Dakota stopped for another light. It glowed red against her face. “You’re an idiot,” she said.
Warmth spread through my body at that simple statement. Was she doing it again? Enthralling me? Is that why I kept getting tongue-tied around her and acting strange? I adjusted in my seat and glanced at her phone—which I still hadn’t given back to her. “Get onto 50 East here. Take the 34th Street exit.” I set the phone back on my lap. “Who are you?” I asked.
The light turned, shading her face in a soft green glow. “I’m Dakota,” she said, stepping on the accelerator and heading toward the highway.
“But who’s Dakota?”
She hesitated, then said, “A Nephil granted you magic, didn’t they? I overheard some of your conversation earlier.”
“You don’t get to ask any more questions,” I said. How did she know about Nephil? About magic? “Who is Dakota?”
Scratching her cheek, she glanced at me, and then clicked on the radio and turned up the dial. “I love this song!” she yelled over the music. She sang along to lyrics I had never heard before.
I pressed the knob, silencing the radio, though she continued to belt out the tune. After a second, she quieted and frowned at me. The tires rolled over asphalt, and the breaks squeaked as she came to another red light.
“As much as I’d love to hear you sing, I only enjoy Christmas music. Year round. Everything else just kind of… chafes my ear sockets. So, back to my question, because how do I know you’re not a murdering psychopath?”
“Well, when I was about eight,” Dakota said, “I watched my daddy murder my mommy and my brubby with the business end of a hammer. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a hammer crack a skull, but it’s not something you easily forget.” She paused, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “He came after me, next. Bloody footprints trailed him. A clump of red hair stuck to the hammer’s claw. I cowered against the wall, sank down to the floor, thumb in my mouth like a baby. But guess what?”
To Sheep, a brutal attack like that would have been written off as a man who had snapped and killed his family. The editor would have created an eye-catching headline, and the press would have ran the story for a few hours, then the world would have forgotten it had happened when the next story came along. Being a card-carrying member of the supernatural world, I knew better.
The Nephil weren’t evil, but they weren’t good, either. They were nothing more than self-serving and opportunistic pricks controlled by their desires—kind of like most people I know. Sometimes, they fell in lust with humans. I mean, think about it—fallen angels hooked up with ancient people to create the Nephil. Why wouldn’t the Nephil get some male or lady boners for the mortal race? Some Nephil probably saw Dakota’s daddy, lusted over that hunk of dad-bod and thirsted for him bad. Being a super awesome husband, daddy-o most likely refused the sexual advances of the supernatural being. That, in turn, led to some Nephil getting their fragile ego damaged and cursing him for no better reason than spite. Not knowing he was cursed, the loving, gentle father went on a family killing spree.
The story is speculation, but if he was cursed without warning, he probably didn’t know how to—or that he even needed to—control his new hunger with blood.
“What?” I asked, imagining this little girl, about Mel’s age, sinking to the ground in fear as a Cursed man approached her with a bloodied hammer.
“I didn’t cry. Not in front of him. He could see me afraid, because we were all afraid, including him. But I would not allow that man to see me cry.”
Dakota turned onto the highway, and I glanced at her. The cab of the car was dark, but with the help of the streetlights, I could see flashes of her face. The tears she had saved from her father slipped down her cheeks.
“What happened?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He cocked the hammer back, and I squeezed my eyes shut so hard that my head hurt. The blow never landed. I didn’t dare open my eyes, because I didn’t want to see him like that. I didn’t want to see the hammer in his red hand. So I held them shut for… I don’t know how long. I finally grew brave enough to open them.” Dakota paused and gulped, inhaling deeply. “And he was gone.”
“Gone?” I asked.
“I never saw or heard from him again. He had just… vanished.” Her fingers hovered over the radio knob before she pulled her hand back. “I know about the Nephil and magic,” she said. “We were happy, as a family. My dad had a farm in Oregon that we lived on. He barely drank, never cussed, had a temper as hot as a cube of ice. I never once saw him without a smile. He laughed when he spoke. You ever hear that before? Someone who’s so happy and kind, that their words are… it sounds like they’re laughing.”
I couldn’t imagine someone so happy. Did that type of joy even exist? “No,” I said.
“Well, that was him. Then, that night…” She didn’t finish the sentence. I already knew what happened that night. “Newspapers fucked it all up, too. Said he abused my mom, me, and my brother. Said we were in debt. Said he entered business with the wrong kind of people, made the wrong kinds of deals, because shit like that doesn’t just happen for no reason at all.”
Dakota turned off the highway onto 34th Street.
“About a mile,” I said. “Take a right on Folsom Boulevard.”
She nodded.
“You think he’s still out there?” I
