Chapter 3 Home

Eva

My hands locked so hard the throttle twitched.

I forced myself to stare straight ahead. Told myself it was a trick of the light, moonlight on a deer, some redneck’s oversized mutt, anything but what I thought it was.

But I saw the eyes, silver like the fighter's, burning with a light that wasn’t a reflection, but a cold, intelligent glow.

I pinned the throttle. A hundred and ten. A hundred twenty. The Ducati howled like it was trying to outrun a ghost. The world blurred into a smear of asphalt and trees. I risked a glance. It was still there.

The dread in my stomach solidified into ice. I almost wrenched the handlebars and sent myself off to my early grave, but a different instinct took over. The relic thief. The survivor. The one who never, ever panicked.

The road sharply curved left, with a drop-off on one side and a mountain on the other. I took it too fast, leaned in so far that my knee kissed asphalt. For a terrifying moment, I thought I might lose control, but the bike stayed steady. I straightened up, breathing heavily as if I'd just finished a marathon.

And then it was gone: the black form, the silver eyes, the unbelievable speed.

I kept riding, not slowing down until the neon glow of a 24-hour truck stop bloomed on the horizon. I pulled in, cut the engine, and waited for the ringing in my ears to stop. I stared at the empty road behind me.

No wolf.

No footprints.

No sound except my own pulse trying to punch its way out of my throat.

But when I reached up to wipe sweat off my face, my fingers came away wet with something warmer.

Blood.

A thin line trickled from my left ear, right over the spot where, behind my ink, I bore a faint crescent-shaped birthmark.

I rolled the Ducati under the buzzing lights and decided the day could go fuck itself.

As I went inside the shop, fluorescent lights hummed over aisles of beef jerky and motor oil. The kid behind the counter, all pimples and boredom, barely looked up. I grabbed a pack of clove cigarettes, a bottle of cheap vodka, and a lighter.

“Fifty-eight fifty,” he mumbled, not looking at me.

I threw a sixty on the counter. “Keep the change.”

The bottle was half-empty before I even got back to my bike. I didn't even feel the burn. I just tried to stop the shaking. I took a long drag from my cigarette, the sweet, spicy smoke filling my lungs. It did nothing to calm the tremor still rattling my bones.

What in the actual fuck happened? A fighter with a kink for public display of whatever that was? A rabid dog on steroids?

This had to be a dream. A stress-induced psychotic break. Yes, definitely. That had to be it.

I got back on my bike and left the truck stop, heading towards the tiny studio apartment I rented above a laundromat on the wrong side of Nashville.

Home.