“Why not?”
“For one thing, we didn’t know what to say. It was insanity. No one would’ve believed us.” He kicked Earl’s head in, exploding gray powder into the air. “We ended up dumping the body in Clearwater Lake.”
“Why?”
“So his friends wouldn’t come for revenge. We decided it was best if he and his car just disappeared.”
Nina took Huck’s hand in hers. “How did you know he had friends?”
“His cellphone started ringing soon after we ran him over. I answered, pretending to be the guy, barely saying anything and mainly listening. Between that cellphone and the blood, we pieced together the impossible.” Taylor exhaled a somber breath. “Trust me, we didn’t rush into anything but when it became clear more of them might come, quietly disposing of the body and vehicle was our only choice. Not just for the town’s safety, but ours as well.”
“How many are out there?” Huck asked softly, a dark reality settling in like an old abandoned house. “How bad is it?”
“There’s no way to know that for sure, but their numbers are growing. You can see it in the rise of missing persons reports.” Taylor pressed his lips into a thin, grim line. “In the beginning, we thought the vast majority were out west in what’s known as the Emerald Triangle.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Nina said. “It’s in northern California, right?”
He nodded. “The trees provide the perfect cover from the air and it’s a hotbed for sex traffickers and drug cartels. In 2015, Humboldt County alone reported over three-hundred-and-fifty missing individuals. We now believe it’s more than just cartels in the area, and they’re branching out. Like the ones here now.”
“So, when you got this guy out of the car that night, how’d he vanish into thin air?” Johnny watched the waning footprints outside the front door. “How do they do that?”
“They use the elements to distort their image, like camouflage.”
Huck and Nina looked at each other. “Elements?”
Taylor turned to stare out a window. “Snow, wind, rain, smoke, and darkness. Somehow they manipulate these things to mask their presence.”
“Like the thing from Predator,” Johnny added, hanging on the sheriff’s every word. “It used the jungle for camouflage.”
Andrews swallowed a lump down his throat. “We are definitely screwed.”
“Maybe not.” The sheriff turned away from the cold glass. “Bright light is the only way to disarm this built-in self-defense mechanism.”
“We need to find some flashlights,” Nina whispered. “And quick.”
Huck’s gaze fell to Earl’s smoldering remains. “What about sunlight? Or UV light?”
“UV light doesn’t do anything, and sunlight won’t kill them or make them sparkle like it does in the movies, but it will slow them down. It hurts like arthritis and they hate it, which is why Seattle and Portland are hotbeds during the summer months.”
“Hang on a second, how do you know all this?” DeSean nervously stroked his beard. “Didn’t you say it was nighttime when you found this guy?”
“It was.”
The big man shrugged. “Then how do you know light kills their camouflage and sunlight hurts them?”
The sheriff’s eyes glassed over as he slipped into the past. “Because two months later, we found another one and tortured him to death.”
“What the fuck!” Andrews cried. “Why didn’t you guys tell me?”
Grimly, Taylor shook his head and BJ sat up behind him.
Chapter Eleven
So Sweet
Nobody said a word, including BJ. He just sat there on the floor and stared straight ahead at nothing in particular. Time stopped along with Huck’s heart. He didn’t want to see what was coming next but couldn’t look away. Despite the grave danger, there was something spellbinding about the whole thing. Something almost peaceful. Then BJ started sniffing at the air and Nina shivered against Huck’s side because this couldn’t be happening. Not in real life. The man was dead a minute ago and now he was back and Huck wondered what else was out there. If vampires existed…
“BJ?” DeSean’s voice cracked when he spoke. “You okay, man?”
BJ stared at nothing, blood no longer spurting from his neck, skin ashen and clammy. In the past several minutes, he appeared to have aged ten years.
“BJ!”
Slowly rotating his head around, his empty eyes stopped on his big brother.
“You okay, man?”
He turned back to the nothing he was staring at before, hands flexing at his side. “I can hear your heart beating from here.” He swept a tongue across his lips. “I can feel the heat coming off your blood.”
“Oh my, God,” Nina whispered, drawing his vacant eyes.
His pale lips bent down at the corners. “No God.”
“Bullshit!” Andrews pointed the Uzi at him. “Should I shoot him, Bobby?”
DeSean jumped between them. “Wait!” His chest rose with a sorrowful intake of air. “He’s my brother; give me the gun.”
Andrews stepped back. “Are you insane? I’m not giving you your gun back. You’ll probably shoot me.”
“I don’t want my gun.” His eyes shifted to Taylor. “I want Bob’s gun.”
The sheriff tensed. “I got this.”
“Bob, please.” DeSean blinked a teardrop out and extended a hand. “If we’re going to make it out of this thing alive, you have to trust me. Now, I need that silver, boss-man.”
Taylor studied his glistening eyes in the silence stretching between them, Adam’s apple jumping on his neck.
“Please! He’s my brother. It has to be me.”
Looking to everyone else for direction, the sheriff blew out an uneasy breath and slapped the revolver in DeSean’s outstretched hand. “You better not shoot us, DeSean.”
Examining the gun’s impressive weight, DeSean gave him a faint nod and knelt beside his brother. BJ stared past him like he wasn’t there, seeing something play out against a row of booths along the side of the diner.
“BJ, you still in there, bro?”
Robotically, BJ turned to him, eyes as dark as the blood on the floor around him. “A little.”
DeSean nodded, tears spilling over his cheeks. “I’m sorry this happened to you, man. You don’t deserve this.”
BJ’s throat clicked when he swallowed. “You need to get back,” he panted, tensing with another painful spasm.
DeSean’s face fell, words refusing to come as an overwhelming sense of helplessness sank in.
“Now!”
Standing, he stepped back and let a thousand horses run through his mind. “Thanks for always being there, baby brother. These last two years were so hard and you made them easier. For that, I will always be eternally grateful. I love you.”
BJ blinked a bloody teardrop out. “I’m sorry about Cassandra.”
“Me too, Billy Joe,” he said, pointing the Colt .45 at his brother’s chest. “Me too.” Clenching his teeth, DeSean’s finger hugged the trigger, gun trembling in his fist.
“Wait!” BJ shoved a hand out. “I forgot to tell you something.”
Barely lowering the weapon, DeSean’s eyebrows pulled together. “Yeah? What’s that?”
He spread a crimson grin. “Your blood smells the sweetest of them all. Isn’t that strange?” He laughed and sprang to his feet with a frightening burst of energy, skin shifting on his skull. But big brother was quicker, ending him with a single gunshot that made everybody jerk.
Chapter Twelve
True Form
Shaking his head in disbelief, Deputy Andrews watched BJ burn in the thunderstruck silence that followed. The smell was bad but the truth was worse. He glanced at the sheriff, the Uzi still clutched tightly in both hands. “Who was he?” he asked, his whisper hanging in the air around him. “The one you tortured to death.”
Taylor held a palm out and DeSean hesitated before handing him the revolver back. “A little boy,” the sheriff
replied, stuffing the gun in its holster.
Nina squeezed Huck’s hand, the room growing colder by the minute. “How little?”
“Eight.” The sheriff crossed the grotesque diner, careful not to slip in blood or vomit. “Tommy was reported missing three states over and I found him eating a dead dog on the side of the road. Franklin and I knew right away.”
“Oh my God.” Nina covered her mouth. “How’d he get three states over?”
Stopping by the front doors, Taylor took his hat off and ran a hand through his thick hair. “Whoever bought him, more than likely turned him. It happens. The kid must’ve broken free of his constraints. Vamps are much stronger than humans, even you, big man.”
DeSean snorted. “How? How does all this work?”
“A simple bite will kill someone and, as you just witnessed, bring them back as a vamp, which is why they use spigot collars instead of their teeth. There’s poison in their saliva and blood, and the head vamps don’t want a bunch of new turns getting out and blowing their cover. That’s rule number one. They prefer hiding amongst run-of-the-mill traffickers, smugglers, murderers, and the wretched lot.”
Huck scrunched his face up. “What head vamps are you talking about?”
“That’s a story for another time.”
DeSean balled his hands into hammers, biceps stretching the sleeves of his coveralls. “Is that what happened to Cassie?” he barely whispered. “Did they take her too?”
“I’m not sure, but…”
“But what!”
“But maybe. Most vamps run hot and like the cold, which is why Cottage Grove makes the perfect hunting ground in the winter.”
Andrews paced the room, mumbling under his breath and shaking his head.
Staggering a little, DeSean stared at the dead things on the diner floor, imagining the worst. Huck could see it in his eyes. Hell, Huck had his own daughter to worry about and she wasn’t even missing. Yet. Who knows how many of these things could be out there and if he blurred his eyes just right, he could see his brown-haired little girl waiting to greet him when he returned home, standing in the foyer with a Zootopia doll hanging in one hand and a bloody grin hanging from her lips, a red puddle surrounding Aunt Tess in the kitchen down the hall.
“What happened to the boy?”
Taylor’s eyes snapped to Johnny and thinned. A single sweat droplet ran down his left temple, getting lost in a thick sideburn. “Franklin and I chained him up in the basement of an old mill outside town and ran some experiments on him.”
“Experiments?” Nina wiped Earl’s soot from the pie knife on her designer jeans. “Like what?”
“Like exposure to sunlight, UV radiation, silver, and starvation.”
“Starvation of what?”
“Blood. If they go long enough without it, the need for blood can expose their true form.”
“What true form?”
Tipping his hat back with a finger, the sheriff looked over at Deputy Andrews. “Like what you just saw with these three. Their power is strongest when they shift.”
“Why?”
“Their true form is so hideous it can paralyze their prey, much like a snake hypnotizing a rabbit into staying put before it strikes.”
“That explains why I could barely lift my gun.” Huck blew out a dejected breath. “This is definitely not good.”
“What else?” DeSean stepped closer to the sheriff. “What else did you do to this kid?”
“We also…”
Huck’s heart beat faster in his chest. “You also what?”
“We cut him to see how fast he could regenerate.”
“You did that to a little boy?”
“He wasn’t a little boy anymore, Ms. Saldana; he was one of them.”
Huck shook his head to clear it. “And what happened?”
“Their skin is tough, like Kevlar, but a silver knife or dagger will make a dent – as will fire. It took a few minutes for the smaller wounds to heal, hours for the deeper ones. Their blood cells work much quicker than ours to repair injuries. It was…remarkable, to say the least.”
“But your shots killed them.”
“Silver hollow points are lethal. We’re working on some silver tipped RPGs right now.” The sheriff paused for reflection. “Amongst other things.”
“How long can they live?” Nina tentatively asked, not really wanting to know the answer, knowing it would devastate her from the inside out. “Forever?
He shook his head. “That’s a myth. I’ve heard rumors of some living up to five hundred years.”
Huck’s jaw hit the floor. “500 hundred years!”
“But most don’t make it to three hundred, so I’ve heard anyway.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.”
“Listen to me, these things can see in the dark and they never sleep. Sleeping in coffins is another myth; we don’t have that fictional luxury. They don’t stop so we have to be on our guard at all times. There isn’t room for a single mistake.”
“Sweet Jesus.” DeSean collapsed into a padded chair, bloodshot gaze drawing outside. “Why don’t they just storm this place or burn us out? Why toy with us like this?”
Taylor shrugged loosely. “Maybe fear seasons our blood, or maybe they’re just bored.”
“Or maybe they’re scared of something.”
Nina frowned at Huck. “Like what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Taylor grunted. “For all I know, they could be…” A loud bang against the front doors cut him off midsentence. Smoothly drawing his gun, he took aim at the glass.
“What the fuck was that?” DeSean whispered, rising to his snow boots and staring out the doors.
“Trouble,” Andrews replied with the Uzi at the ready.
“They’re messing with us again.” Johnny slid into a booth and leaned against the frosty glass. “They’re back.”
“Get away from the window, Johnny,” Huck instructed, drawing the pink Nano.
Somebody banged on the door in the kitchen, spinning everyone around.
“What was that?” Andrews whispered, swinging his weapon from one side of the room to the other.
“Go check,” Huck whispered back.
“No way, man. You go check; I’ll stay with the kid.”
“You’re the cop!”
“We all go together,” Taylor stated, heading for the swinging door behind the counter.
Something slammed against the front door behind them, snapping their heads around on a string. Staggering backwards, Huck’s heart banged in his chest. Paula pressed up against the glass, her clean apron now covered in grime and the pen missing from her bun, leaving curling red locks dangling in her terrified face.
“Open the door!” she screamed over the wind, slapping palms against the glass and leaving bloody handprints behind.
Huck rushed across the room and Taylor stopped him.
“Wait!” He studied her through suspicious eyes, one hand planted in Huck’s chest, the other gripping the magical revolver. “She could be one of them now.”
“Or she could be freezing to death!”
“Let her in, Huck!” Nina agreed, pulling Johnny behind the counter and holding the pie knife out.
Huck smacked the sheriff’s hand away and went to the door.
“Hang on,” Andrews said, pulling something from a coat pocket. “You might need this.”
DeSean looked down at the .38 in the deputy’s hand. “Thanks, brother,” he said, taking the weapon and turning off the safety.
Exhaling a pent-up breath, Huck grabbed the deadbolt. “You stay behind the counter,” he yelled at Johnny, twisting the lock and stumbling backwards when Paula burst inside with the cold.
She fell to her hands and knees, snowflakes skittering across the floor as she chased her breath. “Goddamn sonofabitch!”
Huck forced the door shut and locked it, wondering if anything else got in with the snow. He scanned the checkered tiles, searching for wet footprints trac
king across the floor.
“Sit down.” Taylor gestured with the gun. “Over there.”
Paula stared up at him through the hair hanging in her face, something different lurking in her eyes. Dropping her head like it weighed a hundred pounds, she pushed herself into a nearby chair, banging the table and knocking over the salt. Shivering, she studied their bewildered faces in the weak light. “Where’s Bud?” she asked through chattering teeth.
“We thought he was with you,” Taylor replied, edging closer. “Are you hurt?”
Rubbing her bloody hands together to ward off the cold, she looked down to the pale legs spilling from her dress. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you bit?”
Looking up, her quivering lips went down. “Am I what?”
“Are you bit?” he shouted.
“No, I’m freezing!”
“What happened to you?” Nina asked. “Where’d you go?”
Paula’s droopy eyes gravitated to Helen’s pile of remains on the floor, red eyebrows pulling together into a frown. “I don’t know. One minute, Bud was about to lock the backdoor and the next…we were outside.” Her gaze darted to the sheriff. “Why are you pointing a gun at me?”
“Take a picture of her, DeSean,” he replied.
Slack jawed, DeSean stared at Paula with the .38 pointed at her feet.
“DeSean!”
His wide eyes jumped to Taylor.
“I said, take a picture of her.”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
“Alright man, take it easy.” He dug the phone out and held it up with an unsteady hand. The bright flash lit up Paula’s creamy skin, knocking Huck’s night vision back a step or two. Pulling the screen to his face, DeSean’s lips moved but only white threads came out.
Without taking his gun from Paula, Taylor sidestepped over to him. His gaze flitted to the cellphone and horror slashed through his eyes.
“What is it?” Huck asked, crossing the room on rubbery legs. He didn’t want to see but had come too far to stop now. It was a like an onion, peeling back different layers of hell just to get to the worst of it. The screen’s yellow glow fell over his bent face, breath sticking in his throat like glue. The table and chairs were in the picture. The salt shaker too – knocked over on its side like it is now. But Paula was as transparent as the breath rushing from his mouth. The outline of her body was misty around the edges, like a ghost captured in an old photograph descending some mansion staircase, the face just as indistinguishable as the rest. Huck’s eyes moved to Paula in real life and narrowed. “Jesus.”
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