Her mom had hugged her, warned her to be careful, and waved them off, moving back into the house with Bruno at her heels. Jael climbed into the back seat and sighed. It seemed as though everyone was confident about this vampire slaying exercise except her. She didn’t know if she was quite ready to stake a real live monster, even if they were technically dead.
Her father drove the SUV while Uncle Seth sat in the bucket seat next to him, his computer open on his lap. He’d plugged some kind of Internet thingy into the side and was surfing the web for recent obituaries, then hacking medical examiner offices and police websites to look through their data for victims who died from a loss of blood with no clear exit wound.
“I thought vampires drained the blood from the victim’s jugular. Why wouldn’t the report state that?” she asked, leaning forward.
“By the time the coroner finds those markings on the victim’s neck, the holes have greatly diminished and the redness and bruising that may have been there at the onset have disappeared. There is something in the saliva of the undead that actually heals to a certain extent. And they rarely tear or disfigure a human unless they’ve not fed for an extended amount of time. So a coroner looking for a significantly larger wound would just chalk up those two tiny holes to bug bites or some such thing.”
“Wow, that’s sort of awesome in a creepy killer kind of way.”
He scrolled down a list of names. “I can track the migrating patterns of vampires by the number of unknown causes of death in an area.”
“You’re trying to tell me that vampires migrate like birds?” Jael leaned forward reading over his shoulder. She tried not to laugh but her uncle’s theory sounded a little insane. They may be likened to blood-sucking bats in comic books, but birds?
He glanced back. “It’s not as crazy as it sounds. I’m not saying all vampires migrate but a good bunch of them do. And they don’t just move to the same place every time. They trade houses, cars, etc, with other vampires. They move from place to place like serial killers leaving no clear path.”
“Which way?” Her dad asked, slowing as they approached the exits to the interstate.
“Let’s head toward Beatty.” Seth tapped his finger on the scroll bar. “Looks like we might have a winner.”
Her dad chuckled and took the exit to the right.
“What’s so funny about Beatty?” she asked.
Seth grinned back at her. “Ironic really. Beatty’s called the Gateway to Death Valley.”
Beatty wasn’t much more than a tourist trap with a population of under 2000 residents. A plain square sign with brown letters proclaimed:
Gateway to Death Valley
Beatty
Established 1903
They drove through the little town on Highway 93, the lights from all-night bars and casinos glittered like beacons to desperate people. Jael saw an old man stumbling along the sidewalk, head down, arms wrapped around his stomach as though he were cold or sick. She looked away.
“So what are you thinking?” her dad asked, glancing at Seth in the dark car.
“Let’s drive around a bit and get the lay of the town.”
Jael rubbed a hand over her face and blinked. She’d taken a nap while her dad drove but now she needed to be alert. She reached for the water bottle by her side and unscrewed the cap, took a long drink and tightened the lid back on.
Seth had his computer open again. He clicked on a photograph and it filled the screen. “This is the old train station at Rhyolite. Just a few miles from here. I think a deserted ghost town is just the ticket.”
“If it’s deserted, why would vampires hang out there?” she asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the photograph. It had obviously been a beautiful building at one time, but now had fallen into disrepair. “It looks old but not ghost town old.”
He clicked on another picture. “The station is one of the only buildings still livable. See. This is the school house.”
The outer concrete walls of the school were mostly complete, but the roof no longer remained on the two-story building that once housed boys and girls learning to read, write, and throw spit balls. He flipped through a half dozen other photos and she saw that Rhyolite was most definitely a ghost town. There was an old wooden Mercantile store, the crumbling concrete of a three-story bank building with ornate brick work at the top of the two tallest remaining walls, and a building built of bottles that was once used as a jail.
“Okay, but I still don’t understand why you want to go out there. It’s nighttime. Everybody will be back at Beatty in their nice comfy hotel rooms or hanging out at the bars.”
“Most everybody.”
Understanding dawned like cream slowly rising to the top. He was setting her up. “So… I’m not the hunter tonight. I’m bait,” she surmised.
“Unless some hapless tourist gets there first.”
Her dad didn’t say anything but she saw him watching her in the rearview mirror. His eyes crinkled in a smile. She smiled back. The lights of the little town disappeared behind them as they sped along the highway toward the ghost town of Rhyolite. That quiver in her stomach was beginning to ramp up to a full-fledged ache. Was she getting sick?
“Are you all right, honey?”
She looked up. Her dad was watching her in the mirror again. He glanced between her and the road, waiting for an answer. She nodded. “I’m fine. Just nervous I guess.”
“No need to be nervous,” Seth said, shutting the lid of his laptop. He slipped it into the zippered case and set it on the dash. “You’re ready. You just need to prove it to yourself.”
She glanced out the side window at the dark shapes of rocky hills and desert brush. The moon was only half full but bright in a midnight blue sky. Clumps of boulders dotted the landscape as though God had broken off a handful of mountain, crushed it in his palms and set them into neat little piles.
Her dad pulled into a parking area and shut off the engine. No other cars were in sight. The little ghost town was spread out, dark silhouettes of the remaining structures placed haphazardly here and there as though streets were meaningless back in the Gold Rush days, but since most of the town was long gone into decay and destruction it was hard to tell where the original streets had been. Especially in the dark. There were no light poles or any illumination other than the slip of moon.
They sat there for a minute not speaking, silence stretching between them like a bond of trust. Seth finally released his seatbelt and twisted around. She couldn’t see his face clearly in the dark interior of the truck but she sensed his intensity. He was betting everything that she wouldn’t fail. She hoped he was right.
“So, what do I do?” she asked. She gripped the door handle and prepared to be thrown into the night with only a wooden stake and a prayer. They had trained her to the best of their ability and now it was crunch time. She couldn’t let them down. Not only because it would mean she was not cut out to be The Chosen, but because it would probably mean her death. She could just imagine her tombstone: Jael, Not a very good choice.
“I can’t be sure we’ll attract a bloodsucker tonight but from police reports in the past month, there have been two sightings of a wolf, one attack on a young man, and one accidental death.”
“Accidental?” she asked.
“Supposedly. A group of teenagers were out in the dark and one of them fell from the second story ledge of the schoolhouse. Hit a jagged chunk of cement with his head.”
“But you don’t think it was an accident. You think a vampire pushed him?”
Seth laughed. “No, I think he may have jumped though.”
“I don’t get it.” She shook her head.
“A kid running around in the dark, in a ghost town, and a vampire bares his teeth at him–what do you think his natural tendency is going to be?”
“To jump off a building? I hope that’s not my natural tendency. Or this night isn’t going to end well.”
Her father spoke up. “You’ll be fine, Jael. I have faith
in you. God does not make mistakes. He chose you for a reason. You are brave and talented…and surprisingly quick on your feet.”
She grinned. “That’s true.”
“And humble,” he added.
She opened the door and stepped out into the night. “Wish me luck.”
Chapter 8
Tourist trap