DarkWalker by John Urbancik

companion.
    He’d stuffed the knife back in his sheath. He’d thought to take the thing’s head clean off; he was close enough, and it hadn’t detected him. So he thought.
    Its blood was black, thicker than oil, with a hint of red, but it left no trail. It smelled more animal than vampire. And it was gone.
    Damn it, Nick should’ve been able to track it. Catch it. If it usually ran on all fours, the severed hand should’ve hobbled it.
    It had raced around the side of the building, toward the lake, and veered through the trees toward another street. Nick followed that far, but couldn’t see where it had gone. There were houses here, a small restaurant, a bed and breakfast. Driveways disappeared behind the houses. Wood fences separated the yards.
    The thing might’ve scaled the trees.
    No blood on the street. No witnesses, jaws hanging, to indicate direction. Nothing knocked over or broken. He couldn’t even track it through the grass, with so much sidewalk and this cobblestone street.
    Nick looked up, aiming his gun wherever he looked. Nothing moved, not even wind. He felt stupid. Foolish. Inadequate.
    It wasn’t a vampire. He didn’t know that for certain, but he felt it. Believed it. He’d been mistaken. Should not have gotten involved. But it was more like a vampire than a common criminal, and certainly not human. What else could it be? Anything. Anything at all. Nick realized, with a sudden heaviness, that if vampires existed, so too did other creatures: demons, werewolves, fairies. Dark, twisted out of reality, scarred and vicious.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    1.
     
    Lisa Sparrow tried to push out the memory of teeth—she remembered nothing but those and the claws. No luck. When she closed her eyes, the thing dropped on her again and again. Only Jack’s touch chased it away. It wasn’t sexual. He’d gotten her into her tub, tended her wounds, washed and rinsed them, and bandaged the worst. She let him.
    “You’re okay,” Jack said. Again. His voice comforted her. Had he been coming back? Had fate intervened, sending him to her that very moment? She suspected it had been nothing more than luck.
    And love , she wanted to tell herself, but she wouldn’t hear it. Not yet. She wasn’t sure the teeth wouldn’t return.
    Lisa hadn’t said much since getting upstairs. She closed her eyes, clenched her fists, and let Jack wash her.
    2.
     
    She wasn’t badly hurt. The scratches were mostly superficial. Jack Harlow found a first aid kit under her sink and applied antibiotic creams to the cuts.
    It had gotten her back worst. Crisscrossing scratches. A few bites. If Jack had been any later . . .
    If he’d been earlier, he might have prevented the whole thing. The creature would’ve skipped Lisa, just as all night things always ignored Jack.
    “You’ll be okay,” Jack said, not the first time.
    After Lisa began to relax, Jack helped her out of the tub. He toweled her dry. Led her back to the bed, which she’d made, and tucked her in.
    She didn’t really need the help. She could walk perfectly fine. See straight. Totally coherent. The initial shock had worn off. He didn’t think the cuts were deep enough to scar.
    “You’ll be okay,” he said. It had become a mantra by now. “I need to get some things.”
    “Leaving again already?”
    “I won’t be long,” Jack said. “I need some things from my car. I won’t be thirty minutes.”
    Lisa nodded. “Do you know what that thing was?”
    How much should he tell her? How much could she handle—or accept? “I don’t think so,” he finally said. “But I want to be sure.”
    He’d recorded things in his computer for years, building a database that might, in fact, include a creature just like this one. He didn’t remember any, but that’s why he had the laptop. Memory played tricks. Time warped it. He didn’t trust himself to cross-reference every little detail in his head .
    So he’d been tracking this information with a purpose, after all.
    He kissed