Rogue Darkness by Dianne Duvall

She snorted. Nicole had spent much of her life in Connecticut and upstate New York. North Carolina’s winters were mild by comparison.

A squirrel wandered onto the sidewalk ahead of her. Consumed by its collection of acorns, it refused to budge, so she had to go around it.

Shaking her head with a grin, she admitted she would miss this, too: jogging outside on a pretty path. She usually just joined the vampires on the treadmills at network headquarters. And there wasn’t much scenery to enjoy on sublevel five.

Two guys standing twenty or thirty yards apart tossed a football back and forth while their girlfriends sat together on the grass, their heads bent over their phones. Up ahead, a woman lounged on a bench, reading a paperback, a big bookbag tucked against her side. One of the network’s special ops soldiers loped toward her in joggers, his breath forming white puffs in front of his face. As usual, he nodded cordially and kept going. Another quarter mile or so and Nicole would pass the special ops soldiers who posed as a couple and drank coffee while they debated politics, movies, or some other topic. Sometimes they occupied a bench. Other times, they ambled along the same path she did or sprawled on the lawn.

Pain suddenly exploded in the back of Nicole’s head as something hard slammed into it. Stumbling forward, she lost her balance. Pavement abraded the skin on her palms as she threw her hands out to break her fall. What the hell?

Reaching up, she touched a hand to the back of her head as a pounding ache erupted and raced through her skull. When she glanced at her fingers, the tips were red with blood.

Was that from scraping her hand when she fell or from whatever the hell had hit her?

Her heart began to slam against her ribs.

Was this it? Was this the attack they’d been waiting for? Right here? In plain view?

If so, it couldn’t be vampires. Vampires couldn’t tolerate any sunlight at all.

Nicole swiftly flipped over onto her butt. Her head swam.

“Are you fucking crazy?” a woman shouted behind her.

“It was an accident,” a man said defensively.

Nicole glanced to the side as a football rolled to a wobbly halt a few yards away.

“Accident, my ass. You did that on purpose.” The woman on the bench set her book aside, rose, and stomped toward her. “Are you okay?”

Nicole started to nod but stopped when the slight movement magnified the pounding in her head. “Yeah. What happened?”

Lips tight, expression furious, the woman bent, took Nicole’s hand in her gloved one, and pulled her up. “That asshole hit you in the head with the football. He threw it right at you. I saw the whole thing.”

A football? That’s what had hit her? It has felt much harder than that.

The asshole in question loped toward them, his friend approaching from the other direction. “It was an accident. I swear,” the taller one said.

“Bullshit,” the woman snapped before facing Nicole. “I saw the short one nod in your direction. That shit was deliberate. It was an assault, and you should file a police report and press charges.”

The shorter one had nodded at her?

Suspicion rose. Though her head ached, Nicole studied the duo.

“Assault?” the taller one blurted in disbelief.

“Police report,” the other one bleated.

She’d seen the tall one before.

Where? Here on campus during one of her runs?

No. At one of the parties she’d attended. He and another guy had hit on her. Aggressively. Had it been the shorter one?

She couldn’t remember. But the tall one…

Yeah. That was the asshole she’d had to shut down forcefully. In front of his buddies. Who had laughed their asses off.

Anger rose. Nicole bent and picked up the football. Looking over the tall one’s shoulder, she called, “Over here, officer.”

Eyes widening, both men swung around.

Nicole drew her arm back and fired off the football, putting all the muscle she’d honed training in special ops and as a Second behind it.

The ball slammed into the back of Tall Guy’s head. Stumbling forward, he barked, “Ah! What the fuck?”

The woman burst out laughing.

Tall Guy took a menacing step forward.

Nicole shifted into a fighting stance. She didn’t doubt that she could take this asshole down. And in the unlikely event that she couldn’t, all she had to do was hold him off until the special ops jogger turned around and headed back. The special ops “couple” should be up ahead, around a curve, and would come running if she sounded an alarm.

The woman pulled what looked like a small pepper spray canister out of her pocket. “Oh no, you don’t. You stay the hell back.”

Nicole’s right palm began to tingle and burn. From scraping it on the pavement?

She risked a glance down. The skin around the abrasions glistened, as did her fingers. Not with blood. With something clear.

Frowning, she rubbed them together. They were wet.

From the football?

No. North Carolina hadn’t had rain in weeks. They were going through yet another historic drought, and water restrictions forbade lawn watering and the use of sprinkler systems, so the football had to be dry.

And yet her hand was moist.

Her palm burned.

The woman took a step toward Tall Guy and started ranting about grown men having the mentality of juveniles.

Nicole had touched the woman’s glove when she’d helped her up. Had it been wet?