by Juniper Hart
She inserted the key and the engine fired up. She put it in reverse and turned to back up, when she saw the man in her back seat, calmly smirking at her.
She shrieked at the top of her lungs and accelerated wildly, then slammed on the breaks, sending the guy flying between the front two seats into the dash. She accelerated again and spun the wheel to avoid hitting another car or one of those cart corrals, but this time, her foot stayed on the gas.
The mystery man involuntarily jerked forward from his seat due to Cara’s erratic driving, and his face hit the gearshift with enough force that the car shifted into park. The car screeched to a halt, saved from smashing into any number of inanimate objects.
Cara screamed. “Holy shit! Who are you and what are you doing in my car?”
He peeled himself off the gearshift. A thin stream of goldish liquid was leaking out from his mouth. “You made me bite my tongue!”
He had golden blood? But she had other things to worry about, namely the fact that there was a man she didn’t know that had somehow managed to sneak into her locked car.
“Get out!” she screamed.
Nobody outside the car looked worried. When she’d nearly plowed through some other vehicles, she’d attracted a couple glances, but nobody seemed too concerned.
“Calm down,” he snapped, putting a hand to his nose.
She went for the door, but he beat her there. He lunged across her chest and slammed the lock button. It slid down with a pleasing snap. He grabbed her hands to keep her from running away.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
His voice sounded like a cello being gently stroked – deep, strong, and oddly soothing.
“Just listen to me.”
Cara wasn’t sure if it was the shock setting in, but she nodded her head in agreement. She couldn’t believe it; someone was in her car. She was being held captive in her own vehicle in the parking lot of a large store, with lots of people around.
He released her hands, and she didn’t go for the door. He’d beat her to it once. He could beat her to it again.
“W…why are you in my car?” she hissed. Where was that pepper spray? She’d carried around one of those little vials of pepper spray for years. Dammit! She’d left it in the glove box.
He clambered into the front seat, which is where she got a great view of him. He was built like a bull, laden with muscle, but not too muscular to inhibit his movement. He looked strong and fast, like a professional athlete. His golden, tanned skin complemented his dark hair.
“You’re in danger,” he said, meeting her eyes. His eyes were striking, and were like nothing she’d ever seen before. They were light brown, almost orange, with a tint of gold right around the pupil. Cara wasn’t sure why her brain decided to isolate the peculiar color of his eyes right then, but it did.
What really confused her was that her heart fluttered.
“In danger? From you?” she snapped back.
“No, from Ezekiel.”
He raised his brawny arm to point across the parking lot. There, across a couple minivans, was the glittering purple car.
He had followed her after all.
Any doubt she might have had was eliminated when she saw the fuzzy dice. She noticed the smallest hint of movement inside.
The guy in her car kept talking, which was a good thing. She couldn’t even form words. A stranger—a male stranger—was in her car, and it seemed that someone was following her. It was like an action movie, one that she wasn’t willingly a part of. No, it wasn’t an action movie; it was a horror movie.
But she didn’t see any directors and she didn’t see any cameras. She had no choice but to hear her captor out.
“Ezekiel’s been following me for months now,” he said. “Ezekiel and a bunch of bastards just like him. Now they’re following you. They think you’re working with me. Speaking of which…why didn’t you call me?”
“You’re the one who left me the card?”
“Obviously.”
There was a pause. She groaned.
“You’re waiting for me to ask, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Why’d you send me the card?”
“I need your help.”
“I can’t help you! I tend to have a strict policy against helping men who have kidnapped me.”
“I didn’t kidnap you.”
“You’re holding me hostage in my own car!”
He raised his eyebrow, folded his arms, and sat back.
“Go ahead. Leave if you want. But know that Ezekiel won’t buy your story of innocence. He’s going to kill you.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“What if I told you that there are things that you don’t know about the world? What if I told you that your mortal eyes have only seen the smallest sliver of reality? Just one page out of an entire book?”
“I’d take the blue pill. Or is it the red one?”
His smile faded into a snarl for a moment, which is when she noticed he had sharp teeth. His two canines were sharp, almost like fangs.
“Ha. Very funny. I knew you wouldn’t be easy to convince.” Sighing, he said, “You humans never are…”
With that, a frightening change overtook him.
One moment, he was human. Then his jaw grew longer, his fangs sharper, his eyes brighter. He had a small, professional beard that sprang across his entire face, covering his head in shaggy black fur.
And then he was back to human.
Cara looked for the air to scream. She had just seen the impossible. Part of her wondered if she was going crazy and there wasn’t actually anyone in her car. Part of her wondered if the guy was real and about kill her.
But she never got to find out because right then, faced with a wolf-man, her brain elected to give up the struggle of deciphering real life from the imaginary and caused her to pass out.
3
The first thing that Cara felt was pain. Her head felt like someone had smashed it with a sledgehammer. She felt like someone had hit her with a bus, then put it in reverse and backed over her.
She opened her eyes slowly, wincing from the headache.
To her relief, she saw something she recognized: her cute little apartment. She was sprawled out on her couch with her laptop beside her.
She leaned up to a sitting position with a groan. What happened? Had she dreamt it all? She was still wearing the clothes that she had been wearing at the store. She glanced around her apartment. Nobody else was there.
“What the hell?” she muttered, holding her head from the headache.
That’s when the guy from her car walked out of the kitchen with a banana in his hand.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I was hungry.”
“Get away from me!” she shrieked, throwing the closest thing she could get her hands on at him.
It turned out to be a pillow, which bounced off his chest pathetically. He seemed slightly amused, but otherwise unharmed.
He looked less confident when she got her hands on the metal globe on the coffee table. A friend of hers had given it to her a couple years ago for Christmas, but somehow, Cara doubted her friend had anticipated that it would be used as a weapon against a stranger in Cara’s home. She flung it as hard as she could.
She normally wasn’t a good shot. In fact, at get-togethers, she was always the one that had to get up and hand the remote to someone. She wasn’t allowed to toss anything to anyone—ever. But apparently, all the motivation she needed came in the form of fear and anger because the globe sailed right for the stranger’s head. It looked like it might bash him in the nose, but at the last second, his hand flashed up and caught it five inches in front of his face.
“Stop throwing stuff at me,” he growled. “We’re on the same side.”
“Get out of my apartment!”
“Would you please listen to me? You’re in great danger even if you don’t know it.”
She threw up her hands in exa
speration.
“Fine! Fine. Tell me, then get away from me!”
He smirked, then leaned back and put his hands behind his head, getting a little too comfortable. He started to explain.
“There’s a group of hunters chasing me, okay? I’m a werewolf. They want to kill me and take my pelt. They want to kill you because you happen to have been selected. You do not want to be selected.”
“Can we go back over the part of you being a werewolf?”
“I showed you in the car earlier. You saw it. I know you did because you passed out. That’s okay. Lots of people can’t understand it. The point is, you’re being hunted. I’m being hunted. I can help get you out of your dilemma, and you can help get me out of mine. Comprendo?”
“No, no comprendo. This is insane. I can’t…I won’t believe it.”
He scowled.
“You’re being very stubborn about this.”
“I think the word you might be looking for is ‘rational.’”
She wasn’t sure where this backbone was coming from. Normally, she’d have been melting. Apparently, there was some part of her deep down that had courage. She just hadn’t ever needed to access it before. She was still scared and confused, but she wasn’t passed out on the floor and that was something.
Suddenly, his nose twitched.
“Don’t believe me, huh?” He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a professional-looking handgun, and said, “Well, looks like you’re about to be proved wrong…”
“What are you—”
That’s when someone kicked down her door.
She’d seen doors get busted down in movies. It wasn’t like that in real life. It’s fast, scary, and unexpected. She couldn’t get a perfect view of the door from her seat on the couch, but she did see a foot and then the door swung open.
Three thugs ran in, holding crowbars laced with some sort of glowing liquid around the hilts and a strange glittery substance on the ends. They appeared to be made of a silvery material.
Her companion didn’t stand around to see if they were silver or not. He jerked up the gun and shot. The noise boomed through the small apartment.
The first thug caught a bullet in the chest and went down. He hit the shattered remains of the door before getting back up, clutching the wound. He and another one of the thugs attacked her companion, while the third came straight for Cara, wielding the crowbar.
Cara’s father had taught her some self-defense when she’d first gone to college. He armed her with pepper spray as well, which she carried at all times. She even carried around one of those Tasers for a while. Even though she had taken a few martial arts classes, she’d never been great at the sport; thankfully, she had picked up a few tricks.
The first one: you don’t want to be there when the fist lands.
When the thug swung at her, she simply stepped aside and let him go on by. He swung the crowbar at her head, getting close enough for her to hear the wind as the metal whisked past her face with a velocity that could crush her bones – but he didn’t actually hit her. He came in with too much speed, so she simply stuck her foot out as he went past. He tumbled over the couch with a crash, crushing the coffee table. At any other time, Cara would have been furious.
She heard a couple more gunshots, but she didn’t have much time to think about it because her thug was back up in a moment. He came slower this time. Cautious. He had underestimated her the first time around. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.
He didn’t say a thing, which bothered her more than it should have. She’d always thought if anyone ever attacked her, he or she would be talking smack the whole time. This guy didn’t. He was wearing a hood over his head and dark sunglasses over his eyes. She had no idea what he looked like, clad in dark colors from head to toe.
“Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “Don’t make me—”
He said something, but whatever it was, it wasn’t in English. It sounded guttural and primal and somehow ancient.
He started across the floor towards her. A siren from outside the window distracted him. Cara, meanwhile, bent over and pulled the rug. She’d never put it under the couch because she had never been able to actually lift the couch. She felt proud of her weakness right then because nothing held it from sliding wildly across the floor. His feet flew out from underneath him and he slammed into the ground.
Suddenly, her companion was there. Part of his shirt had been torn off, and he had a bruise forming over his right cheek. He was holding the smoking gun and the two that had attacked him were nowhere to be found. He fired once into the skull of the man on the rug, who vanished into a cloud of dust.
“Well done,” he said, reloading his gun. “You didn’t die. You’re the first.”
“What. Just. Happened?”
“Vampires,” he said, like it made perfect sense. He picked up one of the crowbars and pointed to the liquid vial inside part of it. “See this? Holy water. Designed for demons. And this?” He gestured to the sparkles. “Granite sparkles. Good for goblins. And this…” He pointed to the whole thing. “Made of silver. Designed for me. They’re your classic ‘Acme Rent-A-Thug.’”
She looked at him, then at the dust on her rug. Him. Dust. Him. Dust.
“So,” she said. “What now?”
“Now,” he replied, sliding his gun back into his pocket. “We get the hell out of Dodge before the cops show up. They tend not to like this kind of thing too much.”
With that, they hurried out of the apartment. They got into her Honda and started driving. A minute later, they heard sirens. She ducked down into her seat as they zoomed by, sirens blaring. Somehow, and she wasn’t sure how, her companion had started driving. It was her car. She should be the one to drive, but he’d taken charge.
“Believe me now?” he asked as they merged into traffic.
“I’m starting to.”
“Do you know you’re the first person I’ve ever seen actually pull the rug out from someone?” He chuckled in amusement. “Such a bad idea. I’m amazed it worked so well.”
“Can we just cut to the chase? You just shot up my apartment! Who were those guys? Why do they want to kill me?”
He glanced in the mirror to make sure nobody was following them.
“I didn’t hurt your little apartment. I saved your life. And secondly, they were hunters. They’re looking for both of us for very different reasons. You notice how they were all bundled up? Vampires. They were vampires.” He shifted lanes. “As for why they’re trying to kill you, it’s pretty simple. You’re single. Your parents are dead. You’re an only child. You have very few connections as far as I can tell.”
“How the hell do you know all that?”
“Haven’t you ever seen any vampire movies? They kill people. It’s what they do. They stopped killing just anyone years ago. Now they pick their targets – people that won’t have too many relatives or friends snooping around to figure out what happened. You’re the perfect target. You’re so alone that you made their list.”
Well, that one hurt. Right in the ego.
“Oh…”
“Yeah, I know. I got a copy of their list, and I’ve been going around trying to recruit one of you humans to free me. I’ve had…” He counted with his fingers. “Six die. You’re the first to live this long.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“And you expect me to follow your lead, knowing you’re basically a death sentence?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You know what’s a death sentence? Not having me. Face it, human. I’m your best chance at survival. It was only a matter of time until your little vampire buddies decided to show up for a snack.”
He looked over at her, not watching the road.
“Listen. If you run from me, I won’t stop you. But there will be more vampires after you. Do you really think you’ll be able to survive without me to save you?”
She sat back in the
seat, crossing her arms silently. He looked back at the road.
“Fine,” she said quietly. “I’ll bite. How do I get off this list?”
“It’s easy. You get married. They got plenty of single people to kill without having to worry about spouses. But unless you got someone waiting with a ring—and I doubt it, seeing as you’re still single—your best chance is to get a spell cast on you. It’ll keep you safe for years.”
“I assume you can do that?”
He snorted. “Hell no. But I need something from you first, then I’ll send you to someone who does know how to cast spells.”
Everything started to add up. Well, everything except the fact that she was talking to a werewolf about vampires coming to kill her.
“Why me? I mean, you can obviously handle yourself and I’m not really great with fighting.”
He fished out his phone and handed it to her. There was her picture with a bunch of different stats, such as height, weight, eye color, age, and education.
“And I’m officially creeped out right now,” she told him. “How did you get this information?”
“It’s from the list,” he replied. “Anyway, look at education.”
She did.
“Okay? So?”
“So? You’ve got a master’s degree in computer science. Just so happens I need myself a hacker. You ever hack someone before?”
“Well…” she cleared her throat. “Once or twice.”
“You’re such a good hacker. Why the hell are you working for a publisher?”
“Because it’s my passion, not my…” She paused. “You know what? Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
He grinned. “Easy there, tiger. I didn’t mean to offend you. Anyway, do we have ourselves a deal? You hack something for me and I’ll give you directions to a mage or sorceress.”
She hesitated.
“I don’t even know your name…”
“Reuben.”
He stuck out a powerful hand. Her hand was tiny inside his.
“So, do we have a deal, Cara?”
She thought about it. Without him, she was guaranteed certain death. She had to come to grips with that. If he hadn’t been there with her in the apartment, she already would be pushing up daisies. And it wasn’t like she could just post a Craigslist ad saying Monster Protection Needed.
