Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Drake, who was busy on his bicep, retreats, gives the skin a lick, then presses his fingers to his own lips. “Got it,” he says through his fingertips. “Trial run: a success. Future blood boy session approved. Date and time, yet to be determined.”
Elias is too out of breath to answer, turns to Kyle, his eyes full of questions, confusion—and desire. All the struggles they had recently, walking the fine lines of safety and danger, to have biting and blood in the bedroom, or favor more classical sex …
Suddenly all of it seems possible.
Then a hint of a smile touches Elias’s lips as he continues to look into Kyle’s eyes. They are, both of them, at peace … a peace for which they’ve been long searching.
That’s when the basement door flies open again, and Cade comes scurrying halfway down the steps. “Guys, guys, I think I found it, I found something useful!” From upstairs, Layna calls out: “I’m the one who found it!” Cade grins. “My daughter found it. In the book. Right away, oddly enough … like it was waiting for her. We just need to secure a few things before nightfall.”
Elias refocuses at once, smoothing out his tank top. “What things? I can go out and get them.”
“I’ll come with,” Cade insists. “We need to surround all of Nowhere with a line of salt. Like a big, big circle.”
Kyle lifts his eyebrows. “That’s a fuck lot of salt.”
“And I think we’re gonna need to move all of this upstairs,” she adds with a gesture at the table. “We need full, unfettered access to the wind. Actual wind.”
“This town’s not in any short supply of that,” says Elias.
“Can you help me? Sorry, Kyle,” she then says, “but it’s a particularly hot and sunny day, and … and I don’t think …”
“I understand,” Kyle assures her, feeling helpless suddenly.
“Get your rest, though. Both of you guys,” she adds with a glance back at Drake. “We’ll surely need you when it’s night. If we want to do this,” she then says to Elias, “we’ve gotta go now. It’s a whole shopping list of things we need to do.”
“Got it,” says Elias.
Cade nods. “I’ll send Jeremy down to help bring up all this stuff.” Then she hesitates as she seems to just now realize the three of them are all gathered at the foot of the stairs. “Did I … interrupt something?”
“No,” state Kyle, Elias, and Drake all at once.
Cade blinks. “Okay.” And with that, she heads up the stairs.
Elias follows her partway, comes to a stop, then turns back to Kyle. “Stay safe down here, alright?” He glances at Drake, then surprisingly adds, “You too.”
Drake gives a thumbs up. Kyle nods. “Will do.”
Then Elias is out of the basement. Kyle lingers at the foot of the stairs for a while, lets out a sigh, then goes to the table to start cleaning things up for easy transport. Drake soon joins his efforts, putting things into bags and storing away items.
An hour later, the table is empty, and Kyle and Drake are back on the floor, sitting with a foot of distance between them, heads and backs leaned against the wall, trying to sleep.
Another hour, Kyle is lying down alone while Drake slowly paces the room. The floorboards above creak under footsteps as a muffled discussion goes on between Chief Rojas and Leland, who apparently got a “cryptic text” and came by to see if he can help with “whatever weird stuff” is going on. He is clearly out of the loop, and Chief Rojas does not intend to bring anyone else into it, not wanting to start a panic in the town.
In and out of sleep Kyle drifts. One moment, Drake is near him sleeping. The next, he’s sitting in the middle of the room and the fold-out table has been taken upstairs. Then Kyle has no idea what’s going on as he turns to face the wall, eyes closed.
But even down here, beneath the feet of his friends, Kyle’s sensitive ears pick up a lot. “You don’t have to stay,” says Chief Rojas somewhere above. “You aren’t from here, got no ties to this town. Why don’t you call your folks? I can get you a bus.” “No,” comes Mikey’s voice, soft despite its deepness. “I can’t be out there on my own, not even on a bus. Second the sun goes down, I’ll be found, he’s gonna come for me.” “I’ll have you escorted home,” says the chief. Mikey isn’t having it. “Salazo’s eyes are in my dreams, his ugly eyes. You can send ten officers to escort me, it wouldn’t be enough, they’d all turn up dead.”
The words stick with Kyle, even if he wasn’t truly listening.
Salazo’s big ugly eyes. Haunting Mikey.
Kyle keeps thinking of a grin—a twisted, scary grin on the most beautiful, porcelain face, turning every pretty child’s doll in the world into a piece of the nightmare. La-La’s grin. And the length of that sharp, curved blade he brandished so easily, ready for it to slice through air, slice through flesh, through any of Kyle’s bones that stood in the way, just for fun.