Laws of Nature -2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

back toward Bridget's across the street. "Just as soon as we have tasted blood, in vengeance for the slaughter of Tanzer and the others of the pack."
    With lightning speed, Dubrowski's right hand lashed out, and he scratched deep furrows in Braun's left cheek. Braun hissed with pain and snarled loudly, but resisted making the change that such a break of concentration sometimes brought.
    "What have I told you about cal ing me 'Doobie'?"

CHAPTER 2
    Once upon a time, the department store on one of the few blocks known locally - and surprisingly with little irony - as "downtown"
    Buckton had been a Woolworth's. The old brownstone building had even had a soda fountain inside, where a root beer float or a thick milk shake could be had for pocket change. The Woolworth's had long since been replaced by Mackeson's. It was also a department store, little different from the old Woolworth's except it was now owned by a local family. And the soda fountain was gone.
    Alan Vance was only twenty-nine years old, but he remembered the soda fountain, and he thought it was a damn shame old Bernard Mackeson had done away with it when he bought the store. He missed it.
    Other than that, however, downtown Buckton looked as it had when Alan was a boy. Some of the storefronts had been freshened up, of course, and new signs added, but Alan never felt very far away from his youth when he walked along Pine Hil Road. Pine Hil - which did not become a hil until a half mile or so west of downtown - was the main street, but he'd always appreciated the fact that it was not called Main Street. It added character.
    Most days, Alan walked through downtown with his chin up. Little Alan Nelson Vance had grown up to be Deputy Vance, and he was proud of it. The uniform felt right on him, the heavy leather belt and holster sat just so on his hip. As a kid, he had never been the best hitter in the bal park, or the last one standing at the Vermont State Spel ing Bee, but while a lot of his peers had been in a rush to leave Buckton, Alan had never wanted to live anywhere else. Even the time he had spent in col ege was too long away from his hometown.
    His town.
    Sheriff John Tackett was a good man, but he was also an old curmudgeon. Not that his being old was an excuse for his being cranky. Tackett had been sheriff for going on thirty years, and Alan had the idea he had been just as crotchety when he first got the job.
    Someday Alan would have that job. Then it real y would be his town. For the most part, he had always been satisfied to wait until that day came. It had been enough to wear the uniform and to patrol the streets of Buckton with the good wil of the townspeople on his side.
    Now, though, as he strol ed past the Jukebox Restaurant, where he'd taken Carrie Dietrich on their first date back in the sixth grade, and Travis Drug, where he had bought comic books every week right up until he left for col ege, Alan no longer felt as if he had the townspeople on his side. Nancy McCabe caught his eye from just inside the Jukebox. She looked sweet in her waitress uniform, and normal y she would have smiled and waved to him.
    Today, she frowned and glanced away.
    A few cars were on the road, but no one honked and slowed down to shoot the breeze with him. On the front step of Travis Drug Aaron Travis and Kenny Oberst sat in beach chairs, just old men soaking up the warm July sun, enjoying the breeze and the heat. Any other day Kenny would have glanced up and grunted the word deputy by way of greeting.
    Not today.
    Alan hitched his heavy belt up a little higher, set his back a little straighter, but his chin was not quite so high and his gaze was not quite so curious now, nor so friendly. He passed by the gorgeous faÆade of the Empire Theatre, and the smel of fresh popcorn wafted out the open front doors. For a moment he was tempted to go inside. Sitting in the dark with a bucket of popcorn would be running away, Alan knew that. But he thought in that moment that if the