Vamp-Hire Read Online Free Page A

was he doing this again?
    Nick took one last look around, his eyes
catching on the empty family room floor where he remembered sitting
with his mother, making bracelets. The memory dissolved into
another one, her cradling his head as there was gunfire outside.
Before Nick could think about it anymore he stepped outside and
into the night air.
    That thing was standing on the lawn
again.
    This made the third night it was there. It
looked like a shadow and stood upright like a man with what looked
like long, thin branches for hair. Its eyes reflected the
streetlight behind it, like the back of its head was open.
    Nick wasn’t entirely certain it was real. The
first time he’d seen it emerge from the bushes it had stood in the
exact same spot as now, watching the house. Watching him. It hadn’t
moved then, just as it wasn’t moving now, and they’d stared at each
other several minutes. The moment had been broken before when two
teenage girls passed by on the sidewalk behind it. They’d been out
past curfew and hadn’t seemed to notice the creature or whatever it
was when they passed within a few feet. When Nick had looked back
to where it had been standing, it was gone.
    He had a sense there wouldn’t be any
teenagers to break the line of tension between them this time. The
creature was definitely staring at him, and though it hadn’t moved,
he felt something akin to aggression.
    “You’re not real,” Nick said to it as much to
himself. He lifted one foot to take a step off the porch, letting
it hover a moment. “You’re not real.” He stepped off, watching it
the whole time.
    Nick didn’t want to walk toward it and didn’t
he want to put his back to it. He cut across the lawn, keeping it
in his peripheral vision, heading in the direction of an elementary
school outside the subdivision. He glanced over his shoulder once
he’d reached the sidewalk and it had disappeared again.
    Midway down the block he thought it was a
better to ditch the motel idea and go somewhere else. He didn’t
know where Lucky lived so he had to go to where he hung out. There
seemed to be a lot more cruisers out tonight which would have been
easier to avoid in his own neighborhood.
    A helicopter buzzed somewhere overhead. It
cast a spotlight somewhere into the subdivision to his left. He
turned down a street on his right. He passed a tall figure seated
on the steps of a porch wearing a hat. The red tip of a cigarette
glowed, and the man said nothing as he passed. He gave a single,
slow wave and Nick waved back.
    He quickly weaved through several more
streets and by the time he reached the Big Pig, it was well past
midnight. Nick should have been asleep by now. Part of his therapy
had been adjusting to daylight hours. He was naturally inclined to
be awake at night and sleep during the day and in theory that
wouldn’t help him to reacclimate to society. In truth, he couldn’t
get reacclimated to society because once people knew what he was
they typically wanted nothing to do with him. Before his release,
it had been much easier. It was still summer then and sundown
wasn’t until after nine o’clock. Nick tended to be tired during the
day and went to bed between eight-thirty and nine and woke up by
five. He looked for all intents and purposes like an early riser,
ready to take on the world. Fall had come after his release and now
that the clocks had been dialed back an hour, night time came by
six. He had been given sleeping pills, temporary fixes when they
had worked at all.
    Plus, he’d gone through all those in his
first two weeks out.
    The Big Pig was a square brick building that
looked like it had been a 7-11 in its previous life. It had all its
windows shuttered save for a Plexi-Glass service window the clerk
could use to pass items and take cash without letting customers in.
Nick hoped Lucky still worked here, he didn’t tend to stay in one
place for long; he viewed a job as investment income into his own
entrepreneurial