Going somewhere new might catch me in a dead-end. The same risk existed near my regular haunts, but at least I had more options of potential escape routes if an expected path was cut off.
I viewed Carlos being behind me as good news. While it didn’t remove the risk of him catching me, I had a rough idea of his position. Unless he’d been putting in a lot of exercise on the sly, I was faster and could outlast him any day of the week, even after a long hike.
In bad news, I needed something to eat and rest, but until I found somewhere safe, I would get neither.
Fucking assholes who’d set a bounty on me. I bet my parents held some responsibility, although they couldn’t afford the bill for my capture. They could afford to bump elbows with those richer than them, tipping them off about my existence. They’d probably enjoy a cut of the profits from my sale.
In a way, I almost hoped my auction flopped so they wouldn’t profit from me if they were behind the surge of interest in my person.
My deeded cellar wouldn’t work as a hiding place. Too many knew it existed. With Carlos hot on my heels, I couldn’t risk shifting and having my most important secret exposed. He would take advantage of the situation, get my bounty cranked higher, and do his best to profit off me.
I headed for the general safety of the cellar I’d shared with Sandro, one of many I could access in that general area. With luck, some of the old landmarks remained, else I’d be searching through a barren wasteland of broken debris and bodies for a bolt hole.
Then again, any bolt hole might work, especially if I could control my transformation and mimic a mundane fox. Some red foxes lurked in the outskirts, surviving in exposed, abandoned cellars and creating their dens within them. They avoided people, instead scavenging the dead neighborhoods for anything they could find.
Mother Nature couldn’t beat the persistence of her wildlife, something I admired.
To trick Carlos into believing I headed for the questionable safety of McCoy’s or the martial arts center, I began my trip heading towards Inner Tulsa, sticking to the wider streets more likely to remain unobstructed. Six blocks in, with the man’s incessant cursing trailing behind me, I backtracked, taking advantage of questionable alleys with enough rubble and refuse to make it harder going for someone of a larger build.
Like Carlos.
I scrambled over broken scraps of wood, abandoned and rusting trash cans, and an overfilled dumpster before hopping the makeshift fence meant to keep the trash in the alley rather than spilling out onto one of the nicer streets. I landed hard, grunting before resuming my sprint.
Bolting down the street drew unwanted attention, but during the aftermath of the storm, everyone either shook their heads at me or shouted curses at me if I came too close. I opted against caring.
I ran like a madwoman, and I couldn’t blame them for their reaction. Every now and then, a vagrant would get into a fight with a sick animal, contract rabies, and turn the outskirts upside down as an outbreak added to everyone’s problems. Without access to Asylum or a hospital, rabies led to death, and the last outbreak had killed fifteen people before someone in Inner Tulsa had decided it might be a good idea to treat the remaining survivors before it spread further.
In the East, any half-decent toxin witch could handle the disease; it acted a lot like a poison in many ways, making it our domain. Thanks to my ears and tail, something I’d been born with, nobody had thought to test me as a witch, and by the time I’d clued in I was more than just a hybrid, I’d known better than tell anyone what I was.
I didn’t want to know what would happen to me if anyone learned the truth. Being a fox hybrid would cost me enough. My price tag would skyrocket if anyone realized I was more than I appeared.
My current price tag was enough to make my life difficult.
Once satisfied I might convince Carlos I headed for Inner Tulsa, I began the tedious process of backtracking towards the outskirts. I maintained my run until my lungs burned before I slowed, stopped, and listened for signs of pursuit.
Beyond the expected sounds of people doing their best to burn the bodies and clean up before the next storm, all remained quiet.
“Better luck next