Taming the Night (Creatures of the Night Book 1) (4 page)

She noticed before she got to the door that it was open a crack. This didn’t set her on alarm right away. Maybe Thomas was out walking Jazzy. She pushed the door all the way open and then paused. The door was not open because her husband had forgotten to close it. It was open because it had been kicked in and was hanging by only one hinge.

Instantly she dropped the sandwiches and pulled the gun she had strapped to her belt. “Thomas! Jazzy!” she called out as she made her way swiftly through the den and then the kitchen. There was stuff everywhere… had they been robbed? She was on her way to the back bedrooms when she saw him. She screamed and holstered her gun as she ran to him. The pool of blood beneath him was so large. She meant to check his pulse but his head was nearly severed from his body. A wail erupted from her chest and she fell over him.

“Thomas,” Alicia screamed as she sat up in bed coated with sweat. She had to breathe for a few minutes and calm down. Her hand was clutched around one of her silver daggers and she felt tensed and prepared for battle. Slowly she replaced the knife beneath the pillow where she slept.

She went to the window and opened the curtain, letting the afternoon light spill across her floor. She had slept longer than she’d meant. It had probably been about two or three days, she wasn’t sure. Breaking her back had taken considerable healing time. She could have continued on her way with it broken but it would have hurt worse and taken longer to heal.

Not that it mattered how long she stayed in this little backwoods town. With the number of wolves on the field the other night there wasn’t bound to be another wolf for miles around. Plus, the only witness was sound asleep. No one would noti
ce the drugs in his system. The type of chemicals she’d used weren’t even on the radar as far as she knew. Something Bateman had given her just in case someone got too nosey. It could put a person to sleep for days and they would wake up feeling groggy and disorientated as if they’d had a bad dream.

She sighed. It would be a shame never to see the handsome officer again. She could have had some real fun with him. She smiled as she remembered the way he’d looked when she’d tried to hand him the detonator. “Forty virgins,” she murmured with a chuckle.

It didn’t bother her a bit that the room was stifling hot and that sweat was rolling off of her in beads. The man who was out cleaning the pool stopped as he looked up and saw her. His jaw dropped open. She smiled and waved at him. She was completely nude. She found that she loved to shock people. The woman she used to be would have dropped dead before being caught nude in public, but that woman was long gone.

She turned away from the window before she strode over to the bathroom and clicked on the light. A roach ran off the countertop and disappeared beneath the sink. She had stayed in nicer places… and worse. She preferred to stay away from hotels with central air and security cameras. Bateman preferred it for her as well. She stopped to look at herself in the mirror. Her broken bones and stomach wounds were healed. The bruises were already yellowing. By tonight there would be no evidence of any fight at all.

She smiled at the thought. She would relish another battle right about now. She turned and looked over her back. Tattooed over both shoulders down to her hip bones were the wings of an Angel. The left corner of one of the wings contained a small badge with a poem and the words ‘Thomas Sierra’ in old style script. 

“
Lay down my love, lay down my heart, to be with you forever, to never be apart, our bodies can’t contain us, we are angels, God’s loving art. I’ll be with you forever, forever in my heart.”

She recited the poem twice more before she blew a kiss to the badge and wiped away a tear. She stepped into the shower as she let the hot water massage her bruised skin. Her body would heal. It always did.

Chapter Three

Alicia stood back as she watched the other player eye the table, looking for the best angles. She wanted to scream at him in frustration. If he moved any slower she would die of old age before they finished this game. He was a burly man with a long white beard that was braided down the front of his t-shirt. His ragged
black T-shirt looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month. It stretched menacingly over his distended belly. He wore a leather vest over his T-Shirt. She was pretty sure he’d been wearing it so long that it had been in the original Easy Riders movie.

Maybe he himself had been a young slender man once, riding the highways free and wild on his righteous hog. It was apparent, however, that that had been a long
, long, time ago. He was merely a shadow of himself now. Finally he bent to the table and placed the pool stick on his fingers which were arched just so. He looked at her triumphantly as he sunk a difficult shot.

There was lots of money on the table and he was sweating profusely. She motioned towards the table as if to say that he should continue. Most of the bikers in the bar were watching the game now. At first they had drifted over because of her looks. She wasn’t conceded. She just knew that they found her attractive. Especially
when she wore her jean daisy dukes, her knee high leather boots with spiky heels, and her red leather bustier. Her hair was wrapped around a thin solid silver spike, exposing the length of her neck and shoulders.

She found this outfit to put her at advantage, especially when she was sharking. Men seemed to let their guard down when a beautiful woman with blood red lipstick on her full lips walked into the room. She just thought it a waist that such beauty would be spent on a monster like herself. She was sure that if she ever met the devil, he would be one beautiful son of a bitch. She looked over the men in the room. None of them had an idea what she was, and that was both frightening and… exciting.

The biker took aim and very carefully poked the white ball with his long custom made leather wrapped pool stick. She could tell by the direction the ball went that it was her turn and she didn’t even wait to see where the solid yellow ball went before she got into place. He had called the corner pocket and missed. He cursed as he slapped more money on the edge of the table.

She decided that she had made enough money with his last miss and swung her silver plated pool stick into position. The lines and angles lit up on the table for her and it almost seemed too easy. In quick succession she called out the proper pockets and sunk some of the most impossible shot
s the bar patrons had ever seen. They murmured in disbelief when the ball bounced from side board to side board before they dropped in the pocket she’d called.

She dropped her balls, all his balls,
and then the Q-Ball, causing the man to have to pay her double what was already lying on the table. Suddenly the man, who looked like he weighed a solid ton, and was at least seven feet tall, looked like a bull ready to charge. His face turned red and his eyes narrowed on her. She felt adrenaline flood her own body in response. She scooped up the money that was already on the table before she turned to face his enraged form.

“All right big boy. I won fair and square and it’s time for you ta pay up,” she said smoothly. Inside she was as tight as a spring, but on the outside
, she presented a cool stance that seemed unperturbed by the big man’s anger at all.

“Ru
ss. She won fair. We all watched her,” one of the spectators piped up. She saw fear in the man’s eyes. He was afraid for her. How sweet. If he only knew. It was his friend he should fear for. She tilted her head as she watched Russ get angrier by the second.

“Yeah Jean. You saw her. She’s a pool shark and she had no right comin’ in here prayin’ on us. We ain’t professionals. Just good ole boys
playin’ a honest game. You hear that little girl. You shouldn’t be playin’ with big men.”

He stepped right up to her as if she should cower in fright. She looked up at him and smiled
. “What’s the matter big boy? You scared of a real woman? You prefer playin’ with little boys?” she cooed and nearly laughed as rage flamed to life in Russ’s eyes. He was going to hit her. She decided that she would be the last woman that he ever hit. He undoubtedly had hit more than one woman in the past because he had that gleam in his eye. He was going to enjoy trying to beat her into submission.

A few of the men were trying to talk him out of it but she only smiled broader, waiting. He paused as he looked into her eyes. A moment of hesitation entered him and she knew why. Her eyes were probably changing, preparing for battle as she was. He blinked a few times with his fist pulled back.

“And what exactly is going on here?”

She and Ru
ss both looked towards the door at the same time, and for some reason she could not explain, her heart did a little flip. Her smile turned genuine as she saw the broad frame that filled the doorway. Officer Cayman stepped inside and let the door close behind him. Even with the cast encircling his left forearm and his bruised face, he looked formidable. He looked the way she felt. He was poised, coiled, like a six foot four panther ready to strike. Russ lowered his arm and stepped away from her, all the fight suddenly gone out of him.

She wanted to spit in his face. He would hit a woman but not a man, at least not one as muscled as Officer Cayman. The muscle rippled, even beneath the starched
button down shirt he wore. A white t-shirt peeked from beneath the few buttons he’d left undone. Even in civilian clothes, he oozed a certain amount of authority that said not to cross him. His cast swung off the end of his jackhammer of an arm. Even beneath the cast anyone could tell that the forearm was probably just as corded with lean muscle as the other was. She wondered what a cop like him was doing in a little town like this.

He was probably the star of the show up here
in these hills. He had been the star quarterback in the local high school. He had probably taken some type of knee injury that ruined his career in the NFL, and he was hiding out up here in the hills as a cop. That or some sob story similar to it.  Either way he had probably returned to the little town that had produced him to hold court over the rest of the residents here. She shook her head. It was too bad he was so starched or she would have enjoyed toying with him a bit.

It was time to go, however, b
efore she got herself in any more trouble than she was already in. When Bateman had caught wind of what had happened to the patrol car he’d been livid. She told him that she’d waited to torch as many of the creatures as she could. He’d said that she should have blasted them the moment they’d even neared the field. She had planned to be far away from this little town before Officer Cayman even woke up, but it had taken her more than a week to get a good game going so she could get some gas money.

Turning away from Ru
ss she went to collect her jacket. Suddenly he was there behind her and his clean fresh scent invaded her nostrils. He smelled so good. Like mountain air and Axe body spray. She had the sudden and overwhelming urge to lick every inch of him, to literally taste him. She could nearly hear his heart beating, pumping blood through his entire body, and she closed her eyes as her mouth began to water.

Get a grip girl.
She shook her head to try and clear him from her senses but he was standing so close his body heat reached out to touch her like a lover’s caress. She turned to face him and saw the question written all over his face. He was too close. She smiled at him again before she retreated a few steps.

“I’ll be on my way as soon as I collect the rest of my money officer,” she said easily.

He tilted his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “How did you know I’m a police officer?” he asked.

She laughed and leaned back against the pool table as she slid into her leather jacket. “You just give off that vibe
shug. You blow out cop air as they say.”

*

He watched her as she leaned back against the table. Her legs were so damn long and her shorts were so damn short. Her little red top barely contained the bounty that lay beneath the C cups and he felt his entire body stiffen and go rigid to watch her. She was sex in heels. If it was at all possible, she was more beautiful than he remembered. He had nearly convinced himself that the whole thing had been a nightmare.

The cast, the scratches, the burns to his face and arms, it had all been from being thrown from the car. That’s what he told himself. He’d even gone back to the office on light duty.
He waited for the report that they’d found the vehicle that had smashed him off the dirt road. He waited for something, anything, to happen to explain to him what had gone on out there in those woods. Surely the woman and the creatures were a dream.

He was on his way out to the supermarket to get coffee and supplies for the office when he’d seen the bike. He’
d slammed on the brakes of his pickup so hard that he’d left tire marks in the street. He’d sat there in the middle of the road and looked at the bike in disbelief. It was the machine from his dream, complete with purple flames on the tank and pure silver handlebars. He had pulled into the parking lot, telling himself that there were plenty of bikes that looked like that in the world. Just because he hadn’t ever seen one in Taming before didn’t matter.

Maybe one of the guys in the bar had sprung for a
new paint job or something, although he hadn’t heard of anyone winning the lottery and ordering a brand new custom made Harley in the past six months. It took at least that long for a bike like the one in the parking lot to be custom fitted for the rider. Maybe there was a new guy in town. He’d convinced himself of that too. Right up until the moment that he’d stepped in and witnessed her lovely thighs bent over the pool table. He’d nearly swallowed his tongue.

He had watched the
altercation unfold before his eyes, but his tongue had been frozen in his mouth. His brain refused to believe that the images that he’d dreamed were actually real. It came back to him in clips and pieces that woke him and left him bathed in sweat. Now he watched her leaning against the table, the siren from his dreams, and she acted as if this were the first time she’d ever met him. Was he going crazy? How could he have dreamed of her before he’d ever even met her? He didn’t believe in fate or the sight. He’d never gone to a palm reader or had his fortune told. He believed that the things those people foretold only came true because the people who believed in them made the events happen to prove it was true.

Maybe he’d seen her for a brief moment in passing somewhere around town. He shook his head. If he’d seen her, even in passing, he would have remembered it for the rest of his life. He’d never seen her before
outside of that dream.

He turned his attention to Ru
ss with a force of will. “You wouldn’t be in here gamblin’ again now would you Russ?” Russ shook his head vehemently.

“We was just havin’ ourselves a honest game between friends,” he said quickly.

“Really? You didn’t look all that friendly a second ago and you was callin’ her a shark,” Jerry argued back. Russell had the good sense to look a little embarrassed.

“Actually. I didn’t come here to shark. I sold him a bike part from my custom shop a few miles to the West. I came up here to collect
payment myself because I love the ride through the Smokies. He didn’t have quite enough to cover so I played him for it. He lost. I want the rest of my money.”

She said it so smoothly that it was hard to tell if it was a lie or the truth. She owned a motorcycle shop? “You’re a little on the small side to work on bikes aren’t you,” he commented.

“You’d be surprised at the things a small ole gal like me can do cher,” she said. Her Creole accent spilled from her tongue like a sorceress’s mist putting his brain in a daze. She ran a hot look up and down his body.

He felt his blood heat up and knew that he was probably blushing just a bit. He cleared his th
roat and turned to Russell again. “Is that the way of it?”

Russell’s face was mottled by rage but he just nodded. He couldn’t afford to go back to jail for gambling. Jerry put his good hand out, palm up. Russell reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. Jerry knew the man did a little something on the side
because he didn’t have a real job. Just as he also knew that he would one day catch him slipping up and put his sorry ass back in jail.

“You know Russ. A big man like you would do better
at honest work like collecting garbage or construction. Sure beats pushing around women more than half your size and getting arrested for gambling and the like. One of these days you are going to take on more than you can handle and I’m going to find you in a ditch somewhere.”

Ru
ss mumbled something derogatory under his breath as he counted out a few hundred dollars and dropped them in the officer’s hand. He turned and stalked out of the bar angrily. A few people chuckled when he was gone. They didn’t dare laugh in his face.

Jerry turned back to the mystery woman. On purpose he folded the wad of cash and put it in his pocket. He then stepped up to the bar and sat on a stool. The bartender moved over to him with a question on his face. “It’s all right Dale. I just want a cup of coffee.”