Appreciation, Jessie,she reminded herself. They needed the rain. It had been a dry spring.
She was reaching for the positives and knew it. As evidenced when the wind blew her jacket open and blasted her with a scattering of cold, wet drops. For a moment, it felt like fall, not spring. Loose leaves even skittered across the ground. She locked her eyes on her car, parked in a cluster of vehicles and gleaming beneath the lights.
When she was on day shift, the trees bordering the lot offered a cool, shady respite. At night, they formed an ominous black presence that loomed over her vehicle. Their branches thrashed in the wind, setting flight to leaves painted crimson.
Much harder to appreciate them now.
She shivered again and pulled her coat close around her throat. Her hair whipped into her eyes as her free hand groped deep in her pocket for the fob. A push of a button, and the headlights flashed.
Just another night. No problem. A quick trip to her little house near the river. A hot shower and wine beckoned. As she drew close, she averted her gaze from the tangle of shrubs and trees near her car’s bumper. This night was enough to make her believe in monsters. Her overtired mind and vivid imagination would paint one for her in those shadows if she let it.
You idiot. Even Nosferatu wouldn’t be out on a night like this.As she reached for the door handle, a hard gust of wind blew a flurry of raindrops in her face. She blinked and shoved hair out of her eyes.
The gust abated, and for just an instant, the branches stopped thrashing.
Into the newfound silence, something growled.
Her heart froze.
Unwillingly, her eyes snapped to the trees. Her racing mind ran through the gamut of possibilities.Dog. Must be a dog.Her mind stubbornly refused to compare it to what she’d heard in the neighbor’s yard.
Another gust of wind tossed her hair, but not as strongly this time. The branches moved. Within the shifting darkness, a dense, motionless shadow loomed. She struggled with the scope of it, refusing to lift her eyes from dog height.
It growled again. The sound came from above her, not below.
No.
But her eyes lifted. Higher. And higher. Was the dog crouched on a branch? Two orbs glowed gold in reflected light. Gold. Since when did dogs have glowing gold eyes?
Then it stepped forward. Unafraid. Into the light.
Effing hell.The fob slipped from her hand.
The eyesweregold. They glared at her from a broad skull more like a bear’s than a dog’s. It towered over her. Long ears flattened into a mane the color of night that swirled in the breeze. Powerful shoulders flowed into muscular arms that ended in clawed fingers. It opened its jaws, and snarled, revealing teeth as long as her pinky. The overhead light flickered over a huge, jagged scar puckering the skin along one side of its face.
This was no Nosferatu. As her mind shrieked at her, a single word flashed through her head.
Werewolf.
Her body didn’t care about the impossibility of it. Every instinct she possessed seized hold, spinning her around to bolt back the way she’d come.
She ran straight into a hulking beast of a man.
“What thehell.”
She hadn’t heard him approach. Startled, Jessie stared upward into eyes so pale a brown they were almost the color of honey.
It was the creepy-psycho-grizzly guy from the hospital.
He was still creepy as hell, but relief flooded through her. She wasn’t alone out here. But they had to get away—like now.
“Dammit,man, we gotta run.” Her hands pushed against his chest. It was like touching solid rock, and he didn’t budge.
An arm covered in black hair with muscles like steel wrapped around her from behind. A hand the size of a dinner plate clamped over her face and throat. The fingers were tipped in razor-sharp claws that pierced her skin.
Jessie screamed, or tried to. Very little got past the hairy hand over her mouth. She heaved against his powerful arms, thrashing to get free, but she might as well try to move a mountain. Hot breath drifted across her cheek.
Psycho man stood no more than a few feet from her, his head tilting to one side. Why wasn’t he helping her? Or for that matter, why wasn’t herunning?
