by Jeff Sampson
The voice, if it was ever there, didn’t respond.
Good.
The car stopped, and Dalton held down a button to lower his window. He turned off the radio, then leaned out and waved over some guys led by a tall kid I didn’t know. He was all broad shoulders and bodybuilder mass up top, with disproportionately skinny legs. He had a military haircut and smoked a cigarette.
“Yo, Dalton!” The guy flicked away his cigarette and slapped Dalton’s hand as he came to the window.
Dalton tilted his chin up in greeting. His left leg shook anxiously.
“What up, Scott,” he said.
“Just the usual, bro. Getting ready to race. You here to watch?”
Dalton laughed. “Hell no, man, I’m here to race!”
One of the guys behind bodybuilder Scott laughed. “In an old-man Lexus? Are you joking?”
Scott looked over Dalton’s lap and shouted back, “It’s even an automatic.” It was then that the guy noticed me. I raised an eyebrow and smirked as he checked me out. “Hello there.”
“Hello there back,” I said. “I’m Emily.”
“Well, you definitely ain’t Nikki,” Scott said. He grinned and shook his head at Dalton. “Man, if you’re trying to hit on a new girl, do you really want to embarrass yourself by racing me?”
Dalton nodded. “I’m not the one who’s gonna be embarrassed.”
Scott pulled out a pack of cigarettes, slapped it against his palm, then placed one between his lips. His lighter cast his face in flickering orange as he lit the tip. Inhaling, his eyes flicked from Dalton, to me, and to the car. Then he snorted out two streams of smoke.
“Fine,” he said. “You’ll get the first race with me. Nothing fancy, just side by side to the end of the road, around the roundabout, then back here.”
Dalton raised his hand and slapped the hood of the car. “Easy! Give me a challenge, man!”
Taking another drag, Scott shook his head. “Trust me, I’m a challenge.” He peered back at me over Dalton. “You can watch with the other girls. They’re in the parking lot over there.” He gestured behind him.
I rolled my eyes. “Are you serious? I’m not a sideline kind of girl. I’m riding shotgun.”
“You ever been in a car going over eighty miles per hour on a residential road?” he asked me.
“Can’t say that I have. But I’ve survived worse.”
Scott smirked at me. “If you say so.” He patted the side of the car and told Dalton where to go, then took off with his buddies.
Dalton inched the car forward and stopped at the arbitrary start line that Scott had indicated. We both rolled up our windows. Lining the road on either side were sports cars and muscle cars with guys and some girls on the hoods, drinking from cans and waving around cash while they laid down bets. Just as Scott had said, a group of six or so girls huddled together under a blanket in the bed of a truck, watching from a parking lot.
An engine revved as Scott’s car pulled up beside ours. It was small and sleek, straight out of the movies, with an orange paint job and white racing stripes. Scott sat focused inside, eyes straight ahead. Beside me, Dalton bounced in his seat, his shoulders going up and down and back and forth along to some manic beat only he could hear.
I gripped the sides of my seat, unable to contain my grin. Ahead of us, the road was dark and glistened wet under the streetlights. There was no one around except for the group of us kids and our cars. The road, the night, was ours to have fun with, danger be damned.
I’d let Dalton have this race. But I was definitely going to take the wheel for the rematch.
Dalton revved the engine, his right hand on the driveshaft. “Tell me about when you killed him,” he said, not looking at me, just staring straight ahead and waiting for the signal to go.
An odd time for questions. “Uh, what? Why?”
“Just tell me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “He tried to kill me. I want to know.”
I shrugged. Whatever. I’m not going to lie—I’d enjoyed beating Dr. Elliott’s face in, after all he’d done to me. To my pack, werewolf me added distantly. Dalton deserved to know all the gritty details.
“Fine,” I said, remembering the rush of rage that had come over me when I first saw the killer. “It was just me and Dr. Elliott at first. He tried to shoot me, but I slapped the gun away. He tried to stab me, too, but I pounced on the guy and knocked him to the ground.”
“Yeah,” Dalton said, grinning dangerously. “I could have done that if I hadn’t been drunk and if Nikki hadn’t been screaming at me. Just lunge at the guy and tackle him.”
I opened my mouth to continue, but a guy leaned into the street and waved a fluorescent orange flag.
And Dalton’s hand flew, putting the car into drive. His foot slammed down and we burst forward, the momentum slamming me back into my seat.
It was like being in a spaceship bursting into warp speed, a roller coaster rounding the top of the track. It was awesome.
I whooped almost involuntarily, then laughed at myself. Out my window was Scott, still focused, neck and neck with us. The buildings and streetlamps beside us turned into unrecognizable streaks, and the engine whirred louder and louder. Scott began to pull ahead.
“Keep going!” Dalton shouted, his expression still manic. “Tell me more!”
“I punched him,” I said, one hand up to grab the handhold above the door now, my shoulders taut, my back straight as I watched us burst down the slick street. “I smacked him again and again until he talked.”
“Punched him till his face was all bloody and bruised, hell yeah!” Dalton yanked the wheel to the right, swerving across the street, narrowly missing Scott’s bumper as the other boy pulled in front of us. “Dammit!” He turned to me, scowling, and shouted, “What next?”
I took in a shaky, exhilarated breath. “Spencer was there, but he was a wolf. And Elliott went after him while I changed.” Ahead, the roundabout was growing closer, bigger. We’d be there in seconds. “We clawed his face. I bit his arm. He tried to get away, but we leaped at him.”
Scott’s car swerved right at the last second, entering the roundabout. It looked almost as if his car was riding only its two right wheels, and the back end threatened to fishtail, but he expertly swerved around the circle.
Dalton yanked the wheel right, spinning us in a dizzying turn. The world swirled lazily around us, almost in slow motion. When we screeched to a stop, we blocked the exit from the roundabout, facing back the way we’d come. The harsh scent of melted rubber burned my nose.
“You cut him off,” Dalton finished for me. “You ripped that asshole’s throat out!” He laughed wildly as we heard Scott’s car scream to a stop. I looked out the window to see Scott frantically yanking his wheel to avoid ramming right into us. His car spun in a full circle and he ended up half on the sidewalk and half on the road.
Scott pulled his door open and leaped out, shouting obscenities. Dalton ignored him and pressed down on the gas, rushing us back down the road. I pressed the button to roll down my window and leaned out, waving back at the diminishing figure that was a fuming Scott.
I leaned back in, grinning. Dalton’s expression matched my own, though his gaze was distant as he drove.
“That must have been incredible,” Dalton said as we neared the cluster of cars at the other end of the road. “Taking out a guy like that. I wish I’d been there to just hit that guy. Just over and over again.”
I sighed, exasperated. “Well, Dalton, I killed him for you, so no need to keep going on about it. You should grovel to Scott for forgiveness and let me race next.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “I’d yank that bastard’s arms behind him and put him in a chokehold and squeeze until his face turned red and was about to explode.”
He drove past the angry crowd of racers, turned down a side street, kept going.
I looked back behind us. “Whoa, what’s the deal? That was just the first round.”
“I’
d kick him in the nuts and in the ribs and stomp on his neck.” Dalton was muttering now.
My stomach roiled, nauseous, as though the vehicular acrobatics were finally catching up to me. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling quite so nonchalant. Everything looked gray. Suppressing a gag, I turned back to look at the road in front of us.
A dozen shadowmen were in the middle of the street, standing still in a staggered, random formation. They tilted their heads to the side, watching us barrel toward them.
Though I was still Nighttime, Daytime was suddenly there too, and the wolf as well. How, I didn’t know; all I knew was that the panic from the night before—the pounding heart, the trembling limbs—was back. My head throbbed with a headachy fear as I watched those things standing there, waiting for us to pass by so they could grab us, poke at us, do—
“No!” I screamed. Not thinking, I grabbed the wheel from Dalton and yanked it to the right. He blinked back to attention and slammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a stop parallel to the staggered group of man-shaped shadows.
I turned away from them, hands fumbling over the passenger door as I struggled to find the lock, find the handle, the button to lower the window—some way to escape. But as I looked through my window, I saw more of them were on my side of the car too. They surrounded us, standing perfectly still, watching. I froze.
“What the hell!” Dalton roared. He grabbed me by my arm and yanked me toward him.
All semblance of nighttime fearlessness was sapped from me. I trembled as I looked up at Dalton, his features all black and white in the scant light. Almost as if I had Wolftime vision.
“Don’t you see them?” I asked.
“See what?”
“The shadowmen!” I shouted. I gestured beyond his window, to where I’d first seen them.
They were gone.
Dalton scowled. “I don’t see anything.”
I was shaking. This wasn’t right. Dalton was talking crazy about beating up a dead guy, and there were shadowmen here, too. I shouldn’t have gone out. I was Nighttime, I was Daytime, I was the wolf—somehow. But we all agreed on this right then.
“Take me home,” I whispered. “Please, take me home.”
“I’m not ready yet,” Dalton said.
I placed a hand on his arm, gentle. Looked into his eyes. Saw him inhale my scent, sensed him calming down.
“Please,” I said.
He nodded, then put his foot on the gas and continued down the street.
8
YOU RECOVER FROM THE BIG NIGHT?
As soon as Dalton dropped me off, I ran to the front door, then remembered—I was supposed to be asleep.
I had no idea what was happening to me. My arms and my legs tensed with raw strength, but my brain wasn’t Nighttime, it was me, normal Emily. Mostly. Partially. And my vision was that of the wolf, constantly darting, scanning the grass, the trees, the skies.
My brain told me to move to the window, quietly, while my body wanted to stomp over confidently, and my eyes kept wanting to look anywhere but where I wanted to go, so focused on making sure no one and nothing was about.
It was like all three parts of me had been pulverized in a blender, poured into a casserole dish, and popped into the oven until underbaked.
Clenching my teeth, I struggled to pull myself together. I couldn’t stand outside all night, and I couldn’t try and get past my dad and stepmom, not after they had already grounded me for the first time in my life when I disappeared all night after Mikey Harris’s party the week before.
Concentrating hard, I managed to get myself beneath my still-open bedroom window. No one was watching, wolf me was quite certain of that, so I leaped, flying up with the ease of a cat hopping on top of a counter. I slammed against the siding, my hands clinging to the sill, the metal edges biting into my palms and making me hiss in pain. My sneakers slipped against the damp siding as I flexed my arms and pulled myself into my room, landing silently on all fours as I brushed past my curtains.
How’s that for upper-body strength? I grinned despite myself. I didn’t exactly have Dalton biceps, but I could hold my own.
This was the first time daytime me was truly all there when I was this strong. It was disconcerting and thrilling, but it was hard to focus on anything clearly, not then, not in this weird everything-and-nothing state. I didn’t know why, exactly, I was in this muddled form. My best guess was that my slow-to-rev transformations were going faster, and maybe this meant that I was about to become a wolf. And I couldn’t become a wolf, couldn’t be that out of control, couldn’t risk being caught.
I peeked out my bedroom door. It was after ten and the hall was dark. My stepmom and Dawn were probably sleeping. I saw the blue glow of a computer screen lighting up the stairs at the end of the hall—my dad, downstairs in the foyer/computer room, playing his game.
Quickly, I snuck into the bathroom and downed a couple of sleeping pills. Then it was back to my room, under the covers, Ein clutched in my arms. I hadn’t eaten for hours, and the pills quickly dissolved in my stomach.
And mercifully, I fell asleep.
The next morning was a blur.
I remember opening my eyes just before my alarm, my lashes crusted together, my body sore, my head bursting with a tense, painful headache. I blinked and stared blearily at the ceiling of my room, taking in shallow, shaky breaths, trying to get my bearings.
Letting myself change hadn’t exactly solved all my problems. If anything, I felt worse than I had in days.
I lay there until my alarm blared its irritating screech, then rushed to get ready. As far as I could tell, aside from feeling like I had a hangover, I was back to full daytime me. The day went as normal—a quick breakfast to fill the gnawing in my gut, a ride to school from Spencer along with his mood-boosting pheromones, homeroom with Megan barely talking to me—though not for a lack of trying. I felt horrible about ditching her the way I had, but her only response to my apologies was a grunt before she darted out of the room to her first period.
Great.
After that, classes and lunch were a haze of talking people and squeaking chairs and blazing bright fluorescent lights everywhere I went. After my attempt to smooth things over with Megan, I was sucked right back into my head.
I’d thought I’d be used to all of this by now. I had adapted pretty quickly to the whole Nighttime and werewolf thing when Dr. Elliott was busy trying to kill people, and by the time he was dead, I’d thought I’d sort of managed to find an understanding of how all this worked. I’d had my origin story, and now it was time to rise up and face the various hilariously inept and over-the-top supervillains that were to become my rogues’ gallery, taking them out with ease.
But the rules kept changing on me. The way I transformed was no longer strictly black and white. Before, there’d been an easy line between me and Nighttime Emily and Werewolf Emily. I hit some threshold, and bam, new personality.
What, then, was this new development? Some weird hybrid self? Was that the endgame, all three of us in one body, with Nighttime losing her edge because I was there to get all fearful, and just in general always seeing the world in literal shades of gray like I do when I’m a wolf? I like seeing in color. Color is awesome. So if I had to give up color to become all-powerful, that was gonna be a deal breaker.
Letting myself turn into Nighttime Emily had sent me into a tailspin. If I couldn’t escape worry at night, by sleeping or transforming, when could I? If I couldn’t anticipate when I’d get all simpering at the sight of a bunch of scary shadowy beings, how could I get anything accomplished?
I probably don’t need to say, but I wasn’t exactly super concentrated on school that day. I drifted through my classes, pretending to take notes, avoiding Spencer and Dalton and Megan, waging an endless battle in my head between racing thoughts and trying to tell my brain to just. Shut. Up. Let me exist for a few waking hours without being consumed by the whole werewolf thing. Please.
I gave up on that at the end of the
day. Spencer had caught me between my last two periods and told me he and Dalton wanted to hunker down in the library after school and actually take the time to do some research. Which, yes, we needed to do. It was my plan, after all. I had to focus.
Gotta tell you, having superpowers turns out to be a lot of work.
Spencer leaped up and waved excitedly as I entered the library. I blushed, offered him a hand in return, and rushed through the room to the table where he had a bunch of books laid out. He held a chair out for me, gentleman-like, and I took it.
I had planned to resist, but after the awful, brain-busy day I’d had, I really, really wanted to just calm down. I scooted my chair in close to Spencer, enough so that irresistible musk washed over me. Immediately my brain slowed down, going from a race to a crawl. I closed my eyes and let it soak into me, let it flood out the worries and fears. I knew this feeling was only temporary, and that I needed to stop relying on it to handle my business. But, for just that afternoon, it would help.
“Mmm,” I moaned.
“Uh, you falling asleep?” Spencer asked.
I shot straight up, my eyes snapped open. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just I’ve been running around all day, and it’s nice to sit in a quiet place.”
He grinned at me. “I’m glad you enjoy my company.”
If he only knew.
“Hey.”
Dalton appeared then, and I felt myself stiffen. He sat down in the chair next to me, offered me a smile, and nodded at Spencer. And it was then that I remembered how he’d acted the night before. I’d been so consumed with worries about yet more bodily changes, about those damn shadowmen, that I’d let it slide.
But he’d asked me what it was like to kill a man. He’d kept going on in graphic detail about what he would have done. As though he’d have woken up the next morning, seen the dead body, and enjoyed it.
I looked at his face. It was chiseled but still had a hint of boyishness. There was a light brush of freckles on his cheeks, a lighthearted glint to his eyes. He was the same Dalton I’d always seen around school. The friendly jock everyone loved. It had to have just been his nighttime personality. I mean, I hadn’t exactly been remorseful when I was Nighttime, either.
