Taming the Night (Creatures of the Night Book 1) (18 page)

“Don’t,” he said. She looked to him. If he let her she would turn from him and pretend that nothing had ever happened between them.

“Don’t what?”

“Just… stay with me. Sleep here with me without all the armor. Be soft for me for just a little while longer.
”

She looked like she might object but then relented and
lay next to him. He wrapped his arms around her and nearly before his head found the sleeping bag he was taken away into a deep sleep where lavender and vanilla scented his dreams with sweet things.

Chapter Nine

Al sat against a boulder and struck
a match. She took a deep drag on her cigarette as she watched Jerry sleeping. He was only half covered in the sleeping bag. The sight of the sinewy muscle that stood out even as he lay still made her mouth water. Thoughts of his hands all over her body sent a shiver down her spine.

He was not what she might have expected. He had not been slow and gentle. He had not asked her preferences. He had been rough, hard, animalistic
... He had taken control of her and possessed her and it had felt like a little piece of heaven. Her skin tingled to remember how his hands had seemed to be every where at once. How he’d managed that with one arm in a cast she would never know.

She should feel sore after what they had done, but thanks to her healing abilities she felt nothing but a deep satisfaction in her muscles.
As a matter of a fact she hadn’t felt this good in a long many years. She tried not to compare Jerry and Thomas but it was inevitable. She had no other base of comparison. She and Thomas had met in high school and married soon after graduation.

Thomas had been much older than her but he had been so completely gorgeous that no woman could resist him. A smile curved her lips at that. No woman but her. She had first seen him at her best friend’s graduation party. He was Mira’s older cousin. While all the other girls nearly fell at his feet
, she had steadfastly ignored him. She’d figured that if all the other girls were chasing him, then that left all the other boys open prey for her.

She’d danced and laughed with every other man at the party except Thomas. When she saw him trying to break away from the other girls
, she’d hurried to find a dance partner, and then laughed as she sent him a twinkling look where he stood at the edge of the dance floor. He’d given her a playful look and then found a dance partner for himself. The band had been a traditional New Orleans jazz group complete with someone playing the washboard against his chest.

She could still remember the feel of the flowing red dress
. It had fit her like a sheath while still flaring out around her knees. When she spun her bottom skirts twirled with her. Finally, when she was winded, she’d headed to the buffet table for some punch and a plate full of craw fish. She’d just put on a bib and cracked into her first few crawfish, sucking out the spicy meat inside, when he’d come to sit beside her. A few girls sent her a cross look and she’d laughed.

“Shouldn’t you be te
ndin’ to your adorin’ masses?” she’d asked with mischief twisting her lips.

“Non
, mon petite amor. I’m right where I want to be, cherie. What is your name beautiful?” he asked with a slight upturn of the corner of his mouth.

“I am not your lit
tle love. You don’t know nothin’ bout me. If you did you’d know I don’t take to sweet talk.”

“
Ohh… you are trying to send an arrow through my heart. How is it that you want me to talk to you, mon ami? If you don’t like it sweet then do you want it rough? Would you rather I be smooth or… sexual?” he asked. His French accent was thicker than her Creole one and sexy as hell.

She laughed out loud at that and ate another crawfish as she watched him. Her laugh caused him to give her a full smile and it was like watching the sun burst
over the treetops at sunrise. The flash of his white teeth against his dark skin was mesmerizing. That had been it. It had been over for the both of them.

She leaned back now as s
he puffed on her cigarette. For the first time in eight years she smiled a sincere smile that came from a place that she had thought long dead. She knew what had started it. In all this time she hadn’t allowed any softness, any emotion, to creep into her private thoughts. The only thrill that kept her alive was the hunt, the kill, the adrenaline from the fight. They were the only emotions that had made her feel alive. When she wasn’t fighting or shocking people with her coarseness then she was dead. It was as if she didn’t exist, but in Jerry’s arms…

She blew out a breath as she stubbed out the cigarette. She supposed that it was now completely pointless to smoke the damn things. Even their temporary high felt like nothing next to the high she
’d gone to with Jerry. She hadn’t meant to let him in. Hadn’t meant to go to him once he’d laid out on the sleeping bag but when she sensed his distress, it was as if she had the overwhelming desire to go to him… to comfort him.

Maybe his power as a balance didn’t only affect the creatures. Maybe it affected her too.
Whatever it was, she hoped that she got him to Bateman and got away from him as quickly as was possible because soon… she didn’t know if she could part with him. The idea already made her feel an aching panic inside that she didn’t even want to consider.

If it was his power as a balance that was pulling her toward him she could understand her overwhelming need to protect him, to be possessed by him, but on his side… He had risked his life for her time and again. Why? Sure she was beautiful but
he was an attractive man who could probably have any woman he wanted. And he’d had more than one opportunity to leave her high and dry and get on with his life. Instead he had come back to protect her and he hadn’t had to. For his part and against all odds he seemed to truly care about her. He thought her to be some type of a hero.

She didn’t want that to go to her head. She didn’t want to be flattered by the way he thought of her. She didn’t want to feel special, but she did. Just the same way Thomas had made her feel special by picking her over all the other prettier and more popular girls at her friends party. He’d seen something in her that she hadn’t seen in herself.
She closed her eyes and suddenly wished that she had a mirror to see her tattoo. It was time to get the ink refreshed so that it didn’t fade from her. She should not be allowed to have feelings like this, not ever again, not when her family was dead because of her.

Unbidden memories of that night saturated her thought
s and she allowed it, knowing that it was what she deserved. She should never ever be allowed to forget that night and the things it had set into motion. She was a monster and needed to remember it. It wasn’t fair that she was still alive. She should be the one who died, apparently her blood had been corrupted from the day she was born and she had always been meant to be here, to be this… animal.

The pawing at the entrance had stopped nearly an hour ago and her senses told her that it was morning. She hadn’t slept at all but with as much blood as she’d taken from him the day before
, she wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t that tired. After the good sex and the big meal she could probably go two more days without any sleep at all. She felt a tingling warning run through her senses. She’d felt it all night with the creatures so near but they should be in hibernation by now.

Still… something. She stood straight up when something at the back of the cave moved. She crouched low as she watched it move. She felt her face change.
It stepped out of the shadows with a leering grin and she realized how close it was to Jerry. She kept very still, even to the point of not breathing.

It watched her just as she watched it and without hesitation it made for Jerry. Jerry managed a yelp as it picked him up, tossed him over its shoulder and ran back into the shadows. Before Al could reach him three more creatures stepped out of the darkness. She shook her head.

“You’ve got the wrong one now, bebe. Let’s dance,” she said with a growl as her claws descended and. She leapt at them without another thought for herself. If they were to take Jerry away from her now she would be finished forever.

*

Jerry heard the sound that emerged from his throat. He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. There was something in the cave with them. A creature. It had grabbed him up and was carrying him off, but he was so tired. He couldn’t seem to rouse himself from sleeping. This had to be a dream. He let his head loll and was well on his way back to dark sweet dreams when he heard a scream in the darkness.

He would have ignored it because he needed to sleep so badly. His nerve endings
were still raw and his body was in so much pain. He was literally drained. How could he help anyone the way he was? The scream came again and this time he felt it in his bones, in his soul. Something entered him and gave him the strength to lift his head. It was Alicia. She was crying out in pain. He looked up to see the creatures huddled on one spot like a football pile.

When a mocha colored arm emerged from the heap and was being carried away Jerry felt rage erupt in the pit of h
is stomach. He cried out as he reared back, startling the creature momentarily. As he expected, however, his rage enraged the creature and it tossed him clear across the room. He landed near a wall and struggled to get up. He spied the satchel and made a dive for it.

Just as he grabbed a corner of it he was hauled into the air yet again. He was again being carried
off somewhere but he dug inside the bag until his hand made contact with something. The bag was snatched away from him and he prayed that he had a weapon and not a can of stew. The green light was loosing strength and he had to focus hard to see what was in his hand. When he made out what it was his smile was wide. The creature stopped as if sensing his elation but he didn’t give the thing a chance to inspect what was in his hands.

He pulled the pin and tos
sed the grenade in the air. The white light burst through the room. There was screaming and burning flesh everywhere. He could only tell by the smell since he was now slightly blinded by the light. When the noise died down some he waited for the ringing to clear from his head. That’s when he heard it. There was a whimpering noise.

He thought for a minute that it might be one of the creatures that hadn’t burned completely but the distinct rasp to the sound… It was Alicia. He got to his hands and knees and felt his way through the ash and muck. His hand made contact with something wet and the whimpering turned into a cry of pain. Her bo
dy was covered with the wet.

He forced his eyes to work then wished he hadn’t. At least the blood was
not red against the green light, but the gore that covered her… they had chewed her up pretty good. She was trembling and her teeth were clenched. The muscle in her face was visible because of the strip of flesh that had been torn from her face. Her arm was missing and her clothes were in tatters. There was so much blood, it was just hard to even look down at her. He forced himself to concentrate on her face. One of her eyelids was missing so it looked as if she had her eye really wide as she looked at him.

He cursed
viscously. If he hadn’t just killed them all he would have killed them all again. “What can I do to help you?” he asked as his hands hovered above her. Touching her seemed to hurt her more.

She was trembling so hard that he didn’t hear the words that came out of her mouth. He leaned in closer to listen.

“Sew… it… back… on,” she said through chattering teeth.

“Sew what back on?
” he asked.

“My arm… if… I heal… without it… I’ll… grow… a… new one. Takes… months.”

He knew that the shock had to show on his face because she nearly smiled. The smile looked macabre since the tissue was missing on the right side of her face. He looked around the cave by the faint green light. He saw a few lumps under the ash and sighed. He went to the nearest lump and found a rock. The next two were rocks as well. How many wolves had gotten in and how? He reached for the next pile thinking to find another hard cool rock beneath but there was something slimy and warm instead.

“That’s it,” she shouted and he heard the pain in her tone.

He hurried back to her, then inspected the limb in his hands, repressing the urge to loose last nights dinner all over the cave’s floor. Alicia was breathing hard and a tear rolled down her left cheek. It was darker than a tear so he thought it could possibly be blood.

“I hate to say it babe but I think that this arm is beyond repair,” he said looking at the mangled limb.

The meat had nearly been completely stripped from the bone. When he turned it over to inspect it further and the finger bones flopped around Al hissed and her back arched off the floor as if she were in excruciating pain. He held the arm more carefully as he tried to help her until he noticed something.

The boney fingers clenched into a fist as Al cried out in pain and he threw it down backing away.
This made her cries even more strangled and unnatural. He couldn’t take this. He could take anything but this. He went around to the opposite arm from where the arm lay and scooted up beside her again. “Please Al. I don’t want to have to call Bateman again. That didn’t work out so well for us last time. Tell me what I can do to help you and I’ll do it.

“Get the first aid
kit,” she said on the end of a high pitched scream.

He hurried to where he thought the satchel should be. He found it then went through it. When he found the tin containing her medical supplies he returned to her side. She took his arm with her good hand. He was surprised by how normal this hand seemed compared to the rest of her body. If he concentrated on this arm then he could almost see the beautiful strong vixen again.

“You have to sew it back on.” He felt the tremor run through her body as she tried to keep the pain out of her voice.