Walter’s face never lost that look of caring concern.

Sally cringed as his cold hands stroked brow but his words were gentle. “I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. I did do a horrible thing. But I’m not a monster.”

An unexpected voice added, “Just an idiot.”

Jesse moved into her field of vision, reached across her and tentatively took Walter’s hand, which squeezed his gratefully. And just like that, she was in their home, a home which kept out the malefic presence she had sensed coming. For the moment. Would it hold after sunset?

Far overhead, birds sang into the gathering gloom, so removed from everything in this dangerous grove that they gave Sally a sense of hope.

“Something’s out here,” she said in the same weak voice Lavinia used when paralyzed by daytime. As they cradled her helpless body, she tried to describe it. “Vast … terrible … the heart of this storm … It was … coming for me … you drove it away. It’s close…”

Walter nodded. “It’s here alright.” He glanced at Jesse for guidance and Jesse looked troubled. But still they held her between them, just like on that dreadful night when she’d lost Lavinia. She was enveloped in the deep, loving goodness which she’d sensed from both of them that night. She should have trusted that goodness.

“I can hear her saying that we can stop it,” Walter added, “but I’m not sure how.”

“Her?”

“Your Lavinia. She’s an awfully smart lady.”

Sally’s heart throbbed painfully. “Where … is she?” she gasped. As she struggled to lift her head, her body spasmed as if she expected to be raped again.

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“I don’t know, sweetie. I just hear her ordering me to do something. She’s super butch, by the way, she’d make a great dom.”

In ordinary circumstances Sally would have kept a straight face while blushing so red that she might as well not have bothered. Now she just sobbed, “She’s the best.”

“Um, right,” Walter said. Jesse smiled, then lifted his head, sniffing at the air.

Walter went on, “She picked us up just outside this forest, we were being drawn here, I guess. Oh, I forgot to say, we flew here by plane a couple days ago. Nobody recognized us, I guess videos of, um, an incident never reached, well, anyway, here we were last night, managed to get invited into this charming inn and in the wee hours we both woke up monsters.”

Sally wished Walter could be rushed. Jesse floated upright, ethereal as Lavinia at her most vampire-like, and drifted around, searching for something.

“We slipped out the window, prowled half the night, got paralyzed by the morning, then sometime before sunset, we both got a command.” His voice crackled, too loud in the silence. “We both heard that super-butch voice, telling us to get our asses into these woods and not to touch any of the mother fucking trees or she’d rip us a new one. Well, we did brush against trees, can’t help that, but we were already monsters so it didn’t make any difference. And your Lady guided us right here and woke us up somehow.”

Sally smiled, proud of Lavinia. Jesse disappeared into the dark stairway, squaring his shoulders. His feet in loafers made a most human sound.

Loafers? Heavy hiking boots!

That was what was wrong with Rich’s story! His heavy hiking boots were hopelessly out of date.

Only fierce veteran packers carrying 70-pound loads wore those anymore. All others had worn lightweight walking shoes for years.

Now that she saw it, she realized a lot of things had been 20 years out of date: an external frame backpack, a Durabeam flashlight instead of a modern LED, no cell phone, not even any concept that he might carry one.

The kid hadn’t been lying here since the start of the vampire plague. He’d been lying here, perfectly preserved, for twenty years.

As she tried to understand why only five years ago his unending nightmare had triggered the vampire plague, a fever fire thought echoed through the air like it came from the very trees.

Stop that kid thinking. Stop him any way you can. Kill him if you gotta, but stop him fucking thinking.

And all around came a scream of horror, gashing shards from the world’s end.