Forever Night: A Hidden Novella

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “I’m guessing you’re not a vegetarian,” he said.

  “No. I’m not.”

  “The schawarma is good here. I’m getting that. Ghallaba is good, too.”

  She nodded. They both ordered the schawarma, and then sat in more awkward silence. Shanti crossed her legs under the small table and ended up kicking his knee. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “It’s fine.”

  She wiggled her foot. Nervous habit. And he was definitely making her nervous, with his calm, ridiculously handsome face and those golden eyes, which mostly hadn’t left her since they’d sat down.

  “What’s your name?” she finally asked.

  “My name is Zero Antar.”

  “Zero? Is that your real name?”

  He nodded. “It is.”

  “Oh. Does it mean something different than, um, zero?” She could have smacked herself for sounding like an idiot.

  He looked down at the table, shook his head a little. “No. It means exactly what you think it does.”

  “Is there a nice way of looking at it that I’m missing?”

  He just looked at her.

  “You know what? Never mind.”

  “It’s okay. No. It means what you think it means. In Arabic, it means nothingness. Nothing. Emptiness. And my mother told me that the day I was born, she looked at me and felt nothing. And so she named me Zero.”

  Shanti stared at him. His calm demeanor didn’t let on a thing, but how anyone could say something like that and not be hurting at least a little… that was beyond her.

  “Is there something else you want me to call you?”

  He did smile then, just a tiny lift at the corner of his mouth. “My name is Zero. I want you to call me that.”

  She wanted to crawl into a deep hole and never, ever see the gorgeous Zero Antar again.

  “It’s okay,” he said after a moment. “Why I have this name isn’t the prettiest story. But it’s mine, and I’ve made it my own. Don’t worry about it.”

  She nodded. “That was awkward.”

  “Really pretty much everything about this is awkward,” he said, and she laughed. Their food arrived, and Shanti was relieved for the opportunity to not have to make conversation. They ate in silence, and every time she snuck a glance in his direction, he was watching her.

  “I make you nervous,” he said after about the tenth time.

  She let out a huff of a laugh and ended up choking on the bite of schawarma she’d just swallowed. She started coughing, and then reached for her tea and knocked it over. By then, she was done coughing and both she and Zero were sopping up the mess with their napkins.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Wasn’t my tea,” he said, and she laughed a little.

  They both settled back after the mess was cleaned up and she looked up to see him looking down at his plate.

  “So. Yes. You make me nervous,” she said, and he nodded, that tiny smile quirking the corner of his mouth again.

  “I watched you destroy a monster. You saved my life. And I make you nervous?” he asked her, looking up, his eyes fastening on hers.

  “Well. I’m used to destroying monsters. Not having dinner with gorgeous strangers. Wait, what?”

  He looked away, and she got the feeling he was trying not to laugh.

  The waitress came, and Zero paid their bill. They finished their tea and stood up. He helped her into her coat, and she was glad again that she couldn’t physically blush. He smelled exactly the way a man should: clean, masculine. A hint of spice. And she remembered the taste of him on her tongue.

  Damn.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He nodded, and they headed toward the door. They walked out and onto the street. The crowds were a little thinner now, some of the shops having closed for the night. “So what do you do besides kill monsters?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “That’s mostly what I do. Destroy monsters. Save people who need it.”

  “So you’re like a superhero,” he asked. She glanced over at him, expecting some kind of mockery on his face. It wasn’t there.

  “Not really. There are things I can do, so I do them.”

  “Do you know the Angel?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. She’s the one who trained me. Well, her and her mate. Uh, boyfriend, I guess.”

  “So she’s not human either?”

  She stopped walking. “I need to know, Zero. Why are you asking about this?”

  He stopped too, looked down at her. “Because I was minding my own business one night and got attacked by the kind of thing you only see in horror movies. And then something just as scary came and saved me. And I realized that I don’t know nearly as much about the world as I thought I did. I’m curious. And I want to understand how there can be someone like the thing that attacked me out there, and someone like you, who is the same thing, and so much not.”

  “There are good vampires and bad vampires. Just as there are good people and bad people,” she said softly. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “And you don’t need to. I’m not saying a word about this to anyone else. But you saved me from death that night and now nothing is the same.”

  She watched him. They were at the mouth of an alley, and she heard something. She held her hand up, signaling for him to be silent. She watched as his whole posture changed, as he went from relaxed to a very obviously defensive posture and looked into the alley.

  “I need to go check this out,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  “I’m coming too.”

  “You can’t fight what’s back there.”

  “Are we going to talk or check it out?” he asked her, and she rolled her eyes.

  She walked into the alley, sticking close to the brick walls of the buildings. She heard a snarl. She turned to Zero. “That’s a werewolf.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. You need to stay back. They’re stupidly strong and out of control. I need to knock it out so someone can come collect him.”

  “You’re not going to kill it?”

  She shook her head. “I know this one. He’s generally decent. The packs are usually better about keeping tabs on one another during the full moon. Stay here.”

  And then she was off, leaving Zero crouching near the building. The werewolf had a pair of young women cornered, and they were both too terrified to even scream. This was going to be a mess. There was no way to make them unsee what they’d seen, and what they were about to see. That had always been Molly’s thing. Making them forget.

  “Hey!” she shouted, and as she hoped, the werewolf spun, turning on her. “Run. Go!” she said to the two women, who stood there staring in shock. “Fine. Don’t run,” she muttered under her breath. She didn’t have much time to think about the women, because the werewolf was charging her. She dodged, readying herself for its next charge. Weres were a pain to deal with. The full moon sets them off, as everyone knows. And they’re generally huge, bad-tempered, and beyond reason. Even though she knew this one in his human form, and he wasn’t a bad guy, there was no hope of him behaving himself in his current state. And his current state was ugly as hell: eight feet tall, skinny, but fast. Long claws and yellowed, sharp teeth that she could see clearly when he opened his jaw to roar at her.

  “Come on. You know you want to,” she said to him, wiggling her fingers, taunting him so he’d come at her again. And he did, charging her with supernatural speed. She dropped, kicked out, catching him hard in the hip, which was not exactly where she was hoping to catch him. He roared in pain and anger and spun toward her as he regained his balance. She popped up, readied herself for another charge. He came at her and she kicked out again, using one of the strong, sharp kicks Brennan had taught her. She caught him right in the stomach, and he bent double. She used that, bringing her elbow down hard on the back of his head, dropping him to the ground. She cracked his head against the pavement once, which knocked him out. She checked for a pulse. Still strong. Good
. She always worried she’d forget to hold back and hurt someone more than she meant to. Vampire strength took some getting used to, even after a few years.

  She stood up and glanced around. The women were gone, which was good in a way but which also made it absolutely necessary for them to move quickly. She picked the werewolf up and slung him over her shoulder. Zero was standing a few feet away, watching her.

  “Where are we taking him?”

  “Somewhere that is not here. If those women call the police, there’s no way I can explain this.”

  “My studio is down that alley,” he said. “We can go in there, I guess.”

  Shanti nodded, and they started walking that way.

  “I can carry him,” he said.

  “I got him.”

  “You just kicked his ass. I can at least carry him.”

  “Fine.” She passed the werewolf to Zero, watched as he grimaced a little, yet still managed to put him over his shoulder the same way Shanti had.

  “Dude is heavy,” he said as they started walking again.

  “Sure you don’t want me to take him?” Shanti asked.

  “I didn’t say he was too heavy. Just heavy,” Zero said, and she hid a smirk at the irritation in his voice. They got to the alley where she’d first rescued Zero, and he dug a keyring out of his pocket, unlocked the steel door at the back of the martial arts studio. He hit the button on the alarm, and then turned on the lights. They were in what looked like an office. Probably where the paperwork and crap like that was done. Zero bent and settled the unconscious werewolf on the wood floor. Shanti dug her phone out and dialed Chief Jones’ number, filled him in on what was going on.

  “Jamie and I will be there in about ten minutes,” the chief said after Shanti gave him their location.

  “Great. Thanks.” She hung up and glanced around. “Ten minutes,” she said to Zero.

  “Who was that?”

  “Someone who can take him off our hands and hold him safely until he snaps out of it.”

  She walked around the small office, glanced out at the front of the studio, which was all white walls and gleaming wood floors. Punching bags in each corner, huge glass windows, covered with vertical blinds, at the front.

  “So this is yours?” she asked Zero.

  “Mine and one of my friends. We went in together after we got out of the Marines.”

  “You were a Marine?”

  He nodded.

  Shanti noticed that irritated look again. “Anyway. We got out and this was something we decided to do.”

  “Do you like it?” Shanti asked.

  “Yeah. I do. I don’t think there’s much else I’d be good for at this point.”

  She wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but decided she’d already done too much poking about his name as it was. They stood around, and she listened, and finally she heard a car in the alley and went to the back door. Chief Jones and his daughter, Jamie, were getting out of their SUV. Jamie greeted Shanti with a hug, and the chief shook her hand. Both of them looked at Zero, immediately recognizing him as a Normal.

  “This is my friend. He was with me when we came across the were. This is his studio.”

  “Thanks for the help,” Chief Jones said. Zero was watching him, and it was clear that he placed the face. The Detroit Chief of Police was a regular on the news and in the papers. Not a hard man to miss if you paid attention. And she could already tell that Zero was someone who paid attention.

  The chief noticed it, too.

  He leaned in a little. “You never saw me, son.”

  “Never saw who, sir?” Zero said, meeting the chief’s eyes.

  “Smart man. Thanks for the help.” With that, he slung the were over his shoulder as he and Jamie left, calling their goodbyes to Shanti. She turned to Zero after they left, and he gestured toward the door. She nodded, and they both walked out. He locked up behind them, and they started walking down the street again.

  “Where are you parked?” he asked her.

  “I’m not. I ran here. Well. I mean. I usually just… vampires are really fast,” she said, feeling completely lame again.

  He just nodded.

  “So. Did you like Middle Eastern?” he asked her, stopping and looking down at her.

  She smiled. “I did. Thanks.”

  They stood in awkward silence for a few minutes. “Well. I should go. That was all pretty much a disaster,” she said apologetically.

  That tiny smile quirked the corner of his mouth again, and she felt her heart give one strong thump in response. “It was.” He met her eyes. “Want to do it again some time?”

  “Really?” she asked, smiling.

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “Are you just asking me so I don’t hunt you down and suck your blood?”

  He looked away, and he was still smiling. “Would you hunt me down?”

  “Only if you wanted me to.”

  “I’ll have to remember that. Phone number,” he said, taking his phone out. She recited the number, and he entered it. Once he had it, he leaned in, just a little. “I will be calling you, Shanti,” he said softly, that smooth voice doing all sorts of crazy things to her stomach. Then he leaned down and kissed her, lightly, barely a flutter against her cheek, right near her ear. Then he stood up straight and stepped back, eyes still on her.

  “Okay. Um. Great.” She started backing away, in the direction she’d come when she’d first entered the neighborhood that night. “I’ll see you, then.”

  “Yeah, you will,” he said, smiling a little.

  “Right. Bye,” she said, and then she turned and walked away, then started moving at vampire speed once she was away from him. It took everything in her not to let out a crazy whoop as she ran. As it was, she smiled the whole way home.

  Zero stood and watched as Shanti melted into the night. One moment she was there and then in a flash, she was gone. He stayed, looking at where she’d been just milliseconds before, and shook his head. Eventually, he made himself turn and walk back toward his studio and up the back stairs. As he walked, he reviewed his evening with the vampire.

  Vampire.

  He still couldn’t really believe it. He’d always believed himself to be fairly worldly. He’d been a street-wise kid. Not a troublemaker, exactly, but not the kind of kid who was home very often. He’d joined the Marines after graduation, excelled in his training. He’d fought in Afghanistan, seen things that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  None of it had prepared him for the night he’d nearly died at the hands of something from legend. He’d started to feel faint. His heart had given several fast lurches as it dealt with the quick loss of blood. And he’d been incapable of fighting back. She’d been too strong, and she’d taken him by surprise. He hadn’t had a chance.

  When he’d seen Shanti, he thought he was hallucinating. Beautiful. Insanely fast. And capable of destroying the monster who had nearly killed him. She’d made it look easy, like some kind of deadly dance. And then she’d approached, soothed him. And he’d felt her mouth at his throat. Except there was none of the pain he’d experienced at the hands of his attacker. Not with Shanti.

  He’d thought of little else since that night.

  He went into the bathroom and cleaned up, his mind racing. He knew he should be afraid. He was sane enough to know that much. But he wasn’t. He knew, instinctively, that if she’d wanted him dead, he would have been before he even knew what was happening. And he knew how insane it was that he was always on edge, waiting for an attack that never came, yet he’d been hoping against hope that he would run into Shanti again. Shanti, who could kill him without any effort at all.

  She was a mystery. And she was capable of doing something no one had done in a very long time. She made him smile. He smiled then, remembering how flustered she’d been at the restaurant. He had the feeling he was one of the lucky few to see her like that, and as he fell into bed, he wondered how soon was too soon to call her.

  Chapter F
our

  Shanti’s euphoria over her weird, awkward, yet awesome evening with Zero only lasted as long as it took her to get back to the loft. She walked in, and there was Levitt, doing his moody demon thing, and then there was Nain and Brennan sitting at the dining room table, at the same end, heads bowed as they talked in low voices about something.

  Seeing the three of them made her think of Molly.

  Molly, who’d had love and lost it, and nearly been destroyed by it.

  Molly, whose lovers had both been put in danger because of what she was. Brennan had been kidnapped and tortured by E’s sisters because he was important to Molly. Nain had freaking died. Sure, of his own choice, but still. And then he’d been imprisoned in the Nether once they knew he mattered to Molly.

  And these were two powerful, experienced supernatural men.

  She went into the kitchen, still watching Brennan and Nain. They’d been in danger because Molly had enemies. Because of what they were, they’d survived it.

  Zero was not a supernatural. And Shanti already had no shortage of enemies.

  As the realization hit her, her good mood vanished as if it had never been. Worse, really. The happiness she’d felt only made reality feel that much worse. And the reality was that she liked Zero. A lot. And he was very mortal and all it would take to put him in danger would be for the wrong person to get wind of the fact that they were spending time together.

  She guzzled a bottle of blood as she leaned against the kitchen counter. Levitt threw a glare in her direction then headed out for his patrol shift with Brennan. Nain and Brennan finished talking, and Brennan left the loft without a word. Nain came into the kitchen and put his coffee cup in the sink.

  “Hey,” he said to her.

  “Hey.”

  He looked at her more closely. “What’s wrong?”

  Shanti shook her head. “Just thinking.”

  He leaned against the island across from her, crossed his arms over his chest. “Want to talk about it?”

  “You’re just hoping for another Molly story,” Shanti said, smiling a little.

  “Could be. But you look like you want to hit something and you usually don’t look like that.”