Barbie & The Beast (13 page)

Too late!

Darin, panting on the sidewalk beneath Barbie’s window, pressed his back against the warm brick wall. He was out of the moonlight
and out of breath, but what did that matter now? Either way, Barbie was safe. Safe from him. Or was it the other way around?

Like the moon, full and lusty in the sky, Barbie Bradley wielded power over him. Being with her, even without direct moonlight
on his skin, could definitely bring on the change when he didn’t concentrate. Bits of the change, at least. Claws, for one.
And a bit of fur on his arms. He’d been right about that. Barbie Bradley, it seemed, was a chip off the old moon.

Miss Bradley would also no doubt be pissed over his not-so-grand exit. Over the lame and (she would believe) inexcusable way
he had up and left her. Hell, it
was
inexcusable. Totally. She’d have every right to be angry. He’d have been angry in her place.

Darin pushed his claws into the mortar between the bricks and felt the grinding of his jaws. He tugged at the collar of his
shirt and eyed the closest window. No lights in there. Raising the very sharp claw of his index finger, he scratched
a heart into the wood of the shutter. He added
BB
and
DR
to the center of the heart. Childish, yes. Destroying her property, admittedly. Still, Barbie might see it and believe it
a sign that he cared.

He did care. He cared a lot. Yet for now, he could do nothing more than scratch this bit of graffiti. He was unstable. His
insides were liquid, responding to the gravitational pull of the orb in the sky. His outsides had become a suit of rubber,
expanding, contracting, never quite completing the shape of what he needed to become. He wouldn’t allow it. Not yet. Not fully.
It was exhausting trying to hold on when Wolfy was so strong.

One more glance at Barbie’s window. One more moment of regret. He was sorry to leave her, sorrier than he had ever been about
anything. He couldn’t control the slippage, however. He’d tested himself and how far he could go in that apartment, but Barbie
had touched him as he feared. Her touch had been. . .

Willpower could only take him so far.

One sharp tear of Barbie’s flouncy bedspread with his wayward claws would have been the end. A nightmare. Worse yet, one mistaken
nip to her neck or thigh—all in the name of love, of course. But Barbie wouldn’t know his fear, and he had to leave her with
some hope. As well, in spite of his sorry exit, he himself had to continue to cling to the hope that she would not forsake
him for this first faux pas. In no way did he want to frighten Barbie. Not now. Not ever.

He had a few minutes left, he figured, until the change was complete. More than that if he could get away from Barbie and
stay out of the moonlight. Long enough to make it back home, anyway. Barely. He had to forget about what he might have missed
out on in Barbie’s bedroom. He had to bypass thoughts of the anger and hurt Barbie would be feeling. Tomorrow was another
day. Tomorrow, in the daylight, he’d
call her. He would think of some way to explain this mess. He would plan some way to get her back. He’d offer two shopping
sprees. Ten movies. Right after he got back from his scheduled PD gig.

The sound of silk ripping brought him out of thought. Christ! Another shirt was about to bite the dust. How many did that
make this year?

Tearing off his coat, shoving up his sleeves, and gouging his forearm in the process with his own claws, Darin thought, Jesus!
Claws! What good are they, anyway?

He inched one loafer-clad foot into the cascade of moonlight dripping past the roof of Barbie’s building, winced, and drew
it back. Without bothering to take the time to look up and down the street for an audience, he gathered himself and made a
dash for his Porsche.

His skin began to shift as he reached for the door handle. His heart threw him a double beat that sent him reeling onto the
car’s shiny black hood. His shirt tore with the sound of an ocean wave hitting shore, and his pants became uncomfortably tight.
With a grimace he scrambled off the hood and tried again to open the car door, his head whipping side to side in a perpetual
and uncontrollable shake that increased each time he took a breath.

His hair lengthened, hit him in the face. A cough doubled him over. The skin on his face twisted painfully away from the bones
and underlying ligaments as he jerked himself upright.

There went the pants, torn open at the seams. He helped the process along, ripping with his fingers and claws until he was
free of them. After that, he raised his new, feral face to the heavens.

Okay, Wolf Man, Furball, Hairy-faced Hound, he thought, since he was no longer able to speak, yell, or shout. Get on with
it. Enjoy.

A grating sound followed his dive into the Porsche. His claws had trailed across the glossy exterior of the driver side door
when he slammed it shut. Wolfy, getting the last dig in. Damn wolf didn’t have any manners at all.

Barbie sat on the floor with an empty cookie package on her lap, pinching the plastic pleats for crumbs, getting madder by
the minute. Without the necessary chocolate fix—a girl’s (and okay, Harry Potter’s) best fix in times of stress or excitement—she
wouldn’t be able to sleep. She might not even be able to cope!

Although Angie would be on her way soon, she always took the time to beautify before heading anywhere. Beautification took
Angie a while, an hour at the very least. Barbie doubted if she could hang on for an hour. Adrenaline was already surging.
Her temper had risen dramatically. She shot to her feet.

Hello, Rambo Barbie!

Rambo Barbie wasn’t content to sit and look at empty cookie wrappers. Oh, no. Rambo Barbie demanded action. Rash action. What
would Rambo Barbie do?

Attack.

The silk camisole, the one Darin had liked, she tossed onto a chair. Donning a pair of old sweatpants and a white T-shirt
one size too large, Barbie grabbed her keys, her cell phone, her socks, and her running shoes. She made two last-minute
calls. The first was for a taxi, the second, to Angie’s answering machine.

“Angie? I know you’re in the shower, but get out. Meet me at the graveyard. Last night’s graveyard. Wait by the lamppost,
and don’t get out of the car. Oh, and what ever you do, please don’t forget to stop at the mini-mart on your way.”

It took a full ten minutes for the cab to arrive. Though Barbie looked closely at the back of the driver’s head, this cabbie
didn’t appear to be the same guy who had delivered her to the Gypsy restaurant. Thus, she couldn’t grill him on where he had
met Darin, or how Darin had paid. Bummer. She decided that this driver was also slightly intimidating. He wore sunglasses
despite its being night and never turned his head when he spoke to her. Kind of creepy, she thought. Still, she was a woman
on a mission.

She slammed the car door as she got in.

The cab driver kept talking to a minimum, foregoing any opinions on Barbie’s directions. To his credit, he kept his lips buttoned
about what he probably supposed was an odd choice for a jogging site. Maybe he assumed she was in search of drugs, and the
running shoes were a simple alibi. Cab drivers had most likely seen it all in their checkered careers.

Barbie tipped him generously for the short trip, waved him off, and stood beneath the lamppost where she had dropped her phone
number the night before. Then. . .she reevaluated her strategy, which now was cast in an unfavorable light. The night was
dark. The time had to be close to midnight. She was alone on the edge of a graveyard, chasing down a defective date.

The inevitable pangs of self-doubt arose. There was a good possibility Darin wouldn’t be here. Just because the guy was a
graveyard keeper didn’t mean he had to
live
in the graveyard. Silly assumption, dammit. Darin probably had a very
nice apartment somewhere close by. Porsche ownership showed a liking for luxury. It also suggested graveyard keeping and part-time
police consulting paid better than she would have imagined.

A quick glance over her shoulder to the edges of the dimly lit parking lot produced no Porsche sighting. Nor were there any
other cars, for that matter. Maybe a trip to the mini-mart herself would have been a better idea. Plenty of cookies there
to take out her frustrations on. Tons of cookies. Shelves of the things. More calories, sure, but the action would have been
more reasonable and far less dangerous.

“Hey!” Barbie’s voice wasn’t loud enough to shout down the disappearing taxi. Its taillights, like animal eyes in the dark,
were fading fast into the distance. She was too stunned by her own recklessness to chase the cab on foot.

“Double duh on the darkness,” Barbie whispered. “Failing grades for my behavior to date.”

She glanced up. The lamp above her head buzzed softly. Bugs were skittering nearby with a connection not lost on her.

Moths to the flame.

“Now I’ve done it,” she ranted, to cover the sound of the bugs suicide-bombing the light. She rotated slowly, sighing. “Not
that I’ve actually ever gotten into trouble. For all intents and purposes, I have always behaved well. Maybe I have a tendency
toward temper tantrums, I admit. . ..”

If this were really a temper issue now, Barbie told herself, she’d blame it on the Oreos. Those cookie packages should be
larger, with at least a baker’s dozen inside. A full thirteen! Spare Oreos were what was needed in today’s society, along
with more advanced problem-solving skills.

Damn if she really wasn’t out here in the parking lot of a cemetery, despite her excuses and the blame-placing. In the dark.
Alone. This merited a second sigh. The options, as
Barbie saw them, were to wait for Angie to arrive with proper medication (Oreos), in which case Barbie would have to explain
why she was out here, or she could adhere to Rambo Barbie’s idea and do what she’d come here to do: seek out Darin Dine-and-Dash
Russell.

The prospect of facing Angie was daunting. Scary. Since Barbie hadn’t told Angie about the meeting with Darin in the cemetery,
hadn’t even admitted to knowing the voice on the answering machine when pressed, no possible explanation on the planet would
appease her friend when she arrived. There wasn’t one single thing Barbie could say to make this right, except maybe,
I’ll buy you dinner every week for ten years if you’ll forget about this and never mention it again
. Thing was, who could afford all those meals on a teacher’s salary?

Still, it really was inescapable: explanations were necessary—end of story. No matter what she did with her time until Angie
arrived, she had to come clean. No matter what she did to Darin Russell.

The thought was agonizing. How could things be any worse? Well, for starters, she could listen to Rambo Barbie and make it
two for two.

Edging out of the pool of light cast by the streetlamp, Barbie leaned forward as though she really would venture out alone
into the darkness. Decision made. Inhaling deeply, winding herself up like a pitcher about to throw a ball and chanting “Hua!”
Barbie took off at a sprint across the pavement. Up over the curb she went. Under the Forest Lawn sign, hoping there were
no other extraneous party boys in the area. Three hundred rapid heartbeats later, she stood on the spot she thought might
be ground zero, abduction central, huffing as if she’d run a marathon.

How to find a person in the dark, in an empty void? Shout for all you’re worth.

“Darin!”

After a quick break for air, Barbie tried again. “Hey! Darin! You here?”

Startled crickets hushed for several seconds, then recommenced, rubbing their anorexic legs together in an encore chorus of
what ever they had been playing. Sounded like Dvorák.

“Hey! Darin!” Barbie called. “You left something in my apartment.”
Me.

A snapped twig brought Barbie around in a frazzle of nerves. Another snap, and she whirled again. Never particularly good
at directions, she lost all sense of where the parking lot was.

“Great.”

She had been stupid to think this might work. She’d deserve Angie’s wrath if she ever made it back to the streetlamp alive.
Of course, Angie would have cookies and eventually maybe a modicum of sympathy. That was some small solace.

And, wow! There was a light up ahead! She grinned. “Gotcha, you ego buster. You. . .you. . .”

She trotted briskly toward the pinpoint of light, not giving a thought to stray heads or body parts, until something caused
a hitch in her gait. A noise. Something digging in soft dirt? An animal? Coyotes? Wolves? Big dogs gone astray? Think
Hound of the Baskervilles
. There were also movies about grave robbers after gold fillings and wedding rings, not to mention certain human organs.

Barbie’s feet stopped of their own accord. The puffs of her breath filled the night, joining the sounds of the crickets. The
light seemed no closer. The parking lot, hidden out there somewhere, might as well have been on Mars. She was totally screwed!
Her parents had once warned her about her temper, and they’d been right. Why hadn’t they gotten her some help?

“Darin!” Her shout was fainter this time, less demanding. Sensing possible disaster, mind looping half with fear, half with
adrenaline, Barbie wondered if Angie had gotten her message, if her pal was already out the door in what was going to turn
out to be a true rescue mission.

“Loss of will is not acceptable,” she muttered to the dark. “Not for a Bradley. Besides Dad’s being a judge, my big brothers
are defense attorneys. I might have an ancestor or two buried close to where I’m standing. What would they think of a chicken
in the family? A big chicken who’s afraid of the dark?” She wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

Encouraging her feet forward, Barbie scrambled through the brush, heading in the direction of the light. A flashlight would
have been handy, she realized, wishing she’d learned her lesson from her last trip to the cemetery. A semiautomatic weapon
wouldn’t have hurt, either.

Stumbling through a thick, scratchy patch of greenery, she came up on a building so fast that she almost smacked her head
on it. Backpedaling, catching herself in time to avoid a fall, she faced the building, pulse pounding.

The building wasn’t wide enough or tall enough to be a caretaker’s cottage, but was much larger than an out house. It stood
smack-dab in the center, maybe, of the cemetery. Which meant it was a. . .
crypt
?

Geez. Yes. A crypt. She was so out of there.

Spinning on her heels, digging in with all the rubber left on her running shoes, she made a dash in the opposite direction
. . .and belly-flopped over a gravestone.

More noise came from the bushes. Barbie wasn’t sure if it was to her right or left as she scrambled onto all fours and then
to her feet. There was another near miss, this time involving her left knee and a concrete urn. More cusses. Very unpious.

Bush-rustling sounds came, closer this time. Barbie’s heart
leapt out of her chest, beating so rapidly that her neck actually thumped. Someone was there, in the greenery. Someone or
some
thing
.

Her voice was strangled as she spoke. “Hello? Darin? You there?”

That’s all she got out.