Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 35 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

“I think I’m blind,” she muttered thickly. It seemed the most important thing to say.

“Open your eyes.”

She did, and miracle of miracles, she could see again. The world was too bright. She shut it off again.

“Do you do that to every girl?” she asked.

“No. I am unfortunately limited to those who mate with me,” he replied. “And no, I do not. It is a considerable advantage that you are one half the weight of my usual partners.” He eyed her for a moment, smiling, and then nipped carefully at her throat. “Tell me,” he said, his voice a growl against her tingling flesh. “Did I please you, my alien? Tell me what you feel.”

“I feel like I exploded and got put back together again in the wrong order.”

“Thank you.” He set her on her feet, solicitously holding her arm until she steadied. “Now I will take you upstairs,” he said, “and make love to you.”

She staggered back, her jaw dropping, and caught a teasing gleam in his eye. “You’re joking,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered. “I am. Please prepare us something to eat. I am going to sit before I fall down. You,” he said, lowering himself into the sofa cushions, “burn in my blood, Daria Cleavon. I will be ashes when I return. I will never be able to feel again.”

If there were more perfect words with which to follow such lovemaking, she had never heard them. Daria walked in to fix a couple of sandwiches on a cushion of air.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Can I ask you something?” Sue-Eye said.

Kane glanced briefly at her reflection in the monitor of his computer before focusing once more on the information it displayed. That brief look was enough to tell him to expect trouble. She was curled up at the head of the bed and watching him with her hungry, cunning look, the one she thought was so well-hidden and which could be seen even in the dark, dim eye of his computer’s screen. He could feel his temper simmering already.

“Kane?”

He growled a warning at her without interrupting the rapid typing of his fingers. The last two vials of raw dopamine were cycling now and he was readying the formula that would turn it into concentrated Vahst. It was a thing he had done ten thousand times and it still required all his attention. Even if it did not, he wasn’t inclined to sit and chat with his ichuta’a. He was still pissed at her for fighting with Raven. Yes, Raven had admitted to throwing the first cuff, but he’d bet his own blood that Sue-Eye had provoked her. He’d never met such an aggravating human.

Sue-Eye, stubbornly untrained in spite of all the cuffs and cues he’d given her, asked her fool question again. Kane gazed into the computer monitor, his talons flexing ominous and unseen below the table. He wondered if his father had ever had slaves like this. He’d admit he’d caused his full share of trouble in the raising, but even as a boy, he’d known better than to interrupt Uraktus when he was working or pick a fight on a hunt.

‘Ha!’ Urak’s voice growled up wryly from the back of Kane’s mind. ‘If I’d had another boy, you’d have picked a fight on every hunt. The only thing you knew better than to do was pick a full-grown crewman to fight with.’

Well…maybe. But his ichuta’a still pissed him off.

“Kane?”

He was going to beat her until her hair bled.

“He’s busy,” he heard Raven whisper.

Silence then, allowing Kane to concentrate, gently coaxing numbers up and around, until he had the winning combination. He began to draw on chemicals, adding to the mix that circulated in the analyzer, and finally initiating the program to extract and refine. The hunt in the woods had been a good one for Vahst. Not many humans, but all of them rutting like wild animals. He took away six full vials of dopamine, which worked out to three of concentrated Vahst, but only enough of the human money for this night in the motel and maybe two meals. Kane didn’t mind going hungry a day, but Raven…the heat had done her a sinister turn. He’d sent Sue-Eye against her twice, and she still didn’t look recovered.

Sue-Eye. Who was even now glaring at the back of him and waiting for his attention just as though she had a right to it. Kane found himself thinking sourly of the drug-addled little female he’d had in the woods. Friendly little thing. Nothing in her blood but the poisons she’d been taking. Easily the worst fuck-mate he’d ever personally experienced, but enthusiastic enough, gods knew. Damn it all, he should have traded up when he had the chance.

“Kane?” Sue-Eye again. She’d seen he wasn’t actively typing anymore and was back to pestering him.

He shoved his chair back and faced the bed where his unruly ichuta’a waited. “When I want you,” he said curtly, “I’ll come and get you. When I don’t, it’s best for you if you stayed out of my way.”

She got that thin, frustrated look that meant she was cross with him, and Kane leaned his head back, feeling the slow simmer of anger unspool inside him. She was a hard little human, the kind who could close her mind away from random pains and never learn a thing by them. He’d broken ones like her before, but unfortunately, it was all too easy to break their bodies before their spirits.

“Ask your question,” he said at last. He hoped it was a stupid one, one that would allow him to give her the beating his hands itched to give.

“What is that stuff you’re making?”

“The name would mean nothing to you,” he said.

“Raven says it’s a drug.”

“If you knew, why did you ask?” Kane strolled to the bedside and touched the tip of one claw to her brow, freezing her in place as effectively as a cryo-sleeper. He pressed, dimpling the skin and then cutting through it, and watched a bead of blood form under the curve of his claw. “Do you think I enjoy interruptions?”

A trickle of red etched its way slowly down the hollow of her underbrow, around her eyes, and then down her cheek like a crimson tear.

She was perfectly motionless.

Kane cocked his head to one side. “Do you think I ask questions that I don’t want answered?” he asked, steel in his voice. He drew his claw down, cutting through the strip of hair above her eye and stopping again just above the softness of her eyelid.

“No,” she whispered.

He could always count on a threat to her eyes to get her cooperation. He was beginning to suspect she’d been injured there before, and maybe only had one good one. If he knew for sure which it was, he’d concentrate on targeting just it, and maybe then she’d train up for him.

“Do you think I enjoy interruptions?” he asked again, playing at patience.

“No.”

“Then, and again you force me to repeat myself, if you knew what I was making, why did you ask?”

“Raven only told me it was drugs. I didn’t know what it was.”

She was starting to sweat from the effort of holding so still.

Kane took his claw away and put it to her lips. He waited, and after a few seconds, she opened her mouth to suck her blood from his claw. “It’s a drug,” he said, feeling her tongue swirl cautiously around his finger. It was an agreeable sensation, like the look of that red tear below her unblinking eye. “What difference would it make if you knew the name of it?”

“None,” she said.

“Then don’t ask stupid questions.”

“I wanted to help.”

“Did you?” Kane returned to his chair and sat down, crossing one ankle over the other as he stretched out. “And how did you think to do that? Did you think if you knew the name, you’d suddenly know how to make it?”

“I know it’s made from people,” Sue-Eye said. She still hadn’t reached up to wipe away the blood he’d drawn. “And I know you’ve got a lot of empty bottles.”

Kane considered her, his stalking smile gradually fading. “What did you have in mind?” he asked at last.

“To help you find good places to hunt,” she said. Her eyes slipped away from his for the first time, towards Raven. “Humans know where humans go,” she said. “We could be helping you hunt faster.”

There was a great deal of emphasis in her words, not enough to be open accusation, but enough to send Kane’s gaze inquiringly toward his Raven.

The barb in Sue-Eye’s remarks wasn’t escaping anyone’s notice, it seemed. Raven frowned and drew her knees up before her like a shield. “He knows what he’s doing,” she said. “If he wanted my help, he’d ask for it.”

Kane looked back at Sue-Eye. He was not smiling at all now.

“It’s not your fault,” Sue-Eye told Raven. She returned her gaze to Kane. “I’ve been a bitch a lot longer than her. I know how it’s done. I know it’s our job to anticipate.”

Raven did just fine anticipating the things that mattered, but Kane refused to say so. He wasn’t going to defend a human and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to argue with one.

His cold and silent stare seemed to unsteady Sue-Eye. She dropped her gaze, curling onto her hands and knees in a submissive posture. “The haul you got at Charlie’s was a good one,” she said. “I can help you find another one just as good. One where you can kill easy and no one will interrupt you. If you want to know, just ask me.”

She clearly thought she was being discreet, but Kane recognized a slave shifting for leverage when he saw it. Her invitation was no more or less than a crudely-disguised bid for power, and he didn’t like the way she’d maneuvered Raven into the conversation first. A pretense that artful deserved a second thinking-over. His ichuta’a was more than merely irritating, it would seem. She was dangerous, or she thought she was, and it amounted to the same thing, really.

“What are you wanting in exchange?” Kane asked, his voice no more than a growl. His hands, clasped until now behind his head in a posture of indulgence, silently unlocked and curled into killing claws.

“I only want to make you happy. If I please you, you’ll let me live.”

It was a good answer. In fact, by accident or by devious design, it was the only answer she could have given that would have saved her from an immediate and very difficult death. Kane continued to stare her down and she continued to kneel without meeting his eyes. He shifted his gaze to Raven, and she was frowning back at him, searching his face with a clear, if silent, demand to know if he was really stupid enough to believe her. Sue-Eye, the perfect example of acquiescence. Raven, the very picture of defiance.

But the empty vials in his chemist’s pack had a way of drawing his eye, too, and that was the image he allowed to persuade him. He was not convinced, but he allowed himself to be placated.

“All right then.” Kane turned away from both his humans and found his human footcovers. “Clean your face and get dressed. If you want to hunt, ichuta’a…let’s hunt.”

*

Tammy Trent stood in the claustrophobic box office at the Hillmark MoviePlex with her finger on the Close Out button, waiting out the last five minutes of her shift. It had been a long one. She’d come on at five and it was now eleven, which didn’t seem so long just by the numbers, but when you added in the heat and the boredom, then it was plenty.

Ideally, the night crew had to have at least one person at each station until twenty minutes after the last show started, but the candy girl had already gone home for the night because she was a lazy bitch. And there was no point in complaining to the night supervisor about it, because he’d gone home with the candy girl.

Oh well. It wouldn’t be the first time Tammy had closed up shop all by herself, and anyway, she wasn’t completely all by herself. There was Gavin, the projectionist, upstairs keeping all four films running smoothly for the benefit of all fifty-eight of their current patrons.

The MoviePlex always ran three new releases and a retread. The new releases all sucked: Big Man on Campus, the latest college-crowd pleaser, was nothing but a music video with poop jokes so god-awful that not even the copious amounts of bare tits and pantied asses could coax people in to look at it with any great success. Eternal Night was some serial-killer-in-space thing, full of aliens and tentacles and explosions and more bare tits and pantied asses, except of course, that the panties were shinier and more space-age. Finally, there was Take it to the Street, which was yet another gang-boy-becomes-rap-star thing, full of swearing and sex and drugs and shootings, and completely oblivious to the fact that there were no black people in Hillmark (that Tammy knew of), and certainly there were no ghettos (the half-dozen rundown trailer parks filled with filthy children, drunken adults, and half-feral dogs, for some reason, did not count), so naturally, it was tanking big time. This week’s retread was Raiders of the Lost Ark, and more than half of the night’s crowd was in there, watching Indiana Jones leap around like a little girl at the sight of snakes.

In the olden days, Gavin told her, movies wouldn’t even start unless there were at least ten people in watching them. Nowadays, the movie ran even if the auditorium was empty. He called it a huge waste of time and money. Tammy didn’t really care. The only thing she really cared about right now was ticking down those last five, no, four more minutes until she was done for the night and out of this stuffy old box.

There was a fan in the box office with her, an ancient rotary with ribbons and rubber bands tied to the grate so the breeze would be pretty as well as soothing, but it didn’t really do much more than push the heat back a little. In the evenings, the sun bored down right through the glass and turned Tammy’s room into an oven. After six hours in that roasting pan, Tammy could almost smell cooked pork instead of just sweat. She couldn’t wait to get out of here and go upstairs were it was only muggy instead of openly boiling. Maybe on the way home, Gavin would stop and get her a milkshake or something. The McDonald’s in Kimsey was open all night. He might tease her about it a little bit, but she bet if she offered to let him have some (maybe served up in dribbles over her boobs) he’d buy it for her.

“Excuse me.”

Tammy looked up from her dreamy-eyed trance, staring at her computer screen and thinking of milkshakes, and wouldn’t you just know it? Customers.

There were three of them. The one at the window was a girl maybe Tammy’s age, just out of school, in other words, but there was no way she was a local. She had hair the color of a supermarket eggplant, with two white strips on either side of her face. Her eyebrows and her ears were pierced, and Tammy could see some suspicious bumps under the thin cotton t-shirt she wore that looked like her boobs were pierced, too. She looked nice enough, Tammy supposed, but a girl who would get pierced like that would probably pierce other things, too, and there was only one thing a girl like that would ever be good for. Everybody knew that.

The other two were just as south-bound, in Tammy’s opinion, if not as open about it as the purple-haired girl. There was another girl, a lot older than the pierced one, with straw-blonde hair just growing in dark, who looked like she’d be right at home on the back of one of the choppers that occasionally rolled through in the summertime. The tall man who stood with her looking over the coming attractions posters didn’t look much like a biker, but he did look kind of creepy. Long black coat open to his bare chest, wide-brimmed hat hiding most of his face, hands in his pockets…if he pulled a machete out of thin air right now, he’d make a damn good slasher killer for one of the teenybopper movies.

All of these thoughts passed serenely through Tammy’s head in the time it would take to blink an eye and none of them showed on her face. She was small-town born and bred, and she would be both surprised and hurt if anyone were to indicate she was at all judgmental. She’d been a chubby child and a fat teenager, and she believed that it had made her one of the most tolerant people in the whole world. She would never have told the three people before her that they were going to Hell. They probably got enough of that sort of thing from snotty church people all the time. Tammy was nice. Tammy just smiled and said, “Welcome to MoviePlex, how can I help you?”

The purple-haired girl looked up at the show times panels and bit her lip.

“Everything’s started,” Tammy said helpfully. “But Eternal Night started the soonest ago. It’s all about killer aliens and stuff. Do you like science-fiction?”

Both girls turned at the same time and looked at the man. He continued to inspect the movie posters. Pierced-Girl turned back to Tammy. “Can we have three for that one, please?”

Tammy rang them up, tore their tickets, and sent them in. The tall man glanced at her as he walked by. He smiled.

A chill crawled up Tammy’s spine and she felt her hair trying to prickle and stand up. His eyes beneath the wide-brimmed hat he wore looked like holes burned in a blanket. It was an awful look, one that, just for a second, didn’t even make him look human. She didn’t breathe easy again until he’d gone all the way in and the door shut behind him.

Tammy took several breaths, scolding herself silently for getting goosy over something as stupid as a guy’s eyes, even eyes as awful as his. He’d been smiling, hadn’t he? She watched from the box office to see if they were going to want candy or something, because it would mean her having to go out and get it, but they went right on in without even looking at the concessions counter. She hit the Close Out key and popped the till out of her drawer. Her monitor went dark, the ticket printer silenced, and she got ready to go.

She left the box silent behind her and walked her money quickly across the lobby to the cash office. The night supervisor had given her the key, as he usually did on the nights he went home with that lazy-bitch candy girl, and Tammy let herself in. The safe was open, stacks of money in plain sight, but there were cameras here to keep her honest, and even if there hadn’t been, Tammy would have been honest anyway. Tammy was a church-goer.

With the day’s tickets bagged out and the money locked up, Tammy signed out for the night and finally went upstairs. The sound of explosions, barking dogs, screams, and the full orchestration of Indiana Jones enveloped her at once. Gavin really cranked up the Dolby at night; it was when all the kids came out and kids liked noise. Besides, it masked any thumping around they might make. There was an old couch in the open corner that the employees called a ‘lunch room’ and if anybody knew how many times Tammy had been on it with her hand down Gavin’s pants, no one would ever be able to eat there again.

Tammy giggled at the thought, her mood lightening a little. Gavin didn’t mind driving her home if she fooled around with him first, and he said he liked big girls. He liked her big boobs anyway, and she knew she liked his…his thing. She’d been a virgin when she’d met him—a two-hundred pound virgin who always knew she’d stay a virgin and told herself she didn’t care because anything else was sinful—but he fixed that for her. He was old and he smelled like cigarettes, but the feel of his beard scratching at her body and that sliding, slippery hard-on stuck in her was better than anything she could do herself. Sometimes it felt so good, she actually peed herself a little or something. She loved when that happened. She loved him when that happened, but he didn’t like her to say so. And anyway, only snotty old churchies really believed that things like that were sinful.

“Hey, baby,” she called, reaching the top of the stairs.

“Hey.” Gavin was bent by the reels, his scruffy grey hair hiding his face as he made some last-minute splice. He finished whatever he was doing (the job of projectionist was as foreign and as specialist to Tammy’s mind as that of neural surgeon) and then looked up at her. “Going home?”

“Thought I might hang out here for a while.” Tammy plucked at the clip-on bowtie that the theatre made her wear and smiled at him, blushing.

Gavin grinned briefly and slid off his high stool. “Thought so, huh? Go sit down, baby, I’ll be with you in a sec.”

Tammy went to the weathered old couch, shrugging out of her vest on the way, but not her shirt. Gavin liked her boobs, but she hated to be even a little naked in front of him. There wasn’t much light up here, but there was enough to see her fat. Besides, he liked to take her shirt off himself.

Gavin checked the films, loaded a reel for Indiana Jones, and came back to her. His hand went up her shirt almost the same instant his ass touched the sagging cushions and Tammy got the giggles again.

“Don’t be so quick,” she said, pushing playfully at his arm.

“Aw, come on, don’t be so frigid.” Gavin pawed at her through her bra and then started unhooking it. “Why do you got to wear such complicated shit?” he grumbled.

Tammy tried to kiss him and Gavin stuck his tongue all the way down her throat, which was gross. She pulled back and he opened up her shirt and started sucking at her boob, kneading and rubbing the other one.

“Come on,” he panted. “Come on, come on. Touch it already.”

Tammy put her hand on his crotch and felt the solid lump pushing out the front of his jeans. Touching it made her feel that shivery spike in her own…place. She wriggled on the couch cushions, petting him nervously. She knew he’d put it in her, but there was always this excitement, the newness and wrongness of it, that made her hesitate. That was okay. Gavin seemed to like pushing her into it every time.

“Yeah, that’s it, that’s it, baby. Come on, get your hand in there.”

Shaking a little, Tammy unzipped his jeans and slid her hand under the waist of his shorts. She gripped his thing, feeling it hot and rubbery, and he groaned and sucked harder at her boobs.

They petted like that for a while, Tammy getting hotter and hotter while Gavin’s hands got rougher and his thing got harder. Soon, he’d put it in her and maybe that shivery pee would happen. Maybe it wouldn’t, but it would still feel nice.

Gavin’s watch beeped and he groaned and got up. Holding his jeans up with one hand, his thing poking out over the open zipper, he went off to change a reel and check the other screens. Tammy waited for him, twisting her hands in the open folds of her shirt. She was flushed and breathing hard, but it was a great feeling all the same. Like being sexy and pretty and thin, all the things she’d never been and never would be. (It hadn’t yet occurred to Tammy that ‘fooling around’ five nights a week was a better workout than she’d ever stuck to before and that thinking about the things they did in the projectionist’s bay had replaced most, if not entirely all, of her daily snacks. She’d lost twenty pounds so far, and if she ever got around to noticing it, she might realize that she was at least beginning to be a little sexy for real.)

When Gavin came back, he didn’t sit down. He got up close to the sofa, pushing his jeans down to his knees, and said, “Come on, baby.”

Tammy’s excitement curdled slightly. “No. Come on. I don’t want to.”

“Come on, just do it. Don’t be such a fucking cow.”

Tammy’s eyes and stomach dropped. She tugged her shirt over her hanging boob, the heat in her cheeks turning ugly. “No,” she mumbled.

“Hey, don’t do that. Baby, I’m just playing, you know me.” He shook her shoulder as though he were waking her up from a nap but he didn’t look like he was playing, not at all. “Just do it,” he whined. “You might like it. Most girls do. Come on! You do it for me and I’ll do it for you.”

His thing jutted, swollen and purple, right in front of her face. It smelled sweaty and gross.

“Come on, I thought you were a fun girl,” he said, looking frustrated.

She knew that look. He was close to just stomping off, letting her walk down to the bus station by herself and that would be it for the night. This was a fight they’d had before, and Tammy didn’t know how many times they could keep having it before he gave up on her for real. The thought was more terrible than she could stand.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “But you can’t, you know, in my mouth. Promise you’ll take it out.”

“Girls like that!” he insisted.

“Promise, or I’m not doing it!”

“Okay, fine. Jesus. Just do it!”

After several false starts, Tammy opened her mouth and queasily licked at the knobby head of his thing. It tasted like sucking on a sweaty hand. She tried to make a face and back off, but Gavin grabbed her head and pushed it all the way in. She gagged and he pulled back, but soon he was pushing it in again.

It was gross. That was all there was for Tammy, but he was groaning like it was the best thing in the world. Tammy didn’t have to do much, just suck at him a little, and she did, hating it but knowing he would put it in her pretty soon and then it would be worth it.

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, baby, oh that’s great. Suck it, baby.”

Her cheeks flamed. None of the books she read—books with names like Forbidden Desires and Highland Rogue—ever had men say things like that. It always made her feel a little bad, kind of sick and dirty, the way the churchies had always insisted that any girl who did this sort of thing really was. She wished he’d talk nice to her once in a while, like the books did.

“Suck it, baby! Suck it! Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!”

She felt his thing twitch in her mouth and she yanked back fast. His white stuff shot out a second later, squirting out on the couch cushions.

“Goddammit!” Gavin hollered, and raised his hand like he wanted to hit her.

“You promised!” she shouted back. “I told you to pull it out and you promised!”

He still looked pissed, but his fist uncurled. “Girls like it,” he said. “It’s the best part. You’re such a fucking baby sometimes.” He stomped off, zipping his fly up, to check the reels and the screens.

Tammy waited, her anger drifting into the threat of tears. She got a handful of napkins from the employee’s table and used it to clean the couch. Maybe girls did like it. In the books she read, sometimes the girls did that for the hero and they liked it. Of course, the books didn’t say how gross and sweaty it tasted.

When Gavin came back, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Aw, it’s all right,” he said, only looking a little pissed now. “You’ll do better next time, right?”

“Sure.”

“Sure you will.” He sat down and groped at her boobs, forgiving her.

She let him play with her, gradually coming back to a little of the good, gushy mood he made her feel, until he was panting at her to touch him again. She did, rubbing his thing in her fist the way he’d taught her until he finally started to get hard. He was groaning at her to hurry up as he slobbered at her nipples, and she tried, pulling and rubbing faster.

Finally, he was sticking right up again and Gavin pulled at her pants and panties, shoving her down into the couch. She gasped as he climbed on her, as his thing finally got inside her to that tickly heat. She lay excited and nervous, wondering if this would be one of those times, as Gavin humped and humped at her.

His watch beeped.

“Oh fuck!” he groaned, but he didn’t stop. He was humping faster, rocking the whole couch, and that shivery feeling was growing. “Hurry up, hurry up!”

She giggled. There was nothing she could do about it. But her giggles became a gasp as it happened. That tiny little shiver crawled up to her belly and blossomed, making her glow all over, making her need to pee so much.

Then Gavin grunted in her ear and squeezed off another soapy spurt inside her. Gross. He was off her at once, fumbling his jeans up as he ran for the reel that needed changing.

Too late. Tammy saw the window to one of the auditoriums go white even as Gavin ran to it, which meant the reel had run out and the people in the audience (all six or eight of them) were even now looking around and getting honked off. It was just too bad if they wanted refunds, because the money was all locked up for the night.

“Ah fuck!” Gavin cried. He snatched up the new reel and then leaned in toward the auditorium window and dropped it again.

The canister banged like a gun and film came spitting out. Tammy jumped up with a cry of sympathetic dismay, but Gavin didn’t even seem to care. His mouth was moving, but he wasn’t saying anything. He stumbled back, his face washed out and staring.

“What’s wrong?” Tammy asked. She pulled her shirt shut and hugged herself small. “Gavin?”

“Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus fuck.” Gavin looked at her, his eyes huge. He was shaking. “Stay there.”

Tammy huddled on the couch, fear and confusion fighting for control of her. “What’s wrong?” she asked again. Her voice cracked on the second word.

“Just stay there, baby. Don’t move. Don’t…don’t make a sound, okay?” Gavin staggered across the projectionist’s bay to another screen. He leaned into the window, shading his eyes. “Jesus,” she heard him whisper. He reached out and slapped at the up-lights, flooding the auditorium with light even though the movie was still running. “Oh sweet baby Jesus.” His voice slid up shrill and unsteady. He looked a hundred years old.

Tammy felt herself get up without giving herself any conscious order to do so. She walked down the bay to Raiders of the Lost Ark on legs she couldn’t even feel.

On screen, Harrison Ford was frantically spraying cobras with gasoline and she couldn’t seen anything below but a few dozen people quietly watching from their seats. Then the scene changed to the desert, lighting up the place like a sun, and Tammy could see blood. Blood in rivers. Blood in falls. Blood painting the back of every chair where a person sat.

She waited to faint, but she didn’t. She didn’t think she could. She heard Gavin run across the bay and into the manager’s office, heard him rattling at the phone and then screaming into it. She couldn’t even wonder who he was calling. She couldn’t feel anything, not even fear.

So much blood.

OceanofPDF.com