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  Falling Dark

  The Watchers Trilogy, Book 1

  Christine Pope

  Dark Valentine Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  FALLING DARK

  Copyright © 2017 by Christine Pope

  Published by Dark Valentine Press

  Cover design by Christian Bentulan

  Ebook formatting by Indie Author Services

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from its publisher, Dark Valentine Press.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by Christine Pope

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  You know that feeling when you’re positive you’re being followed?

  Well, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following me right then. Creepy-crawly sensation on the back of my neck, cold trickle down my spine that didn’t have anything to do with the gray clouds looming overhead.

  Problem was, as I stood on the sidewalk just outside Trader Joe’s and let my gaze sweep the store’s parking lot, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The usual mothers with kids too young for school in tow, hipster-looking couples who might have been students at Art Center…or Caltech, since these days being a science type was no excuse for not also being vaguely hip, too. A couple of oddballs like me, people who should have been at work but, for whatever reason, weren’t.

  The lot was a little more than half full. I tried to time these trips at hours when the place wouldn’t be too crowded, hence the availability of all those precious parking spaces. Since I set my own schedule, there was no reason to cram myself in with all the other people trying to grab a couple of bottles of cheap wine on their way home from work.

  A cool breeze ruffled my hair. Overhead, the sky looked more and more threatening, even though the rain had held off so far — and I hoped it would wait until I got back to my condo. Then it could come pouring down. Lord knows we needed the rain here in Southern California, needed every drop to help prevent the parched land from blowing away altogether the next time we got a round of Santa Ana winds.

  Once again I scanned the parking lot, then glanced down at my phone. The little dot on my Uber app crawled along, clearly caught in some kind of heavy traffic as it made its way from Old Pasadena down Arroyo Boulevard. I let out an exasperated breath and looked up from the phone. As far as I could tell, no one was paying any attention to me. I’d been the target of unwanted advances here in the past…nothing like some random guy trying to hit on you in the frozen food section…but today I’d been left alone. Even though I’d escaped this shopping trip unscathed, for some reason, I was still having a massive case of the heebie-jeebies. Then again, what was new about that? After the past few years, I should have been used to my brain messing with me.

  Anyway, the distance to my condo from where I stood was less than a mile. Even carrying a couple of shopping bags, it shouldn’t take me more than fifteen minutes at the most. And I doubted the Uber driver would care if I canceled the trip — he could stay safely in the old town area instead of having to venture down here, where his fares would be more widely spaced.

  That seemed to settle it. I tapped the screen, canceling my ride request, then shoved the phone into my purse and picked up the two shopping bags I’d set down on the sidewalk. After glancing around one last time — and telling myself I was being totally paranoid — I headed out across the parking lot.

  I decided to go up Marengo since it was a nicer walk, one that would take me through a quieter, more residential area. Besides, a lot of large old trees overhung the sidewalks there, promising some shelter in case the rain did arrive.

  No one paid any attention to me as I crossed the street and headed north. I didn’t even know why I thought they might, except for that nagging sensation, the one that wouldn’t quite go away, of unfriendly eyes somehow fixed on me.

  Once upon a time, I hadn’t been nearly so paranoid. But now that I was a…actually, I still didn’t quite know what to call myself. “Psychic” sounded so pretentious. And it wasn’t as if I could read minds, or hold a set of keys and know who they belonged to, or speak to the dead and deliver messages from beyond the grave. No, the only thing that made me out of the ordinary was my dreams. Visions. Premonitions. Whatever you wanted to call them.

  Most days, I didn’t call them anything at all. My family didn’t like me to talk about that sort of thing, so with them, I pretended that the visions didn’t exist. They still desperately clung to the hope that one day I might get better…whatever that meant. So I didn’t tell them anymore. I wrote everything down in a little book I kept by my bedside, since sometimes the visions came in the form of dreams, and sometimes they visited me when I was wide awake. As far as I’d been able to figure out, there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason as to why or when they would descend. Usually, those visions would be proven true within a day or a week — or much more rarely — in a month or two. Every once in a great while, they didn’t seem to come true at all. But even with an overall decent batting average, I did my best not to talk about them.

  Who would believe me?

  All right, I had a couple of people who actually did believe me…but neither of them were my family members.

  The wind picked up, tugging at my loose hair, and I thought I felt a drop of rain hit my cheek. Damn it. Yes, the forecasters had been saying that the storm would come in this afternoon, but I’d thought I’d be able to beat it.

  So you’ll get a little wet, I told myself grimly as I trudged along, wishing I hadn’t bought that third bottle of wine. At the moment, it felt as if it weighed a ton. It’s not the end of the world. You can change your clothes, take a hot bath.

  Ignore the world. That was something I’d gotten pretty good at over the past couple of years.

  Another drop of rain followed the first one, and then more. No, it wasn’t coming down too hard yet, but I knew how these things went. In a few minutes, I was probably going to get hammered. Yes, I had on a jean jacket over my tank top and long skirt, but denim wasn’t exactly waterproof.

  My sunglasses shielded my eyes somewhat, although I still kept my gaze fixed downward, watching the pavement, trying to keep the increasingly heavy rain from hitting directly me in the face. Probably not the smartest thing to do. After getting that rampaging case of the creepy-crawlies back at Trader Joe’s, I should have been paying better attention.

  The property I was passing had a low wall that separated it from the sidewalk, and on the other side of the wall grew some thick bushes and several stubby, spreading trees of a variety I didn’t recognize. The bushes rustled, and then out of them burst — well, I suppose you’d have to say he was a man, maybe a few years older than I, with a shock of pale hair and equally pale eyes, and a pasty complexion.

 
; That was all the time I had to take in his appearance, because in the next instant he had lunged for me, wrapping thin but surprisingly strong fingers around my bicep. I let out a startled cry, but I wasn’t so shocked that I completely forgot to fight back. Out of instinct, I swung one of my shopping bags at him, the one that had two of the three bottles of wine I’d bought inside.

  The bag connected with his shoulder with a sharp crack, but the blow wasn’t enough to stop him. As the bag fell to the sidewalk with a crunch of glass, he didn’t even blink, instead maneuvering past so he stood in front of me, blocking the sidewalk. He grabbed my other arm with his free hand, squeezing so tightly that I dropped the second bag of groceries.

  Adrenaline zinged through my bloodstream, pushing past the initial shock, telling me what I should do next.

  “Help!” I called out. Surely there had to be someone around, even though it was a little before eleven in the morning, a time when probably most of the people who lived in the neighborhood had to be at work or school. “Help!”

  In response, my assailant let go of my left arm and clapped his hand over my mouth. His fingers were cold and hard, and my lip stung as it was ground into my teeth. The metallic taste of blood ran over my tongue. “Shut up,” he growled into my ear. “No one is going to help you.”

  The rain fell faster, harder, soaking my hair, stinging my cheeks like little chips of ice. Right then, I wondered if he was right, if he’d chosen this spot on purpose because he knew no one was close enough to come to my aid.

  Maybe that was true. In which case, I’d have to help myself.

  Without even stopping to think, I drove my right knee into his groin, using all the strength of my yoga-trained muscles. Surely the force of the blow would be enough to make him let go of me, if only for a few seconds. Then I would run like hell, or at least as fast as I could. The old injury in my leg had begun to ache, and it might have slowed me down.

  But I never got the chance to find out, as my attacker didn’t let go. A harsh breath escaped his lips, but his grip on my arm only intensified. Tears of pain and fear stung my eyes. Right then, it seemed all too likely that he’d be able to drag me off that sidewalk — maybe to the shabby Volvo parked a few yards away — and take me wherever he wanted.

  And why the hell hadn’t he doubled over in agony the second I kneed him in the balls? Was he hopped up on something, like bath salts or PCP?

  So maybe I should be more worried about him eating my face off, or —

  A dark blur. I didn’t really see where it had come from, because I had been struggling in my attacker’s grip, still trying to wrench my arm out of his hand, even though he might as well have been holding me in a set of shackles for all the good that did. But in the next instant I saw a fist come out of nowhere and hit the man who held me, striking him in the jaw with such force that he did finally let go, right before he reeled back a pace or two and bumped into the wall behind us. I pulled in a breath, wondering if I should scream again, but then I stopped, staring. A man I knew I’d never seen before, tall, with shaggy dark hair, advanced on my assailant, left fist coming up to connect with the other side of his face. Improbably, my attacker began to laugh, even as blood trickled down from his pale mouth.

  “You think that’s going to stop me?” He swung, but the man who had hit him moved so fast my eyes could barely track the motion. All I really saw was his left hand coming up to catch that fist before it ever connected.

  A sickening crunch, one that could only have come from all the bones in his hand being crushed at once. At last my attacker flinched, the remaining blood draining from his face so he barely even looked human, seemed more like a wax figure before any color had been painted on its features.

  “No,” said the man who had stepped in to save me. “But this will.”

  He grabbed my assailant’s other hand, crushing it just as he had the first one. The pale man sank to his knees. An odd keening noise escaped his lips, a sound that didn’t even seem as if it could have come from a human throat.

  And then — maybe it was pain, or maybe it was shock. I didn’t know, because I couldn’t come up with a rational explanation for what I witnessed next. The man who’d come to my assistance reached in his pocket and pulled out a small vial filled with a strange silvery liquid. He took out the stopper and splashed the liquid on my attacker’s face.

  It dissolved. Or rather, he dissolved. All of him, melting down into a pool of a pale oily substance that quivered briefly, as if it still possessed some kind of hideous life. And in the next second it was gone as if it had never been.

  “What — ?” I managed. “Who — ?”

  “Later,” said my savior, his tone curt. He bent to pick up my dropped bags of groceries, one of them clinking with the sound of broken glass. Even though the bags were the heavy plastic reusable kind, red wine still began to drip from the bottom. “Let me drive you home.”

  My mind was still reeling, attempting to process what I had just seen, but I knew I sure as hell wasn’t going to let this stranger drive me to my condo. I’d had enough encounters with crazy men for one day. Letting this one get me alone in his car? Not going to happen.

  “No, that’s fine,” I said. Somehow, I even managed to smile. No doubt my mother, who’d made it her goal to ensure that both her daughters could handle every social situation with grace and ease, would be very proud of me.

  Not that I would ever tell her what had just happened. That would be the final piece of evidence she needed to be convinced that I was completely crazy.

  “It is not fine,” the man said. For the first time since he’d come to my rescue, I was able to take in some more of his appearance, to note that he also looked to be a few years older than I — maybe around thirty — and had dark brown, longish hair that brushed against the collar of his black T-shirt. His eyes were also dark, piercing as he stared down into my face. Tall. Definitely over six feet.

  “No, really,” I returned. I pulled in a breath and added, “Unless you’d like to stay here with me while I call the police.”

  “To report what?” he asked. His gaze flicked to the spot on the sidewalk where my attacker had melted into nothingness. “Police require evidence.”

  “I — ”

  “I mean you no harm, Serena Quinn.”

  My protests died there. “How do you know my name?”

  “That isn’t important. Let me get you off this street.”

  Mind churning, I said, “Give me my groceries.”

  “No. You’re in no condition to carry them. I’ll give them to you after you’re safely home.”

  “Fine,” I told him. “Keep them.”

  And I turned away and began walking up the street. Yes, my knees wobbled, and I honestly didn’t know if I had the strength to make it the extra half mile to my place, but the one thing I did know was that I sure as hell wasn’t going to get into a car with him.

  From behind me came a muffled curse, followed by the sound of footsteps. A second later, he had caught up with me, thanks to his much longer legs. “You are a very stubborn woman.”

  “So I’ve been told.” I didn’t dare let myself look up at him. For some reason, I had the feeling that if I looked too deeply into his eyes, I’d discover things I didn’t want to see, would begin to find some answers to the craziness I’d just experienced.

  Right then, I wasn’t sure I wanted answers. I wanted to go home and pretend this morning had never happened.

  The rain arrived in earnest then, pouring down in that shocking way it did sometimes in California, as if giving the finger to the endless commentary about the seemingly never-ending drought. The stranger’s hair plastered itself against his cheeks and his neck, glistened in the dark stubble on his chin, but he barely seemed to notice, only kept walking along at my side.

  Because I’d stubbornly refused the offer of a ride, I was getting soaked as well, raindrops beating through my jacket as if it was made of thin silk rather than heavy denim. My cotton skirt
was equally soaked, beginning to cling to my thighs.

  Had he noticed? I couldn’t tell, because I was trying so very hard not to look at him.

  Eventually, the silence grew too terrible. I said, desperation clear in my voice, “Really, I’m fine. I’d appreciate it if you could leave me alone.”

  He only shook his head. “No, I don’t think you’re fine. And I cannot leave you alone.”

  Oh, that was just wonderful. So apparently I’d traded a crazy would-be rapist for a stalker. Or something. True, the man who walked calmly along beside me was an order of magnitude better-looking than the one who’d attacked me, but I wasn’t about to let his looks lull me into a false sense of security. After all, Ted Bundy had been attractive.

  Don’t forget about Jeffrey Dahmer, my mind whispered at me, even though I was forced to admit that I wouldn’t exactly have been Mr. Dahmer’s type.

  Since I didn’t know how to respond to the stranger’s words, I lapsed into silence again, walking as quickly as I could. At least I’d had the sense to put on low-heeled boots, faux leather ones that did a pretty good job of keeping out the rain. My feet would be dry, even if the rest of me was a lost cause.

  Not for the first time, I wished that my powers — or whatever they were — might be of a little more use in situations like this. A vision might come to me of a bus crash or a kidnapped child, but I never seemed to see anything that affected my own life, whether present or future. Every once in a great while I’d get an odd tingle like the one I’d experienced at the Trader Joe’s parking lot. Even that hadn’t done me any good, though. The danger hadn’t been there at the store at all, but waiting for me up the street.