Night Falls on the Wicked

FIVE

Darby made it through another day at work without any more encounters with the stranger. She wondered if he’d already left. No one stayed here long after all. You were either born and bred in this town or just passing through. Like her, he wouldn’t be sticking around.

She didn’t know what to make of him. She guessed he wasn’t the murdering rapist variety or he would have finished her off last night. Even though he’d done nothing more than caution her about jogging alone at night—something a nice guy would do—she was convinced he wasn’t a nice guy. Nice guys didn’t look the way he did. They didn’t have eyes like his that glowed. Eyes that made her decidedly uncomfortable.

She finished her cereal bar and took a swig of juice. Reclining on her couch, she watched the television blindly, her mind drifting, returning to last night and him.

She supposed it was natural. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked to a hot guy. She felt like a schoolgirl with her first crush. She replayed their conversations over and over in her head, thinking about what he said, what she said … what she could have said better.

She groaned and shook her head side to side. She didn’t know why she was so bothered with any of it. None of it mattered.

She refocused her gaze on the television. Usually true crime shows riveted her. Her feet were propped up on the old chest that served as her coffee table. She wiggled her tired, numb toes. After a long day on her feet, it would be easy to blow off her planned run and veg out. But she could veg later. More important, she never slept quite as well as she did after a run. She slept like the dead—a deep, dreamless sleep. The kind of sleep no demon could invade. And wasn’t that the point? The point of everything? Her whole life.

Running from demons.

With a deep breath, she pushed up from the couch and turned off the TV. Glancing out the blinds, she saw that daylight was fading. She frowned, telling herself she could push it hard for thirty minutes and beat full dark.

And why should that matter? a small voice demanded. An unwanted voice because it wasn’t hers. It was his. His advice had stuck with her, and she couldn’t deny he was right. She shouldn’t be out alone at night. Especially with people getting killed around town.

Ignoring the voice, she laced up her shoes and left her apartment at a hard run. Her feet beat the pavement quick and fierce. As she passed the B&B, she couldn’t stop herself from looking. The Hummer was gone and a sinking sensation filled her. Had he left town for good?

She pushed harder, sprinting now, air fogging from her lips and nose as she turned left off Main, following the sidewalk through a neighborhood of brick houses with smoking chimneys.

She spotted Corey’s house ahead. Or rather, Corey’s mom’s house. Corey and her little boy lived there with her. As her shoes pounded the snow-covered sidewalk, a truck roared past and pulled into Corey’s driveway. Even with the window rolled up, heavy rock blared from the inside. The driver laid on the horn once. In moments, Corey was coming out her door and skipping down the front steps of her porch. Darby guessed this was the “date.”

Darby ran past their house to the end of the street and turned around. The truck’s taillights glowed in the night. Bad manners or not, she felt herself envying Corey her date.

She picked up the pace, her legs working harder, the air sawing from her mouth faster. She turned back onto Main, intent on exorcising those feelings. Determined to rid herself of every emotion, every feeling except the ache in her muscles and the reliable burn in her lungs.

Her legs stretched long as she passed the various storefronts of downtown, her pumping arms cutting through the dry, cold air. It helped. This helped. She didn’t feel sorry for herself when she worked her body hard. She didn’t think about anything, not about the friends and family she left behind, not the empty days and nights that lay ahead of her. Not about the stranger from the night before that roused all kinds of longing inside her. It was nothing but this. Her body in perfect, fluid motion.

Almost home now, she was sweating beneath her clothes. The sun had dipped behind the snow-covered mountains and a faint haze of red washed the air. She circled to the back of the diner and pounded up the steps to her apartment. Inside, she paced the small space of her living room, cooling herself down. She grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator and took a swig.

Her buzz was still there, a euphoria that would last her through the night and ease her into the deep, dreamless sleep she needed. Moving into her bedroom, she stripped off her clothes and turned on the shower, waiting for the water to warm.

Still, just to be safe, she strolled naked back into the living room and flipped on the television and found an old movie, welcoming the noise, the distraction. It filled the silence and made her life seem less … less.

Anything to keep her thoughts off the cloying quiet, the suffocating aloneness of her life.

COREY SLAMMED THE DOOR shut with all her might, swearing when a nail broke in a sharp burst of pain. Hands on her hips, she glared through the dirty truck window at her date.

“Don’t call me again,” she bit out, and then stomped away, churning the snow with her boots. It was only a couple of miles back to town. She wasn’t afraid of walking.

The truck pulled up alongside her, the diesel fumes choking her. She waved a hand to clear the stink.

“Come on, Corey,” Don cajoled. “Don’t be that way.”

“Leave me alone.” Why had she ever agreed to go out with him in the first place? She shouldn’t have listened to her mother. So what if he had a solid job and his own house? That didn’t make suffering through his rough gropings worth it.

“You don’t want to walk to town in this cold. C’mon, sweetheart.”

“It beats getting back in the cab with you.”

“Corey!” Apparently he thought taking an authoritative voice would win her over. “Get in the truck!”

He would be wrong on that score. She could almost feel the steam coming out of her ears. She’d had enough with overbearing men in her life. First her daddy, and then her husband. If Tommy hadn’t run off the road after an all-night bender and wrapped himself around a tree, she’d still be stuck with him and his quick fists. With the slaps that made her ears ring. With choking tears and sobs she had to stifle so she didn’t wake up Parker.

“Go to hell,” she flung at him. She was twenty-seven. She still had a lot of life left. She didn’t need a man. She had a decent job and Parker. He was all she needed.

“Fine, bitch! Hope you freeze.” He gunned the truck. The tires spit a spray of grimy snow on her, dousing her new pair of jeans. She watched the taillights fade into the night, not the least bit sorry.

With a tired sigh, she continued down the road.

The moon rode high above the tall trees, following her as she made her way back to town. Its pale light reflected off the snow. The night floated like a pool of ink around her. Striding ahead, she felt as if she swam through it. The distant lights of town winked at her through the occasional break in the trees.

Her pace increased as she thought of her warm bed, her television, Parker asleep in his bed in the room next to hers. For the first time in her life, she was okay with what she had—with what she was. She didn’t need more than that. She didn’t need some jerk draggin’ her down.

The first howl stopped her cold in her tracks. It was like no wolf’s howl she’d ever heard before, and she’d grown up out here, where wolves were part of life. You didn’t camp or hike the trails in the summer without glimpsing or hearing an occasional wolf.

Their distant cries, hoarse and hollow-sounding, had always made her a little sad, a part of herself recognizing the loneliness in their calls.

A howl came again and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Terror struck her heart, quick as a deep-slicing blade.

She was running clumsily by the time she heard the third howl. And the fourth. She was panting and sobbing, her boots hitting the hard tire tracks in the road when she realized they were all around her, running along both sides of her, gliding in effortless, loping grace through the dense trees that crowded the road.

Her heart beat like a wild bird in her chest, desperate to burst free and escape to another place. She caught glimpses of them through the trees, ghostly figures that kept pace with her, that seemed too large to be wolves. Bears?

“God, please, please …”

She sobbed ugly, raw sounds and lost her balance, falling onto the uneven road. She staggered back to her feet. Their howls filled the air in a terrible cacophony of sound. They toyed with her. They could have had her by now. She was sure of this.

Elation filled her as suddenly lights appeared ahead, dipping and rising with the undulating road. Headlights. Someone was coming. Adrenaline shot through her, mingling with a sudden burst of joy, the wild hope for survival.

She was moving again, her arms pumping hard, her legs faster. She was going to be all right.

“Hey!” she cried, her voice wild in the suddenly silent air. She waved her arms violently over her head.

The night held its breath all around. No more howls. The trees were still. The only sound she heard was the low hum of the distant car approaching and the rush of blood in her overexerted veins.

She slowed to a stop. Bending at the waist, she pressed her hands against her thighs and squinted, peering intently into the press of foliage, into the sparkling snow and ice-covered undergrowth.

Nothing. They were gone. Nothing lurked there except the bite of a late-clinging winter. They must have heard the car coming. She was going to be okay. She released a shuddery laugh, straightening.

Then the trees shifted, something moved, and she realized she wasn’t staring at the glint of ice upon trees at all, but a pair of silver eyes.

The thing moved so fast she couldn’t process, couldn’t absorb. She only knew that it wasn’t a wolf coming at her.

And then there was nothing else.

DARBY JERKED FROM SLEEP with a sharp gasp, lurching upright in her bed to the usual sounds of her apartment. The rattling heater fighting to work, the steady click of the wall clock, the creak of the mattress springs as she shifted her weight.

And another sound. An unfamiliar sound. It scraped down her spine and she shivered beneath the heavy bedding.

She cocked her head and listened, absorbed the sound of the fading scream that seemed to stretch and hold itself above familiar noises like the fading note of a guitar string.

She reached for her lamp and pulled the chain. A yellow glow instantly flooded the small room. She flung back the thick shroud of blankets that cocooned her, instantly missing the baking warmth of her electric blanket as she hopped down.

Driven by the ghost of that scream, its echo rattling around in her head like a loose marble, she darted across the room to the window that faced Main Street, her fuzzy socks protecting her from the worst of the cold wood floor. She really needed to ask Sam for a rug.

Pressing hands flat against the bitter-cold glass, she stared out the window at the silent street. Her breath fogged the glass and she wiped it clean with a squeak of her fingertips.

The snow-covered mountains stretched in a wide, jagged outline against the ink-dark night. She scanned the street as if she could somehow see the source of that shriek. There was more light than usual. She looked to the night sky. A full moon stared down at her. Her breath caught in her throat.

Nothing stirred out there in the vast whiteness of the town, and she began to wonder if she’d heard the scream at all. Or had it been in her head, a wisp of a nightmare? Maybe tonight’s run hadn’t been enough protection, after all.

Surely there’d be light from other windows along the street if it had been real. Mr. Gilberry, the barber across the street, lived in his shop. How could he have slept through that terrible sound? There had to be someone else concerned, curious. Someone …

And then she saw him, a shadowy figure out late on a night when everyone else remained warm indoors, snug and safe. When every other soul was in bed, this figure was strolling the sidewalk with a steady, purposeful pace, as if waiting for someone. Or something.

As though he felt her stare, he stopped and turned. His gaze swung up, directly to her window and into her eyes. A small shiver rushed over her. Her chest grew tight, her breath hard to catch. Instantly, she knew him.

Even across the distance his eyes glowed. She felt those indigo eyes like a stroke, a touch against her shivery skin.

Before she had a chance to turn from the window and pretend she didn’t notice him, a distant howl floated on the air. Others joined in, the sound awful and eerie.

She tried to peer down the far length of the street to the single blinking stoplight. She didn’t know what she expected to see. Wolves parading down the street? The cries were coming from somewhere outside town, much farther away. With another shiver, she looked again to where the stranger stood.

But he was gone.