Nightwalkers Read online

  "I hope that isn't prophetic," Jassy shivered, looking up at it.

  "C'mon," Brad said soothingly. "The beds may be hell, but no one can spoil a straight bourbon."

  "That your tipple?" Jassy laughed. "What a coincidence! I drink nothing but. Let's check in and go polish off a couple to warm our bellies."

  * * *

  "Mister and Missus Smith?" the clerk said suspiciously. He was a little balding weasel of a man with horn-rimmed glasses, over which he peered, sizing them up. "And how long will y'all be staying?"

  "That depends on the weather and the roads," Jassy told him icily. "No longer than we have to, that's for sure."

  "Good," the man said. "We gotta a karaoke night scheduled for tomorrow. Need all the rooms we can get for them things."

  "We'll certainly try to be out before the first note is sung," Brad assured him.

  "Your unit's Twenty-six. Out back by the swamp. Only one we had left when Deputy Flynn called. There's no inner corridor, so you'll have to get to the bar and dining room by the outside. And, if you want a drink tonight, please see you don't go out alone."

  "Why not?"

  "I told you. You're out by the swamp. Nightwalkers."

  "Hog-wallow!" Jassy snorted, flipping her still-wet black hair in disdain. "C'mon, Brad."

  "Oh. Just a sec, y'all," the clerk called them back.

  "What is it?" Brad wheeled around.

  "I see y'all didn't put down the make and license number of your car, Mister...Smith." The clerk's voice dripped disapproval. Apparently it was all right for local singles to shack up on karaoke night. But strangers didn't have such a long rein.

  "Oh...oh, yes," Brad said, a mite flustered. "That's because...you see...it's my sister's car. I just borrowed it for a couple of days."

  "Then I'll need to see the ownership," the clerk said.

  "It's a Dodge, I know," Jassy said. "I noticed it on the dash. And..." she peered through the streamlets of rain on the window. "The license is 8-1-7, D-X-D. There, that satisfy you?"

  "Rules say, if a car is borrowed, I have to see the ownership," the clerk shook his head officiously.

  "Never mind," Jassy huffed. "It must be in the glove compartment. I'll get it."

  And Jassy was gone before Brad could move.

  "Here you are," she slapped the leather wallet on the counter in front of the clerk who picked it up and peered at it for what seemed like half an hour.

  "Cindy Waller is your sister?"

  "I said it was her car," Brad said defiantly. "Why the bloody inquisition?"

  "Can't be too careful. There was a murder on Highway One tonight."

  "Yeah, we heard about it."

  "So, then all I need now is your driver's license," the clerk said to Brad.

  "You've already got my name." Brad slammed his hand down on the register.

  "You and I both know that's a phony. Don't worry. Y'all are Mister and Missus Smith to me. But, if the cops should ask about you, I need to know who at least one of you really is."

  With a disgusted grunt, Brad handed his license to the officious little man.

  "This doesn't say your name is Waller," he said, his voice sounding triumphant.

  "Waller is my sister's married name, dammit!" Brad shouted. "C'mon, Jacynthe, I really need that bourbon now."

  He grabbed her elbow and steered her forcibly out of the lobby. "C'mon, before I clobber the sniveling little crud."

  They had a bourbon in the bar/dining room. Then they had a second. And a third. In fact they drank until they lost count and Brad finally sighed and said,

  "I think I'm unwound enough to sleep now."

  And they staggered to their small room with its threadbare carpeting, peeling wallpaper and a TV that bore an Out of Order sign. But it did have a couch as well as a double bed, and Brad lay with his back to the bed until Jacynthe had finished undressing and hanging her clothes in the bathroom to dry. Then when she was under the covers and facing the wall, he stripped to his underwear and pulled a spare blanket up to his waist.

  "No p.j.'s either?" Jassy asked turning to look at his semi-nakedness. "In fact, you didn't bring in your suitcase."

  "That's because this trip was a bit of a surprise. Didn't have time to pack one."

  "Oh..." Jassy said, appearing to be thinking of something else. "Good night, Brad, and thanks."

  "For what?"

  "For probably saving my life. There may be no Nightwalkers, but there was a killer out there on that stormy road tonight."

  "Well, you're perfectly safe now. If a little drunk. So g'night, Jassy."

  There was a long silence but her breathing didn't change to the heavy rhythm of sleep, and Brad knew she was lying awake looking at him. In fact, he could almost feel her piercing green eyes boring into his back.

  "Brad?" she asked at last.

  "Mmm-mmm? What?"

  "Why did you say that Waller was your sister's married name?"

  "Did I?"

  "That's what I thought you said."

  "You must've misunderstood. You were angry."

  "Yeah. That's right."

  More silence.

  "Brad?"

  "What now?"

  "I've been thinking I should thank you for saving me."

  "You just did."

  "I mean really thank you." Her voice dropped into a lower register. "In the way only a woman can."

  "That's the drink talking."

  "I'm sober now. And I mean it. I want you. I want you to kiss me, to make love to me…"

  "God...I hardly dared hope..." Brad gasped as he rolled over to face the room.

  Jassy was already standing beside his couch, the faint glow of the red and blue neon sign outside the motel making her bare skin glow in abstract patterns of ghostly light. Her long hair was streaked with highlights of red, framing a pale blue face with jet-black lips that seemed more full and sensuous than they had earlier in the bar. Likewise, her almost-purple breasts seemed to thrust out more provocatively, their black nipples already raised to hard points that begged his lips to encircle them.

  God, Brad thought, now she was really Circe, really the supernatural sorceress luring him to his destruction. Why, even her hand was held out in a slow beckoning motion toward him.

  "Come," she was saying softly. "My bed is much softer and wider than this couch. We will have room there to…do things properly."

  Brad could not suppress a shiver of anticipation at the throaty way she purred the words 'do things'.

  He rose from the couch as if in a trance.

  Jassy's beckoning fingers encircled his half-erect penis in a grip that was both firm and gentle. Instantly, he felt it harden and throb with anticipation.

  "Come," she whispered again, leading him across the room and pulling him down on the bed beside her by his pulsating cock.

  The skin of her belly and thighs was cool against his, though her nipples seemed to burn into his chest as she drew his quivering body against her. He felt his rigid cock slide between her legs where she entrapped its heat between her smooth, firm thighs.

  "Kiss me," she cried softly. "Kiss me hard! On the neck! God, yes, on the neck!"

  Brad drew his head back and stared at her in wonderment.

  How could he have been so lucky as to find this one, he thought.

  Slowly and gently he moved his head until his lips were just grazing the smooth flesh of her throat. Then his tongue protruded to lick at her throat in long, sensuous strokes from the smooth hollow at its base to a point just below her chin and around to below her left ear. She moaned gently in ecstasy and shuddered all over. At last, Brad's tongue gradually moved upwards until it was circling the recesses of the soft shell that was her earlobe.

  But that was not enough for the hyper-sexed creature Jassy had become.

  "Kiss me hard, I said!"

  Her voice was almost a bestial growl as her clawed hands went behind his head and pulled it down on her lips in a kiss that was so hard Brad wondered if
the sudden taste in his mouth was blood—and if it was his or hers…or both of theirs commingled.

  Abruptly and surprisingly now, Jassy broke the fierce kiss and drew her head back, her deep green eyes glowing with a fire that was almost demonic.

  "I know," she purred. "Let's sixty-nine it for a while. I love that. Somehow, it seems really down and dirty. Besides, I love a man's tongue in my pussy almost as much as I do his cock."

  She wriggled around under him until the V between her legs was beneath his face.

  "Lick my little pussy," she mewed softly. "Lick it and, if you're good, I'll lick you back."

  It was an offer Brad certainly couldn't refuse.

  His head plunged between her thighs and his tongue searched out the oyster-like folds of her labia. He found them, wet and ready for him.

  "Yes…yes…" Jassy whispered. "Flick your tongue against my cunt-lips. Pussy wants to play…"

  Brad licked and lapped at her until she suddenly thrust her hips up at him, burying his tongue in her vagina. Then, simultaneously, he felt her lips part to surround the head of his penis and begin to suck it into her mouth.

  The next few minutes were filled with inarticulate, bestial noises as they both filled their mouths with each other's genitalia…his tongue penetrating and circling around in the wet recesses of her vagina, her tongue encircling his cock and swirling slowly around it, while her cheeks and throat sucked him deeper and deeper into her.

  Then, abruptly, Jassy broke the mutual conjoining of their bodies.

  "Fuck me now, Brad," she breathed hoarsely. "Stick your cock in me and screw my brains out!"

  Within a moment, they had crawled frantically around and Brad was in her, his shaft driving so deep his scrotum was slapping against her sodden labia.

  "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" she grunted in rhythm with his thrusts and he raised himself to the length of his arms to make his penetration still deeper.

  Her eyes were staring up at him with a carnality that bordered on rage as her breath came in grating gasps between teeth that gnashed up at his chest.

  God, Brad thought, what was he having sex with? Was she a woman or...?

  No, that would be too…

  "Bite me, Brad! Oh, God, bite me!" she shrieked hoarsely. "I want to feel pain!"

  "You know what's funny?" he panted, as he bent his head all too willingly to bite her neck. "Just a moment ago, I had this wild idea you could be a Nightwalker."

  "No, what's really funny," Jacynthe chuckled, "…is that I am."

  Then she bared her fangs and tore his throat out in a single, rough-edged bite.

  The sudden agony made Brad spasm and come, shooting his sperm violently into her.

  Jacynthe waited for the lingering quivers of his orgasm to die away. Then she calmly rolled his corpse from on top of her, slipped off the bed, dropped to all fours, leapt through the window and loped off into the night.

  * * *

  In the early morning the chambermaid went shrieking to the same little bespectacled clerk who was just going off duty.

  "Nightwalker," he nodded. "I just knew it."

  He never told anyone, though; that it was "Mrs Smith" he would have bet on as the corpse-to-be.

  Chapter One

  November 2003

  Jacqueline—known to everyone as Jackie—Talbot opened her red-rimmed eyes and stared balefully at the clock-alarm.

  God, she thought, it couldn't be seven o'clock already. She'd have to speak to Doc Enright about prescribing something to make her sleep more soundly. Every night for a month or more had been restless, haunted by—no, you couldn't exactly call them dreams. Sort of fuzzy mental 'film clips' without clarity or continuity, but vaguely and uniformly distressing. They seemed to leave her, literally, with a flat, slightly rancid taste in her mouth that even mouthwash couldn't quite erase.

  Slowly she eased herself out of bed—every bone in her body seeming to ache—and stumbled over to the open window, shutting it against the cold November air. It had snowed in the night, she saw, just a dusting, but still a harbinger of the season to come.

  Jackie shuddered.

  For some reason, she'd always hated winter. All she wanted to do when the snow flew was crawl into a cave and hibernate until spring.

  She drew her dressing gown over her naked shoulders, lurched into the bathroom and dared to face herself in the mirror.

  No doubt of it now. The circles under her eyes were getting darker and she was definitely losing weight—flesh she could ill afford to lose. Her top weight had never been above one-twenty, and she doubted that she weighed one-ten now. And at five-eleven, that was bordering on scrawny.

  Right then and there, Jackie made up her mind. She'd go in to work and immediately ask to see her boss. Then she'd ask for the day off, which Eleggua would have to grant her. I mean, it was obvious she wasn't well.

  * * *

  Doc Enright, bless his heart, worked her into his busy schedule and was immediately concerned about her sallow complexion and her loss of weight. But a cursory office physical exam could not explain it—nor, of course, her nocturnal restlessness. However, he took some blood, telling her he'd call her if anything out of the ordinary showed up, and prescribed a mild sedative to help her sleep more soundly. He also gave her some samples of a multi-vitamin caplet the size of a horse-pill which he told her to take daily.

  Jackie dropped these in a trash basket on her way back to the office. She didn't need to win any races, she told herself. Just eat more pasta and pies.

  She put in the rest of the day at Esoterikon, Publishers of Rare Books, fielding calls for her boss, Ms Eleggua, from angry booksellers who were still awaiting the latest volume of Agrippoulos Sinister's new-old volume, The Chronomicon. Then she walked the two blocks to her apartment, still feeling like death warmed over.

  As she closed the door behind her, however, she saw something she had failed to notice on her fuzzy-headed exit that morning. Her white running shoes were just inside the door. Jackie hardly ever wore those shoes any more—I mean, who wears running shoes to work these days? And she couldn't remember when she'd had a day off when she could have worn them last. Around the apartment, she just went barefoot.

  Oh, well, she sighed, maybe she'd taken them out in her blind fog this morning, intending at last to throw them out. She bent over and picked them up to return them to the cupboard.

  "That's funny," she said aloud, for the soles of the shoes were caked with mud.

  Well, she thought, whenever she'd worn them the last time, it had been raining, that was for sure. Quite a lot too, for the heels were coated almost over their tops.

  Well, she wasn't about to clean them now. Maybe she'd just give them as they were to the Sally Ann and let them worry about them.

  Jackie opened the cupboard door and stooped to hook them on the shoe rack. However, as she did so, she noticed the thin white summer slacks she'd always hated. That was Sally Ann fodder, too.

  Abstractedly, she fingered the flimsy material.

  Damned if it wasn't damp to the touch!

  Now, she certainly hadn't worn that in an eon and definitely not out in a rainstorm…which there hadn't been for weeks anyway. But the dress was unmistakably wet just the same.

  Maybe Jacynthe had borrowed both the dress and shoes…

  Jackie stopped herself.

  Now, what would make her think of that name after all these years?

  Jacynthe had been the name she'd chosen for her alter-ego as a child. The one who actually did all the bad things for which Jackie got blamed. Both Jackie and her mother knew that Jacynthe was a mythical creature, but her mother seemed to find the idea of a bad fairy amusing with the result that Jackie's punishments were often less severe.

  But Jackie hadn't thought of her in maybe ten years, not since Jacynthe ceased being useful to her.

  Then, when she left home to go to school in the city, Jacynthe simply ceased to be. City kids didn't believe in 'Bad Fairies'.

  So why shoul
d she think of her now?

  Maybe it was Jacynthe who was sending her the disturbing dreams…

  Oh, don't be silly! That was just her exhaustion talking.

  Jackie stripped and showered, then sat in her dressing gown and drank a stiff Glenfiddich—tap water, no ice—while a frozen shepherd's pie heated in the oven. By the time she had finished it and washed the plate, fork, and glass she had dirtied, she felt the blood beginning to flow again.

  But she was still in the grip of a vague depression.

  Maybe a walk in the fresh air of a chill November evening would snap her out of it.

  It certainly couldn't hurt. And she was bound to feel better when she got back to the apartment, lit the gas fireplace, and had the nightcap scotch she'd promised herself.

  But what to wear?

  Jeans and her lined jeans-jacket were the obvious choice, but Jackie somehow didn't feel like looking like a teenager tonight. Besides, that had become the winter uniform of the local hookers, and she certainly didn't want to give that impression.

  But she stood in front of her cupboard undecided for so long that she finally made up her mind just to close her eyes and wear whatever her fingers chose.

  It turned out to be her short black sheath with the high neckline that emphasized whatever figure she had left. That meant she'd have to wear her knee-high black leather boots, too, for they were the only footwear that matched.

  Oh, well, if that was what she was stuck with, it matched her long black hair and the circles under her eyes.

  But she'd look like something out of one of Esoterikon's books.

  Maybe Jacynthe had directed her fingers…

  Stop it, Jackie! You're a big girl now.

  Just in case it snowed again or rained, she shrugged her black raincoat on over her ensemble—I mean, why spoil the funereal mood with her yellow slicker?—and took the elevator all alone from her fourteenth floor apartment to the lobby, wondering vaguely why no one else was in the elevator at this time of the evening. Was some sort of deluge promised?

  The street, however, was populated by the normal collection of late commuters, early evening shoppers, couples on their way to dinner or a show or both, a few panhandlers and 'a flourish of strumpets', her father's phrase for a group of hookers. And all—even the hookers—were dressed more warmly than she was.