Free The Attraction by Douglas Clegg Page B

of their stash. I know about those kids. I read about it. They were hiking where they shouldn’t have gone hiking,” she said.
    “You know everything, don’t you?” Ziggy said, an edge to his voice that wasn’t quite sarcasm but close to it. “You know everything. Well, maybe we’ve gone where we shouldn’t go hiking. I saw that thing. It’s a sacred relic. I believe someone at that gas station stole it from where it was meant to rest. It’s from some old religion that we can’t even begin to understand. I believe people used to believe in it. And they died because of it. They laid down their lives in sacrifice. It freaks me out. It does. I think we’re like those kids in the woods, off the path. And that thing is a tiger. Maybe a sleeping tiger. But sleeping tigers wake up. And when they wake up, they get hungry.”
    “Sit down,” Bronwyn said. “It’s the two sex fiends doing the nasty in the Pimpmobile.”
    2
    Griff and Tammy hadn’t made their way to the car until after they’d been up against a big flat rock that they’d stumbled across in the dark. Griff had his shirt off fast, and then was unbuttoning his shorts, which dropped to his ankles and he did what Tammy called his “penguin walk” over to her and nearly tore her top off to get to her breasts. Their lips locked, with tongues tickling, and Tammy kept whispering things to him when they weren’t kissing, and it all turned him on more. She had left the condoms in the backseat of the Pimpmobile, and so she had to disengage. “I’m all dirty,” she said.
    “I feel that way, too,” he said, grabbing around her back to keep his fingers on the nipples of delight, but she peeled his fingers back.
    “I mean dirty dirty,” she said. “All this damn sand. Now let go for a sec. I do not intend to get pregnant just yet and unless we just fool around, that’s a distinct possibility.” She jogged to the car, opening the back door. “My bag is in here somewhere. We just used them last night. Where’d I put those Trojans?” She kneeled on the seat, bending over to check the floor for her handbag.
    “Maybe it’s in the back,” he said.
    “The trunk?” she said. “Oh, maybe. Go pop it for me, okay?”
    He wanted to pop more than the trunk, but he went around to the driver’s side, opened the door and found what he hoped was the lever for the trunk.
    It popped open slightly.
    “I’ll look,” he said. He shut the door and went around to the back of the car and lifted the trunk.
    The light hadn’t come on in the trunk, so he rooted around in things, and threw a couple of suitcases out on the dirt. He reached into a pile of clothes, but they felt funny. He wondered why they felt so ragged.
    Then he felt the top of Scratch’s head.
    3
    He nearly jumped when he felt it. It was bumpy, but he knew he was touching bone. He laughed to himself at the slight chill he got from the contact. It was kind of gross having a dead little guy in the back, even if it was about five hundred years old.
    He thought he found Tammy’s little round suitcase, and as he reached for it, something grabbed him by the wrist.
    It wasn’t just a grab. It felt like razors on his skin.
    For just a moment he thought he’d stuck his hand into one of the other guys’ shaving kits, and somehow, someway their razor blades were all laying in a circle, like a bracelet on his wrist.
    Then he felt a pain that shot from his hand up his elbow and finally ended at his jaw.
    Something had scraped skin off his wrist.
    He tried to bring his hand out, but whatever had it gripped it tight. It was like a bear trap on his wrist. His mind wasn’t working right as he tried to see in the dark, among the piles of crap. The razors dug deeper and he screeched.
    Maybe if he’d been over at the fire, like Josh and Bronwyn and Ziggy, they’d hear that as a metallic sound.
    Maybe.
    4
    Tammy scrambled out of the car seat, and ran back to the trunk. She could make out Griff, but wasn’t sure