It wasn’t a large rest area. Pretty much just a public toilet and some vending machines. Big rigs and buses were parked on one side of the parking lot, and cars were parked on the other side. At first glance, there didn’t appear to be any silver hatchbacks with broken rear windshields.

  Tim hopped out of the car. “Where the hell is he?” he asked, frantically scanning the parking lot. He held up the tablet. “The red dot and the blue dot are right on top of each other!”

  “He’s got to be around here somewhere,” said Julian.

  Randy opened the van doors. “Jesus Christmas!” he cried as brown liquid flowed down the bumper and splattered down into a puddle on the pavement.

  Dennis and Professor Goosewaddle waved their hands toward their noses, as if trying to forcibly shove fresh air inside. Dave just sat there, his face pale and haunted, like he’d given up on life.

  “Oh my god,” said Stacy, turning away from the van. “You were right. I did not want to know this.”

  “Tim,” said Julian. “Call my phone.”

  Tim pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Battery’s dead.”

  “Shit,” said Julian. “Stacy, do you have any change?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  He reached inside the car and took a ballpoint pen out of the cup holder. “Give me your hand.” She did so, and he wrote his phone number on it. “Go find a pay phone and call this number.”

  “Hurry up!” said Tim. She gave him a warning look. “Please?”

  Stacy ran toward the main building.

  “You ain’t gonna hear a cell phone over all this noise,” said Dennis.

  Dennis had a point. Cars and trucks continuously thundered by on the interstate, while several of the big rigs and buses sat parked with their engines still running. Picking out a measly little cell phone ringtone would be a strain on the greatest of human ears. But maybe not so much for elf ears. Now was not the time for caution. He removed his Papa Joes cap and Katherine’s headband to free his long ears.

  “Damn, son!” said Dennis. “Ain’t they got plastic surgeons in China?”

  “I’m not fucking Chinese!” said Julian. “I’m an elf. Now shut the hell up for a second!”

  Julian closed his eyes and concentrated on listening. One minute passed. Then another.

  “Come on, Stacy,” Tim muttered. “Hurry it up.”

  And there it was. The Star Wars Imperial March. Julian opened his eyes.

  “There!” he shouted, pointing at a Greyhound bus. “He’s on the bus!”

  “Which bus?” asked Tim.

  “The one that’s pulling out!”

  “It’s now or never!” cried Tim. “Cooper! Stop that bus!”

  Cooper jumped out of the van and sprinted toward the bus. Everyone else ran after him.

  The bus driver slammed on the brakes just short of flattening Cooper.

  The ringtone grew stronger as Julian ran nearer, as if Darth Vader himself was about to emerge from the bus.

  Cooper roared, and passengers at the front of the bus started screaming. Tim banged his fist on the bus door, but the driver refused to open it.

  That didn’t matter. The sound wasn’t coming from the inside of the bus. A wave of panic spread from the front of the bus to the rear. Everyone inside was screaming, which briefly drowned out the phone’s ring. Julian slowed his steps, caught it again, and followed the faint sound to the rear of the bus until he was standing in a cloud of exhaust. He coughed and choked on fumes as he felt under the rear bumper. Finally, he found what he was looking for. His phone was duct taped to the bumper. His eyes stung as he ripped his phone free from the tape. Exiting the cloud of bus fumes, he greedily breathed in fresh air.

  “Tim!” he called out. “Stop it! Let them go.” He waved his phone for Tim to see.

  Tim stopped banging on the door. “But where’s Mordred?”

  “He played us for chumps.”

  “Cooper!” said Tim. “Knock it off. Let them go.”

  Cooper, who had been growling and waving his arms about scarily, ceased doing so. He stepped to the side. “Sorry for the delay, folks. Be on your way.”

  The bus driver didn’t hesitate. The bus lurched forward. Passengers crowded against the windows to snap pictures of Cooper with their phones. He gave them the finger.

  Julian answered his still ringing phone. “Hey, Stacy?”

  “Did you find Mordred?”

  Julian sighed. “No.”

  “Then where was your phone?”

  “Come on back outside. I’ll show you.” He hung up. “Damn it,” he said, rubbing the screen with his thumb. “He wrote on it with permanent marker.”

  “That’s just mean,” said Cooper.

  “What does it say?” asked Dave, who had only just turned up with Professor Goosewaddle.

  Julian held up his phone for everyone to see. “Nice try, assholes.”

  Chapter 10

  Tim reclined his seat and stared at the red light on his phone. Charging. With everyone’s batteries dying, Stacy had insisted they stop at a Wal-Mart on the way back to buy a car charger. It was a long way back to Gulfport, and both Tim and his phone needed to recharge. Hopefully, a fresh, rested mind would be better equipped to figure out a way to track down Mordred.

  “Julian,” said Tim. “If I sleep all the way there, do you think you’ll be able to show Stacy the way to the Chicken Hut?”

  “I know where that is,” said Stacy. She didn’t sound thrilled about it. “You didn’t have enough at Arby’s?”

  “No, we just –”

  “You really need to watch what you eat. Arby’s is bad enough, but that Chicken Hut crap is just nasty.” She spat her gum out the open window.

  Tim raised his seat to its original position. “I wonder,” he said, feeling as though he was walking on eggshells, “if there’s something more to your feelings for the Chicken Hut than the nutritional value of its food?”

  “Fine,” said Stacy. “You caught me. My ex-boyfriend cheated on me with the whore that used to work there.”

  Tim and Julian exchanged a glance. As far back in time as could possibly be relevant, there had only ever been two people who worked at the Chicken Hut, and Tim was pretty confident about ruling himself out as the whore in question.

  “Also,” said Stacy, “it’s just nasty chicken. There’s a Popeye’s at the next exit.” She nodded at the approaching highway sign. “Do you want to stop there?”

  “No,” said Tim. “We’ve got to go to the Chicken Hut. My sister’s locked in the freezer.”

  “She’s what?”

  “Do you think we can make it back before sundown?”

  “Hang on a minute. How do you know your sister’s locked in the freezer of the Chicken Hut? Is it some weird game intuition magic?”

  “No,” said Tim. “I locked her in there this morning.”

  “Oh my God! Are you crazy?” said Stacy. The car suddenly picked up speed. “Julian, you need to call 911 right now!”

  “Slow down!” said Tim. “She’s fine.”

  Stacy looked at Tim over her sunglasses. “She could be dying in there!”

  “Not likely.” Tim smiled at her. “She’s already dead.”

  Stacy pulled something out of the compartment on her door and pointed it under her right arm, which she was still steering with, at Tim. “The next thing you say will determine whether or not you get a face full of mace.”

  Tim’s smile was supposed to have conveyed a friendly, I-bet-you-didn’t-see-that-one-coming sort of message. But, in retrospect, he could see how smiling while he confessed to a complete stranger that he had his sister’s dead body locked in a freezer might be taken the wrong way.

  “She’s a vampire,” said Tim. “She got turned while we were in the game.”

  Stacy shook her head. “Of course she is. Here, have a Mentos.” She tossed the mace canister onto Tim’s lap. It turned out to be a half-eaten roll of Mentos.

  Julian breathed a sigh of relief. Tim felt the same. The thought of being sprayed with mace wasn’t half as scary as the idea of the mace cloud blowing into Stacy’s eyes while the car was moving eighty miles per hour.

  “We’re going to need something to feed her,” said Tim. “Arby’s won’t cut it.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open for orphanages,” said Stacy. “What’s she doing in the Chicken Hut freezer anyway?”

  Tim had hoped against reason that she wouldn’t bring that up. But there it was. He might as well get it over with while there was plenty of driving left to be done. “We own it.”

  “The freezer?” Apparently Stacy was also hoping against reason.

  “The Chicken Hut.”

  Stacy gripped the steering wheel tighter with both hands. “Do you?” she said accusingly. “And just how long have you owned it?”

  “Look,” said Tim. “I don’t know what happened between your boyfriend and my sister, and I really don’t want to know. But what’s important right now is that she’s a hungry vampire, and she needs to feed. She’ll only be able to hold back her bloodlust for so long before she snaps and hurts someone.”

  Stacy steered with her knee while she cracked her knuckles. “I’ve got something to feed her.”

  “She’s really strong now,” said Tim. “She’d tear you in half.”

  “Tim,” said Julian. “That’s perhaps not the most diplo—”

  “We were practically engaged!” said Stacy. “And then one Halloween he goes and makes out with some floozy in a cat costume at Bar Bones!”

  Tim had hoped that it might all be a big misunderstanding, but his hopes just evaporated. Bar Bones was Katherine’s favorite hangout. Also, he remembered that Halloween. It was two years ago. She had left him manning the store all by himself so she could go to that Halloween party. He remembered the cat costume. But Stacy didn’t know that he remembered any of that.

  “How do you know it was her?”

  “My boyfriend’s dumbass friend posted pictures of it all over Facebook,” said Stacy. “It didn’t take too many clicks on friends of friends of friends to track her down.”

  Well, shit. “She couldn’t have known he was engaged. If you think about it, she did you a favor. He was going to cheat on you sooner or later.”

  “Julian, honey,” said Stacy. “Can you pass me a Slim Jim?”

  “Uh… sure,” said Julian. “Do you want me to unwrap it for you?”

  “Nah, that’s all right, sweetie. Just pass it here.”

  Julian passed her the beef stick, and she slapped Tim over the head with it.

  “Ow!” said Tim, more from surprise than pain. After you have your foot gnawed nearly off by a giant rat, you can more easily withstand being slapped by a sausage.

  “Does asshole run in your family?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tim. “I was just trying to –”

  “Ahem,” said Julian. “If I may?”

  “Fine,” said Tim.

  “Stacy,” said Julian. “There’s no point in dwelling on past misfortune. You’re a beautiful young woman who deserves much better than some loser who would cheat on you with Tim’s sister.”

  “Hey,” said Tim. But he could see Julian’s Diplomacy skill in action. He was complimenting Stacy while insulting Katherine at the same time. It was just what she wanted to hear. Brilliant.

  “Why ain’t you a sweet thing!,” said Stacy. “Go on.”

  “And I’m sure that when this is all over, and we’re back to our normal selves, that if you’d like to beat the shit out of Katherine, then Tim won’t stand in your way.”

  “That sounds fair,” said Stacy. She looked at Tim. “Get me a cigarette out of the glove box.” She pushed in the car’s cigarette lighter button.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” said Tim, eager to fill his own lungs with tar and nicotine. He’d finished off his own pack in the back of Randy’s van.

  “It’s just when I’m upset.”

  Tim opened the glove box and found a nearly full pack of Virginia Slims. Not his brand, but he wasn’t picky. He passed her a cigarette. “Is it okay if I –”

  “No!” she said, snatching the cigarette out of his hand. She lit it, placed the plug back into its socket, and took a nice, long drag. Tim watched longingly until she started hacking like she was about to barf up a lung. She threw the barely spent cigarette out of the window. “I haven’t been upset for a while.”

  Tim reclined his seat once more, sat back, and watched the sun sink lower in the sky as his exhaustion overtook him. They weren’t going to make it back before sundown. Katherine was going to be pissed.

  Chapter 11

  Katherine’s eyes snapped open, and she knew the night had begun. She’d been hungry when she lay down to sleep on the freezer floor, but now her insides ached like they never had before. She needed blood. She needed it now.

  “Master,” said Ginfizzle, sitting up. “I starve.”

  “I know, Ginny,” said Katherine. “I’m hungry, too. Let’s see what the boys brought for us.” She stood up and knocked on the inside of the freezer door. Nobody answered. She knocked harder. Still no response. She put her ear to the door. Ginfizzle did likewise. The metal was ice cold against her skin, but not uncomfortable.

  “Do you hear anything?” asked Katherine.

  “Nothing, master.”

  Katherine couldn’t hear anything either. That could have been due to the thickness of the door, but she suspected it was probably due to her brother and his fucktard friends forgetting about her.

  “Stand back,” said Katherine, taking off her shoes. She raised her arms and kicked her heel into the door as hard as she could. Cold steel gave way to her dead foot. The locking mechanism crunched as the freezer door swung open. She walked into the kitchen through a cloud as frosty air met humid warmth. “Wait here.”

  Katherine briefly admired the dent her foot had left in the steel door. As much of a badass bitch as she felt, she remained cautious. She peeked around the door and between kitchen equipment into the dining area. The lights were turned off, and the twilit sky provided little light through the gaps in the blinds over the front windows, but she could see with near perfect clarity that the place was empty.

  Walking silently past the office, she caught something amiss in the corner of her eye. Or rather, it was the lack of something. In the cracked office mirror, she saw only the fractured reflection of the little black dress she’d asked Millard to have made for her. That wasn’t so odd, as it was the dress she was currently wearing. The odd part was that it appeared to be empty and hovering. She couldn’t see any of herself in the reflection. She went into the office to get a closer look at one of the larger pieces of mirror. Her eyes had not deceived her.

  “Holy shit,” she said to herself. “I’m invisible!” She pulled the dress off over her head and looked in the mirror again. It was incredible. There was absolutely nothing of her there. She closed her eyes as her stomach churned. She would feed soon. Being invisible meant that she could hunt with impunity.

  “Master!” Ginfizzle croaked from inside the freezer. “I’m hungry.”

  “It’s safe to come out,” said Katherine. “Take off your clothes.”

  “Well I… As you wish, master.”

  The blue light on the CPU meant that Tim had left the computer on. She wiggled the mouse, and the screen lit up. The first thing she saw was the Gulfport sex offender registry.

  “What the fuck?” she murmured to herself. Was Tim out there kidnapping a pedophile to feed her? She supposed there was some logic to it. Who’d miss a pedophile? It was a sweet gesture on Tim’s part, but they’d inevitably screw this up. Being super strong and invisible, she was much better suited to go hunt down pedos on her own. She made a mental note of the area with the highest concentration of registered sex offenders. She only hoped she and Ginny could get there before Tim got hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ginfizzle. He was behind her, standing in the office doorway. “My dingle isn’t working.”

  “Your what?” Katherine turned around. Ginfizzle was standing in the doorway, frowning down at his limp little vienna sausage dick. “WHAT THE FUCK!”

  “I’m sorry, master,” said Ginfizzle. “This has never hap—” He looked up. His mouth hung open as he gaped, transfixed by Katherine’s breasts.

  Katherine gasped and snatched her dress from off the desk, trying to cover as much as she could. “Get the hell out of here, you little creep!”

  Ginfizzle backed up into the kitchen. “But you said –” He turned his head. Something to his right had managed to tear his gaze away from Katherine’s body. The something growled.

  “Butterbean!” said Katherine.

  Ginfizzle licked his lips. “Blood.”

  Butterbean barked, and Ginfizzle disappeared from the doorway.

  Katherine dropped her dress and ran out after him. When she arrived in the dining area, Ginfizzle was on top of a struggling Butterbean, his fangs already sucking out her wolf’s lifeblood through its neck.

  “Get off of him!” she screamed, grabbing Ginfizzle by the back of the neck. She pulled him off Butterbean and lifted him up in the air.

  “Mine!” cried Ginfizzle. He squirmed in Katherine’s grasp and kicked her in the face. It was harder than she’d ever been hit in her life. Had it not been for her own superpowers, it might have knocked her head clean off. Still, the crunch she heard and felt inside her head suggested that he had broken her nose.

  “Get out of here, you little troll!” Katherine hurled the naked, undead halfling head-first through the front window, destroying the blinds. The right side of the headrail collapsed, sweeping the blinds to the left. The entire window pane had turned white, webbed with tiny fractures, but the window held together except for the foot-and-a-half diameter hole Ginfizzle had flown through.

  Ginfizzle stood up in the parking lot outside, a little naked guy smeared in blood. He pointed back at Katherine “MINE!”

 

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