Forbidden Instinct

by Cassandra Chandler

  “Hey, buddy,” Darren called softly.

  The whimpering turned to a low growl. Not surprising.

  He assessed his surroundings quickly. There were too many ambush points for his liking. Wooden shelves still filled some of the relatively small place, blocking his line-of-sight. Some had been smashed, boards strewn about the floor. The blood trail led around the last few free-standing rows.

  Of course.

  Adrenaline flooded his system, sharpening his senses and making his skin feel electrified. He took a few deep breaths to even himself out.

  No matter how much Mrs. Ford tried to deny it, he and Scott had been in dangerous situations before. They had learned to pay attention to even the tiniest details in their surroundings, to listen to their instincts and trust that they knew when danger was near. Darren had faced down guns, kidnappers, and even a maniac with a bomb strapped to his chest.

  He had never felt this much danger. The air was thick with it.

  Keeping his voice as calm as he could, he said, “I’m not here to hurt you. I’d like to help if I can.”

  The growling stopped. The space became utterly quiet except for the sound of Darren’s breathing. He took another step closer, grit and dirt crunching beneath his feet.

  Hell burst out from around the corner.

  A six-foot tidal wave of fur and claws and teeth launched itself at him. Darren had been aiming at the floor, watching for something near the ground, but this thing… Its face was on the same level as his. It swatted Darren’s gun away before he could get off a shot. Swatted the gun with its hand.

  The creature was on him almost too fast to track. Darren’s arms shot up to protect him from the attack, bearing the brunt of it. Pain lanced up his forearm as the thing bit him, hitting Darren with its full weight and taking him to the ground.

  The hard tile floor smacked the back of his head hard enough to make lights flicker across his eyes. He forced himself not to panic—to block out the pain and look around for anything that might help.

  The flickering light he was seeing turned out to be from his flashlight, spinning crazily on the floor after he dropped it. No help there. A board from the broken shelving was nearby, but not close enough. Darren still reached out with his free hand—the one not being chewed on by the furry monster—clawing at the floor as he tried to grab it.

  His flashlight slowly stopped its spin, the beam at just the right angle for him to get a better look at what was latched onto his arm. His brain logged details that didn’t make sense. Panic must be clouding his senses.

  It was hairy, huge, and had a long muzzle—like a wolf. But from the quick glimpse Darren had caught before the thing took him down, it was bipedal. It glared at Darren with bright green irises surrounded by white sclera.

  A dog with human eyes.

  The thing gave Darren’s arm another jerk, the pain escalating to levels that were close to shutting down his capacity for rational thought. If that happened, he was done.

  But the excruciating movement had shifted him far enough that his searching fingers latched onto the loose board laying nearby. He lifted it and smashed it into the side of the creature’s head as hard as he could.

  Maybe it was the adrenaline or maybe the thing was more messed up from his car than he realized, but his blow knocked the creature off of him. Darren rolled away and came up in a crouch, breathing heavy and still holding the piece of shelf. Blood dripped from his mauled arm and his muscles burned like his veins were filled with fire.

  The thing slowly stood on its back legs, one of its clawed hands held against its stomach, where a large spot of fur was matted with what looked like blood. It made a hacking noise and took a stumbling step toward Darren, then fell onto all fours.

  In the dim light from his flashlight, Darren watched as its fur retreated into its skin, its ears and muzzle shortened, and its body shrank down to the proportions of a normal person. The light was left reflecting off the pale skin of a man stretched naked on the tile floor.

  He pushed himself up on his elbows and glanced around the room, eyes wild. His hair and beard were dark red. He looked over at Darren with the same green eyes as the creature.

  “What happened?” The man’s voice was barely a rasp, but thick with a Scottish accent.

  “I have no idea.”

  That wasn’t true, though. Darren had one idea. One absolutely bat-shit insane idea.

  This guy is a werewolf. I’m talking to a werewolf.

  A werewolf who had bitten him.

  Darren pushed aside thoughts of fairy tales and focused on the very real man in front of him who needed his help. The man’s gaze slid to Darren’s arm and a look of unbridled anguish twisted his features into an even greater expression of agony.

  “Oh God,” he moaned. “I bit you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  The man’s voice broke off as he arched his back, a scream tearing through him as he rolled to his side. Darren could see a dark spot on the man’s stomach just like the one that had been on the wolf. Blood trickled steadily onto the floor.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” Darren said.

  He took a few staggering steps, the room spinning around him. He must be losing more blood than he thought himself. His arm burned—his shoulders, his back. He fell to his knees next to the stranger.

  “No time,” the man gasped, each breath an effort. He still managed to grab Darren’s sleeve. “The nights will help you. Find the nights.”

  The man’s eyes went blank. He took one more shuddering breath, and as he let it out his skin, his eyes, his hair, his entire body turned a dark charcoal gray, as if he was turning to ash.

  Darren jerked his arm away, and that small action caused what remained of the man to crumble in on itself, leaving behind nothing more than a pile of dust. Darren tried to scramble back, but his limbs gave out and he sprawled onto his chest.

  What the hell just happened?

  It might have been a hallucination except for the pain in his…everything. The burning had spread to his chest, his legs, even his head. His arm was numb where he had been bitten. But then the burning started to fade in the rest of his body. It was almost like a wave of heat and pain that traveled through him and then just left.

  From how charged up he felt, it was probably a huge adrenaline spike. And, God, was he hungry.

  He pushed himself onto his hands and knees and crawled to his flashlight. He managed to sit, then picked it up and held it between his teeth. Very carefully, he pulled up the fabric of his sleeve, angling his head to aim the light.

  Blood coated his arm, but he didn’t see any punctures or lacerations. Darren cautiously wiped a finger over his skin and found a jagged pattern of red welts where he’d been bitten. That was all. The feeling had returned to his limb, but the pain was gone.

  What the hell?

  He pulled the flashlight from his teeth and stood up slowly, still fighting waves of dizziness. The floor seemed to shift beneath him, the walls of the store tilting in at funhouse angles.

  Acrid smells burned his nose, dust and decay nearly choking him. He could hear the wind whistling through the front door, see each splinter of broken wood in sharp relief. The world felt surreal.

  Definitely adrenaline. Not turning into a werewolf.

  Darren took a few deep breaths, trying to reason things through. It had to be the stress of everything. A trick or hallucination. Someone was messing with his head.

  He remembered the blond man and how Scott had simply handed over the coins. Darren looked all around, half expecting the guy to step out of the shadows, waving a watch on a chain or doing whatever else hypnotists did.

  Darren had to get out of there. But first, he needed to find his gun.

  It hadn’t slid far after being knocked from his hand. He picked it up and checked it, then slid it back into its holster. As he turned toward the door, the light of his flashlight glinted off of something in the pile of dust that his ‘hallucination’ had left b
ehind. He walked over to it and pulled out a handkerchief before reaching down to pick up the object.

  A small silver coin. The light from his flashlight reflected off of several stars laid out in the constellation Orion on one side. He knew without turning it over what was on the other side. A scorpion. It was one of the stolen silver coins he and Scott had been delivering.

  “Shit.”

  It was still warm to the touch. Probably from being in the man’s body. It couldn’t have been anywhere else—the man had been naked when he died. Darren remembered the gut-wound.

  Doesn’t silver kill werewolves?

  He shook his head, wrapping up the coin and stuffing it in his jacket pocket. He and Scott could dust it for fingerprints and see if there was anything stuck to it that might give them a lead.

  If any of this was real, anyway. Darren was still wondering if he was having some sort of psychotic break. Maybe he’d been drugged. It could all be part of discrediting him, of laying the blame for everything at Darren’s feet. What he had seen couldn’t be real.

  He headed back to his car, wondering where he could go that would be safe. Not his apartment. If Morrison and the blond man were going to these lengths to mess with Darren, they’d certainly be watching his house.

  No, he needed neutral territory. Someplace no one would think to look for him, but where he might be able to get some backup if he needed it. He climbed into the driver’s seat, his options playing through his head until one rose to the forefront of his mind.

  Jack had said he’d been in a similar line of work. He had connections, if his veiled threat about knowing Darren’s personal information was more than a bluff.

  And Darren wanted to see Miranda again. He needed to see her.

  He kicked the car into drive and headed for The Red Thread.

  Chapter Seven

  One of the bells above the back door rang out as Miranda stepped into the night air. The first few hours of her shift—working the dinner rush—had been busy enough to keep her mind off of her visions. Her usual shift…not so much.

  She felt like she was about to crawl out of her skin. When would she die? How would it happen?

  The only thing that helped was focusing on the less-personal vision—of the stars falling from the sky. It had to be a metaphor for something. She’d never had a vision like it, though. The damned fog was making everything hard to see. Maybe it was because she wouldn’t be around to see it with her own eyes. Her own physical eyes, anyway.

  She glanced around the mostly-empty parking lot and froze. Darren’s dark blue muscle car was sitting in the corner spot farthest from the restaurant. The windows were fogged up so she couldn’t see inside. There was a huge dent in the front bumper, and one of the headlights was broken. It had been fine the last time she’d seen it.

  Her heart started to race. The attack must have already happened. How had he managed to drive afterwards?

  She didn’t know what she would find in his car. Part of her didn’t want to find out. But he had headed straight to her car when he’d thought he was walking up to a nightmare. She would do the same for him. She hurried to his car.

  If he had been able to drive himself to the restaurant, he couldn’t have been hurt as badly as her vision led her to believe. She’d thought he was going to be killed.

  She could barely make out a dark figure slouched in the driver’s seat. Holding her breath, she rapped on the glass.

  Darren stirred—at least, she hoped it was Darren. He jerked forward and glanced around, then fiddled with the key and rolled down his window. He stared up at her with those steel gray eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She laughed. “I find you passed out in your car in the parking lot, and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”

  “I wasn’t passed out. I was just…thinking.” He ran his hand over his face, then shook his head. “It was a long night.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He laughed.

  “No, really. What happened?”

  He shook his head. “Long story.”

  “I don’t have any customers and my break is just starting. Come in and have a cup of coffee.”

  He stared at her for a few moments, mouth opening and closing as if he was fighting to keep the words in.

  Something had happened. She was sure of it. She wanted to help if she could. He didn’t strike her as the sort who would ask, so she figured she’d give him a little nudge.

  “I’m actually really bored and could use the company,” she said. “Can you come to my rescue one more time?”

  “Always.”

  He responded instantly, with an intensity that made her breath catch in her chest. Her heart seemed to stop. Her excitement was quickly drowned in sadness. Nothing could ever come of a relationship with him. She was going to die.

  Then again, she’d been wrong about him dying in the attack she’d foreseen.

  She had to know what was going on—and what would happen next.

  Reaching her hand through his window, she rested it on his shoulder, pulling a vision of his future from him. All it usually took was a few seconds of a light touch. She could scoop up people’s futures, like dipping her hands into water and staring at the reflection of the sky in what she held.

  He sucked in a breath, staring at her hand on his shoulder. She gave him her best smile and cocked her head toward the restaurant, even though he wasn’t looking at her.

  “Come on—the place is dead and the coffee’s on me,” she said. “It’s the least I can do after you taking me home last night.”

  Slowly, his gaze travelled up her arm until his eyes locked with hers. The look in those eyes… It was possessive. Predatory. Unlike anything she’d seen from him before. It made her toes curl and set her tingling in places that had been dormant for too long.

  And it absolutely terrified her.

  She stepped back, hand balled in a fist as she waited for an opportunity to read his future. If he would look away for a moment, she could take a peek. He didn’t seem interested in dropping their eye contact, though. He managed to hold her gaze as he slid out of his car and closed the door.

  She hadn’t moved away as far as she’d thought, and he ended up standing right next to her, his body putting off an incredible amount of heat. He leaned a little closer and she thought he might be about to kiss her. Worse, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to stop him.

  Instead, he took a deep breath through his nose, like he was…smelling her.

  The Red Thread was a diner. A nice diner, but still a diner. She knew she smelled like grease and bleach. What she didn’t understand was why his eyes drifted shut and he inched even closer, as if the scent was as sweet as fresh-baked cookies.

  It was weird enough to break through the temptation of the moment. She turned away and started walking toward the front of the restaurant. Jack wouldn’t like it if she brought someone in through the side door. Plus, the slightly greater distance would give her more time to read the glimpse of the future she’d plucked from Darren’s shoulder.

  She glanced down at her hand. Finally, she was using her powers as usual. Except all she saw was fog. That damned fog.

  Whatever it was, whatever it meant, Darren was in the middle of it. Since she couldn’t see anything, she was going to have to rely on conversation to try to figure out what was going on.

  Flicking her fingers as discreetly as she could, she cleansed her hands of the energy from the reading, just in case she decided to try again.

  “You said you’ve had a long night?” she asked.

  “It was just…strange. I haven’t slept in a while. I guess it caught up with me.”

  “Are you okay? I noticed the front of your car is banged up.”

  “I hit a dog.”

  The attack had already happened? And that thing had just been a dog? He didn’t even seem to be injured at all.

  “Oh no.” She did her best to sound genuinely surprised. “Is it okay?
”

  “No.”

  She had a feeling conversation was going to be a dead end as well. Darren didn’t seem in a talkative mood.

  The dog had been huge in her visions. If it wasn’t for its long, pointed muzzle, she might have thought it was a bear. At the very least, his arm should have been crushed. Bones broken, muscles torn. She turned so she could see his face again, searching for any signs of pain. He just looked…angry.

  It was hard to make out details from the dim lights in the back lot, but his hair was dusty, especially in the back. And his clothes were a mess. She could see something dark staining his shirt. Blood?

  The fog enshrouded his future. Like Eden’s and Miranda’s. She had thought that meant the attack would kill him. Yet here he was. It didn’t make sense.

  Even if her visions had suddenly become metaphors, the fog was the same for all three of them. With Eden’s sickness, Miranda was sure that meant they were all going to die soon. Darren first—like immediately—then Eden, then Miranda not long after.

  And then there was the vision with the falling stars. Miranda didn’t need to see the casualties of whatever event that represented. She could feel the dead pressing on her in that future.

  A crazy theory popped into her head. Zombie apocalypse. Not with actual zombies, of course, but maybe a sickness. A plague that would spread like wildfire throughout the planet. Something that dog had carried and passed on to Darren when he was bitten.

  If he had been bitten. It didn’t seem possible that the attack had already occurred. Unless one of the symptoms was…a lack of symptoms?

  She needed more information. A little touch wouldn’t do. Darren was at the center of the vision with the falling stars. Too much was at stake for her to hold back.

  He started to open the door for her. She heard one of the bells let out a tinkling chime, a higher pitch than she was used to. She glanced up and saw the silver bell dancing on its string. That was another mystery for another time.