Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology) (148 page)

“
Going out there and saying
hello would not be throwing yourself at him, unless you intend to
take your top off while you do it,” she said, then
winked.

“
Very funny,” I said, then
laughed again. “Okay.”

She grinned as I hopped out of the
truck.

Outside, Jesse was sitting in the
truck bed, his gorgeous black locks blowing in the wind.

“
Hey,” I said.

“
Hey.”

“
Need some company?” I
asked.

His eyes twinkled in the moonlight.
“I’d love some.”

I jumped into the cab and sat next to
him. “Keeping us safe from all the wild animals out prowling
around?”

“
Lots of dangerous
predators hunt at night.”

“
Like the bobcat? I know
they’re nocturnal.” I smiled, then gazed into his eyes.

“
I almost didn’t come
tonight,” he said. “Now I’m glad I did.”

I smiled, nervously tossing my hair to
the side. “If you knew it was dangerous, why did you—”

Before I could even get the question
out, he turned to the left and glanced into the towering woods.
“Taylor, get back in the truck and lock the doors,” he
said.

I smiled, thinking he was joking.
“Why? Are we being stalked? More mountain lions?”

He didn’t laugh, though, and his face
remained stern. “Please get back inside the truck.

Knowing he was dead set on protecting
me and realizing how serious he was, I didn’t protest. I opened the
door and climbed in.

“
What’s going on?” Julie
asked.

I tried to get a glimpse of some
hungry wildlife, but I saw nothing. “He thinks something’s out
there.”

“
Like what?”

“
Like a wild
animal.”

She blew out a breath and glanced out
the window. “He needs to get his butt inside too. I don’t wanna
watch him get torn to shreds!” She rolled down the window. “Jesse,
get your butt in here.”

While we
looked out at Jesse, who was pacing the road and staring deep into
the dark woods, I began to get really creeped out.
Where the heck is this friend of his?
I wondered, knowing we needed to get back on the
road and get home before Julie’s mom did. She had worked the
nightshift at the hotel, but she would be home by eight a.m. at the
latest. If we didn’t make it home before she did, my own mother
would find out, and I’d be grounded for weeks.

BANG
!

Suddenly, something shattered the
driver’s-side window of the truck. I ducked as flying glass sprayed
everywhere. Disoriented, I glanced up at my friend.

“
Now
you’re
bleeding!” Julie shouted. “Where’s that medic when we need
her?”

Chapter 5

I glanced down and realized that some
of the glass from the window had cut the top of my hand. “It’s
okay,” I said. “I just got cut when the glass
shattered.”

Suddenly, rifle shots echoed through
the darkness.

I froze, and a cold chill shot down my
spine.

“
Somebody’s shooting at
us!” Julie said, her voice wavering as she stated the obvious.
“We’re being robbed or somethin’.”

The words remained frozen in my
throat, and I could only shake my head in shared disbelief. I
reached for my phone and quickly called 911, but the call wouldn’t
go through. “No signal!” I said.

“
Same here,” Julie said,
trembling with fright.

“
Jesse!” I shouted through
the broken window. I glanced around for him, but he was nowhere in
sight.

BOOM
!

More glass shattered like rock candy,
spraying us with shards as the windshield was shot out.

“
We’ve gotta get outta
here!” I said. “Some crazy person is shooting at us, and I’ve kinda
got the feeling he’s not gonna stop until we’re dead.”

“
No!” Julie said. “I’m not
leaving. If we step out of this truck, it’ll be like target
practice for our trigger-happy stalker!”

“
Julie, if we stay in this
truck, we’re as good as dead.”

She met my gaze, her eyes wide with
terror. Clearly, she’d been scared sober.

I gripped her hands. “We can hide in
the woods.”

“
No way! Haven’t you ever
seen a horror movie in your life? The hockey mask guy always chases
girls into the woods, and I don’t wanna be chopped up with a meat
cleaver!”

“
That’s just the movies,
Julie. I’ve been in those woods already. I know it’s dark, and
there are so many trees and shrubs and boulders. He’ll never find
us.”

“
But what about Jesse?” she
whispered.

Droplets of sweat rolled down my face.
“I-I don’t know. I don’t see him anywhere.”

“
So he just abandoned us?
Your knight in shining armor left two damsels in distress?” she
snapped. “Humph. Some Prince Charming he turned out to
be.”

I tentatively glanced out the window,
and another chill shot up my spine when I noticed a puddle on the
street, glimmering crimson in the moonlight. “Oh my
gosh!”

“
What?”

Biting my lip hard, I pointed. “Blood!
Jesse’s hurt.”

She cautiously glanced out, peeking
through her fingers the way someone would look at a car accident,
then let out a trembling breath. “Wh-where did he go?”

A cold feeling washed over me, and I
felt as if all the blood had instantly drained from my face. “I
dunno.”

BANG
!

More glass shattered as a bullet
destroyed one of the side windows, garnering another scream from
Julie.

I gripped Julie’s hand. “We’ve gotta
get out of here. We’re sitting ducks if we stay.”

She nodded, finally realizing I was
right.

I opened the glove compartment and
fumbled around through all sorts of junk, everything from gum
wrappers to a tire gauge to coupons for fast food places. “You got
a flashlight in here or under the seat or anything?”

“
No,” she said, shaking her
head. “I know I should, but I didn’t expect to be…”

As she trailed off, I heard an
unmistakable howl echoing in the distance, and the hair on my neck
rose.

“
Did you hear that?” Julie
frantically whispered. “Maybe my Little Red Riding Hood joke wasn’t
so far off. There are wolves out there, Taylor! Wolves!”

With that cruel realization, I
second-guessed my decision to run into the woods, but staying in
the truck and being easy pickings for the deranged Rambo wasn’t an
option either.

Swallowing hard, I slipped out of the
passenger’s door and stayed low. Adrenaline spiked in my veins, and
I had to force myself to take slow breaths. I motioned for Julie to
follow me, and we slowly crept into the woods. Eerie shadows
stretched and shifted in the trees like ghouls. Darting forward, I
jumped over logs and zigzagged through the towering trees, going as
fast as the burning muscles in my legs would allow, with dry leaves
and twigs crunching beneath my feet. I continued checking over my
shoulder and was glad to see that Julie’s drunk had worn off enough
that she was having no trouble keeping up; the moonlight glinting
here and there off of her sparkly shirt let her know she was right
behind me. I spun and found an alternate route, squeezing through
the clustered trees in the hopes of escaping our
pursuer.

A few feet behind us, within earshot,
twigs snapped and ferns rustled, as if someone or something was hot
on our trail. I wasn’t sure if it was human, bobcat, or some other
variety of predator, but I twisted through the overgrown ferns and
foliage, running faster and encouraging Julie to hurry.

“
Taylor!” Jesse’s voice
said.

I had no idea how he found us with all
the turns and twists I’d taken, but it was a relief to know that he
was there and hadn’t deserted us after all.

Jesse sucked in a deep breath and held
his chest, where blood was dripping from a gaping wound.

I gasped, then took a deep, trembling
breath. “Jesse, I saw blood by the truck. Are you okay?”

He struggled to breathe. “I was…he
shot me.”

My pulse pounded in my ears. I had no
idea what to do for a gunshot wound, and even if I had known, I was
too scared to think clearly enough to play nurse.

Julie took off her sweater and applied
pressure. “Stay calm…and whatever you do, don’t pass
out.”

“
We need to keep moving,” I
said. “We gotta get back on the road and find help.”

“
He’ll have no idea where
were coming out,” Julie said as we walked briskly, helping Jesse
along.

“
I’ll be fine,” he said. “I
just need a little while to recuperate.”

“
Uh-uh, buddy. Don’t go
trying to be Mr. Macho right now. This isn’t like shaking off a
twisted ankle,” Julie said. “You were shot, for goodness sake! You
need surgery, medical help, and a lot of prayers.”

I pushed branches aside, took another
step into the dense vegetation, then straightened to listen.
Barking, whining, and haunting howls echoed in the air. It seemed
we’d lost the maniac shooter, but now we were wandering around a
lonely forest, a dark labyrinth of trees, possibly being stalked by
a pack of wolves.

“
We gotta keep moving,”
Jesse said.

A deeper, more menacing howl made my
hands shake. It reminded me of a bloodhound my neighbor had once
owned, but when all the wild canines bayed together, it was beyond
freaky and downright ominous.

We kept going, climbing over slippery
logs and jagged rocks and pushing our way through thick underbrush
and tall grass. My foot caught on a broken log and a cluster of
rocks, but before I toppled over, I somehow managed to regain my
equilibrium. Still, my ankle throbbed, slowing me down.

“
They’re too close,
Taylor,” Julie said. “We’ll never outrun them.”

“
Forget the wolves,” I
said. “They just add ambiance to our spooky night hike.”

She shook her head. “How are you so
calm?” she said as we stumbled along through the thick terrain.
“Jesse’s dying, we’re lost in the woods, a crazy madman might be
following us, and now some wolves wanna make a midnight snack out
of us. All things considered, maybe the hockey mask guy with the
meat cleaver would be better.”

“
I’m not dying,” Jesse
said, leaning into me as he used us as human crutches.

“
Sorry,” Julie said. “I
don’t mean to be so negative. I guess I’m still a little drunk and
wondering if this is all a dream and I’m really passed out back at
that party.”

I stumbled on a log again, then
regained my balance; I was dressed for a party and wasn’t exactly
wearing hiking boots. “Don’t be scared. Wolves are predators, but
they don’t attack humans. After my run-in with the mountain lion,
my dad gave me a lecture on all the wildlife around
here.”

“
You still have a lot to
learn about these woods,” Jesse said.

“
But wolves naturally fear
humans,” I said confidently. “Dad said that, but so did this guy on
this Discovery Channel special he made me watch
yesterday.”

“
These don’t,” Jesse
added.

“
Wolves have been known to
leave a kill when they saw a human coming in their direction,” I
argued. “Besides, I’m more scared about the guy who shot at us,” I
said. “And we really need to get you to the hospital.”

“
Wolves are…predators,”
Jesse gasped out between breaths.

I glanced
at him skeptically. “My dad said that in the past century, there’ve
only been two incidents in North America. He wouldn’t lie to me,
not when he wants me to be safe out here.” I glanced over my
shoulder and gasped at the canine silhouettes not far behind.
“Wait…they
are
following us! They’re not acting right. Do you think they have
rabies or something?”

“
Or something,” Jesse said.
He suddenly stopped, then pointed. “There’s a cabin up there. Maybe
someone’s home who can help us.”

I glanced
ahead but didn’t see anything. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he
might be hallucinating from blood loss, like a thirsty man seeing
an oasis mirage in the desert. As the howls grew louder and began
to come from closer, I hoped my imagination was just playing tricks
on me too.
Nope. Wolves don’t hunt
humans,
I kept telling myself, but I wasn’t
sure if I could believe it, in spite of my dad and Animal
Planet.

“
There it is!” Julie said.
“How’d you see it from that far away?” she asked Jesse, but he just
moaned and didn’t answer.

It was still hard to see but I could
make out a structure in the moonlight, a cabin looming in the
distance. The barking and howling grew louder, and I knew the
wolves had captured our scent. I hoped the cabin would offer us
safety and a landline; that hope was the only thing that kept me
sane and calm.