Into the Wild Dark

CHAPTER 20 - SUNNY

Ch. 20: Sunny's Loophole

September 2 | Night

"You're the thing that goes bump in the night, the creature in the shadows, the stuff of nightmares," Mal informed him. "However, you also heal faster and live longer than humanly possible. You're stronger, more agile, equipped with animal instincts combined with a homo sapien brain for the betterment of both the man and the beast within you. I'd say you hit the genetic jackpot."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Jack warily contemplated her, stunned into silence. In his worldview, vampires and werewolves were simply edgy symbols of the out-of-control feeling of shifting from childhood to adulthood. Yet, he was in our world now, and the beings his human ancestors had woven into stories for aeons had always existed here.

I repositioned closer and placed a hand on his skin. Divine touch imparted soothing vibrations to counteract the anxiety coursing at breakneck speeds throughout his system. Mal crossed a twill-clad thigh over the other and studied him with a self-satisfied smile.

"The hub of your pioneer into the paranormal is Overlay City, a haven for Supernaturals," she explained. "As the moniker implies, the municipal overlaps New Orleans, blending with the character of the host location. There are other Supernatural city like it clustered around every major metropolis, places where our kind gravitate to the pull of what's called ley lines."

"I've heard of ley lines," Jack grunted a cynical laugh.

"Have you?" She rested a finger against her cheek.

Jack ran a hand over his tired face. "Yeah, conspiracy nuts in prison used to talk about a mystical energy grid that criss-crossed the globe. Bonkers. Show me the science."

"The science is you just changed shape and howled at the moon," Mal snorted a laugh. "Alright, what are you gonna believe? Your own lived experience or something you half-remember from your high school biology class?" She sat forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands hanging loosely between her legs.

I saw Jack struggling to reconcile his shapeshifting experience with a consensus reality that no longer applied. Furthermore, his complexion was sallow, and when I laid a hand across his forehead, his skin burned hot with fever. How long would it take him to fully recover from the body-altering effects of his first shift? He jerked his face from beneath my palm.

Even though his restlessness severed the cord of divine touch, I was determined to protect him. The guest bedroom of the Ashivant house had been converted into a makeshift recovery room. I refused to leave his side. He had survived his harrowing ordeal–vitals checked out, all systems go–but he hadn't returned to normal, and I didn't know if he ever would. The problem was inexperience. I had never witnessed anything like what I had seen in the night garden. I just wanted to get him away from this place.

Jack stared at Mal from beneath lowered eyelids. "You act like I should be thanking you."

"I won't apologize." She tossed her hair, sensuality in her every movement. He wasn't immune. His hooded gaze traced her figure. "What you're forgetting, Jack, is that you signed up for this experiment. You've been paid–and are still being paid–staggering amounts of money for your services.

"Now, I understand your formerly human sensibilities may be finding this all a bit overwhelming," she said as she crossed willowy arms, "but the genes we injected into you were lycanthropic. In other words, you're swimming in werewolf DNA. Ravani genes, to be exact, and we both know why you believed you needed the serum."

"To trick the courts into thinking I was the Ravani heir and steal Detective Ravani's inheritance," Jack whispered, chagrined. He did a headshake and muttered an expletive.