by Tisha Wilson
Taming the Night
Book One of Creatures of the Night
By: Tisha Wilson
Copy-Written 2011 by Tisha Wilson
Chapter One
Alicia took a drag from her cigarette as she looked up at the night’s moon. It was a crescent tonight. Whoever said the moon had to be full for the night to be wicked had perpetrated a terrible lie. The night could be as dark as the inside of a raven’s wing and still evil would haunt the night. Especially tonight. She had felt the evil gathering for some time. It was strong in this little back woods town in North Carolina and she had been drawn like a moth to a flame.
Did that make her evil as well? She had asked herself that question a million times the past few years. She always came up with the same answer. A small smile curved her lips as she allowed the ensuing battle to flood her veins with adrenaline. She certainly was not innocent.
She threw the butt of her cigarette to the ground and allowed her boot to crush it before she flung her leg over the seat of her custom made Harley. It was lower to the ground to accommodate her smaller frame but it was still a piece of machinery to behold. By all rights it should have been too large a bike for her slender frame to uphold.
She kicked the beast to life and let it purr between her legs for a few minutes. Riding the monster was as close to sex as she could get with her clothes on. She took a moment to unzip her leather duster. Her pants, bustier, and duster were made of black leather because leather held up better during battle and because she looked smokin’ hot in it.
As she sped through the night she allowed her hair to blow out behind her like a midnight black flag in the wind. The air was stifling hot and even though she was moving at well over eighty miles an hour it felt like the air was barely moving. For just a moment she wished she could be wearing a light dress to catch more of the breeze, but she was no longer the type of woman to wear a dress. At one time in her life she had been, but the night had stolen that life away from her.
Before she could think anymore on her old life she felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck pick up. It started as a slow tingling sensation but soon her entire body was alive with adrenaline. She took a deep breath to savor this feeling. The fight was coming and she could almost taste it.
There were very few times when she felt alive anymore. There were very few times when she could truly be herself. She had to present a front to the world so they wouldn’t try to lock her up. She had to endure phony smiles and mediocre conversation. But she did not have to hold back during the fight. During the fight she could release the wild side that stayed on a short leash inside of her and she relished it.
Just as that thought passed through her mind the wind ceased to roar as it whipped around her. The animals that occupied the woodlands ceased in their chirping. The night fell as silent as a tomb. From her peripheral a shadow moved in the trees to the left of the road. There were several more shadows to follow the first and then on the right.
The smile on her face became one of anticipation and she nearly licked her lips. It was time. She revved the motorcycle to a higher speed, ready to be in the midst of the fight. Just as she neared her destination she saw the very last thing that she needed to see. Her heart slammed against her rib cage and she cursed out loud. Her smile faded as she realized that it was too late to prevent the innocent from being involved in this fight.
*
Officer Jerry Cayman sat in his cruiser sweltering to death. What he wouldn’t give for a vehicle that he could leave running. He missed the cruisers in the city. He could leave police cruisers in the city running with the air conditioning going, the radio blazing, and his laptop booted up without even a blip on the batteries radar. That was when he was in Durham. But he wasn’t in the big city anymore. He was in Taming, North Carolina.
What he wouldn’t give for something icy and cold to drink. Moving through this humidity was almost like living in slow motion. He looked over at the mounted police issued lap top. At least it was newer than the cruiser, which wasn’t saying much. Moses had probably used this car to herd goats. He had the momentary desire to turn on the lap top to distract him from the motionless boredom of the night, but, he didn’t want to risk draining the battery in this old hunk of junk.
He picked up the mike and keyed up. “This is 536 performing a mike check.”
“You just did a mike check half an hour ago, 536. Your mike is working just fine. Stay off the air unless it’s official business boss.”
Jerry slammed the mike back into its holster. He would bring in a recording of crickets chirping to play over the mike, but it wasn’t necessary. All he had to do was open the mike and hold it out to the woods. The crickets chirped so loud out here sometimes that it was nearly deafening. The crickets, frogs, and night birds sometimes sang in a soft and peaceful cacophony. On nights like this, however, when there was not even a car in sight, their song was loud and incongruous.
It was as if the insects and animals were competing with each other to see who could make the loudest noise. He would roll up his window but that would be tantamount to suicide in this heat. He didn’t feel like being reamed out again by his sergeant for wasting police gas to, as Sergeant Gerald put it, “Fan his hide like some fancy lady.”
“Just wanted to let them know that I was still breathing,” he mumbled to himself irritably. He dug his MP3 player out of his gym bag.
He let the heavy metal drown out the night sounds as he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He imagined that if he went to sleep for the rest of the night no one would be the wiser. Taming was populated by maybe two thousand people who decided, seemingly in unison, that nine thirty was the hour to turn out the lights and go to sleep.
In fact, save for the full moon crazies and hunting season enthusiasts, there was barely a car to drive on these old roads past ten o’clock. There were also a few town drunks, but even they mostly slept in the rooms available above the bar when they’d had one too many. Jerry scoffed. Even if they had tried to drive home, Sergeant Gerald would probably just give them an escort and make sure they were tucked in for the night. Everyone here knew everyone else and it was the rare occasion that someone was actually arrested.
In fact, the only time Jerry had arrested anyone in the year since coming here was when there was abuse of a woman or child involved. That was something that Chief Hernandez had little tolerance for. The Chief preferred to have a low crime rate and he usually helped the crime rate stay low by seeking other means besides jail and court to help keep townspeople out of jail. It was almost a Wild West mentality. The law was what the Chief said it was, but no one seemed to mind. At least not anyone that was willing to go up against the Chief.
Jerry felt a stab of hunger in his gut as he sat up and looked at his watch. It was two am. He must of dozed for a moment. He decided to get up and move around a bit. Then he would get back in his car and head over to the diner that was attached to the gas station. It was the one oddity in the sleepy town. Paul Santo had decided that if he kept his gas and dinner open all night then he could make double the money from truckers who ventured off the highway. His pride and joy was the fact that he’d been able to put a sign up on the highway with lights giving directions to his restaurant and gas station.
Jerry doubted that they made double the money. Most of the late night money made came from those in town who were still awake at this hour. Not many truckers stopped at this little middle of nowhere town, not when there were so many Exons and BP’s near the highway. Still, there was no other place to go at this time of night if you needed some emergency supplies. The prices were outrageous, but it was a ca
se of supply and demand.
He heaved a sigh of frustration as he unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car. He took off his earphones and tossed them to the seat before he slammed the door shut. He leaned back against the car and stretched all of his muscles in one languid movement. He felt the weight of his utility belt fall comfortably around his hips and again he had to sigh. When he had worked in the city the weight had been a constant reminder of the authority that was entrusted in him. Here, it was a constant reminder of how useless a cop could be in a town like this.
He had been a sergeant on his way to being a lieutenant in Durham. He’d had a job he couldn’t wait to go to and a wife to die for. Well at least he had thought so in the beginning. Cherish had seemed so beautiful and vital when he’d met her and he’d fallen hard. It was too bad he hadn’t seen her true ugliness until it was too late. She had wrapped her hooks in him and when he’d tried to pull away she’d shredded his good and happy life.
Just thinking of her made him want to find a deep hole and a good bottle. Maybe he could hide in said hole until Cherish decided to stop being angry with him. Maybe when he immerged from that hole she would have forgotten her anger towards him. Maybe the good Senator, her father, would not keep stopping his applications from being accepted at any major city on the East Coast. Maybe hell would freeze over as well and the devil could go ice skating.
He glanced at his empty ring finger. He’d gotten his divorce. It had taken a long and bloody battle but he’d gotten it. Now he was wondering if it might have just been better to stay married the way she had wanted. He had nothing left. He was in career hell. This was the type of place where cops came to retire and fade away into obscurity.
He was about to turn to get back into his cruiser when suddenly the night went silent. He stopped with his hand on the door handle and looked back towards the woods. The little hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he turned away from the car. The moon was a silver sliver in the sky but it was a clear night. Still he reached for the heavy flashlight that dangled from his utility belt. He clicked it on and scanned the area surrounding his car.
He took a few steps towards the woods as he listened for any noise. His hand crept instinctively towards his gun. He ordered his heart to stop pounding as he watched the trees. There was something. It was faint at first but it was getting louder. It sounded like… like branches being snapped. Something was running through the woods and whatever it was, it was coming fast.
He wanted to turn and make his way back to the car but if it was some type of bear or other large wild animal, he knew he would probably be mauled before he could ever get there. He felt like a deer frozen in the headlights as he waited for whatever it was to burst from the trees at any second. He realized in a moment of insane clarity that if this had been a scary movie he was watching, he would have been yelling at the screen, telling that stupid cop to get his ass moving. Even as he told himself this, his feet stayed stubbornly rooted where they were.
Then the noise stopped just short of the clearing where his cruiser lay in wait. He wasn’t breathing now and he didn’t recall drawing his weapon but the cold steel was in his palm none the less. There was a feeling of dread in him. Something bad was about to happen.
Just then, a motorcycle shot by like a bolt of lightening. It whipped by so fast that he didn’t see the color or the rider. All he heard was the roar of the engine that was distinct to a motorcycle alone. Snapping out of the stupor he’d been in, he uprooted his feet and ran for his cruiser. He’d been sitting out here alone in these woods too long. He snapped the gun in his holster, slammed the flashlight home, and slide into the cruiser, snapping the belt in place all in less than thirty seconds. He cranked the car to life and hopped on the mike.
“536 to control. I have a 318 in progress. A motorcycle of unknown color and unknown tags heading west on Highway seven doing about a hundred. Check me in pursuit.”
“Christ in a cartoon! I copy that 536. 512, did you read that?”
Jerry rolled his eyes. The sergeant in charge had to approve a chase. “I heard ‘im. 536. Don’t you go on any high speed chases. Those roads are dangerous. Just let em go. They’re almost to Fairfax by now. That’s not our jurisdiction.”
“I copy sir but we can pursue up to three miles in another jurisdiction. This guy is trying to break sound barriers on that bike.”
“You have your orders. Just follow him out of town, 536. Lou. Raise Fairfax and make sure they are waiting.”
Jerry cursed the lazy old man who was probably sitting out in the woods somewhere right now with a jelly donut to further distend his round gut. Gerald should have retired long ago, and probably would have if he wasn’t so loyal to the Chief.
“I copy, sergeant,” the dispatcher replied in a voice rough from too many years of cigar’s and pipes. There was a slight tint of disappointment in Lou’s voice over the loss of a little bit of excitement. Lou put Jerry in mind of one of those people that sat around listening to their CB radios all day, waiting to see if someone would find their channel and start up a conversation.
“Did you hear what I said?” the sergeant growled over the mike and Jerry knew he wasn’t talking to Lou.
“I copy. I will follow at a distance and make sure the motorcycle leaves town. That’s all,” he responded.
He clicked on his blue lights and siren and hit the gas. The old car might not have looked like much, but in the spirit of the crown vic, when he hit the gas, the engine purred and pulled the car to such an alarming speed that he was afraid that the engine would detach and go running ahead without him. He reveled in the speed of the chase as the rear lamps of the motorcycle finally came back into view.
He cursed to see how close the bike was getting to the mile marker that marked the end of Taming and the beginning of Fairfax. He at least wanted to give the motorcycle a ticket, but at the speed it was going, he would be lucky to even catch up to it within the three mile limit much less get him to stop. Just when the bike would have crossed over it veered off to the right. Rocks and dirt kicked up behind it as it hit the little dirt road there.
Jerry picked up his mike as he slammed onto the little dirt road with a hard right. The car nearly fishtailed. Something dug into his back side as the car jostled and he remembered his music player belatedly. As he fought to regain control of the car he dug around beneath him until he caught the player and tossed it aside with a muttered curse.
He finally righted the car and took off after the bike again before he keyed up. “536, control.”
“Go ahead, 536.”
“We have changed direction. The bike veered off down a dirt road to the right of mile marker 118. I’m in pursuit.”
“Are those sirens I hear!!!”
Jerry rolled his eyes again. “I hit them when the bike almost fishtailed in the gravel trying to take this dirt road,” he replied to his sergeant.
“Damn it, Jerry. I told you no chase. That back road probably leads to that old boy’s house. Let him get home and sleep it off. We’ll go and talk to him in the mornin’.”
The Crown Vic went airborne for a moment as he hit a dirt clod and it took him a moment to reply.
“I’m going to make sure he gets home and stays there. It won’t take me long and I’ll check in with you when I’m through.” The motorcyclist was skilled. He dodged clumps of grass and rocks like they were nothing while his car took a bit of a beating. He wasn’t giving up though. He stayed on the cycle the best he could. It had been a long time since his blood had pumped like this.
“Boy! You are gonna learn the hard way to let those old codgers go to their houses and sleep it off. You are going to make me arrest someone tonight. You’re always trying to make me arrest someone.”
This was no old codger by the looks of him. His leather duster flew out behind him menacingly and the hair that flew out behind him like a flag suggested he might be a real biker. Those that patronized the biker bar on the edge of town rarely came to this par
t of the woods. There was nothing out here but old hunting and fishing shacks. What was he doing out here?
“That is sort of our job,” he snapped before he could sensor his tongue. The Chief was bound to hear about this before morning. He could scarcely care, he was so caught up in the moment.
“Well I’m not going to be the one to deliver you to your uncle in a body bag, not on my shift. You do what I tell you or you switch to days so that he can watch over you!”
That hit home. The Police Chief in Taming was also his uncle and the only reason he still had a job in law enforcement. The last thing he wanted to do was upset him. He clicked off his siren but let his blue lights blare on as he hit the mike button again.
“Control. I’m no longer in pursuit. I’m in route to the dinner,” he said as docilely as he could manage. Gerald wasn’t fooled.
“If I don’t see you there within the half hour I’m calling the Chief,” he said without preamble.
“I copy,” he snarled as he pushed the gas a little harder.
So be it. He was tired of this little town living. He was a cop and a damn good one and he would follow this punk into the ground if he had to. The motorcycle was just ahead of him now. He was just about to back off a bit when the motorcycle hit its brakes. Jerry had to maneuver not to hit him. He hit the brakes so hard that he whizzed by the bike and did a near one eighty.
Once he got his bearings again he slammed the car in park, unfastened his seat belt, and stood in the apex of the car door. He drew his weapon and took aim. As the dust began to settle his jaw nearly hit the floor.
This was no biker. This was a woman, and not just any woman. She wore tight leather pants, a slip of leather that might have been called a shirt, over which she had a black leather duster. She was medium height and of a petite frame. Her bone straight black hair hung past her butt. The bone structure in her face hinted at an Indian heritage, but her skin was a creamy mocha. The most shocking thing about her was her violet nearly purple, eyes.
