Brave the Night: A Bully Boys Novel

by Cassandra Moore

  “I do,” he said, each word rough with emotion. “It fucking terrifies me to admit, but I do. I’ve loved you since you listened to me talk about Greg. Since you set that picture of Meghan on my mantel and I realized you understood what I’d never wanted to put into words before. Shit, maybe I loved you since I saw you on Tyler’s bike, dirty and tired and not letting that stop you. God, you were beautiful, lit up by the sunset and pushing that bike as fast as it would go. You drove it like it was part of you, like nothing out of Hell could stop you.”

  “I was scared,” she said in a raw voice. “I was afraid to look over my shoulder, because I might see Hell trying to stop me.”

  “That was why you were so beautiful. You were scared, and it didn’t matter at all. Fear couldn’t stop you. Ferals couldn’t stop you.” He let go of her hand, but only so he could push his chair away from the table.

  She watched him, lower lip quivering as she looked up at him towering beside her. “I’m scared now. Scared of so many things.”

  “And you’re more beautiful to me now than ever.” He knelt down next to her chair. Mindful not to tip her out of it, he turned the chair to face him. “What are you scared of?”

  Her hands felt cool in his as he clasped them again. He could feel her tremble as she spoke. “I’m scared I’ve gotten sick. That I’m going to die. Or worse than die.”

  “No. I refuse to let that happen.” Fiercely, he brought her hands to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “What did I just say? Nothing out of Hell could stop you. Ferals couldn’t stop you. You are too strong to let this beat you, and I won’t let you go.”

  A tear spilled over to slip down her cheek. “I’m scared I’ll be another Greg in your life. Or a Meghan. Just… Just pain that won’t ever leave you. Another thing you lost.”

  His heart squeezed until his breath left him. That fear, he understood too well. But with the ache of loss came a realization too many years in the making. “Do you think I regret any of the moments I spent with Greg? No. I hoard them now. I guard them, because they mean I ever had him. Even when it hurts so bad to remember him that I want to scream, I hold them tight. The only things I regret are the moments I didn’t spend with him. The times I said I’d hit a movie instead of going to his house. The phone calls I cut short because I had something else to do. You feel that way about Meg. Don’t you.”

  Another tear streaked down her cheek as she nodded.

  “Thought so. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Erin. I believe you’re strong enough to beat whatever threatens to bring you down, but shit goes south sometimes. We both know it. And I accept it.” He reached out, gentle and tender, to cup her tear-damp cheek. “I would rather have every second I could with you, even if it meant my heart shattered later, than the regret that I tried to protect myself from that pain.”

  She tilted her face to lean her cheek harder into his palm, gaze wet but bright. “And I’m scared because I love you, too.”

  A wave of emotion surged through him, wild, boundless joy tinted with the sweetest melancholy. You would have loved her, Greg. You would have laughed at how I called you to tell you about her, wanting to sing about it but talking your ear off instead. You would have said, “Don’t listen to me, jackass. Love her and be happy about it. Let’s get dinner. I can meet this amazing girl of yours.” God, why couldn’t I remember you and hear your voice in my head before Erin came along without feeling like you’d died all over again?

  “The last times I’ve said those words haven’t worked out very well,” Erin continued. She turned her head in his grip so she could kiss his palm. “They’ve been a mess that left everyone worse off than they were before. I’m scared to say those words to you. If I do, then it’s real, and if it’s real, it can break. Or be taken away.”

  “No one and nothing can take you away from me.” To him, she weighed so little, yet within her she carried all he could hope to have. His heart, her love, the strength that would sustain them. He eased her from her chair to kneel there on his carpet, cradled in his arms. “Wolves mate for life. For werewolves, that means we spend a lot of our lives wondering if we’ll meet the one who wants who we are. All of who we are. The beast, the person, everything in between.”

  “Just one?” she asked with her face buried in his neck. He could feel her lips move against his skin.

  “Just one. Those of us who are lucky enough to have mentors hear that early on.” He tilted his face down to place a kiss on the top of her head. “You may have many lovers, and many loves, but there is only one mate. Once you find them, every moonrise changes in your eyes, and the moon wears the face of the one you are bound to. Every sunrise is brighter because you have seen it in their eyes.”

  “And what if you lose them?”

  “You don’t. We’ve got a saying in our pack. ‘Mates are for keeps. No takebacks.’ That’s pretty clear, I’d say.”

  She lifted her head to look into his eyes. “But what if—”

  Knowing what she intended to say, he silenced her by putting his lips over hers. The words died into a soft kiss that threatened to undo the last fetters on his heart. “No what if,” he murmured.

  “But—”

  Another kiss, warmer now, longer and deeper than before. “There is only one thing I want to hear you say,” he said, once the kiss broke and he could speak again. “Mates. No takebacks.”

  “Shane, I could—”

  He leaned back onto the floor and took her with him, snug against his chest as he pulled another kiss from her. Her eyes were still closed when he looked up at her. “Say the words, Erin. You told me you loved me. Say the words, and we face all the ‘what if’ and ‘I could’ together. No regrets. No time lost.”

  Her eyes opened, and within them, he could see her vulnerable soul staring back at him. The caretaker who never allowed anyone to care for her in return. The woman who loved without reserve but did not know how to allow others to love her back. The lonely spirit who had waited for her wolf to hold a candle to the darkness she kept within.

  “Mates. No takebacks,” she said softly.

  Within him, the wolf howled, whole at last with the mate he had waited a lifetime for. Shane lunged up and rolled to set Erin beneath him, sheltered by his body and guarded by his heart. Her arms wrapped around him to pull him down to her again, and he went willingly to her. Any distance apart was too far from her, even inches. Now, he needed all of her, needed to bury himself within her and glory in the warmth of her around him.

  When they were one, body and soul, perhaps they would be close enough at last. When they were lost to each other, perhaps they would find what they had lost within themselves. In her soft moans and the heat of her skin, Shane found that which he had never known he had needed, but never intended to do without again.

  The moon had long since crossed the zenith to descend towards the western horizon. Shane left Erin asleep in an argent beam of light that slipped through a crack in his bedroom curtain to fall upon her face. He didn’t want to leave her, not even for a minute, but neither did he want to disturb her with what he needed to do.

  He listened carefully as he stepped onto his back porch. No howls in the distance. No roar of engines. The night breeze carried with it a quiet he didn’t trust but didn’t care to begrudge. They needed quiet nights. Maybe we’ve driven them back into hiding to come up with another plan. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Either way, quiet gave him room to put in a call.

  “Holly, do you read?” he said into his walkie-talkie.

  Moments later, the device crackled. “I read you, boss. Everything all right?”

  “I never have a good answer to that question.”

  “Do you currently have a pulse, respiration, and a lack of Ferals trying to pull out your intestines?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then everything’s as all right as I need for a ‘yes’ answer. What is it, Shane?”

  “Have you talked to Alok?”

  “No. Which is concerning to both
me and his mother, who hasn’t been able to reach him for almost a week. He missed his weekly phone call.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not great, but it’s not cause for worry yet. He’s been known to drop off the radar occasionally when he gets going on a project.”

  “Keep trying. Don’t stop until you get hold of him.” Shane leaned against a pillar on his porch to look at the line of oleanders that bordered the yard. They hadn’t fully recovered from the Feral incursion. Then again, neither had he. He took a deep breath. “Ask him something else when you do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ask him how much exposure to the Feral virus is required for someone to come down with it. And if it’s possible to fight off a very small exposure. Maybe there’s something that can be done to help a person overcome it.”

  Quiet on the airwaves. Then, “I’ll ask him. You want to revise the answer to ‘everything all right’?”

  “No.” No, because I refuse to believe Erin won’t fight this off. She’s tough, and I just found her. I won’t lose her now.

  12

  Silent is the Nightmare that Steals Beyond the Land of Dreams

  “Glad you could make it, Shane,” Sheriff Harris said, and pulled down the brim of his hat to better block the unrelenting glare of the late afternoon sun. “I sure as hell hope you knew about this, because we didn’t have a goddamned idea.”

  Shane stared at the line of RVs, conversion vans, and trucks hauling fifth wheels with a mix of shock and awe. Dozens of them drove down the highway, all on a course that would lead them straight to Coyote Trail. “Nope. Not a clue here, either. What’s going on?”

  “That’s the thing. Those folks in the RVs out there? They’re from Levalle. They said the alpha wolf here told them their town wasn’t safe anymore, and they ought to go somewhere that was.” The sheriff cocked his head to eye Shane from under the brim of the hat. “Seems they think the Bully Boys can keep them safer than anyone else. You sure you didn’t know about this?”

  “Oh, Christ on a cracker,” Shane groaned, and scrubbed his hand over his face. “I told them they should evacuate, because they’ve got no one to keep them safe out there and the Ferals will be back. But I told them to go to Phoenix, or Vegas, or Laughlin. I didn’t tell them to come here.”

  “Looks like you made some fans, then,” Sheriff Harris said wryly. “Guess I can’t blame them. The question now is, what do we do about them? Tell them to keep on driving?”

  “Why are you asking me, Jim? I’m not in charge.”

  “I think they’d beg to differ.” Jim Harris nodded towards the line of vehicles that made its way toward the town. “And some days, so would I. We’re not what I’d call equipped to take those people in. But I’m not a man who turns folks away because there’s no room in the inn, either, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do know what you mean.” Shane sighed, forcing his shoulders to relax as he did. “Do we have the resources to take them in?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But I know who hasn’t got any resources. Them.” Jim tucked his thumbs into his pockets and let his hands dangle from them. “We could pile them in at the south end of town. There’s no hookups for the RVs, but they ought to have storage tanks. We’ll have to work out what to do about the waste they’ll create, and we’re definitely going to have to do something to get the delivery trucks arriving here on the regular. Can your pack stretch to keep that bunch safe, too?”

  “We’ll manage. I’ll see if I can get hold of packs to the south of here, too. Could be we can arrange an escort after a few days to get those refugees to one of the bigger cities. They don’t have to stay here forever.” Shane squinted at the position of the sun. “It’s too late to tell them to drive on today. Let’s put them at the south end of town and take it from there.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Jim said. “I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d swing by and have a word with those folks as we do. Let them know you expect them to stay civil, whatnot.”

  “Do you expect that to be a problem?”

  “No, but I didn’t expect a damn herd of refugees today, either. I’d rather head off problems before they stomp on in.”

  “We’ll come by.”

  “I appreciate it. Looks like I’m not the only one who wants to talk to you today, either.”

  Shane followed the sheriff’s gaze. Rigo had parked his ride by Shane’s, off a ways in the convenience store lot by the air pump, and hustled over at a brisk, long-legged walk. “Looks like you’re right. Thanks for calling me out for a look, Jim.”

  “Thanks for coming.” The sheriff strode towards his own vehicle to start what Shane anticipated would be a long evening.

  “Kerri said you might be out here, jefe,” Rigo said as he approached. “She was listening to the police scanner.”

  “Of course she was,” Shane said. Rigo didn’t even have to come close for Shane to see the rangy scout hadn’t rested. “When was the last time you slept?”

  Rigo shrugged. “It feels like last Thursday. I can sleep when I’m dead. Since I’d like to not be dead soon, I will keep on not sleeping. Did we tell the people from Levalle to come here?”

  “We told them to go somewhere safe.”

  “We should have been more specific.” Rigo winced. “While Holly wears out her redial button and yells at her friend’s voicemail, I followed the signs left in Levalle.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “I found more questions than I started with.” The scout folded his arms over his chest. “There are two more of the big ‘we sell gas, snacks, and very bad souvenirs’ stores full of dead people on the highway west. At them, there were signs that many more semi trucks had parked there. Inside the stores, all the goods stored in the refrigerated sections had been thrown out into the aisles. The fridges were empty, but there were scuffs and circular marks on the floors.”

  “More barrels.”

  “Si. That is what it looked like to me. But I found the strangest thing in Levalle itself.”

  Shane raised an eyebrow. “We didn’t find the strangest things there already?”

  “That would be a nice change.” Rigo shook his head. “There’s a hardware store on the edge of town. The people who worked there were some of the hostages. I followed the trail of the Ferals there. They’d ransacked it while the employees were gone. It was hard to tell for sure what was missing. I did find empty shelves where the goods weren’t on the floor, but they made no sense. It was generators and the electric air pumps for filling up tires.”

  Shane glanced at the air pump not far from them. “They do have a lot of trucks. Could be they’re trying to fill up flat tires.”

  “It could be, but I don’t even know if that would work on tires that big.” Rigo held his hands apart to indicate an object about the size of a loaf of bread. “The air pumps are very small. They don’t have a lot of power.”

  “No, but do the Ferals know that?” How do the Ferals even know to steal automatic air pumps? We’re missing something. There’s an important piece of this we don’t have yet. There has to be. “Where’s your partner in crime?”

  “At home, wearing out her redial button and shouting at her friend’s voicemail. I took her breakfast earlier,” the scout said. “I think if she could have thrown her breakfast burrito through the phone, she would have.”

  “If it was one of your mother’s, that would have been a crime.” Shane took a deep breath, held it, and let it out again. His patience had worn as thin as his temper had the day before. The need to do something, do it now, hop on his bike and ride off to save the day from a threat he didn’t yet understand, gnawed at him until his inner wolf snapped in irritation. “Thanks, Rigo. Go catch a couple hours of sleep, then head out again. You’re no good to anyone if exhaustion drops you.”

  “I wish this weren’t true. I’ll take a short nap.” Rigo paused, then asked, “Is Erin all right after yesterday? I saw the inside of tha
t firehouse. It would have given me nightmares last night if I had bothered to sleep.”

  Is she all right? If I knew that, I would have slept a lot better myself. Erin had spent much of the night twitching in her sleep, caught up in dreams that didn’t seem restful at all. She’d looked like she’d crawled through the outskirts of Hell on her face when she woke up. When the sheriff had called Shane out, he’d left her promising to do their laundry just before she dozed off on the couch.

  He’d stolen a glance at her arm. While much of the general redness had faded, the distinct red streaks had grown angrier. They stretched into her hand, now, and gathered in places at the inside of her elbow. Several of the crimson stripes had begun to creep up into the arm of her T-shirt as well.

  “She had some bad dreams herself,” Shane said out loud. “I left her home to take a nap while I came out here. Which is what you ought to be doing. Go on, Rigo. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Smart woman,” Rigo said. He sketched a mock salute. “Though we knew that. She picked you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s what that means.” Shane laughed and walked with the scout towards their rides. If she were smart, she would have picked someone who didn’t have to explain to a caravan of scared refugees that they might have driven out of the frying pan and into the fires of Hell.

  He’d barely turned his bike off at the new refugee camp before he heard Holly’s urgent voice on the walkie-talkie. “Shane! Come in! I know you have this damn thing on you. Come in or I’m going to tell Erin to wash all your underwear with a cheap red shirt so they turn pink!”

  “I don’t wear white underwear, Holly,” Shane said into the airwaves. Only after the words had left his mouth did he realize his entire pack now knew the color of his underthings, or at least what color they weren’t. “All right, well played.”