Strangers of the Night

  “Telekinesis? Stuff like that?”

  “Yes,” Phoenix said, and watched her expression of incredulity. “He and all the people in his cult did their best to create offspring with talents. Mine is the ability to influence people to do things against their will.”

  Willa’s brows rose for a second before her eyes narrowed. “The lady in the grocery store. Brady.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked uncertain. “Me? Oh my god. Did you...did we because you...?”

  “No,” he said. “Not you.”

  Willa shook her head. “How can I believe that? If what you say is true, how would I even know? I mean, not that I can believe you—it’s just crazy.”

  Without saying a word, with no more than a glance in her direction—and only that to show off to Willa what he was doing, since he didn’t need to see the person in order to nudge them, he just needed to be aware of their presence near him—Phoenix had the waitress come to their table.

  “I hate my job,” she said. “I would like to pour this coffee all over the register and walk out. Can I get you something else?”

  “Just the check,” Phoenix said at Willa’s startled expression. “Which you will have comped. Then you’ll forget us both, and if anyone asks, you never saw either one of us.”

  The waitress grinned. “Sure thing, no problem. Here you go, you have a nice night.”

  Phoenix waited until she’d wandered back to the counter, where she pulled out her phone and started tapping away again without so much as a glance toward them. Then he looked at Willa. “Ready to go?”

  * * *

  She’d seen it happen, but that didn’t mean anything. Did it? Willa didn’t even look at him as they crossed the highway to get back to the motel.

  In the Penn’s Grove library, there was an entire section on the occult and paranormal. Willa had acquired titles and shelved them in that section for years and had never once picked one up. She didn’t watch horror movies or read scary books. She didn’t hold on to superstitions. Yet she’d seen the waitress respond to something, and it had clearly not been free will.

  In the room, she excused herself to use the bathroom. A long, hot shower. Tooth brushing. She put on a pair of soft sweatpants and a T-shirt from the go bag since she hadn’t packed pajamas. She swiped away the steam from the mirror to take a long, hard look at her reflection.

  “So who were those men?” she said without preamble when she came out to find Phoenix with his head propped on a pillow and watching something on the TV with the sound turned so low he couldn’t possibly hear the dialogue.

  “They come from a place called Wyrmwood,” he said without pause. He sat, back pressed against the headboard. “It is exactly what I said it was in the diner. They found out about Collins Creek years ago and raided it. They took some of the children.”

  “You?”

  “No. My sister and I got away. We ran. We lived on the streets for years.”

  Willa sat on the edge of the second bed, facing him. “How old were you?”

  “Ten. On the farm, all the children lived in the nursery until they turned five, and then we were tested to see if we had any talents. If we did, we got to move into the dorms.”

  Willa frowned. “If you didn’t?”

  “You went away. I don’t know what happened,” Phoenix said, voice free of inflection. No hint of emotion on his face. He might’ve been talking about the TV show still playing.

  “So you and your sister, at age ten, were on the streets and on the run, after years of mental and physical trauma?”

  Phoenix said nothing. His steady stare didn’t waver. He looked at her, but that was it.

  Without thinking of why, without holding back, Willa got up and knelt on the bed in front of him. She pulled him close, his face pressed to her neck. She stroked the length of his hair. When he tried to resist her by pulling away, she tightened her grip, and he sent still. He sighed against her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered into his ear. She held him tight, not understanding what had pushed her to this offer of comfort. She was not the sort to hug, and while she’d never thought of herself as being unkind, she wasn’t totally a warm and fuzzy personality, either.

  This time when he made to pull away, she let him. He didn’t meet her gaze. Her fingertips rested on his shoulders, no longer holding him, but the connection was still there.

  “It was a long time ago. Decades. And I made it through. I’m fine.”

  Willa had gone through her own hell, but she was sure not one bit of it compared to whatever Phoenix had endured as a child. Being on the streets had to have been awful, too.

  “How did Wyrmwood find you this time?”

  “I called my sister. She’s been...” He paused, then shook his head. “There’s another group, kind of the opposite of Wyrmwood. Run by a dude named Vadim. Group of people, some of them with abilities like mine, most just able to do other stuff like computer hacking or whatever. It’s called the Crew. They research stuff like this, or they’re paid to prove or disprove the existence of this sort of thing. When someone sees a chupacabra, they end up going after it.”

  “A chupa... I don’t even know what that is.” Her fingers curled a bit more on his shoulders until he looked at her face.

  “So why would calling your sister bring down Wyrmwood on you?” she asked, mind whirling, trying hard to put the pieces together.

  Phoenix shrugged. “It’s the only thing I can think of. The Crew uses encryption and all that shit, I’m sure. But I was on a phone that might’ve been monitored. I don’t know.”

  “All of this is crazy,” she said.

  He smiled and touched a strand of her hair that had curled, damp from the shower. “Totally bat shit.”

  “I don’t like thinking you made me do something,” she said bluntly. “How do I know you haven’t? How do I know that I’m not here right now because of something you forced me into?”

  Phoenix closed his eyes. Said nothing. Beneath her hands, his muscles shifted and bunched, tensing, before he relaxed.

  “I tried with you,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”

  She sat back then, putting distance between them. “What?”

  “It doesn’t work with you,” he repeated, opening his eyes. The pupils had gone wide and dark. “I’ve never met someone I couldn’t nudge, but you just won’t be nudged. I don’t know why.”

  Something twisted inside her at those words. That look. A slow and spiraling heat began low in her belly, spreading upward.

  “You expect me to believe that out of all the people in your life you’ve ever met, I’m different, somehow?”

  Phoenix let his tongue slip out to dent his bottom lip for a second. “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I can believe that,” Willa said.

  “I can’t prove it,” he said finally. “You’ll always wonder if I’m making you do something. You’ll never be able to fully trust me, because you won’t be able to trust yourself.”

  It sounded like he’d been down that road before, but she wasn’t going to go there right now. Now she was tired, her stomach full, and at least for the moment it seemed as though they were safe. She stifled a yawn.

  “I need sleep,” she said.

  Phoenix nodded and used the remote to turn off the TV. “Sure. That’s a good idea. I’d like to get out of here first thing in the morning.”

  “It’s already first thing in the morning,” Willa said.

  He smiled. “We don’t have to leave at dawn or anything. You can sleep for a few hours.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine. You sleep,” he said, and whether it was because he’d told her to or she could no longer fight the exhaustion, Willa crawled into bed and was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pi
llow.

  Chapter 8

  They’d been driving for an hour before Willa said more than a few grunted words. Apparently she was not a morning person. Phoenix didn’t blame her. He didn’t love mornings himself.

  “So...where are we going?”

  He glanced at her. “I’m taking you to meet my sister.”

  “What?” Startled, she did a double take. “Where is she?”

  Phoenix focused again on the road. “Not sure. But I know how to find her, or how to let her find me, anyway.”

  “You’re taking me to the Crew?”

  He nodded. “Yes. They’ll be able to keep you safe.”

  “So you do think I’m in danger.”

  “Because you were with me,” he said. “Yes. They wouldn’t keep you, I don’t think. But the things they’d do so that you didn’t remember them or your time there wouldn’t be good.”

  Willa made a face and looked back out the passenger side window. Without turning back to him, she said, “I don’t have anything to go back to, really.”

  “Your family,” Phoenix told her at once.

  She nodded, still looking out the window. “Will they be all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She turned. “Could the Crew protect them?”

  “Yes. I think so,” he said. “To be honest, though, I doubt Wyrmwood would go after them. I heard they have money problems.”

  She laughed. Hard. “Are you kidding me?”

  He hadn’t realized how much he’d been hoping to see her smile until she did. “Nope. Everything takes a budget. Do you know how much it costs to get all those black uniforms?”

  She was giggling then, rolling her eyes. It lifted something in him that had felt very heavy for a long time. She waved a hand at him.

  “Imagine the dry-cleaning bills,” she said.

  Then both of them were guffawing, the cab of the truck filling with their laughter. He couldn’t recall ever losing himself to humor the way he was in this moment. Maybe once or twice, but not for a long time.

  Willa looked at him with shining eyes. “This all feels so surreal, you know?”

  “I know. I’m...sorry.” He was not used to apologies, but one felt necessary now.

  Willa shook her head, her smile softening but not disappearing. “What are you sorry about?”

  “Everything.” Carefully he navigated the truck off the rural road they’d been following since this morning and onto a smaller road that had not been plowed. There wasn’t as much snow here as there’d been in Penn’s Grove, but it was enough to make driving difficult.

  “Oh,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “You wouldn’t be in this mess if not for me. You’d be at home now, safe.”

  “Don’t be sorry about everything,” she said after a second or so. “I’m not.”

  Again, her look. Her voice. His cock thickened, pressing the front of his jeans. He wanted to answer her but had no words. He wasn’t used to that. It made him a little angry but did nothing to release the pressure in his crotch. If anything, it got his cock even harder.

  She didn’t say much after that, and neither did he. They drove for another half an hour, slow going on the dirt road even with the four-wheel drive. The snow and ice had not been plowed, and it required almost all of his concentration to keep the vehicle on the road. By the time they got to the clearing in the trees and the small wooden cabin there, his fingers had cramped a bit from clutching the steering wheel. He pulled up through the snow to park in front of the cabin and turned to her.

  “We’re here.”

  * * *

  She’d told him in the truck that all of this felt surreal, and that hadn’t changed. If anything, several times Willa had stopped herself to make sure she was indeed living this adventure and not dreaming it. Even so, she kept waiting to wake up.

  Phoenix had brought them to what he said was a safe house for the Crew. A hunting cabin deep in the Pennsylvania mountains. Fully stocked with food, beverages, with heat provided by a wood-burning stove. Comfortably furnished with everything a hunter might need...or a pair of people on the run from what she was still not certain was a real thing.

  “How’d you know about this place?” she asked, watching as Phoenix moved from the stove to the counter and back again. He was cooking something for her from things he’d pulled from the pantry. She wasn’t going to argue about it. She liked watching him move.

  Phoenix glanced at her as he sliced some onions and set them sizzling in a pan. “Vadim brought me and my sister here a long time ago. He said if we ever needed anything, we should find a way to get here and someone would be along to get us shortly.”

  “Is that what we want?” Willa frowned at the thought of this. “I get the idea you don’t like the Crew.”

  “I don’t want to ever be beholden to anyone,” Phoenix said sharply. “I don’t want to ever be put in a place I can’t get out of. I don’t want anyone to tell me what I should do with my abilities. I don’t want to be controlled.”

  She could understand that, for sure, although she couldn’t help thinking about the night in his house. “You let me tell you what to do.”

  He’d been turned toward the stove when she said that, and his back straightened. He half turned. “That was different.”

  “I’d like to know why,” Willa asked quietly.

  He didn’t answer her. She didn’t push. He kept cooking, a simple dish of pasta with sauce made from canned tomatoes, onions and garlic. He put it on the table in front of her and didn’t take a seat.

  She looked up at him. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t let you tell me what to do,” he said after a second. “I let you do things to me. That was different. I chose it.”

  “Fair enough.” She didn’t push. Instead, she picked up the fork he’d given her and twirled it full of pasta. She tucked the bite into her mouth, murmuring with pleasure at the flavors. She chewed. Swallowed.

  He watched her, waiting until she’d finished the bite and looked up at him before he put his own plate on the table and took a seat. They ate in silence. She didn’t stare at him, although she felt him looking at her a lot. When they’d finished, she cleared the table and started washing the dishes, waving him away when he tried to help.

  “I got this,” she said. “You made dinner. I’ll clean up.”

  “How domestic,” Phoenix said.

  She glanced at him as she rinsed a plate and put it in the drainer next to the sink. “How long until someone comes?”

  “I don’t know. Could be hours. Could be a few days.”

  “How do they know we’re here?” She asked.

  Phoenix shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” Willa said as she finished the last dish and turned to face him. “I guess we’d better make the most of the time we have, huh?”

  She’d been testing him, not entirely sure how he was going to react. But there it was again, that fine shiver, the brief flutter of his lashes as his eyes closed and he forced them open immediately. The slick pink point of his tongue on his lower lip before it disappeared.

  “Go upstairs,” she said, her breath catching and her heart beginning to pound even though she was doing her best not to show it. “Take off your clothes and wait for me.”

  He didn’t move at first, and she thought he was going to refuse. Or make a comment, a joke, maybe even a cheesy retort. There was a second when a hard light flared in his gaze when she thought he might flat-out tell her to fuck off.

  He didn’t.

  He got up from the table with a scrape of the chair on the faded linoleum. Silently, he left the kitchen. She heard the tread of his footsteps on the narrow set of stairs leading up to what she’d already seen was a gabled attic room lined with several
beds.

  She finished with the dishes, not because she had any sort of cleaning fetish but so she could make him wait. The creak of the floorboards above her had ceased after the first minute or so. She imagined him waiting for her, and her breath slipped out of her on a small hissing sigh as she fought to keep herself from shaking. Desire and need made her fingers tremble so much that she dropped the pot in which he’d cooked the pasta. It hit the sink with a clatter so loud she was sure he’d be down the stairs in an instant, but there was only silence.

  Willa gave a breathless laugh at her foolishness and got herself together. They were doing this, she thought with something like wonder, and that idea—that she would climb those stairs and find him waiting for her—was as surreal as anything else had been for the past couple of days. She let the water from the faucet run cold for a half a minute so she could dab it at her throat and over her forehead.

  Then she went upstairs.

  “Oh,” she said at the sight of him. “Oh my god.”

  He had done as she’d told him. Naked. Stretched out on a sagging double bed. His cock was hard. His eyes were closed, lips slightly parted as she moved to stand over the bed. He let out a small sigh when she ran a hand up one muscled thigh and over his hip to rest on his belly, close to but not touching his erection.

  Swiftly, Willa undressed. The cabin was warm downstairs, but up here it was chilly enough that she could see her breath. Her nipples peaked at once. So much for heat rising, she thought, and nearly let out another burst of those semihysterical giggles that so plagued her when she was faced with a situation she couldn’t quite believe was happening.

  She didn’t want to think of this as a dream or a fantasy, though. She wanted it to be real. This man and the things he’d allowed her to do were all too real. Too precious, too sexy, too delicious...too rare, she thought as she dug her fingernails into the taut skin of his stomach and watched him arch beneath her rough touch.

  “Open your eyes.”

  He did.

  “Tell me,” Willa said in a voice so low and rasping she wasn’t sure he’d heard her.