by Jenna Black
“I’m going to get you back,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to do it.”
“Newsflash for you: I’m perfectly happy where I am. There is no way in hell I want to go back to what I was before. So ditch the shining armor and get off your noble white horse. This princess does not need saving.”
It would have been the perfect time to turn my back and stride back into the depths of the square with my head held high. I certainly intended it to be a parting shot. And yet somehow my feet seemed rooted to the pavement. I just couldn’t walk away when there was still a possibility Luke would keep talking to me.
From the look in his eyes, I’d say Luke was seriously considering walking away himself. I don’t suppose I was much of a joy to talk to, and it wasn’t like we had anything worthwhile to say to each other. But apparently he was just as reluctant to walk away as I was, because he just kept standing there, gnashing his teeth and not saying anything.
“There you are!” said a voice from behind me, and both Luke and I jumped about a mile in the air.
I looked over my shoulder, and Aleric seemed to materialize out of the darkness, though I quickly realized he was merely walking out from beneath the deepest shadow of a tree. I wondered how long he’d been listening in. I didn’t believe for a moment he had announced himself the moment he arrived.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Aleric said, smiling pleasantly. An unwholesome glitter in his eyes told me the pleasantness was an act. The Nightstruck might not be possessive of each other, but Aleric was not Nightstruck, had never been human, and I was definitely getting a testosterone-fueled jealousy vibe from him.
Luke had gotten over his surprise, the look on his face now frozen into a combination of wariness and loathing. His right hand had ostentatiously disappeared into his coat pocket. It might have been a bluff, but even if he was carrying a gun, we had already seen proof that it was useless against Aleric. I’d shot him multiple times once before, and the bullets had passed harmlessly through. Luke had seen it happen.
“I’m sure you’ve been searching for hours, this square being so huge and all,” I said to Aleric. I tried to make my voice light and flippant, but my instincts were telling me having these two anywhere near each other could be a recipe for disaster. I wondered what it meant that even Nightstruck, I was at least mildly worried about Luke’s safety.
Aleric looked Luke up and down with a curl of his lip. “Why don’t you come on in and have a proper visit?” he mocked, making a sweeping gesture of invitation. Hidden in the shadows behind him, Leo was crouched and ready to spring, just in case Luke was stupid enough to accept the invitation. Which of course he wasn’t.
“We were having a perfectly pleasant conversation just as we are,” Luke said. “Until you showed up, that is.”
I stifled an urge to laugh. Luke had a very generous interpretation of “a perfectly pleasant conversation.”
Aleric did laugh, the sound full of sharp edges and holding no sign of genuine humor. He came up beside me and put a possessive arm around my shoulders. No doubt about it: he was jealous. I mentally scribbled a memo to myself to put some thought into how I could use that to my advantage.
I tried to shrug Aleric’s arm off, but his fingers dug in tight enough to hurt. I declined to put up too much of a struggle. I probably couldn’t have gotten Aleric to let go anyway, and if Luke thought Aleric was hurting me, he might lose some of the good sense that was keeping him firmly outside the square’s borders.
“I’m sure you were having a lovely talk,” Aleric said. “You two have so much in common these days.”
“You’re being a dick,” I told Aleric crisply. I gave him a world-class glare, but he wasn’t even looking at me, his eyes locked with Luke’s.
“If the Night Maker chooses to move in this direction,” Aleric said to Luke, “the patch of night will move with it. All it would take was a few feet, and suddenly you’d be in my reach.”
Behind him, Leo snarled and stalked out of the shadows so that Luke could get a good look at him. Anyone in their right mind would take a few steps backward if they caught sight of Leo. Luke was in his right mind.
For a few seconds, Luke couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the monstrosity that was Leo. I couldn’t blame him, seeing as Leo still gave me the creeps after all this time.
“Night Makers are very possessive of their territory and reluctant to move it,” Aleric said. “However, since Becket and I are the ones who brought this one here, it owes us a debt of gratitude. I can probably persuade it to move over the few feet I need.”
Luke’s horrified look shifted from Leo to me.
Crap. I’d had no intention of letting Luke know I had anything to do with the arrival of the Night Maker. I might not have killed anyone myself, but I knew people had been killed in the square because they dared to venture in during the day. They were idiots, and one could say it was an example of survival of the fittest, but it wasn’t too much of a stretch to lay those deaths squarely on my shoulders.
I considered explaining all these perfectly logical reasons why Luke shouldn’t blame me for what had happened, but I knew none of them would convince him. Aleric had known it, too, which was why he’d opened his big mouth in the first place. The guy was pretty much the center of my world these days, but sometimes he could be a colossal pain in my ass.
“He’s bluffing,” I said, although I knew perfectly well it wasn’t Aleric’s threat that was causing Luke to back away. “If he could persuade the Night Maker to move, he’d have done it already.” Besides, he’d told me the Night Maker was tethered to the gate through which it had come, and I saw no reason not to believe him.
Aleric had done exactly what he’d set out to do. Luke was no longer interested in anything I had to say. He shook his head at me in disbelief, his face twisted into a grimace of pure disgust. Then he turned his back and hurried away, crossing the street without even looking to see if any cars were coming. He was in that much of a hurry to put distance between us.
So much for my would-be knight in shining armor.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thanks to the industrious thieving of his minions, Aleric and I now had a large tent set up on the grass. We even had furniture, including a luxurious featherbed and a leather sofa so soft it was like sitting on taffy—without all the stickiness. It was a comfortable little space, for the most part, except for the constant bone-chilling cold. We’d tried setting up a space heater, taking advantage of the electricity that had once powered the square’s lights, but of course the city had shut the electricity off.
It wasn’t quite sunset yet, but I was wide awake and restless, pacing the tent like a trapped animal. Glad as I was to have my days back, being trapped in the square all day was driving me crazy, even when I spent much of that time sleeping. It didn’t help that ever since Luke had come by, Aleric had been watching me—or having me watched—twenty-four/seven. Even on the rare occasions when he let me out of his sight, there always seemed to be some construct lurking in the shadows.
Aleric was lounging naked in the bed, watching me hungrily. It seemed I was constantly pissed off with him these days—and he with me—but I saw no reason why our little arguments should stop me from enjoying the pleasures of having a hot guy in my bed. He and I got on much better when we weren’t talking, if you know what I mean.
“Any chance you’ll let me have some time to myself tonight?” I asked.
He gave me a look of wide-eyed innocence. “What do you mean?”
“Stick to looking menacing,” I advised him. “You’re much better at menacing than innocent.”
I was rewarded by a quick narrowing of his eyes, though he banished the expression almost before I could see it. He sat up straight, wrapping the covers around his hips. If it’d been me, I’d have been freezing with that naked torso, but Aleric never showed any sign of feeling the cold.
“You can have as much time to yours
elf as you want,” he said curtly. “I’m not keeping you prisoner.”
“It’s not time to myself if I have Leo or Billy or some other construct breathing down my neck,” I retorted. “What are you afraid I’m going to do if you’re not watching? Run off with Luke and get married?”
He rolled his eyes at me, but something in his body language told me that Luke was indeed the reason behind the extra scrutiny. I didn’t understand how Aleric could possibly be jealous of Luke. It was Aleric whose bed I shared, and Luke wanted nothing to do with me. Then again, human emotions are rarely logical, so I guess it was no great surprise Aleric’s weren’t, either.
“I’m looking out for your safety,” he said, not very convincingly.
“Seriously?” I said. “That’s your story? Who the hell do you think is going to mess with me?”
“I can think of one person,” he snapped in response, eyes flashing in annoyance.
It wasn’t hard to guess who he meant. “Luke would never hurt me!” The denial came quickly enough to my lips, but fast on its heels came the memory of Luke pointing my own gun at me, of him shooting it in my general direction. I still honestly couldn’t believe Luke could shoot me, but maybe now that he knew I was responsible for the presence of the Night Maker, his attitude toward me would have hardened even more.
“He already has,” Aleric fired back. “You should be having the time of your life being Nightstruck, and instead you’re pining for some vanilla Boy Scout who can’t stand the sight of you.”
I flinched. I was hardly Luke’s favorite person right now, but it wasn’t as bad as all that. At least, I thought it wasn’t. Still, Aleric’s barb had sunk in pretty deep, and I didn’t have a quick rejoinder.
He reached for me, and I let him take my hands and pull me toward him. I felt the intensity of his eyes on me, though I couldn’t meet his gaze.
“I’m sorry this has been so hard on you,” he said, and he let go of one of my hands to brush his fingers gently over my cheek. The touch made me shiver. “Our trap was meant to catch a different sort of person altogether. It would have called to anyone nearby who had the proclivity to become Nightstruck. It’s only bad luck that you were there and that you were too strong a person to let your fear hold you back.”
This unexpected kindness took some of the sting out of his earlier words. It had been obvious to me from the beginning that I wasn’t quite like the rest of the Nightstruck, that I wasn’t quite as … free. I was happy with my current life, and I had no wish to go back to what I’d been like before. But there did seem to me some tiny piece of me that was still stuck in the past. Otherwise, why would I still care what Luke thought of me?
“I have an idea,” Aleric said, a note of sly cunning entering his voice. “Something that may help you get the most out of being Nightstruck.”
“Oh? What do you have in mind?”
* * *
Annoyingly, Aleric decided he wanted his “treat” to be a secret. He said he needed a little time to set it up, so he left me to fend for myself for the first few hours of the night. Unfortunately, I had to fend for myself with Leo on my heels. I tried to think of somewhere I could go where he couldn’t follow, but the only idea that came to my mind was to go inside somewhere, over a threshold that the constructs couldn’t cross. But it wasn’t like people were leaving their doors open these days, and if I wanted to get inside somewhere, I’d need Leo’s help to break me in. And unless I found somewhere that had a back exit I could escape through, he’d be waiting for me right by the entrance.
In the end, I decided it was all too much trouble for not enough gain. The nightly party was well under way in the square, and though I had actually grown a little bored with partying, at least in the midst of the crowd I could try to pretend that I wasn’t being watched.
It was probably around three in the morning when Aleric returned to the square. As usual, an entourage of Nightstruck followed in his wake, but I could tell something was up by the brightness in their eyes and the almost palpable aura of energy and excitement that emanated from them. I had dipped into the stash of chocolate vodka we kept in our tent, and I was pleasantly tipsy. Enough so that I’d been dancing almost nonstop for the last hour, reveling in the warmth and buzz though my legs were getting tired and my hair was plastered to my face with sweat.
I stopped dancing and stepped away from the crowd when I saw Aleric approaching. I had dumped my coat on the grass after the first dance, the movement and the booze keeping me toasty warm, but now I shivered as a chill breeze tried to freeze the sweat on my face. I quickly found my coat—a little worse for wear—and slipped it on.
Aleric came to a stop about an arm’s length away from me. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and his lips were curved into a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. Whatever surprise he’d arranged for me, he sure was proud of himself.
Behind him, his Nightstruck groupies fanned out in a semicircle. They were practically bouncing with anticipation, barely able to contain their excitement. I resisted the urge to ask what was going on. Aleric was sure to tell me anyway. I was both excited about what Aleric had in store for me, and a little wary. I’d already established that I wasn’t like the other Nightstruck, that I shared very few interests with them. It was hard to imagine something they found so exciting would be something I’d like.
I waited for Aleric’s explanation, but he was apparently in no hurry. Grinning like mad, he indicated the row of Nightstruck behind him with a sweep of his arm.
“See anyone you know?” he asked.
Frowning, I examined the ragged group more closely, looking from face to eager face. There was no one I recognized, and I turned to Aleric to tell him so.
“Look more closely,” he insisted before a word left my mouth.
I scanned quickly over the group once again, and once again failed to recognize anyone, at least beyond a vague awareness that I’d seen a couple of them hanging around the square once in a while. I wondered if Aleric was playing some kind of mind game with me. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I was about to turn away once again when something stirred somewhere in the back of my brain, and my eyes locked onto one of the waiting Nightstruck. He was a total stranger to me, and yet …
I stared more closely. He was skinny as hell, his elbows and knees sticking out sharply, his cheekbones forming dramatic shadows on his face. His eyes were Nightstruck green, sunken deep into bruise-colored sockets, and his hair and beard—both of which were filthy—were a whitish blond. When I’d first seen him, I’d thought he was about thirty—and a hard thirty at that—but now that I was really taking him in, I realized that he was about my age.
With a shock that drained the blood from my face, I finally thought to imagine that face with eyes of ice blue instead of green. And I knew exactly who he was.
“Stuart,” I whispered.
When I was in middle school, I was very shy and got exceptionally good grades. This combination of traits was like an evil catnip for the school bullies, and I’d been picked on mercilessly. Stuart Caufield was the boy who in sixth grade dubbed me “Becky the Brain,” and that hated and hateful nickname had stuck to me like glue until my parents finally decided they wouldn’t be spoiling me or turning me into a snob if they sent me to a private school.
It was no surprise that rotten kid had turned into just the kind of rotten teen who would be Nightstruck. He’d pulled every bully stunt you could imagine on me, from coining the nickname, to hitting me—and then insisting to the credulous teacher that I fell—to stealing my lunch money, to trying to trick me into thinking an older boy “liked” me. He was the bane of my existence for many years, and was absolutely the last person I ever wanted to see again.
Though come to think of it, it was kind of nice to see how skeevy he looked. He’d thought he was quite the stud when I knew him, and his blond-haired, blue-eyed good looks had won him many an admiring glance. Now he looked like a dirty, homeless junkie, and I had no doubts that if he pus
hed up his sleeves, there’d be track marks. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, I thought with just a touch of satisfaction.
I curled my lip in distaste and gave Stuart my best sneer. “Looks like you’ve moved up in the world,” I said. “Been sleeping in a Dumpster lately?”
Stuart broke from the crowd of Nightstruck and came toward me. Despite how awful he looked, he hadn’t lost the swagger in his stride, and he sure could look down his nose with the best of them.
“Aleric told me you wanted a piece of this,” he said, going for the ever-so-classy crotch-grab.
“Ew, gross!” I said, jerking my eyes away and glaring at Aleric, who grinned and shrugged.
“If I’d told him why I was really bringing him to you,” Aleric said, “it would have spoiled the surprise.”
“Huh?” I said in reply, and heard a similar sound fall from Stuart’s lips.
Aleric just smiled mysteriously. But I noticed the loose semicircle of Nightstruck had gotten tighter, filling in the space Stuart had vacated and forming a human wall behind him. And I also noticed the rest of the Nightstruck in the square had started drifting toward us.
The air was suddenly charged with electricity, and I remembered how excited the small pack of Nightstruck had been when they’d approached. Stuart might have been excited by what Aleric had told him was going to happen when we met up, but public sex was hardly a cause for excitement for the rest of the Nightstruck. Hell, there were virtual orgies going on in the square at all hours of the day and night, and no one would care about having an audience.
The music went silent, and I could hear the excited murmuring of the crowd as they gathered closer, forming a large circle all the way around Stuart, with Aleric and me standing side by side in the front row.
“What the hell?” Stuart asked in alarm, turning a quick circle and finding himself surrounded. When his eyes locked on Aleric’s, they were wide enough that I could see the whites all around the shocking green.
“You’re tonight’s entertainment,” Aleric announced.
