The Truth About Night

by Amanda Arista

  I smiled. Ethan said that to me on more than one occasion. I had this habit of writing the endings to the articles, of knowing the truth of the stories before we had evidence on everything. It infuriated Ethan that I assumed the worst every time, though nearly every time I was right.

  I sighed and took a sip of the whiskey. If Emily Howard Rhoades was involved in something nefarious, it didn’t show in her work; her school employment had been exemplary. When I’d called, her principal said that because Emily always took long weekends for their monthly hiking trips and was still out on bereavement leave, she was running low on her vacation time and was in jeopardy of losing her job. But I knew from the tone of the man’s voice that he would never fire Emily.

  On a general search of the police database cross-referenced with her name, I’d stumbled upon a report detailing vandalism to the school where she worked. Only her classroom was ransacked. Desks overturned, windows broken from the inside, spray paint on the walls, yet nothing taken. It was definitely a surprising find. Could this be the evidence I needed that the Howard family wasn’t on the up-and-up? Two break-ins in less than two months?

  “Hey.”

  What I couldn’t figure out was why there wasn’t a bigger inquiry? Practically nothing had been reported. Of course, my dad would have said that two break-ins made a coincidence, only three made a pattern.

  And more importantly, Ethan hadn’t mentioned a word of it to me. That stung, and damned the family further. You’d think it would merit a mention during a seven-hour stakeout when we were talking about our college heydays or my little psychosomatic thing that happened when I told a lie. God, he had loved that. Especially the descriptions of some of the flavors.

  Bill rapped his knuckles on the bar in front of me. I jerked my head up. He hitched his thumb over to my right.

  My mysterious Romeo was standing beside me the bar. His eyes were trained on me, and there was a quirk to his lips, but all I could do was stare at his greasy, slicked-back hair and his terrible plaid blazer.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I wanted to know how that drink is.”

  I inspected the drink still in my hand. “Pretty good.”

  “What about the one before that? The one I sent over.”

  I snorted. This guy was seriously trying to hit on me? In the middle of the day? In that get-up? “Pretty good.”

  He moved to take the stool next to me, but I put a hand on his chest and pushed him back. “Listen. I am absolutely positive you are a spectacular guy, but I’m really not interested right now. So if you’d like the six bucks back for your conversation starter, I’m sure Bill could put it on my tab.”

  He smiled down at me. “You really are a ballbuster.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Everyone knows Merci Lanard always gets her man. I mean, look at how easily you took down Cartwright. Seems pretty little lonely at the top now, though.”

  I instinctively balled my fist and flexed my forearm, making the wound flare to life. The pain spread up my shoulder and heated my cheeks.

  Last bar you haven’t been kicked out of, Ethan repeated in my head.

  I forced a smile. I needed to keep my head. Truth was, this wasn’t the first jerk who hadn’t gotten the hint, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  “Listen,” he continued smoothly. “How about you come with me, we have a few drinks, and I’ll let you see if I’m the man you’re looking for.”

  “Unless you’re responsible for the death of my partner, you’re not the guy.”

  “How do you know?” he said with a smile whiter than it should have been, wider than it should have been.

  It was the ugly smile that jogged my memory, the notion that there were too many teeth. He’d been snooping around the Mayor’s office a day late and a dollar short on the Cartwright construction bribe story. “I know you. You’re from The Teller. Mitchell, right?”

  There was a moment of panic in his eyes as his ruse crumbled. “I want to know what happened that night.”

  I laughed in his face. This sad excuse for a reporter was trying to scoop Ethan’s attack? “You couldn’t find a headline at high noon.”

  Bill stepped in and probably prevented lawsuit number five. “Why don’t you leave the lady alone?”

  “Why should I? She’s got her own editor publishing lies. Someone has to tell the truth to the people of this city.”

  I dropped my chin and looked up at him, the thunder rolling through my temples. “Are you seriously going to question my story?”

  The electric sizzle started between my shoulders and seemed to travel to where my hand still curled around the whiskey tumbler.

  “Someone has to.”

  “Merci, I think you should go,” Bill said.

  “Why? I’m not insulting the integrity of your clientele.”

  Bill had to pry the tumbler from my left hand. I turned to my neighborhood bartender and my anger dissipated a fraction as he held me within his calm blue eyes. “Ease up, Lanard,” he said softly.

  But what I heard was Ethan’s voice telling me to stay out of trouble. I didn’t have back up like I used to.

  Mitchell stepped forward quickly. He reached for the inside of my sleeve and caught the edge of the white bandage that peeked out of my shirt.

  “What’s this?” he demanded as he tore the medical tape and gauze from my arm.

  Fire flew up my forearm, and I clutched the wound to my chest.

  “Article didn’t mention you getting cut. You’re hiding things, Lanard,” Mitchell waved the bloody gauze between us.

  I looked down at the still red and raw wound on my arm. There was a faint memory of a surgery resident making the small, clear sutures on my deadened skin. I ignored it mostly for the past week.

  White tape dangled, half torn off and exposing the strange mark. Blood started to ooze out of the straight, deeper middle portion of it. The hook at the end seemed still tightly sown back together. The gore, the fresh blood froze my thoughts for a moment as I looked at wound like it was on someone else’s arm.

  Bill came to my rescue with a white towel and more expletives flung at the reporter than I had ever heard strung together in one breath.

  The man clenched his jaw and left the door barely on its hinges as he stormed out.

  I held the towel to my arm and my arm to my chest and exhaled through the fresh pain.

  “I’m sorry about that, Merci,” Bill said as he returned to his proper side of the bar. He pulled out two clean glasses and poured whiskey into each.

  “Great. Am I driving you to drinking too?” I asked him as I sat back down on my stool, surveying the scattered papers.

  “I hate guys like that.”

  I laughed. “You run a bar frequented by guys like that.”

  “You’re different from those ambulance chasers, though. You fight hard. You drink like a fish, but you care. Guys like that are only in it for the acclaim.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, some acclaim. Look where it got me, got Ethan.”

  Bill shook his head and sipped his whiskey. “You will never convince me otherwise, Merci.”

  I made a wish that Mitchell wasn’t the last man to buy me a drink in a bar, and threw back the amber liquid. I’d made a promise to Hayne and at least I could keep one promise this month. “Cheesesteak, extra whiz?”

  “Coming right up.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I’d gotten myself into some interesting spots before. In the closet during a sexscapade starring the former governor. Hiding out in an air duct for a day to catch corporate espionage. Kidnapped by a serial rapist. But never had I ever found myself climbing a tree during a full moon to watch a bunch of people go camping.

  Ethan and Emily had gone camping every month. He’d even pack up in the middle of a story and leave for three days. Middle of the week. National holidays. Ethan hadn’t lied to me about that. I knew they went hiking and camping often.

  I’d been rethinking what I knew about E
than, what I could prove, what I had seen with my own eyes. He went camping with his wife; I’d seen the pictures. He loved puns; I’d been the victim of his jokes for two years. He held more than a few cheesesteak eating records at local restaurants; I’d been there for most of them. He listened to hours of me talking through my frustrations with my mother. He planned something silly to do on my birthdays and always made sure to call me on major family holidays.

  That was all I had so far. I couldn’t prove the rest of who he really was. So I did what all good reporters do—searched for more proof. I’d looked through my notebook to find Ethan had taken his last foray into the forest just over three weeks ago. They were due for another visit on Friday. So since Emily wasn’t going to talk to me, I had to get the information with an old-fashioned stakeout. So in no time, I was waiting outside Emily’s place, and, sure enough, she took off that night with a large pack tossed in the back of her Jeep, and I followed her straight here.

  I had assumed they were camping at the plethora of local national parks around Philly. But that’s not where we were now. I’d followed her car out to the large property I’d found while digging through the Howard Family holdings. Just an hour outside of the city, the property was just land. No buildings and no real roads or electricity or plumbing running to it.

  So why did a city family of construction workers, who built for a living, need a significant chunk of undeveloped land? The storm started brewing and I wanted to know—no, needed to know—what they did every month.

  So here I was, up a tree. Following where my instincts led me.

  I found a steady branch and sat on it, leaning against the broad trunk. The night was bitter cold, and I was aware of my cloudy breath as I perched. My position in the tree was high enough that I could see a group of people mulling about on the crest of a hill. Not a lick of camping equipment in sight.

  Why camping? There was certainly nothing appealing about sitting around, freezing in the woods on a November night and certainly nothing that needed to be done every twenty-eight days out here.

  I pulled my coat collar up around my ears against the frozen night. I’d forgotten a scarf again.

  For a moment, I hurt. My entire body ached with grief again as I sat alone in the tree. As desperate for answers as some of the mothers I’ve talked to, the ones who were trying to figure out how their sons got involved in crime in the first place.

  As if it was carried on the breeze, I heard Ethan’s voice.

  Lanard, pity party of one.

  I chuckled despite myself. That’s right. I didn’t have the right to feel self-pity. I was alive and there was a story to chase. I could be on the verge of witnessing something that would open the door to why Ethan was killed. Drugs. Human trafficking?

  Through my binoculars, I saw Levi, Emily’s brother, standing at the center of the clearing at the top of a wooded hill, bathed in full moonlight. It was easy to make out other figures through my binoculars. So the “camping” was a family thing. It wasn’t just Ethan and Emily, but the entire crew? But where were the tents? Was this one of those survivalist cults?

  Levi took off his shirt and any estimation of his age was thrown out the window. He was ripped, totally buff, the moonlight defining every abdominal. In fact, as most of the others followed suit and shed their clothing down to the bare essentials, I could make out lots of very in-shape people. The group, maybe forty now in total, peeled off layers of clothing. What was happening? Correction: Was this a nudist survivalist cult?

  Levi seemed to be addressing the group, but I was too far away to make out his words. He extended his arms out and leaned his head back. The scent of puppies filled the air, and a hot brush of fur swept against my cheek and my cold hand pressed against my face as if to catch the softness. My whole body was immediately relaxed, like something hit a button inside of me that made me as limp as a rag doll.

  Nearly losing my braced perch, I barely caught myself before I fell off the branch. The limb shook violently, sending dead leaves and twigs falling the twenty feet to the ground. My heart jumped in my throat at the vision of being splayed out at the bottom of the tree like a suicidal squirrel.

  Frustrated, I positioned myself better on the limb and cursed my sensitive nerves. What the hell was that? I moved to note it to my audio recorder, only to find that it must have taken the dive to the forest floor without me.

  I sighed. At least I had my binoculars.

  The air was suddenly charged, like I’d run my socks over a mile of carpet, like when I knew that a story was going to break. I could still smell puppies around me as the hair on my arms stood on end and the nape of my neck prickled.

  Levi was still standing at the apex of the hill, a clear shot for me to see. I watched patiently through the binoculars. Though for a moment I thought they’d fogged; one second, Levi was clear, in the next, he was blurry, and in the third, a huge wolf with black fur and a sharp, angular snout stood proudly.

  He looked straight at me, his gaze piercing through the branches.

  I gulped.

  Levi had turned into a wolf.

  The others began to shimmer, and animals began to fill the clearing, pacing and running and chasing each other. People faded into wolves, dogs, a mountain lion. A few hawks began to circle overhead. It was hard to miss the huge black bear that lumbered over the top of the hill then disappeared into the tree line.

  The wind wrapped a howl around me. My skin goose bumped, and I shivered in my coat on my little branch in the middle of the woods surrounded by animals, most of them carnivores.

  I knew that sound. The memory of that scream had jolted me awake for the past two weeks. The primal scream that Ethan had emitted, the scream that had drawn the men off my back.

  The truth left me white knuckled and gasping.

  It hadn’t been a scream that night. It had been a howl.

  Ethan was a werewolf.

  Magic was real, and I’d just seen it with my own two eyes.

  Ethan’s family were werewolves, and I had followed them out in to the woods. Alone. With nothing more than an audio recorder, binoculars, and a stun gun, my usual arsenal. Nothing with silver or anything smart like a gun or knife.

  How do people protect themselves against bears? Was it to make a loud noise or just stay up the tree? But I’d seen large cats, too, and mountain lions were very adept at climbing trees. In fact, that’s where they preferred their prey. I was going to die. I was going to be eaten by my deceased partner’s family for following my insanely dangerous instincts again.

  I listened to the night. The scent of puppies had dissipated a long time ago, and I couldn’t hear anything padding around in the forest over the sound of the whirling blood in my ears.

  A twig snapped, and the wind carried a rustle that seemed to dance around me and disorient the direction it might have come from. Perhaps staying in the tree was better.

  I looked down at my feet to secure my bearings on the branch and saw a man at the bottom staring up. Still and pale, his large eyes shone in the moonlight, like a predator on a night vision camera.

  Exposed and drowning in a fear, I froze. I could feel my heart lodge in my throat as I contemplated a defensive move. Drop something? My binoculars? God, how could I have been so stupid to climb a tree in the middle of the night with nothing but an audio recorder and a Taser?

  “Lanard?”

  I would have known that voice anywhere. The man from the funeral. I readied for battle and kept looking for a weapon.

  “What?” I called down.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he called up.

  “Are you one of them?” I looked to the crest of the hill, remembering what I had just seen. Humans that turned into animals, and I already knew how vicious he could be in human form.

  He shuffled around the base of the tree. “You’ve got to come down.”

  “Answer me.”

  “Yes, and so was Ethan.”

  And I knew it. I couldn’t refute
it now after what I had witnessed. He was telling the truth.

  Werewolves were real, and Ethan had been one of them.

  And I was stuck up a tree in the middle of the woods. But somehow, climbing down seemed the most sensible option. It wasn’t like I’d ever gotten into anything I couldn’t charm my way out of. Except the IRS investigation. I was going to be audited for the rest of my life after that one. And the whole nearly getting beaten to death by people whose faces I couldn’t see while my partner’s throat was slit. There was that.

  But up until this moment, this particular adversary had only berated me with words, and words I could fight with. Teeth not so much.

  The climb down was not as graceful as the climb up had been. My foot slipped on last knob before the ground, and I stumbled out of the tree and straight into him. He caught me and righted me quickly.

  I didn’t have to look up at him; he was my height. But what struck me was how warm my face was before his, like standing in front of a space heater. I would have stayed there in that warmth for the rest of the night. Ethan has been just as warm.

  Jarred by the painful comparison, I pushed myself away and brushed the dirt from my hands and jeans. “What are you doing here?”

  He scoffed at the question. He took a step closer, and I wanted to take a step back, like part of me knew that close was not a safe place to be with him. “We need to go,” he whispered as he surveyed the woods.

  I didn’t budge, except to reach for the recorder in my pocket, before remembering it was somewhere beneath the tree. “You called me a liar.”

  He glared at me.

  “You said I got Ethan killed,” I pressed further as I searched for my recorder.

  “From where I’m standing, your instincts get you into dangerous situations.”

  “From where I’m standing, you and your family look a lot like monsters.”

  It was the word, like I’d plucked the one word from all of creation that stung him like a bee, and he flinched.

  “It’s not safe out here for you.”

  “I was fine up in my tree.”

  His gaze shimmied up the tree and down with it came a confession that I was not expecting. “There is a lot about our family Ethan never told you,” he finally said.