Taming the Heart (Creatures of the Night Book 2) (2 page)

Something was blaring and a white cloud flooded her face. It took a disorientated moment to realize that the air bag had deployed. She fought against the bag before it deflated and released her so she could breathe again. Her head spun and she had the odd sensation that she was dangling. Not upside down but to the side. Something was tight on her chest, holding her in place. The seat belt. She struggled with it but it was locked into place. Katie lay completely still against the passenger door in the dirt. Apparently the van had landed up on its side.

“Katie,” she croaked.

She tried to loosen the seat belt again with no results. Tears flooded her eyes. How was she going to get down to Katie? Her wheel chair had landed on top of her sister and they were both far out of reach. Relief flooded her as her sister began to move.

“What happened?” Katie asked as she sat up and looked up at her sister where she dangled from her seat belt. She hadn’t been buckled in and Miranda felt a fresh wash of relief that her sister hadn’t been thrown from the car.

“I think we had an accident,” Miranda said as she continued to strain against the suffocating belt.

“So much for your dream of being a truck driver,” her sister said as she pulled herself up, shoving the wheel chair aside. She took a lethal looking knife from her pocket. Miranda sometimes forgot that her sister was perpetually armed.

“Always the comedian,” Miranda teased back in a raspy voice as her sister cut the belt from her. Katie caught her as she began to fall. She set her to the ground as she took the wheelchair and tossed it up and out of the driver’s side window, which had been smashed out.

“Put your arms around my neck,” Katie instructed.

Miranda grabbed on to Katie’s neck as she reached for her. Miranda held on as Katie began to climb. They were about to climb out of the driver’s window when an angry snarl rent the air. Katie froze.

“What the hell was that?” she whispered.

“It sounded like a bear or something,” Miranda replied.

“A really big bear,” Katie replied in a whisper.

Katie lowered them back to the passenger side door and looked out the splintered windshield. There was nothing there. She pulled out her knife again and motioned for Miranda to release her neck. Miranda did and watched as her sister began to climb up and out of the window, the knife clutched between her teeth.

“Be careful,” Miranda whispered.

Katie held on to the steering wheel as she looked down at her. She pulled the knife from her teeth smiling. Not even the trickle of blood that ran down the side of her face could detract from her strength and beauty. “I thought I told you that we were going to grow old together and I-”

Her words were cut short as something reached inside the driver’s side window and drug her out. Miranda heard an unnatural scream before there was silence.

“Katie! Katie,” she screamed as she pulled herself up the seats. She had to use all the upper body strength she had, which was considerable since she had insisted on moving her own chair and not having one of those automatic deals. She didn’t ever want to fall and not be able to pick herself back up. She was sweating hard but she finally pulled herself up and out of the window, getting seated on the dented door.

“Katie,” she cried out as tears burst free.

There was blood all over the side of the door. Where had she gone? What was that thing? Something moved in the trees behind her and her head snapped that way. Her heart was pounding and it felt like her collarbone might be broken.

“Katie!” she screamed yet again as she began to tremble.

Something moved near the woods. She focused on what she saw and terror seized her. There was something. It looked like a giant dog with red glowing eyes. When it stood on two legs and began to walk towards her she had to control the urge to faint. It came right up to her. It was as tall as the van, even though it had been turned on its side, and she smelled something that smelled like rotten flesh. It smiled a macabre smile full of ugly decaying teeth.

Slowly it moved forward and she put an arm of protection up. It seemed for a moment that the thing wouldn’t bite her and she stayed completely still. It sniffed her arm and without warning bit down. She cried out then and tried to pull away. She heard bones snap and lost the fight for her consciousness.

*                            *                            *

Braden blasted the animal just after it bit the innocent. He cursed viciously. It was not like them to attack a moving vehicle. He supposed they hadn’t intended to. They had been coming to him and the innocents got in their way. He watched as the woman and the animal fell to the ground beside the vehicle. The animal was flaming from the silver plated bullets that had passed through its head.

He looked at the small woman lying next to a pastel pink wheel chair. She was so tiny that if it weren’t for the lines around her eyes and mouth she would appear no more than a child. Something stirred inside of him without provocation. He touched his chest and looked at it. His heart was beating fast. He couldn’t recall the last time something had caused his heart to speed so. He shrugged. It didn’t matter. She would turn now that she had been bitten. He would shoot her.

He took aim and waited. When nothing happened he kicked her leg with his boot. Her legs were so small and puny. The wheel chair had to be hers. She was probably paralyzed. That wouldn’t matter in a moment. When she turned into a wolf, her legs would work again. He kept the gun trained on her as he moved up to her arm. His senses were still tuned to the woods, listening for any other sounds to indicate more creatures approaching. He kicked her arm and her eyes fluttered for a moment. He watched her as her eyes finally opened.

She grabbed her bleeding arm and clutched it to her chest as tears flooded her big midnight blue eyes. “Please. Please don’t hurt me.”

He felt the unfamiliar flutter in his heart again. This wasn’t right. She should be turning already. The disease invaded the blood stream quickly and completely. A thought came to him but he pushed it aside. He quickly put his gun away and knelt to her side.

“The creature bite you?” he asked. He had thought he’d seen it bite her, but perhaps he was mistaken.

She wailed as she looked around them. “Where is my sister?” she cried as she sat up holding her arm.

“They took her off before I could get to her.”

“What! You have to do something, call someone! Those dog things will bite her! I don’t hear her screaming. What if they…. What if they…” She began hyperventilating. He reached out and grabbed the back of her neck to push her head between her knees. What he ended up doing, however, was pushing her face in the dirt. She cried even harder as she fell to her side and he took his hands from her.

She lay there crying and blubbering in a way he hadn’t heard in some years. He didn’t know what to do. Usually by now he had either determined that the bitten innocent was going to turn and had shot them, or they turned out to be only injured and not bitten, at which point Braden would leave them to go after the remaining creatures. This was something new.

“Listen… You must stop your blubbering,” he said as gently as he could.

“Then why don’t you do something! Open up my chair and put me in it and call the police! My arm is broken and I have to find my sister,” she shouted hysterically through her tears.

She was really beginning to bother him with all her incessant crying. He eyed the folded up chair and approached it. He drug it over closer to her without even attempting to open it. He had never had cause to operate them though he had seen a few innocents with them. He was fairly certain they hadn’t had them when he was still human, and if they had he wouldn’t recall it any way.

She took initiative then and grabbed the chair. Despite her continuing to wail like a hurt animal, she opened the chair and pulled herself up with her one good arm. He made to help her but she snapped him a sharp look through her tear streaked face.

“If you want to help me then pull out your cell phone and call the police, or if you don’t have a phone climb up in the van, get my phone, and I’ll call them,” she yelled before she continued crying out loud.

“Katie!” she called out to the tree line again.

Hadn’t he just told her that she was gone?

He pulled the phone from his pocket and strode off a distance from her so that he couldn’t hear her wails and desperate pleas any longer. He hit the speed dial for Bateman’s line. A female answered.

“Where is Bateman?” he asked gruffly.

“He is out of the country,” the woman replied in a clipped efficient tone that told him it was probably someone at the compound that had answered Bateman’s line.

“Listen. There is something weird going on here. I have an innocent who…” he stopped as he looked over at the woman who was weeping openly into her hands. “I just need him to come right away. I’m not sure exactly what is going on here. I also need a cleanup team.”

“We will have someone out within the hour. Please be out of the area for their safety,” she said before she hung up.

He would have to wait for Bateman’s call but in the meantime… He had to go with what he knew for a certainty. She had been bitten and hadn’t turned so that only left one alternative. He strode back to the woman and went around behind her chair. He picked up the chair and dumped her out unceremoniously.

*

Miranda fell to the cold wet ground with a thud and it took her a moment to realize what happened. She flipped over to her back and glared up at him as pain shot through her arm.

“What is your problem?! You think it’s funny to abuse a cripple?” she screamed up at him as tears continued to fall from her eyes.

She pulled her arm closer to her body just barely holding herself together. The pain was hot and searing and she wanted to pass out again, but she needed to stay awake for Katie. She used her sleeve to quickly wipe the run off from her nose. Her beautiful suit was already ruined, why not.

“You were bitten,” he said in that deep monosyllabic way that was beginning to work her nerves. It was creepy to have this mountain of a man looming over her and she wanted to run and scream. She couldn’t do that so she would use her words instead.

“Thank you Captain Obvious. What in the world has that got to do with you shoving a handicap woman out of her wheel chair?”

He continued to stand over her, his fists balled as if he expected her to jump up and begin fighting him or something. She would have told him to be at ease, she couldn’t attack him if she wanted to, but he seemed to be having some sort of internal debate. She waited to hear what reason he could possibly have for pushing her out of her chair after having brought it over to her in the first place. When he continued on with his creepy silence she screamed at him again.

“Well?!”

He knelt down to get in her face so swiftly it nearly stole her breath away. His crystal blue eyes were icy and cold. He looked like a Viking with his strong features and blond hair. His broad shoulders and powerful build further added to that impression. He could probably do curls with her on one of those massive arms of his. It was intimidating and impressive at the same time.

“Listen to me well,” he began. “There are things in this world that you have never had to encounter in your sheltered little life. Things that stalk the night, and when one of those things bites you one of two things happen. You become one of them, or you become one of me. The chances of you becoming one of me are one in eight billion and if you were turning in to one of me I would be ready to rip your head off. Outside of annoyance with your silly wailing I have no other feeling towards you what so ever.”

She blinked up at him and shook her head. Where had this guy come from? Had he stepped out of the past to ruin her sanity? Was she dreaming? Was she stuck inside the van, hanging upside down, waiting for someone to come and save her? This man who had appeared to be a savior just a few minutes ago was suddenly seeming more like a lunatic.

“I just want my sister back,” she croaked.

“Your sister is dead,” he replied without any emotion in his voice.

Miranda wailed out loud as she turned to begin pulling herself towards the woods. This man was not here to help her. Katie was not dead. She was out there and she would come racing back soon with her commando knife clenched between her teeth and a bear head for a hat. No one knew out doors and hunting better than her sister. Miranda’s progress towards the trees was stopped as the man put a booted foot in the center of her back. She cried out to feel the weight of his boot pushing her down into the mud. Her ruined arm was pinned beneath her and it felt like someone was stabbing her hard.

What could she do against him? He was bigger and certainly stronger than her. Most people respected her status as a handicapped person and never did things like this to her. Her only defense was to cry out. She laid her face in the mud and cried gut wrenching sobs. She wanted her sister here with her.

“Katie,” she wailed. Katie would kick this guys ass!

“Fight me,” the man growled at her.

“What?” she squeaked.

“Stop acting so weak and fight me. Curse me. Do something. Don’t you have any sense of self preservation?” he asked and she heard anger in his voice.