Where the Wild Things Bite(10)

Unfortunately, airport security frowned on matches and Swiss Army knives almost as much as they did pepper spray, so it was a moot point. The closest thing I had to survival supplies was a granola bar I’d purchased on the flight from Atlanta to Louisville. Thanks to the miracle of modern packaging, it hadn’t been smashed when we landed in the lake.

If only I’d thought to put my phone in the sealed plastic bag. It would have made texting more difficult, but my phone might have lived.

“How about yours?” I asked, dumping the excess water out of my purse.

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and showed me the waterlogged, fractured screen. “I seem to have landed on it. Along with an unnamed and ungrateful person.”

“Pardon me for not being overflowing with gratitude for you tossing me out of a plane! Now, what are your skills?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Beg pardon?”

“Your skills. You vampires all have these deep, dark wells of mysterious capability, with your shadowy origins and the ‘oh, I could tell you how I learned to count cards and read Welsh upside down, but I would have to kill you’ thing. Plus, most of you have a special vampire talent. So what can you do to help get us out of here? Because I have to tell you, the closest thing I have to outdoorsmanship is carrying a Swiss Army knife, which I couldn’t even take through the airport with me. So what are your skills?”

“Do I look like a mountain man?” he asked, gesturing to his well-tailored, though obviously dirty and rumpled, clothes.

“No.”

“I am just as out of my element as you are.”

“Where the hell are we?” I scanned the shore. Trees. All I could see were trees moving in the gentle summer breeze. No city lights in the distance. No water towers helpfully labeled with the local township’s name. Nothing.

I flopped down on my butt on the sandy patch of grass near the muddy shore. I was stranded in the middle of the Kentucky backwoods, with no phone, no transportation, and no idea how to get to civilization. The rest of my anxiety meds were burning in my suitcase on the plane, because I didn’t trust myself not to take too many if I packed them in my tote bag. And I was trapped in the bluegrass version of Deliverance. With a vampire.

Worst. Case. Scenario.





2




First, establish a food source for the vampire that is not you.

—Where the Wild Things Bite: A Survival Guide for Camping with the Undead

Mr. Vampire had no time for me or my need to catch my breath after nearly dying in a horrible air disaster.

“We need to get moving,” he said, as I wrapped my arms around my bent knees and tried to rub circulation into my hands. We were fortunate, I supposed, that it was August and relatively warm. I wouldn’t court hypothermia on top of my partially medicated emotional trauma.

“What? Why?” I protested. “All of the survival guides say to stay with the wreckage. Rescue crews, the FAA, helpful rednecks with ATVs who see the flames and want to burn an old mattress, they’re going to come looking for us. Why would we walk away from the thing they’re looking for? Besides, at least with the plane fire, we have some light to see by.”

“Because the pilot took the plane off course. We weren’t supposed to fly this far south.”

“And you know that because your magical vampire power is sensing longitude and latitude?”

“Because while someone was running about the cabin like an insane person, I happened to see our heading on the instrument panel,” he told me.

Damn it, I hated it when people out-logicked me. My eyes narrowed at the know-it-all vampire. I’d been more comfortable when I thought he was just a pretty face. “Well, he wasn’t supposed to jump out of the plane, either, I’m guessing. Either way, even if we are off course, why wouldn’t we want to stay put?”

“Because, unless that pilot just really hated his job, I’m guessing someone paid him to take the flight off course, meaning they probably had some preconceived notion of where the flight would end up. And since they thought the pilot would have your bag, which they are clearly after, for reasons we will discuss eventually, they’re probably going to linger in that general area so they could pick up said bag, don’t you think?”

I paused, thinking about that. I didn’t know this vampire. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t walk through the woods in the dark with a strange man who didn’t have fangs. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and when it counted, the vampire had stepped between Ernie and me. He could have left me on the plane to die, but he didn’t. He could have used me to cushion his fall when we hit the water, but he didn’t. If he was going to hurt me, he probably would have done it by now.