Tears threatened—grief for the dead, for the dying. For herself and the fact that she felt completely, utterly alone in the town where she’d spent the two happiest years of her bounced-around childhood.
“Knock it off,” she said aloud, hearing the words echo in the waiting room. “Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to change a thing. Getting some sleep might.”
Sometimes her subconscious did a better job than her waking self when it came to shuffling puzzle pieces into place. Besides, she was so tired she was going to start making mistakes soon if she didn’t catch a few hours of downtime.
Forcing herself to push away from the clinic door, she flipped the sign from Open to Closed, though that was a formality since she was on constant call. Then she flicked off the lights, plunging the waiting room into darkness. She was just about to head upstairs to her apartment when she saw movement outside.
She stopped and stared through the clear glass door, trying to make out details through the fog.
Was someone there? She could’ve sworn she’d just seen a figure slip from the porch to the shadows beside the fog-cloaked building diagonally across the street.
Maybe it’s a dog, she thought when she didn’t see the motion again. Or a raccoon. A deer. Heck, even a bear would be preferable to what her gut told her she’d seen: a human figure hiding in the shadows long after the 8:00 p.m. curfew that Captain Patrick Swanson, the chief of police, had issued earlier that day.
Rox’s instincts told her to call the cops to investigate. Under normal circumstances she never would’ve bothered them with something so mundane…but these were far from normal circumstances. Sure, it might be an animal, or teenagers refusing to let the curfew spoil the start of their summer fun. Then again, it was possible that Captain Swanson’s last house-to-house sweep had missed seeing the red-tinged eyes and faintly jaundiced skin tones that were the only warning signs before the disease hit full-force.
Better to call the cops and have it be a raccoon than have a new Violent on the loose, Rox thought.
That was what the townspeople were calling the patients whose symptoms leaned toward psychosis: Violents. More accurately, as far as Rox could tell, they became uninhibited. The good tendencies in their personalities decreased and their negative sides took over, amplifying their normally controllable impulses and making them uncontrollable.
Of the four dead, only two had died from the disease itself. The other two had been murdered by one of the Violents. The threat of more such cases had left the townspeople locking their doors tight, and watching each other with grave suspicion. Are you getting sick, everyone was thinking. Am I?
Knowing she was far better making the call than not, Rox turned the lights back on and headed for the phone on the waiting room desk. She was halfway there when someone knocked on the glass door.
Her heartbeat kicked into overdrive as she turned and looked back. The glare of the lights reflecting on the glass panel meant she could only make out the indistinct figure of a man outside her door. She couldn’t tell who it was. More importantly, she couldn’t see his eyes or skin.
Training and compassion told her to answer the door in case someone needed her. Logic said she should wait for the cops.
Logic won, but just as she grabbed the phone, the man outside kicked his way in.
Rox screamed when the safety glass spiderwebbed and shattered inward.
Fingers trembling, she stabbed 9-1-1 on the phone. “It’s Roxanne. I need help!”
It took her a second to realize the phone line was dead.
The wind howled through the broken door and driving rain spattered against the figure of local fisherman Aztec Wheeler as he stepped through the door.
He’d gotten the nickname Aztec from his straight, dark hair, sharp features and prominent nose, and his take-no-prisoners style on the high school basketball court. But this wasn’t the easygoing young jock Rox had known in school, and it wasn’t the grown man who’d asked her out twice since she’d come back to town and opened the clinic. This was someone else entirely.
Or rather, something else.
Aztec’s dark hair was plastered to his skull and he was soaked to his yellow-tinged skin, but he didn’t seem to notice the discomfort—his attention was locked on Rox, and his reddish eyes were hard with anger. With rage.
Smiling terribly, he lunged across the waiting room and grabbed her.
Panicked, Rox screamed and thrashed, trying to break free from his grappling arms. She elbowed him in the ribs, but he twisted, putting his face near hers. It took her a terrified moment to realize he was actually trying to kiss her.
“Stop!” She shoved at him, but he was an immovable wall of muscle. “I said stop!”
“You should’ve said yes.” His clothes were soaked and cold, but his skin and breath were fever-hot. “You shouldn’t have turned me down like that.”
Her panicked brain made the connection. He’d been interested in her, had asked her out a couple of times and she’d said no. Now, the Curse had warped his brain, turning a harmless crush into an obsession and loosening his normal control over his emotions.
She braced her forearm against his collarbone and pushed away, trying to reason with him, trying to talk to the man she knew him to be. “Listen to me, Aztec. You’re sick. You don’t really want to do this, the Curse is making you—”
He got his lips on her ear, but instead of kissing her he bit down, hard.
Pain lanced and Rox screamed, then screamed again when he yanked at her white doctor’s coat, tearing the buttons and leaving the garment hanging half off her. Panic-stricken, she kneed him in the crotch, praying he would feel it.
Aztec doubled over with a howl.
Sobbing, Rox yanked away and bolted for the broken front door. She slipped and almost went down on the rain-slicked threshold, but kept going, running into the darkness.
The rain slashed at her, soaking through her clothes within seconds as she fled through the nearly impenetrable fog, headed for the town hall and the RCPD entrance around the side of the building.
The air smelled of the sea, thick and salty. Thunder grumbled in the distance and the wind howled like a living thing.
Rox ran for her life. Tears mingled with the rain on her face as Aztec’s footsteps slapped on the wet pavement too close behind her. He howled something that might have been her name, and she realized she wasn’t going to make it to the police station before he caught up.
No! she screamed inwardly. She put her head down and pushed harder, her legs burning as she pounded up the street.
Aztec closed on her. He grabbed her white coat, but she pulled free and kept going. She had to keep going, had to—
She saw headlights pause at a cross street up ahead. They turned toward her, creating bright halos in the thick fog.
Heart jammed in her throat, Rox waved her arms and ran into the light. “Help me!”
For half a second nothing happened, as if the driver didn’t see her—or more likely couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then the big black SUV accelerated toward her with a roar. When it was nearly on top of her, the driver slammed on the brakes, slapped the transmission into Park and lunged out of the vehicle, snapping to his companions inside the big car. One of them tossed something to him, and he caught it and spun toward Roxanne, shouting, “Hit the deck!”
Though she couldn’t see his face through the fog, the sound of his voice instantly kicked her back two years, to another epidemic on another continent. Another lifetime.
“Down!” he barked, and she obeyed automatically, throwing herself onto