Blood of Gold Read Online Free PDF Page A

fire and other emergency vehicles, all with their own unique sonic signatures.
    She didn’t know anything more than a frightened thirteen-year-old girl, she suddenly realized. At least a decade had passed outside, and she didn’t know anything about it. Even the cars parked on the street looked strange. Who was the president? What kinds of inventions and devices had been created while she was gone?
    She almost felt like turning around, going downstairs and putting the chains back on again. At least she knew that world.
    A heavy black cloud passed overhead and she sprinted for the van, even as she saw a man emerging from the house on the opposite side of the street. She slipped into the darkened van before he could turn around and see her.
    Only a few moments later, the young man got into the driver’s seat with a sigh. Slender but athletic-looking, sporting a crew cut, he didn’t look old enough to own his own business. In fact, he looked like he was barely out of high school. “Idiots,” he muttered. “All they had to do was turn on the water.”
    He shook his head and put the keys in the ignition.
    Simone moved swiftly from behind his seat, grabbing the top of his head. Her fingers were exposed to the sunlight for a second. The pain flared until she wrenched his head back out of the light and placed the steak knife against his neck. She almost surprised herself with how fast she moved.
    “Don’t move, don’t shout, just do as I tell you,” Simone said.
    The man started to turn his head to look at her. The pressure of his movement made his skin grow taut under her blade, and he had second thoughts and stopped moving. His eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. There was nothing there. He looked puzzled for a second, then closed his eyes and groaned. “I knew it was too soon to go back to work. But everyone was so insistent. Offering double and triple the usual rates.”
    “Drive us out of here,” Simone said.
    “Listen,” he said urgently. “I’m taking you where you want to go because I want to. Of my own free will. Just because you need to get there, OK? No need to get weird about it.”
    “Drive,” Simone repeated.
    “Sure,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “Where to?”
    “Anywhere!” she shouted. “Away from here!” Without meaning to, she pressed down on the knife a little too hard and it penetrated the man’s skin. A trickle of red blood ran down his neck. Simone felt herself salivating and averted her eyes.
    “All right, all right!” He fumbled with the gearshift, stalled in first gear and tried again. He pulled out into the light traffic.
    “What happened out here?” Simone asked, staring at the wreckage around them. Every block seemed to have a burned house, or a car wreck, or some other kind of destruction. There were police and National Guard troops everywhere. She looked out the passenger-side window and saw, in the shadows between two large houses, what appeared to be a couple of cops kneeling over a dead body. One of the cops swung an axe, and it looked as if the head fell away from the body. She shuddered. It had been a small girl, from what she could see.
    “You don’t know?” the man said. “Oh, you said, ‘out here.’ Been shut in, have you?”
    “Yeah…” Simone drawled. “You could say that.”
    “Everyone went crazy there for awhile. As soon as it started happening, I locked the doors to my house and took my family downstairs, and we hid out. When all the gunfire stopped, I came out. Then the phone started ringing off the hook. Everyone needs repair work done, all over the place, will pay me anything I want.”
    “So you don’t know what caused all this?”
    “They’re saying vampires,” the plumber said quietly. He tried again to look at Simone in the rearview mirror, and again, there was nothing there. This time he dared to turn his head all the way, and she knew he could see how gaunt and pale they were.
    Laura laughed shakily. “Vampires? Has