American Vampire Read Online Free PDF Page B

frowned at the car. The night before, she’d thought it was a Corvette. In the light of day, she realized how wrong that first impression was. Maybeit was a Mustang, but it would have to be a custom job. More likely, it was a fancy foreign import, and she wrinkled her nose in distaste. That just proved what kind of a guy he was, driving around in a ridiculously expensive car.
    She tossed the gas can and hose on the grass, figuring she probably wouldn’t even know where the gas tank was, anyway. The windows were open, and she leaned inside. The dew had settled over his leather interior. That wasn’t great. His phone wouldn’t be worth much, but he had to have CDs in there somewhere, and maybe even some convenience-store food. She opened the door as quietly as possible and climbed in. A leather jacket lay crumpled on the floor of the passenger side. Who wore leather in the middle of the summer? There was a pack of cigarettes in the pocket; those would fetch a good price. She rummaged beneath the seats and in the glove box, and found the car depressingly devoid of food. No chips, no popcorn, no beef jerky. Not even an empty soda can. The guy was probably a health nut. “Vanity,” she said to no one, clucking her tongue. Sure enough, he was some slick city guy who thought hard work happened in the gym. She climbed out of the car and closed the door, again as quietly as she could, to avoid alerting him to her snoop search.
    Jessa finished her chores quickly, though her muscles still ached from her late-night flight from It. When the chickens had been tended and the gardenwatered, all the tomato plants inspected, when she checked up on the beehives, when she tacked the siding back up from where It had brushed its huge, scaly back against it and knocked it down, she put on her boots and approached the fallow field that surrounded the yard and headed to the woods beyond.
    Though It rarely struck the same place twice in a row, a chill left over from the night before crawled up her spine. The woods didn’t seem frightening now, just a bunch of trees and May apples swaying on the shaded ground between them. “Elf Umbrellas,” Mom used to call them. Jessa squeezed her eyes shut tight as she stepped over the tall-grass border and into the trees. There was nothing in the woods. Nothing but her gun, and she needed that. It was the whole point of coming out here, where it wasn’t safe, where she shouldn’t be. What had brought her out here the night before, though…
    She opened her eyes and saw the shotgun, gleaming black and simulated wood grain at the base of a tree. The tree itself was wounded, from where her first shot had missed. She never missed twice. She’d struck the creature, but that had only infuriated it.
    She ran to the gun and snatched it up, her hands shaking, heart hammering, and looked for the blood trail. Closing her eyes, she remembered the scene the night before. It had been charging her, and she’d fired the first barrel, hitting the tree and exploding wooden shrapnel into the air, leaving behind an angrywheal of white tree flesh. It had kept coming, and she’d fired again, the second shot hitting its center mass, filling the air with a fine, red mist and the stink of burned flesh amid a disgusting sulfur-and-mold smell. It had roared and swatted at its chest, where the scatter shot had peppered its skin with bloody holes. It hadn’t stopped coming for her, but the wound had given her time to run.
    No one had ever stopped It. They knew that evasion was the best they could settle for.
    When she opened her eyes, she faced the direction she’d fled the night before. A path of ruined trees and uprooted plants showed where It had chased her, and she followed the trail. Blood stained the forest debris on the ground, volumes of it, but It had barely slowed. Its impossible strength hadn’t faded in the least, leaving it capable of destroying an entire building with its bare hands. No, not hands.