Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
But Amelia’s transformation was different—faster, more violent. As if the baby’s birth had accelerated it.
The curse, Nora had thought. What was this if not a curse placed on them by the spirits of the land, for violating the codes of humanity?
To eat the flesh of another is to become a monster.
And this time, it was literal.
Another scream pierced the night, closer now. The sound of something moving through the snow, fast.
Nora ducked under a tree as she ran but her foot caught on a hidden branch. She pitched forward, managing to twist so she didn’t crush the infant. Pain exploded through her shoulder as she fell on it wrong, sinking into the snow. When she looked up, Amelia loomed over her.
Her aunt’s nightgown was soaked black with blood, steam rising from the dirty fabric. Her skin had split in dozens of places, revealing muscle and bone that writhed. Her mouth gaped open, jaw hanging by strips of flesh, teeth crowding forward. The milky eyes had turned an impossible blue-white, glowing with hungry fire.
“Please,” Nora whispered, though she knew her aunt was beyond hearing. “She’s your daughter. Josephine.”
Amelia lunged. Nora rolled, the movement sending fresh agony through her shoulder. The baby wailed, the sound swallowed by the storm. Nora’s vision blurred—from tears or exhaustion or the beginning of the change, she didn’t know.
Already she could feel it inside her, the hunger that had turned so many of them into monsters. It gnawed at her belly, whispering promises of warmth, of meat, of life. The baby’s skin looked so soft, so tender—
“No!” Nora bit her own arm, using pain to focus. She wouldn’t become like them. Not yet. Not until the baby was safe.
In the distance, torch light flickered. Voices carried on the wind—human voices. A search party? Or people from the other camp?
People who had already turned.
Nora didn’t have time to ponder it. She got up and forced her failing legs to move faster. Behind her, the sounds of Amelia’s pursuit faded, lost in the howling wind. Her family rarely ventured far from their shelter, at first paranoid about the other parties, but then it turned into something territorial. The hunger made them brutal but cautious.
The baby squirmed against her chest, alive and warm and human. In that moment, Nora made her choice. If the search party were ordinary humans, she would tell them the child was hers. She would hide the truth of what happened in the lean-to, of what her family had become. And when the hunger finally took her—because she could feel it would, the curse already burning in her blood from the flesh she had eaten in desperation—at least she’d know the baby survived.
She stumbled toward the torchlight, her aunt’s inhuman shrieks fading into the storm. Through the swirling snow, she could make out figures moving closer. Human figures, moving normally, their voices sounding sane.
Safe.
This monstrous curse was already in her veins, but perhaps this child—this miracle born in blood and snow—would find a different fate. Even as the hunger clawed at her insides, Nora smiled. The baby would live.
She stumbled forward just as the search party spotted her, rushing forward to help.
Behind her, three pairs of blue-white eyes watched from the darkness.
Waiting.
Hungry.
1
AUBREY
The woman behind the bar has an eyepatch. She’s been surly to me ever since I stepped into the Three Fingered Jack Saloon, which makes her even harder to read. Still, I have questions and this seems like the place I might get some answers.
“Still nursing that?” she asks me, gesturing with a flick of her dishcloth to the whiskey on the rocks between my palms. If she knew me at all, she’d be proud of me for having so much control, especially on a day like today. Perhaps I’ll get a bottle for the motel room when this is all over. Or maybe I’ll just drive back to Sacramento if this another dead end, even though the idea of being back in my apartment feels like being buried alive.
“Do you know where I could find Jensen McGraw?” I ask her. I keep my voice low, despite it being three in the afternoon on Wednesday and there’s no one else in the bar except for two old timers with matching handlebar mustaches playing pool in the back. The crack of the balls make me flinch every time and I wish the shitty country music was louder to drown it out.
The woman pauses for a moment. To her, I’m sure she felt she had a quick recovery, that it won’t go unnoticed. But I notice. It’s my job.
“Never heard of him,” the woman says with a shrug before turning her back to me and busying herself at the bar.
“Uh huh,” I mutter under my breath and have another sip of the whiskey. I swallow and put it back down, turning the glass over in my hands. I glance behind me at the men playing pool. They’re laughing, drinking Bud Lights. Relaxed is good, it means they’re pliable, especially if I bring my feminine wiles to the forefront. The reason I chose this bar is because it seemed like a place for the locals, located on the outskirts of Truckee toward Donner Lake, and since Jensen McGraw lives in the area, according to the article I read that morning anyway, I was certain someone here would know where I could find him. I couldn’t find anything about him after searching online, but the man exists, and so here I am.