by Jen Pretty
A Lark In The Night
Goddess Durga – book 2
Jen Pretty
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching,
and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
CHAPTER ONE
“Bye, Lark,” the group of hockey girls called as they walked out to the waiting minivans in the parking lot.
“See you Thursday,” I called back. It was the last class of the morning, so I was heading home to bed.
“That was a great class,” Trevor said as he appeared from the men’s changing room. He had taken three classes this week and was progressing quickly. It was helping him regain his strength, though he was still painfully thin from his starvation and being attacked by the rogues a month ago.
“Thanks, Trevor. I’m glad you’re enjoying yoga.”
He smiled and followed me to the reception desk where Randy was filling out the bank deposit.
“Hey, Randy. How’s business?” I asked with a laugh.
“Fabulous,” he smiled. “Your second senior’s class is now full.”
“That’s amazing. You have a real talent for this business,” I said. He blushed and waved me off, but it was true. His advertising ideas were brilliant and his customer service was top notch.
We said our goodbyes before Trevor and I walked out into the early morning sun. The shiny SUV that Vincent had bought me sat in the now empty parking lot. Trevor and I got in and headed back to the vampire’s mansion.
There was a commotion coming from the entertainment room when we walked in the front door. Trevor ignored it and wandered off towards his room with a wave goodbye. I followed the hall around to find a big group of vampires crammed together on the couches watching a replay of some football game.
Drew was sitting on the couch closest to the door. He hopped up when he saw me. His floppy blond hair and Hawaiian shirt complemented his surfer style as he gave me a crooked grin and offered me his seat with a regal bow and flourish of his arm.
I laughed at his antics but turned down his offer. I was too tired and needed to eat and head to bed.
I ducked back out of the room and wandered down the hall to the dining room.
“Hey, Lark. How was yoga?” Cedric asked from where he sat finishing up his breakfast.
“Pretty good,” I called back as I loaded my plate with breakfast foods. Bacon and scrambled eggs with peanut butter on rye toast had become my standard pre-bed meal and my plate was loaded. I turned back to join Cedric, but, instead, came face to face with Vincent. We hadn’t seen each other in the month since the showdown with the rogues. Vincent went to Romania with his brother Vaughn shortly after we confirmed that their fallen and feral brother Vernon had left the city.
“Hey,” I said, fumbling my grip on my plate. A little bit of eggs slid off and splatted onto the floor. He didn’t seem to notice; his eyes stayed trained on mine.
“I’d like to speak with you after breakfast. In my office.” He moved to the side and let me pass then he walked out of the dining room and disappeared down the hall.
“Shit,” I muttered. He looked way too serious.
“By the way, the boss is back,” Cedric snickered.
“Yeah, I see that. Thanks for the heads up.”
“What was that about?” Cedric, the nosey vampire, asked.
“Nothing, he just wants to talk,” I said, as I set down my plate and took a napkin back over to scoop up the spilled eggs. As I returned to the table, I noticed a piece of toast missing from my plate and narrowed my eyes at Cedric as he openly munched on the stolen toast. “I was going to eat that.”
“Sorry,” he muttered with his mouth full. “Well, I hate to leave you to eat alone, but I’d like to catch up on the game,” Cedric said, pushing his chair back and standing.
“No worries, I’m just going to inhale this and quickly see what the boss wants before I crash.” I took a big bite of bacon and hummed in happiness. It was perfect. Not too crispy, not too soft.
Cedric laughed and wove his way out, leaving me alone in the empty dining room. Durga squirmed around under my skin and my vision turned red for a second. She had been pushing at me more and more, but there weren’t many rogues left in the city, and the last one she found was innocent; just a vampire passing through the town. So, she hadn’t sliced or diced any bad vamps in weeks. Going out at night helped, but she was still restless.
“Calm yourself. We will find some bad guys for you soon,” I muttered. She gave me a boot to my stomach, making me queasy for a second. The Cow.
I finished and returned my plate before walking the halls of the giant mansion to Vincent’s office. The door was ajar and he had his back turned to me with the phone to his ear. I knocked once, then walked in and sat down in the chair across from him. He was having one of those vamp whisper conversations, but I could hear him now with my new senses.
“Yes, brother, I’m going to talk to her now, can you give me an hour?”
He looked up at me and I wiggled my fingers at him in a little wave. He grinned and hung up the phone.
“Was that Vaughn?” I asked
“Yes. He received a report of a possible sighting of Vernon in Northern Canada. He has deployed his team, but he is hoping we can get there quickly enough that you can sniff him out.”
Great, I was a hound dog now.
“Ok, I’ll go drag the team away from their hockey game. I’m going to need to sleep on the plane.”
“It is waiting for you at the airport.”
I stood and turned to leave, but he spoke again before I could get out the door.
“I missed you, Lark.”
I turned back and looked at him. His face was serious.
“Uhm, me too,” I said awkwardly before scooting out of the room. I backtracked to the TV room and shouted in. “Team Lark. We are moving out.”
The guys hopped up and zipped past me to go collect their things. I followed behind them and grabbed my bag from my room. Hopefully, someone had some winter clothes. Northern Canada sounded cold.
***
“Ready, Lark?” Vlad asked as we pulled into the airport twenty minutes later. The team was all here. Vlad, Cedric, and Drew. Tommy had joined the private security team, now that I had Durga to back me up, we didn’t really need a big team.
“Sure, I hope we find him this time.” We had dropped everything and flown out of this airport twice since the showdown with the rogues. The other times were on tips sent in from around the continent which had turned out to be false alarms. Though we did catch a rogue in Tallahassee. He surrendered peacefully, and we went home. It was very anti-climactic.
Boarding the private jet was easy. I hadn’t flown before I met Vincent, but I always heard about long waits and customs nightmares. We just drove up to the plane and climbed on board Vincent’s private jet. Being wealthy seemed to cut through a lot of red tape and hassle.
Soon we were racing down the runway at a ridiculous speed and the plane lifted off the ground. The flight was only four hours and my eyelids weighed a ton, so I curled up in my seat and drifted off.
“Wakey, wakey, sleepy head,” Drew said in a weird sing-song voice that made me want to punch him. That was not enough sleep, but it would have to do. I stretched and my joints cracked and popped like the cereal. Drew handed me a big parka with fur trim around the top. I peeked out the plane window to a view of glistening white. It was so bright that I had to look away. I rummaged around in my bag until I found my sunglasses, wishing that Durga had the power to dim the world. It was bright in the south, but the sun off the snow was like a million lumens.
I pulled the parka on and zipped it. Luckily, I had thought to
wear my old army boots so at least I would be less likely to slip and fall on my ass. I tossed my bag over my shoulder and walked to the small exit door.
As the door opened and the icy air met my face, my feet glued to the floor and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to get off the plane. How did people live here? It was like the north pole.
“Welcome to the Ottawa International Airport. My name is Wendy,” a cheery woman said as I disembarked and regretted every decision, I had made in my whole life that had led me to this place. The cold air permeated my pants and froze my skin on contact. A breeze came across the open tarmac and burned my cheeks, freezing my nostrils shut and frosting my eyelashes, making my eyes water. The tears froze to my face, burning like acid.
“Why are we here?” I asked. I knew my basic Canadian geography and Ottawa wasn’t particularly northern. Not that I wanted to go more north after experiencing this first hand.
“We have to switch planes. Ours isn’t made to land on snow,” Cedric said. I looked back at the plane, wishing we could go home. What is this crazy-ass, fallen vampire doing in this godforsaken place anyway?
“Come on, Lark. It's an adventure,” Drew said with a shiver to his voice. He was huddled up beside me a bit closer than casual, but he blocked the worst of the wind. Maybe that was why Canadians were so friendly; they huddled together for warmth.
Positive I had just solved the mystery of the Canadian people, I followed along behind Wendy who led us into the airport to wait for our more winter-ready plane.
Inside was fast food restaurants and cafés as well as hordes of people moving about. It was a busy hub of international travel.
Drew stopped at a shop and bought some mittens for himself and me. I stuffed those in the pocket of my parka. Wendy walked us to a comfortable restaurant. It was warm in the booth and we all removed our coats and hats and settled into the fake leather covered bench seats to wait.
“How long will we be waiting here?” I asked Cedric. I wanted to get this over with, so we could get back to a more reasonable climate. I was not hardy enough for this place.
“I think an hour or so. Just long enough to get some food and we will be on our way. The next plane ride is only an hour. A local vampire thinks he spotted Vernon in a hunting camp beside the Hudson Bay.”
Freaking vampires, what the heck would possess someone to live up here?
We ordered some food and ate quietly for a few minutes.
“Do you think it will be colder further North?” I asked around a bite of my french fries covered in cheese and gravy. It was pretty good. Not as good as bacon.
Cedric looked at me with a bit of a sad expression. “Vampires don’t really feel the cold,” he said.
“What? Drew does,” I objected.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cold,” Drew agreed.
“That’s because you are young still,” Vlad said to Drew before taking another sip of his soup.
Drew nodded and went back to eating. Vampires physiology was weird.
Just as we finished, Wendy popped back up out of nowhere. “Hey, guys, your plane is ready. You can follow me and I will lead the way.” Wendy’s chipper voice contrasted harshly with my interest in going back outside, but we shuffled out of the booth and followed dutifully along behind her while bundling back into our coats, hats, and mitts.
By the time we got to the door, I was sweating, but that didn’t last long. As the outside door slid open, winter hit me right in the face. I had forgotten how cold it was or maybe I just blocked it out. My eyelashes froze together, so I could barely open my eyes. The air I pulled into my lungs burned and I coughed it back out again. Looking around, except for Drew, everyone else seemed to be handling the temperature with stoic dignity. I liked Drew a bit more at that moment as I watched him tuck his face down into the front of his coat and walk along nearly blind. He and I were on the same team. The say-no-to-snow team. I hurried after Wendy, in her pretty jacket and stylish scarf and hat set until she started walking us towards a small plane, then I passed her and hurried up the steps and through the door into the tiny craft.
There were only ten seats, and they were crammed in together. Not luxurious like Vincent’s jet. I wasn’t sure about flying in the tiny tin can, but I was sure I didn’t want to be outside any longer. The rest of the team caught up to me and Wendy wished us well and closed the door before she sauntered back towards the airport like her ass wasn’t being frozen off. I sighed with relief when I found a seat directly under a heater and curled up under a blanket. I had an hour to thaw out before I would have to go out in that weather again. The plane wasn’t that warm, but it was warm enough.
The plane dipped and rose in the sky, making my stomach drop and leap up into my throat. Drew was looking kind of pale too, but Vlad just read a book while Cedric played a game of solitaire. They seemed relaxed even in the face of certain death. Every time the plane dropped, I was sure it was going down and we would all die in a fiery ball. Then it would right itself, and we would carry on to our destination.
Durga had been surprisingly quiet the whole day, but I could feel her stirring now that it was getting late in the afternoon. It was just about the time I would regularly get up. She and I had gotten into a pretty solid routine. She left me alone during the day and I let her hunt at night. It was working for us.
“Ok, we are going to be landing in about 5 minutes,” the pilot's voice came over the tiny mechanical speaker. “It might be pretty rough, leave your seatbelts on.”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. At least I would be on the ground again.
The plane dropped quickly. Out the window, to my left, was all white but out the window to my right was the blue of the Hudson Bay. It stretched out until it met the horizon. The sight distracted me until a bump alerted me to the fact we had touched down. The following bumps and skids and slides and screams were just the icing on the cake of this hunting trip. Finally, the plane slid sideways to a stop and I unclenched my hands from the armrests, taking deep breaths to try and calm my racing heart. Everyone was looking at me like I had lost my mind and I realized I was the only one who had been screaming. I wondered if we could drive home as I tucked back into my winter clothes. Drew handed me a pair of snow pants. I had no idea where they came from, but once I had them on, he passed me a pair of thick insulated boots.
“I think I love you, Drew,” I muttered.
He gave me a goofy grin, and we disembarked from the death trap and into the frozen world that would probably kill us.
CHAPTER TWO
Someone sat on a snowmobile at the bottom of the small steps, bundled up beyond recognition. As I watched, they turned their helmeted head and lifted the visor reveling a man with glowing eyes. Not a man, he was a vampire.
The chainsaw hum of more snowmobiles drew my attention away and three more vehicles pulled up beside the first one.
The engines turned off and the silence of the snowy landscape was broken only by the whistle of the wind as it breached my hat and froze my ears. I tucked my hood up and pulled it tight as the vampire swung off his snowmobile and swaggered towards us like he was straight out of an old-time western movie. I snorted at the thought. He could very well have been around when the west was won. He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Thanks for coming, folks. My name is Ajax. I’m the leader up here in the north. We can take you to our estate on the snowmobiles.” He gave me a wink. “You can ride with me, darlin'.”
I felt my stomach rise into my mouth, the only warning I had that Durga had something to say to this frozen cowboy.
Instead, the snow suddenly became cast in red as my eyes changed and Durga blasted forward, taking over completely and shoving him to the ground. She straddled his chest and held him down by the throat as my knife flashed into my hand and she sliced his cheek in a shallow, quick movement.
The scent of his blood filled the air even before anyone else had moved. She pulled his scent in through my nose and then let it out with a gentle sigh.
“You may escort us to the estate,” she said, as she dusted the snow off my knees before retreating to her usual place inside me.
“Sorry,” I said awkwardly. Swallowing the vomit that tried to force its way up my throat. Clive took a step back and watched me like I might explode again. God. Someday I would get used to Durga’s random acts of violence. Today was not that day.
“Shit, Lark,” Drew breathed. Like it was my fault that Durga was a terrible house guest.
Ajax didn’t get up right away, he lay in the snow and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths and giving thanks to whatever God he worshipped. Sometimes Durga was a bit of a drama queen.
He rose and dusted the snow off himself, then nodded once deeply and waved me towards his snowmobile. Clive tossed our bags onto a sled attached to the back of one of the snowmobiles and secured it down, then we each climbed on one of the noisy machines behind the driver and we took off across the open range. The adrenaline of sliding over the snow at breakneck speeds was tempered by the fact that I couldn’t feel my face and had to tuck into Ajax’s back so I didn’t lose my nose to frostbite.
The ‘estate’ as they called it, was a low squat building that stretched across the landscape. The flat roof was buried in snow, but a garage door opened as we slid up and the snowmobiles drove straight in, the door sliding shut behind us.
I climbed off the machine and took off my mitt to wrap my warm hand around my numb nose. Vlad walked up next to me looking fine and not frostbitten at all.
“You aren’t made for this weather, are you Lark?”
“What was your first clue?” I asked in a snide tone, but I jokingly bumped my shoulder into his, making him laugh.
“Ok, folks, if y’all want to follow me, I can show you to your room and then we can head out to the cabin we thought we saw that old snake hiding at,” Ajax said before marching towards a door that led out of the garage.
As I walked through the door, I was surprised to find it looked like a house from the early 70s. The walls were wood, and the furniture was all a green plaid pattern. The curtains matched the carpet in a shade of orange that should not have ever existed. Despite the retro look, it was warm and there was a fire crackling away by one wall.