Vesper (16 page)

"You know you're not supposed to be in here."

The voice was right next to my ear. I spun around to find a blond vision behind me—Deputy Jared in a tight red T-shirt. In his hand he clenched a bunch of flyers.

The dancing, the heady sensations, everything here was good—but not as fulfilling as I'd hoped. Something was missing. Maybe Jared could fill that emptiness.

"Well, hey, fancy seeing you here," I said as I moved in close. I grasped him around his waist and pulled our chests together. The echoes of his heartbeat pulsed through my body, almost in time to the beats of the music blaring around us.

He wasn't fazed at all. "Seriously. Emily, right? Aren't you sixteen?"

I sighed and stepped back, almost bumping into a pair of women walking by. They stumbled but just laughed before wandering off.

"And aren't you off duty?"

He smirked at me. "Right. Well, I don't know how you got in, but now I've got to escort you out. It's my civic duty."

I rolled my eyes and walked past him. "Come on, don't be such a Boy Scout. Why don't you dance with me? It'll be fun, I promise."

He followed as I wound past chairs and other club patrons, then stepped in my way. "You know, Emily, I heard some things about you."

"Oh?" I said. "Awesome things, I hope."

He rolled and unrolled his flyers as he regarded me. "Well, I heard that you are a nice, quiet girl who likes to stay home and watch movies on Friday nights. And yet here you are, out on the town alone, dressed like—" He gestured at me, his flyers flapping. "Well."

Find
the one who smells right. Find the others.

The thoughts came unbidden, bombarding my brain, pulsing to the club's beat that endlessly assaulted my ears. Not even Jared could keep away these urges. Especially not if he was going to insist on being so insufferably
good.

I inhaled, taking in more of the sensual odors surrounding me. My head went woozy.

I needed to find someone else. Immediately.

"Right, well, I can take care of myself. Now, if we're not gonna dance, I'm going to—"

He put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I get it, Emily, really. I don't want to get you in trouble. I did a lot of stupid things when I was sixteen too. It's just been really hard seeing kids not that much younger than me getting hurt lately. There's a murderer out there, you know.”

I arched my brows. "Is that why you made photocopies of the police reports and passed them around like salacious reading material?"

"No, I just thought maybe it'd hammer home how dangerous it can be out there”. Trying to guide me forward, he turned so that we were side by side.

"Come on, I'll take you to your car and make sure you get home okay.”

"Yeah, no, I'm good, but thanks anyway." I freed myself from his gentle grip, bumping him in the process. His stack of flyers—all emblazoned with a Bubonic Teutonics logo—went fluttering to the floor.

He dropped to his knees to pick up the flyers, and I started to walk off to find a non-police-officer guy to have fun with.

And then I smelled it. The musk.

It wasn't quite the same as Patrick's wonderful scent, but it was close enough, like Dalton's had been. Someone was nearby who was like me.

Someone male, someone who smelled different from everyone else in the club.

It was like I'd been dying for a drink and someone just walked by with a pitcher of water.

I'd resisted the urge all evening, but I couldn't do it any longer. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with him when I caught him. But it didn't matter—every part of my brain was screaming at me, demanding I seek out the source of the scent.

Sniffing at the air, I made my way past the couches to the spiraling staircase that led to the roof deck. Behind me I heard Jared calling my name, but he couldn't see where I'd gone, so I ignored him. Up on the roof I found that the couples had left, replaced by three guys laughing with one another while talking about things I didn't particularly care about. Ignoring them as they catcalled at me, I strolled to the edge of the building, nostrils flared, following the scent trail.

Down. He was down there, in the alley. And close, too—his smell even overpowered that of the rotting garbage in the Dumpster.

I vaulted over the side of the building, not worrying about using the ladder. I landed on the fire escape below with a loud, metallic ring. Then I half ran, half leaped down the stairs to the bottom fire escape, put both hands on the edge, and flung myself over.

I landed in a crouch in the alley. The aroma was strong now, so wonderfully strong, but I couldn't see him. Still sniffing, I marched forward, past the Dumpster.

It was as though I was standing right on top of him. My fingernails dug into my thighs in anxious anticipation—this wasn't the right one, but perhaps he was one of the "fellow's" I'd felt compelled to seek out. Oh, but he would do. We could dance all night, and Fauxhawk and Jared and everyone else would just fade away.

He wasn't there. He had to be there.
Needed
to be there.

But I couldn't see him, even as his musk swirled around me, slid into my nostrils, dug into my brain, drove me to keep searching.

My heel stepped on something hard, and glass crunched. I crouched down and discovered a broken vial lying there, thick, clear liquid in a puddle around it. A biohazard label was affixed to the part of the vial that wasn't shattered. I sniffed again. The smell was incredibly strong, making me light-headed, like I'd just drowned myself in a vat of perfume.

The smell was coming from the puddle. From the broken vial.

"What the-"

There was a shuffling behind me. Immediately I stood up and spun around. A dark, shadowy figure stood there. He was tall and slender, a long overcoat hanging to his knees, a wide-brimmed fedora hiding his features.

"Emily Webb?" the figure asked, his voice deep and gravelly, almost as though he was disguising the way he really sounded. "Daughter of Caroline and Gregory Webb?"

"What?" I asked again. "How did you-"

I couldn't finish as his odor hit me. The man's stench was overwhelming; he smelled like a laundry pile that had spent the summer fermenting in the boys' locker room. I gagged, even as I realized that this smell had a feeling. It felt like ... fear? No. Nervousness?

"Yes," the man grunted, his tone flat and emotionless. "You're her."

The man raised his arm and pointed his finger at me. No, it wasn't a finger jutting out of the man's dark sleeves. It was the barrel of a gun.

A gun.

My heart thudded, and a flurry of thoughts flooded my mind in the moment before the man pulled the trigger:
Leap at him, duck, scream for
Jared, runrunrun.
The thoughts were a din of incomprehensible noise, and I froze, my legs heavy and dead and unable to take me away.

I began to open my mouth to speak, to say something to make the man stop whatever it was he was going to do. Instead I felt my lips curl into a snarl, baring my teeth.

And the man pulled the trigger.

Flame flared from the gun's muzzle, flashing like the strobes inside the club. The flashes were followed by two small, almost unimportant pops.

And though my mind was frozen, turned to mush by fear at the sight of the gun, some unknown instinct screamed
Move!
in my brain, and I flung myself to the side.

I swear I felt the breeze of the bullets fly past my head like a pair of flies buzzing close to my cheek. Somewhere down the alley, the two bullets hit a wall with two little clinks.

I rolled, and found myself crouching beside the stained Dumpster. My chest heaved, my heart burned with anger—he'd tried to shoot me. Someone was trying to kill me!

Steady, clicking footsteps as the man walked purposefully around the Dumpster to finish what he'd started.
Not
my mind raged.
You will not hurt me.

You will not hurt me!

I grabbed the edge of the Dumpster. Something damp oozed between my fingers, but I didn't care. Tensing my arm muscles and with a primal scream, I shoved. The Dumpster creaked in protest, then spun away from the wall.

The man yelped. Another flash as the Dumpster careened into him, another pop as a bullet fired uselessly into the air. The Dumpster banged against the brick wall on the opposite side of the alley.

I couldn't see the man, didn't know how much damage I'd done. But I could hear him breathing, could hear the rapid beating of his heart, smell his rancid stench.

Again anger flared within me. Clenching my fists, I tramped forward, ready to pummel him for what he'd tried to do to me, for what he'd done to Dalton, to Emily C. And then I would carry his limp body inside, drop him at Jared's feet, and show that know-it-all deputy that I really
do
know how to handle my business.

I cried out as stars burst behind my eyes. My stomach heaved, my arm hairs prickled. Doubling over, I clutched my gut.

"No," I sputtered. "Not now!"

I could hear him moving. He'd fallen, had been knocked over and momentarily stunned by the twirling Dumpster. I could end him. I took another step forward, then dry heaved.

I had no choice. Reaching out blindly toward the damp brick wall beside me, one hand grabbing my stomach, I turned and careened down the alley away from the man, forcing my feet to move even as my head howled, demanding I lie down in the trash, let the pain overtake me, let the change come that I now knew had never been a hallucination.

I staggered out from the alley, into the street. Horns beeped at me, people walking down the street stared, bright lights flashed, and tires screeched as someone swerved to avoid hitting me. I ignored it all, ran into the next alley and the next, splashing through stagnant puddles and nearly tripping over a homeless man curled under an old army blanket.

The pulsating behind my temple turned into a squeezing sensation, like my brain was swelling, bursting free of my skull. I couldn't keep the change at bay any longer. Finally, in a new alley, behind a new Dumpster, I moaned and fell to my knees.

My hands throbbed like I'd dropped a desk on them, my nails tugging at the skin of my fingers as though trying to pull free. I held my trembling hands to my face, watched as the nails blackened and grew long and sharp, tearing free of my cuticles. My eyes watered as bones crunched and lengthened, the sensation like getting a tooth drilled while jacked up on Novocain. Coarse, dark hair appeared on my palms, spread to my wrists, climbed up my arms.

My arms. They quavered uncontrollably, feeling as though someone was pounding them with rubber mallets. Like with my hands, it hurt only distantly, but it was horrifying to see my skin twisting as my bones
moved—
malleable, rubbery things that stretched and stretched, pulling tendons to their limits, forcing my muscles to grow taut, hard. The same thing was happening in my legs, and I could feel my now-clawed toes slice through Dawn's black shoes, my heel elongating, forcing the heels off with sharp
pops.

My gut and my chest seemed to bubble beneath my dress, contorting and twisting, the sensation stinging like I was in the midst of doing a dozen crunches. The dress. Stupid as it was to think about something like that in the midst of transforming into a frickin' werewolf, I didn't want to ruin Dawn's dress. So I fumbled and shrugged the dress over my head, balling up the shimmering fabric and letting it fall to the ground.

I grabbed at my chest—it had flattened and grown hard, muscular. My stomach narrowed into tight knots, and fur spread here, too, covering me in black and gray. I wanted to scream at the absolute wrongness of it all, fall to the cobbled stone of the dirty alley and cry, but something new was taking over. The part of my brain that had been whispering its strange urges to me for days now was pushing me back, asserting itself over Daytime and Nighttime Emily both. It was calm and focused, forcing me to relax and let the changes finish.

There was a tugging at the base of my spine, a sharp pain at my tailbone, and something pushing its way into my underwear. For a moment I thought I'd messed myself, but no, no—I knew what it was. Modesty completely out the window, I sliced with my claws, my underwear falling to the ground in tatters.

A long tail unfurled and slapped at the back of my legs.

Finally the pressure in my brain burst, my skull becoming puzzle pieces rearranged by unseen hands, pulling and stretching to make my mouth and nose into a snout, to drag my now pointed ears to stand at attention atop my head, to file my teeth into sharp, saliva-dripping fangs.

And then, finally, it was done.

I had changed. I was no longer Emily Webb, Daytime or Nighttime.

I was the wolf.

Whatever was left of my normal brain was too stunned, too freaked out about someone trying to kill me and the realization that werewolves were real, to do anything. The instinctual wolf brain wanted to take over completely, and I let it.

Something dangled around my neck. I pawed at it with my claws: Megan's car keys. Some part of me recognized I needed to keep those close, remembered the muddied dress lying at my feet. Because even though I was mostly wolf now, I was somehow still Emily, still me, still all the parts of me.

I snatched up the dress in my jaws, sniffed at the night air. Discarded fish guts in the Dumpster near me. Diesel exhaust from the roads. Brine on the breeze coming in from Puget Sound.

But I didn't smell the killer's horrific stench. Didn't smell the false musk he'd used to lure me out of the club.

He was gone. But for how long?

The moon was a razor's-edge sliver in the sky above me, its now gray glow searing my pupils. I turned back the way I'd run, the wolf brain knowing without ever being taught that sticking to the shadows was safer.

That man had tried to murder me. I needed to protect myself. Protect my unknown mate.

My mate?
The Emily side of me, still mostly overwhelmed, laughed bitterly in my brain. That was what all this was about, wasn't it? The urges to smell guys, the frantic search for the right one. The wolf side of me wanted to mate.