Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 10

"Rescue 7, respond to Whisper Mountain Road off Highway 63 for a 24-year-old male, attacked by a wolf."

I jerk out of my oblivion. Attacked by a wolf? It's not our territory, but I lean over, start the ignition and crank up the heat for Dana.

"Rescue 1 to Central. Cancel 7. We'll take that call. Do you have a more specific location?"

"Negative, Rescue 1. Call came from a cell phone. The caller was confused and unable to state his specific location. We triangulated the call with GPS."

I pull up the map on the computer mounted on the dash. The location is up a high mountain road and sunrise is an hour off. Dana climbs in the truck bleary-eyed, pulling her hair back. "Did they say attacked by a wolf?"

"Yes. It's probably a wild dog."

She takes a quick look at the map then looks at me. "You sure you want to take this? Seven can take it. Lucien relieves you soon."

"I'll be fine. It's a trauma call. We'll make it quick."

She gives me an uncertain look. Despite the rare diagnosis of XP, xeroderma pigmentosum, I claim to have, she thinks my aversion to sunlight is purely psychological. No doubt this risk I'm taking is solidifying her theory. But if I don't feed tonight, I won't make it long, sunlight or not.

***

Dana follows the mountain road, slick with icy frost, at a relatively reasonable pace. We don't have a specific location and she doesn't want to miss it. All I see are miles of wilderness, trees so thick they form an impenetrable barrier to my vision. Sunrise is still a ways off and the night is the violet black of dying darkness.

I roll my window down to sniff the air. Dana doesn't complain. She has the cold tolerance of a Viking. Suddenly, the scent of blood hits me.

"Stop."

She glances over at me and slows. "Did you see something?"

"I think I heard yelling. Pull over here." Blood fills the air, hitting my brain with the intensity of light. We're close.

Dana finds a spot to pull over on the narrow shoulder. To our right, the ground falls off sharply into a tilt of trees and brush. "Stay with the truck. I'll check it out and let you know if I need anything." She opens her mouth to speak, but I'm slipping down the incline, through the trees into darkness.

The air is chill with the scent of pine and blood. It floods my head. I follow the scent over cold-hardened ground, my boots breaking through the frost. All my senses are alive. I can hear the beat of a heart, getting louder and louder as I near. I pray it is strong enough to sustain the trauma. I smell no wolf, nor hear one. The night is silent save for my breath and boot falls, and the beating of a heart louder than sirens swelling in the night.

I fall through the trees.

In the splintered moonlight I find them: a father and son in camouflage, rifles within reach. Hunters. The father is dead, his neck torn open leaving him drained. Blood is everywhere.

A few feet away, a young man lies semiconscious on the forest floor, panting with quick shallow breaths, his back propped awkwardly against a tree, one hand clutching a rifle. His gun is hot. I can feel the heat reaching out to strike me. He looks like a thick country boy, now drawn and diminishing. His femur is broken with a jagged edge of bone jutting out of the flesh like wet white coral. The break has lacerated his femoral artery and it oozes hot blood in the crease where his thigh meets his hip. A t-shirt is wrapped tightly around his leg, but it hasn't fully staunched the bleed.

I crouch down and untie the bandage, exposing the wound. He is slashed but not entirely drained. His skin, the bone-white color of shock, gleams with cold sweat as his eyes begin to dim. He is fading. There isn't much time. Sirens howl through the night. Soon Santos will arrive. I sense him coming like a storm.

Crouching, I rip the boy's jeans open wider, fall to my hands and knees, press my lips against his wound and drink.