Driven by Dean Murray

It's practically impossible
for a shape shifter to get to the point where their body starts
failing as a result of sleep deprivation. The danger for us is that
we usually lose control of our beast long before that happens.
    For
the beast there was only one legitimate reason to go without sleep,
being chased by a predator even more dangerous than us. The best-case
scenario for a shape shifter who gets so tired that their beast
wrestles away control from them, is for other shape shifters in the
area to beat them into submission before their beast goes into some
kind of killing spree.
    I
didn't have the benefit of other shape shifters around, so I was
operating without a safety net. Given the strength of my feelings for
Ben, I didn't think my beast, even in full-on
kill-every-threat-in-sight mode, would hurt him, but it wasn't the
kind of chance I should be taking. Not with Ben, not with anyone
really, but not with him most of all.
    My
phone had been working only intermittently for the last few hours. I
was pretty sure that meant that someone was looking for me and Alec's
guys were having to kick me off of the grid while they shut down the
trace attempts. It had made life extra difficult, if not as difficult
as dealing with another squad of Coun'hij enforcers would have been.
    Despite
the difficulty, I'd managed to find a youth hostel on the outer edges
of the Bronx, one that was close enough to reasonable parking for me
to be able to get Ben out of the car with my normal 'my friend is too
drunk to walk on his own' trick of throwing his arm around my
shoulder and supporting his weight with my arm around his waist.
    I
managed to secure one of their few remaining open double rooms, which
was a bigger stroke of luck than I'd realized. Apparently it was best
to call ahead and reserve a room by phone. The only thing that saved
me was that we weren't quite to the heavy tourist season because it
was still so cold outside.
    I
put Ben in the black metal bunk that was mostly hidden by the door so
that I'd be able to enter and exit the room without people in the
hall seeing that he was just lying there as unresponsive as always,
and then made him as comfortable as I could. Once a new IV had been
run and he was as well off as I could make him, I locked the door and
went out to grab something to eat.
    I
needed something that was as energy-dense as I could get it without
just going straight sugar, so I jogged over to a fast food joint and
ordered two meals to go. I was back in the room with Ben less than
fifteen minutes after I'd left.
    "You
know, Ben, I think if I'd been living on sugar water for as long as
you have been that just the smell of this food would wake me up."
    I
waved a golden fry underneath his nose, but got absolutely no
response at all. If someone else had been around I would have
pretended that I was just joking around, but the truth was that I
would have done much more foolish things than that if it would have
woken him up.
    "Don't
worry, Rachel will come through. She always has before. She's crazy
now, like halfway out of her mind, but she does seem to know stuff
that she shouldn't be able to know. Maybe I'm being stupid, maybe
she's gone completely bonkers or she's just using me for some
nefarious purpose of her own, but I don't think so. I think this
Geoffrey guy really exists, and I think that she'll lead us to him
sometime soon."
    My
beast was still edgy just due to the lack of sleep, but she'd calmed
down a little once I started getting some food into my stomach.
Getting too hungry was almost as bad an idea as going without sleep.
None of us in Sanctuary had ever lost control and eaten something…or
someone… we shouldn't have, but there were plenty of stories
about people who had, and I was pretty sure that not all of them were
urban legends.
    Discussing
Rachel got my beast worked back up, and for a moment it was all I
could do to hold onto my shape as a wave of anger and otherworldly
energy crashed through