Going Dark (Nightfallen #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

quite yet,” I said, suddenly feeling devious.
    “Why not?”
    “She’s cute, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Sure.”
    I reached for Tracy’s jeans, and undid the button. “We’ve already used her body as a vending machine. No reason to stop there when we can also use her body as a playground.”
    “Forget it,” he said.
    I looked at him. “You don’t like drinking from guys because it’s gay, you don’t like playing with available girls. Is there something else you like that you’re not telling me?”
    “If she goes back to her boyfriend feeling sore, she might begin to wonder about whatever time she’s lost. She begins recounting her steps, she may try to account for the hole in her memory. She does that, it could lead to us.”
    It was a rational concern, but not one I’d ever heard a male Nightfallen raise before. They tended to think with their dicks first, last, and always. I could tell my predator mind was wondering about him—I could hear the Sumerian background music in my brain grow louder.
    “There’s always her mouth,” I said.
    “She’ll have a sore jaw.”
    “Someone’s bragging now,” I said. Then the humor left my voice. “If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if you had a conscience.”
    It wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t a dare. It was a dropped gauntlet.
    He accepted it, but played it off like it wasn’t a big deal. “Okay, but I’ve never done this with anyone watching before,” he said.
    He took a seat, and I guided Tracy’s face to his lap.
    Whatever his initial hesitation, he got over it before long.

 

    4
    The Underground
     
    But that initial hesitation kept bothering me.
    We were bad things. That was automatic as soon as you dug yourself out of the earth in which you’d been buried three nights before. You were a soulless monster.
    That’s not to say you instantly ran around pillaging and slaughtering—our evil was tempered by our self-interest in not being killed, which meant drawing as little attention as possible.
    What self-interest was there in not using a girl who wouldn’t remember? The only answer seemed to be Jackson had a lingering morality. As I thought about it during the nights afterward, even though he’d eventually played with her, it seemed like the actions of someone trying to blend in rather than really belonging.
    Then there was the fight in the alley. The meathead’s cross had blinded me, but Jackson had walked up to him easily. As if he hadn’t even noticed it. Combine all that with the fact his saliva didn’t have any healing effect . . .
    On a smartphone bought with victims’ money, I googled him. His obituary was from a month ago:
    Sgt. Jackson J. Wheel died Wednesday at the Harrisburg Veterans Hospital from injuries suffered in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province two months prior.
    Born on Halloween night, 1983, “Wheeljack”, as he was known in his unit, was a native son of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of three brothers that would all eventually join the military, Jackson enlisted in the Army after graduating high school. His family was enormously proud to see him graduate the U.S. Army Ranger School and join the 75th Rangers Regiment. His service to his country included 10 combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .
    Along with a list of his surviving relatives, the obit casually mentioned some of the courses and schools he’d graduated from. Their understated titles—things like “Pathfinder School” and “Joint Firepower Control Course”—sounded impressive, even if I had no idea what they were. Three combat ribbons and a Silver Star sounded like a lot too.
    At least his story checked out. The obituary’s reference to dying two months after being injured dovetailed with what Jackson had told me about becoming Nightfallen while in a hospital.
    I could have left it at that. I liked him, after all. We began getting together every couple of nights. As non-Nightfallen as it may sound, it was nice