Friday morning dawned cold and wet. Dark clouds hung low in an angry gray sky. My first thought was for Susie. Picking up the receiver, I called the hospital and gave the operator her room number.
A man answered the phone.
“Hi,” I said. “This is Kathy McKenna. Is Susie there?”
“This is her husband. She’s not taking phone calls just now.”
“Oh.” I didn’t like the tone of his voice at all. “Is she feeling any better?” I heard Susie’s voice in the background. It sounded like she was crying. “Mr. McGee, please, if I could just speak to her for a minute.”
“Perhaps another time,” he said curtly.
“Excuse me, Mr. McGee, but I’m the one who found her. I think I have a right to speak to her.”
There was a pause, the sound of muffled voices that told me Rick had his hand over the receiver, and then Susie’s voice came over the line.
“Kathy, I’m sorry, but I really can’t talk right now.”
“Are you all right?”
“Not really.”
I had the feeling her husband was standing over her, listening to every word. Before today, I’d never said more than three or four words to the man, but I was starting to hate him. “I understand. Why don’t you call me when you get home, or when you can talk?”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, thank you for calling,” Susie said politely, and hung up the phone.
I stared at the receiver, wondering if I dared call back. She had sounded so…I don’t know, so completely forlorn, so lost. I had hoped her husband would comfort her, but I didn’t think the man had it in him. He had sounded angry, as if what had happened to Susie was her own fault.
But there was nothing I could do about it now, not while he was there. If he didn’t want me to talk to her on the phone, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want me coming to visit.
After a quick breakfast, I showered, got dressed, and went to the bookstore.
In spite of the rain, or maybe because of it, a number of people came into the shop to browse. Even more surprising, they seemed in no hurry to leave, and most of them actually bought books.
“I’m going home to curl up in front of the fire,” one woman remarked. “A good book and a cup of hot chocolate—I can’t think of anything that sounds better on a day like this.”
An image of Rafe flashed through my mind. I could think of several things I’d rather do on a day like this, I mused, imagining the two of us curled up on my bed. I didn’t say it out loud, of course, merely nodded in agreement.
Shortly after two o’clock, things went back to normal, as in, no customers. I closed up for thirty minutes and went to lunch, then returned to the store. Shortly after three, the Were-girl I had seen once before entered the shop.
She picked out a couple of paperbacks. Ringing up her purchases, I wondered what would be the best way to start a conversation with her and decided on a simple, “Hi, Jennifer, it’s nice to see you again.”
She looked at me, her violet eyes wide and suspicious. “How’d you know my name?”
I held up her credit card.
“Oh,” she said, blushing, “of course.”
I smiled as I returned her card, then bagged her books. I wanted desperately to question her about what it was like to be a shape-shifter, but the words stuck in my throat. She didn’t look like she was anxious to talk about it, and I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to let her know that I knew what she was. Besides, she probably couldn’t answer my questions anyway, since being a shape-shifter wasn’t the same as being a Werewolf.
“Come again,” I said.
She smiled uncertainly as she picked up her bag and left the store.
With a sigh, I stared after her, then picked up the phone and dialed the hospital. I asked for Susie’s room, only to learn that her husband had already taken her home.
The hours seemed to drag by. And it was Friday, which meant staying open until nine. Of course, I was the boss. I could always close up early. Heck, I could close up now.
Moving to the door, I stared out into the gloom. Jagged bolts of lightning speared the clouds; thunder rolled across the lowering skies. The sidewalks were empty; there was little traffic on the street.
I’d stay another half an hour or so, I thought, and then I was going to go home and, like the woman who had been in earlier, I was going to curl up in front of the fire with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book.
The prospect was so appealing, I decided not to wait any longer. With that thought in mind, I turned away from the window and felt my heart skip a beat when I saw Rafe standing by the counter. He wore a long black leather coat over a pair of black jeans and a dark green shirt.
“Oh!” I pressed a hand to my heart. “You startled me!”
“Sorry.”
I studied him for a moment. He was as handsome as ever, his appearance impeccable, his long black hair framing a face worthy of a Botticelli, but something wasn’t right. And then it hit me. “How come you’re not wet?”
He shrugged. “Vampire magic?”
I grunted softly. It seemed to be his standard answer for anything related to his Supernatural status. “Susie went home today.”
“She’s better then?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really get to talk to her. I’m worried about her, Rafe. Her husband seems so unsympathetic and, well, I’m just worried about her.”
“You don’t think he’d hurt her, do you?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t believe they let her go home already. I mean, she lost a baby and…and, you know.”
“We can stop by there later, after you close up,” Rafe said.
“I’m closing now,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Rafe parked his car a block away from Susie’s house. I looked askance at him. Did he expect us to walk in the rain? Maybe he wouldn’t get wet, but I would.
“I’m going in alone,” he said.
“What?”
“The best way to find out what’s going on is for me to go in there, unseen.”
“How are you going to…oh. Can you really do that? Make yourself invisible?”
He winked at me. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“No?”
Before I could say anything else, Rafe’s body shimmered and dissolved into a faint silver mist, kind of like shimmery specks of dust. I stared at him in astonishment, all the while wondering what other Supernatural powers he possessed, and then the mist was gone.
“Be careful,” I murmured, but there was no one there to hear me.
Staring out the window, I listened to the rain beating down on the roof of the car. Lightning flashed in the distance. I was wondering what was going on in Susie’s house when the strangest thing happened. One minute I was watching jagged bolts of lightning flash across the skies, and the next it was like I was inside Susie’s house. It took me a minute to realize I was seeing things through Rafe’s eyes, hearing what he heard.
Susie was sitting up in bed, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. It made her look like she was about fifteen years old. Her husband, Rick, sat in a rocking chair beside the bed. I suppose he was a good-looking man, though it was hard to tell, his expression was so grim. His eyes were gray and as hard as iron; his hair was blond and he wore it cropped close to his head. I couldn’t say how tall he was, since he was sitting down, but from his physique, it was obvious that he worked out.
“…don’t know what we’re going to do about this,” he was saying. “If you think I’m going to leave you here alone with my sons while I’m at work, you really are out of your mind.”
“I’d never hurt them,” Susie said, though her voice lacked conviction. “This isn’t easy for me, either, you know.”
Rick dragged a hand over his jaw. “I can’t handle this now,” he said, “not on top of everything else. I’m going to call my folks tomorrow and see if they’ll take the boys for a while.”
“I’d never hurt my babies,” Susie repeated, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“You already killed one of them.”
Susie pressed her hands over her womb, her face white with shock. “It wasn’t my fault,” she whispered. “How can you blame me for that?”
“I shouldn’t have said it,” Rick muttered. “You know I didn’t mean it. I know how much you wanted another baby.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Susie said, her expression bleak. “Maybe it would be best if the boys went and stayed with your mother.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “I think you should go, too.”
There was a long pause. I had the feeling Susie was hoping that Rick would refuse to leave her, that he would take her in his arms and tell her that no matter how bad things seemed at the moment, they would work it out together.
He said nothing of the kind. “What are you going to do while we’re gone?”
“I’ll ask my mom to come down and stay here with me.”
“Does she know about…about what you’ve become?”
Susie nodded.
“It’s settled, then. I’ll call my folks first thing in the morning.” Rising, he gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Why don’t you try and get some sleep? Everything will look better tomorrow.”
Leaving the bedroom, he closed the door behind him.
Susie stared at the door. “No, it won’t,” she murmured, and dissolved into tears.
My own eyes were wet when Rafe materialized in the car beside me. “How did you do that?” I asked. “How could I see what you were seeing, hear what you were hearing?”
“I’ve tasted you. You’ve tasted me. We’re connected now in a way that I can’t explain.”
“Poor Susie,” I said, swiping at my tears. “I wish there was something I could do.”
Rafe blew out a sigh. “It’s worse than you think.”
“Worse!” I exclaimed. “How could it possibly get any worse?”
“There’s an underground movement among the mortals. As Mara and Clive feared, the humans are starting to worry. That worry has prompted some of them to band together. They’re forming groups, hunters, if you will.”
I stared at Rafe. “Hunters?” I thought about Susie and her husband. But surely Rick wouldn’t tell anyone, especially a hunter, that Susie was a Werewolf. And yet I couldn’t forget the expression on his face when he looked at her. I was very much afraid that his revulsion for what she had become was stronger than whatever love he’d once had for her.
Rafe nodded. “As far as I know, there haven’t been any active Vampire hunters in the last twenty-five years, but from what I hear, mortals from all over the world have gone off to some school down in Texas that was supposedly started years ago by a couple of the best hunters in the business. The school hadn’t been attracting any interest until recently. Other hunters have gone underground in hopes of finding our lairs. No one knows where these men meet, or how many there are. Right now, all we have are rumors, but when rumors abound, there’s usually some truth behind them.”
“But…why? I mean, the Vampires and the Werewolves are only killing each other, aren’t they?” But even as I spoke the words, I thought about Mark Littlejohn. How many other people had disappeared that no one knew about? How many innocent people, like Susie, had been transformed into monsters?
“It seems there have been scattered incidents of Vampires and Werewolves attacking humans,” Rafe said. “Until recently, most of the mortals killed have been drifters, you know, people who wouldn’t be missed. But late last night there were two attacks that changed all that. In New York, a Werewolf killed the son of a well-known actor, and another Werewolf attacked the daughter of the governor of New Jersey. She’s not expected to live.”
A coldness swept through me at his words. It was one thing for the Supernatural creatures to kill each other; quite another when they started openly attacking humans.
“How do you know all this?” I was pretty sure it hadn’t been reported on the six o’clock news, or on the front page of the
Oak Hollow Clarion.
“Bad news travels fast. Mara and Clive met early this morning. The Werewolves involved in the attacks have been dealt with, but that won’t end it.”
Dealt with. A polite way of saying they had been executed.
I looked at Rafe, realizing for the first time that he was also in danger from hunters, and his family with him. I told myself not to worry. His grandfather had existed for hundreds of years. His grandmother and his parents were all strong, able to walk in the sun’s light. Surely they could all protect themselves. Couldn’t they?
By the time we reached my house a few minutes later, the rain had stopped. I was glad to be home. I quickly turned on the lights, as if that could chase away the evil that lurked outside in the shadows.
When I shivered, Rafe obligingly started a fire in the hearth, then drew me down onto the sofa beside him.
I snuggled against him, grateful for his nearness. “You’re in danger now, too, aren’t you?”
Rafe draped his arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry about it.”
“How can I help it?”
“Kathy, love, I appreciate your concern, but…”
“But you’re a big, bad Vampire and you can take care of yourself,” I said, elbowing him in the ribs.
“Exactly.” His fingertips caressed my cheek. “Now that that’s settled…” His lips brushed mine. “I’ve been needing to do that since last night.”
“And I’ve been waiting since last night.” But even as I closed my eyes and surrendered to Rafe’s caresses, concern for Susie continued to niggle at the back of my mind, until I felt Rafe’s tongue sweep the side of my throat. Excitement rose up within me as his fangs lightly scraped my skin.
He hesitated, his breath warm against my neck as he waited for my consent.
“Do it,” I murmured, and surrendered to the dark ecstasy of my Vampire’s kiss.
The faint sting of his fangs was quickly swallowed up in the almost painful pleasure that followed. For a time, I was lost in a world unlike any other, a hazy red wonderland where nothing existed save one exquisite sensation after another—the heat of his mouth against my skin, the touch of his hand in my hair, the pressure of his thigh against mine.
Gradually, vague figures rose in my mind, like pale images emerging from the mists of time.
I saw Rafe playing football with a dark-haired boy that I dimly realized must be his twin brother, Rane. A woman with blond hair hovered in the background, her expression one of maternal amusement as the two boys tussled on the ground like rambunctious puppies. That scene blurred as a new one took its place, and I saw Rafe and his brother prowling the shifting shadows of the night. A tall, handsome man accompanied them, and I realized I was watching Rafe’s father teaching Rafe and his brother how to hunt. The image became sharper, clearer. I felt the coolness of the evening air, the pounding of Rafe’s heart as he summoned a young woman to his side. I felt his excitement and her fear as he wrapped her in his embrace and then, like magic, her fear vanished and she stood quiescent in his arms. I shivered as his fangs extended and his eyes took on a faint red glow. I gasped when he bent his head over her neck. The scent of blood and lust filled my senses and then, as if someone had turned off a light, the images disappeared.