by Juniper Hart
There was a man outside, tall, gaunt and somewhat awkward.
Jeffrey.
The postman.
“Hey, Jeff,” she said, lowering the coffee.
“Package for you, ma’am!”
“A package? I didn’t order anything.”
“That’s something you’ll need to take up with someone else,” he said with a cheery smile. Jeffrey was like Cara—he hated his job, but he could put on a happy face when he needed to.
“Um…okay.”
She closed the door on him and returned to her bed, setting the coffee on the nightstand. She ripped into the package. There, inside some bubble wrap, was a single cobalt blue business card.
There was nothing on the card. No name or address—just a single, stark phone number in the very middle, printed with shimmering gray letters.
She frowned, flipping it over a couple times to see if she had missed something. Nope. She’d been right the first time; it was just a mysterious, single card. It felt nice under her fingers—rich and pleasantly textured.
Cara set the card aside. Whoever it belonged to, she wasn’t interested. It was probably just some scam artist. Nowadays, you could get five-hundred cards like that for less than a nice meal. She was willing to bet it was like those email scams; just click on the link and get a lovely virus. The last thing she needed right then was someone to remotely attack her phone.
The rest of the day was pretty boring. She just worked on her story and waited for the rain to die down. It never did. It kept pouring the entire day, nonstop.
Chapter 2
On Sunday, the rain finally broke. Cara took the opportunity to run to the store to grab some groceries. As she was driving, she couldn’t help but think about that card. Why would someone send her a card? It just didn’t add up.
First of all, a true scammer wouldn’t have just put a number on the card. They would’ve made it all pretty, nice and attractive – probably with a pamphlet that tried to convince victims to call the number by promising debt consolidation or a fat burning solution.
Second of all, she was hardly a good person to target for any sort of scam. Fat burning? She was already slim. She took care of herself. She ate kale and quinoa, and drank kombucha. Sometimes she went to the gym before all the guys checked her out and made her uncomfortable to the point of making her leave. Debt? Nope. She was one of those rare people that plugged away at debt and lived frugally. Except for Netflix, her laptop, and basic necessities, she had a very inexpensive lifestyle. She wasn’t sure what she was saving for. It wasn’t like she had some grand plan, daringly buying into real estate and becoming crazy rich. It just felt right to have a nest egg hidden for emergencies.
She shifted lanes in traffic and spotted a glaringly unattractive car behind her. To some folks, it was probably an awesome car, but to her, it just spewed classlessness. It was a supped-up town car with spinning rims and a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the front mirror. The whole body was covered in glittering purple-black paint. She couldn’t see much of the guy driving it from behind the darkened windshield. She just assumed it was a guy. Sexist? Maybe. Did she care? No, not really.
She kept driving and put on the blinker to get off the interstate. The obnoxious car did the same.
She shifted off the interstate toward the grocery store. A little while later, she changed lanes. The other car did too. Finally, the store’s sign came into view and she pulled in.
The car kept driving.
She let out a sigh of relief that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She was awfully tense recently. First, she got nervous about answering the door and getting attacked, and then, she thought the guy in the ugly car was following her. The poor guy was probably just trying to head home after dropping a kid off at choir practice or something, and here she was, wondering if she should be ready to call the cops. She wasn’t normally that nervous. Maybe it was the card that was putting her on edge.
She tried to shake it off as she shopped. It was like a game—pick up one thing and put one down. Pick up one gallon of almond milk and put down the stress of being single for the past year. Pick up some bananas and put down the irritation that everyone was texting her about their one-night-stand regrets from the night out that she had skipped.
As she checked out, she noticed the cashier taking a glimpse of her. His eyes widened for just a moment as he glanced over her body. It was gross. Sometimes she was okay with guys checking her out. Other times? No.
This was one of those no times.
“How are you today?” he asked.
“Fine.”
All she wanted to do was get her food and go. He kept trying to engage in conversation, obviously flirting. Some people are good at flirting; they smile at the appropriate times, wink, and ask the right questions. Cara thought she was quite talented at it, on the rare occasion she was actually attracted to someone. Sadly, the cashier didn’t do it for her. He was too…soft. She felt like she could just push him over and he’d apologize for falling. If she, quiet little Cara, felt that way about him…it wasn’t good for his cause.
She wandered back out to the parking lot to put the groceries in her car. It was a Honda, one of the old ones. She wasn’t going to wow anyone with its looks, but it was dependable and had good gas mileage. Mindlessly, she tossed the groceries in the back and sat in the front seat.
She inserted the key and the engine fired up. She put it in reverse and turned to back up, when she saw the man in her back seat, calmly smirking at her.
She shrieked at the top of her lungs and accelerated wildly, then slammed on the breaks, sending the guy flying between the front two seats into the dash. She accelerated again and spun the wheel to avoid hitting another car or one of those cart corrals, but this time, her foot stayed on the gas.
The mystery man involuntarily jerked forward from his seat due to Cara’s erratic driving, and his face hit the gearshift with enough force that the car shifted into park. The car screeched to a halt, saved from smashing into any number of inanimate objects.
Cara screamed. “Holy shit! Who are you and what are you doing in my car?”
He peeled himself off the gearshift. A thin stream of goldish liquid was leaking out from his mouth. “You made me bite my tongue!”
He had golden blood? But she had other things to worry about, namely the fact that there was a man she didn’t know that had somehow managed to sneak into her locked car.
“Get out!” she screamed.
Nobody outside the car looked worried. When she’d nearly plowed through some other vehicles, she’d attracted a couple glances, but nobody seemed too concerned.
“Calm down,” he snapped, putting a hand to his nose.
She went for the door, but he beat her there. He lunged across her chest and slammed the lock button. It slid down with a pleasing snap. He grabbed her hands to keep her from running away.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
His voice sounded like a cello being gently stroked – deep, strong, and oddly soothing.
“Just listen to me.”
Cara wasn’t sure if it was the shock setting in, but she nodded her head in agreement. She couldn’t believe it; someone was in her car. She was being held captive in her own vehicle in the parking lot of a large store, with lots of people around.
He released her hands, and she didn’t go for the door. He’d beat her to it once. He could beat her to it again.
“W…why are you in my car?” she hissed. Where was that pepper spray? She’d carried around one of those little vials of pepper spray for years. Dammit! She’d left it in the glove box.
He clambered into the front seat, which is where she got a great view of him. He was built like a bull, laden with muscle, but not too muscular to inhibit his movement. He looked strong and fast, like a professional athlete. His golden, tanned skin complemented his dark hair.
“You’re in danger,” he said, meeting her eyes. His eyes were striking, and wer
e like nothing she’d ever seen before. They were light brown, almost orange, with a tint of gold right around the pupil. Cara wasn’t sure why her brain decided to isolate the peculiar color of his eyes right then, but it did.
What really confused her was that her heart fluttered.
“In danger? From you?” she snapped back.
“No, from Ezekiel.”
He raised his brawny arm to point across the parking lot. There, across a couple minivans, was the glittering purple car.
He had followed her after all.
Any doubt she might have had was eliminated when she saw the fuzzy dice. She noticed the smallest hint of movement inside.
The guy in her car kept talking, which was a good thing. She couldn’t even form words. A stranger—a male stranger—was in her car, and it seemed that someone was following her. It was like an action movie, one that she wasn’t willingly a part of. No, it wasn’t an action movie; it was a horror movie.
But she didn’t see any directors and she didn’t see any cameras. She had no choice but to hear her captor out.
“Ezekiel’s been following me for months now,” he said. “Ezekiel and a bunch of bastards just like him. Now they’re following you. They think you’re working with me. Speaking of which…why didn’t you call me?”
“You’re the one who left me the card?”
“Obviously.”
There was a pause. She groaned.
“You’re waiting for me to ask, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Why’d you send me the card?”
“I need your help.”
“I can’t help you! I tend to have a strict policy against helping men who have kidnapped me.”
“I didn’t kidnap you.”
“You’re holding me hostage in my own car!”
He raised his eyebrow, folded his arms, and sat back.
“Go ahead. Leave if you want. But know that Ezekiel won’t buy your story of innocence. He’s going to kill you.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“What if I told you that there are things that you don’t know about the world? What if I told you that your mortal eyes have only seen the smallest sliver of reality? Just one page out of an entire book?”
“I’d take the blue pill. Or is it the red one?”
His smile faded into a snarl for a moment, which is when she noticed he had sharp teeth. His two canines were sharp, almost like fangs.
“Ha. Very funny. I knew you wouldn’t be easy to convince.” Sighing, he said, “You humans never are…”
With that, a frightening change overtook him.
One moment, he was human. Then his jaw grew longer, his fangs sharper, his eyes brighter. He had a small, professional beard that sprang across his entire face, covering his head in shaggy black fur.
And then he was back to human.
Cara looked for the air to scream. She had just seen the impossible. Part of her wondered if she was going crazy and there wasn’t actually anyone in her car. Part of her wondered if the guy was real and about kill her.
But she never got to find out because right then, faced with a wolf-man, her brain elected to give up the struggle of deciphering real life from the imaginary and caused her to pass out.
Chapter 3
The first thing that Cara felt was pain. Her head felt like someone had smashed it with a sledgehammer. She felt like someone had hit her with a bus, then put it in reverse and backed over her.
She opened her eyes slowly, wincing from the headache.
To her relief, she saw something she recognized: her cute little apartment. She was sprawled out on her couch with her laptop beside her.
She leaned up to a sitting position with a groan. What happened? Had she dreamt it all? She was still wearing the clothes that she had been wearing at the store. She glanced around her apartment. Nobody else was there.
“What the hell?” she muttered, holding her head from the headache.
That’s when the guy from her car walked out of the kitchen with a banana in his hand.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I was hungry.”
“Get away from me!” she shrieked, throwing the closest thing she could get her hands on at him.
It turned out to be a pillow, which bounced off his chest pathetically. He seemed slightly amused, but otherwise unharmed.
He looked less confident when she got her hands on the metal globe on the coffee table. A friend of hers had given it to her a couple years ago for Christmas, but somehow, Cara doubted her friend had anticipated that it would be used as a weapon against a stranger in Cara’s home. She flung it as hard as she could.
She normally wasn’t a good shot. In fact, at get-togethers, she was always the one that had to get up and hand the remote to someone. She wasn’t allowed to toss anything to anyone—ever. But apparently, all the motivation she needed came in the form of fear and anger because the globe sailed right for the stranger’s head. It looked like it might bash him in the nose, but at the last second, his hand flashed up and caught it five inches in front of his face.
“Stop throwing stuff at me,” he growled. “We’re on the same side.”
“Get out of my apartment!”
“Would you please listen to me? You’re in great danger even if you don’t know it.”
She threw up her hands in exasperation.
“Fine! Fine. Tell me, then get away from me!”
He smirked, then leaned back and put his hands behind his head, getting a little too comfortable. He started to explain.
“There’s a group of hunters chasing me, okay? I’m a werewolf. They want to kill me and take my pelt. They want to kill you because you happen to have been selected. You do not want to be selected.”
“Can we go back over the part of you being a werewolf?”
“I showed you in the car earlier. You saw it. I know you did because you passed out. That’s okay. Lots of people can’t understand it. The point is, you’re being hunted. I’m being hunted. I can help get you out of your dilemma, and you can help get me out of mine. Comprendo?”
“No, no comprendo. This is insane. I can’t…I won’t believe it.”
He scowled.
“You’re being very stubborn about this.”
“I think the word you might be looking for is ‘rational.’”
She wasn’t sure where this backbone was coming from. Normally, she’d have been melting. Apparently, there was some part of her deep down that had courage. She just hadn’t ever needed to access it before. She was still scared and confused, but she wasn’t passed out on the floor and that was something.
Suddenly, his nose twitched.
“Don’t believe me, huh?” He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a professional-looking handgun, and said, “Well, looks like you’re about to be proved wrong…”
“What are you—”
That’s when someone kicked down her door.
She’d seen doors get busted down in movies. It wasn’t like that in real life. It’s fast, scary, and unexpected. She couldn’t get a perfect view of the door from her seat on the couch, but she did see a foot and then the door swung open.
Three thugs ran in, holding crowbars laced with some sort of glowing liquid around the hilts and a strange glittery substance on the ends. They appeared to be made of a silvery material.
Her companion didn’t stand around to see if they were silver or not. He jerked up the gun and shot. The noise boomed through the small apartment.
The first thug caught a bullet in the chest and went down. He hit the shattered remains of the door before getting back up, clutching the wound. He and another one of the thugs attacked her companion, while the third came straight for Cara, wielding the crowbar.
Cara’s father had taught her some self-defense when she’d first gone to college. He armed her with pepper spray as well, which she carried at all times. She even carried around one of those Tasers for a while. Eve
n though she had taken a few martial arts classes, she’d never been great at the sport; thankfully, she had picked up a few tricks.
The first one: you don’t want to be there when the fist lands.
When the thug swung at her, she simply stepped aside and let him go on by. He swung the crowbar at her head, getting close enough for her to hear the wind as the metal whisked past her face with a velocity that could crush her bones – but he didn’t actually hit her. He came in with too much speed, so she simply stuck her foot out as he went past. He tumbled over the couch with a crash, crushing the coffee table. At any other time, Cara would have been furious.
She heard a couple more gunshots, but she didn’t have much time to think about it because her thug was back up in a moment. He came slower this time. Cautious. He had underestimated her the first time around. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.
He didn’t say a thing, which bothered her more than it should have. She’d always thought if anyone ever attacked her, he or she would be talking smack the whole time. This guy didn’t. He was wearing a hood over his head and dark sunglasses over his eyes. She had no idea what he looked like, clad in dark colors from head to toe.
“Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “Don’t make me—”
He said something, but whatever it was, it wasn’t in English. It sounded guttural and primal and somehow ancient.
He started across the floor towards her. A siren from outside the window distracted him. Cara, meanwhile, bent over and pulled the rug. She’d never put it under the couch because she had never been able to actually lift the couch. She felt proud of her weakness right then because nothing held it from sliding wildly across the floor. His feet flew out from underneath him and he slammed into the ground.
Suddenly, her companion was there. Part of his shirt had been torn off, and he had a bruise forming over his right cheek. He was holding the smoking gun and the two that had attacked him were nowhere to be found. He fired once into the skull of the man on the rug, who vanished into a cloud of dust.