by Jenna Black
I’d seen Nightstruck throw themselves into harm’s way at Aleric’s command without showing the slightest hint of fear or reluctance, but Stuart was clearly terrified. His breath steamed in the cold air, coming in frantic puffs.
“You can’t!” he choked out. “You can’t hurt me. I’m Nightstruck.”
Aleric laughed long and loud, and the rest of the crowd joined in. I wasn’t amused enough to laugh, but I did smile. I’d already seen how carelessly Aleric could throw away the lives of the Nightstruck, and it would never have occurred to me to think that he couldn’t hurt them just because he generally chose not to. What cause would he have to hurt people who asked “how high” when he told them to jump?
Heavy metallic footsteps clanked against the pavement, and the crowd of onlookers parted as Leo lumbered forward into the circle. Stuart’s eyes almost bugged out of his head, and he backed away until he reached the wall of Nightstruck behind him. One of them gave him a hard shove in the back, sending him sprawling on his face right at Leo’s feet.
“Are you feeling any great and generous urge to hug it out with your old pal?” Aleric asked me.
I bit my lip, looking at the pathetic figure cowering at Leo’s feet. He’d tormented me day after day, year after year, and though I didn’t consider myself a hateful person, I did indeed hate him. The old me probably would have felt sorry for him now. His life had obviously gone to shit since I’d last seen him. Although now that he was Nightstruck, I didn’t suppose he was too unhappy with how his life had turned out.
My conscience wasn’t completely dead. I knew without question that no matter how cruel Stuart had been to me, he didn’t deserve a playdate with Leo. But I wasn’t going to heroically run into that circle and throw myself over him to protect him.
“I’d never get the stink out if I so much as shook his hand,” I said. “So no, not hugging.”
“Glad to hear it,” Aleric said with a satisfied smile.
One of the snakes on Leo’s head darted out and sank its metal fangs into the meat of Stuart’s shoulder. He let out a shriek of pain and pulled away, the fangs ripping through flesh and sleeve as he freed himself and charged toward the wall of observers.
Someone started chanting Leo’s name, and other voices soon followed suit. Heat flooded my body, and my breaths came short as my heart rate skyrocketed. Stuart was shoved back into the circle once more, and this time it was Leo’s scorpion tail that struck, impaling Stuart’s thigh with a thud I could feel through the pavement beneath my feet. His scream could have shattered lightbulbs if there were any around.
“If it gets too much for you,” Aleric said, “let me know, and I’ll put a stop to it.”
My fingers curled at my sides, nails digging into my palms. Leo gave Stuart an almost playful swat with his paw, his claws leaving bloody furrows.
This is wrong, I thought to myself. You should tell him to stop.
I opened my mouth, meaning to tell Aleric that that was enough, that I was satisfied Stuart had paid for everything he’d done to me. But no sound came out, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away as Leo bit clean through Stuart’s ankle. The circle was already slick with blood that steamed in the cold air, and the metallic scent of it made my nose wrinkle.
Okay, it was hard to deny that this was wrong. But I wasn’t the one hurting Stuart. And it wasn’t like this had been my idea. It was all Aleric’s doing. Besides, just because Aleric said he would put a stop to it if I asked didn’t mean he would actually do it. And even if he did, Stuart had lost a lot of blood already and wasn’t going to get any medical attention. He was already dead.
I never got fully into the spirit of the thing, never joined the chanting, never cheered or jeered or applauded. But my blood hummed with excitement, and I couldn’t have torn my eyes away from the spectacle if I’d tried. Stuart might not technically deserve what was happening to him—not based on what he’d done to me as a child at least—but it sure was satisfying to know how deeply he was paying for all the pain and misery he’d caused me.
Becky the Brain, frightened and shy and goddamn weak, would have saved him. Nightstruck Becket didn’t even try.
CHAPTER NINE
Some of the luster had worn off being Nightstruck. Aleric’s moodiness and the fact that I couldn’t turn around without bumping into him were grating on my nerves, as was the constant vigilance of Leo and Billy. Try having a scorpion-tailed, snake-headed, spider-jawed lion breathing down your neck every night and see how you like it.
Even the parties were getting old, though I still sometimes lost myself to the music and the dancing. But it wasn’t as exciting as it had been in the beginning. Aleric offered to track down some of the rest of the bullies who’d tormented me in middle school. However, although I didn’t feel bad about what I’d let happen to Stuart, I didn’t feel particularly good about it, either. Not enough to do it again at least.
Being Nightstruck was a little like living on a diet of potato chips and ice cream. I love potato chips and ice cream, but every once in a while I craved a good, solid meal.
“You’re still holding back,” Aleric told me when I declined his generous offer to find another bully to “play” with. “Until you give up the last vestiges of your past, you’ll never be truly free.”
“By last vestiges of your past you mean Luke, right?”
I was rewarded by an unmistakable flare of jealousy in his eyes. I hadn’t seen Luke in over a week, and we hadn’t exactly parted on good terms, but Aleric was still obviously touchy about his “rival.” Despite his heated denial.
“I wasn’t talking about your Boy Scout,” he said with a sneer. “You can’t give up what you don’t have.”
“Ouch,” I said with an exaggerated wince that was only partly fake. I wasn’t sitting around pining away for Luke or anything, but I would have greatly preferred it if he didn’t hate my guts. I sneaked a glance toward the center of the square, where the Night Maker crouched in its veil of darkness. I still couldn’t bring myself to get within sight of it. I didn’t regret bringing it into the square and regaining the missing hours of my days, but I did wish Aleric hadn’t told Luke I was responsible.
“I’m serious, Becks,” Aleric said, the rancor now gone from his voice as he took both my hands in his. “This life still isn’t quite natural to you. But it could be if you let it.”
I looked into his eyes and wished it could be that easy. “I’m trying,” I told him. “I watched you torture someone to death and didn’t say a word. What more do you want from me?”
“I want you to fully embrace your new life. I want you to reach out and take what you want.” His lips turned up in a sexy smile. “But first you have to figure out what that is.”
My heart gave a very pleasant little flutter. I might not know what I wanted in the long run, but I certainly knew what I wanted at the moment. Aleric was still holding my hands, and I gave him a little tug.
“How about if I start off by taking you?” I suggested.
Not surprisingly, Aleric had no objection.
* * *
Afterward, I lay drowsing contentedly in Aleric’s arms and tried to remember why I’d ever thought I had cause to complain. He stroked my sweat-dampened hair, and I cuddled close to him, feeling warm and free and sated. My life was pretty damn spectacular, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“I’ve been thinking it might be nice for you to have a house,” Aleric said out of the blue.
I pulled a little away from him and propped my head on my hand. “A house?” I asked, frowning at the thought of it. We had occasionally “borrowed” someone’s house during the night, but I always felt weird about it. Not because it was “wrong” to trespass, but because I found little comfort in a house that wasn’t mine. I was much more comfortable in our tent in the square, even though it was tiny and missing many of the creature comforts.
“I think you might enjoy having a place to call your own. I can have my Nightstruck go clean out your old place
and refurnish it for you one of these nights.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “You’d let me have my house back even though you and your constructs could never go inside?” I should have known right then that there was a catch. Aleric wasn’t about to let me have my privacy without getting something out of it.
“I want you to be happy.”
I believed he meant it, though I was sure his motive was more complex than that. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about the house I’d grown up in. Though it would be nice to have better shelter than a tent—especially on rainy or snowy nights. “I’m not sure it would feel much like a place of my own if I had to make sure to clear out of it every morning.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I understood what Aleric was really suggesting, and I sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the blankets protectively to my chest. “You’re talking about summoning another Night Maker!” I said in my most accusatory voice.
“Of course. We wouldn’t have to summon him right in front of your house. We’ll make sure he’s well out of sight of your windows but close enough that your house will be within his territory.”
“My house and all the other houses on my block,” I whispered.
“Naturally. But it’s not as if anyone there matters to you, right?” There was an almost teasing lilt to his voice, like he was daring me to contradict him.
What would happen to all those houses and to all the people inside them if daylight never came? Most importantly, what would happen to Luke and Dr. Gilliam and Bob?
To be perfectly honest with you, I didn’t much care. I could give Luke a warning in advance so he could get himself and his mom and Bob out of harm’s way before we brought the Night Maker through. It wasn’t conscience or empathy that made me hesitate. It was the memory of how the sight of the Night Maker had made me feel. It was the only time since I’d been Nightstruck that I actually felt afraid, and that was an experience I was happy to do without. Not to mention that cutting myself hurt, and I wasn’t eager to do it again.
“Let me think about it a bit,” I told Aleric.
He shook his head but didn’t argue. He probably thought I was hesitating because of Luke. If I’d thought denying it would have helped, I might at least have tried. But Aleric’s potentially hurt feelings didn’t trouble me enough for me to make the effort.
* * *
I thought about Aleric’s proposition a lot over the next couple days and nights but couldn’t seem to make up my mind. I loved the idea of having my house back—especially after Aleric spontaneously sent his Nightstruck to clean it up and stock it with the stolen loot I’d collected and never used. But every time I imagined the ordeal of summoning another Night Maker, I chickened out.
“We can put a blindfold on you,” Aleric suggested. “Out of sight, out of mind, right?”
That’s the philosophy I’d adopted with the Night Maker I’d already helped bring into this world, but I didn’t think it would work in this instance.
I suspected I would eventually summon the nerve, and that meant I would have to warn Luke—preferably without Aleric breathing down my neck while I did.
I stole a cell phone from one of the Nightstruck. She’d conveniently left it in the pocket of the coat she’d tossed off when she and one of the guys started going at it with no concern for privacy. I couldn’t get used to the way the Nightstruck never seemed to care who was watching when they were having sex, and despite having lost almost all my inhibitions, I still generally preferred to look away. This once, I decided to take advantage of their distraction, and I doubt either one of them even knew I was there when I reached into the coat pocket and snatched the phone.
As a general rule, the Nightstruck have no need for phones, but some of them still carried the ones they’d had before they were Nightstruck, and sometimes they stole them from their victims just because they could. The phone I took from the coat pocket was definitely one of the latter, based on its contents. The girl I’d taken it from was nowhere near old enough to have photos of her grandkids on her phone.
I was proud of my little bit of thievery. Aleric and his spies had eyes on me pretty much twenty-four/seven, but they were at their least vigilant during the nightly parties. After all, Luke couldn’t come to me at night, and I couldn’t leave the party without being noticed, so there was no need to be super paranoid. I doubted they’d considered the possibility that I’d steal a phone and text.
I settled myself into an especially dark corner and tried not to look too furtive as I turned the phone’s brightness down until it was barely visible and then sent Luke a quick text.
meet me @ entrance 2morrow? need 2 talk
He wouldn’t recognize the number, of course, but he would have no trouble figuring out it was me. Whether he’d be willing to talk to me or not was a whole other question. And let’s not even discuss the question of just what there was for us to talk about. If I told him I was going to summon another Night Maker and park it on our block, it wouldn’t exactly go over very well. It would be much more sensible to shoot him an e-mail and then ditch the phone so I didn’t have to see his reply. But if I did summon the Night Maker and chase Luke from his home, then I might never see him again, and that I didn’t want.
I set the phone in my lap, putting my arms around my knees to hide its faint glow. I tried not to stare at it, tried not to act weird and suspicious enough to make anyone watching me curious, but it was hard. I willed Luke to answer me, but as the minutes ticked by, the phone went to sleep and stayed there. Which was an answer in its own way, though one I found myself reluctant to accept. I gave it one more try, though it’s hard to be persuasive when texting.
i’ll b there @ 2, see u
I wasn’t shocked when he didn’t answer that one, either. I’d have tried a third time, except I didn’t think it had any better chance of succeeding. Besides, the more I texted, the better chance someone was going to see me doing it and wonder what I was up to.
I turned the phone off and shoved it deep into the pocket of my coat. Luke would either show up, or he wouldn’t. If he was there waiting for me when I slipped away, we might have as much as five minutes to talk before Aleric showed up. We’d likely have to live with being watched and listened to by Billy or Leo, but I wasn’t sure if they were capable of relaying our conversation to Aleric, and it probably didn’t matter anyway.
Even if Luke showed up, the conversation was bound to go about as well as our previous ones. It was a stupid plan—if you could even call something a plan when I couldn’t tell you what I hoped to accomplish or why I was doing it. Maybe I was hoping Luke could talk me out of summoning the Night Maker, and his arguments would help counter some of Aleric’s persuasions. Or maybe I was doing exactly what Aleric kept accusing me of and clinging to the past.
* * *
Aleric was rarely around during the day. I don’t know exactly where he was, but my best guess was he was hanging out in Night Maker Central, wherever that was. Another dimension maybe? Who knew, but I guess it was a more exciting place than Rittenhouse Square during the day, when lack of sleep and too much drink invariably caught up with the Nightstruck.
I’d have said this worked to my advantage, if it weren’t for the vigilance of Billy and Leo, although even the two of them seemed somehow bored during the day. If nightmare constructs made up of metal and magic can get bored.
I peeked out from Aleric’s and my tent at just before two o’clock the next afternoon and saw no sign of my watcher du jour. Either they had grown complacent because I so rarely left the tent during the day lately, or they were watching from the distance. I peered into the shadows, but despite the bright sunlight I could clearly see when I looked up at the sky, it was dark as a cloudless night in the square and I couldn’t see very far into the distance.
I shrugged. It probably didn’t even matter if I was being watched, because Luke probably wasn’t going to show up. And even if he did, it wasn’t like we were going to be talking about top-secr
et plans. Aleric would not be surprised to learn I planned to warn Luke before summoning a Night Maker in his backyard.
I had myself so convinced he wouldn’t show up that I stopped in my tracks and blinked when I got close enough to the Walnut Street entrance to see Luke standing there. I’m not gonna lie: Luke was nice to look at. He didn’t have Aleric’s bad-boy vibe—the vibe I’d never found all that attractive, at least not until I’d been Nightstruck—but I felt a predictable punch of desire whenever I saw him.
I wished he were a little less wholesome. If he had some character flaw the night’s magic could exploit, he could be with me here in the square every day. It sure would have been nice to have a friend, an ally, a lover, who was not Aleric. But Luke was way too selfless and kind to be vulnerable, and even in my current state I knew I didn’t really want him any other way. If he were Nightstruck, he’d be just as good-looking, but all the other things I loved about him would go away.
I got over my surprise quickly enough and hurried toward him. I still had no clue what I was planning to say to him—how do you tell someone you’re thinking of permanently shrouding his home in malevolent night?—but it was hard to care too much when all I wanted to do was throw myself into Luke’s arms.
Judging by the look on his face, throwing his arms around me wasn’t the first item on Luke’s agenda. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he looked both grim and worried, though I wasn’t sure why.
“You got my text,” I said inanely as I approached.
“I did,” he confirmed. His posture didn’t soften, and I noticed him scanning the darkness behind me. Keeping an eye out for Aleric and the constructs, I suppose. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
In the old days, I’d had an embarrassing tendency to turn into a gibbering idiot in Luke’s presence. I couldn’t just launch into a conversation about summoning a Night Maker—not if I wanted Luke to stand still and listen to me. But it was hard to think of how to start, and the old me would have blushed and stammered and generally made it obvious that I had nothing of any value to say. Being Nightstruck had changed all that, and I wasn’t even mildly worried that I might make myself look stupid as I made up a bogus explanation for why I’d wanted to talk.
