They pushed through the crowd until they settled on a dark spot underneath the bridge. She wasn’t ready to look up. Without a word, Henry pushed her forward until she stood in front of him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kept her close. She inhaled deep to take in his subtle but spicy cologne. The soothing music drew to a close, and the crowd’s impatient chatter increased.
“Tell me about the bats. Are they friends of yours? Do you fly with them?” she joked, trying to sound playful and not too breathy.
Emma briefly closed her eyes as she felt the rumble of Henry’s laugh against her back.
“Probably not these guys. It actually takes several centuries to learn the control and skill to transform into a bat or mist, so I’m still a bit young for that. But I do come see these critters fly out at least once a year,” he said.
She blinked. She hadn’t been serious but had to admit she shouldn’t be surprised, given all the other lore that had turned out to be true. In his element, Henry described the appearance and habits of the Mexican free-tailed bats. They usually flew many, many miles to get their food, primarily insects. The Bat Night event had been going on for several years, and the organizers usually brought a device up to the microphone on stage so mortals to hear the bats’ echolocation patterns.
The crowd’s excited murmurings fell to a hush. Emma almost missed it, but one tiny bat flew out and made its debut. True to Henry’s word, the bat device onstage captured a shrill clicking sound.
The crowd waited and watched. Emma kept expecting to see a dramatic onslaught of bats come rushing out from under the bridge. Maybe some would ruffle people’s hair. But they were just teeny little guys flitting about in the newly darkened sky. They came out in groups no larger than five or six. She could barely hear them, even with the echolocation adapter, but they were transfixing to watch.
By the time more of them flew out, complete darkness had nearly taken over. Emma watched them, small black doodles flying erratically across the faded purple sky. As it got darker and as people realized there would in fact be no dramatic rush of bat wings invading the sky, the spectators started to disperse.
She and Henry stayed and continued to watch in silence. Her lips twisted into a smile and imagined them turning into vampires once they got far enough away from the crowd. She squeezed Henry’s hands at her waist. He bent his head forward. She knew he didn’t have to in order to hear her words but reveled in the closeness.
“I never thought I would thank someone for making me watch bats, but…thank you for bringing me to see the bats. They’re beautiful.”
***
Henry hadn’t been sure what Emma’s reaction would be to the outing, but something protective and joyous swelled inside him when her soft words floated into his ears. As he watched the hordes of people move past them now that the show was nearly over, he relished having the empty riverbed to themselves.
“I get the impression this isn’t your first time here,” she said.
For years he’d come out to the various bridges on the north side of town to watch the bats fly out at sunset in search of food. In the twenty-first century, some mortals had taken it upon themselves to make the autumn bat flights into an event with music, food, and lectures. After attending his first Bat Night, he was hooked.
While he couldn’t turn into a bat, he liked to feel connected to something. The Mexican bats were the closest things he had to family.
“Definitely not. I know I can come watch them on a night that isn’t quite so showy, but being alone in a crowd of this many people is comforting. It’s even better with you.” He kissed her ear.
Emma laughed. “I thought you preferred ‘paper, not people,’” she teased.
Henry smiled sadly. “Remember how I told you about how living indefinitely gives you time to get over your baggage?” When she nodded, he continued, “It’s mostly true, but one of the reasons I come here is to mourn. Bat Night is the one night of the year that I let myself have an angst fest to consider the should-haves, would-haves, and could-haves.”
She ran her hand along his forearm. “I get it. It’s just that kind of place.”
They fell silent, lost in their thoughts.
“How did you get turned?” she asked after a short while. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”
“It’s fine. I want to. I was in the wrong place, very much at the wrong time.” He laughed hollowly.
Night had completely taken over. He knew he should take her back to the car and stop talking about heavy things like the past, but he felt calm in the warm darkness. Most everyone had already left, but small clusters of people talking remained.
“Was it…voluntary?” she prompted.
He shook his head. “No, but that’s okay. I don’t regret it now. My friend Grant had been turned a few years before, but I had no idea he was a vampire. There was no reason to suspect anything because we usually went out at night to hit up saloons for card games and…” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Other pastimes.”
Mirth bubbled out of her. “I would kill to see you in cowboy getup hitting on saloon girls.”
He gave a strand of her hair a playful tug.
She sobered. “Sorry, go on.”
Henry contemplated his past while he looked above at the remaining twitching creatures hanging from the rafters of the bridge.
“It was all pretty inane, unfortunately,” he continued. “I was rather rudely accused of cheating at cards. Said some things I probably shouldn’t have, and in true cowboy fashion, I got shot. Grant got me out of the melee and pulled me behind the building. He realized I was dying. He gave me some of his blood and took some of mine, and here we are,” he finished, his tone carrying the false cheerfulness of a gameshow hostess.
“That’s why he went with you to see your family.”
“It is.”
“I want to meet him and say thank you.”
Henry squeezed her tighter and smiled.
Then she asked, voice teasing, “Are you going to tell me what the name de Daumier-Smith is all about?”
“What, I don’t get to ask you any questions?”
“In a minute. I finally remembered where I’d heard it before. It’s from a J.D. Salinger story, so I’m curious why you picked it.”
“I thought it was funny. It’s just a name.”
Emma scoffed and kicked up some of the sand beneath their feet. “Yeah? Then why not Henry Caulfield? Henry Bananafish?”
He laughed loudly and without guile. “Fine, I’ll be Henry Bananafish in my next life.”
She sighed. “Witness, please answer the question,” she said in her stern lawyer voice.
“Come on, it’s not that complicated. The kid is pretentious and clueless while he stumbles through life, and he takes on a completely new identity. I can relate to all of that.”
“The story behind it is sad, but I like that you chose something with meaning for you.” She rubbed her hand back and forth across his.
“Now,” Henry said, happy to jump off the hot seat. “Do you have any personal tragedies you’d like to share with the class?”
“Hmm,” she mused. “Well, I told you about losing Gram. That was harder on me than I expected. I also had one of the shittiest boyfriends ever, but that’s more a scarred war wound I wear with pride than a tragedy.”
“Do tell.”
“I met a guy when I was in college in Phoenix. We were together for about a year, and we were going to live in Tucson together after we graduated while I went to law school. It was going to all be very neat and precise.”
Henry winced. “I assume that is not how it played out.”
She faltered but continued, “No, Jeremy just wanted to do something bigger with his life, which I get now, but he executed it in an idiotic way. He joined the Peace Corps, but the coward only told me three days before he left.”
“Three days.” He whistled low.
“Oh yes. We were supposed to sign
a lease that day. Instead he shows up to my apartment with his backpacking gear.”
Henry shook his head. “Classy.”
“Right, so, whatever. I fumed and ate my ice cream before moving on eventually. I went to law school. You know my resume. After graduating, my options were Keith and Heller or volunteering with the Maricopa PD until I could snag a paying position. I had over a hundred grand in loans. I couldn’t afford to be anything but safe and careful. But I was also exhausted and miserable by the time I left Keith and Heller.”
Henry stepped back so he could turn her around in his arms and face her. “So you don’t regret diving into this wild world with me?”
Emma laughed, tilting her head up at him, though he knew she probably couldn’t see much in the dark underneath the bridge.
“No, not yet. I just…still need practice jumping.” She kissed him soundly.
“Right there with you.”
She leaned away from him. The air grew chillier, their capes snapping in the wind. “Which reminds me. Something I want your opinion on.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“We need to do something about the supernats,” she blurted. “What we’re doing is a Band-Aid when they need stitches. A lot of stitches. Like twenty.”
Dread pooled in his chest, cool and dark. “I appreciate and empathize with the sentiment, but how are we supposed to do that? With what resources?”
“I-I’m not sure, but how do supernats survive in bigger cities?”
He ran his tongue over a fang, frowning. “Shadow governments, but those have been around for ages. This is the Wild West. We don’t have that level of organization or those kinds of resources.”
“Why can’t we make a shadow government ourselves? People are going to keep doing stupid stuff. There might be checks and balances that generally keep the peace among supernats, but they need to be protected, and the resources we do have are scattered. There is literally one supernat therapist, and we had no idea she existed. How many new vampires know about the blood CSA you get your supply from?”
Henry ran his fingers through his hair. “I understand what you’re saying, but people come here because they don’t want to be meddled with.”
“They need meddling if werewolves keep ending up in jail. We’ve had an amazing run so far. Some supernats can hide themselves in jail, but it’s a damn miracle that a werewolf hasn’t been in jail during the full moon. We’re already under a lot of pressure, and we need a better fail-safe than Abernathy.” Her tone was pleading.
“Then they need to learn to handle themselves,” Henry countered. “If they don’t want to get caught, then they should stop stealing and walking around with weed in their pockets.”
Emma massaged her temples. “But for whatever reason they’re not, so we need to do something.”
Henry opened his mouth to snap a reply but reined himself in. Sensing this was well on its way to morphing into a heated lawyers’ debate, Henry pushed her cape behind her shoulders so he could clasp her bare arms. He squeezed them reassuringly.
“I know you care. I do. But can we table this? There’s nothing we can do about it tonight, and we didn’t come here to do this.”
“Fine.” Emma sighed. “You’re right. This isn’t the place for work crap.”
She stepped forward to lean into his embrace and circle her arms around his waist. Henry stared at the gnarled scrub brush that littered the riverbed. They lapsed into silence again and let the evening’s insects do the talking.
Chapter Sixteen
Blood sluiced over the man’s clothes and onto his shoes as he let out a terrified grunt. Wendell pulled the hunting knife from the stranger’s chest and dropped it in some dried leaves. He gripped the dying man’s shirt and held him up to stare into his eyes as they dimmed. Shock and adrenaline slammed the alcohol that had been swimming in his blood to the backburner.
“Shit,” he said and dropped the man down to the ground.
The body crumpled, and Wendell heard his victim’s heartbeat slowing as it lost its toehold on life. The alcohol overtook Wendell again with a strong, dizzying wave.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked himself more than the man.
One minute Wendell had been doing some drunken night hiking and feeling twitchy after storming out of his pack’s camp. He didn’t care what Shiloh said; it was too damn close to the full moon to engage in meaningful meditation or eat vegan s’mores in front of a campfire. But halfway up the trail…Wendell had heardsmelledfelt someone else.
It was the middle of the night and the middle of the forest. With all his senses numbed and too drunk to notice whether the other being was actually a threat, he’d just charged. His heavy boots hadn’t hindered his speed. He’d just felt danger and a tight need to quell it. Tree branches had reached out to scratch him like haunted limbs. Had they been trying to stop him?
Now blood covered his hands and chest. His white t-shirt was smeared with dirt, sweat, and more blood. And a man was dying at his feet. Wendell crouched down to look closer at the man’s wound, his tiger’s eye amulet dangling from his neck. Shiloh said it would ground him and enhance his willpower and integrity. So much for that.
“What the fuck happened?” Wendell asked again.
“I was lost,” the man said. Blood gurgled in his throat. He stopped moving.
Furious with himself, there was only one thing for Wendell to do: bury the poor son of a bitch. He dug a large, deep hole, ignoring the worms and other crawling things that fell on him. The metaphor wasn’t lost on him.
By the time he finished, he was covered in more dirt than blood. Wendell grabbed his knife from the ground, wiped it down with the inside of his shirt, and resheathed it. Exhausted, he sat down on the grave of the stranger he’d killed. Wendell pulled a large flask of bourbon from one of the many pockets of his hiking pants and unscrewed the cap. Contemplated the brushed steel of the container. He lifted the flask to his lips but paused.
Hadn’t he been making progress? At times, the vegan pack’s meditation and plant-based diet made him feel at peace. Other times, it made all of his anger and fears flare up.
Then that therapist Emma had sicced on him had made everything worse. Felt like he was constantly reliving his mistakes and fighting ghosts of personal demons he thought he’d vanquished. Apparently he’d never conquered them, only numbed them into stasis. Patting the ground beneath him in salute to his victim, he downed the flask. Once an addict, always an addict. Wendell let the haze take over again.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, but it finally occurred to him that he should get out of here before humans or, worse, werewolves found him and the grave. He used the trunk of an unwilling tree to help him get to his feet. And swayed. Blinking several times, he finally got enough control over his faculties to jog through the woods, stumbling over rocks and slipping on leaves along the way.
Eventually, the trees thinned. Wendell crept to the edge of the woods close to the main road and spotted a few twinkling lights in the valley below, but darkness surrounded him. During the day, you could see sandy-colored rolling hills dotted with green scrub. Now, it was just Wendell, the woods, and the stars—a thousand times as many lights in the sky as there were in the valley. He wanted to jump out of his skin.
The vegans couldn’t find out about what he’d done. So far, they were generally a live-and-let-live type of pack, but no one had ever mentioned the consequences if he veered too far from their path. They could exile him, beat the hell out of him, or maybe kill him. Or it could all end with a chanting circle; who knew?
“Gotta get off this damn mountain,” he muttered.
His best bet was to run back down the mountain and hide at the compound while everyone was gone for the full moon. He’d figure out a cover story to feed them later. If Wendell could get back toward the city, maybe as close as Tanque Verde, he could call a cab. The driver probably wouldn’t bat an eye at a drunk, dirty customer at this time of night.
Wi
th that plan in mind, he shucked his clothes and stuffed them in his small canvas satchel. Crouching down, he closed his eyes. The dirt, rocks, and grit abraded his skin like a rusty square of steel wool as he turned back into a wolf. His breath chuffed in the night air. He still felt a little woozy from the bourbon. This wasn’t going to be fun, but he had to get home somehow. He grabbed his satchel in his teeth and took off down the quiet mountain road.
Four hours later, Wendell was still drunk and ready to pass out from exhaustion and dehydration. He wandered into a subdivision in Tanque Verde, just south of Mount Lemmon. Once he got home, he would sleep. For days.
His tongue lolling as he ambled along the sidewalk, he spotted an open rusted gate that halfheartedly guarded a nearby house. Perfect. He trudged into the gravel backyard. The fence itself was made of smooth, tan adobe that secluded the yard. He hid behind a stubby tree, tossed off his satchel, and transformed back into human form. Groaning, he tried to stand up but stumbled. He waved his hands in the air to steady himself. Too late, he realized he’d triggered a motion-sensor floodlight.
“Fuck!” He screwed his eyes shut as the light seared them.
Wendell dropped onto the gravel, naked. He kept still for a few minutes until the light went back out. Once darkness fell over the yard, he opened his eyes. Every muscle in his body protested, but he would get through this one moment at a time. Soon, this nightmare would end. It had to.
He dug his clothes out of his satchel, and after taking a few steadying breaths, he stood back up, boxer briefs in hand. He stuck one foot out to put through a leg hole but lost his balance. And promptly fell ass-backwards into a cactus.
Wendell’s scream rent through the night air as saguaro needles stabbed and tore through his skin. His underwear fluttered to the gravel as he let out pained wheezes. The floodlight shot back on. His back muscles spasmed and gave up on him. As he slid to the ground, he mentally flayed himself. You’re a pathetic sack of shit with a wreck of a life. He lay there for a while, contemplating staying there until morning.
Destiny: A Fantasy Collection Page 45
