At the sound of slamming car doors, Jael slowly sat up, slipped her phone out and glanced at the lit screen. 3:17 a.m. She rubbed a hand over her face, yawned, and opened the door. They’d stopped once again. This time it looked like they would spend a few hours. Her eyelids felt like they were glued partway shut. She forced them open and followed her family toward a row of tiny, dilapidated cabins set back a ways from the parking lot in a hilly area populated with a few scraggly pines and uncut grass. One of those get back to nature people would probably call it a spectacular panorama of beauty, but it looked more like dried, crinkling fire tender.
The door creaked open on rusty hinges that had never felt the soothing ointment of WD-40. Jael paused in the doorway, while her parents carried the overnight bags in and set them on the floor at the foot of the beds. Worn, threadbare bedspreads covered thin mattresses. A picture of a man taking aim at a Grizzly bear adorned the wall over the head of one bed. Over the other bed was a set of moldy looking antlers. She shook her head.
“This place is so old and off-the-map it hasn’t even been fire-bombed by PETA yet.”
“Just brush your teeth and go to sleep, kiddo. It can’t be worse than sleeping in the car,” her mom said, digging through her bag.
Seth stepped into the open door. “I’ll be in cabin #4 if you need me,” he said, pointing up the hill to the left.
Her dad nodded.
Jael turned to shut the door after he left. “Where’s Bruno?” she asked, her brain still foggy from the early hour and lack of sufficient sleep.
“Oh, I forgot. He’s still in the back of the truck.” Her dad handed her the key. “Let him out, will ya, and walk him around a minute before you bring him in here.”
She hurried to the truck. Poor dog was probably wondering if they’d all lost their collective minds. Leaving him in the back of a dark vehicle, cramped and all alone. He was an outdoors dog. A wolf hunter. She smiled, wondering what Shadow would think of her one-hundred-fifty-eight-pound canine friend.
Bruno was thrilled to be let out of his prison. He leaped out of the truck as soon as the door lifted, nearly knocking her down in the process. With tail wagging and a happy dog face, he stretched his legs out and made a groaning sound.
“Sorry we forgot you, Bruno baby.” She bent and wrapped her arms around him. “It won’t happen again. At least not tonight. Come on, let’s take a walk.” She didn’t bother with the leash. Bruno always stayed by her. He was well trained and protective, although he loved most people and would probably lick up their noses on an equal first come first serve basis.
They hurried up the hill into the woods, careful to stay away from the cabins. It was hard to tell which ones were occupied, since everyone had their lights out at this hour, but only three vehicles were parked in the lot, not counting their two. Jael didn’t want to wake them. Anyone desperate enough to stay here for the night was probably exhausted.
A narrow dirt path wound up and around through the trees. They followed that until it crested on a hilltop overlooking a valley. Jael could see the highway winding like a ribbon toward a little town a few miles north. It definitely wasn’t a city. There weren’t enough lights left on. Small towns like Sunburn had an unspoken rule. Lights out by ten o’clock. Everyone abided by this rule because there wasn’t anything to do after that hour anyway.
A tiny plaque was nearly hidden in the growth of tree seedlings and tall grass. It read: Overlook: Smythe, Utah. Once a growing railroad town shipping coal across the country, Smythe withered to a small hamlet when the mine closed causing the railroad to pull out in 1958.
Bruno did his business off the path while Jael tossed pebbles at a hole in a hollowed out tree. She was starting to wake up from her nap in the truck and decided to walk a little farther before returning to the cabin. Fresh air would be nice before getting closed up in that bedbug habitat. She snapped her fingers for Bruno and headed along the top of the hill away from the cabins.
The path narrowed even more as they left the well-trodden area. Tall grass encroached, growing in thick thatches. It swished lightly against the legs of her jeans. In the distance she heard a sound like someone stroking the small teeth of a comb. Preep preep. It was a sound she’d heard before. The Western Chorus Frog. She loved frogs. Used to catch them when she was a kid and put them in coffee cans with grass and water until her mom made her set them free. This one was probably 50 yards away. They had some strong vocal chords for such tiny creatures.
Bruno made a low growl in his throat. Was he afraid of a little bitty frog? She reached out to stroke his head and felt the hair on the back of his neck bristling up like a forecast of danger. She crouched beside him, listening, stilling him with a hand on his side. Nothing. Even the frog had gone silent.
Suddenly a now familiar pain shot through her foot and she nearly gasped. Bruno nudged her face with his nose. “It’s okay,” she whispered, peering into the dark trees behind her. It would definitely be helpful right now to have that special tracker night vision Shadow was said to possess.
A twig snapped somewhere to her right, sending her pulse racing. She needed to be calm as she’d been trained. She drew a deep breath and silently expelled. Vampire hunting wasn’t a problem. She knew she could hold her own. But being prey, alone at night, with no backup or even a stake in hand…
She looked around the ground for something to use as a weapon. A tree branch, about half an inch thick and nearly three-feet long, lay alongside the path. She reached out and picked it up, peeled off the sucker branches as quietly as she could and then snapped it in half to a handy staking length. The sound on the still night air was as loud as a fart in a church service.
Jael felt both ends of the stick to see which seemed the pointiest. She repositioned it in her hand and gripped it tight, ready for anything. Bruno growled again, his hackles back up. She whispered in his ear, “Lay down, boy,” and stepped around him when he sprawled obediently in the path.
Moving slowly, listening intently, she placed one foot in front of the other, closing in on the darkened forest. The rough bark of an old, dead tree scraped her arm as she moved around the trunk. She instinctively reached out to feel for damage. She’d scraped a chunk of skin off and caused it to bleed. Terrific. A bloodsucker was stalking her and she’d just given him a whiff of what’s for dinner. A wild guttural snarl alerted her to danger a split second before a hard body hurtled toward her in the dark. She was knocked backwards to the ground, hitting her head.
Bruno barked madly, obviously not happy with her predicament. “Stay boy!” she commanded.
The vampire had flown past her when she fell, landing a few feet away. Jael arched her back and bounced onto the balls of her feet before he had time to readjust his flight plan. She turned, ducked, and met his attack with a solid blow to his chin. His head jerked back but he wasn’t stopped. His teeth inched down as he reached out to grasp her by the throat. He was so close she could smell his aftershave. Aftershave? What the…?
“Is that Old Spice you’re wearing?” she asked, wrinkling her nose and dodging left to avoid his clutches. She yanked his arm while he was off balance, twisted, and threw him over her shoulder, then sniffed. “Really old spice, I’d say.”
He landed with a thud on the hard ground and glared up at her with a snarl on his lips, his fangs protruding like an overbite that needed severe correction. She decided to help him out with that, since his dentist had obviously failed so miserably. But the quick kick to his face was intercepted. He grasped her foot and threw her back with a strength she hadn’t experienced before. She smacked into the tree behind her, and felt the breath knocked out of her.
He moved like lightening and was instantly standing over her, looking down. His features were dark and unfocused with the moon backlighting him. She sucked in air like a fish out of water and tried to calm her pulse. Her grip tightened on the stick in her hand.
“I don’t usually meet such worthy foes in this county.” His laughter was soft and confident, a
monster standing over a helpless victim. He bent close, fangs gleaming against dark skin. “You’re just a girl,” he said, disbelief widening his eyes.
“And you’re just a rotting dead guy covering up his stink with perfume!” she kicked him in the kneecap, rolled away and bounced to her feet.
He roared with pain, and turned to face her head on. “You should have stayed down. I would have killed you gently, little girl. Now I’m going to rip your jugular open, suck you dry, and leave you for the wolves to snack on.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.
Bruno was barking like a fiend now, his giant body crouched low and menacing in the path. Jael hoped he stayed back. She didn’t want him to get hurt. He was more of a lover than a fighter. “Go get Dad, Bruno!” she yelled, then jumped to the right and planted an elbow in the middle of the vampire’s back as he lunged at her again. He stumbled but turned and met her attack, deflecting every blow.
She was tiring, and he looked like he could continue this for eternity. She had to take him out now. He advanced and she slowly retreated, letting him beat her back, closer and closer to the low hanging branch she’d spotted earlier.
Pounding footsteps sounded on the path below. Someone was coming. She blocked a blow to her head, feinted left, planted a round-a-bout kick to his kidney region and saw him turn toward the path where Bruno continued to bark excitedly.
Jael jumped, climbing the trunk of the tree, grasped the branch and swung, kicking out with all the strength she had left. Her foot connected with his shoulder blade and she let go, letting her weight bring him to the ground, her legs wrapped around his neck. She heard a snap, dropped and rolled away, but was instantly on her feet, turning.
“Jael!” her father yelled, crashing through the underbrush with Bruno by his side.
Pointy branch still clutched in her sweaty grip, she ran forward and drove it into the monster’s chest when he tried to sit up. He roared, eyes rolling back in his head, and slumped to the ground, a pile of worm-eaten flesh clad in black pants and a leather jacket.
Jael slowly stood, and swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat at the stench. Old Spice. She felt herself sway, the strength gone out of her legs.
Her father ran up, breathing hard, brandishing a huge flashlight like a club. He stared down at the vampire and then pulled her into his arms and held her tight. Bruno ran back and forth, licking Jael’s arms as they dangled loosely at her sides and growling at the corpse on the ground. If her father hadn’t been there to hold her up, she definitely would have fallen down.