Then everything disappeared. The whole landscape was replaced by the obnoxious fairy and his damned glowing apple.
“Where is he? Where’s Laddin?”
Bitterroot held up the apple. “Care to make a purchase? It won’t cost much,” he offered. “I swear.”
“Fuck you,” Bruce snapped. Then he focused as hard as he could on waking up.
He jolted awake, gasping as he half rolled off the bench. His arms got tangled in a heavy blanket, and he threw it off him with a curse. Then he searched around frantically for Laddin, but he couldn’t see him. Just an endless landscape of newly turned field. Hell, he could be anywhere!
Bruce did a slow circle, searching for a clue. All he saw was the fairy leaning against a tree while eating an apple. For a split second Bruce had a moment of panic. Was that his apple? Had he taken too long to decide? Was the bastard even now eating—?
No. It wasn’t his apple, and the fairy wanted him to say yes. Plus, he didn’t intend to eat the inventory anyway. This was a ruse to get him to panic and say yes in desperation. But it wasn’t going to happen. He had to think of a better way of finding Laddin.
“You’d find him immediately if you took me up on my offer.”
“I don’t even know that what you showed me is real.”
Bitterroot gave him a wounded look. “Everything I say is true. You have my solemn oath on that.”
“Unless you’re lying about that.”
The fairy polished off the last off the apple with a disgusted grunt. Then he shook his head and spat a single word. “Mortals.”
Bruce didn’t bother with the obviously response of “Fairies.” Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to remember the details of the images he’d seen of Laddin. What did the environment look like? Were there any trees, buildings, clues, anything?
“You’re not going to find him that way.”
Bruce opened his eyes and glared at the fairy. The prince was gone, but the apple was hanging from a branch in an oak tree just this side of the field. Bruce resolutely turned away from it. Or he started to, when he saw something far in the distance. A flash of light? A trick of the apple? Hell, he didn’t know. Maybe his eyes were screwing with him and he’d have to use his other senses, but….
Smell. He had a keen sense of smell, but not as a human. Which meant, hell, he had to shift to a wolf, and he didn’t know how.
His gaze slid back to the apple. Last time he’d eaten the cherry and bam, five minutes later, he’d been a wolf. The apple would likely do the same thing. But no, no, no! God, the temptation was killing him. He had to close his eyes, smell as a human, and pick a direction. If he was wrong….
His gut clenched in fear. What if he was too late? What if he chose wrong? What if someone died because he wasn’t enough again?
He couldn’t think like that. Indecision was definitely the wrong choice, so he had to pick. He’d seen something beyond the apple, so he’d go in that direction. He hoped it wasn’t a distraction set up by Bitterroot. If it was, that meant he ought to go in the opposite direction.
But he’d already started jogging, zipping around the apple that was so close he could easily grab it. He didn’t. He kicked it up from a jog to a run, and if this was the wrong direction, then so be it. Rather than let his stomach clench tighter in fear, he pushed himself to run faster while his eyes burned from the wind. Pretty soon his breath was sawing in hard gasps and his side was killing him. But the fear for Laddin grew exponentially stronger the farther he went. He still didn’t see anything, but he heard… was that screaming? Did someone call for help? Damn it, he couldn’t hear over his own breath.
It didn’t matter. He would run until he dropped. He focused on the ground, the way they’d taught him in firefighter school. The flashing something or other had been near another tree, far across the field. He’d head there. He put everything he had into setting one foot in front of the other. That was his destination. He kept his senses alert for anything else, but he was going there.
He ran. And he was going faster than he’d ever thought he could before. Plus the smells were sharper, and he could even taste the air. It wasn’t until he could smell something awful that he realized he was running on all fours.
He was a wolf. He’d done it! He’d shifted, and the joy of that gave him an extra spurt of energy. Unfortunately, it also had him inhaling deeply of something that smelled like moldy cheese. Moldy, fermenting, back-of-his-garage, something-died-in-it cheese.
He blinked as his eyes watered, and he breathed through his mouth rather than his nose. Then he saw bright things bouncing up and down, while white rope stretched along behind the bouncing things. Except it looked more like string cheese than rope. And Laddin was batting the things away as he fought from his knees.
Laddin! I’m coming!
He thought the words but had no breath to voice them. Meanwhile, tiny wedges with legs were swarming all over Laddin, who grabbed a rolled-up orange thing with his fist and squeezed. Unfortunately, the orange stuff oozed out through is fingers and apparently sealed his hands shut. Laddin was now swinging big orange-covered fists and batting things away with his forehead.
“Stop it!” Laddin boomed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
But it sure looked like they wanted to hurt him. They were swarming him, and wherever they touched him, they flattened out and hardened. Whole areas of Laddin were covered in that stuff and seemed completely stiff. Pretty soon the guy wouldn’t
