The Temptation Read online

  THE

  TEMPTATION

  a kindred novel

  ALISA VALDES

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated in loving memory to

  Jesse Andrus and Mike Hillman.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  The storm came out of nowhere. One minute I was driving along a desolate stretch of Highway 550 in the bright winter sunshine of New Mexico, listening to Vivaldi in preparation for my violin performance in Farmington that evening. The next minute I struggled to keep the car on the road, trapped in a sudden cold and windy blackness that had raced up behind me and rubbed out the sky.

  Ice balls the size of frozen peas thundered against the metal roof. Violent gusts flicked the car like a toy along the empty road. There were no other vehicles on the highway. Not one. I was alone, miles from the nearest town. I’d had my driver’s license for less than a year and felt panicked—I’d never driven in a storm like this. My heart hammered in a lopsided, urgent way as I tried to focus on what I was doing. I reminded myself to breathe.

  I’d passed the tiny outpost of Lybrook ten minutes earlier, nothing but a couple of sagging houses and dirt roads. The nearest village was probably the puny town of Cuba, New Mexico, which must have been a good seventy miles behind me now. Farmington, a thriving metropolis by comparison but still pretty small as cities go, was more than an hour to the front of me in good weather. An hour felt like an eternity now. Nothing but gaping, vacant desert stood between me and Farmington, punctuated only by a couple of little settlements where you’d be more likely to find a rundown trailer with junk in the yard than, say, a hospital or gas station. I was in major trouble.

  I vowed in that moment to always check the weather forecast before setting off on my own to performances with the Albuquerque Youth Symphony. I got into the orchestra two years before, when I was fourteen, and my mom had been ferrying me to my rehearsals and concerts across the Southwest. When I turned sixteen, my dad bought me a BMW and Mom started letting me drive myself to performances. I liked getting around on my own, but usually there wasn’t an icy typhoon from hell bubbling up out of the yawning nothingness. In that moment, I wouldn’t have minded having my mom there, or even my old, stained yellow blankie.

  The noise of the hail scared my little dog, Buddy. He cowered on the passenger seat, his giant black bat-like ears flat against the small hard baseball of his skull, his enormous wet eyes bugging out. Then again, Buddy was a Chihuahua. The songs of birds on sunny days sent Buddy into the shakes. I teased him now, as I guided my car through the storm, trying to lighten my own mood with false bravado. “What are you anyway, a dog or a mouse?” I asked.

  I should have pulled over to let the weather pass, the way they teach you to in driver’s education classes, but I had to get to the concert. Tonight was my first public performance of the impossibly difficult and beautiful Vivaldi “Winter” solo as first chair of the orchestra. I had been working nearly twelve years for this day, and I wanted to show off.

  So, I ignored the storm and kept driving, albeit cautiously, along that lonely, solitary stretch of the highway. The weather grew even fiercer, and began to crackle with electricity, tossing down blue and gold lightning bolts, thick and quick. The sky cracked open in a swirl of fast-moving thunderheads and unleashed an even heavier barrage of ice and blowing snow. I wondered if this was the stirrings of a tornado, the winds were so powerful. Fifteen minutes from Lybrook now, and the road was slicker, the sky was darker, the wind was angrier, and Buddy was a cowering, whimpering mess.

  “It’s okay, my little birdbrain,” I cooed. “We’ll be just fine. You’ll see.”

  But I wasn’t so sure. I kept feeling that there was something running alongside the car, but every time I looked over I saw nothing.

  Buddy’s eyebrows twitched back with anxiety. I called his name in a singsong voice, which usually drew from him at least a halfhearted tail wag. He remained worried, and looked at me with what seemed to be fear. I got the eerie sense that there was something other than the storm bothering him.

  I felt the tires slide a bit, like the paws of a cat thrown onto an ice rink. That’s when I saw an unusually large coyote in the middle of the road maybe twenty yards ahead. It was dark gray, soaked and sinewy. It limped pitifully in dazed circles in the center of the road, battling the wind and snow. I felt so terribly sorry for it my breath caught in my throat. I slammed on the brakes, which only made the car slide harder, sideways, toward the creature.

  “No!” I cried out, in a panic.

  The animal swiveled its head to look at me, as though it had heard my scream. In the split second before we were destined to collide, it . . . smiled. Yes, smiled—narrowing its glowing red eyes. Sinister, monstrous, and completely impossible. I yanked the steering wheel to the right, stomped again on the brake pedal. There was a horrible, deafening blur; a momentary sense of weightlessness followed by a terrible tumble and crash; a deafening crunch of metal and glass as the car flipped end over end, rolling off the right side of road, down the small rise of the shoulder. I didn’t have time to scream, though I instinctively reached for Buddy to hold him in place in his seat. To my horror, I couldn’t find him. Then the impact slammed me. The Vivaldi on the stereo stopped. Everything stopped. It was the worst sort of frozen stillness you can imagine, and there I was, wrapped up in it like a slab of meat in a freezer. I wondered if I was dead.

  The car was on its side. The cold wind of the desolate northeastern New Mexico plains ripped through its hull with frenzied shrieking. I dangled like a puppet from my seat belt, disoriented, throbbing with pain everywhere. My shoulder burned, and something pierced my chest sharply with each inhale. My hands were cut and bleeding. My left foot felt unhinged at the ankle, as though something had twisted a large bite out of it. A cut somewhere on my head was gushing blood into my hair, into my eyes. I wiped what I could away, and squinted, but couldn’t see or hear my little dog anywhere. I called his name. No response but the howling wind.

  I suddenly remembered all those movies I’d seen where the crashed car bursts into flames moments after impact. I found the button to release the seat belt, and wriggled free. Be brave, I thought, or die. Gravity dumped me onto the passenger door, where my shoulder and back screamed with pain. After catching my breath, I managed to push myself out of the jagged hole where the windshield used to be, shaving off bits of clothing and skin as I went. I intended to run from the car once I was out of it, but the horrific pain—the worst I’d ever felt—limited me to a stiff, slow crawl. My legs simply would not support my weight. They were almost useless.

  I blinked ag
ainst the blowing snow and the oozing blood and inched away, breathing heavily. My hands and knees pressed through the snow on the ground, to the frozen sand and dead weeds beneath. A hot pain stung my back and shoulder with every motion. I was dizzy and afraid I’d pass out. But I couldn’t let that happen. No one could see me down here, and if I passed out I’d freeze to death in minutes. I had to get moving, to keep my blood flowing and my body temperature up. With great effort I stood up, slowly and with a pounding, sloshing sensation in my head. Resting my hands on my thighs, I squinted hard, looking for my dog. “Buddy!” I called, my voice small and raspy.

  I looked toward the road, but there was no sign of him, or of the smiling red-eyed coyote, or of any other car or living thing. I staggered away from the car like a horror movie zombie.

  I scanned a nearby field and saw a small dark lump in the snow, maybe twenty feet from the car, on the other side of a barbed wire fence. I limped faster toward the fence, and squeezed my way through the wires, impervious now to the new cuts and pain.

  Sure enough, it was Buddy.

  I’d found my sweet little dog, the best friend I had in the world, covered in blood but still alive, on his side, licking his chops the way dogs do when they’re hurt, his innocent black eyes searching my own for some sort of comfort.

  “Oh, my poor baby!” I cried. “Good boy. What a good dog you are.”

  The effort of wagging his tiny tail to please me exhausted Buddy’s reserves. His eyes rolled back into his head and his little body seized. In a complete panic now, I remembered my cell phone. I’d had it charging in the center console of the car, and now it could be anywhere.

  “Someone please help me!” I cried, as loud as I could, my voice cracking and with the metallic taste of blood on my numb lips. “Hello! Help us!”

  I stood helplessly at Buddy’s side, my weight centered on the leg and foot that hurt the least, and I waited, but no sound came back. Not even an echo. My words were absorbed completely by the wind and snow.

  I knelt down again, shivering from cold and pain but feeling it all less, now that I had someone else to worry about. The hail stung my numbing cheeks as I scooped Buddy’s limp body into my arms. I worried I’d hurt him more by moving him, but I could not leave him to freeze to death here. I returned to the fence, ducked through it with my dog cradled in my arms. I tried to avoid nicking Buddy on the barbs.

  I hauled Buddy to the road and wandered there, my pain numbing to a low, hollow throb, and I prayed for someone to come, some car or truck, anyone. I tasted more thick, metallic blood in my mouth.

  The ankle gave way anytime I put weight on it. I suddenly felt thirsty, incredibly thirsty, dizzy, and faint. If only a car would come, just one car.

  But no one came.

  I realized that to survive I’d have to get myself back to Lybrook, and pray that someone was home in one of that town’s isolated houses. Ten minutes by car would mean limping for hours. It was so cold. But there was no other choice. Better to die trying than to just give up.

  I hobbled back to the car, which had not exploded after all, to see if I could find my coat and phone.

  My parka, which I’d thrown onto the passenger seat when I started the journey, was tangled around the steering wheel. I tugged it loose with great effort and excruciating pain and draped it over my shoulders with Buddy in my arms beneath it. I tried to find my cell phone, but with a thud of dread I realized it was gone.

  As I turned toward the road, a dark gray blur loped across the highway and disappeared on the other side with a soft rustling noise. Red eyes glowed out at me from the scrub brush and then disappeared in the darkness. A coyote howled, close . . . too close. It wasn’t the sorrowful wail of an injured animal. It was something else, something terrifying, answered by something equally terrifying in the distance, as a pack heeded the call, and approached.

  When you grow up in the high desert, on the outskirts of a big Southwestern city, as I had, you quickly come to know what various coyote calls mean—and why you should keep your cats and small dogs indoors no matter how loudly they might protest. I had lost exactly three cats to coyotes, and I knew precisely what these bloodcurdling yelps and howls meant. The pack was on the hunt and they had found food.

  Chapter Two

  I hunched against the numbing wind. I heard the baying of coyotes getting closer, and I wanted to throw up.

  Weakly, I scanned the ground for something—anything—that I might be able to use against them. But there was nothing—no stick, no branch, no rock visible above the thickening white blanket of snow. Nothing but three coyotes cresting a nearby hill, ragged and lean, their shiny eyes focused on me through the snow. They moved fast to hide themselves behind a bush across the road, next to a couple of wooden roadside crosses, the kind people made to mark spots where people had died, usually in car accidents—much, I thought hopelessly, like this one. Not comforting. Not comforting at all.

  “This isn’t happening,” I moaned as I stumbled along near the demolished corpse of my car. The heap of twisted black metal was the only shelter around, and I hoped that the clicking, gurgling sounds it still made, and the awful oily smell it gave off, might be enough to keep the animals away. It was far too twisted and crunched up for me to get back inside, so I could only use it for support.

  The car didn’t stop the coyotes, however. They inched closer, noses to the ground. Within a minute or two, I was being circled by a mangy pack of six or seven of them. They did hungry laps around me, coming closer and closer, communicating with one another in body language, with their eyes, and with those horrible, mournful yelps. Each of them, other than the red-eyed one, was smaller than a German shepherd, but they were strong and well-muscled, and in the winter, out here in the middle of nowhere, probably hungry. They would take what they could find, and right now the hot red scent of our blood must have been carried to them on the wind, delicious, seductive, irresistible as life itself.

  Frantically, I tried to find something, anything, that had spilled from the wreckage of the car that I might use to scare them off. All I found were a couple of dirty paper coffee cups. I grabbed one of the cups, and wadded it up in my free hand, still holding Buddy with the other. The movement was excruciating, and I began to weep. The coyotes continued to circle me, growing ever closer, howling ever louder, their tongues wagging from their mouths in anticipation of fresh meat.

  “Get away from me!” I screamed, hurling the cup at one of them as it slinked within a few feet. It scampered back, surprised for a second. Then it picked the cup up in its jaws, chewed it a couple of times, and dropped it in disgust.

  Closer they came, all of them together, their hackles raised, and their lips pulled back to reveal sharp, serious fangs dripping with saliva. They snarled, and positioned themselves for attack.

  “Go away!” I screamed again. I grabbed whatever I could, more of the cups, snowballs, and I hurled with what little strength I had left, first to the front of me, and then to the back. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

  Suddenly, two coyotes came at us with lightning speed, their jaws open and ready. I managed to feebly knee one of them in the head before it sank its teeth into me, causing a hollow pop, and the creature backed off, shaking its head. Unfortunately, the other coyote had already clamped its fangs down upon one of Buddy’s back legs, and was attempting to drag him away from me. Buddy made an awful, desperate bleating sound I had never heard from him before. I was horrified and sickened, and shocked he was still alive.

  “Get away!” I whimpered, hardly able anymore to hold myself upright. The coyote would not let go of my dog. We were in a tug of war, and Buddy, poor Buddy, was the rope. I tried to hang on, but I was powerless and dizzy. I couldn’t hold Buddy any longer. He began to slip away.

  Chapter Three

  Just as the coyote was about to jerk Buddy from my grasp, I heard a loud boom. Gunshot! Instinctively, I cowered. The coyote released Buddy and scattered with its pack, but not too far. They st
ill watched me hungrily from a distance, and began their circling anew. I tried to see where the noise had come from, but all I saw was snow and emptiness. I prayed the shot was intended for the animals, and not for me.

  Quickly, the coyotes were closing in again, and the one with the red eyes came from behind me, charging with a terrible snarl. Again, the blast of a gunshot, and again the coyotes scattered, all except this one, who seemed utterly unmoved by the sound. I screamed, because the red-eyed beast was running toward me now, smiling as it had done in the middle of the road, leaping toward my throat. All I could do was stare, paralyzed by fear, as it sailed through the falling snow toward me.

  Just then, I heard a different sound, a sort of fast whoosh, like a ball moving through the air. I saw a blur shoot past my head, and then the projectile, whatever it was, landed squarely between the red eyes with a loud crack. Stopped in its tracks, the coyote fell to the ground, a large dark rock in the snow by its head. Again came the whizzing sound, and a deep thunking noise as yet another rock found its mark. Again and again they came, in quick succession.

  When the coyote had had enough, it retreated, loping unsteadily down the road with its tail between its legs. The other coyotes still circled, though at a greater distance than before. They would not give up easily. All around me I heard the whooshing noise, and watched as one by one the coyotes were struck and felled by stones. I spun around, searching for the source of the rocks.