Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "C'mon, Dmitri, cough up the bucks!" Manley whined. "Won 'em off you fair an' square at pool."

  "Actually," I purred, taking a step toward Sandovsky. "I think your friend here should spend that money on me himself."

  Something dark flickered in Dmitri's eyes, and his smile widened to show shockingly white, straight teeth. "Manley, take a hike," he said without removing his eyes from me.

  "Aw, c'mon, Dmitri! She's so hot, man…"

  Sandovsky turned on Manley and growled. Not just the raspy sound most humans make but an actual growl, deep and rumbling. Manley turned tail and fled to the other side of the room. Sandovsky swiveled back to me. "Where were we?"

  "Well." I smiled, giving my shoulders a little shimmy and pushing my chest forward. "You were gonna tell me what you wanted me to do?"

  His grin almost split his face apart. That's right, Sandovsky. This is the luckiest night of your life.

  "Beautiful, what I want is for you to tell me."

  Oh, he was good. I bet those bedroom eyes and that voice made of hard dust alone made girls' panties moisten. It was sure working on me…

  Focus, Luna. Homicidal sex killer here. Not someone you should find remotely attractive. And you better get him out of here fast, lady, before all his pack buddies realize what you are.

  I chuckled low in my throat, placing my hand on his thigh. Hard and muscled. No softness under my palm. "Should we go somewhere?"

  Dmitri took another lazy swig of his beer. "You can talk dirty to me right here."

  Damn it all.

  I leaned into his face and breathed out, lips an inch from his. "Have you heard the one where I take you into bed, push you down, straddle you, and then…" I unhooked my cuffs from my waist and let them dangle in Sandovsky's face. "… arrest you, handcuff you, and take you in?" I finished.

  Sandovsky's eyes popped. "What the fuck is this?"

  "Dmitri Sandovsky, you're under arrest for the murder of Lilia Desko," I said crisply. "Turn around and put your hands on the bar."

  He laughed at me before I could start in on the Miranda warning, so hard some beer sloshed out of the bottle he was holding. "Sweetie, that's great, but there's such a thing as takin' the fantasy too far. You're not a cop. You're just Insoli trash. And if you were a cop in this place, you'd be in deep shit."

  "Sweetie," I said, taking my badge off its clip and slapping it on the bar, trying to hide the shock I felt at the fact he had discerned my Insoli standing, "this isn't anyone's fantasy, I am a cop, and the only one here in deep shit is you." Lilia's torn throat came into my head, and my voice hardened as I thought of how Dmitri had been the one to tear it. "Put your hands on the bar. Now."

  Sandovsky looked at the shield, at me, at the shield again.

  "You said Lilia Desko," he said finally.

  "That's right," I agreed.

  "Lilia's dead?"

  "I don't know, Sandovsky. Why don't you tell me, seeing as you're the one who killed her."

  "When?"

  "Get your hands up and be quiet," I snapped. "You do have the right to remain silent. Use it."

  I expected rage, screaming, Sandovsky putting up a fight. Instead his entire body began to shake, and tears sprouted at the corners of his eyes.

  "Lilia's dead," he said again, testing the words.

  "Yes, Mr. Sandovsky, she is," I told him, reaching for his arm to restrain him.

  He lashed out, sweeping a collection of beer bottles off the bar. "Fuck!" he screamed, collapsing to his knees, quaking with sobs. "She can't be!"

  Real grief is hard to fake. A six-foot-four were biker having a breakdown in full view of his packmates is damn near impossible.

  "Mr. Sandovsky?" I said softly. "I need to take you in."

  He looked up at me, and I could see the wheels turning in his head, weighing the odds.

  Then he slowly got up and placed big, scarred hands flat on the bar. I grabbed his right wrist and pulled it behind bis back. Rougher than I needed to be, but he shouldn't have called me trash. The room had gone quiet. Was this Old West or what? I half expected a posse to burst through the front door.

  "You're making a mistake," Sandovsky told me as the handcuff locked around his wrist. He wasn't shaking anymore, but he was pale under the goatee and had the shattered look of a man whose entire world had just been rearranged.

  "You made a bigger one when you killed Lilia," I told him with a snarl of my own. Being around so many weres was making me cranky.

  "I didn't kill Lilia," he muttered. "Didn't even know she was dead." Was it my imagination, or did something stir in his eyes—regret? His mouth tightened. His lips were full and expressive, at odds with his angular cheeks and chin. And why was I noticing this?

  "What bastard did it?" Sandovsky demanded.

  "Why do you care? She was just your whore," I said, reaching for his other arm. The pure hurt in his expression caught me off guard, and it was all the time he needed to rotate his upper body and hit me in the side of my head with his uncuffed hand.

  My skull exploded like a flashbulb had gone off inside it. Sandovsky knocked me sideways into the bar, wrenched his secured arm from my grip, and barreled out the door. I pulled myself upright, ears ringing. My vision skewed distinctly to one side, and the cold, detached part of my brain told me I had a nasty concussion coming.

  Were strength. Like meeting a Mack truck head-on.

  Manley and his little friends had gathered in a half circle around me, watching with bright eyes to see what I might do for my next trick. Leaning on the bar and willing myself not to fall over again was about all I could manage.

  One of the cronies pulled a knife. Big, silver, a fixed-blade hunting job. "Where you goin', pretty?' he mocked. All the men had the same snarling wolf head on some part of their clothing. Thanks, Sandovsky, for running out and leaving me with your chorus line.

  At least he'd also left me his empty beer bottle. I tapped it hard against the bar and then brought the jagged end to Hunting Knife's neck, at the spot where his carotid artery pulsed under the skin.

  "Back off or I bleed you." No gun. I had no gun. Why had I come into this place with no gun? Curiosity may have it in for the cat, but tonight it had killed the damn werewolf.

  The pack circled me, closing in so I could barely move my arms. They were amused by my attempt to protect myself. I was prey.

  Only one thing could possibly work in my favor here and that was not being a pack member. No ranking meant no way to judge how much dominance these jerkoffs had over me. Dominance among weres exists mostly to keep the new bites in line, but it can turn ugly fast when folks decide they don't like their place in the pecking order.

  "Neil, mebbe you should teach her it ain't nice to play rough," Manley chortled.

  I stepped up to Neil's big black boots, leaning in until our noses were less than an inch apart and I could smell the hot dog and relish he'd eaten on his breath. I stared into his eyes, keeping the bottle on his neck. "Move," I growled. The were echoed, telling Neil he was nothing, a simpering pup compared with me. He would be torn apart if he stood against me. I was powerful, he was weak. I dominated, he got the hell out of my way.

  I almost felt the air go out of Neil. The smell coming off him changed from a musky stink to sour, like stale urine. His jaw quivered, and he dropped his eyes from mine, knife arm falling to his side.

  "Shit," Manley muttered in an awed tone. The pack parted.

  I had no time to parse that I had successfully dominated a group of weres on their own territory. I was glad to be alive, and out the door faster than Sandovsky, running to close the gap between us.

  Five

  At the street I stopped and sniffed, drawing odd looks from a group of passing clubgoers. Sandovsky was distinctive, his stricken body odor harsh even in the stench that surrounded Cannery Street. He had gone north and I followed suit.

  Run hard, remembering the six-minute mile that qualified me for the police academy. Pour my extra-strong heart and enlarged lu
ngs into the chase, feel my muscles work in tandem with my blood and breathing.

  Sandovsky's scent trail ended in an alley three blocks up, at a blank brick wall slick with moss and grit. Surrounded by high walls, the alley was pitch-black. I breathed slowly and listened. Nothing. Well, unless Sandovsky could pass through walls, he was still in the alley waiting for the chase to run on by.

  A quick scan showed me a rickety fire escape ladder about five feet up. No stretch for a big guy like Sandovsky. I jumped, caught the third rung, and pulled myself up, climbing quickly and wishing harder and harder that McAllister hadn't taken my gun.

  The tenement roof was rotten, exposed tar paper flaring from underneath the shingles. It was like every other crumbling building in the city—a flat surface with half a dozen chimneys and an access door labeled CONDEMNED—NOCTURNE CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY in bright orange letters.

  I whispered into the night air. "Sandovsky?"

  Heavy breathing answered me from behind one of the half-destroyed chimneys, along with growling.

  My heartbeat quickened. That definitely hadn't been human. If Sandovsky was some kind of witch in addition to being a were—Stop it, I told myself. I reached into my empty holster, brushed leather with my fingers, and cursed silently. I made two fists instead, as if whatever was behind that chimney could be dealt a good hard punch and that would be that.

  It growled again. Something like a large dog, only lower and with more bloodthirsty menace creeping along the undertones.

  My fear put on rage as a mask. "Whatever you are, get the hell out here!" I ordered.

  Heavy treads sounded, and something low and bulky padded into the sickly half-moon light reflecting off the bay. A canine head with pricked ears, yellow eyes that glowed from under heavy brows, and startlingly bright white teeth protruding from under a curled lip.

  The red-furred wolf stared at me and growled again.

  "Oh … crap" was all I mustered as my mind raced at a thousand miles an hour, telling me this was not possible, the full moon was six days away, a werewolf that had been Dmitri Sandovsky was not, not, not looking at me.

  Then I saw the handcuffs still locked around the wolf's right paw and I went cold.

  He lifted his foot and shook off the offending link. It slipped away easily and landed with a thud on the rotten rooftop. He took a step toward me. Another. Stalking his kill.

  I reached out with my foot, bumped a broken brick, picked it up. I might have been about to meet the same end as Lilia, but I would fight just as hard.

  Sandovsky continued his measured progress toward me. I gripped the brick and prepared to smash it into his head in the same spot he'd hit me. A grievously injured were would phase back to human. Another bit I'd learned the hard way.

  About five feet away Sandovsky stopped and licked his lips, black nostrils flaring to scent the wind. The rooftop creaked under us. As a man, Sandovsky was big but slim, maybe 220. As a wolf he had to weigh close to four hundred pounds.

  He bared his fangs, and his back legs tensed. A roar erupted from his throat and then he was airborne, his wide maw coming straight at my face.

  I screamed and slammed the brick into him, missing his temple and bouncing it off the back of his skull. I doubt he even noticed. His weight landed on my shoulders, dropping me like a sack of dead Luna. Nothing flashed before my eyes except Sandovsky's wolf face, and pure, unadulterated panic boiled my gut. I thrashed wildly under Sandovsky's weight, adrenaline doing its damndest to keep me breathing.

  As Sandovsky reared back his head to tear out my throat and end his hunt, the wood underneath us gave way with a roar and we plummeted through the timbers. Plaster, insulation, and broken brick followed us down, covering me in an oppressive cloud of dust and rubble.

  Too much. I blacked out as my body bit solid wood, the last thing I heard the crashing of beams and roof falling on top of me.

  There is an iron band across my chest. No, an arm, a human arm, strong and masculine, adorned by a snake tattoo. The snake rears back, fangs reaching for me, and I feel his bite as the man's body presses down on my ribs, cracking me and crushing me and squeezing blood through my pores.

  I gasped for air as I came to, roof beam holding me to the floor. The facts presented: I was alive and Sandovsky was gone.

  Thrashing and kicking, I threw the beam off me and stood up. My right knee immediately gave out and I sank to the ground again, fighting tears.

  I have a horrible phobia of being pinned, ever since I got the bite. It's been fifteen years, but I still wake up fifteen and on my back with Joshua holding me down, straining and panting as he sank pointed canines into my skin when I fought him. My shoulder throbbed where the crescent-shaped bite scar still showed, and I rubbed reflexively. Hiding it from my mother had been a real trick. My father was usually under a car or the influence, and couldn't have cared less.

  After a minute I tried to stand up again and sort of managed it. A door-shaped hole led to a balcony, five stories up. My knee would be supporting me again by the time I walked out of this tenement thanks to were DNA, but the pain would take its sweet time to fade.

  "Hex you, Sandovsky," I muttered as I started the five-story gauntlet toward the ground. He could turn into a were at will. All were packs had their magicks, passed down from the founder of their Line, but this was beyond anything I had ever witnessed.

  Sandovsky was strong, dangerous, and a murderer. And with six days before the full moon, I had to work fast. Headstrong as Sunny and McAllister thought I was, I knew that if I faced Sandovsky at full phase, I would lose. And from what I'd seen of Sandovsky, he wasn't inclined to be merciful.

  * * * *

  The waitress's name tag said DORIE. I hobbled through the door of the tiny diner and flopped into the nearest booth, which gave off a sweaty odor. It could have been coated in thumbtacks for all I cared right that second.

  "You okay, honey?" DORIE yelled at me from behind the counter. "If yer a drunk, sleep it off someplace else!" She squinted at my face and then announced at the same volume, "Holy cow, you're bleedin'!"

  "Among other things," I said. My knee felt like a small, determined dog was chewing on it. I pulled out my cell and started to dial Sunny.

  "No cells in here!" Dorie hollered. "The radio waves mess up your brain!"

  I yanked my shield off my belt and waved it at her. "Police business. Leave me alone."

  She came closer and examined the shield. I prayed she wouldn't bite it to check for gold. "That real?"

  "No, I shoplifted it from the toy store."

  "I don't need none of your lip, missy," she informed me.

  "Then just let me make my gods damn call and I'll be sweet as pie," I told her with a wide, fake smile.

  Dorie grumbled but waddled away and let me be. I dialed and Sunny answered with an "Mmmhello?"

  "Sunny? It's Luna."

  "Luna!" she exclaimed, and I could picture her bolting up out of her sheets in panic. "Oh, Hex, who died? Are you hurt? Did you shoot someone?"

  "Why do you always assume the worst?"

  "What happened!"

  "Never you mind. Look, Sunny—I'm at the Waterfront, and I can't drive home with my knee, so I need you to grab a cab and take me and the Fairlane home."

  "What happened to your knee?"

  "Sunny?"

  "Yes, Luna?"

  "I'm in a lot of pain. Tonight would be nice."

  She sounded truly worried, like she might cry. "Why can't you call for backup? Lieutenant McAllister will be worried sick!"

  Somehow, I thought now might not be a great moment to tell my hyperemotional cousin I'd gotten suspended. Call it a hunch.

  "Sunny, I'm in the…" I searched for a sign and saw it reflected in the diner window—STAE ETIN LLA. "All Nite Eats diner on Cannery. Come get me, and we'll take it from there. Hurry, Sunny." I closed the cell gently. Dorie was still staring at me.

  "You wanna cuppa?" she finally said.

  "From this place?" I said. "I'd have
to be suicidal."

  * * * *

  After Sunny drove the Fairlane home and I fell into bed, I dreamed about Joshua, who gave me the bite, and his howling screams as I'd escaped and run from his van. These dreams were so real I could feel the warm blood coursing down my shoulder and smell the salty tang of late-night San Romita air.

  "You have no idea how bad it will be if you leave, bitch!"

  I stumbled over rocks, my bare feet prey to the ground as I scrambled up the beach path. Far below me, Joshua exploded out of the van, yanking on boxers as he gave chase. He had seemed dangerous at the bonfire, but not this—not a man who'd make me bleed and certainly not a rapist.

  "Luna! Get your ass back here! It was just a little love bite, baby!"

  Crying and half naked, I made it to the coast highway and took off at a run. I'd gotten away in time, while he had his pants tangled around his ankles. I didn't have to look back—I knew what was behind me.

  "Luna!"

  My mind broke the surface of consciousness.

  "Luna!"

  I was in my bed, dressed in pajamas I never wore but that were familiar and mine. My entire body felt like it had been disassembled and then put back together by slightly sadistic mad scientists.

  "Luna! Phone!"

  Sunny's voice carried up the stairs and made my entire head split with pain.

  "Luna—"

  "I heard you!" I bellowed. "I'm awake! I'm coming!" A wave of dizziness engulfed me. Yelling at Sunny, apparently, was not something the Headache Gods favored.

  Standing, either. My knee screamed as I tried to put weight on it, but it wasn't as wobbly as it had been last night. I pulled up the leg of the pajamas—lavender and pink stripes decorated with sprigs of flowers—and examined it. It was swollen, and my thigh was one solid royal blue bruise.

  I made it down the stairs with slightly less grace than Frankenstein's monster. Sunny was holding the cordless phone by its antenna, glaring at me.

  "It's McAllister," she sniffed.

  "What's your problem?" I demanded, taking the phone when she shoved it at me.

  "Oh dear, let's see—we have the frantic phone calls at two AM, me not knowing if you're alive or dead most nights, and oh, don't forget the bitchy attitude that makes everything you put me through so much easier to handle."