Chapter Twenty-five
Tess had a full day of appointments and walk-ins at the clinic, work she was grateful for because it helped give her something to think about besides Ben's disturbing telephone message. Yet it was impossible to put his call out of her mind completely. He was in some serious trouble--injured and bleeding besides.
Now, it seemed, he had simply vanished.
She'd tried calling his apartment several times, and his cell phone, the area hospitals... but there was no sign of him anywhere. If she had known how or where to contact his parents, she would have tried them too, even though the odds of Ben turning up there were slim to none. As it stood, the only other thing she could think of was to go past his place after work and see if she could find some sign of him there. She wasn't holding out a lot of hope, but what were her alternatives?
"Nora, patient in Two needs a combo test and urine sample," Tess said, coming out of the examination room. "Can you get those for me while I check the X-rays of our collie with the joint inflammations?">She'd been hugely disappointed to wake up and find him gone, but the note he'd left folded on her nightstand took away most of that sting. Tess dug the piece of paper out of the pocket of her fleece track pants as she pushed open her apartment door and let Harvard off his leash.
Strolling into her kitchen in need of coffee, she read Dante's bold handwriting for about the tenth time, her broad smile seeming permanently stuck on her face: Didn't want to wake you but had to leave. Have dinner with me tomorrow night? I want to show you where I live. I'll call you. Sleep tight, angel. Yours, D.
Yours, he'd signed it.
Hers.
A wave of fierce possessiveness swamped her at the thought. Tess told herself that it meant nothing, that she was foolish to read anything into Dante's words or to imagine that the powerful connection she felt toward him might be mutual, but she was practically giddy as she set the note down on the counter.
She glanced at the little dog who was dancing around her feet, waiting for his breakfast. "Well, Harvard, what do you think? Am I getting in too deep here? I'm not actually falling for him, am I?"
God, was she... falling in love?
A week ago she hadn't known he existed, so how could she even consider that her feelings might go that far this fast? But somehow they did. She was falling in love with Dante, maybe already had, judging by the sharp tumble her heart was taking just thinking about him now.
Harvard's eager bark snapped her out of the emotional free fall. "Right," she said, looking down into his furry face. "Kibble and coffee, not necessarily in that order. I'm on it."
She filled her Mr. Coffee machine with Starbucks grounds and cold water from the tap, hit the button to start it brewing, then went to retrieve a bowl and the dry dog food from the pantry. As she passed her kitchen phone, she saw that the message indicator was flashing.
"Here you go, baby," she said, pouring a serving of Iams into Harvard's dish and setting it down on the floor. "Bon app?tit."
With more than a little hope that the message might have been from Dante calling while she was out walking his dog, Tess pressed the play button and put the voice mail on speaker. She waited anxiously, punching in her pass code and listening as the automated greeting announced that she had one new message, time-stamped from late last night, and began playing it back to her.
"Tess! Jesus Christ, why aren't you picking up your fucking phone?"
It was Ben, she realized, her disappointment over that fact swiftly draining into alarm at the odd tone of his voice. She'd never heard him sound so panicked, so unglued. He was breathing hard, panting, his words spilling out of him. He wasn't merely afraid. He was terrified. Worry clutched at her with icy talons as she listened to the rest of his call.
"--needed to warn you. The guy you're seeing, he's not what you think. They busted into my place tonight--him and some other dude. I thought they were going to kill me, Tess! But it's you I' m afraid for now. You've got to stay away from him. He's into some fucked-up shit... I know this sounds crazy, but the guy he was with tonight... I don't think--ah, Jesus, I just have to say it--I don't think he's human. Maybe neither of them is. The other guy took me away in an SUV--I should've tried to get the number off the plates or something, but everything was happening so fucking fast. He drove me down to the river and he attacked me, Tess. The son of a bitch had these huge teeth--they were fangs, I swear to God, and his eyes were lit up like they were on fire! He wasn't human. Tess, they're not... human."
She backed away from the counter as the message played on, Ben's voice chilling her as much as the things he was telling her.
"Asshole bit me--smashed my head into a car window, beat me nearly unconscious, and then... he fucking bit me! Ah, Christ, my neck is still bleeding. I gotta get to a hospital or something... "
Tess retreated into her living room, as if the distance from Ben's voice would somehow insulate her from what she was hearing. She didn't know how to make sense of any of it.
How could Dante be involved--even peripherally--in an attack on Ben like the one he described? True, after he'd arrived at her place last night loaded down with weapons and bleeding from an obvious altercation, he had said he'd been pursuing a drug dealer. It certainly could have been Ben he was talking about. Tess had to admit, albeit sadly, that it wasn't that big of a stretch to imagine Ben falling back into his old ways.
But he was talking absolute nonsense now. Men who could turn into fanged monsters? Savagery that belonged in a horror movie? Those things had no place in real life, not even in the harshest realm of reality. It just wasn't possible.
Was it?
Tess found herself standing in front of the shrouded sculpture she'd been working on last night, the one of Dante's likeness. The one she'd botched and would probably end up throwing away. She'd gotten his mouth all wrong, hadn't she? Given him some strange sort of sneer that didn't look like him at all?
Now her fingers tingled as she reached for the scrap of cloth that covered the piece. Confusion and an odd, niggling dread sat in her stomach like a stone as she grasped the edge of the fabric and drew it clear of the bust. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw what she had done--the mistake she'd made had given Dante a wild, almost animal-like appearance... right down to the sharp canines that turned his smile into a feral-looking sneer.
Inexplicably, she had given him fangs.
"I'm really afraid, Tess. For both of us," Ben's voice said over the speaker of her answering machine. "Just... whatever you do, stay the hell away from these guys."
Dante flipped his malebranche blades, one in each hand, the steel flashing in the fluorescent lights of the compound's training facility. He spun at blinding speed and struck hard at the polymer target dummy, ripping twin razor-sharp lacerations several inches into the thick plastic hide. With a roar, he pivoted around and went at it again with a further assault.