Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 6

"I'll drive," I say, climbing behind the wheel. I must do something. I can no longer sit passively beside Dana while she prowls the streets like a huntress. "This is the last time I let you talk me into going anywhere. Though, I must admit, you are correct about Professor Hardcastle. He's uncommonly arrogant."

"He was actually being super nice to you. He apologized twice. You were kind of being a bitch. You on the rag?"

I haven't had a cycle since I was turned, but I don't tell her this. "My physiological state has nothing to do with my mood." This is, of course, another lie. I feel as if I'm starving to death and it's making me overly sensitive. I stare out the window, trying to ignore Dana's luscious fertility. Night Walkers can't reproduce, but even if we could it wouldn't matter. After all this time, I'm still a virgin.

I lay my foot on the pedal with no idea whatsoever where I'm going. My hands are slightly trembling, whether from hunger or the confrontation with Professor Hardcastle I'm not sure. I can't recall when I've had such a long conversation with anyone besides Dana. Especially not a man.

Most of my partners have been male, but no one likes to work the night shift long, so they change rather frequently. Even those who linger come to accept my reticence. I've worked with men for years who know less about me than Dana has pieced together in six months.

Beside my partners and patients, I mostly come into contact with firemen and police, but they're men of action, not intellect, and so rarely lure me into conversation. Conversation leads to understanding and that leads to connection. From connection arises attachment. I cannot become attached to anyone or anything. This is how I survive.

I am silent and perfectly careful. This bores most people. A few people it intrigues—usually men. They are unused to silent, unknowable women, but after a while they move on. No one has more patience than a Night Walker. For us, a decade might as well be a day.

We circle the town and cross the slow, cold French Broad River then I'm speeding onto the interstate, west toward the Smokies, north toward Mt. Mitchell and back south along the Blue Ridge Parkway, skirting the edge of our territory, but I don't care. The night is dead and I'm starving. Dana's on her phone, compulsively texting a girlfriend in California or some new mystery man, I don't know. The Abominable Snowman could cross our path and she wouldn't notice.

Mountains surround me like granite kingdoms, leaning in, forcing me back toward town. I'm driving fast in aimless circles, trying to outrun memories clashing inside me like demons I don't have the strength to fight. Professor Hardcastle has cracked open the coffin of my past and its ghosts are pouring out. I feel smothered by mountains and darkness. How I long for the wide-open spaces of my youth! Horizons immense as the sea. Endless. But I'm downtown again, boxed in by buildings, crawling down empty streets until I find myself on Ravenscroft and turning onto Church Street.

Easing off the pedal, I glide before a row of glorious Gothic Revival churches fashioned in limestone and brick, whispering of endurance. Eternity. Transcendence. They're all arches and angles, curves and towers straining to heaven. Stained glass that glows in the dark. And suddenly the spirit of Papa is brimming within me, filling me with tears. God, how I miss him! His stern dignity. His iron love.

No one suffers more than he who lives longest.

My sister Emily may have resembled Papa most in temperament, but I was most akin to him in faith. He alone understood how I struggled with God. Even though we disagreed on doctrine, he never challenged my right to free thought or derided my devotion. When Emily scorned my beliefs and Branwell laughed and laughed at my folly, Papa quietly reminded me to trust myself. God speaks to some more than others, he said, and listening is not for the faint of heart.