Until I was wedged between a germ-laden cruiser door and a three-foot foam dinosaur head I hadn’t realized how truly screwed I was. The police had cuffed me and stuck me in their car, complete with flashing red and blue lights. I’d be taken downtown, the slammer, or wherever cops took felons.
Throwing a drink in someone’s face wasn’t a felony, was it? Besides, Tweedledum and Tweddledee hadn’t read my Miranda rights before they’d left us locked in their parked car. I could walk free if this went to trial for whatever charge. What had they charged me with? The best I could come up with was drunken and disorderly.
If anyone needed to be charged with being disorderly, the asshole lounged in the seat beside me ought to be high on the list. Not only had he insulted and generally harassed me, but he’d also taken up four fifths of the seat with his stupid costume.
From his chest up, the asshole sported a white t-shirt that had been all but painted over his toned body. Even though he’d been stuck inside two inches of foam for who knew how long, he maintained the nice pear scent I’d caught earlier. Now that his entire head was visible—tousled medium-length hair and all—I had to begrudgingly admit he was gorgeous. If I were into pretty Asian boys like my friend Karen. Okay, pretty Asian men. That didn’t mean I had to like being stuck in a car with him and his getup.
I elbowed the green head, hissing as my bone collided with something hard. Did a metal frame exist under all that foam?
The asshole turned his human head my way. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. We haven’t been arrested.”
I might have been relieved if he hadn’t set me off with his condescending tone. Glaring, I growled. “We wouldn’t even be in here if it weren’t for you.”
He let out another of his irritating chortles. “You mean how I literally had your knickers twisted around my finger?”
Fury had me wordless. Just as well, considering I hadn’t had much luck getting him to behave like a decent human being thus far. I shimmied against the seat as best I could and stared out the window, ignoring him.
Greg’s infatuation with Dave Matthews filtered through the cruiser’s closed windows. A white strobe light from a room I hadn’t gone into—perhaps the one Greg had called the dungeon—alternated with a red spotlight that must have pissed off one of the respectable neighbors. No wonder the police had turned up. Someone must have called in a noise complaint.
“They’ll just take us to a drunk tank,” my companion said.
A truck marked with a city police shield coasted into Greg and his college buddies cul-de-sac. The vehicle parked catty corner to the cruiser and flipped on its lightbar.
“See?” Jurassic-jerk poked a finger toward the metal grate separating us from the front of the car. “They brought in the truck to corral the other drunks.”
I opened my mouth to argue I wasn’t drunk, but closed it without saying a thing. He wasn’t worth my effort.
Two new police officers popped out of the truck and started for the house. I bounced my knees, hoping Tweedledum and Tweddledee would take us in now that their friends had arrived. While I didn’t want to be arrested, I wanted to be stuck in a tight space with the asshole beside me even less.
“C’mon,” he said, crooning a little too prettily, “don’t be like that. Can’t we be friends? I have already seen your underwear.”
He hadn’t said what I wasn’t supposed to be like so I didn’t bother doing anything differently. Though I tightened my hands against my forearms.
“What’s your name?”
I narrowed my eyes in an attempt to see through Greg’s windows. Were the police doing anything yet? I never thought I’d see the day when I’d wish the cops would bring me to their precinct faster.
“Mine is Nick,” Jurassic-jerk said. “My mother named me after a member of a boy band she was obsessed with. I’ve never recovered from the mortification.”
Was Nick an oversharer? I really didn’t need to know any of his childhood woes. Especially considering the anecdote humanized and otherwise inhuman asshole.
“See?” he said. “Isn’t that worse than someone finding your underwear?”
That overshare had been meant to make me feel better? Why? What would Nick the Jurassic-jerk do once I felt better? Ask me who my fairy pimp was?
I gave into the urge to turn my head. Nick gave me a self-deprecating version of his smirk, turning him into an unfortunately handsome ass.
My mouth puckered because I couldn’t stand that I found him attractive. “Is the unfortunate origin of your name the reason you’re a colossal asshole?”
His expression faded into a frown. “Telling the truth makes me a colossal asshole?”
I’d have been happy if he got hit with a horse tranquilizer and shut up for the rest of the night. Maybe a nasty comment would do just as well. “Tact goes a long way,” I said. “And our introduction proved you don’t have any.”
Nick made a little sound with his lips that might have been disbelief. He shifted on the seat, and his foam made a farting noise, which he ignored.
I rolled my eyes and transferred my gaze to the truck. How many people could that thing hold anyway? Surely not the entire party. Maybe the police would do Breathalyzer tests and send home anyone who could drive.
They hadn’t tested me. Would I have passed? I couldn’t say if my behavior had been alcohol or asshole instigated.
Nick adjusted his pose again, and the motion knocked the Tyrannosaurus head into my thigh. The costume’s top hat flopped toward me, hanging from the forehead by a thin elastic band. I sent it a sidelong glance, trying to see inside the brim. Images of the magician my mom had hired for my tenth birthday flickered from my memory. Maestro Magic claimed the rabbit he’d produced had come from Magic bunny land. How large a bunny would come out of a top hat three times the size of the Maestro’s?
Holy fuck. Magic bunny land? Exactly how drunk was I?
“Get down.”
I sent Nick a sharp look. “Fuck you.”
He’d shifted, body facing me at an angle while his head craned in the opposite direction. “Get,” he said, pitch lowering to a sexy growl. “The fuck. Down.”
I audibly scoffed. “You’re cray-cray if you think I’m going down on your misogynous ass.”
He reached out a hand, fingers forming over my skull, and then he shoved my head to the floorboards. Something banged outside the car, followed by a crack that pierced through Dave Matthews singing “Crash Into Me.” Nick jerked, groaning.
I twisted my neck until I could see him.
Eyes squeezed shut and mouth screwed tight, he was the picture of a level ten on the pain scale. I scanned him, looking for the explanation. The red-dot sized stain at his shoulder hadn’t been there when I’d been salivating over his painted-on shirt earlier. And the red dot was now a red quarter. The color’s diameter expanded at a rapid rate, going to softball-size.
Nick had been shot!
His eyes snapped open, fixing on me. He widened his mouth, and a guttural noise ground out. The hand on my head vibrated, and then shook off. He punched air out of his nostrils, pale skin going red.
Footsteps thudded around the back of the car.
“Police, put your weapon down,” someone shouted from the direction of Greg’s house, “and your hands in the air!”
Five more bangs followed in quick succession—five more gunshots. Screams of pain from Greg’s side of the yard had my teeth chattering. Had the people sent to protect us just been shot? If so, they needed backup. I contorted so I could reach the phone in my costume’s hidden pocket.
“Don’t. Move.” Nick shook all over, voice coming out so rough that I barely understood him.
He’d known someone was about to fire a gun. That’s why he’d told me to get down. If he told me not to move, I wouldn’t move.
How insane was it that five minutes ago I’d wanted him to be forcibly unconscious and now that he was in danger of that very thing, I followed his every command? He had managed to protect me and for his effort he’d been shot.
Nick stilled, breath halting in frightening silence.
My lower lip trembled as I warred with his last command and the need to make sure he hadn’t just died.
Tapping on the sidewalk outside the car had me freezing. My insides trembled, but there was nothing I could do about that.
Bang !
I screamed at the awful cracking sound mere feet away. Nick jolted his foam leg into my hip and shoved. Something roared—something very, very close. I hazarded a glance up as I struggled to keep from being squished, fearing spotting the gunman staring at me through the window.
Nick’s red skin had darkened and…grown hair—great, shaggy, dark hair. All over.
No, that couldn’t be right. How the fuck would he have grown a beard in the last minute? And since when did beards cover foreheads? Was that a snout poking out from the mass of fur?
I scrambled into the corner, trying to make sense of the very animal-looking thing confined in a police car with me. Whatever was in Nick’s seat growled at me, snout opening to reveal glistening white teeth. Even as I gaped, the thing’s head hit the roof and its shoulders broadened and hunched at the same time. The car creaked, protesting the internal pressure. Glass shattered. Chunks rained on my shoulders, but it was the crumpling and rocking of the vehicle that had me whimpering.
Cool air rushed in, carrying the smell of pear-scented grass that didn’t gel with what I was looking at. Somehow the thing that had been Nick had grown in size and in body hair. He’d bulked up so much, he’d destroyed a quarter of the car.
This had to be a nightmare. First the asshole insulted my costume, then I was shoved into a police car with said asshole, then asshole was shot, and now asshole was…hulking out? Except…the Hulk turned a hairless green hue. This guy was…
I didn’t know.
The appendage that came down on the Tyrannosaurus’s top hat—furred, wide with black pads, and black claws—could only be described as a paw.
Okay, I did know, but I couldn’t credit what I saw as real. The asshole had turned into a bear. A black one. A really, fucking big black one. And either I was having the worst night of my life or I’d wake up to find the dream meaning for being locked in a car with a bear that had once been a man.
A…werebear?
The bear bellowed, sending spittle and beer-scented air all over my face. I drew further into myself, ducking my head between my body and the door.
The car bounced, and then settled. Bear spittle and growls faded as if the creature had vacated his seat. Dull thuds outside made every muscle in my body tighten, anticipating another gunshot. The only bang I heard was my heartbeat. Six, twelve, eighteen thumps of my heart passed. Tears fell over my cheeks. The heat and moisture felt real against my skin, but none of this could be reality.
A roar, muted and distant, floated back. Two more bangs had me flinching. But they, too, had been muffled as if far away. Someone shouted. Someone shrieked—a high-pitched, pained noise. The scream silenced as though someone had pulled the plug on the radio playing it mid-sound. Except that hadn’t been a radio.
I huddled into myself, quivering and crying.
“Shelby?”
I screamed.
“Shelby! Shit. It’s me. It’s Greg. Stop screaming. He might hear.”
More footsteps brought the voice that had been across the car from me to just outside the door I’d used for cover.
“You gotta get out of that car. He might come back.”
My barrier disappeared. Air rushed in, chilling my drenched face as I fell forward. Hands reached in and grabbed my shoulder. They steadied me for the thirty seconds it took to get to my feet.
I blinked away my terror and realized my coworker stood in front of me, pale face set with sober features. Greg tugged at my elbow, sending little glances over the car’s wrecked roof. I let him lead me toward the house, but stumbled when I spotted a body face-up in the grass. Clad in an official-looking uniform complete with metal badge, the trim figure was familiar. Tweedledum.
Sobbing in earnest, I tried to avoid seeing two more pairs of black boots sticking up out of the grass. But I couldn’t miss seeing pudgy Tweddledee in his spot sprawled near Greg’s porch.
Greg tugged me into his house and slammed the door shut, releasing me so he could grab another beer and chug it. Dave Matthews sang about satellites. No one danced. Zombie masks had been pulled off, eighties make-up ran in streaks, and men that had played at being monsters quaked in their shoes. Everyone looked like I felt—terrified and distraught. Every huddling person fixed their gaze on me.
I let out a wobbly breath. “Has anyone called 911?”
Greg pointed his finger at the door. “That…was…”
Too numb to reply, I turned to the closest person who wasn’t Greg and gave them a meaningful look. The girl reached for her phone and dialed the three fateful numbers, putting it on speaker so we could all hear.
“9-1-1, where is your emergency?”
The girl looked to me for a reply. I might still be in handcuffs but my mouth worked fine apart from my tremulous voice.
Suburban hell wasn’t a valid answer so I gave them Greg’s street address and prayed they’d still send someone after they heard my story.
Someone other than the psych ward people.