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  The muffled sound of voices set the fine hairs on the back of my neck on edge. Both were male, one deep and amused, one high pitched and frightened. I was willing to bet every cent in my bank account – fifty-seven dollars, to be exact – that the voices belonged to Travis and… well, whoever Giant Man really was.

  Ignoring the scream and pull in my muscles I slowly stood up, and, mimicking every mistake ever made by the dumb blonde in a horror movie, peeked inside the window.

  The man with the silver teeth leered at me, his face so close I could see each individual pore on his big ugly nose. “Hello love. Long time no see.”

  I should have been ready with some witty retort, or at the very least something intimidating to set him back on his heels and tell him I meant business. Instead I screamed.

  Giant Man’s mouth twisted into a sneer. His fangs glinted in the light, sharper and longer than what I remembered. “What? Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  Summoning every ounce of courage I possessed – which, if added up, I’m pretty sure wouldn’t total to much more than what was in my bank account – I kept my feet planted firmly underneath of me. This time I wasn’t running away. “Where is Travis?” I demanded. I tried to look past Giant Man, but his large body blocked the majority of the room. At least the window stood between us. To get at me he would have to come out the front door, and by then I would have a pretty good head start. Giant Man might have been huge, but I was willing to bet he wasn’t that fast.

  Unfortunately, my theory was disproved when he made a fist… and punched his hand through the window.

  I screamed again. Glass shattered. I felt shards of it catch in my hair and a bright, brilliant pain bloomed on the right side of my face. When I touched my cheek my fingers came away dark and slick and covered in blood.

  Giant Man was bleeding as well. It looked like someone had taken a vegetable peeler to his hand. The flesh between his knuckles was sliced away and my stomach rolled in horrified protest when I saw naked muscle stretching over bone.

  “TRAVIS!” I shrieked, ducking sideways when Giant Man swiped at my face with his bleeding fingers. “TRAVIS, WHERE ARE YOU?”

  “Lola?” His voice was faint, his reply muffled as though he was speaking through a wall.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but I never got the chance. Giant Man snagged the end of my braid. Pulling it taut, he whipped my head around and I slammed up against the side of the house. More glass fell, raining down on my shoulders. It crunched under my feet as I tried to run, but the grip on my hair was strong, and with an ugly laugh Giant Man gave a vicious yank that brought instant tears to my eyes.

  My temple banged off the edge of the windowsill. Dazed and disoriented I wobbled in place, fighting the urge to vomit down the front of my shirt.

  Movies make violence look simple. They make it look easy. When the hero gets punched in the jaw he might stumble, but he always gets back up. In real life, there is nothing simple or easy about pain. It hurts. It hurts so much I won’t waste time describing it because until you’ve been there, until you’ve felt the greasy slide of puke and blood backing up in your throat and the pain has numbed you all the way down to your toes, words are a waste.

  “Did you think you would get away so easily?” Giant Man’s breath fanned out across my cheek. His upper body and arms were stretched out of the window and his hand was still wrapped in my hair, but his grip had loosened. I swayed drunkenly on my feet, and he laughed. “Did you think you were special? Did you believe you would be spared? Foolish girl. No one will make it through the night.”

  It’s never good to underestimate your opponent. I had underestimated Giant Man, but he’d also underestimated me. I may have been small and I may have been weak, but I was also stupid. Stupid enough to snatch up a long, sharp fragment of glass and stab it right at the middle of his big ugly face.

  My makeshift weapon struck skin and deflected sideways, leaving a thin, shallow line of red in its wake. Giant Man howled and jerked back, clawing at his face with both hands.

  “Travis, I’ll come back for you!” I cried, hoping he could hear me, praying he could forgive me. I thought I heard him say something, but his reply was lost to the dull ringing in my ears. I shoved away from the window. Branches slapped at my face and arms as I fought my way through them, forging a new path out to the street. When the soles of my sneakers slapped hard pavement I stopped to catch my breath.

  I knew I wasn’t safe, but I couldn’t physically run until I got control of the terror. My breath came in fits and starts. Tears ran down my face, mixing with the blood that still dripped from the cut on my right cheekbone. Using the hem of my shirt I dabbed at the stinging wound. On some level I knew trying to clean a dirty cut with an equally dirty shirt wasn’t the most hygienic of solutions, but right now infection was the least of my worries.

  The slamming of a door had me jolting upright. Like a deer in the crosshairs I froze in place, every muscle tightening. I backed slowly into the street, more afraid of Giant Man than being run down by a car. Not that there were any cars. Or any people.

  Everything was empty. Everything was still.

  At least until the screams started.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I Play a Game of Horse Shoes

  All things considered, I was getting pretty good at running for my life. That’s something else they don’t really show enough of in horror movies. You want to survive the zombie apocalypse? Forget stocking up on food. Start jogging.

  The screams chased me.

  They seemed to come from every house I passed. Horrible, gut wrenching cries that begged for help, for mercy, for death. More doors slammed. Glass shattered. A baby wailed. I tried to shut out the noise but it rose up around me, a macabre symphony of the tortured.

  I expected people to spill out onto the streets, but whatever gruesome fate they were suffering it seemed to be occurring strictly inside their houses.

  So I ran. I pointed myself in the direction of the apartment complex and I ran like my very life depended on it, which, all things considered, it probably did.

  I didn’t know what was happening, or why. All I knew is my brain was screaming RUN HOME, a basic instinct every animal recognizes when it’s threatened.

  I veered off the street. It felt too open. Too exposed. I went through backyards instead, clinging to the shadows as I ducked under clotheslines and crawled over fences, skinning my knees and ripping my hands apart with splinters.

  I didn’t feel pain. I tucked it away in some dark, dusty corner of my mind along with the fear and the mind numbing terror. I only had one goal now. One thought. One reason to keep going.

  Get home. Get Dad. Get Travis.

  I was halfway across a neatly manicured yard when bright floodlights, the kind meant to make robbers piss their pants, kicked on. I didn’t think, I just dove.

  The hedge of bushes didn’t provide a very soft landing, but it beat being seen. With a soft grunt of effort I turned around so I could peer out through the twisted thicket of branches and diamond shaped leaves, my gaze trained on the rectangular cookie cutter porch. I ignored the plastic toys scattered haphazardly across the lawn. I didn’t want to think of children being trapped in the house of horrors, and so I locked them in a corner too.

  A woman dressed in red burst out the back door, her hair a wild tangle of honey blonde, her eyes so wide I could see they were brown even from where I cowered in the bushes.

  She skidded down the steps and went sprinting across the lawn. From my hiding spot I silently cheered her on. If someone else could make then I could make it. I wouldn’t be the only one running from the monsters in the dark labyrinth of suburbia.

  But fate is a bitch, and the woman tripped over one of her own kid’s toys and went crashing to the ground.

  I was halfway out of the hedge, ready to run out and help her, when I saw she wasn’t alone.

  Something had chased her out of the house. Something fast. Something dangerous. It prowled aro
und the edges of the light as the woman struggled to her feet and stumbled towards a wooden gate at the edge of the lawn. I could see the hope in her face. She thought she’d made it. She thought she was free.

  The thing chasing her loped forward with a casual grace. The woman spun. Her fingers slipped off the gate latch. Her shoulders sagged.

  “No,” she whispered brokenly. “No, please no, my kids, please my little girl—”

  Her captor stepped into the light. My breath caught in my throat. Of all the things I’d been expecting, I never imagined the monsters would look like this.

  The thing that stalked the woman was human yet not human. A girl yet not a girl. She could have gone to my high school. Her hair, brown and sleek and swept over one shoulder, was normal. Small gold hoops caught the light and sparkled at her ears. Her blue jeans and black t-shirt could have been worn by any teenager the world over, but her piercing blue eyes… and the blood that dribbled down her chin… that was about as far from normal as you could get.

  “Stop begging,” she said, cutting the woman off. “You know I hate it when you beg. It is so very tedious.”

  “Why are you doing this?” the woman cried.

  Shut up, I ordered from the bushes. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

  Unfortunately, while it seemed crazy psycho people were a thing now, telepathy still wasn’t. The woman kept blubbering until, without warning, the girl grabbed her wrist and swung her around like a rag doll. The woman hit the gate and crumpled to the ground. This time she didn’t get back up.

  And I saw, I saw even when I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my mouth to keep myself from crying out, that the woman who’d begged for her life and the lives of her children wasn’t wearing red clothes. She was wearing clothes soaked in blood.

  The girl sighed and perched a hand on her hip. Her fingers were long and elegant and painted deep, dark red at the tips. “I told you to stop. Now look what you’ve made me do. Stupid human.” She kicked her fallen prey and started to walk back towards the house. Halfway to the porch she paused. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air.

  Have you ever been so scared you were in danger of peeing your pants? I never have. At least, not until that very moment. I clenched my thighs together and bit down hard on my bottom lip as my bladder filled. The girl’s head swung towards me. Her eyes, so bright they seemed to glow, traveled leisurely back and forth across my hiding spot.

  “I smell you little human,” she said in a singsong voice. “You smell like sugar and spice and something quite nice.”

  My right foot was cramping up. I flexed my toes, fighting off the pins and needles. The tiny movement nearly made me lose my balance. I wavered to the right and managed to catch myself. My fingers touched something hard. Something metal. Slowly, silently, I lifted the metal object up and held it to my chest. It was a horseshoe. The big, heavy kind people threw in sand pits during barbeques. No, not a horseshoe.

  A weapon.

  “I want to play a game.” The girl’s gaze flicked across the lawn to where the woman remained in a heap of blood and twisted limbs. “But I’ve broken my toy. Come out, come out, wherever you are.” Her teeth flashed white and silver as she smiled. “I promise to be much more careful with you.”

  I would only have one chance. One chance to defend myself. One chance to save my life. The yard wasn’t that big. It was only a matter of time until I was discovered. I waited until the girl turned away, and then I attacked.

  With more desperation than finesse I launched myself at her legs, catching her just below the knees. She went down instantly and I fell with her, the horseshoe clutched in my right hand. I didn’t give myself time to think. I’d heard the screams. I’d witnessed the horror. Right now it was kill or be killed, and I had no intention of dying.

  I swung the horseshoe violently, striking the back of her head again and again until blood splattered up and covered my face and neck in a spray of warm, sticky red. The girl snarled and clawed at the ground, twisting this way and that until she finally managed to dislodge me enough to flip onto her back.

  Her hand struck with lightening quickness, leaving five burning marks across my cheek courtesy of her nails. The scratches burned like someone had poured acid in them and I screamed, but I didn’t stop wielding the horseshoe. I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted. Instinct had taken over and I was more animal than human as I fought for my life.

  Beneath the blunt force of the horseshoe her nose shattered, then her jaw. Her blue eyes bulged and I jammed my thumb into the left one, just like Mrs. Hamilton had taught us to do in self-defense. Who knew those boring classes I’d slept through half the time would actually come in handy? There’s a lesson for you, kids. Be cool, pay attention in school. Even if it’s gym.

  The girl wailed and bucked her hips, trying to throw me off. “I will kill you for this,” she hissed, glaring daggers at me with her one good eye. Her face was almost unrecognizable, the skin swollen and distorted. Her teeth snapped an inch from my face and caught my hair. She ripped a chunk of it out by the roots and spat in the grass.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I kept repeating the same words over and over, not realizing I was sobbing until I tasted the bitter salt of my own tears. I brought the horseshoe down again. And again. And again. So many times I lost count, and in that moment of sheer violence and madness I lost track of who was the victim… and who was the monster.

  When the girl went limp beneath me and her head fell back, mouth open, eyes closed, I flung the horseshoe to the side and staggered to my feet.

  Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I took a deep, shuddering breath, ready to flee, but something stopped me. Something pulled at me.

  I stared down at the girl I had beaten with a kind of horrified fascination. With her mouth open I could see her fangs. Like the man’s they were silver, slightly curved and dagger sharp.

  Slowly I knelt beside her head and reached out with one trembling hand. If I could just touch the fangs… If I could just feel them… They really were quite beautiful. The way they glistened in the moonlight… It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

  My finger brushed against one fang and it happened in an instant. One second the girl was motionless and the next she had her teeth clamped down on my hand and was shaking her head back and forth with the savagery of a wild dog ripping out the throat of its prey.

  I screamed and fell back. She released my hand and I clutched it to my chest, expecting to see it ravaged beyond repair, but the only visible damage were two small pinpricks of blood between my thumb and pointer finger where her fangs had pierced the skin. Yet it burned. Oh, God, my entire arm was burning and I was screaming and the girl was laughing.

  She sprang to her feet, nimble as a cat, and circled me as I rolled in the grass, frantically to trying to put out the invisible fire that was consuming my body inch by inch.

  “Peek-a-boo, I got you,” she cooed before her lips curled into a deadly snarl and she crouched over me, slamming her hands to the ground on either side of my head.

  Half out of my mind with pain I stared up at her. I saw her blue eyes, both of them open wide and glittering with malice. I saw her nose, straight and unbroken. I saw her face, healed to perfection.

  And I knew I was going to die.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Pet That Ran Away

  You know how they say right before you die your life flashes before your eyes and you see a bright light and everything is all happiness and rainbows and floating unicorns? Yeah. That didn’t happen to me.

  Instead I held perfectly still as the girl traced a single fingernail down across my cheek and hooked it under my jaw, poking until I felt a drop of blood slide down my neck. She poked again, harder this time, puncturing another hole in my skin as though I was some sort of human piñata and my blood was the candy.

  “Aren’t you going to scream?” Her lips pushed out in a childish pout and she tipped her head to the side. Her hair slid across her ne
ck, a sleek curtain of silky brown. “The other one screamed. You’re no fun.” Another poke. Another drop of blood drawn. “You’re no fun at all. I want a new toy.”

  If the bitch thought I was here for her own amusement she had another thing coming. I may not have known what the hell was going on, but I wasn’t about to lay here and let myself be turned into a pincushion by someone who deserved her own special on Dr. Phil.

  The fiery pain emanating from my hand had subsided to a dull burn. I slapped her arm, a feeble attempt to defend myself compared to the hits I’d gotten in with the horseshoe, but the girl let me get up, renewed interest glittering in her icy blue eyes.

  “I am not a toy,” I said. “And you can’t go around killing people!” Without meaning to I glanced at the woman by the gate. The woman who had not gotten up. The woman who was definitely dead. “Well, you shouldn’t go around killing people,” I amended. “The police will be here soon and—”

  “Oh don’t get me started on the police.” The girl waved her hand dismissively. “We took care of them ages ago.”

  I thought of my 9-1-1 calls, and I knew she was telling the truth. “Who are you?” I whispered. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

  “Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this?” the girl mocked in a high-pitched parody of my own voice. She rolled her eyes, the gesture so purely teenager I almost forgot, just for a second, that she was a crazy murdering psychopath. “Always the same dull, inane questions. Stupid humans,” she breathed as she began to circle around me. “So content in your little bubbles. So assured of your own dominance. Did you really think you were top of the food chain? That in this big, bad world there was nothing bigger and badder than you? Well I am sorry to say your little bubble” – she snapped her fingers an inch in front of my face – “has just been popped.”

  I twisted my head to the side. “What’s your name?”