Free Vampires in Devil Town by Wayne Hixon Page A

there.”
  “Yeah. I think we showed him, didn’t we? Sorry about cutting you. I had to do it with him looking.”
  “Don’t worry about it,” Rachel said. “I’m just happy to have my breasts for now.”
  “Bones has a real thing for cutting the nipples off. He plays with them for days. Until they get all rotten and smelly.”
  Rachel suppressed a shudder.
  They lit their cigarettes and continued walking in the dark woods.
  “What made you change your mind?” Rachel asked.
  “What you said... about him messing with you. That’s what did it. It’s happened before and I didn’t even really care if you were lying or not because it made me think about last time and how that had made me feel and about how I should have left him then. How I should have just quit this whole thing the minute it started but didn’t and I guess that was it. I didn’t want to be around him another minute. I’ve been thinking about it for a pretty long time but I never had anyone I could use as an accomplice or something. I haven’t really been myself until recently.”
  “Do you think he’s still following us?”
  “Honestly? I doubt it. He doesn’t like to leave his van alone and he’s... well, he’s incredibly lazy for one thing.”
  “Lazy Bones.”
  “Ha.”
  “Sorry.”
  “No need to be. That’s what I think of him as too. To myself anyway.”
  “So what happened last time?”
  Rain took a deep drag of her cigarette. “You really want to know?”
  “Tell me some stuff about yourself and I’ll tell you some pretty shocking stuff about myself. How’s that? Maybe we can try and make some sense of all this.”
  The girl exhaled and Rachel noticed her breathing trembled just thinking about it.
  Rachel reached out and touched Rain’s arm.
  “It’s okay,” she said. “Bad stuff happens to everybody. It’ll make you feel better to talk about it. Trust me.”
  The girl took a harsh drag from her cigarette and said, “I guess so,” smoke puffing out of her mouth.
  “Okay,” Rain said. “First of all, let me start by saying this: I don’t really know you and what I have to tell you could get me in a lot of trouble too. I want you to promise me you won’t tell anyone about what I’m about to say. I mean, I’d look like an accomplice or something. And I didn’t really want to do any of it.”
  The girls sidestepped a tree and landed on a narrow clearing.
  “As much as I would like to promise that, I don’t know if I can.”
  “Then I can’t tell you.”
  “Well, see, my situation’s a little more complex than you might realize. A couple years ago, my boyfriend, Jacob, and I had some really strange stuff happen to us and ever since then we’ve been trying to sort of figure out what it was that really happened. So, I can tell you now, whatever you tell me will probably make it back to him because we don’t keep any thing from each other. Especially not the really strange stuff. Not anything that might help us get to the bottom of this mess.”
  “Well, I guess it’s okay if you tell him if you’re sure he wouldn’t tell anybody else. I was mainly talking about cops or anyone like that.”
  “Oh, I wouldn’t tell a cop.” Rachel almost laughed at Rain’s nearly naive sense of caution. “Besides, the cops in this town are probably just about the most evil people we have. Besides Them.”
  “Them?”
  “The Devils. Have you ever heard of the Devils?”
  “Can’t say that I have.”
  “Well, let me clue you in. They’re kind of a legend here in Lynchville. Now, I have family all over the U.S. and I’ve mentioned the Devils to just about all of them and none of them seem to have heard of them either. The Internet doesn’t really help much. The Devils are like the most evil thing imaginable. I don’t really know what it is about them that makes them evil or what they’re trying to do. Legends are the