by Molly Harper
“Tell that to the ground rushing at us!” I yelled, pointing out the window.
The vampire huffed, yanked at my seatbelt buckle, and popped it loose.
“What are you doing!” I screeched, smacking at his hands. He took hold of both of my wrists and dragged me out of my seat.
I could hear a consistent, quiet slap slap slap against the belly of the plane and realized that it was tree branches. We were so close to the ground that tree branches were smacking against the plane.
“I need to get back into my seat!” I yelled at him.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said, hauling me against him.
Even through the panic, I couldn’t help but notice how easily I fit against his solid, muscled frame. That was inconveniently timed.
“Put your arms around my neck, and hold on,” he repeated, wrapping my arms around said neck.
“What?” I gasped, snapping out of my hands-on ogling. “Why?”
“We’re going to jump,” he said, leading me toward the open door.
“No!” I yelled. “Are you crazy! No!”
I didn’t know of any survival statistics for people who leaped out of crashing airplanes without parachutes, but they couldn’t be good.
“It will be fine,” he grunted, as we inched nearer to the open door, the wind plucking at our clothes and blowing my dark hair over my face.
“Vampires can’t fly! I’ve looked into it!” I insisted, trying to wedge my feet against the seats so he couldn’t move me.
“Come on, woman!”
“No!” I yelled, scrambling over his shoulder so I could dig my fingernails into the seats. “This is insane! You are insane!”
The vampire grabbed my hips and dragged me down the length of his chest, wrapping my long legs around his waist. He secured me against him with his left hand while he clutched my chin in the other. “It’s going to be fine,” he promised.
“I don’t want to jump out of the plane,” I told him.
“OK,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Really?”
He nodded, tightening his grip around my waist. “I’ll do the jumping.”
And with that, he took a running start out the door and leaped from the plane.
“You asshooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLE!” I screamed, as we cleared the door and dropped into nothingness. Over the vampire’s shoulder, I could see the underbelly of the plane shrink in the distance. The wind tore at my clothes, whipping my hair over my face and around the vampire’s.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Time moved at a snail’s speed as we plunged through empty space. I heard everything and nothing all at once. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, but dozens of questions streamed through my brain. How long would we fall? How much would it hurt to hit the ground? Didn’t people black out from fear in situations like this? I would love to black out from fear right now. Using some sort of midair rolling maneuver, the vampire turned us so that he was under me. But I was too busy burying my face against his neck to appreciate his chivalrous, impact-absorbing gesture. I squeezed him even tighter, squealing in terror. I heard him wheeze in protest, but if these were my last moments before crashing into the ground, I wanted him to know that I was displeased with his decision to fling me out of a plane without my permission. My bag flapped loose, the leather slapping viciously against my side as we plummeted.
So very, very displeased.
I felt him tense under me, and I braced myself for the impact. But instead of splatting against the ground, we landed in cold black water with a tsunami-sized splash. The shock of the impact made me want to gasp, but the vampire clapped his hand over my nose and mouth to keep me from sucking in water. I was able to keep hold of my bag as we sank. I fought, and I clawed, but he clutched me close. For a second, I thought he was going to hold me under, drown me before swimming to the surface himself. But after a few seconds, the bubbles cleared, my eyes adjusted, and I could see him clearly.
He was frowning at me through the water, but it was a concerned frown, as if he was worried about the fact that he was probably drowning me. Between the adrenaline burnout and the cold submersion and the repeated potential for death, my body started to shut down. I was so tired, as if my limbs were made of lead. My lungs burned with the need to draw another breath. I wriggled, trying to get loose from the vampire’s grip. He stopped staring at me and blinked rapidly, as if coming out of a fog.
I pushed harder at his chest, kicking toward the surface of the water. He nodded slightly and loosened his grip, his hand sliding over my breasts to grip me under the arms. He dragged me up until my head broke through the water and I was able to draw air. I was not ashamed of the loud, ragged gasps as I sucked in oxygen.
In the distance, I could see flames where the plane had crashed into trees on the far side of the lake. There was no way we would have survived that. The vampire had just saved my life. I shuddered, imagining what I had just escaped, my body smashed against the interior of the plane, possibly burning to death if I survived long enough.
I’d never thought I’d survive a situation like that. Despite my near-constant preparation for the worst possible outcome, I’d always considered myself fate’s cannon fodder. I always figured I’d be occupying the first building hit by the world-ending asteroid, among the first wave of people infected by the next great plague. I never considered that I might survive.
What was I going to do now?
Also, this water smelled like dirt and rotting fish. Were there fish? Was Kentucky the sort of place where they had those giant catfish that could drown grown men? What sort of bacterial scum was floating on the surface? Was I going to get a nice case of pinkeye on top of everything el— Ow!
In the process of treading water, the vampire had elbowed me in the eye. The hell?
The vampire turned toward me, grinning, as if he expected me to congratulate him on tossing me out of a plane and giving me a shiner. “Well, that worked out better than I hoped.”
“You asshole!” I howled, and swung at him. The motion dragged my purse out of the water and slung it at his face. I couldn’t help it. My brain was fried by the constant cycle of terror, and the only response I had left was fury.
“Ow!” he yelped, sinking for a moment as he clutched at the side of his head, while I swam for the nearest shore. “That’s a fine thank-you for someone who just saved your life.”
“You threw me out of a plane!” I paused my swimming to kick at him, splashing water in his face.
“To save your life,” he repeated, emphasizing each syllable with a slicing stroke through the water.
“I know. I’m still trying to process my hysterical panic!” I shouted back, grabbing my purse strap when it nearly floated off my shoulder.
“What is it with you?” he demanded. “Why was the pilot trying to take that bag from you? Who the hell are you, woman?”
“I’m nobody!” I swore, as the bag strap dragged at my arm and my stroke faltered. My face dropped into the water, and the vampire slid his hand across my chest, under my bicep, pulling me along with him.
“Pilots don’t decide to mug passengers and then abandon their planes for nobodies,” the vampire told me. “Now, what’s in the bag?”
“He was crazy!” I yelled. “Airline employees get sick of dealing with obnoxious passengers. Combine that with deep vein thrombosis and the long-term effects of pressurized cabins and they lose it. You read about it in the news all the time.”
“You really don’t,” he told me.
I treaded water, working to keep my face in a neutral expression. “We’ve got to get out of the water. Hypothermia could set in,” I said, taking advantage of my overlarge eyes to convey Disney-princess innocence.
He stared at me, his brown eyes reflecting the light of the moon above us as he examined my face for a few awkward moments.
“Come on,” he said, sighing, slinging one arm around his chest and pulling me against him while he kicked toward shore. My unus
ually long legs and arms made me a good swimmer, able to cover long distances in the water with little effort. But he wasn’t even letting me try, and frankly, it was pissing me off.
“Would you stop yanking me around like a rag doll?” I grumbled, though I had to admit that we were making much better progress without my aquatic flailings. My arms and legs didn’t seem to be getting the right messages from my brain.
“Well, if you would just cooperate, I wouldn’t have to yank you around,” he growled into my ear. As he bobbed in the water, his mouth inadvertently brushed against the back of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with water temperature. “Did you have to dig your claws into me like that?”
“Yeah, I protest when someone tries to drag me out of a plane. What an unreasonable wench I am,” I shot back.
“Tell that to the gouge marks in my shoulders.”
“They’ll heal,” I muttered.
“But my shirt won’t. It’s like you’re half-wolverine,” he told me, as my feet hit the muddy bottom of the lake. I stumbled, trying to get footing on the slick surface. I’d dressed sensibly for a flight, canvas ballet flats, jeans, a tank top, and a cardigan. I’d wanted shoes I could wear through the security gate without struggling to get them back on. And frankly, it was a miracle they’d stayed on my feet during our impromptu skydive-slash-swim. But they were not much help in the “finding purchase in swamp mud” department.
My feet slipped out from under me, and I dropped under the water again. He pulled me up by my arms as we staggered onto solid ground.
“Is this going to be a thing?” I asked him. “This constant grabbing and dragging? And don’t think I didn’t notice the underwater breast graze.”
“Yeah, I accidentally brushed against your chest while saving your life, taking the impact for you when we jumped out of a plane into a lake. What an unreasonable jerk I am.”
I’d just reached knee-deep water when I turned on him and slung my wet hair out of my face. “You lingered.”
“You flatter yourself,” he told me.
“Look, I am not interested in whatever you’re selling. So you can just keep this weird, flirtatious, ‘oh, silly female, I’m not really flirting with you, I’m just naturally gregarious and charming’ thing that I’m sure works on those girls you neg at the blood bar, and cut it out.”
“We just survived a plane crash, and this is the moment you want to tell me that? And I don’t bother with girls at the blood bar. At least, not in the last year or so—and you know what, I wasn’t even trying to flirt with you!”
“Good. Because it wouldn’t work.”
“Oh, if I tried, it would work,” he insisted, smirking at me.
And for a second, I was sincerely concerned that it would work. Because that smirk was chock-full of dangerous, manipulative potential, and I was a mere human who would have to refer to a calendar to remember the last time I’d had sex.
A pregnant silence hung between us for a few seconds before I added, “And it’s not like we dropped some huge distance. It was maybe a hundred yards.” I stumbled but righted myself before he had to save me from another face-plant. “An airborne skydiving rescue it was not.”
“Speaking as the man sandwiched between you and the water, I can tell you it felt like more.”
I made an absolutely foul face at him as I unzipped my purse. I’d sealed the package in two airtight plastic bags and closed the outer bag with wax. But there was always the chance that it could leak, or that the bag could have ruptured when we fell out of the freaking plane. I blew out a relieved breath when I saw the bag was intact. The interior of the package was dry and untouched.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I think your makeup is a loss at this point.”
Breathing deeply, I fished my hand through my sodden bag. “My phone is in here,” I lied easily. “I was going to try to call 911 or the airline’s customer-service complaint line or someone who could maybe fish us out of this godforsaken nowhere.”
“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but if your phone is still in there, it’s a paperweight. The water has probably fried it.”
I fished my cell out of the bottom of my purse—which still had several inches of water standing in it—and saw that he was right. My phone was completely soaked, because I’d failed to close the little charger port on my protective phone cover. Damn it. My wallet, paperback, and watch were also soaked through. I supposed the only blessing was that I’d decided to leave my laptop at home instead of bringing it with me. Otherwise, years of research would have been lost.
As I searched through the ruins of my bag, my stomach sank with the realization of exactly how unprepared I was for this situation. If I’d known we were going to be dropping into the wilderness, I would have brought my trusty Swiss Army knife, some waterproof matches, a first-aid kit, water-purifying tablets—most of the emergency supplies I kept handy in my “apocalypse closet.”
Unfortunately, airport security frowned on matches and Swiss Army knives almost as much as they did pepper spray, so it was a moot point. The closest thing I had to survival supplies was a granola bar I’d purchased on the flight from Atlanta to Louisville. Thanks to the miracle of modern packaging, it hadn’t been smashed when we landed in the lake.
If only I’d thought to put my phone in the sealed plastic bag. It would have made texting more difficult, but my phone might have lived.
“How about yours?” I asked, dumping the excess water out of my purse.
He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and showed me the waterlogged, fractured screen. “I seem to have landed on it. Along with an unnamed and ungrateful person.”
“Pardon me for not being overflowing with gratitude for you tossing me out of a plane! Now, what are your skills?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Beg pardon?”
“Your skills. You vampires all have these deep, dark wells of mysterious capability, with your shadowy origins and the ‘oh, I could tell you how I learned to count cards and read Welsh upside down, but I would have to kill you’ thing. Plus, most of you have a special vampire talent. So what can you do to help get us out of here? Because I have to tell you, the closest thing I have to outdoorsmanship is carrying a Swiss Army knife, which I couldn’t even take through the airport with me. So what are your skills?”
“Do I look like a mountain man?” he asked, gesturing to his well-tailored, though obviously dirty and rumpled, clothes.
“No.”
“I am just as out of my element as you are.”
“Where the hell are we?” I scanned the shore. Trees. All I could see were trees moving in the gentle summer breeze. No city lights in the distance. No water towers helpfully labeled with the local township’s name. Nothing.
I flopped down on my butt on the sandy patch of grass near the muddy shore. I was stranded in the middle of the Kentucky backwoods, with no phone, no transportation, and no idea how to get to civilization. The rest of my anxiety meds were burning in my suitcase on the plane, because I didn’t trust myself not to take too many if I packed them in my tote bag. And I was trapped in the bluegrass version of Deliverance. With a vampire.
Worst. Case. Scenario.
2
First, establish a food source for the vampire that is not you.
—Where the Wild Things Bite: A Survival Guide for Camping with the Undead
Mr. Vampire had no time for me or my need to catch my breath after nearly dying in a horrible air disaster.
“We need to get moving,” he said, as I wrapped my arms around my bent knees and tried to rub circulation into my hands. We were fortunate, I supposed, that it was August and relatively warm. I wouldn’t court hypothermia on top of my partially medicated emotional trauma.
“What? Why?” I protested. “All of the survival guides say to stay with the wreckage. Rescue crews, the FAA, helpful rednecks with ATVs who see the flames and want to burn an old mattress, they’re going to come looking for us. Why w
ould we walk away from the thing they’re looking for? Besides, at least with the plane fire, we have some light to see by.”
“Because the pilot took the plane off course. We weren’t supposed to fly this far south.”
“And you know that because your magical vampire power is sensing longitude and latitude?”
“Because while someone was running about the cabin like an insane person, I happened to see our heading on the instrument panel,” he told me.
Damn it, I hated it when people out-logicked me. My eyes narrowed at the know-it-all vampire. I’d been more comfortable when I thought he was just a pretty face. “Well, he wasn’t supposed to jump out of the plane, either, I’m guessing. Either way, even if we are off course, why wouldn’t we want to stay put?”
“Because, unless that pilot just really hated his job, I’m guessing someone paid him to take the flight off course, meaning they probably had some preconceived notion of where the flight would end up. And since they thought the pilot would have your bag, which they are clearly after, for reasons we will discuss eventually, they’re probably going to linger in that general area so they could pick up said bag, don’t you think?”
I paused, thinking about that. I didn’t know this vampire. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t walk through the woods in the dark with a strange man who didn’t have fangs. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and when it counted, the vampire had stepped between Ernie and me. He could have left me on the plane to die, but he didn’t. He could have used me to cushion his fall when we hit the water, but he didn’t. If he was going to hurt me, he probably would have done it by now.
Or he was keeping me alive so I would be a convenient source of warm blood when he got peckish on our hike to the nearest highway.
“If that’s the case, I think it would be better if we went our separate ways,” I told him. “I need to make it to civilization as soon as possible. And I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that if I’m only traveling during nighttime hours.”
“So you’re going to hike out of here alone?” he asked, smirking at me.