by A. P. Wayne
“Show you?”
“Show me exactly what you were doing while I was becoming.”
Now Hunter’s erection was back.
He cleared his throat. “No offense, but I’d rather actually fuck you.”
She smiled, moved a hand over the bulge in his pants. “You and I are connected in ways you could never imagine.”
The image of the villainess from his book popped into his head. What she said was no less cryptic than what she had been saying.
“So why do you want to watch me do that?”
“I like it. You watched me getting fucked. You watched me getting bitten. I think you owe it to me.”
Hunter unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, shucking them down with his underwear. His penis sprang up. He took it in his hand. She looked intently at his penis and he looked at those freaky black eyes.
“You tell stories,” she said. “I have many stories to tell. Would you like to hear them?”
Hunter sat there, pumping his penis, wondering what the hell was going on. Things seemed to be getting stranger and stranger. Making no sense at all.
“Now?” he asked.
“We all have a function even if some people’s function is to not have a function.”
“I guess the world needs filler.”
“Everyone has an individual story but it’s very few people who can shape and influence the story of so many others. This town, Lawrence, is my story. Do you know what I’m saying?”
He didn’t. Not really. And he was close to coming. He felt things warping and bending inside of him.
“I think maybe you haven’t chosen which person you want to be yet.”
Hunter felt like his brain was being attacked. He’d had his eyes closed and when he opened them again he looked at the window where he was expecting to see the rain beating down but it was covering it in black like ink was raining from the sky and he held himself in his hand but there was this girl sitting next to him and she was putting off this huge sexual vibe. At that point he thought maybe she was the most erotic female he’d ever encountered. He grabbed her arm and she didn’t pull away. And then he was opening his door and pulling her across the seat and they were outside. The cold rain beat down and Hunter noted with relief that it wasn’t black at all. It just had a way of turning the night black, turning the air to steam and now he had the girl in both hands and dragged her to the edge of the woods where he unbuttoned her pants and ripped them down. He forced her onto her back on a patch of grass and then he was between her legs, buried in her warmth and maybe crying and she whispered strange things he didn’t understand into his ear. The only thing he did understand was her saying, “Bite me.” She was giving him exactly what he wanted so he decided to return the favor. He bit her. Bit her until she bled.
Twenty-nine
When Walker finally came to, the sun was blinding him. He was outside. He had to reach back to think of the last thing he remembered. It had been so long since he’d woken anywhere except his house that he was completely confused.
He’d followed the screaming and the laughter to the strange house in the woods and ...
Melanie.
He’d fucked Melanie.
Then he’d bitten her.
Then he ... hadn’t felt very well.
He’d gone back into the house to rest and had, he guessed, passed out.
So where was he now?
He stood up and still felt woozy. He braced himself on a nearby tree and fought the urge to vomit. Sweat broke out on his forehead and a shiver ran through him. He needed to get home. Shit. If it was the next day, that meant he’d missed Jordan’s visit. And that meant she’d be pissed at him. It seemed like she was pissed at him a lot, anyway.
He looked around for the house he had presumably come from but didn’t see anything. He was surrounded by woods. Thicker than anything he’d ever really seen around Lawrence.
He took a deep breath.
Shit.
It really was a gorgeous day. The air smelled almost sweet. There were so few days in Ohio that were perfect. Mainly the weather was good at being volatile. Otherwise it was just uncomfortably cold or grossly hot and humid.
Unless he wasn’t in Ohio.
It seemed like a flippant thought but, walking through the unfamiliar woods, feeling them growing thicker and gloomier around him, the possible reality of that thought hit him. He’d never been here. No, he wasn’t that lucky. The Fangs had come for him for reasons he still wasn’t too clear about. But he was sure Jordan had been here. She’d told him about it during the period they were trapped on the farm. She said she’d seen his brother, Elliot, in the dream. She said this place was called Neverly—the town behind the town. Walker was never quite sure how much of what Jordan said was fact and how much was supposition. He assumed everything she had been told had come from Elliot ... but maybe not the real Elliot. Maybe some dream Elliot that may not have been Elliot at all but a Fang impersonating him.
Reality seemed to be an increasingly tricky business in Lawrence.
Jordan had told him this other place, Neverly, was where the Fangs hid. There were some who actively took over people in the real world. There were those who existed in the real world as mostly spirits—ghosts—and were ultimately harmless. Those two levels represented the most evolved states of the Fangs. The bulk of them were monsters. Monsters waiting for the door between our world and theirs to open so they could rush out and feast on human blood and flesh until there wasn’t any left.
Monsters.
And there was a distinct possibility he could be in their territory now.
Monsters.
Just like him, he thought. He was a monster. Everyone else seemed to know this about him. He could understand Jordan thinking he was a monster. He could understand the rest of the townsfolk thinking he was a monster for potentially killing his parents. But Melanie had known, too. Known the truth. If she had known, how many other people did? Why hadn’t he known?
But he had, he guessed, to be fair to himself. He’d known ever since being trapped on his farm, stalking Jordan like prey. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it.
And now he’d made Melanie a monster, too. Well, maybe not a complete monster. One had to also drink the blood of a Fang to become what they were. But a bite from them would certainly send them on their way. It would make her exactly what he was, since he had never partaken of Fang blood.
Once again he stopped in his tracks.
If he were in Neverly, that would mean he had the power to go back and forth. That was something he hadn’t had the power to do before, not that he’d tried.
But Jordan said she’d been there.
No. That wasn’t necessarily true. Jordan had said she’d seen it because Elliot showed it to her. Meaning he could have just as easily given her a vision.
Somewhere in the distance, he again heard that laughing scream. Now he couldn’t even tell which one it was.
He thought he should probably just turn around and go back the way he’d come. But he was here and he was curious and he wasn’t really sure he had anything to go back to.
No. That wasn’t true. He did know what he was going back to.
Melanie.
He had turned her. Whether he was happy with that decision or not, it was one he’d made. He turned a girl who he’d only known a few minutes instead of turning Jordan.
Why not Jordan?
Was it because she never specifically asked him to and it would have been too much like rape if he’d done it without her permission? Or was it because it really was a kind of death, whether either of them wanted o admit it or not, and Jordan seemed too young and full of life to do that to? Or was it something else? Was it because he knew they were doomed and had been for a while?
Now Walker had convinced himself he was just walking to clear his head. It was probably ridiculous to think he was anywhere other than the real world anyway. He could do that as much as he wanted to. Sometimes he just had to admit
to himself he wasn’t the sanest, most rational person on the planet.
In the near distance, he caught a brief glimpse of movement, like a person moving away from him. Of course it could just as easily have been a butterfly or a bird.
He followed the movement.
He was suddenly aware of the wind rustling the trees and the birds chirping around him and the clean natural smells of the woods. He didn’t see how he could be anywhere but the real world.
Thirty
Jordan awoke to an empty bed. She was mad at Melanie but couldn’t remember exactly why. She kicked the covers from her naked body and stretched. She was sore. Everywhere sore. Her muscles ached, but so did her jaws and between her legs and even her ass. But thinking of how she’d become so sore brought nothing but pleasant memories.
Maybe she was just upset Melanie wasn’t here now.
Then she remembered.
The bite mark.
Jordan wasn’t going to come right out and question Melanie. Things with her were still in the early stages and, if she were wrong, she didn’t want to do anything to drive her away. But she could and would question Walker about it. She thought he owed her something. After all, she’d been his daily dinner for over a year now. If he was just going to toss her aside, then she thought she deserved to know.
That seemed really hypocritical. And probably not necessarily true. The reality of it had more to do with her no longer being afraid to lose Walker but wanting to hang on to Melanie. If anything, he was the one who deserved answers.
And what if it was true?
What if he had bitten Melanie? Turned her?
What then?
That would mean the two most important people in her life besides her parents were Fangs.
Maybe then she should just have one of them turn her too so they could live as a big, happy threesome.
And, she thought, wouldn’t that actually make her truly happy?
Everything seemed moot without first getting some answers.
She got out of bed and tried to stretch away some of the stiffness before taking a shower and heading out to Walker’s.
Thirty-one
Hunter woke up in a ditch for not the first time in his life. He was soaking wet but, luckily, it was warm outside. He stood up and reached for his phone in his pocket. Its absence incited a brief, blinding moment of panic. He took a few deep breaths and tried to clear his head. The missing phone was probably not the most horrible thing that had happened to him last night. He had a terrible taste in his mouth and it felt like someone was pinching his ears.
First things first ...
He climbed out of the ditch.
Parts of last night were still with him. He remembered that freaky girl and leaving his car in the middle of the road.
His car was no longer in the middle of the road. It was nowhere to be seen.
Jesus. His ears hurt. He raised his hands to massage them or something and discovered he had a rubber band wrapped around his head. He pulled it off, taking some hair with it, and realized the rubber band was there to hold a note in place.
Only it wasn’t a note.
It was a parking ticket.
Which meant he wasn’t as finished with the Lawrence Police Department as much as both parties would have wished. He almost decided to say fuck it and leave his car there but his phone was probably in it. He didn’t think he really had the money to get the car out. He did have the money, but he was hoping to use it for something more important, like drinking. Maybe they would let him get his possessions out of it. All he had to do was think back to his one encounter with Chief Bowsman to reassure himself that probably wasn’t happening.
“Fuck,” he mumbled.
He began walking back to town before he could talk himself out of it. It gave him some time to reflect on the previous night. All in all, he’d have to say it went well. He had opened his senses and his imagination to the reality of the Fangs and he was pretty sure one of them picked him up. He was also pretty sure he’d had sex with her. Evil being or not, that was a plus. In fact, Hunter would have considered every woman he’d ever had sex with to be an evil being. Then he had bitten her. That was cause for concern. He knew AIDS medication had gotten pretty good, so that wasn’t really what he was worried about. But if she had been a Fang, and he’d drunk her blood, it seemed like something inside of him should be changing.
Thinking that seemed to open some kind of paranoid rabbit hole his mind quickly spiraled down into. Maybe he shouldn’t be walking to the police station. Last night, he’d thought things seemed a little too easy. He’d even considered entrapment. Meaning that if the cops had been close enough to give him a ticket for leaving his car on the road, then they may have also been nearby while he was fucking what was most probably a minor.
He looked at the ticket again, not really knowing what he expected to find. The words “Statutory Rape” in the violation line, maybe? Or some vaguely accusatory slant to the handwriting. He stopped and mumbled, “Fuck,” again.
He heard a car behind him and quickly turned around.
He really was paranoid. He expected it to be a cop. He’d made the split second decision to take off running if it was.
It wasn’t a cop but it did slow down as it drew closer to him. And as it pulled up beside him, Hunter saw the girl from last night.
Potentially good.
Potentially really bad.
“Hi!” she said. She seemed really cheerful and smiley.
“Uh ... hi,” Hunter said.
“Hop in.”
Hunter wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. He moved closer to the car to see what the girl thought—good idea or bad.
“Come on,” she said. “Hop in. I don’t bite.” He crossed in front of the car and thought he heard her say, “Unlike you.”
He pulled the door handle and it was locked so he panicked and just kept pulling on it like a child. Finally it unlocked and he collapsed into the passenger seat.
“Rough night?” the girl asked. Hunter felt really bad that he couldn’t remember her name but she was acting like she didn’t remember anything.
“Kind of,” he said. “Somebody left me on the side of the road.”
“I left your car with you. I left the keys in the ignition and everything.”
Hunter held the ticket up in front of her.
“Oh. Oops.”
“Yeah. Oops. I don’t think I’m going to go pick it up.”
“I can take you.”
He waved her off. “Say, you don’t know if anyone happened to see us together last night, do you?”
“What? You mean like the cop who gave you the ticket?”
“Exactly.”
“And you’re worried about that because I’m underage?”
“So acute.”
“I don’t think so. Let me take you to pick up your car. It’s the least I can do.”
“No. What happened last night isn’t the only reason. It goes back a couple of days. But I’m pretty sure I can’t go the police station yet. You don’t happen to have a phone I could borrow, do you?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, handing it over to him. He stared at it and said, “Can you get the Internet on this?”
She pressed a button at the bottom and a browser popped up.
“Thank God,” he said.
“Why do you need it?”
“I left my phone in the car. I have insurance on it. This way I can get them to send me a new one without having to go to a police station.”
“Wow. That’s really ... brave.”
“Thanks. I’m going to tell them it exploded while I was talking on it.”
“And honest, too.”
“But you could do me a huge favor and take me home so I can put some clean clothes on.”
“Where’s home?”
He directed her.
Thirty-two
Walker continued to track the movement he’d seen earlier. He still had n
o idea if he was in the real world or that other place. He kind of felt like he was sliding back and forth. The woods here were definitely denser than anything he’d ever seen in Lawrence. Not only did there seem to be more of them, they seemed taller. So if he was still in Lawrence, it was some area he’d never been in. Which wasn’t entirely impossible. It wasn’t like he’d ever been much for exploring. But he figured he would still be somewhere around his house and that was an area where he thought he’d seen everything.
He watched the movement as it crossed a clearing in front of him. Now he was pretty sure it was a figure. Female probably. In the brief second he was able to track her, he thought it looked like she wore a white gown. He thought about calling out to her but he wanted a better idea of where she was going first.
And what was he going to say to her if he did catch up with her? Ask her where he was? He could imagine himself looking even crazier than everyone already thought he was.
He was getting ahead of himself. He thought he was doing a pretty good job of staying calm. Not that panicking would have helped anything. At least tracking the figure was giving him something to do, giving him some measure of forward momentum. The last thing he needed to do was stand in one place and think about things.
Just as he thought about continuous movement, he heard the screaming laughter again. This time it sounded really close. Now he stood in the clearing, ready to follow in the direction of the girl, but he stopped to see if he could find the source of that sound.
As he stood there, the sound seemed to move closer and closer to him, deafening. Not just deafening—piercing and painful, like it was punching holes in his equilibrium. From the middle of the clearing, he watched the trees spin around him. And every second, he caught a glimpse of the figure moving away from him. Farther and farther every time that part of his vision spun back around.
Unable to remain upright, he collapsed into the middle of the clearing with no idea what was happening to him.
