Bring On The Night (12 page)

Screaming incoherently, she kicked out with both feet, throwing the werewolf off her. It bounced against the alley wall, whining in pain. The werewolf was dazed enough to give Jessie time to get behind it. Wrapping one arm around the werewolf’s head, Jessie got her other hand planted against the skull. A quick, simple twist brought the fight to an end. Half wolf, half Margot, all dead, lay in a heap at Jessie’s feet.

Jessie cupped her hand to catch rain-water, washing the blood from her eyes. She took a few ungainly steps, wanting to get out of the alley and find the others. She didn’t get far. A body crashed to the ground behind her. She spun around.

“William!” she screamed, running to him. He lay face down, unmoving and bleeding. Her fingers found a weak pulse. “William, can you hear me?”

His eyes fluttered open and he tried to roll himself over. She helped, and cried out when she saw his shredded pants leg. Looking closer, she found the flesh of his thigh torn and ripped, and not from claws. He’d been bitten, savagely. She took off her sodden jacket and wrapped it around his leg. Blood soaked through immediately.

“Help us!” she shouted, over and over. His body convulsed, from shock, from the cold rain, from the poison already working its way through his blood and altering his DNA. She cradled him in her arms, both of them shaking, both of them soaked in blood and rain.

Brandon found her sitting on the curb outside the emergency room. He handed her a steaming cup of coffee as he sat down next to her. “She didn’t throw him off the roof. He threw himself over.”

“Did he think she was going to kill him?” The coffee tasted like crap, but it was hot.

“I don’t think so,” Brandon said thoughtfully. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the night with cool, clean air. “He’s pretty out of it right now, but it sounded like she told him she was going to, uh.”

“Make him a werewolf,” Jessie finished for him. “You remember what I told you? About bites?”

Brandon nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “The full moon isn’t ’til tomorrow, so he won’t change all the way, right?” She nodded once. “But he will be different?”

“Yeah,” she said flatly. “He’ll be different.”

He regarded her quietly for a long moment as they drank their bad coffee. It was getting close to dawn. She’d have to get back to her hotel soon. “You’re upset,” he started. “I mean, really upset. So why don’t you tell me what you’re so upset about.” He kept his voice even and light, but she could sense a layer of steel underneath. Haywood had told her what Brandon did, how he took out a vamp on his own. Did Brandon even know what he had in him? Most people didn’t, and if they ever found out it was at the worst possible time, under the worst possible circumstances.
Moments of reckoning
sounded like so much clichéd nonsense, but it had a ring of truth to it. The moment Brandon found himself faced with a vampire intent on killing him had been a reckoning for him. Panic and action were the two choices that existed for him in that moment, and without even thinking about it Brandon had made the choice of action. He had killed his first monster—she had no doubt it would only be his first—and saved both himself and Haywood.

He would be different now too, but she felt no need to point that out to him. He was smart enough to figure it out on his own. As for William, and the reckoning he would soon be faced with, she couldn’t let herself think too much about it right now.

“It’s different for every person it happens to,” she said finally. “There’s a lot of variables at play. Her blood, his blood, the moon phase, all those unquantifiable things that go along with magic.” She stopped.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he said.

“Me too.” She finished her coffee and set the Styrofoam cup on the curb. “You should know, you may have to subdue him when the moon is full, especially at first.”

“I’ll tell Haywood.” It wasn’t sinking in yet. She could tell from the tone of his voice.

“You know I’m leaving.” It wasn’t a question.

“I figure you got your job done, with the pack dead.”

“Yeah. My work here is done.” She laughed, a brittle sound.

“What happens now?”

Jessie shrugged. “You go back to being a reporter. Brother William...”
Doesn’t go back
, she thought but didn’t want to say.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

She stood, picking up the empty cup and chucking it into a nearby waste can. “Because you’re not just a pretty face, Brandy. You are a hotshot investigative reporter, with a mind like a steel trap and instincts like, like, I don’t know.”

“Something with really good instincts?” He laughed.

Her demeanor turned serious. “Don’t do it.”

He looked up at her. “Do what?”

“Don’t turn yourself into Kolchak. Walk away from this, and stay away from it. Write about organized crime, political corruption. Hell, have a gossip column. Don’t throw your life away chasing shadows in the dark.” She pleaded with her eyes.

He looked down to stare at his coffee. “Who’s Kolchak? Some old boyfriend?” He wouldn’t meet her eyes, but she could see his grin.

She knew the decision had already been made, knew it even before she spoke, but she had to try. All she could do was hope trading daylight for nightfall wouldn’t get him killed. She reached out, twining her fingers in his hair. “You’re gonna have a thing for supernatural chicks now and it’s all my fault,” she teased.

He took her hand in his as he stood. Still grinning, he said, “A real
big
thing for supernatural chicks.”

They both laughed.

“It’s almost dawn,” he said.

“I know. I can smell it.”

He furrowed his brow quizzically.

“The air changes. Like the quality of the light will change. You’re out this time of night enough, you notice.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll keep a lot in mind.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back then her knuckles, still ragged from the fight with Draven.

“You take care of yourself, Brandy, and take care of them too.” She didn’t have to tell him she meant Brother William, Haywood and Rowdy.

“Take care of yourself, too, Jessie. Be careful.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, his skin warm and soft against her cold lips. She stayed there, close to him, drinking in his scent, a little longer than she meant to. She knew she had to leave and she turned abruptly and walked away. She didn’t look back, but she knew he stood there and watched until she disappeared.

As she walked away it occurred to her the fresh tang of near-dawn air smelled good, but she hated it. It meant the night was drawing to a close. It meant hours of being trapped, hiding from the sun, hours of waiting for nightfall. That was the worst part, waiting for the night.

http://www.lyricalpress.com/sonya_clark

Sonya Clark is a lifelong fangirl of all things that go bump in the night, as well as being a fan of old fashioned noir. She always wanted to create her own tough guy character with attitude, living on the fringes but still caring enough about innocents to stand between them and the real bad guys. Merging that first with her fondness for vampires and then with a desire to flip a couple of gender stereotypes on their head, she got the idea for a vampire named Jessie and went from there. She lives in Tennessee with her husband and their Yorkie.

Sonya’s Website:

http://sonyaclark.webs.com/

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