AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The team offered me (and the diner) the blood of whatever animals/ creatures they caught if I’d help them with their investigations (having incredible speed, strength and stamina are marketable gifts, apparently) and whatever I couldn’t drink right then and there, I bottled and brought to the diner (and wouldn’t you know, I was fresh out). There were a few creatures in Windy Ridge who lived solely on blood and none of us were particularly interested in hunting.
Not only that, but human or once-human blood was out of the question where I was concerned. I might have been reduced to this parasitic state, but I’d be damned if I fed on the very people I called my neighbors and friends—especially when they weren’t even people any longer. Yes, I could have hunted beyond the hundred-mile-radius of fog-infected towns and woods but I didn’t like the idea of taking human blood. Never tried it and never planned to.
I tried not to dread the trip down to Ol’ Ned’s. To get any kind of food, I knew I was gonna get roped into whatever insanity they’d been cooking up the minute I got there. I didn’thateworking with them, exactly, but they were alotto deal with on the best of days.
Ol’ Ned lived in a trailer just down the lane from mine, both about a ten-minute walk from the diner. In fact, most the people in Windy Ridge lived in the trailer park, though some well-to-dos lived in houses just up the hillside.
The trailer park was called ‘River’s Edge’, and it was the definition of:sneeze-and-you-miss-it. Someone could wander through the forest for weeks and never set foot near the place. That was why the monster hunting team had started in the first place; when the fog came, about a quarter of the population lost their marbles and ran off into the woods, never to be seen or heard from again. We’d agreed to try to round up the missing in the hopes of rehabilitating them. And, so far, we’d been able to find about a handful of them and now they were doing good, living their lives as paranormal creatures in Windy Ridge, just like the rest of us.
I’d heard a bit about the team’s latest investigation through the gossip of the diner patrons. Apparently, there’d been sightings of a pink man running buck-ass naked through the trees, and Bud and Ol’ Ned figured it was a crazy that couldn’t hack it. They wanted to trap whatever the thing was, lure it in with a series of baits, then have me wrangle it (superior vampire strength) when they had it subdued.
Because I was the team’s strongest member and the hardest one to hurt, they called me in whenever they needed the big guns. And I understood—after all, if anyone else tried to wrangle some of the things I’ve had to catch, they’d probably be dead before they could blink.
“MY PA USED TO RUN LIQUOR TO BRANSON IN THE THIRTIES, Y’KNOW?”
A sudden word explosion from Dorcus about jolted me right outta my shoes and set my heart to thudding all the way up my throat. Dorcas didn’t notice, of course, and I had to sit back and recover as she prattled on.
“RUNS IN THE FAMILY. ‘WE GOT BOOZE IN OUR BLOOD’ HE USED TO SAY. MY STILL’S GOIN’ STRONG, EXCEPT FOR THE DAMN DIP IN SALES. PEOPLE DON’T APPRECIATE GOOD MOONSHINE NO MORE, I TELL YOU WHAT.”
I pursed my lips and flipped the notebook, scribbling a note and flipping it towards her.Most people can’t drink anymore, you know that. Monsters don’t get drunk like humans do.
Dorcas looked at the note (how she was able to see anything with such small and sunken eyes was beyond me) and scoffed, the air whistling through her bucked teeth. “THEY JUST AIN’T DRINKING ENOUGH.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, but before I could reply, I heard something ring in the distance. Instantly, my heart plummeted because that sound could only mean one thing.
“Dorcas! Quiet!” I yelled, forgetting she couldn’t hear me.
“WHAT? YOU KNOW I CAN’T HEAR YOU NONE, TWILA! I SWEAR THAT FOG DONE TOOK THE BRAINS RIGHT OUT FROM BETWEEN YOUR EARS!”
I had to wave my hands to make Dorcas stop yelling so I could focus on the sound; deep and low, echoing slightly in the air. It was the town church bell clanging inside its tower, ringing in a steady rhythm of repeated strikes.
There were only a few reasons why the church bell rang. Back when things were normal, it would sound at funerals and weddings. Or occasionally someone would set it off during some important person’s christening. Now, though, it was reserved as a warning;someone had entered Windy Ridge, and that someone was human.
I stood up, letting my chair tip over behind me.
Grabbing my pencil, I wrote the word “BELL” on a slip of paper and shoved Dorcas out the back of the kitchen. The lunchtime chatter stilled as the other patrons heard the ringing outside, and every single one of them turned to face me as I skidded on the tile, propping the kitchen door open with an old iron bucket.
“We got a normie!”
I ran for a bussing tray, heart pounding as I pointed to the patrons. Nearly everyone inside the diner was some kind of monstrosity. Aside from Sicily and me, the only other person who could pass as normal was Boone.
“You all know the drill!” I yelled. “Anyone who doesn’t look human needs to go home,now!And don’t come back out again until I give you the okay!”
All at once, folk began to stand and rush to the back of the diner as they made for their cars in the lot or just made for home on their feet (the bat-man and gargoyle both flew away).
“Should I help them?” I heard Sicily call at me. I looked over to see her half-standing, eyes wide and books already packed into her bag. Hurrying over to her, I put a hand on her shoulder to sit her back inside the booth.
“No, no, stay here.” I peeked through one of the blinds, scanning for unfamiliar faces. Far as I could tell, no one was in the parking lot who shouldn’t have been there. It was probably just a matter of time though—if there was a human in town, chances were they were coming here. Everything else was closed. “If everyone’s gone, it’ll look suspicious. Just… do your work or focus on… on something else, okay?”
Sicily looked unsure but, thankfully, followed my lead with a slow nod. I sprinted around the counter at the unnatural speed I was given, picking up plates of bones and entrails and other distasteful things that outsiders would find puzzling.
Within seconds, the floor was spotless, every trace of unsavory meals dumped out back and shut in the dumpster. All the cryptids were gone and my heart was racing, but I quickly straightened my apron and posed at the counter, tonguing my canines to make sure they were still dormant. As long as they were short, I looked as normal as any human, which meant that in emergencies like this, I was almost always the chosen lookout.
For a long time, Sicily, Boone, and I stayed frozen in our places, the blinds half-open so we could see outside. It was still, silent other than the blood rushing through my ears, but eventually, three figures walked up to the door, pushing it open with achingof the bell tied to it.
They were men, all of them, though their ages varied.
One of them I recognized as Deputy Drayton, a slim man who shifted into a merperson whenever he touched water. Standing next to Drayton was a younger man who was unfamiliar to me—he was maybe in his early twenties. But the last figure made my fingers squeeze into the counter so hard, it nearly cracked.
After all, a girl’s likely to get a surprise when her high-school flame walks back into her life after twenty-three years.
