Smiling, he shook his head. "It's hard to explain. You must feel it."
Abigail tried, but the only thing she felt was the weight of Jess's head in her lap and the heaviness of her conscience that still flogged her over all of this.
Choo Co La Tah's words didn't help her any, either. If anything, they made her feel worse. Her lasting impression was four plagues and untold horrors played out on innocent people.
Part of her wished she was twisted enough to not care. But sadly, she did.
Choo Co La Tah pulled over to the side of the road and parked the truck.
Jess sat up slowly.
"Are you any better?"
He pulled the towel down and she cringed. He was still bleeding pretty badly. "Sasha? I need some tissue to pack my nose with."
The wolf gave him a suspicious stare. "Is that hygienically sound?"
"Sasha..."
"Fine, but if you get toxic shock up your nose, buddy, remember I warned you." He held his hand palm up and a box of Kleenex appeared.
Jess pulled a couple out and wedged them into his nostrils. He gave Abigail a sheepish smile. "Sexy, right?"
"Oh yeah, baby. You're so hot right now, if I was chicken I'd lay hard-boiled eggs."
Sasha fell back laughing.
Jess chucked the box of tissues at him. "At least I don't lick my own crotch."
"Hey!" Sasha snapped. "That's just rude. And for the record, I don't. We do have full cognitive functioning in our animal forms and that's all I'm going to say on the matter. I refute your mean lies." He sat up again and laughed at Jess. "By the way, you really need to check yourself out in the mirror."
"I'm really not going to." There were some things a man didn't need to know about himself. How much a goober he appeared to a woman he had the hots for was one of them. His imagination was bad enough. God forbid the reality be worse than the image he had in his head.
He wouldn't be able to recover from that blow.
Sasha flashed out of the cab while the rest of them climbed down.
Jess made sure to take his gun.
They met up at the back of the trailer while Ren swooped down from the sky and returned to his human form.
Abigail was impressed at how he did that. One second he was a bird and then after a small flash of light that could be easily missed if you weren't paying attention, he was human again.
Ren shook his head at Choo Co La Tah. "Nice driving. I honestly thought you guys were dead, especially when you hit that off-ramp at warp speed."
Sasha snorted. "So did we. Be glad you weren't there for the screaming."
Abigail rubbed her hands down her arms, trying to banish a sudden chill. "So what do we do now?"
Choo Co La Tah pinned her with sinister stare. "We find the sacred rock and you make your sacrifice."
Abigail took a deep breath to quell her rising fears. This was what she'd come here to do. Trade her life for the world.
You can do this.
No, I can't. I can't. I don't want to die. Not now that she had a real reason to live. She wanted to hang on to every heartbeat. Every breath. Because every one of them meant something now in a way they never had before. After a lifetime of waiting for something, anything special, each second with Jess was an extraordinary adventure in discovery ...
Of him.