Paranormal After Dark

by Rebecca Hamilton

  His car’s high beams swung wide and cut through yet another endless field of flowering cane, outside just another Outback town. At first he didn’t register the shape moving along the side of the road. But, as the car neared he slowed and moved the vehicle toward the center of the road.

  The rising sun behind him illuminated long blonde hair, so he assumed the lone figure was a woman. By the way she moved, he thought she might be injured. She stumbled along the crumbling bitumen, the edges gouged and dangerous for weak ankles. He eased his foot off the accelerator. A memory formed inside his head, reminding him of the day when he’d stopped for another woman on the side of the road. An encounter that’d left him for dead. Adley pressed the accelerator. There was no way he was stopping, no matter what she looked like. What kind of woman walked along the road in the middle of the night, anyway? At that moment, she turned to look back at him, her frantic eyes staring right into his through the bug-splattered windscreen. The headlights illuminated the shape of her body and his gaze was drawn toward her stomach.

  Shit, she’s pregnant.

  Chapter 12

  Grimm

  GRIMM FELT ANTSY as hell. His wolf wanted to run, hunt, and enjoy the power tonight’s full moon would bring. But his priorities changed in a matter of minutes. The Family had been given another job. Rashda had spoken, and well, the Family jumped. That’s how it was.

  Kali relayed the information given her by her sister. It seemed a group of vamps planned to hijack and blow up a goddamn airplane. He couldn't help but be impressed by both their balls and obvious lack of fucking brains. Balls were one thing, but balls and stupidity, now that was fucking lethal. All the Family seemed to do lately was to kill and clean up after the oversized fucking mosquitoes. Grimm, for one, was sick of seeing their white pasty skin and manic fucking eyes. His kind should’ve wiped them from existence when they had the chance.

  “Hey... you still with us, or what?”

  Grimm jumped, noting Jinx had moved to stand next to him. He pretended to stretch to cover his step to the side, putting some distance between them. The vamp made him nervous as fucking hell. It wasn’t the stench of blood or luminescent skin which made him anxious. No, it was a whole different reason. ‘Accident prone’ was not the right phrase for Jinx. Jinx was aptly named. The dude had caused each of them to test immortality a number of times. Drowning, head-on collisions, even a grenade or two. You name it, the vampire caused it. But as far as vamps went, he was all right. You just knew not to walk under overhead power lines near him.

  Grimm cleared his throat and looked to Scribe. “Yeah, keep going.”

  “The schematics for the plane are attached here. You’ll need to memorize the layout before you leave. As far as I can determine, the bomb or bombs will be on the vampires. So you’ll need to make sure the detonators are taken care of—after the bombers, of course.”

  Scribe’s soft voice seemed oddly inappropriate for the topic under discussion. “If you need anything else, let me know. Until then, I’ve secured your tickets and phoned Foster to fly you to Vancouver today. We can’t have you missing the connecting flight.”

  Gareth Foster was a human, and as far as humans went, he was pretty damn cool. The ex-Air Force pilot had some skills in the air, Grimm would give him that. He’d flown them over restricted air space once or twice and always managed to sneak in and out without so much as a muttered ‘fuck’ in the cockpit. Foster had been contracted to the Family after some pretty intense interviews about ten years ago. Some of those interviews may have involved a little intimidation and a lot of screaming, especially when Grimm turned and showed Foster his wolf. The poor bastard hadn't recovered from that yet. Grimm was sure he would. He just needed a little more time. Another decade or two oughta do it.

  “Okay, anyone have any questions?” Scribe rolled up the diagrams, formally ending the group meeting. Grimm watched Smoky move toward the armory to check their weapons for yet another mission. The djinn was an excellent marksman. He’d once fought alongside Grimm, Kali and Jinx. The four of them made up the response team. But somewhere along the line, the old man had grown somber and withdrawn. Eventually he stepped down, leaving the group, but he could never leave the Family.

  He took a role in the armory, making sure they were equipped with whatever weapons they needed. Once they finished, he saw to their weapons. Guns, knives, and everything else they carried were cleaned, serviced, and tested, until they almost fired themselves. They felt the old man’s absence while they moved around in the human world—one less soldier to back them up. His absence mattered, but no one commented, no one said a damn thing.

  “Well, you two will need to be fed, then.” Harmony moved toward the kitchen and a second later the clang of pots and pans filled the air.

  Harmony was the most functional of them all. She moved among humans as though she were one. Grimm couldn't understand why she liked humans as much as she did. Then again, she had no reason to hate them, not like he did.

  Grimm made his way to the front of the mountain and the outside world. His wolf was restless and sometimes the mountain wasn't big enough. In times like these, he needed to get out.

  He slid into the black Alpha Hummer. With a lover’s touch, he made her purr and then hit the button on the garage. The car was his pride and joy, but still a close second to the Harley sitting next to her. Normally the bike gave him the sense of freedom he craved, but not today. Today he felt raw.

  He could say it was because of the mission and the whole fucked-up immortal balance thing going on. Hell, he'd been telling himself that for the past two hundred years, but deep down, he knew the real reason. He was just too afraid to admit it.

  Denial was useless. Each full moon that called to his animal to fuck or fight also drove home once again the fact he’d never find another to mate with and one day raise his young.

  Humans had invaded their land and ripped away their way of life. Humans gouged the Earth, infecting the land with their crops and buildings, destroying their forest, tree by tree, until there was nothing left. He had been so young, barely one hundred years old when he first saw them. Food, his animal howled—but his father cautioned him to stay away. As much as he wanted to blame humans, he couldn’t. The numbers of his species had dwindled. The humans merely accelerated a process already underway.

  The cruel way their females gave birth was the main factor for the difficult regeneration of their line. Unlike the other non-human species, his kind didn’t live forever. Tempered by their genetic make-up and the way they lived, they remained strong. Despite each pregnancy, their numbers dwindled.

  Their women remained in their human form to carry their young until the eleventh moon. If they made their way past the seventh without turning into their wolf, thus aborting the baby, it was miraculous. He could still see their faces. They haunted him in his dreams. He’d been too young to understand, but as he aged and their numbers decreased, he realized all too well. He could only watch from afar as their bellies swelled with each passing moon. Their terrified, gaunt expressions said it all as they fought the change with an unrivalled determination. Most didn’t make it. He could still hear their screams of pain and anguish as the moon called and they were too exhausted or weak to ward off their own nature. Their screams turned to howls as they shifted, and in the morning they carried a child no more.

  The females who aborted were shunned by the other women of the pack. They were deemed unfit for breeding, but while the pregnant women continued with their struggle, those failures at motherhood became useful for another purpose—to fight for the pack or to fuck.

  Those who clawed their way through to the eleventh month did so with the weight of their line on their shoulders. The birth was a life or death struggle, not for the baby, but for the mother. On the night of the eleventh full moon, the baby would hear the call of the moon, and they would shift inside of their mother’s womb.

  The screams of the birth would haunt their mates forever, as their pup
fought its way into the world. Their claws were designed for destroying and the soft flesh of their mother provided minimal resistance. If the women survived being shredded from the inside out, they were left permanently scarred. It was a cruel existence, born from blood and death, only to belong to the moon for as long as you lived. But it was their life, a lycan's life. That was, until the humans came.

  To remain secret, they built walls around their compound and forbade any communication with the humans. Outside their walls, they were branded a cult and, instead of the peace they so sought, they became the focus of prejudice and scrutiny. Their walls were broken, their forest ripped from the ground, and their food was either scared off, or eaten. His kind perished around him—some by their own hand—unable to carry on, leaving him alone.

  The engine roared as he pressed the accelerator harder. Thirty minutes later, he hit the outskirts of the city, where the hills gave way to apartment buildings. Life went on. In his four hundred years, he had seen the world change until it had become unrecognizable, while inside, he still burned with anger.

  Hate threatened to consume Grimm. It felt like there were two of him, two wolves tore at his soul. One wolf was full of abhorrence, ready to take on the world with each injustice it felt. That wolf’s young, amber eyes only saw what it needed to fuel its anger, all the injustice and contempt, and ignored everything else.

  The other wolf inside him was older, more controlled. His soft brown eyes watched the other wolf with a sense of loss. The mature wolf was able to see hating someone or something served no purpose. The bitter emotion only stained his soul with the poison he swallowed, while his enemy lived free, oblivious to the constraints that bound him. The two aspects of himself were at war with each other, fighting for every emotion and thought, as though Grimm’s feelings were their only source of food. They were hungry—oh yes they were. The choice he had to make was just a matter of which one he would feed.

  The older wolf showed him humans didn't deserve the devastation of their kind. They were as much victims as he was in this whole mess called life. Why should they be blamed for vampire’s desire for greed and blood? That understanding was why he couldn't turn his back on them, even after all they had done.

  So, he fed the old wolf inside of him, while the other bared its fangs and howled in desperate anger. Now they were getting ready to fight for these humans, to bleed and die for them if needed. All in the name of the Balance he’d been left to uphold.

  Grimm was the last of his line, a lycan warrior. One to be feared. One to be known. His gut hardened like stone and his hand gripped the steering wheel harder. His wolf was restless, eager to fight. And he would go down swinging.

  Chapter 13

  Eve

  SHE WAS TOO far from Hurrow to turn back. The lights of the town faded to a glow in the distance as her attacker came at her through the cane. Eve could hear the snap of broken sticks and his voice drifting to her on the wind. Edric’s back to finish what he’d started—to kill me and my son. She stumbled along the road, knowing she was too far out to turn back. She’d never make it alive.

  The pain in her back made her nauseous. So she concentrated on breathing and shuffled as fast as she could. She should’ve bought a weapon, a knife, anything. Stupid! The headlights from a car cut over the slight incline behind her, washing over her with a white light. The intensity grew with each second that passed until the light became blinding. Eve lurched forward off the asphalt and onto the gravel shoulder. She’d wave the driver down. He could help her, even if only by taking her to the next town, until a single thought ran through her mind. What if it’s not Edric in the cane? What if he’s driving the car?

  Eve turned and stared into the light, instantly realizing this movement had been a mistake. Her heart thundered inside her chest. She tripped and stumbled. Her vision filled with iridescent sparks everywhere she turned. Eve caught herself before she fell, but pain tore through her ankle and she screamed. She stumbled to the side and waited for the car to pass. Instead of kicking gravel into her face, it slowed, pulling up alongside of her.

  “Do you want a ride?” A man barked over his disappearing automatic window. Eve shook her head and kept on limping, watching the car out of the corner of her eye. Eve could hear the car change gear a second before he called out. “Fine.”

  She kept the car in her peripheral view and walked with a rigid determination until the car disappeared and she could pretend no more. The pain from her ankle bit, like a taipan snake with each step she made. She should've taken the lift. How much longer could she walk? How long would it take for her attacker to hunt her like an animal and kill her? Her heart sped with the thought and she whimpered like a pup. Stupid… stupid. The sound of a car stopped her and she stepped off the road, looking around for somewhere to hide as the car pulled alongside her once again.

  “Look, I'm sorry. Get in. I'll drive you wherever you need to go, you shouldn't be out walking at night in your condition.”

  She would’ve told him off if she could, but she had no other choice, so she bent her knees to stare at him through the window. Her ankle pained, forcing her to nod. Please let me be safe, just this once. “Thank you.”

  She limped around the back of the car, opened the passenger door and slid in, pushing her backpack beside her feet. The car was warm and filled with the scent of burgers, dirty clothes, and smelled faintly of deodorant. The aromas only intensified when she closed the door behind her. He watched her from the corner of his eye which made her feel uncomfortable. She clicked the seat belt in place before he put the car into gear and pulled away.

  “Are you cold?” He twisted the knobs, moving his hand over the vents and turning them in her direction.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she shivered, aware of his every move beside her.

  The high beam from the car lit the road ahead as the stranger accelerated. He seemed in a hurry to get somewhere, and that was fine with Eve. She needed to get far away from Hurrow and the monsters it held.

  A voice blasted through the car. Eve jumped in her seat and held her breath until she realized the sound came from a scanner. The voice continued in short, loud bursts. The man lowered the volume, leaning toward the speaker while he attempted to drive.

  Crime Scene 401 going off at Unit 12 Bartlet...

  Crime Scene 401. Copy.

  Ah, VKR, do we have an ETA on 402 and 403?

  ...

  Crime Scene 401. ETA is approximately fifteen minutes. They’re stocking up on supplies. Over.

  Yeah. Thanks VKR. It's gonna be a long one. Over.

  The car swerved across broken lines before it veered back, the violent motion pushing Eve hard against the door. Great, escape a homicidal maniac to get wiped out in an accident. Maybe I should say something? She licked her lips and was sure she smelled her own nervous sweat. “So, where are you headed?”

  “Fuck, fuck!” He drove his fist down on top of the steering wheel so hard Eve heard the keys in the ignition jingle. “Wait... no, it's okay… fucking husband did it.”

  She swallowed and glanced at the police scanner from the corner of her eye. The way he drove, the way he spoke was aggressive. Why was he listening to a scanner? Was he searching for someone? Was he searching for her? It’s a bit late to be asking these questions now. Something I should’ve thought about before I got into the bloody car. Eve shifted in her seat. She drove her fingers into the cushioned door handle, but her sweaty palms caused her hands to slip. Determinedly, she grabbed the handle again and dragged her swollen, aching body as far from him as possible.

  The scanner exploded with chatter, and then died mid-word. He pressed the buttons and moved the dial, with no luck. The thing stayed silent. Eve whispered a plea for it to stay like that.

  “Goddamn dead spots. You’d think with the amount of money the government takes, they could put it to better use and upgrade these towers. There are blackouts the whole way through Queensland—what the fuck!”

  Eve was th
rown forward. The tires squealed and the car shuddered, braking hard and swerved sharply to the left, crossing the center lines. The belt cut hard against her pelvis and under bump. The jolt had Eve reaching for the dash with one hand and her seatbelt in the center of her chest with the other, as a flash of grey cut across the headlights.

  He glanced over at her as he pulled the car back to the right and accelerated. “Are you okay?”

  Eve swallowed her heart back down and nodded. “Yeah, I think so. What was that?”

  “A goddamn roo. It just cut through the cane in front of me. We almost wore the bastard as a bonnet ornament.”

  Eve’s chest ached from the sudden jolt and her speeding heart. She shifted in her seat and pulled at the belt across her waist, searching for movement inside her. Her baby gave a kick, and then another one.

  “Sorry ‘bout that. I should’ve been paying more attention. It’s this bloody cane. You can’t see a damn thing. I’m Adley, by the way.”

  “I’m Eve. They just started cutting the cane, so it won’t be long until it’s new again.”

  She knew as soon as she said the words, they’d been a mistake.

  “Eve,” he repeated. “So you come from here? Did you walk from the last town, Hurrow?”

  Her stomach hardened and her head throbbed. She should’ve said nothing. She should’ve just shut her mouth. Now she either had to lie, or be rude and just not answer.

  “Hey, did you hear me? Did you come from the last town?”

  His voice boomed inside the small space. Her heart beat the walls of her chest like a helpless child. She stared at him from the reflection of the window, unable to speak. It wasn’t his tone, or his demeanor which disturbed her, but she could feel him staring, waiting for something. A lie? She looked down and studied her hands, which grasped the mottled green wool at her chest. Her knuckles glowed white. They passed several miles where the cane gave way to small crops she couldn’t quite make out. Eventually the mood inside the car seemed to soften and he turned his focus back to the road.