Of Doms & Subs

The Great Escape

I was very appreciative of the thick carpeting because it allowed me to nearly soundlessly slide the dresser in front of the bedroom door.  The window screen was almost as silent when I popped it free of the frame.  The room faced the leeward side of the hill, so it was effectively a three story drop to the ground.  Not being eager to test the limits of my regenerative abilities, I took one of the ropes from my pack and tied one end around a leg of the heavy oak bed.  Rather than drop my bags noisily to the ground, I was grateful for my new strength that allowed me to climb down with them both slung across my back.

It was raining again.  Or would that be still raining?  Hard to tell in this part of the Northwest.  Hopefully it would help muffle sounds.  The thick grass squelched under my feet as I sprinted for the road, avoiding the driveway and the crunch of gravel. 

I was so focused that I almost didn’t see the wolf charge at me as I rounded the house.  What was his name again, Ian?  I spun the duffel from my back to the front, using the momentum to slam the end into his solar plexus.  Fifty pounds of weight powered by a werewolf judiciously applied into a two-foot squared area was sufficient to knock the wind out of even another werewolf.

Unfortunately, werewolves recover much faster than humans.  Asphalt was so close I could practically taste the petrichor when Ian grabbed me.  Before I knew it, I was slung over his shoulder so that it dug into my stomach, which was still full of pizza and carbonation.  Not a good combination.  The duffel fell down and I extricated myself from the strap before it could strangle me.  Rather than start a fight I couldn’t possibly win, to keep myself calm, I pondered at what point suffocation would overpower regeneration.

“That was quick thinking with the duffel,” Ian said as a salve to my pride.

“Get mugged on the way back from the gym, or work, you learn to improvise.”  My voice sounded stuffy to me from the blood rushing to my head till it felt like it would burst.  “How’d you know?”

“We were all expecting it,” he laughed.  My stomach really wished he hadn’t as his shoulder bounced against my gut.  “Hell, there’s a betting pool going on when you’d try.”

Ian set me down on the porch and opened the door for me.  We pried off our muddy shoes in the aptly named mudroom. 

“I’m gonna have to climb back up the rope.”  He cast a confused look my way.  “I pushed the oak dresser in front of the door,” I confessed.

He threw his back and laughed.  “You sure you’re submissive?”

“That’s what they keep telling me,” I shrugged.

“I’ll send Jim up, skinny dude’s like a spider monkey anyway.”  He gestured for me to hang the backpack on a hook, so I surrendered it with as much grace as I could muster before he marched me down to what I was rapidly coming to think of as the principal’s office.

If Angus had been woken up he gave no sign of it.  He was dressed in the same clothes he wore earlier.  The scowl was certainly the same, if a touch darker. 

"Where were you going this time?” he demanded.

“Timbuktu,” I answered far more casually than I felt.  “What is this?  Another attempted case of forced Stockholm syndrome?  Right now the only difference I’m seeing between you and John is a mansion in the city vs cabin in the woods.”