Broken Warrior (The Weavers Circle 1)

The smell hit him first. It was like walking into a solid wall of fetid cow carcasses. Clay gasped and stumbled a step, gagging on the odor. Another potential attacker stepped into his path.

With one hand pressed to his face, Clay grabbed a bag of cereal off the shelf and threw it at the bastard. The man batted at the bag, causing it to explode in a shower of hard marshmallows and puffed wheat. Clay slammed his fist into his face. It was like punching concrete. Pain radiated up his hand and through his arm to his elbow. The fucker’s head snapped, and he staggered into the shelves. Several boxes of cereal toppled on top of him as he hit the ground.

Clay didn’t wait around for him to stand. Leaping over his sprawled legs, Clay pushed through the exit that led to the storage area and out the rear delivery door. He kept running, down one street and up another. Just turns at random until he was completely lost. Didn’t matter. He’d ditched those fuckers.

For now.

Two hours ticked slowly by before Clay wandered to find his car. He’d parked it a couple of blocks away from the grocery store. More than once he’d crawled over that old beater with the cracked windshield and missing rear bumper. They had to have placed some kind of tracking device on it, but he never found anything.

The old girl was sitting exactly where he left her, waiting for him to drag his sorry ass to her. The fifteen-year-old Toyota had been a hand-me-down from his mother when he’d graduated high school. She’d thought Clay could use it to commute between college and work, but the college thing hadn’t worked out.

Not that he’d ever planned on the college thing. High school had been all he could take of being trapped inside. There was no way he was going to train for a career that stuck him indoors and behind a computer for forty, fifty, or even sixty hours a week. Fuck. That.

Of course, that now meant he was a twenty-nine-year-old gay man with no home, little money, and absolutely no direction. The freedom was great, but that was about all he had in excess.

With a sigh, he dropped behind the wheel and drove out of town. The highway stretched out in front of him, one long, gray lane disappearing into the darkness. The window was down, and warm air raced into the car, ruffling his hair and smelling of fresh-mown grass. Spring was in full bloom in Southern Georgia, and the nights were comfortably warm. Perfect for camping if he ran out of money for the occasional cheap motel room.

For now, he kept heading south. It sounded insane, but his head seemed to hurt less when he was traveling south. As if his body were looking for something but refused to let his brain in on the secret.

Every once in a while, he’d say fuck it all and turn west or north. His brain would scream in breath-stealing agony. The headache only cleared when he turned south again. Even if he had to do it on his hands and knees.

It was close to midnight when he pulled off the road and stopped at a tiny motel surrounded by nothing but flat plains and a smattering of scrub brush. The stars shone so damn bright overhead, all of space looming over him as if trying to impress upon him its overwhelming vastness. Or maybe just remind him of how insignificant he was.

No worries, Universe. Message received. There was no escaping it.

But the headaches that had come and gone for the past few days had almost completely dissipated now. Exhaustion and a low-level ache weighed on him. He needed at least one night in a comfortable bed, followed by a hot shower.

Standing in the stretch of nothing with only the faint lights of the motel behind him, he could breathe deeper. Sleep and a shower would clear away the clutter in his brain. In the morning, he could make some new plans. Make decisions with some thought instead of knee-jerk reactions and panic.

After waking the manager, Clay got the key to one of the rooms in the long line stretching parallel to the road. The poor place hadn’t been updated since at least the eighties with its loud carpet and strange floral comforter. But the sheets on the bed looked clean, and the lock on the door was sturdy. It was enough that he might finally get some sleep.

As his eyes dropped closed, he thought about trying to find a job in the area. Maybe he’d been working to disappear in cities and towns too big. Maybe he needed something in the middle of nowhere. He’d stay here and fade into the background, let the world forget about him.