Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,1

creating pockets of shadow around recessed doorways and hulking Dumpsters.

A strange shiver ran down my spine, and my footsteps slowed.

It’s not strange to shiver when it’s twenty degrees out, I told myself.

But something felt … off. I looked all around, searching for a logical explanation for why I was suddenly creeped out. I saw nothing, though there were a couple of shadowy areas that were probably big enough to hide the maniacal serial killer my lizard brain seemed to think was lurking.

I was chilled to the bone and could no longer feel my nose. If I stopped being a wuss about the alley, I could be home in less than five minutes. I wanted a giant mug of hot cocoa and my electric blanket.

But then I noticed that the hair on the back of Bob’s neck had risen, and his ears had gone flat. I wasn’t the only one who sensed danger in the darkness. Bob was staring intently at the pool of shadow at the base of the stone steps leading up to the church, and his lips peeled away from his teeth. The shadow wasn’t big enough to hide a knife-wielding psycho, and I wondered if maybe Bob had spotted a cat. Or maybe even a rat.

Whatever it was, I wanted no part of it. One of the self-defense lessons my dad the police commissioner had taught me was to always listen to my instincts, and they were telling me in no uncertain terms that it was time to get out of that alley. I felt a little silly being spooked when there was no visible threat, like a little girl who was afraid of the dark, but there are worse things in life than feeling silly.

That was when I heard the wailing cry that turned my blood to ice and set my heart racing. Bob let out a furious bark and lunged toward the shadow, practically yanking my arm out of its socket. He was seventy-five pounds of pure muscle, and in a tug of war, I was bound to come out the loser.

“Bob, heel!” I yelled at him in my most commanding tone.

I must have sounded like I meant it, because Bob stopped straining against the leash, although he was still snarling, and his every muscle was quivering with his desire to attack. I didn’t know what had made that bloodcurdling noise, but it wasn’t a rat or a cat.

“Come on,” I urged Bob, giving his leash a little tug. At that point, I’d have happily walked a mile out of my way, if that’s what I needed to do to avoid that pool of shadow.

The cry came again, sounding as unearthly, as alien as before. I felt like I should cross myself, or maybe make a sign to ward off the evil eye. The sound was utterly and completely wrong. I took a step backward, tugging on Bob’s leash. Every instinct was screaming at me to run, but I couldn’t make myself turn my back on that shadow.

I don’t know if it was a trick of acoustics or if my imagination had been running wild with me, but the sound seemed to change. The unearthly wail became something much more ordinary, and I realized what it was: a baby crying.

The hair on the back of my neck and arms prickled, and I froze. I wanted the safety of my house, the security of a closed and locked door. Finally identifying the sound as a crying baby rather than a bloodthirsty monster didn’t chase away the sense of wrongness that gripped me. It didn’t seem to be calming Bob down any, either. My instincts were still telling me to get the hell out of there, and I kept hearing my dad’s voice in my head, telling me to listen to my instincts.

But what kind of person hears the cries of an abandoned infant—on a subfreezing night, no less—and runs away? It was a baby, for God’s sake! There was nothing to be scared of, and leaving a helpless baby to freeze to death in an alley just wasn’t an option.

The problem was Bob. He’d obeyed my command to heel, but he was still bristling and snarling. There was no way I could get close to that baby with him on the end of the leash. He was well trained and usually pretty obedient, but I’d never had to control him when he went into attack-dog mode, and I was afraid he was too strong for me.

I