Free Howl for Me by Lynn Red Page A

arms apart, so there he was. Stuck.
    And anyway, Damon put a pair of silver cuffs on top of those plastic zip-ties, just in case. If Devin managed to break the plastic, he’d be in for a world of hurt.
    Damon rolled to the other side, spat out another mouthful of red grit, and stood. The air coming across the desert was so cool that he’d slept bundled up in both a sleeping bag and all his clothes. He’d been warm enough, but being so bundled up made it hard to hear anything going on. He didn’t like that one bit.
    When he found Devin broken and bleeding by the side of the road, his brother told him someone was chasing him – chasing them, but he wasn’t sure who. They’d been running for the better part of two days.
    He hated sleeping almost worse than anything. Out here, he felt vulnerable and helpless, especially when his only companion was the brother who hated him.
    It took most of a day, and a whole lot of convincing, to get Devin to calm down enough to ride, but once he had, the going hadn’t been too tough.
    But of all the trouble – being chased, having to deal with Devin – the hardest part for Damon was missing Lily. In a distant second was listening to his brother whining.
    Damon stretched, then shoved his fists into the small of his back. He bent backwards, twisting in either direction, until he got a few satisfying pops.
    That’s when he first realized how quiet the morning was.
    One thing that never happened with Devin, was quiet.
    Damon looked around to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Devin’s bike was propped up against a tree, and he could see part of his brother’s jacket, where he was leaned against it, between the wheel and the frame. But still, something was wrong.
    Damon dug his fists into his eyes, and rubbed the two hours and change of sleep from them. If there was one thing he’d learned about his brother, it was that trusting him was always the worst possible idea.
    But, there he was, asleep, behind his parked motorcycle.
    Slowly, Damon walked to a tree and pulled some jerky out of his jacket pocket. The stuff was tough and hard, and only tasted vaguely like the advertised hot sauce. At least it kept his stomach from growling. He and Devin stopped almost right after the Arizona state line, just far enough from the road to throw anyone following them. Now, he knew, it was just a matter of time, and a matter of Damon deciding when to wake up his complaining brother, and they’d be in Fort Branch before noon.
    Hopefully.
    A wind kicked up, cold and harsh, and the dust it carried stung Damon’s eyes. He pulled his shirt up to cover his mouth and squinted into the distance.
    The wind wasn’t letting up, though, not like it usually did. It just kept grinding away. Before he knew it, he was leaning forward, trying to keep from moving backwards. Something creaked, a brush-tree branch, probably, and then snapped behind him.
    A pair of headlights – or, maybe, two motorcycles moving abreast – approached from the far off horizon. Squinting into the blowing dirt, they were just faint little halos, but he was sure he saw them.
    Damon turned back toward Devin’s motorcycle, just in time to see the big metal beast start to lurch, threatening to fall and crush the somehow sleeping wolf, underneath it. Quickly, Damon made his way across the thirty or so feet that separated him and Devin’s bike.
    When it started wobbling, he moved faster.
    Then, just as he was next to the bike, a huge gust blew from the east – from the direction of the road – driving cold grains of sand against the skin on Damon’s neck.
    With a groan that sent a thrill of nausea up Damon’s chest, the bike tottered.
    The fifteen-hundred cubic centimeter motorcycle, that probably weighed a thousand pounds, tipped, and collapsed.
    In a half-panicked fury, Damon grabbed the handlebar and wrenched it off the ground, grunting with effort, until he heaved the metal mass off his brother. He swore and pushed