Seven Minutes to Midnight

31

I went back downstairs to find the living room deserted. The television was still on, images of zombies ripping a man in a military uniform to shreds flashing across the screen. I sat down, stared at my closed front door. I hadn't heard Veronica leave, either.

I stared at the massacre onscreen until I couldn't take the growling and screaming anymore. I cast around for the remote control, searching the couch cushions where Veronica had been sitting, crawling around on the floor. Finally the noise had pushed me to a limit—I ran over to the television and smacked the power button. The screen blackened for a moment then blared back to life. I pressed the button again, very deliberately, and it went black for good.

My breathing came back under control.

Without a clue about what to do with myself, I sat down and started knitting again. The repetitive action felt therapeutic: a monotonous, meditative activity. My mind needed settling. I mean, wasn't this what I wanted? For someone to finally admit that this was all just a game? Then it had happened and I was a mess.

Gradually the silence faded away and all those little sounds—the ones lost in the buzz of modern society—became much louder. Being the middle of summer and not having air conditioning, the windows were open as far as they could go, letting in the song of crickets and the barking of dogs, the whoosh of cars driving by on the streets outside. A cacophony of dogs barking, now that I was paying attention.

Their alarm set off my own, and I found myself staring into the blackness outside the windows, a darkness that showed mostly my own reflection under the lamp's pool of light. I looked pale and weird, my eyes blank holes. My hands ticked away on the knitting needles and still I stared outside.

What was I looking for?

When I saw them I knew exactly what I had been looking for. Twin pinpricks of green animal eyes, blinking in and out of the darkness. I had to blink myself, and rub my eyes, before I could convince myself that I'd actually seen them—it was akin to watching for fireflies, those moving dots of light that are never where you last saw them. But soon I was sure.

The wolves were watching me.

Protecting me.

My reflection in the windows smiled faintly. My knitting pace slowed into a comfortable rhythm. The wolves would keep trouble away. I couldn't imagine a couple of vampires being a problem for an entire wolf pack. Even if I had never seen exactly how big or fierce any of the werewolves were. Or what was so bad about these vampires Lane feared.

The major problem was that Lane had never showed me his powers. That's what most vampires did, to impress humans, or so I thought. All he'd done was read my mind and influence my behavior a bit. He hadn't really shown any extra strength. I didn't know if he was like the vampires in modern vampire stories—super strong and super fast—or if he was like Dracula, all old and decrepit and ready to disintegrate.

I couldn't imagine that Lane was decrepit. But he certainly hadn't displayed much beyond extraordinary. Nothing entirely unbelievable.

A lone howl rose up. I couldn't tell if it was a wolf or one of the neighborhood dogs, but it sure sounded like a wolf, and it raised the hairs on my arms. The howl trailed away, leaving silence in its wake. Complete silence.

That's when the fear returned. I put down my knitting and reached over and turned off the light. Darkness washed over me, and the windows cleared of my reflection. The street outside and my front lawn was barely visible. I watched for the green eyes, and saw a flash of white instead.

I was on my feet in an instant and rushed to the window, even pressed my face up against the glass, but I couldn't see anything white. There had been something there.

A thud crashed overhead. My bedroom. My head spun around so fast my neck would later be sore. I stood there, staring up the staircase.

My heart thumped in my chest, painfully hard.

I was debating whether or not to go upstairs or to call the police when Lane appeared on the landing. And by appeared, I mean that he wasn't there, and I blinked, and he was. Standing there, not moving. Not like he was in the middle of running. Like in the span of a second he had clambered down the stairs to the landing, and stopped when he saw me looking.

He was wearing jeans slung low on his waist. No shirt. That fact distracted me somewhat.

We stared at each other for a long moment.

"What are you—"

"I was just—"

We stopped. Lane, apparently reading my thoughts, finally said, "I apologize for coming in this way. The Other is out in force this evening."

"You scared me."

I wasn't sure why I was using the past tense, since I was still scared. Why had Lane come? I heard the memory of his voice in my head: Once you have made your decision, you may come here to find me. Had I taken too long? Had he come to find me instead?

Lost in my thoughts as I was, I still didn't see Lane arrive at my side. But he was suddenly there, enveloping me with his alabaster arms.

"Don't think that, Amy, please don't think that about me," he whispered into my hair.

"You're crushing me," I mumbled into his stone hard chest.

He released me and I looked up at him. "I haven't made a decision yet," I told him. "Maybe Veronica can shrug it off but I can't. I need to think about it some more."

"I haven't come to pressure you. I only wanted a pleasant way to spend time."

With that he took my hand, kissed it, and pulled me upstairs, to my bedroom.