"I'm thinking of it as a big goddamned waste of money and space, how about that?"

"A person of limited imagination," she admitted, "and poor cooking skills might think of it like that."

He sniffed the jar that held the vanilla pods and tossed it into her cart. "FYI, sunshine, I am a great damned cook, and these things are a total waste on a camping trip. Not to mention, they're from Mexico, not Madagascar, so on top of everything else, you're getting screwed."

"Say that after you've tried my campfire cocoa."

"Sure I will. How much money do we have left, anyway?"

"Enough to get free range eggs," she said, plucking them out of the dairy section. "Be a good boy and scamper off to get some Asiago cheese, will you?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," he said, folding his arms across his chest.

"You're just mad because we skipped the Milk Bones aisle."

"Sara, for the love of God... if you don't stop with the dog jokes, and I mean, stop with them right now ..." He followed her, practically wringing his hands, and she hid a smile. It was good to have the upper hand, however momentarily.

Camping across country with a werewolf... nowthat was going to be an adventure.

16

"So you want to stop?"

"I don't mind stopping."

"I didn't ask if you'dmind. I asked—"

"Since I'm sitting right next to you," he said, trying not to snap, "I was sorta able to follow the conversation. Look, I can go all night. Drive," he added when she went red. "I can drive all night. If you want to, curl up in the back, go to sleep."

"Well, we bought all this camping equipment."

"You.You bought it all."

"Right. And it's"—she looked at her wrist— "eight-thirty. We could stop, maybe sleep for a few hours."

"And make some burgers?"

"What?" she cried. "We just dropped twenty bucks at McDonalds!"

"Oh, Big Macs," he scoffed. "They're more like an appetizer than an actual meal."

"Actually," she said frostily, "if memory serves, someone insisted we stop so he could get the toy in the Happy Meal."

"It's for my friend's kid," he tried not to whine. "Anyway, it's not my fault. That stuff doesn't fill you up. Half an hour later—"

"It's been twenty minutes."

"—and you're hungry again."

She smacked herself in the forehead, which looked painful, and left a red mark. He resisted the urge to kiss it. "Okay, okay. So, we'll stop, eat, and sleep. For a little while. We're out of California, anyway. I mean, we're making good time."

"Okay," he said, because really, he didn't know what elseto say. She was getting nervous, which was makinghim nervous. Which he couldn't stand. It's like she hadn't really thought about the fact that they'd be sleeping right next to each other in the back of a truck until just a couple of minutes ago. Which was extremely weird, because Sara was many things, and stupid wasn't one of them. Shit, it was the first thing that went throughhis mind when they were deciding which nylon bags to buy. "So, we'll stop."

She pointed. "There's a campground."

"Yeah, I see it."

Twenty minutes later, they had their one-night camping permit and had selected a teeny campsite that was roughly, given what he'd just paid, ten bucks a square foot.

He decided to kiss her again, break the ice. Well, that, and he wanted to kiss her again. But really, it was, like, a necessity. If she got any edgier, and thus bitchier, he just might try to kill her again, and another brain aneurysm he didnot need.

So, they'd kiss, and maybe it'd lead to something and maybe not, but she seemed to expectsomething, and he was certainly more than willing to oblige.

Except.

Except, she hopped down from the truck, groped in one of the bags, and was now coating herself head to foot with noxious chemicals. He coughed and gagged and waved the air in front of his face, to no avail. The cloud was suffocating him!

"Enough, enough!"

"Do yousee all the mosquitoes?" she cried. "We'll get eaten alive."

"Speak for yourself."

"Are you serious?" She walked over to him, and he backed up, terrified—she was a walking biohazard—but she grabbed his arm, forestalling his retreat. He was coughing so hard he missed her question.

"What?"

"It's true! You don't have a mark on you."

"Bugs don't like werewolves."

"Lucky bastard," she muttered.

"Listen, Sara ..." She was still holding on to him, which he kind of liked. He bent in. "You know, we're going to be spending a lot of... um . . . you know,time together . . . and . .. and . . . shit."

"What?" She was looking up into his eyes, and oh, she was just so pretty it was a damn crime, that's what it was, and ...

Shit.

His lungs exploded. Or, at least, that's what it felt like.

"You've got to lay off the bug spray," he gasped after about ten minutes of spasms.

"Well, what do you know about that," she said, and smiled for the first time in half an hour. "It's werewolf repellent."

He laughed in spite of himself. "Deep Woods Off: For those really pesky werewolves."

An hour later, he wasn't laughing. They'd eaten, doused their fire, said their good nights, crawled into their sleeping bags. Well, she did. He couldn't see how she could cocoon herself in a heavy bag when it was eighty degrees outside— humans wereweird, or maybe it was just females of any species—but whatever. And now he was lying beside her in the back of the truck, slowly going insane.

He'd dated humans before, so it wasn't like he'd never had this problem before. The communication thing. Because he had. But somehow, back then, with other women, it hadn't bothered him so much.

It bothered him now.

If Sara were a werewolf, she'd smell his intent and he'd smell hers, and they'd do it, or she'd say right out: Not interested, pal, take a hike, and they wouldn't do it. Period. The end. But Sara couldn't smell a thing, comparably speaking, and what was worse, she was pretending like she didn't know he was so horny he was ready to have sex with his rolled up sleeping bag. So it was this big—this bigthing that they weren't talking about. What was that saying? It was the elephant in the room. A big, green, horny elephant.

He tried to think: What would Michael do? Jeannie had driven the poor guy nuts in the beginning . . . still did, sometimes. And a lot of the early problems were because she had trouble settling into the Pack. And Michael, as alpha, expected her to fall in line. And Jeannie, as a human who carried firearms, thought he should drop dead. So Michael had a lot of experience with the communication thing. He'd been forced to learn, poor bastard. What wouldhe do?

He'd talk to Sara, that's what he'd do.

"Sara," Derik whispered.

Nothing.

"Listen, Sara—" I really really like you, and you smell great, and I think your powers are really cool, if kind of terrifying, and oddly enough this makes you more appealing than any female I've ever known, and I definitely think we should fuck—oh, shit, I mean make love, you know, whatever—and then we can cuddle and I can get SOME FUCKING SLEEP.

"Sara?"

A light snore for an answer.

"Shit."

Saving the world was going to be harder than he thought.

17

"This werewolf thing," Sara said abruptly. She puffed a hank of hair out of her face and took a break from struggling with her sleeping bag. It was uncanny. You bought the thing in this nice little roll, and after you used it, you couldn't get it back into that nice little roll if someone stuck a gun in your ear. Uncanny! "You know, the full moon's in a couple of days."

"Seventy-eight hours. Yeah, I know."

"So ... what then?"

"Sara, we could all be dead in seventy-eight hours."

"How many times do I have to tell you?" she snapped. "I'm not going to destroy the world.

And what's with you this morning, you big blond grump?"

He mumbled something. It sounded like "I know you are but what am I?" but even he wouldn't be that immature. And boy,, hadhe woken up on the wrong side of the truck this morning!

"I'm just curious about what would happen, is all," she said. "What if you lose control and bite me?"

"What if I do?" he grumped.

"Oh, very nice! ThinkI want to be worried about full moons and biting people and—and getting rabid and eating undercooked food and maybe getting Mad Werewolf Disease?"

He covered his face with his hands and squatted by the smoldering remains of their fire. "It's sooo early..."

"Seriously, Derik."

"I am being serious. It's too early for this shit." He took his hands down from his face. "Besides, it's not the flu, Sara. You can't catch it. I could give you a blood transfusion, and you wouldn't catch it. We're two different species."

"Oh. I didn't know that. So all the movies are wrong?"

"Totally, totally wrong." He scrubbed his face with his hands and yawned. "Don't waste your time watching them, unless it's for entertainment value. Also, we don't carry babies off in the moonlight, and I wouldn't eat a person on a bet. Yech."

"Yech?"

He shuddered, and she took offense. "What's wrong with eating a person? You should be so lucky! Not that I want you to."

"You taste terrible, that's what. All of you. The omnivore diet. . . blurgh." He actually gagged!

"Well, nobody's asking you to eat anybody."

"I'd make an exception," he grumbled.

"Very funny. Don't even think about eating me. And if we're two different species, how do you have children with humans? And speaking of blood transfusions, would one of those even take?"