The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,63

little girl in his arms, doing something unspeakable to her. She couldn’t picture that part clearly, but she imagined it was Korey. She imagined it was Blue. She imagined the police would be a while.

“Do you have a flashlight?” she asked Wanda.

CHAPTER 17

Patricia went down the shaky front steps with a silver Boy Scout flashlight in one hand. Mrs. Greene stood in the doorway.

“I’m just going to look around the back of the trailer,” Patricia said, but Mrs. Greene had already closed and locked the front door. Patricia heard her slide the chain into place.

All over Six Mile she heard the hum of air conditioners. The woods around her were a tornado of screaming insects. Every breath felt like it came through a towel soaked in warm water. She made her legs move, taking her around the dark corner of the trailer.

She clicked on the flashlight and played it over the big wooden spool, as if she might see an incriminating footprint outlined in black ink on its top. She shined her light down on the sandy soil and saw indentations and shadows and lumps but didn’t know what any of them meant. She straightened and shined her light at the woods.

The pale yellow beam played over pine trees. They were spaced pretty far apart and she realized she could walk along the edge of them and still keep an eye on the trailer. Before she could think better of it she stepped around the first one, then the second, the flashlight beaming a lamplight circle on the ground in front of her, leading her into the woods step by step, as the screaming insects closed in around her.

Something grabbed her foot and yanked and her heart flooded with cold water before she saw that she’d snagged it on a rusty wire stretched along the ground. She looked back behind her, feeling confident, but the lit windows of the houses were farther away than she’d expected. She wondered if the police had arrived but knew she’d see their blue lights if they had.

The smell of warm sap surrounded her, and pine needles were thick underfoot. She knew this was the last moment when she could turn back. If she kept walking forward she wouldn’t be able to see the lit windows at all anymore and then she was going to be out here alone with James Harris.

Hang on, Destiny, she thought as she started walking deeper into the woods. I’m coming.

With the flashlight beam bouncing before her, she concentrated on each tree trunk, not the entire dark mass of them crowding around and behind her. She went carefully, not wanting to step in a hole, conscious of the loud crashing sounds her body made as she brushed through the branches, bushes, and vines.

Something that wasn’t her rustled to the right. She froze and clicked off her flashlight so it wouldn’t give her away. The night rushed in around her. She strained to listen over the sound of blood throbbing in her ears. Her pulse thumped in her wrists. Her breath rasped in her nose. Then she realized: the insects had stopped screaming.

Blobs of dark color flashed across her vision. She heard something scurry through the trees, and suddenly the thought of standing still panicked her, and she needed to move, but without the flashlight she couldn’t see her way forward so she clicked it back on and the trees and pine needles on the ground materialized in front of her again.

She moved fast, flashlight pointed down, looking for a little girl’s leg clad in denim sticking out from behind a pine tree. Mixed in with the sound of her breath and her heartbeat and her pulse she heard things groaning in the trees all around her; any minute a big hand would settle on the back of her neck. Her pounding heart pulled her forward.

She should turn around and go home. She was nothing but a tiny speck in the forest. She was a fool to think she’d somehow stumble across Destiny Taylor this way, and what was she going to say when she saw James Harris? Was she going to knock him over the head with her little flashlight? She needed to go back.

Then