Jael tucked a stake into her waistband at the back of her jeans and moved across the hard packed road to the entrance of Rhyolite. She walked slowly, listening to the sounds around her, letting her eyes adjust and focus in on the landscape. Up ahead was a long row of ivory bright sculptures, forms like angels posed to guard. As she drew closer she saw that the statues wore hooded shrouds like grim reapers, only in white and without a scythe, no wings in sight. Apparently, a historic American ghost town wasn’t a sufficient enough draw for whacky tourists, so someone decided to allow random artists to throw their creations into the mix. In the light of the moon and stars, a giant pink woman, built like a Lego creation, stood sentinel in a lonely patch of desert; a strangely alien creature to welcome tourists to this hundred-year-old ghost town.
Jael shook her head. “Weird,” she whispered.
She picked up her pace, moving closer to the town ruins, and away from the safety of the SUV. A gentle breeze blew, cool on her skin. She shivered and rubbed her arms. The temperature in the desert dropped quickly at night. She should have brought her jacket but she’d left it in the truck. No point in going back now. She just wanted to get this over with.
A crumbling wall was all that was left of the first ruin she came across. She poked around it a bit, listening, but there was nothing. Then she heard it. The howl of a wolf up in the hills. Or a dog. Did wolves really live out here or was her uncle just pulling her leg? She tilted her head to listen. No answering call. That was a good thing. If there had been wolf attacks nearby, she didn’t want to be the next victim. Staking a vampire wasn’t quite the same as fending off a big hairy beast with sharp teeth. Well… maybe it was.
She moved on, slipped inside a structure with two-story walls left standing but no floors. It was a little eerie moving around inside what was left of someone’s home, now deserted and crumbling away inch by inch. Had there been children, a dog, a dinner table where they sat and ate each night and talked about their day? She imagined the presence of a family, singing together at a piano in the corner or reading by lantern light. She glanced up at the star-filled sky. She’d seen enough reruns of Little House on the Prairie to know they didn’t have flat screens, cable, or Internet, so they had to do something to break the monotony.
Something scraped against the outside wall and she spun around, reaching for the stake in her waistband. Moving as quietly as she could she crossed the open space and pressed her back to cool adobe. Never leave yourself open to attack, her father had said many times. Of course, now was the first time she’d ever really needed to take that piece of advice seriously. She scooted slowly down the length of the wall until it ended in a jagged opening, tightened her grip on the stake at her side and held her breath, listening.
Screech, screech. The sound sent a chill up her spine like fingernails on a chalkboard. She drew a deep breath and concentrated on slowing her heartbeat. She felt it beating wildly inside her chest, like a drummer on uppers. The last thing she needed was a vampire excited by the pulse of blood in his ears. According to Seth, they loved to toy with their prey just to hear that sound of pulsing fear.
She edged forward, ready to jump through the crumbled opening and confront whatever crouched behind that wall. A low snarl raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. She jerked around, stake clenched tight in stiff fingers.
A grey dog, about the size of a coyote and just as scraggly and mean looking, stood in the opening of the door a dozen feet away. His snarl, low and phlegmy, rattled up from a throat guarded by bared and dangerously honed teeth. She could tell the dog was coiled tight and ready to spring. He was probably just as surprised to find her here in his territory as she was to find him. She glanced back through the broken wall over her shoulder. At the moment, the unknown source of the scratching sound was preferable to a wild dog with rabies. Without wasting another second, she stumbled over the broken pieces and out into the night.
An old, rotting, section of picket fence leaned close to the wall. Nothing else. The wind picked up. Screech, screech. Jael expelled a breath and relaxed. She reached out and pulled the boards away from the wall, let them drop to the ground with a soft thud.
This was ridiculous. There were no vampires out here. There was only a stupid, gullible, teenage girl, some old buildings, and a hungry dog. She shook her head and pushed the stake back into her waistband. It was time to rethink this whole trusting the grownups thing. After all, had she ever seen a vampire? How did she know they even really existed? She was literally taking her crazy uncle’s word for it. And of course her parents. But maybe they’d been indoctrinated by Seth or those weird Amish relatives they talked about. Could they have been brainwashed?
She ran her hands through her hair, pushing it back behind her ears. Ten more minutes and then she’d head back to the truck. If there really were vampires, let them come to her. This hunting thing was ridiculous. She peeked back inside the house. The dog was gone. Must have decided to try his luck for shelter elsewhere.
More structures loomed as she hurried along, dark shapes taking form as she moved nearer. The old bank’s imposing façade trickled away as she left the front side and moved around to the back. Two walls rose three stories high and then dropped off to broken down hunks of adobe and brick.
A voice carried on the night air, mumbled and low, but she couldn’t make out the words. Pain shot through the side of Jael’s right foot. Actually, it felt like…no, that was just crazy. She looked down at her tennis shoe, lifted it to peer at the sole. No nail or anything embedded in the rubber. But she could have sworn it felt like something had pierced her sixth toe…
She blew out a breath of frustration. Now she was imagining things. Phantom pain in a toe she didn’t even know she once had until a few days ago.
A low growl startled her and she dropped her foot so fast that she lost her balance and nearly fell over. A chuckle echoed hollowly inside the walls of the bank.
“Little girl, won’t you come in? There seems to be a wolf outside. It will be much safer here with me.”
Her missing toe continued to throb with pain. It felt as though someone had just now cut it off inside her shoe. She pushed the discomfort from her mind and focused on the voice inside the bank. Was this truly a vampire, or some pervert with a thing for teenage girls?
Another low growl from the shadows reminded her that avoiding the rabid dog was a sound choice. He was obviously hungry… or mad. Either way, he’d followed her down the road and was getting ready to pounce.
She didn’t know whether to be more afraid of the dog or the man hiding inside the ruins. But she was trained to fend off humans, not dogs, so she stepped over the broken wall and into the presence of the unknown.
The man laughed again, pleased at her decision. She saw him across the expanse of the bank, leaning with one shoulder against the far wall. He wore a long dark coat and pants and stood in deep shadow. He straightened and turned to face her as she moved inside. She caught a glint of teeth when he smiled.
“Who are you?” she asked, one hand at her back, clutching the stake, her voice a tad shaky given the circumstances. “Do you live here?” She knew there were caretakers who lived nearby and she really didn’t want to stab one in the heart with a stake just because they were eccentric and liked to hang out in the dark or something.
He took a step forward and Jael felt pain slice through her foot like a razor’s edge. She clenched her teeth and reminded herself that it was just a figment of her imagination. She didn’t know why she was imagining pain – she’d much rather imagine Zach Efron showing up to kiss her in the moonlight – but pain it was.
He slowly moved from shadow into the pale light of the moon. “You’re a very curious young woman, aren’t you?” he asked, holding her gaze.
She shrugged. “I like to stay on top of things.”
“A thirst for knowledge is an excellent trait,” he said circling slowly around to her left, his eyes never leaving her face. Or was it her neck?
Jael
circled to the right, ready for most anything. But she wasn’t ready for his next move. He leaped at her like a cat springing on a mouse, and knocked her to the ground. The stake fell out of her hand on impact and rattled across the floor. The man’s hands were like iron, pressing into her arms as he held her down. He smelled like something the cat dragged in and left under the bed for a week. She wrinkled her nose and tried not to gag.
“Would you like to know what I’m going to do now, little girl?” he said, his voice dropping to a grating whisper. He threw his head back and bared his teeth and she thought he might howl at the moon, but instead, fangs suddenly materialized, growing to at least an inch in length.
She couldn’t reach the stake. It was too far. He probably wouldn’t hand it to her even if she asked him nicely. But what the heck? “Would you mind handing me that little wooden spike right there?” she said, slanting her eyes in the general direction.
He glanced toward it, his attention diverted. That’s all she needed. She bit down on his hand. His grip automatically released and she twisted away. Before he could pull her in again she used her legs to flip him backward. He hit the far wall with his head and went down.
For good measure, she did a jump kick to his face before turning to pick up the stake. As she grasped it in her fingers, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. He was up and charging her already. She barely had time to pull the stake in and position it with the sharp point out before he rammed her, knocking them both to the ground again.
His long coat lay open like bat wings covering them both. She gasped, trying to breathe. The force of his body had knocked all the air from her lungs. She shoved him from her and rolled away, crawled to her knees, sucking in air.
Slowly, Jael rose and stood over him, still a little afraid to get too close. But she had to be sure. His eyes were wide and staring straight up, one hand at his chest where the stake protruded. He blinked and she realized with a shock that he wasn’t quite dead. What to do? She wished her father were here to throw out a few pointers because this real live vampire slaying was not going so well.
He snarled and his eyes focused on her with a dark hatred she’d never felt before. His other hand lifted to the stake and she thought he was going to pull it out. She glanced around the bank. A large chunk of concrete lay near the doorway. She darted over and picked it up. It was heavy. She stooped over with the weight and shuffled to carry it those few feet.
He gripped the stake in both hands now and was slowly drawing it from his chest, his eyes slanted nearly closed with the effort.
“Let me help you with that,” Jael said, now standing directly over him, and she dropped the concrete slab.
He roared, his eyes widening with fury, and then the fight went out of him.
There was no blood pool, no mess. Just a dead vampire in a one-hundred-year-old bank building in the middle of the desert. Now what? Weren’t they supposed to disappear or something? Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and all that? She rolled the chunk of concrete from his chest to look for her stake. There wasn’t enough to grab hold of now. It was deeply embedded in the monster. How was she supposed to get it out? Her fingerprints would be all over that thing. A dead body found in a ghost town would definitely bring out the authorities.
The rotting corpse smell seemed to be getting stronger. She crouched over him trying not to breathe, and checked his pockets for ID. Nothing. Not even a monster truck license.
“Terrific,” she mumbled, and stood up.
The sky was lightening at the edges when she stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Morning would be here soon and she didn’t want to be around when it shone a spotlight on the dead body in the bank. She pushed her hair back and looked around for the dog, but it had once again vanished into the night.
When she returned to the truck, Seth lay sleeping like a baby. His seat was in the reclined position and he was actually snoring. Her dad, on the other hand, looked anything but relaxed. He thrust his door open and jumped out, pulling her into a bear hug before she could climb into the backseat. His eyes were filled with relief when he finally released her. “Thank God, you’re all right,” he whispered, a breath on the wind. “I was about ready to come after you.”
“Wish you had. I could have used a little advice back there.”
His brows pulled together in a frown.
“Like what to do with the body?” she said, lifting her shoulders. She ached all over as though she’d just endured one of her dad’s grueling workouts… or hand to hand combat with a two-hundred pound vampire.
He glanced inside at his brother, who was now sitting up, rubbing his eyes.
Seth yawned and motioned for them to get back in the truck. “Come on, we better get out of here.”
“The body?” she repeated, hands on her hips. “It’s going to be light soon and he smelled like last week’s road kill. Someone is bound to find him.”
“You didn’t leave him under a tarp or something, did you?”
“No, but…”
“Then it’ll be fine.” He dismissed her worry with a wave of his hand. “Once the sun comes up he’ll be nothing more than a pile of ashes.”
The news should have given her some sense of relief, but all it did was fuel her anger. “You couldn’t have told me this up front?” she demanded, climbing into the backseat with a huff.
Her father closed the door after her and got back behind the wheel.
She wasn’t through complaining. They practically threw her out there without any instruction. “I actually contemplated cutting his chest open so I could retrieve my stake.”
Seth laughed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because my fingerprints were all over it and I didn’t want to go to jail for life for killing someone who was already technically dead.”
Her dad started the engine and pulled back out onto the highway. They drove in silence for a few moments until Seth couldn’t take it anymore. He released his seatbelt and twisted around to stare back at her. “Come on! Give us all the gory details. Most people have never seen a vampire up close and personal like you just did and lived to tell about it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re just going to have to wait. I’m tired.” She lay down across the back seat, her knees drawn up and her hands beneath her cheek, and closed her eyes.
“Leave her be,” she heard her dad say in a soft voice before she drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 9
A date with destiny