Wicked is the night

by Catherine Mulvany

  Downtown Midas Lake was quiet at this hour, both vehicular and pedestrian traffic light. A couple of bars were still open, but even their customers were starting to thin out. Trick stopped at the red light across from the train depot.

  “Where did they park?” Nevada asked.

  “Who?” he asked. “The train passengers? I think there’s a parking lot on the other side of the depot.”

  “No,” she said. “The vampires. They didn’t pull into the driveway.”

  “Perhaps they left their car parked along the highway,” Marcello suggested.

  “I didn’t hear an engine start up,” she said. “When Sarge left, I mean.”

  “Maybe he escaped on foot,” Trick said, though damned if he could see why it mattered.

  “Possibly,” Nevada agreed, then after a lengthy pause, “Probably.”

  The light turned green. Maybe it was the reflection that made her look so sickly. And maybe not. “You’re staying in the house tonight,” he said, prepared for an argument, but she didn’t acknowledge his statement. He wasn’t sure she’d even heard it. Nevada seemed to be in a world of her own, a nightmare world, judging by her haunted expression. “How does your neck feel?”

  She put one hand to her throat, as if checking to see if it was still there. “Okay. Sore.”

  “She seems to be handling it well,” Marcello said, again speaking Italian.

  “Too well,” Trick said in the same language.

  Trick had made up a bed for Nevada in Blanche’s room. “If you need anything in the night—even if it’s only to talk—just yell. Marcello’s room is at the other end of the hall. He can come get me.”

  “I’m fine,” she told him, which was an out-and-out lie, but she didn’t want him to worry, not any more than he was already worrying. She never should have stayed here, never should ha‹nevas ve taken him up on the job offer. Her pursuers—no, make that her pursuer—knew where she was now, and it was only a matter of time before he tried again. This room felt safe, but safety was an illusion. The monster named Sarge would just keep coming again and again until he finally succeeded in killing her.

  And yes, that prospect terrified her, but what terrified her even more was the possibility that Trick or Marcello might get hurt—even killed—in the process. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—risk such an outcome.

  “Nevada?” Trick frowned at her from the doorway. What did he see in her face to put that worried expression on his? “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I just need some rest,” she said, even though sleep was the farthest thing from her mind. Tamping down the fear and guilt that threatened to overwhelm her, Nevada schooled her features into a pretense of calm. She could do this. After all, the Institute had provided her with years of practice at hiding her true emotions.

  Trick hesitated for a second or two longer, as if maybe her mask wasn’t fixed as securely in place as she’d thought, as if maybe he were picking up on some of that negative energy she was struggling so hard to hide. But in the end, he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Nevada gave it an hour—long enough for Trick and Marcello to fall asleep—before she stirred. Moving quietly, she dressed, packed a few essentials in the secondhand backpack she’d found at the Salvation Army, made sure she had her money and her pills, then, carrying her shoes, tiptoed in her stocking feet across the room.

  The door whined a protest when she opened it. She stood there frozen, waiting, her heart pounding. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. A lifetime.

  Gradually, she relaxed. Apparently the creaking door hadn’t been loud enough to disturb Marcello. She could hear the faint sound of his snores from a room at the opposite end of the hall.

  Slowly, she pulled the door shut. Again, it protested but not enough to cause a change in the rhythm of Marcello’s snores. One hurdle crossed.

  Silent as a whisper, Nevada made her way down one flight of stairs. She paused on the landing, listening hard. Nothing. If Trick was asleep, he wasn’t snoring.

  She fought the sudden foolish impulse to kiss him good-bye, proceeding instead down the last flight of stairs, then across the entryway to the front door. Quietly, she let herself out, then closed and locked the door behind her.

  Nevada paused on the front porch just long enough to slip into her shoes, tying and double-knotting the laces. Then she glanced back up at the house, the closest thing to a home she’d had in as long as she could remember. She didn’t want to go, but want and need were two separate animals. She needed to get away for her own good as well as for…

  Damn it, she’d meant to leave a note of explanation. What if Trick woke up and found her gone? What if he assumed she’d been kidnapped?

  No. Ridiculous. One glance at the closed windows and securely locked doors and he’d know better.

  Still, leaving this way felt wrong.

  <‹t="ckep height="0%" width="5%">Another alternative occurred to her. She walked around to the Jeep, dug a pen from her backpack, and used it to scribble a quick note on an unused napkin she found lying on the floor in the backseat. She placed the napkin on the center of the dash where Trick couldn’t miss it, then, before she could change her mind, set off for the main road at a fast walk.

  Trick, who’d assigned himself to guard duty, woke with a start. The last thing he remembered he’d been reading the latest Elvis Cole mystery, but apparently he’d fallen asleep sitting up in his chair before even finishing the first chapter, which was no reflection on the book but spoke instead to his own exhaustion. It seemed a million years since he’d watched Nevada eating veal parmigiana at the breakfast table.

  He stifled a jaw-cracking yawn, then stretched and shoved himself upright. Might as well make a quick patrol since he was up, check the doors and windows, make sure Marcello and Nevada were okay. He took a single step, stumbled, and nearly fell.

  Glancing down to see what had tripped him up, he spotted his book. It stared accusingly back at him. “Abandon me in the middle of chapter one, will you?” it seemed to say.

  He picked it up, placed it carefully on a table out of harm’s way, and then set off on his rounds.

  Once he’d reassured himself that all the doors and windows were locked up tight, the shutters latched across the broken window, reinforced now with a sheet of plywood, he made his way to the third floor. He paused outside Marcello’s door.

  His assistant was snoring softly. No need to disturb him.

  Trick walked to the other end of the hall, pausing outside Nevada’s door. No snoring. No sounds at all. He knocked softly but got no response. Carefully, he eased open the door so the light from the hall fell across the threshold, illuminating the bed.

  The empty bed. If the covers had simply been tossed aside, he’d have assumed Nevada had just slipped down the hall to the bathroom, but the bed had been stripped, the sheets and blankets neatly folded.

  So where was Nevada? Could she have returned to the apartment over the stables? Surely not. Not with the psycho vampire still on the loose.

  Don’t panic, he told himself. There’s probably a perfectly logical explanation.

  Right. Like she’d been sucked through a rift in the space-time continuum and ended up lost somewhere two centuries in the future.

  Only in that case, would she have had time to fold up her bedding? Obviously not. So wherever she’d gone, she’d gone there of her own free will. She hadn’t been coerced or kidnapped or even time-warped.

  The question was, where would she have gone in the middle of the night?

  And the answer was, away, somewhere far away, somewhere, hopefully, where there weren’t any psycho vampires waiting to suck her dry.

  She didn’t trust him to protect her. She’d seen his pitiful showing in the battle earlier. Hell, a shovel. What had he been thinking?

  But she must know she’d be safer with him and Marcello than wandering around on her own. What if she tried to hitch a ride and got picked up by another pervert like the logging truck dri
ver? Or worse, what if the first car that stopped was Sarge’s? Had she thought of that? No, she’d gone running blindly off into the night.

  He paused in the midst of his mental rant, brought up short by an alternative scenario that had just occurred to him. What if she hadn’t gone running off at all? What if she’d taken the Wrangler?

  He crossed to a window overlooking the driveway. Moonlight glimmered off the Jeep’s rear bumper.

  So she was on foot.

  No, calm down, think clearly, and quit jumping to unfounded conclusions. He didn’t even know for sure that she’d left the premises and wouldn’t until he’d done a thorough search.

  Fifteen minutes later, having looked everywhere except the beach—the path was too slippery to risk—he was 99 percent certain she’d run. The only other possibility that occurred to him, admittedly a long shot, was that she’d appealed to Britt for help, thinking she’d be safer at the lodge, locked away in an anonymous hotel room.

  He dialed Britt’s private number.

  “Yes?” She answered on the second ring, sounding groggy.

  “This is Trick. Nevada’s gone, and I’m worried. Have you seen her?” Please tell me that you’ve seen her.

  “Not since yesterday morning. Why? What happened? I heard you had the EMTs out there earlier.”

  “Nevada and Marcello were attacked.”

  Britt drew in a startled breath. “Is he…are they…all right?”

  “We thought Marcello had a concussion at first. He took a pretty nasty blow to the head. But the ER doctor said not. Apparently he has a harder head than I thought. As for Nevada, physically, the damage was minimal, but mentally, I think she was pretty traumatized. I tried to get her to talk about it, but she said she was tired and wanted to get some sleep. When I went up to check on her a while ago, she was gone.”

  “But where would she go?” Britt asked.

  “I was hoping you’d tell me she’d shown up on your doorstep.”

  “No,” Britt said. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Then she’s on the run,” he said. “Scared out of her mind and on the run. I’ve got to find her. But…may I ask a big favor of you?”

  “Of course,” she said without hesitation.

  “The man who attacked Nevada and Marcello? He’s dangerous. Dangerous and persistent. I have to find Nevada before she gets hurt, but I don’t think it’s safe for Marcello to stay here by himself. If his attacker comes back…” He let it trail off, hoping she would take the hint.

  “You want‹&ldatt Marcello to stay here at the lodge.”

  “Yes, I do, but not as a registered guest. There can’t be any record. In fact, it would be best if no one knew he was there, not even the staff.”

  “But how? Oh,” Britt said. “You want him to stay in my suite.”

  “Please, Britt. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important.”

  “I know. It’s just…” She paused for so long that he thought she was going to say no. “Okay,” she said finally. “I know I’m going to regret this, but okay, he can stay here. Have him call when he’s ready to come across, and I’ll go downstairs to let him in the back door.”

  “Thanks, Britt. I owe you.”

  “Big-time,” she said sourly.

  He hung up without even saying good-bye. Ten rather traumatic minutes later, having convinced an extremely reluctant Marcello that staying with Britt was the only intelligent option, he grabbed the keys to the Wrangler and headed out the door.

  Seemed like she’d been walking for hours. In all that time, Nevada had seen no more than a dozen cars, and none of them had stopped. Although this secondary road provided the most direct route to San Francisco, heading this way had probably been a mistake. Traffic was light at this hour, even lighter than she’d expected. And that didn’t bode well for her chances of catching a ride any time soon.

  If she had a lick of sense, she’d hike back into Midas Lake and hitch a ride at the Stop ’N Go. But returning to Midas Lake would mean backtracking, and she didn’t want to do that if she could avoid it. Too much chance of running into someone she knew, someone who might later report her whereabouts to Trick. She knew if he had any idea where she’d gone, he’d try to follow her. And damn it, she’d already put him in enough danger.

  Time to stand on her own two feet. Literally.

  She shivered in the cold night air. Her hoodie wasn’t warm enough for the nighttime temperatures here in the mountains. Below freezing, judging by the way her breath made those little white clouds. She pulled up her hood, stuffed her chilly hands deep in the pockets of her sweatshirt, and walked a little faster.

  Something moved with a furtive rustle among the trees on the opposite side of the highway. Startled, Nevada froze. The forest was full of animals, she told herself, most of them harmless.

  But not all. Not bears. Not mountain lions.

  More rustling noises broke the stillness. Then she heard the sharp crack of a branch breaking. Nevada held her breath, not sure if she should stand her ground or run and hide.

  Then a doe came into view, carefully picking its way down the mountainside, and Nevada released her breath in a sigh of relief.

  No sooner had the doe reached the graveled shoulder of the highway than a second doe appeared, following in the footsteps of the first. By the time the first doe had crossed the blacktop, a third had come inching its way down the hill, moving more‹ll,ed, slowly than the first two.

  The first one had crossed the road at a trot, then disappeared into the trees on Nevada’s side of the highway. After a moment’s hesitation, the second had followed. Neither animal had spared Nevada a glance. But the third doe made it only to the center line before pausing midstep and fixing her with suspicious look.

  Nevada didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t even blink.

  Apparently reassured, the doe broke eye contact, clicked across the second half of the highway, then vanished into the trees.

  Cheered by the encounter, Nevada resumed her hike, trudging another half mile or so without seeing a single living soul. She’d almost talked herself into turning around and heading back to Midas Lake when she heard a vehicle coming, the sounds faint at first but quickly growing louder. Something with a powerful engine, moving fast.

  It roared up the incline behind her, the noise echoing off the steep mountainsides.

  This one probably won’t stop, either, she told herself but, standing well off the paved surface, her back pressed against the guardrail, she held out her thumb anyway.

  Headlights appeared suddenly as the vehicle crested the rise, two blinding beams bearing down on her at an alarming speed.

  Surely the driver could see her. Her dark clothing provided a stark contrast to the white ribbon of guardrail behind her. But the car, something big and dark, flashed by without even slowing.

  It missed her by a good five or six feet but created enough of a draft to pull down her hood and whip her hair into her face. Jerk. She was already cold enough without his help.

  Perhaps the driver hadn’t seen her until he was right on her, or perhaps he’d had a sudden change of heart. Whatever the reason, he suddenly slammed on his brakes, squealing to a stop fifty yards beyond the spot where she stood. Then he put it in reverse and began backing up.

  The car was a Crown Victoria, she realized with a nasty jolt, the same model her pursuers had driven. Could it be the same car? What were the odds?

  Run! her brain ordered. But before she could even decide which direction to bolt, the car pulled to a stop next to her. She searched the empty highway. No help. No help in either direction.

  She glanced over her shoulder, trying to see how far she’d roll if she threw herself over the guardrail. Too far, she decided, since she couldn’t see the bottom of the steep slope. Too far, too rocky, too dangerous.

  The driver’s window rolled down. “Need a ride?”

  Not Sarge. Relief washed over her.

  She couldn’t see the driver very clearly; sh
e could tell, however, that he was both younger and slighter than the vampire.

  The passenger leaned across the driver, another male, late teens or early twenties. “Yeah, babe, want a ride.” She could smell the alcohol fumes from where she stood.

  Babe?

  “Where are you headed?&rdquo‹u high; the passenger asked.

  Maybe she could pretend they were going in the wrong direction. But no, that wouldn’t fly. She’d stuck her thumb out, and why would she have done that if the car had been going in the wrong direction?

  “We’re on our way back to Auburn,” the driver said.

  “Hey, don’t be so hasty, Travis,” the passenger chided. “We’re flexible. We’ll take you anywhere you want, babe.”

  “Flexible? Hell, yeah, we’re a bunch of damned rubber bands,” she heard from the back seat.

  So there were three of them then. Maybe four.

  “I appreciate the offer,” she lied. “Unfortunately, I have this rule about riding with drunk drivers, and it’s pretty clear that you guys have been partying tonight.”

  “We have, yeah, but not Travis,” the front seat passenger said. “He’s our designated driver.”

  “Not to mention a stick-in-the-mud.” A hand reached up to cuff the back of the driver’s head.

  “Knock it off,” Travis said.

  “What’re you doing out here in the middle of nowhere anyhow?” someone yelled from the far side of the backseat.

  “My boyfriend and I had a fight.” She shrugged. “I took off.”

  “Looks like your boyfriend’s stupidity is our good luck,” the front seat passenger said.

  “Amen!” The rear door swung open. “Get in. We’ll move over.” The burly young man sitting there gestured with his beer can for her to come closer.

  “Better yet,” the guy sitting on the other side said, “she can squeeze in between us. Emphasis on the squeeze.” He laughed uproariously at his own lame joke.

  “Thanks,” she said, “but no thanks.”

  “Now, don’t be like that.” The blocky young man with the beer can stumbled out of the car, so drunk that he nearly took a header on the pavement. After regaining his balance, he staggered over to the shoulder of the road, a silly grin on his face. “Want a drink?” He shoved the beer can in her face.