Finding Midnight (6 page)

“Summer, this is Jackson, my best friend in
all the world.” Nick had his arm around Jackson’s shoulder. He then
fake punched him in the stomach. Jackson seemed embarrassed by his
friend’s brashness, but very politely held out his hand towards
Summer.

“Hi, Jackson. It’s nice to meet you,” Summer
yelled across the bar as she took his offered hand in a quick
shake.

Jackson seemed to blush, but it was hard to
tell in the lighting. “It’s my pleasure to meet you,” he shouted
back genuinely, tossing his hair a bit to get it out of his
dazzling green eyes.

As Tori said, the crowd dispersed within the
hour, the music was turned down to a level where people could talk
without shouting, and only a handful of people were scattered
about. Summer and Tori chatted while Nick showed Jackson the ropes,
teaching him how to make a few of the popular drinks and how to
change a keg. In between lessons, Nick smooched and cuddled with
Tori, and Jackson made awkward small talk with Summer. Noting his
shyness, Summer tried to help him along.

“Where are you from, Jackson?” she
asked.

“All over, really, but most recently
Colorado,” he said.

“I’ve heard it’s beautiful,” she said.

“You’ve never been there?” he asked.

“No. I’ve never been anywhere, really.”

“You should go. You’d like it. The climate
is very similar to California, just a little bit less
predictable—and, of course, there’s no ocean.”

“Right. So what made you decide to move out
here?”

“Nick, mostly. I didn’t have much keeping me
in Colorado and he’s been bugging me for years to come here, so I
figured, why not?”

“That’s nice. Tori said you’ve been friends
for a long time?”

“Yes, we have. Nick’s like a brother to me.
I don’t have any family…any more.”

“Me neither,” Summer said.

“Oh, right, Nick said you and Tori grew up
together in the orphanage.”

“Yes. She’s like a sister to me. The other
girls used to tease us because we were so different, but I never
saw it that way. She was my voice when I was too shy to say
something and I was her conscience telling her to back off when
she’d gone over the edge.”

“That’s neat,” he said with a heart-melting
smile.

“How did you and Nick meet?” Summer asked.
Jackson went a little pale.

“Uhh,” he said nervously, looking to Nick
for help, but he was mid-smooch with Tori and too far away to hear
the conversation.

“Are you okay? You look sick,” Summer asked
with concern.

“No, I’m uhh…” he said, fidgeting with his
apron and shifting his weight behind the bar.

“Oh, does it have to do with your secret?”
Summer said quietly with her hand cupped around her mouth.

“My secret?” Jackson said with a squeak in
his voice, still hoping to gain Nick’s attention, to no avail.

“Being a vampire, I mean,” she
whispered.

Jackson went white as a sheet, which Summer
thought was pretty impressive since he was so pale already. He
stammered before he distraughtly whispered, “You know about
that?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Tori, of course.”

“Tori knows? About Nick?” Puzzled, he looked
at Nick but still couldn’t get his attention. “And me?”

“Yes.”

“And you are both okay with that?” he asked,
voice a little shakily.

“Are you kidding? She’s thrilled. She’s
wanted to date a vampire since she could read,” Summer said.

He laughed nervously then downed just about
the entire glass of beer in front of him. “And you?”

“I have to admit I had my reservations about
Nick in the beginning, but he seems to be a really good guy,”
Summer said.

“He is. He really is a good guy, but what I
meant was how do you feel about ME being a…one,” he said.

“I was a little nervous about meeting you,
but I know Tori would never introduce me to anyone who would hurt
me. Very strange men, yes, like the guy she set me up with who
thought blowing green Jell-O out his pierced nose made him look
like a really cool alien character from some graphic novel he’d
read.”

“That didn’t really happen, did it?” he said
with a laugh, as he placed newly poured beers in front of both of
them.

“Oh, YES, it did!” Summer said.

“Trust me…you’ll never see me blowing green
Jell-O out my nose, at least not on purpose,” he said.

“Good to hear.” Summer laughed.

“And, well…as for being a…you know…I’d never
hurt you,” Jackson said sweetly.

“I think most psycho killers might say the
same thing,” Summer joked.

Jackson laughed heartily just as Nick and
Tori came up for air, and when they thought Jackson and Summer
weren’t looking, they knuckle-bumped one another. The rest of the
night was full of laughter and getting to know one another, ending
with an exchange of numbers by Jackson and Summer. On the drive
home with Nick and Tori, Summer was besieged with an interrogation
the CIA would applaud.

Tori wanted to know every detail of the
conversation she missed while smooching, though Summer kept her
answers vague in an attempt to not reveal too much to Nick. She
didn’t want too much information getting back to Jackson.

The three of them said their goodbyes when
they pulled up to the cottage behind the shaggy dogmobile. Nick sat
with the engine running until Summer was safely in the cottage then
they pulled away.

Chapter 6

The night was inky black from lack of
moonlight. Outside the window, a gentle breeze fluttered the leaves
about the trees, making them rustle. Inside the tiny one-bedroom
cottage, all was silent aside from the gentle breathing of its
sleeping inhabitant, but the relaxing calm that reigned over this
little home nestled against the tree-line of the vast woods behind
it would soon be shattered.

A low rumble of thunder sounded in the
Cascade Mountain range above, swelling in volume and resonance as
it traveled downward like a curling wave of water gaining momentum
and mass only to meet the shore with a deafening crash. A blinding
light lit the bedroom making the lump under the covers stir in her
sleep. Less than a second later, an explosion of sound rattled the
walls and shook the windows, making Summer bolt upright in bed.

Feeling muddled from being ripped from a
deep sleep, she rubbed her eyes and looked around the room,
realizing what woke her. She listened as the angry thunder
continued grumbling at its lightning counterpart, like two
quarreling siblings—thunder always getting in the last word.

Summer pulled back the covers and got out of
bed. She was making her way to the kitchen when she heard a loud
crash that shook the ground, as if an angry giant had hurled a
boulder down the mountain side. A growl, deep and guttural,
followed it, making the earth beneath her feet tremble in
vibration. She jumped into shoes, grabbed her coat, and ran out the
door.

Boom…Crash…Growl
… These sounds came
from beyond the small graveyard and garden. Summer bolted in the
direction of the main house. Near the mansion, she fell into a
large indentation in the ground that was a good six inches deeper
than the surrounding area.

Growl…Boom
…Summer righted herself,
feeling the earth below her quake with another impact. The noise
lie within the woods. She darted towards a large opening of
splintered tree trunks and broken branches when another lightning
bolt lit up the sky and radiated outward and towards the very woods
she was approaching. She ran in the direction of the source of the
commotion, all the while wondering to herself,
am I insane? I
should be running away, not heading to the disturbance
, but her
feet had another agenda and THEY sprinted towards the noises within
the forest.

It was a miracle she didn’t kill herself
running in the dark through the forest with the debris of
splintered logs and branches left in the wake of whatever she was
headed for. This thought crossed her mind as she tripped over a
rock, which launched her in the air like a rocket and deposited her
into the soft organic matter of undergrowth under an ancient tree.
She spent no time at all righting herself and continued her pursuit
of the source of ruckus. The path zigzagged this way and that,
seeming to head back to the house.

Crash…Growl…Boom
…A long, hideous
squeal of pain pierced her ears. Soon after, there was a howl so
loud and so close she felt sure she should be able to see
something, but the forest was too dense. The smell of rotten eggs
grew stronger with every stride, making her eyes water and her
stomach churn. Ten more strides and she did see something.

Something she’d never seen before—there
within feet of the clearing behind the house but still sheltered by
the forest, were two unmoving forms. One was the size of a small
horse or donkey, and the other seemed to be a man. They were twenty
feet or so from one another. The man was in a crumpled heap up
against the trunk of a tree in an unnatural position that looked
painful. The large animal was black and furless and lay unmoving on
its side with the remnants of a splintered trunk protruding from
its middle. She thought it very likely dead. A pie-shaped arc,
which started from the creature’s mouth and fanned outward, still
smoldered. It looked as if the creature had tried to torch
everything in the vicinity with its dying breath.

There was nothing to be done for the
creature, but a moan came from the man and Summer turned her
attention to him. He was trying to turn onto his back from being
practically wrapped around a tree. Black stains soiled his shredded
shirt. She assumed the lack of light in the forest was making the
blood look black. Either way, black or red, there was a lot of it.
If he didn’t get some medical care he would bleed out in a matter
of minutes.

She pulled him away from the trunk and laid
him flat, and then ripped off the remains of his shirt to use as a
compress against a nasty gash on his side under his rib cage. She
pulled at his belt until it was free, and then quickly wrapped it
around his upper thigh to slow the bleeding at yet another bad
laceration. She tore several long strips from the bottom of her
nightgown to make another compress for his leg, and then secured
both compresses with more strips from her gown. He rolled to his
side and she jumped a bit, for she could have sworn his face
changed to something fanged and gargoyle-ish and then back to that
of a man. She told herself it was just the lighting playing tricks
with her.

“Are you okay?” Summer asked.

“Not exactly,” he said hoarsely.

“Can you walk?”

“With help, yes, I think so,” he said
wincing.

“My name is Summer,” she said, helping him
to a standing position. She supported much of his weight as they
hobbled forward toward the creature and out of the forest, back to
her cottage.

“Hunter, my name is Hunter,” he said behind
clenched teeth.

She stumbled once under his weight, but kept
them moving. She had a thousand questions for Hunter, but it was
taking every ounce of her strength to keep them upright and
moving.

She would have taken him to the main house,
but there were no lights on and she didn’t want to scare Ms.
Midnight in the middle of the night with a strange, injured man and
an even stranger story. It was a workout, but they made it into the
cottage where she deposited the man on the couch after shoving the
mysterious envelope the sisters had given her out of the way.

She turned on the lights and grabbed her
cellphone, and turned back to Hunter on the couch. She nearly
dropped the phone as his face once again morphed from a handsome
human face to something nightmarish, and back again. She noticed
too that the dark stains were indeed black, NOT red. It hadn’t been
a trick of the light. Her mind flooded with questions and doubts
and she wondered what she had brought into her new home. The only
thing she knew for certain was Hunter was something other than
human.

The look on her face told him he had better
explain things about himself and fast or she’d be no use to him as
a caregiver.

“What…what are you?” she stuttered as panic
started at her toes and worked its way up her body, into her chest
making it incredibly hard to breathe or think.

“I don’t mean to scare you, Summer,” he
said, clearly in a great amount of pain. “I’m a demon and…” That
was all he could utter before passing out, his face morphing back
into something only nightmares are made of.

“A demon?” Summer said out loud to an
unconscious Hunter.

She sat for a moment after Hunter’s
declaration. She thought back on the dragon shadow she had seen at
her window and her meeting with Daniel, the fallen angel who’d
confessed to watching over her all her life. Not to mention the
vampire she’d had a date with earlier that evening.

Now a demon and whatever that creature
was in the woods?
Sister Mary Louise certainly never told her
all these things in her teachings. Had she been just sheltered from
these things at the orphanage? Or had she somehow plunged into some
strange supernatural dimension? Maybe she was still asleep? She
almost got up to see if she’d find her body in bed but the thought
of yet another supernatural event like astral projection was too
much to handle.

She looked at Hunter once more. The blood
smeared around his wounds and seeping from his compress was indeed
black. This was real. She wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t in some strange
dimension. She had helped a demon into her home. A real demon. He
had deep-set eyes below a broad, protruding brow. He had large
canines both top and bottom that extended past his lips in both
directions. But the most prominent features were two small horns
set high on his forehead just at the hairline.