A Dance with Darkness

by Jenna Wolfhart

The creature's glittering red eyes looked down on Lars. It pulled back its lips, showing off the sharp points of its enormous fangs. Fangs that dripped with saliva, blood, and flesh.

  My stomach turned, and I pressed my hand to my mouth. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t real. It was another one of my panic attacks, making me see things that weren’t really there. As much as I’d wanted to believe I was okay, I clearly wasn’t.

  I was seeing things. The creature wasn’t really there, and Lars wasn’t hurt.

  Stumbling back, I gasped when a soft hand landed on my shoulder.

  “Norah, hon, why are you out here in the alley…” Rachel trailed off, and her face went stark white. The grip on my shoulder tightened, and the skin underneath her chin began to tremble. And then she was off, rushing down the dim alley to drop by Lars’s side.

  “Oh my god, Lars. What the hell happened to you?” She pressed her hand to his cheek and choked out a cry. “Norah, call the police. Call 911. Tell them we need an ambulance.” She glanced up, her eyes fierce yet full of tears. “Why are you just standing there? Do something! Now!”

  Hands shaking, I nodded and pressed my cell phone to my ear. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the creature who now loomed over Andrea, his saliva only seconds away from dripping onto her head. The creature was so close. So horribly, gruesomely close. If it shifted even an inch closer, its teeth could graze her cheek. Its sharp nails could slice through her back.

  “It’s not real,” I whispered under my breath.

  “No, it’s very much real.” One of the strange guys whispered in front of me and charged down the alley, a dagger flashing in his hand. Bathroom Guy grabbed my arm and pulled me back, dragging me away from the mouth of the alley.

  He shifted his body in front of mine and threw out his arms, holding them on either side of me. “Stay behind me, Norah. You interrupted its feeding, and it won’t take that very well.”

  “His feeding." I blinked. “You can see it?”

  “Of course I can see it,” he said in an impatient tone of voice. “Just stay behind me. Liam, Rourke, and Finn should be able to dispatch it easily enough. As for your friend…even if he can survive the bites, the venom will be difficult to fight.”

  Fear churned through my gut as I watched the three strangers charge the alley. The creature stumbled away from Lars and Andrea when it saw them approach, and it crouched with claws and fangs bared. My heart trembled at the sight, but it did nothing to slow the men down. They quickly surrounded the creature, triple blades held high in the hair.

  The stranger from the club turned toward me, his eyes full of power and darkness. And then everything went black.

  Chapter Four

  Dishes clattered around me as silence rained down upon the dinner table. I couldn’t get the images from the theatre out of my head. Blood splattering on the oil and grime covered pavement. Those empty eyes that stared up at me, begging for my help, accusing me of being helpless to stop the creature. Or accusing me of causing the wounds myself.

  I’d always felt like there was something wrong with me, like a strange shadow of darkness lurked behind me. And now I kept seeing things no one else could. My ears were turning into horns. Maybe it was my fault in some strange way. Maybe I was causing this.

  “Adeline said you were grounded, but you got home late from your job. If you can really call that a job.” My step-dad’s deep voice cut through the kaleidoscope of gruesome memories, sending a sharp chill into my bones. So my mom had told him she’d grounded me. That probably wasn’t going to end well. Any time he thought I stepped even a toenail out of line? Well, he didn’t react very well to that.

  “The show doesn’t end until eight. Rachel needed me to stay and help close up,” I said after swallowing the lump in my throat. I hadn’t told either of them what had happened. Because I couldn’t. If I did, there was no telling how my step-dad would react. He would either try to pin the blame on me or force me to quit my job, citing safety as the reason. But the truth was, he’d take any excuse to exert more control over my life. He’d never had much respect for my job at the theatre. Probably because it paid shit wages, and he was dying for me to get out of his hair.

  “Well maybe I’ll just call Rachel to confirm that.” He pointed at where my cell phone rested screen-down on the table and only showed the colorful music notes on the deep green case.

  “Dan.” My mom’s voice was horribly weak and deferent, almost as if she were afraid to speak up against him. Which, of course she was. The man was horrible, terrifying. The worst kind of alpha male mixed in with what I swore were sociopathic tendencies.

  I had no idea why she’d married him. No wait, that wasn’t true. I understood it, in a way. When they’d first met, Dan had been different, though I’d always sensed an undercurrent of something off. He’d wined and dined my mom, made her feel like a million bucks when she’d been lonely and depressed before. And then, slowly, almost so slowly that it was hard to spot at first, he began to change. The small snide, off-hand comments about her figure. The random comments about other women flirting with him. The slow and methodical alienation from her other friends. He made her think she needed him and that she was lucky to have him, when really it was the other way around.

  And now she was trapped.

  I wasn’t even sure she realized it, but I did. And that was why he hated me.

  He dropped his fork on his plate and levelled his eyes across the table. Immediately, she flicked her gaze down to the flowery tablecloth, something she’d only bought since Dan came along. Before she’d met him, she wouldn’t have been caught dead buying anything so feminine.

  “Now, listen, Adeline. You said yourself that Norah needs to have some more discipline in her life if she’s going to freeload off of us like this.” He gripped the edges of the table, his eyebrows furrowing. Anger simmered off of him, like his body was full of a darkness so profound that it couldn’t hold all of it inside of him.

  “I’m not freeloading,” I said. One thing I’d learned over the years: don’t talk back to Dan. But sometimes, like now, I couldn’t help myself, particularly when that rage was directed toward my mother. “I pay rent on my room.”

  He sneered, taking his attention away from my mom and placing it firmly on me. “You give us two hundred bucks a month. Do you know how much this apartment costs? Electricity? Cable? Internet? And let’s not forget this damn food.” He pointed at the cast iron skillet in the middle of the table, full to the brim with a delicious paella my mom had made from scratch. A dish that none of us were enjoying because of the dark tension in the room. “We live in Manhattan, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Dan,” came my mom’s pleading voice. “Please. Let’s not use that kind of language in front of Norah.”

  “She’s eighteen years old, Adeline, and she’s a high school graduate. You need to stop babying her. I’m fucking tired of her freeloading with no consequences. She either needs to get another job or get out.” He shoved his finger at the paella. “Now serve me some of that food, or I’ll start packing up her shit right now.”

  “Dan.” My mom’s eyes had gone glassy, and her knuckles were snow white where she gripped the napkin in her lap. “I think that’s enough. Norah is my daughter, and she’s not going anywhere. Not until she decides it’s time and she has the means to support herself.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath and sat up straight in the stiff dining chair. Well, this was certainly a first. Mom never stood up to Dan, not even when he transformed into the inner beast we both knew was beneath the handsome face.

  His face darkened, and his voice dropped into a strange, eerie, quiet calm. “You pay less a month than she does, Adeline.”

  A quiet threat, one that made my mom blink in shock. I’d seen him do this before. Anytime it might seem that Mom was grasping for some kind of control over a situation, Dan would turn the tables on her before she’d managed to find her feet. I didn’t believe for a second he would ever kick her out, and maybe M
om didn’t either, but there was enough fear there that it shut down her every objection. Because he was right. He supported her, fully and completely. She was broke without him.

  “You know what?” I asked as I pushed back my chair and stood. “I’ll serve you some paella. How’s that?”

  He pursed his lips, his gaze still locked on my mom, but then he nodded. “Maybe you aren’t so useless after all.”

  Lovely.

  Before Mom could object, I grabbed the skillet and moved to stand beside Dan so that I could spoon some paella onto his plate. But the moment my skin came into contact with the handles, the world became cloudy around me. Frowning, I blinked. Everything remained shifting blobs of dark and light.

  I gripped the handles tighter, taking deep breaths in through my nose. I couldn’t have another panic attack, not right now. Talk about the worst timing in the world. My step-dad would probably have me committed if he knew just how bad the attacks had become. But it was no use. Nausea churned through my stomach, my head felt light and full of swirling clouds, and my palms went slick with sweat.

  And then I lost my grip on the skillet. It fell with a heavy thud onto the hardwood floor, and rice and seafood soared through the air. Some of it splashed into my face, but I didn’t care. I needed some fresh air. I needed to sit down. I stumbled away from the dinner table, in the direction of my room.

  But a strong hand shot out and wrapped around my arm. It lurched me back. His grip was so tight that it sent sparks of pain through my body. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? You think you can just walk off and leave your mother to clean up your damn mess?”

  “Dan, please.” My mom’s voice was soft, pleading.

  “I’ll clean it up,” I said. “Just give me a minute. I feel dizzy.”

  I hated admitting that to this man, but I didn’t have any other choice. If he didn’t let me sit down, I might pass out.

  “Fine.” He let go of my arm. “Sit down in your chair and have some water. And then clean it up.”

  I estimated that I had maybe five minutes to recover before he lost his patience with me. At least it was better than nothing. With a heavy sigh, I slid back into my seat and closed my eyes, trying to reign in the fogginess that had filled my eyes.

  I almost immediately felt better. It was so strange. The second I’d picked up the skillet, I’d felt as if the entire world was going black, but the instant I let go, the nausea began to subside.

  There was something strange about that, something I couldn’t put my finger on. And it was as if the answer was somewhere deep within my mind. It was a thought that niggled at me, but one I couldn’t find. There was something causing my sudden nausea, but what? The doctor had called it a trigger, but how could a dish full of paella be a trigger? Did my body not like spices? But that didn’t make sense. My mom had been making me paella all my life, and I’d never had a negative reaction until now.

  Just as I took in my last deep breath and opened my eyes, the doorbell rang. Dan let out a grunt and threw his napkin onto the table, standing so abruptly that his chair almost toppled to the ground.

  He pointed at me. “Stay here and start cleaning up. If that’s one of your friends ringing our doorbell during dinnertime, you’re going to be in even more trouble than you are already.”

  And then he stormed off, his fisted hands shaking by his sides.

  As soon as he disappeared out of the room, I breathed a heavy sigh and slumped lower in my chair, thankful for the moment of sweet relief of not having my step-dad around, even if it would only last five seconds. Luckily, the person at the door wouldn’t be any of my friends. Mostly because Bree was pretty much the only one I had, and she knew better than to stop by during dinnertime. Bree knew all about my step-dad.

  “Norah, honey, you need to be more careful around him,” my mom said quietly, hands pressed tight against the napkin in her lap. “You know how he gets sometimes.”

  “Mom. Maybe he’s the problem and not me.”

  She hissed and flicked her eyes to the empty doorway. Deep voices drifted to us from the hallway, but thankfully, my step-dad hadn’t returned just yet. “Don’t say things like that. If you make him angry enough…”

  Her words trailed away into nothing. The truth was, neither of us knew just how far he would go if he got angry enough. And while I certainly didn’t want to find out, I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep my thoughts to myself. Things had to change and change soon. We couldn’t keep living like this.

  Footsteps thudded on the hardwood floor, and my step-dad darkened the doorway before stepping into the dining room. Behind him, two police officers stood with their hands resting lightly on the guns on their hips. My heartbeat roared in my ears, and a new kind of cloudiness began to creep into the corners of my eyes.

  I wanted to ask why they were here, but I already knew.

  It was about Lars’s murder.

  “Norah, these two police officers are here to ask you some questions about the death of one of the crew members at that theatre where you work.” His eyes flashed, full of anger. I had blatantly not told him about what had happened, and he was going to punish me for it.

  “Norah?” My mom rose from the table, her slender hands pressing against the wood for support. “What’s all this about? A death at the theatre? You didn’t mention something had happened there. Why didn’t you tell us?”

  I winced.

  “Yes, ma’am,” one of the officers said. “Your daughter is a witness, according to another witness of ours. Norah, are you free to answer some questions, or will we need to take you into the station?”

  I read between the lines. Either we could talk here, or they’d escort me into a police station where I’d be grilled in a little room with one-way windows.

  “We can go into the living room,” I said, pressing my sweaty palms against my jeans. “I’m happy to answer whatever questions you have.”

  Kind of. What could I say? A wolf monster killed Lars, but no one else could see it but me. Not even Lars had realized what had attacked him. And then four strange guys with golden skin fought the thing with swords and daggers before I’d passed out in the middle of the street, somehow ending up home even though I didn’t remember getting here. The police wouldn’t believe me. Hell, I wouldn’t even believe myself unless I’d seen it happen with my own two eyes.

  I didn’t know how to explain what I’d seen without sounding crazy. Or guilty.

  So, I lied. I weaved a story, one that sounded logical and realistic rather than something that sounded straight out of an episode of Teen Wolf. When I’d finished the explanation, both police officers jotted down notes, both uneasily silent about the whole thing.

  “So,” I said, clearing my throat. “It’s like I said. I didn’t actually see much. By the time I got into the alley, Lars’s attacker was already gone.”

  One of the cops looked up, a woman who had called herself Deputy Franklin. “The owner, Rachel Harris, mentioned that you were shouting about a monster. Do you care to elaborate on that?”

  From out of the corner of my eye, I could see the frown deepen on my step-dad’s face. He’d insisted on sitting in on the conversation, as well as my mother. They were going to shit some actual bricks when the police officers left.

  “I think she maybe misunderstood me,” I said. “I just meant that whoever did this to Lars is a monster. There was a lot of blood.” I swallowed hard and blinked back the tears that burned my eyes. “I think I was just in shock a little bit.”

  Deputy Franklin nodded, apparently accepting my scrabbled together answer.

  “Just one more question,” Officer Whitmore said, clicking shut his pen and resting it lightly on his knee. Something about that move struck me as odd, as if it wasn’t entirely genuine, as if he wasn’t actually relaxed about the question he was about to lob my way. And once he spoke, I knew why. “Rachel Harris also mentioned that your shift ended a full hour before she found Lars—and you—in the alley besi
de the theatre. I don’t suppose there’s a reason why you stuck around for so long after your shift?”

  I swallowed hard. Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  The first words I could think of popped right out of my mouth. “I was waiting to talk to someone I know who went in to watch the performance.”

  The officer clicked his pen. “And what’s the name of this friend of yours? We’d like to speak with them just to confirm.”

  My heart shuddered in my chest. This was going far worse than I thought it would. Partially because I kept sticking my foot right in my mouth.

  “Um…I don’t actually know his name.” I winced when the officer frowned. “See, the thing is…” I glanced over to my mom and her stark white face. Her eyes met mine, and they slightly widened, as if she knew exactly what I wanted—and needed—to say. She glanced at my step-dad and gave an imperceptible shake of her head. But I had no choice but to give a version of the truth. “It was a guy I met when I went out dancing last night for my birthday. I guess you could say I was...intrigued by him. So, when he showed up at the theatre with three of his friends, I wanted to talk to him since we hadn’t exchanged numbers….or names.”

  “I see.” The officer sounded skeptical, but I couldn’t blame him. It sounded ridiculous.

  The police officers asked me a few more questions, and then finally stood to go.

  “Thanks for your cooperation, but we’ll likely need to speak to you again,” Deputy Franklin said as the two of them hovered by the door. “It would be for the best if you didn’t leave town until we’ve wrapped up the case.”

  I’d binge-watched enough police procedural shows that I knew exactly what that meant. I was a suspect. Maybe their main suspect. And if I tried to get the hell out of dodge, they’d probably arrest me.

  When the door shut behind the cops, I had the sudden urge to fling it back open and beg them to take me into the station. Because I could just feel the piercing gaze of my step-dad on the back of my head.