Night Tides - By Alex Prentiss

CHAPTER ONE

THE TERROR BEGAN, prosaically enough, with casual rudeness spurred by a misunderstanding.

Twenty-year-old Ling Hu opened the cooler door, took a bottle of flavored water from the bottom shelf, and walked sideways down the narrow aisle to the checkout counter. The place had all the accoutrements of a standard convenience store crammed into roughly two-thirds the usual space. It was a neighborhood institution, though, and the owner had never considered remodeling.

As the college student paid for the water, a voice behind her said, “Love your ink. The design is gorgeous. Who did it?”

She turned. A man with long gray hair, balding on top, and a pasty complexion stood behind her with a six-pack in his hand. He had to be referring to the elaborate dragon’s foot design across the small of her back—the only one of her tattoos her clothes didn’t completely cover. And that tat showed only when she squatted and her jeans rode down, which meant he’d been staring at her ass while she got her drink.

“Fuck you, creep,” she said, scowling. And he was creepy. Not only was he at least forty years old, but his skin was unhealthily pale and gleamed with sweat. She rushed out the door and into the twilight after paying, glad to get away from him. Then she put in her earbuds and cranked up the music as she headed off down Willie Street.

“GIRLS,” THE CLERK said disdainfully as he rang up the sweaty man’s beer. The open books and laptop behind the counter marked him as another student in the man’s eyes. “They dress to say, ‘Stare at me,’ and when you do they say, ‘What’re you looking at, asshole?’ You wouldn’t believe some of the shit I see in here. And the ones that stay for summer classes are the worst. Must be the heat.”

The man took his beer outside and gazed down the street. He spotted Ling Hu several blocks away, flouncing along to her music, the moment in the store no doubt already forgotten.

Two contradictory emotions battled for supremacy in him. One was outrage at her cavalier arrogance, while the other was wonder at the certainty that she had not recognized him.

Then an idea formed. It was a terrible idea, and a wonderful one. For the first time in weeks, his despair began to lift. After all, what did he have to lose?

He quickly went to his truck.

AN HOUR LATER, Ling Hu stood naked in the bathtub with her latest boyfriend, Ken, making out as the shower sprayed down around them. They’d just had sex on the rickety balcony of his apartment, despite the summer mosquitoes drawn to their sweat. After, she’d immediately hopped into the shower. He had followed. She might be late for her study session, though, since her soapy writhing against him had brought Ken—or, at least, parts of him—back to life.

“No, I have to go, seriously,” she said, and pushed him lightly away.

“Are you seeing that other guy, the football player?” he said, cupping her behind.

She was seeing Tyler after her study session, but she didn’t feel it was any of Ken’s business. “No, I have to study. I can’t afford to blow that test tomorrow.”

“Can you afford to blow anything else?” Ken said with a wicked grin. He was more than a foot taller than her, skinny and pale, with a nipple-piercing and a Celtic rope design around one biceps.

She giggled and playfully slapped him. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

He put her hand on his hardness. “Do I feel like I’m kidding?”

She felt a rush of response and looked up into the spray. “Okay, but if you’re not done by the time the hot water runs out, it’s you and your hand tonight.”

“Fair enough,” he said. He braced his arms against the damp wall as she slid sinuously to her knees.

Twenty minutes later, her black hair still wet, Ling Hu emerged into the humid Wisconsin night. Madison was the state capital and a city of 200,000, but, because of an odd quirk of geography, its downtown area was confined to a four-mile-long isthmus between Lakes Monona and Mendota. With the state capitol as its center and the University of Wisconsin at the far west end, the isthmus was the city’s hub, especially for the thousands of students who inhabited its packed, iconoclastic residential neighborhoods.

Ling Hu rushed down the sidewalk of one of these neighborhoods, backpack across her shoulders, mentally trying to shift into study mode and not anticipate her tryst with Tyler. It was