Taming the Heart (Creatures of the Night Book 2) (8 page)

African Hunter: I could stand to hear a little more.

Braden signed off then. “They’ll go on like that for hours. Trust me, it will only get worse from here.”

She smiled and shook her head. “They seem like an… interesting bunch.”

“Yeah. A real laugh riot.”

She laughed out loud and was shocked to see him actually smile a full lingering smile. It was like watching the sun break free on a rainy day. He was so much more appealing with a smile on his face. She hoped she wasn’t going to be one of those people who ended up having Stockholm syndrome, though with a man that looked the way he did...

“So… when do I get my secret password or whatever?”

“God help us all when that happens. Bateman will take care of all that when he surfaces and better takes care of your training. You need to go through our boot camp.”

“You have a hunter boot camp?” she asked.

“Yes. It can be difficult to adjust to being a hunter. As humans you are used to seeing things in black and white. You shouldn’t be able to regenerate limbs, you shouldn’t be able to lift cars or bend steal with your bare hands. It can take time to get used to your new strength. You snapped my neck like a twig without meaning to. It takes some getting used to and some training not to hurt every innocent you come across.”

“Innocent?”

“Human,” he clarified.

“So we hunt the werewolves and protect the humans, like superheroes?”

“No. Not like superheroes. There is a side of this that… It can be really dark sometimes.”

“Like when you have to drink blood?”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Do you get headaches?” she asked curiously. “I mean if you heal the way you say I wouldn’t think you could get headaches. So you told me you already ate this morning, did you go out and bite someone? Will I have to drink blood too? I don’t think I’ll like blood very much.”

The cold impassive look stole over him again as he sat beside her, staring down at her. It made her skin crawl when he looked at her like that, as if he could look straight through her.

“Am I going to stay here with you? Are you going to train me? Do you think my legs will ever be healed while I am not a hunter? If I’m not a hunter then what am I? Did I have fangs when I jumped you earlier? Do you think you could make me that mad again? I mean if I know you’re making me mad, I might be less inclined to get mad, but I think you might have a talent for making people mad. Can we try again right now?”

When she finally wound down she looked up at him expectantly. “First. You have to learn how to find your quiet side.”

She laughed and slapped his arm playfully before she reached out and turned the laptop towards herself. “Do you think I could e-mail my mom or call her? Maybe not. They would be able to track me then right? Will they give me a new name? I like Miranda Jamison but I am willing to sacrifice for the cause.”

*

Braden felt his temper rising. He should have expected this from someone who saw the world through rose colored lenses. First she wasn’t willing to accept that there were werewolves and vampires, and now she wanted to romanticize it. She was looking over the website with an excited eye, the way one of those wannabe’s might look at it. He snatched the lap top away from her.

“This is not a game Miranda. You are not going to receive a superwoman costume. You are not going to fly in in the nick of time. All you can do is what you were born to do. Sometimes innocents will get bitten and YOU will have to be the one to put a bullet between their eyes. It is not a thing of beauty. Death is messy and complicated. Every wolf you come across is someone’s loved one, another person that people will cry for and miss every day of their lives. Do you understand? Like your sister!”

She pulled back as if he had slapped her. He wanted to yell at her in frustration. Now she was going to do that whole whimpering thing. He began to rise but she grabbed his arm.

“No wait! You’re… you’re right. I don’t want you to leave me right now. I need… to not be alone right now. What do you think I should know? I won’t ask anymore question. It’s just… Sometimes when I’m nervous I ask a lot of questions until I feel more comfortable.”

Against his better judgment he stayed put. Something about her touch… He nodded and heaved a sigh. He would have to see this through her eyes. This was all brand new to her. It wouldn’t be easy.

“Okay. You must know that you are not going to know all there is to know in one day. It’s overwhelming. The easier thing for you to know is that most superstitions and fairytales have roots in truth. There was a time when people knew and feared what went bump in the night. Since the invention of motion pictures, however, and the birth of the age of reason, people tend not to believe in what they don’t see.”

She nodded as she continued to grasp his arm and watch him with rapt attention. Was it necessary for her to sit so close to him?

“Everything?”

“Everything,” he confirmed.

“Demons?”

“Most certainly.”

“Flying monkeys?’

“Not in this age.”

“You’ve seen a flying monkey?”

He gave her a look and the mischief in her eyes told him that she was teasing him. Once again he had that awkward feeling in his heart. People didn’t tease him, at least not in person. People didn’t smile and laugh around him. He didn’t have much to smile or laugh about. Had he even smiled or laughed in his last marriage?

Dawn had been a severe woman who understood what he was. She had fought alongside him until she was cut down by a so called witch hunter also known as a human on a self-righteous mission. If the human had only known how much Dawn had done for the good of mankind...

“So… You’re an immortal vampire?”

“No. I am a wolf hunter. I have attributes that some might call vampire, but I am not one. I can walk in sunlight. I can turn into a hunter in the daylight as you have seen. I don’t sleep in a coffin.”

“So werewolves, they don’t become human during the day.”

“No. Sunlight kills them. They hibernate in the day and if you can find their lair and open it up to sunlight they won’t be around to stalk innocents another day, for the most part.”

“But even the wolves were innocent once. What happens to them after you kill them?”

“They return to the collective group of wolves. These wolves are not natural wolves. They are one collective evil operating in separate bodies. Once they capture a body that soul becomes trapped, strengthening them, until the end of days. Until the world no longer exists and we all return to creation.”

“You mean the souls of the dead stay with those creatures until the end of time? Can they kill us? I mean we don’t become one of them or get trapped like the other innocents do we? What can they do to us?”

“Not much unless they can get a hold of you and devour you completely. Then you will be a part of their collective conscious until the end just like the humans. You will feel what they feel, be consumed by the evil they exist in. One of us is the equivalent of a hundred humans, however, and the wolves that ate you would come that much closer to a human form.”

“Human form?”

“The older wolves, they are stronger, smarter. Eventually they will learn to change, to be day walkers.”

“Day Walkers?”

At least she was asking one question at a time now. “Day walkers are more like the wolves you’ve seen in the movies only they can change at will weather it is day or night. They are nearly composed like snakes with the ability to bend their shapes. They are like chameleons. They can look like anyone and they are hard to keep track of. They are always moving. We kill them when we can but they are smarter, harder to catch than the creatures.”

“So the only way they can become day walkers is to eat hunters?”

“That or a few thousand humans, or they can capture a balance and mate with him.”

“A balance?”

“A man born once every thousand years that can mate with a wolf or a day walker and produce more day walkers.”

“So day walkers cannot produce more day walkers themselves?”

“They can lay with each other but no new life can be created from them. They are unnatural.”

“So… There is a balance alive right now?”

“Yes. He surfaced briefly but is under the protection of the mentors. I think Bateman might be off setting him up in a different life to prevent the day walkers from finding him. I’m sure that they will find him again though.”

“Why don’t hunters protect him?”

“Because hunters are far more attracted to him than wolves are, males to fight him, females… for other reasons.”

“All hunters?”

“Well all but one. She hunts in the South East of the United States and she seems to be able to be normal around him, or so she claims. I’m not convinced that she didn’t jump him at least once.”

“What’s her handle on the sight?”

“Creole Hunter. She’s a very young hunter. I think she was born in New Orleans.”

“And you? Where were you born?” she asked as she continued to stroke his arm. He wondered if she even realized she was doing it.

“I was born in what would now be called Norway.”

“Do you remember your parents?”

“Not even their names,” he replied.

She paused as if this shocked her. “Did they die when you were young, I mean human?”

“I don’t think so. I became a hunter while out on scavenge and never returned to them. They probably died of old age. I kept a journal back then. I only ever referred to them as mother and father. I’m lucky I can still read it. I barely recall the language at all.”

“Do you remember what they were like?”

He shook his head. “That’s like asking you if you remember what kind of watch the doctor was wearing at your own delivery into this world. Memory, after a time, becomes fuzzy. My life is like yours. A series of days. After thirty years or so you have established an entirely new existence. I could possibly tell you what I personally was doing thirty or forty years ago, I can vaguely recall fashion trends and important events, but for the most part I rely on what I’ve written.”

“How often do you write in your journal?”

“Once every ten years or so I cover major events. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. It’s nearly time for me to write again. I haven’t really had my heart in it since my last wife died.”

“Your wife?”

“I was married about a hundred years ago. I’ve been married three times, though Dawn is the only one I recall at the moment. I think it had been a good three hundred years before her that my second wife died. I would have to pull out my journal to really recall. I can’t remember that far back at all, not even how I felt about it. I only remember at all because Dawn used to be in awe of how long it had been since I was last married. I think I used to tell her that I didn’t want to remember how depressed I was when my second wife died.”

“And your first wife?”

He thought really hard. He didn’t know why he was telling her all this. He hadn’t talked this much in as long as he could remember.  “No idea whatsoever. I think I may have been human or newly changed. I would have to get out my journal.”

“Where are your journals?”

“Some are stored in many trunks beneath the house. Some in a storage unit in town.”

“What happens if there is a fire?”

“Then I will loose a few years of my history, but it doesn’t matter too much. They are already pretty much lost to me anyhow.”

She finally stopped talking then and just looked up at him. She had the most curious look on her face and he had to suppress a laugh. “Go ahead. I already told you I won’t bite you.”

She reached out and touched his face. “You feel… human.”

He allowed her to caress his face and his hair until she was satisfied. Her tiny hands felt like a piece of heaven against his face. Her hands were a little rough, he supposed from pushing that chair around all day, but he didn’t mind. Their dainty size made up for the loss. When she was finished he rose and headed towards the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”

“Why are you so nice to me?”

He froze at her question and turned to face her. “You think I’m… nice?”

“I think you try to put on a tough guy act, but that you are secretly nice.”

“You have a lot to learn,” he replied before he turned to pull down some canned beef and potatoes.

He was tempted to leave her to her own devices but his kitchen certainly was not equipped for a tiny woman in a wheel chair. She would likely starve before she got anything properly cooked. Once the food was cooked and he sat it before her, he stalked from the room grabbing his jacket as he went.

Chapter Five

Miranda looked to the living room table where he had left his laptop. She wondered if he knew he left it. What if she was to e-mail her mother… just one time? The authorities would probably be looking for her right now. It might mean more hardship for her mother if she tried to contact her. She went to the table and picked up the remote control instead of messing with the lap top. It was probably password protected anyhow.

She flipped on the television. It was on the history channel. It figured. He seemed like a history person. With a thousand years of experience he would probably be one kick ass history professor. How many people were there left that could speak and write ancient Norse. Two professions he could occupy, history professor, super model. How many people could say that? She smiled to herself. She bet he would hate it if she said that out loud.

The man seemed to get miffed at every other thing she said or did. She flipped through the channels. Of course there was nothing on the local networks being that she wasn’t too close to her hometown and there was nothing on the national networks. At least she knew where she was. She hadn’t had much clue where he’d brought her last night and it had been disorientating to not even know if she was still in Wisconsin. She and Katie must have been close to home when they crashed.

She forced herself to clutch on to her piece of good news. She was near Hurley, Wisconsin. It was four hours from home but at least it was still in the state. The local station might start flashing her and her sister’s pictures tomorrow once their disappearance went state wide. They weren’t children, so it might not make it to National news. That plus her mother wasn’t stable enough to go on television and make an emotional plea for their return.

She looked over at the laptop again. She sighed. Even if she could e-mail her mother, her mother wouldn’t even remember how to use the computer without her help. Every morning when they sat down to the office desk her mother marveled at this new thing called the computer. She always said, “I thought only the government had computers, and I hear they are as big as rooms.”

Her mother had early onset Alzheimer’s and most days she was lucky if her mother didn’t ask her why she was rolling around in a wheel chair. In her mother’s mind Miranda was still the head cheerleader in her high school. It was always hard to see the look of dismay on her mother’s face when she had to explain the accident to her all over again. Sometimes it was easier just to tell her that she was resting her legs and back in preparation for the next competition. She had been a fierce competitor and her mother wouldn’t argue with her logic in wanting to rest, ridiculous as it may have sounded.

“And in other news coming out of Madison, Wisconsin, West Point graduate, Katie Jamison, and her family were killed in a car accident on their way home from her West Point graduation ceremony late yesterday afternoon.”

Miranda’s head snapped up and she hit the volume button. Her mouth fell open as they flashed her sister’s picture in full dress uniform across the screen. The scene then flashed to her minivan. It was overturned and… on fire! Her eyes blinked a few times as the newscast went on.

“Apparently Katie Jamison, Miranda Jamison, her sister, and Donna Jamison, her mother, were on their way back to Madison when they were side swiped by another vehicle, flipping the van into a stand of trees where the van burst into flames. It is not certain if it was the accident or fire that killed the occupants of the van. Police are searching for any information on the other driver or vehicle involved in this tragic hit and run accident. In other traffic news…”

Miranda looked away from the television and did her best to breath evenly. She could hear her blood rushing in her ears. She had seen her sister disappear with her own eyes, and she was sitting here in this chair, and her mother… her mother hadn’t even gone with her to the graduation… right? She began to feel herself hyperventilate again. Had she died? Was this some type of freaky world in-between death and the afterlife?

She rolled to the door and pulled it open. Night was coming on quickly. “What did you do to my mother?” she screamed out loud.

Feeling her temper rise to boiling, her legs came under her. She stood up and went to the kitchen table. She grabbed the keys that sat there and strode purposefully out towards the truck. She felt a chill run up her arms at the bite of the night air, but she ignored it. She paused when she reached the truck. She lifted her nose to the breeze and caught a whiff of… death.

The hairs rose on the back of her neck and adrenaline was dumped into her blood stream. Her nails lengthened and her eyes became more sensitive. The sun sunk behind the mountains but it was still shockingly bright outside. Something moved in the trees. She turned and, nearly before she could think about it, she was there. She could feel something… a low grumble sounded in her throat and her teeth felt funny. She ran her tongue over her extended K-9’s in amazement. She felt coiled, ready to spring.

“What were you planning on doing with my truck?”

She spun and crouched. He stood there amongst the foliage looking like a part of the forest itself. He was so still when he wanted to be. The only thing that gave him away was the eerie glowing of his eyes. She leapt at him and he ducked her easily. She tumbled like she’d done so many times as a young cheerleader. She spun and was on him again.

This time he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the soft grass. He got so close to her that she could smell the mint on his breath. He brushed his teeth? She felt his hand begin to cut off her breathing so she clawed at his arm. She felt a rush of satisfaction when she took flesh and he growled. He lifted her up and slammed her down again, hard.

“She’s all right. They relocated her to a mental facility.”

“I… want… to… see… her,” she managed before she landed a kick to his mid-section. He flew away from her and she gasped, chocking for air.

“You cannot go to her.”

He was standing before her again and she leapt at him. Her fangs landed in his jugular and she bit. He slapped her down and she hit the ground roughly. She felt her leg break, the bone going through the skin. She grasped her leg and closed her eyes as the pain coursed through her but… to a lesser degree than it should.

She took a deep breath as she focused on the broken leg. The pain decreased the more she concentrated on it. He was there then , pushing her bone back into the skin and setting it straight. She screamed, but only because it was what she would do if he had done something like that to her when she could feel the full force of it.

It hurt. It hurt like hell, but slowly… she took a deep breath and continued to concentrate. She could feel the inside of her body in a way she never could before. The same way she could wiggle her toes and be sure they were alright, she could move the marrow in her bones. It was almost as if she could feel every molecule of blood, every cell, every atom. She moved the healing to the place where it was needed most and when she looked to her leg…

There was nothing but an ugly bruise where the bone had gone through. She looked up at him in amazement. She heard something scurry behind her and she turned over in a crouching position. It was a housecat. The cat hissed and bounded off into the trees. She heard an owl hooting in the distance. She heard a leaf fall from a nearby tree.

Again, something on the breeze caught her nose and she looked off towards the north. There was something out there. There were a lot of them. They were running away from them. The instinct was so strong to run after them, to find them, to hunt them, to kill them, that she found herself pawing at the earth. The feel of the cool earth in her hands was curious. She was momentarily distracted from the chase as she felt the soil slide between her fingers, beneath her extended nails. She could feel it with every pore of her hands.

He shifted behind her and she remembered her purpose in coming out here. She turned to him baring her fangs. “I want to see her.”

“Come,” he replied as he turned and strode towards the house.

She was tempted to not follow. She had his keys. She could drive into the nearest town and… what? Ask people to help her find her mother? If
they
had her, the people who had shown up on the scene of the accident, then he was the only link she had to finding her. Rage seethed up in her as she realized she didn’t even yet know his name. She had to have more information before she just went running off down the mountain. Besides. Without him to piss her off, her legs might stop working and she wouldn’t be able to do anything with that giant truck besides wish it would go with the power of her mind.

She walked quickly after him and felt a rush of warmth at the feel of her legs beneath her. They felt powerful, solid… if anyone had told her that she would walk again she would have laughed in their faces. Yet here she was, whole. She felt guilty for feeling so good about having her legs back when her little sister was most probably dead and her mother was God knew where, but there it was. She always could see the good in the worst situations.

He was opening the lap top when she closed the door and came to sit beside him. Something powerful arched between them. It was like electricity. She nearly jumped off the couch again, but forced herself to stay put. He readjusted himself as if he felt the charge as well. He moved just that much further away from her. Finally he had something up on the laptop and he turned the screen towards her.

All the fight fled from her as tears entered her eyes. She knew it the moment her legs were gone again and she lamented the loss. Her mother sat out on a porch near the ocean. She was smiling and happy as she looked over the roiling sea. A woman that looked suspiciously like Miranda’s dearly departed grandmother approached with a glass of lemonade and said something pleasant. Her mother held fast to the woman’s hand for a moment before giving her an adoring smile.

“She’s in Maine,” Miranda said softly. Her mother had grown up in Maine in a little cottage by the sea. The house in the camera image was much larger but it was a similar build and color.

“I got the call moments before I heard you cry out for me. I was going to show you. Saul had her relocated and settled in a way that would keep her happiest. He’s always good at that. He’s human so he knows a few things about sentiment that I wouldn’t.”

So her mother wouldn’t grow old in a nursing home. She would grow old in her happy childhood home, at least for as long as she still had memories. Miranda knew with a sinking heart that her mother would never have another thought for her or her sister or her father again. It was good for her mother, heartbreaking for her.

“You’re right. She’s better off where she is. She probably won’t even miss me.”

*

He saw the heartbreak in her eyes and felt that unfamiliar pang inside him again. She was not the huntress right now. The electricity had stopped sparking between them, but he still had the urge to reach out and pull her close, to comfort her. Strange.

“Maybe not, but there will come a time when she will… return to creation and remember. Your time together, as mother and daughter, will always exist outside of time.”

She shook her head. “In the end of days right? Because I can’t die, like you. I’ll never see her again until after the last wolf is dead.” A small sob hiccupped from her soul but to her credit she didn’t break completely down. The reality was setting in on her now.

“I will always be honest with you because lies are a waste of time. You heal like me yes, and in most likely hood you are immortal like me, but… you are still human too. I don’t know what will happen. Your human self might still grow old and return to creation.”

“You mean go to heaven?”

“I don’t know that there is a heaven or hell. I only know this existence.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” She looked so lost and he knew that he wasn’t one to give direction since he had nearly lost himself, but he would give her what he could.

“I only know that humans are born and then they die but it is not this flesh that makes a human. Humans are more than flesh and like there is the evil force that is darkness, the force that makes up the wolves, there must be light. They balance each other. Do I think there is some city with streets paved in gold like the Christians do? I don’t know. I only know the life force… creation.”

“So where does that leave us as hunters. We are not part of the darkness and we cannot create life right?”

He shrugged again. “No. Like the wolves we do not create life, neither were we born of darkness. As I said, all I know is this existence. If not for my journals I wouldn’t even know if I had come from creation. Sometimes I feel like I walked out of the mist.”

He heard what he was saying and had to wonder why he cared enough to tell her these things. He hadn’t ever told anyone these things. Even with Dawn he had kept some parts to himself. With Miranda Jamison… he just had this overwhelming desire to please her, to see her smile. He hated for her to wail and sob the way she had done. It grated on his nerves. He would move mountains if she would just be at ease.

“What is your name?” she asked.

He hadn’t even realized he had not told her. “Braden Saarikoski.”

“Braden. The name suites you. You were a Viking then?”

“I may have been a Viking in the time I was born.”

“I thought so.”