Shadow Train by J. Gabriel Gates

even know which Flatliner was Emory. As much as he’d hated the rival gang members and wanted to hurt them and blamed them for his and his friends’ problems, the sad fact was that he didn’t know them at all.
    * * *
    Clarisse hurried up the alley as fast as she could without breaking into a run.
    After leaving Rick, she had doubled back to sit on the curb outside the parking lot, out of the reach of streetlights, and watch the door to Rick’s little upstairs lair. She knew they weren’t exclusive but somehow knowing it made her feel even more possessive, and she’d decided to spy on him to see if that conceited cheerleader Maggie was going to show up. The thought of catching Rick in a lie gave her a painful satisfaction, she thought, like when you wiggle a loose tooth with your tongue: even though it hurts and you can taste your own blood, somehow it’s impossible to stop.
    When she had first started following Rick, if someone had asked her what the attraction was, she wouldn’t have been able to tell them. Sure, she’d always had a thing for bad boys—her fling with that drug dealer back home after Nass had moved to Middleburg proved that. Her relationship with Oscar Salazar had been sick—so sick that she’d scammed him out of a ton of money and had to flee Los Angeles in fear for her life. But never, even during her thing with Oscar, had she obsessed over a guy like she was doing with Rick.
    It wasn’t just because he was hot or rich or because he was a football star. She liked those things, but they didn’t fascinate her. Rick had a certain indefinable primitive power about him, like some kind of exotic jungle beast. She liked the way he just grabbed her when he was in the mood to make out, without bothering to see if she was up for it. That, she just thought of as taking charge (which she really liked in a guy), but there was something more, something deeper in him that she was trying to discover. It was like . . . a kind of dark, uncontrollable energy bordering on violence that was always on the edge of erupting. And if she could discover what drove Rick, what gave him the brute strength that was somehow connected to the darkness, she might be able to control him.
    She had been sitting there on the curb, in the shadows, thinking about all this when Emory, Myka, and Haylee had emerged from the car. She’d seen Rick come out of the doorway. She’d inched silently forward behind a row of hedges that formed one border of the parking lot, and from the hidden shelter of their boughs she’d watched what Rick had done to Emory. In the fleeting glare of the fireworks, she’d even caught a glimpse of the same thing she’d seen the night of the big fight on the tracks when she thought she’d lost her mind. The thing she watched for every time they made out, and both hoped and dreaded to see: Rick’s face transformed into that of a snarling demon.
    That night, the sight had filled her with fascination that had quickly turned into lust, even though she had been sure she had imagined it. But tonight, she knew it was real. Maybe she should have felt revulsion after witnessing the beating he gave Emory, but her fascination with and desire for Rick hadn’t diminished at all. The truth was, it had increased tenfold.
    After Rick and Bran took off, she lingered long enough to see Myka emerge from the back door of the restaurant. She heard Myka’s scream, and she saw her push Emory’s little sister back inside. She’d heard Myka’s words coming out in sobs as she called the ambulance. Then, as stealthily as possible, Clarisse split. If growing up streetwise in one of the worst neighborhoods in L.A. had taught her anything, it was the skill of selective amnesia. It was not a good thing to be the only witness to a crime, especially when the perpetrator was rich and well connected. No, she told herself, she hadn’t seen anything. If the