“Time is not your friend,” he called to her, advancing with a casual, loping pace.
She stepped into the water, gasping at the temperature—it had been a warm day, but this stream was fed by snowmelt high on the mountains and could hold on to the cold even in the sun. On her second step, her foot found a slick rock and she nearly lost her balance and fell in the water. Behind her, the vampire howled with delighted laughter. She pushed forward, the water waist-deep now and the current strong. The sunlight had contracted to one final beam, allowing her a clear view of the elk’s dead eye staring up at her. His throat was torn open, so much like Jim’s, but the damage was even worse here. She could see that the chest cavity had been pulled apart, white bones protruding into the water, and that his insides had been devoured methodically, almost tidily. Maybe he hadn’t fallen victim to a bear, after all. Maybe it had been wolves.
Another howl came from behind her, but this time the pleasure was gone, and the sound was pure rage. When she chanced a look back, she couldn’t see the vampire where he belonged, at the farthest part of the shadow line. She located his silhouette some thirty feet behind the extended dark, saw that he was engaged in whirling, frantic pacing, the dog on the electric fence routine again. But this time the fence was down. He could come so much farther. Why wasn’t he?
The water, she realized as she watched him. He won’t enter the water.
He was streaking up and down the streambed with appalling speed, and here and there he would splash into the shallows and then retreat as if the water had nipped his heels. She thought again of Dracula, those scenes on the Demeter, the captain lashed to the wheel. The Count, even if he takes the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition, and so he cannot leave the ship, Van Helsing had explained.
But that was a story. Nothing more.
Story or not, the rules seemed to hold. As full dark settled in the Sunlight Basin and all of Kristen’s protection vanished, the tall man remained on the shore. He could cross from one side to the other, but only far upstream, in a place where high boulders met and whatever water there was flowed trapped beneath them. Out here in the middle of the depths, though, she was apparently safe. Eventually he stopped running along the streambed, either having given up on finding a way to cross or having burned off his frustration, and called to her again.
“Very good, dear. But you’ll be cold soon. You’ll be freezing soon enough if you don’t get out of that water.”
Soon enough was an understatement—she was already shivering, her skin covered in gooseflesh, her teeth chattering.
“Ask yourself if that’s really better,” he continued, his tone sympathetic now, almost soothing. “Is a slow, agonizing death really a victory for you? I wouldn’t want that. Not if I could have a swift end.”
He wasn’t wrong—she would die here before sunrise. She’d succeeded in keeping him at bay but only by trapping herself in the icy water. It was a warm-enough night by mountain standards, and if she got out now, she knew she would survive. Even if she stayed in longer, she knew where Jim had stowed emergency heat blankets and fire starters. She could endure the cold for a while and still survive, but there was a time limit to that. Just as her nemesis had been forced to wait on the sunset, she would be forced to wait on the sunrise, and that was far too long in the frigid water. Any attempt to move out of the stream would be an immediate sacrifice to him, though. With that unbelievable speed, he’d go upstream and cross the rocks and catch her on either side without difficulty. Her options, then, were as he said: the slow death or the swift.
She didn’t want to give herself up to him, though. Better to let the river take her, something natural and of this world. As the night drew on and he waited patiently and her shaking became more violent, she remained in the water, trying to keep moving, trying to keep her blood circulating. It was becoming harder and harder to do, though. Simple motions seemed difficult. She stumbled on the slick rocks several times, and then finally she fell, but that was all right, because she landed in warmth. It took her a minute to realize its source—she was pressed against the dead elk.
She recoiled immediately, splashing back into the water and managing to grab hold of one of the boulders to avoid being pulled downstream. For a time she stayed there, letting the frigid water wash over her, and then she spoke aloud.
“There are no good options, Kristen.”
It was the truest thing she had ever said. She let go of the rock then and splashed back to the elk and found its fur with her hands. When her fingers slid over a sheared bone, she felt a surge of bile in the back of her throat, but she choked it down and continued to explore the carcass by touch.
The chest cavity had been ripped apart and spread wide. It was a massive bull elk, probably every bit of five feet tall at the shoulder and seven hundred pounds. Kristen was five feet nothing, although she claimed five-one for dignity, and one hundred and five pounds. Just one day ago, she’d been frustrated by her own diminutive size as she struggled to adjust backpack straps on her too-narrow shoulders. Now she felt her way around the jagged bones of the dead elk and was grateful for every midget joke she’d ever endured.
It would still be cold, but it would also be dry, and that was what mattered. The elk was so big and the boulders that had caught his carcass were so high that his body rested above the waterline. Much of his hide remained, too, and that would provide a windbreak. All that mattered was her core temperature, the thing that the water was robbing from her with every passing minute. The night air was warm, and if she could find her way into it and dry, she could live to see the sunrise.
“How are you faring, dear?” The voice came from the shore not far from her, maybe thirty feet away. “Chilly night, isn’t it? And I’m here on dry land. I can’t imagine it’s very comfortable for you in that water. You do know that’s fed from the snowmelt, correct? And last winter, goodness, so much snow. Down here in the basin, there was so much. Up on the peaks, where the river finds it source? Oh, there might have been twenty feet there. And glaciers, you know. There are still glaciers up on top. This is a very cold part of the world.”
Kristen looked to the sky, which was a wash of clean, bright stars, more stars than she had ever seen anywhere else in the world. Unspoiled by light pollution and, tonight, unmarred even by clouds. It was going to get colder, on a clear, cloudless night like this. It was only going to get colder.
She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth to hold down the gag reflex as she extended her arms into the hollowed-out remains of the elk. Her hands slid over bone and slick flesh and other, softer things. Some of them seemed to move of their own accord. She nearly lost her nerve then, but she willed an image of Jim’s throat back into her mind, and of the blood that had shone on the thin man’s mouth, and then she ducked her head and pushed forward and now the smell caught her and she couldn’t hold back on the gagging any longer. She kept going, though, wriggling forward, and eventually her feet were out and all of her was above the waterline.
She realized her mistake then; she should have gone feetfirst so that her head was closer to the opening and not trapped in this dark, dank horror. When she tried to turn, though, the elk’s body started to slip, and she froze, terrified that it would slide free from the boulders and splash back into the water and take her downstream.
The carcass held in place, though. It rocked and tilted precariously but she kept her panic down and held her breath and did not move, and eventually the carcass settled in the boulders once more, still high and dry. Still stinking of death. There were maggots in the rotting flesh and she could feel them moving around her own, living flesh as if trying to ascertain a difference, perhaps wondering how something alive had merged with something dead. Around her the water rippled and burbled but she couldn’t see much of it. There was a gash that had pierced the bull elk’s hide just above where Kristen’s left eye now rested, and the wound gave her a window to the stars.
The water dripped fr
om her and she dried slowly, and the elk skin that remained stretched over the rib bones shielded her from the wind in a way that had no doubt been used by ancient people desperate for shelter in this very place before. She was still shivering, but she thought that was a good thing. It was when you stopped shivering that you had to worry. She wrapped herself as tightly together as possible and let the air dry her as she watched the stars.
When the sky began to lighten, she thought it was an illusion. Or madness. Over the course of the night, madness had begun to feel not just threatening but inevitable, and she knew that she would stay entombed in the remains of the elk forever. She actually shut her eyes against the graying sky so she could not be fooled, but after a time she had the sensation that things continued to brighten, and when she opened her eyes again the elk bones directly above her were glowing a pale pink.
It was morning.
She tried to slide out carefully, but she was stiff and numb and unable to move with any grace at all, and when the carcass began to slide she felt certain it would trap her and she would drown within it. The current kicked the dead elk sideways, though, and spilled her out into the stream, and she managed to catch a boulder with a hand so numb that the pain didn’t register.
Above her, the sky was crimson.
She got her heels braced on the slick streambed and stumbled forward, only to be washed downstream several times and bounced between rocks before it was finally shallow enough for her to rise to her hands and knees. She crawled forward, out of the water and onto a gravel bar, and lay there for a long time, shivering and gasping, as the sun continued to rise over the mountains. When she lifted her head again, she saw him just in front of her.
He was sitting back on his heels on the rocks. The shadow line where the mountain blocked the rising sun and preserved the night into the day came up almost to his feet and those worn leather boots.
“How about that?” he said. His voice was low and sad. Kristen didn’t respond. The daylight continued to encroach, and he shuffled backward, a thin silhouette in the shadows. Kristen got to her feet. It was a laborious and painful process, but she made it.
“I’ll come back for you,” she said.
“I wouldn’t. Those old tunnels are deep and dark, my dear.”
“Not deep enough. I’ll find you.”
“Perhaps. Until then? Well, if I wore a hat, I’d take it off to you. In all its millennia, I doubt this valley has ever seen anything quite like that before. What’s your name, anyhow, dear? I’d like to remember you as more than a face.”
“Kristen,” she said. “And I meant what I said. I’ll come back, and I’ll kill you.”
“Kristen. That’s beautiful. I’ll remember it. They just called me Medoc, usually. Do your homework, and I’m sure you’ll find a few stories about me. Not the real ones, though. You’ll read about what a rugged wilderness this is and how deadly the weather can turn. You’ll read about the way I perished, probably explained by a guide who knew better but found it safer to tell lies so that he would not bear the burdens that come with telling the world a truth that it would like to forget. You’ll read all of that, but unlike everyone else, you’ll know the truth. After last night? You’ll know a truth that is very difficult to live with.”
“I’ll live with it,” she said.
He rose and cast a displeased glance at the peaks to the east, then bowed to her. In the gathering twilight not that many hours before, it would have been a mocking gesture before her impending execution. At dawn, it seemed to carry true respect. The thing who called himself Medoc began to make his way up the dark side of the mountain face and back toward the adit that led to the abandoned mine. There he sat on a high rock in the shadows as Kristen limped to the remnants of Jim’s tent and pulled her wet clothes off and dry ones on and then fumbled out one of the emergency blankets and wrapped it around herself like a cape. By the time she was done, the crimson sun was fully visible over the peaks and the adit on the slope above her was, too, standing exposed and empty. She watched it for a few moments but nothing moved, and then she turned and began to limp through a mountain basin that glowed as if it held all the light of the world.
THE NEIGHBORS
SHERRILYN KENYON
“I think there’s something wrong with the Thompsons.” Jamie stepped back from the window to frown at his mom. “Have you seen them?”
“Not since they moved in a few months ago and Teresa gave me her number.”
“But not since, right?”
With long blond hair and bright green eyes that matched his, his mom picked up his little sister’s backpack and set it on the table near him. “Teresa said that her husband’s an international antiques dealer. He travels a lot and keeps weird hours whenever he works from home.”
Jamie moved to sit down at the table to do his homework. “I’m telling you, Ma, there’s something really, really off about them.”
“Stop reading all those horror novels, and watching those creepy movies and TV shows. No more Dexter on Netflix! It’s all making you paranoid.”
Maybe, but still . . .
Jamie had a bad feeling that wouldn’t go away. Unsettled, he watched as his mom collected Matilda’s toys and sighed from exhaustion.
It’d been hard for all of them over the last few months since his dad had been killed while off on a “business” trip.
As Jamie opened his chemistry book, a motion outside caught his attention. Frowning, he slid out of his chair to get a closer look.
He gaped at the sight of his neighbor carrying a strange-shaped baggie out of his detached garage and tossing it into the trunk of his car . . . which, now that he thought about it, was never parked in the garage.
Neither was Teresa’s.
His neighbor struggled with the weight and odd shape of whatever was in the bag.
Was that a body?
C’mon, dude. Don’t be stupid. It’s not a body.
But Jamie had seen plenty of horror movies where they moved corpses, and that was what it looked like. It didn’t even bend right.
“James? What are you doing?”
He pulled back to see his mom glaring at him. “Being my usual delusional self. You?”
“Wondering what I got into while pregnant that caused your brain damage. Must have been those lead paint chips I craved.”
“Ha-ha.” He returned to his homework, but as he tried to focus on chemistry, he couldn’t get his mind off what he’d just seen. The way his neighbor had carried that bag . . .
It had to be a body.
Unable to concentrate, he got up to look outside again. The moment he did, he saw his neighbor’s wife, Teresa, with a huge white bucket that held some kind of thick red liquid she was spreading around the driveway.
Red?
Water?
Nah, man. It was too thick for water. Looked like blood. Diluted maybe, but definitely a hemoglobin-like substance.
He started to call for his mom, but the moment he opened his mouth, Teresa looked up and caught sight of him in the window. Terrified and shaking, he quickly hit the deck on his belly.
Oh God, she saw me!
What was he going to do? I know what blood looks like. Even diluted. And that was blood she’d been dumping.
Maybe she’s a taxidermist.
Yeah, right.
“Jamie?”
He flinched at his sister’s call. Crawling across the floor, he didn’t get up until he was in the hallway. “Whatcha need, Matty?”
With honey-blond curls and bright blue eyes, his little sister stared up at him from the couch. “Can you come help me? I can’t get the TV on the right channel.”
“Sure.” He moved toward her to check it out. The battery on the remote was low.
After changing it for her, he returned to the living room to put it on the kids’ channel she preferred, then froze as he heard the news.
“Another body was found near Miller’s Pond. Mutilated. The headless remains were burned beyond re
cognition. At this time, the authorities are investigating every lead. So far, they’re at a loss over this horrific crime that appears to be related to a set of six murders over the last four months.”
Jamie was frozen to the spot as he heard those words.
“Give me that!” Matilda jerked the remote from his hand and changed channels.
Sick to his stomach, Jamie bit his lip. Now that he thought about it, those murders had started only after the Thompsons had moved in.
Six months ago. Just a few weeks after his father had been killed outside of Memphis.
Weird.
It’s nothing, dumb ass. Get back to your chemistry.
Yeah, but what if . . .
“Jamie?”
He turned at his mother’s irate tone, which usually denoted one particular bad habit he had. “I put the seat down!”
She growled at him. “It’s not the toilet seat. I just got a call from Teresa. Are you spying on her?”
Well, yeah, but he wasn’t dumb enough to give her the truth with that tone of voice. “No.”
Hands on hips, she glared at him. “You better not be! She said she’s going to call the cops and report you for stalking if you do it again.”
“ ’Cause I was looking out the window of my house? Really? When did that become a crime?”
“Don’t get smart with me, boy. Now do your homework.”
Grousing under his breath, Jamie returned to his book, but not before he texted his best friend.
By the time he’d finished his assignment, Ed was at his back door with an evil grin on his nerdy little face. Barely five foot three, Ed wasn’t the most intimidating person on the planet, but he was one hell of an opponent on any science or math bowl team.
“So you think your neighbors are weird.”
“Shh.” Jamie looked over his shoulder to make sure his mom wasn’t there before he pushed Ed out onto the back stoop. “Yeah. There’s something not right. You feel up to some snooping?”
Seize the Night Page 10
