“I’ve zoned out a few times since coming back from LA, but nothing like this,” she admitted. “I thought it was because I’ve only been getting an hour or two of sleep a night, but now, I’m not so sure.”
“A person can’t go for very long on a few hours of sleep,” he said. “I’ve done it for prolonged periods a few times on missions and it sucks, but what you’re doing sounds worse. If you don’t give your body the rest it needs, it’s going to shut down.”
She finished that slice of pizza and helped herself to another. “It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose. I’ve had a hard time sleeping lately.”
“Nightmares?”
She looked up sharply. “How did you know that?”
It was Knox’s turn to shrug. “I was outside your apartment the other night, remember? I heard you scream, then saw you walk into the living room. You looked freaked out, and since no one else was in there with you, I figured it must have been a nightmare.”
Rachel sat there with a half-eaten slice of pizza in her hand, trying to wrap her head around Knox seeing her after she’d had a nightmare when she was covered in sweat and looking like crap. That thought bothered her for some reason.
“I get nightmares a lot,” she admitted, deciding there was nothing to be gained from lying or ragging on him for being a stalker and a Peeping Tom. “They make it hard to sleep.”
“How often do you get them?”
“Pretty much every night.”
She stared down at her plate so she wouldn’t have to see the pity on his face. She didn’t want him looking at her that way—like she was broken AF.
“Does this have to do with the clown who attacked you in the graveyard?” Knox asked.
Rachel suddenly wanted to tell him everything. That the clown who’d almost killed her was still haunting her to this day. That he was driving her more insane every day. But she censored herself at the last moment, afraid she’d scare Knox away.
So instead, she nodded. “His name is Horace Watkins, and he worked as a clown of one type or another for most of his adult life. If you ask me, that’s what drove him crazy. I mean, it has to be tough making a living being something that freaks everybody out. As far as I’m concerned, that’s worse than being a dentist.”
Across from her, Knox’s mouth edged up.
“Anyway, he went nuts one day and kidnapped a teenager, then dragged her to a nearby graveyard and started carving her up,” Rachel continued. “Someone called 911 saying they’d heard screaming coming from the cemetery, so since the place was on my beat, I went to check it out. In the interim, Hannah managed to get away from Watkins and hid in the woods. When she saw me, she ran out of the darkness and right into my arms.” She shuddered a little at the memory of that night. “I got her back to my patrol car just as Watkins showed up. He did a number on me with the same knife he used on Hannah, then went after her again. I finally took him down and cuffed him, but he damn near killed me. Even before that, I never thought much of clowns. But now, I frigging hate them.”
“I don’t blame you,” Knox said. “I’m guessing he got one hell of a long prison sentence.”
“Yeah, but that didn’t stop me from being a complete mess for weeks following the attack.” She dropped her gaze, finding it easier to talk to her slice of pizza than to the guy across from her. “The trauma of getting stabbed multiple times by a clown was bad enough, but I was also dealing with the whole werewolf thing to boot. One moment, I wanted to hide in a corner, and the next I wanted to rip somebody apart. But even that wasn’t as bad as the nightmares.”
“Didn’t you talk to anyone?” Knox asked. “Police departments offer help for stuff like that, right?”
“They do, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.” She shrugged. “I guess part of it was the cop code. You know, never admitting something on the job is bothering you? But part of it was also my own stubborn nature. I was brought up in a tough family to be a tough girl. I refused to let something as stupid as a damn clown in a graveyard get to me. Besides, it wasn’t like I could tell the department shrink I’d been waking up in the middle of the night with blood in my mouth because I kept biting myself with my flashy new fangs. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t have gone over well.”
Knox frowned. “So you’ve been having these nightmares since your change?”
She shook her head, finishing that slice of pizza and reaching for another before answering. “The nightmares gradually faded over the next several months as I came to grips with everything that’d happened. It also helped that I was able to figure out the whole werewolf thing a little while later. After that, things became almost normal for a while. Then the nightmares started showing up again two months ago. They weren’t too bad at first, but they’ve been getting worse lately.”
“Two months ago?” he repeated. “That was around the time I showed up at the wedding reception with the hunters.”
She gave him a small smile. “As much as I’d like to blame it all on you, I can’t. I thought I’d dealt with my demons, but now I realize I’d simply done a good job of shoving them in a dark closet somewhere. Now those demons are out, and the nightmares are back worse than ever.”
Rachel expected Knox to ask what she saw in those nightmares—something she definitely didn’t want to get into—so she was extremely grateful when he turned his attention to the pizza. Maybe she’d get out of this dinner without having to reveal how completely screwed up she really was.
“How’d you figure out the whole werewolf thing on your own?” he asked, catching her off guard and with a mouthful of pizza.
She sipped her tea to wash it down. That part of the story she could talk about without breaking into a cold sweat. “I didn’t really do it on my own. I was still working street patrol five months after the attack when I responded to a suspicious activity call down near the river. There are a lot of abandoned buildings down there, so it’s a prime location for transients to live. As I was searching the area, I picked up a scent that seemed vaguely familiar, so I followed it and found three female beta werewolves hiding out in one of the buildings, terrified and nearly starving to death. Hunters had been tracking them for weeks and had already killed their alpha, so they were beyond relieved to finally see another werewolf. I think they were hoping I’d become their new alpha, while I was just thrilled to realize I wasn’t alone in all this.”
“What happened?” Knox prompted, transferring another slice of pizza to her plate, then doing the same for himself.
Rachel picked up the cheese shaker and sprinkled some on it. “They lived in my apartment with me for about a month, and it was amazing. They taught me so much about what it means to be a werewolf, and I made sure they had food on the table and kept them safe. Being around other werewolves was calming for me, so that helped, too.”
“So, why didn’t you want to become their alpha?”
