Night Owls (4 page)

 • • • 

“T
HAT WAS
F
RIDAY
night. Well, Saturday morning, I suppose. They were outside, waiting. We ran. I don’t know how we got away, but we did. He spent Saturday making preparations, making sure the place we were holed up was defensible.” Elly’s tea had gone cold while she talked. “He never got to look at the book. They came that night, and we had to run again. They broke through his wards inside of an hour.”

Professor Clearwater grunted at that. “If they’re determined enough, they’ll barrel through anything. Even if it hurts them.”

“That’s what they did. The first ones who came through were bleeding something fierce.”

“Why did you two make a stand? You could’ve put half the country between yourselves and them.”

Elly shrugged. She’d argued the same:
Let’s get on a bus and go to California. There’s a train to Chicago leaving in an hour. Let’s be on it. I’ll steal a wallet and we’ll charge flights to London on the credit cards inside, put the whole damned ocean between us and the Creeps.
But he’d vetoed every suggestion, and his reasons for
why
were flimsy at best.
No time, Eleanor,
he’d said, as if that were enough explanation.
No time.

Still, Elly had survived as long as she had doing as Father Value told her. She hadn’t fought him too hard on it.

Maybe if I’d fought him more, he’d still be alive.
She shook that off. “He wanted to stay close, said there wasn’t much time. He said you’d know what to do with it, but he wanted to shake them off first.”

Henry got up and began to pace. “He should have come straight to me and let me
help
. But to stay just out of reach? It’s foolish in the extreme.” He paused by the window, looking out over their expansive backyard.

“He said . . . He said he didn’t want to bring trouble to your door. Or as little of it as possible.” She shifted in the chair. Dancing around a delicate topic wasn’t something Father Value had taught her how to do. She felt like the conversation called for tact, but she’d never been good at employing it. All she’d ever really learned was,
If you don’t want to tell the whole truth, hedge.

Of course, she’d learned that from Father Value, and that meant Professor Clearwater was probably familiar with the tactic, too.

He turned back to her, the set of his jaw somewhere between amused and annoyed. “What you’re saying, then, is he thought I’d gone soft since leaving the Brotherhood.”

Damn.
“He thought you might be out of practice, a little.”

“I suppose I might be. I’ve not had to fight for my life in a very long time.” He must have seen her tense up, because he held his hands out, palms up. A calming gesture. “That doesn’t mean I’m unprepared for it. Come here.” He beckoned her closer.

Elly set aside her tea and stood with him at the window. She squinted into the darkness, but nothing struck her as obvious. The dark shapes of a patio set and charcoal grill were all that broke up the neatly mowed lawn. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, sir.”

“Not out.
Down.
”

Frowning, she glanced down. And grinned. Lining the inside of the windowsill, in the groove between the glass and the screen, was a thick line of salt. It wouldn’t stop the Creeps outright—she’d learned that the other evening—but it would slow them down. And if the Clearwaters had salt wards, they’d have others, ones that weren’t so easy to spot.

“If they want to come in here, they’re going to hurt for it. But they won’t try tonight.” Outside, the first tinges of dawn lightened the sky. “There’s not enough time.” He guided her back to the chairs and peered into their empty teacups. Out came the flask. He poured a generous splash into each. “I’d suggest we get some sleep, but if you’ll pardon my saying, you still look wide awake.”

“Part of the lifestyle. We keep late hours.”

“Nearly nocturnal ones, I’d imagine.”

“Yes sir. But you don’t have to stay up with me. I can entertain myself.” Her fingers itched to flip through some of the books in this room, but, at the same time . . . She found herself hoping he’d insist on staying, found herself wanting the company.

He smiled. “Surely you must have questions for me. I’ve always found that getting answers helps me sleep.”

4

A
SMART VAMPIRE
would
have gone home and gone to bed.

No, a smart vampire would have built up her wealth over the years, amassed a small army of devoted minions, and built an impenetrable fortress-mansion somewhere exotic. I went with the “sink all your money into a bookstore and barely scrape by in a quaint college town.”

And she’d sent her one minion home.

That had been the right decision, though. Chaz might be good at getting rid of the frat kids when they got bombed and came in to titter at the books of nudes in the art section, but no way in hell was he prepared to face what she was sure had loped its way into town. Hell, she wasn’t sure
she
was prepared to handle it, either.

More than ten years had passed since she’d last been face-to-face with a Jackal. It was another life, on another coast, and she’d been with five others. Back then, they’d been armed with stakes of rowan wood and vials of ash when they’d headed into the nest. Tonight, all Val had were fangs and claws. She wished she’d gone back to the store and grabbed a roll of quarters. Not that they’d help all that much.

She scuttled along Edgewood’s silent streets, heading toward campus. The scent hadn’t returned, though every now and then she’d stop and turn in a circle, sniffing the air just in case. They could have gone anywhere, might not even still be in town, but Val had to be sure. If they were on the hunt they’d find easy pickings at the dorms.

And plenty of virgin flesh.

It wasn’t often she wished she could turn into a bat or a shadow or a column of mist and speed through the night, but right then it would have come in awfully handy. Those things would come with age and training, not to mention a whole lot of ass-kissing. For now, the best she could do was will her legs to push harder, dig her heels in deeper, and launch herself headlong up the road to the student housing buildings.

Edgewood College had four dormitories in addition to the houses on Greek Row. Val dismissed the fraternity and sorority houses right away—lights still burned in the windows of Phi Lambda Lambda and Delta Mu, and from the looks of it the Gamma Rho Epsilon girls were having an all-night lawn party with the boys from Beta Epsilon. It was possible that a Jackal would hang around and watch from the shadows, waiting for an unsuspecting sister to totter away from the main festivities—it was how they’d earned the other name she’d heard them called: Creeps. But crowds made them nervous. If there was easier prey, they’d take it.

That also ruled out the two coed dorms. It was closing in on five thirty, but even with most of their inhabitants asleep, there were too many windows glowing softly from students’ monitors or lamps clipped to their headboards. The single-sex dorms, though, were a different story. The Jackals wouldn’t know it, but Ward and Bryant Halls were the places you lived if you wanted peace and quiet and early lights-out. Kids who lived in them did their partying elsewhere and tiptoed if they came home in the wee hours. It was where the campus geniuses lived.

Both were also—conveniently for a Jackal—nestled in at the far end of the street, and their back halves looked out at the woods. Now the trick was figuring out which kind of virgin flesh the Jackal was in the mood for tonight.
Sugar, spice, and everything nice, or snails, pails, and puppy dog tails?
Val stood halfway between the two buildings and sniffed again.
Maybe it was a false alarm. Maybe it was just passing thr—

There.

Val hurried around to the back of the boys’ dorm, following the smell of rot and blood. The streetlights’ glow didn’t carry back here, but her eyes adjusted almost instantly. On the second floor, a window was open. She got up close to the building and ran her hands over the old brick. Just above her head, she felt the gouges from where the Jackal’s claws had dug in as it scaled.

What’s good for the goose, as they say.

Val held her hands out in front of her. This was the part she hated, the reason she suspected she’d never go for the whole bat-form thing even if she
could
. Bones cracked as she willed her hands into claws. They grew gnarled and twisted, the fingers becoming hooked and knobby, the nails lengthening, thickening, sharpening. She bit down on her lip to bear the pain of it, which was a mistake. Her fangs unsheathed and stabbed down, slicing into the tender skin of her lower lip.

The wounds sealed as soon as she opened her mouth to pull the fangs free, but it still hurt like hell. At least the surprise of it had distracted her from the last seconds of transformation as the fine bones in her hands finished adjusting themselves.

Of course, there was one last problem.

She hadn’t been invited in.

If she entered without a come-on-in, she wouldn’t be repelled; no unseen force would throw her back to the ground. Nor would entering unasked mean agony with every step she took. But her abilities would be weaker, the reserves she could call on nearly nonexistent. Ten years since she’d faced a Jackal. Long enough since she’d even needed her claws that she made the fledgling mistake of tearing her lips. Val
needed
that invite. Fast.

There hadn’t been any screams yet, which meant the Jackal inside was either being extremely cautious or savoring its next meal. Val fumbled her cell phone from her jacket pocket, cursing the clumsiness of her freshly warped hands and thanking the gods for voice dial at the same time. She only hoped the fangs didn’t garble the preprogrammed names.

“Call Justin.” The call went through with no trouble, and somewhere deep in Bryant Hall, a cell phone rang.

He picked up on the third ring, his voice muzzy with sleep. “’Lo?”

I knew there was a reason I hired him.
“Justin, it’s Val. Can I come in?”

“Time izzit?”

“Just say yes, Justin. Can I come in?”

“Uh. Yeah, ’kay.”

“Good. You’re dreaming. Hang up and go back to sleep.” She put a bit of Command into her voice. It didn’t always work through phone lines, but it helped if the person was inclined to do whatever you were asking them to, anyway. Justin already trusted her, which made him more susceptible.

The call ended and she shoved down a pang of guilt. She’d feel bad about manipulating him tomorrow, when the Jackal was gone and a freshman remained uneaten. She snapped the phone shut and shoved it back in her pocket.

Then she began to climb.

 • • • 

V
AL TUMBLED THROUGH
the window onto the cold, hard bathroom tiles. Whether the window had been opened to let out smoke, steam, or stink, she didn’t know and didn’t much care—laid over all of it was the gag-inducing psychic stench of the Jackal. Now that her fangs were out, the reek was even stronger. She stalked down the length of the bathroom, past shower stalls and urinals. If luck had been with her, the Jackal would’ve been lurking in here, waiting for a victim to stumble in for a late-night piss.

Luck seemed to be taking the night off.

She cracked the door inch by inch, sniffing as the darkened hallway was revealed. She stuck her head out and peered in both directions. No light spilled from beneath any of the doors. This floor’s inhabitants were all asleep. Good for her and the Jackal, bad for its prey.

The scent was sharper out here in the hall, as though it had paused awhile before moving on to find a victim. It likely had; human scents tended to muddle together for Val until she was up close, but in that regard Jackals’ noses were far more refined. It had probably stood in this same spot, taking in the residents’ scents the way a mall-goer might look at the options in the food court before deciding what was for lunch.

In this case, lunch—
or breakfast,
Val supposed—was off to the right. She followed, pressing herself as close to the wall as she could. Bryant Hall was one of the oldest buildings on campus, built in the early nineteen hundreds. The floors were hardwood, prone to creaking if you tromped down the middle of the hallway. The boards were tighter at the edges, quieter. Val was good at moving silently, but she wasn’t taking any chances. As it was, she had to hope the Jackal was too involved in its prey to have caught a whiff of its own predator.

One door down, two doors, three.
Here.
The trail led to a door with a whiteboard hanging from a nail.
Jarrod’s Room: Beware of shark!!!
it read, with a picture of a shark about to devour a stick-man to illustrate the point. Someone had drawn a T-Rex eating the shark, and captioned it, “FLEE, PUNY HUMAN!”

The knob turned easily.
Don’t these kids ever listen to the “keep your doors locked” speeches they get at orientation?
At the start of every semester, she allowed kids from the student union to hang campus safety posters in the store. That one was always on there, right beneath reminders about the buddy system and sticking to well-lit areas. Maybe Jarrod wasn’t worried about someone stealing his stuff, but leaving his door unlocked had let in something far worse than a thief.

She opened the door just enough to squeeze through. The rotten stink assaulted her as soon as she entered, making her skin crawl and her gorge rise.
Meat gone bad and old, dead blood. Midden, filth, and milk turned sour. A feast for vultures and flies and—

The boy. Help the boy.

She shook her head to clear it and crouched down low, creeping off to the left so she could see both the kid and the Jackal. The room was small, maybe ten by twelve. Jarrod had pushed his bed beneath the window against the far wall.

The boy was kneeling up in bed, clad in a pair of cutoff sweatpants. His skin was pale, nearly paper white, and he was so scrawny his ribs stood out in the dim light. His open eyes were blank, already under his intruder’s spell. The Jackal stood over him, a thin figure in a long grey coat. A hood rose up from beneath the coat to cover its head—most of them wore hats or hoods to hide their faces. Val peered at it; it seemed small for its kind.

The thing tilted its head back, taking a long, deep, ecstatic sniff. The hood fell back as it did. Val caught a glimpse of the thin, pointed muzzle, the mouth open slightly to drink in more of Jarrod’s scent. A cascade of greasy black hair, freed from the confines of the hood, tumbled down the Jackal’s back. The tips of two long ears poked up from the tangle.

It’s a woman.
As the revelation slammed home, Val’s prey went rigid.
And she’s realized she’s not alone.
Val sprang forward as the Jackal started its turn. She meant to get an arm around it, catch it around the throat, but the damned thing was fast. It sidestepped. All Val got was a handful of air.

She caught herself on the desk, her claws gouging the pine surface. She felt a whoosh of air and jerked to the left. Something heavy and hard-cornered flashed past her face and smashed into the desk, sending splinters flying. When Val looked up, she saw the Jackal holding a trophy by its gold-painted plastic man, the corner of its marble base lodged in the wood.

Before it could yank its weapon back for another strike, Val’s hand snaked out and grabbed it by the wrist. She dug her claws in, piercing through layers of trench coat and sweatshirt, into its skin. The Jackal hissed its pain as warm blood leaked over Val’s fingers. It pressed itself against her, its other arm coming up to scrabble at her throat.

Damn it, that was my move.
Val let it get a grip. She even let out a few convincing gags. The crushing of her windpipe hurt like hell, but the Jackal had either forgotten something very important or had never fought a vampire before: Val didn’t actually
need
to breathe. She bent her knees and let her free hand get purchase on the edge of the desk, keeping the claws on the other hand in the Jackal’s wrist. Then she launched herself backward, like a swimmer pushing off from the edge of a pool.

They sailed across the room, the Jackal along for an unwilling ride before they crashed into the far wall. A thud and the sound of shattering glass came from the room next door as their impact dislodged whatever Jarrod’s neighbor had hanging on the other side.
Time to get the hell out of here.
The maneuver had also knocked the Jackal’s hand away from Val’s throat. “Jarrod,” she rasped.
Yep. Crushed windpipe.