“Mmm…”

  “Nathanial…” she sighed. He ran his hand along her face and she got a faint scent of her own sex. He placed his hand over her mouth and she licked it and when he took it away, she tried to lift her head to bite his fingers.

  “I wanna eat you up,” she said.

  “Me first,” he responded, slowly moving down her body and placing his hands against her thighs to spread her legs. He took in her scent. She was eager. He put his hand in her hair, folded his hand in a fist and trapping a few red strands before he pushed his way inside her, invading her, causing her expression to change in an instant, her eyes shut tight, her mouth wide open.

  “Yeah…” he said, enjoying the response he drew from her. She felt so amazing – so soft and wet. He went for another thrust, this one harder. He put his hand over her breast to feel her heart beat as it sped up.

  “Oh…fuck…” he bit her neck and clamped his hand over her mouth again to catch the scream. He pressed inside her harder, trying to remain full, but he wanted to spill out inside her so badly. He kissed her hard, he wanted her to remember this long down the road when they got involved with other walking human damage, when the sex happened and then things fell apart when someone disappointed them – he wanted her to have this night to reminisce over, fall back on, and smile about.

  He kept on, penetrating her, touching her face. She never thought it could be like this. A guy that wasn’t just fucking to come.

  “Marisa…” he whispered her name, he sounded so vulnerable it killed her. She grabbed his hair and bit him on the neck. “Do you live to die or do you die to live?” he asked.

  “What…” she found it hard to breathe right now, his rhythm was perfect, the way he penetrated her, the way he never lost focus.

  “Just tell me, which is it…” he begged.

  “I die…to live,” she managed to answer before wrapping her arm around his neck and experiencing the most amazing orgasm she’d ever been given.

  “Ahh!” Her body continued to tremble long after and he came and kissed her on the cheek.

  22 “I’ll Catch Up With You”

  Marisa had dozed off after the sex. She woke up and looked around. It was pitch-black and eerie. She looked over at Nathanial who must have been one of those types that could sleep anywhere, under any circumstance.

  “Hey?” she put her hand on his tummy. “Hey, babe?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at the sky. A little panic took hold and he lifted his head and looked around. Where the hell was he?

  “What…”

  “We fell asleep.” Marisa sat up and looked around.

  “Hey…” she said after a few minutes of desperate silence. “Clair was supposed to come back and she never did…” She focused on Nathanial for a minute. “You have leaves in your hair,” she reached over and pulled a few out and stood up.

  “You do too,” he said. He was too spent to get up. Jeremiah never came back either, he suddenly realized. Maybe they went to sleep.

  Marisa looked around. She felt like she’d fallen down some sinkhole. The nonstop current of sound had been halted. What was this place?

  “Hey, I’m gonna go back to the van,” she said.

  He looked up at her. “Stay and stargaze with me?” he sweetly requested.

  “Oh babe,” she gave him a slight kick in the side. “My back hurts.”

  “Okay, I’ll catch up with you,” he promised.

  “Okay.”

  It was much darker now, as Marisa descended down the narrow path in the woods. The path much trickier in her shoes. She made it halfway and stopped. Something had come over her, a paralyzing fear. Something wasn’t right. She looked back at the lake and then at the van, the distance between both pretty much the same. She wanted to make sure Clair and Jeremiah were okay. She wanted to hear their voices. She wanted everyone to be laughing and talking about what they’d do once they got to L.A. She went a few feet and then it happened, the ground beneath her just seemed to give way and her entire foot turned on its side. She cried in pain. No one seemed to hear her.

  She felt hot blood swell around her ankle. She took off her damned shoes and crawled the rest of the way to the van. The door was wide open. She paused before climbing in. She heard nothing at all. She didn’t sense anyone in there. Maybe they were on their way back to the lake, but wouldn’t she have passed them?

  She hobbled into the van and huddled over in the corner. Tired, sore, she started to fall asleep when loud music snapped her out of it. It was that horrible Norwegian band Nathanial played earlier. It was deafening. She managed to stand and thought maybe the boys were playing a trick on her. She heard the door slam shut and saw Jimmy standing there. He had something in his hand. It was too dark to tell what it was. Before she could scream he reached out and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her head towards his crotch and slammed something hard against her head so she fell over on her side. Jimmy was crafty, he was careful not to kill her. He wanted her alive to play with in the same way a cat did a mouse.

  She lied there, stunned, feeling the blood trickle down her face and wet her hair. She was starting to lose her vision. She reached out and tried to stand up but her ankle wouldn’t cooperate and fell back, she wanted to reach for something to defend herself with but there was nothing but space and she stumbled about before falling to her knees. The music…she felt like she was drowning in its darkness.

  “That’s it,” Jimmy said. “On your knees the way you always should be.”

  She heard him unzip his pants and smelled the terrible scent of his sex. It was suffocating. She felt dizzy, she started to pass out when he grabbed her by her hair and crammed his cock in her mouth. When she bit down on it he stepped away and slammed the hammer against her head. This time he meant for it to be fatal. He watched her slump down in the corner of the van, blood poured down her face. He raised the hammer and slammed it down on the center of her head and felt it sink.

  23 “I’m The Wolf That Read How To Catch The Rabbit”

  “MARISA?!” Nathanial called out as he walked along the path, sticks crunching beneath his feet, the wind howled. He stopped when he noticed something white on the ground. He picked up fake vampire teeth and stared at it for a minute when something heavy slammed down against the back of his head and he fell to the ground, blacking out.

  Nathanial woke up sometime later on a dirty mattress. It was bare of sheets and had a huge stain in the middle. He tried hard to wake up but he’d been drugged. He realized his hands were tied behind his back. He was inside some grungy trailer with trash all over the floor.

  He looked over and through his blurred vision, he could make out Jimmy sitting calmly in a chair, watching him with a serene look on his face. The right side of Nathanial’s head throbbed and he couldn’t remember how he got here. The last thing he could recall was being on the road. He remembered it being hot. He remembered hearing The Cure.

  As Jimmy kept a placid stare on Nathanial, the lyrics of the song played in his head. Then he remembered dancing. His mind was working backwards…

  He turned his head, thinking maybe the spot on the mattress on other side of his head smelled better. Nope. He had no idea what drug he had been given. He had no idea what was on this filthy rag that was crammed into his mouth.

  “I’m the wolf that read How To Catch The Rabbit,” Jimmy said. Nathanial blinked his eyes. There was blood in one. He turned his head again, facedown on the mattress. He started shaking his head. Panic set in and he couldn’t stop shaking his head as he tried to scream.

  “Oh shush,” Jimmy said, walking over to him and running his hand through Nathanial’s hair. Nathanial started crying when he saw the blood on Jimmy’s fingers.

  “Now I should have read the second book – it’s a trilogy,” Jimmy went on. “But I didn’t, and now I’m not sure what to do with the rabbit.”

  Nathanial started crying into the mattress – they were
terrible violent sobs of desperation.

  Jimmy got on top of him and pulled his head up by his hair and took the gag out of his mouth.

  “Say something, I want to hear you talk,” Jimmy ordered.

  “Where…are my friends? Clair…” Nathanial sobbed.

  “They go wherever dogs go when they die!” Jimmy shouted before shoving the horrible cloth back into Nathanial’s mouth, jabbing the roof of Nathanial’s mouth with his fingers. “I’m tired of not getting what I want, I mean I’m tired of not being noticed!”

  Nathanial was quiet, he felt like he was drowning in his own fear. This couldn’t be happening. What was happening?

  “What does the wolf do?” Jimmy asked, pressing down on Nathanial so Nathanial could feel Jimmy’s erection against his ass. “Does he eat the rabbit?” Jimmy spoke in Nathanial’s ear.

  Nathanial found a bit of relief when Jimmy got off of him. Jimmy walked over to a plastic container of food on the floor by the chair. It was the food Marisa had gotten to-go from their last stop, of which Nathanial had absolutely no recollection.

  “Are you hungry, lil’ rabbit?” Jimmy asked. Nathanial stared down at the food. His face had a smudge of black from eyeliner he’d put on this morning, a morning that felt like it took place decades ago.

  He shook his head. Whatever soiled the rag in his mouth was making him feel sick and weak. He watched as Jimmy took the sweaty lid off of the food and tossed it aside.

  “You need to