I pulled away from him, wiping at my damp cheeks.
“OK, doll?” he asked, and I shook my head. I also grimaced at the condescending nickname, but chose the better part of “not pissing off a vampire.”
“Why didn’t you do anything?” I wheezed. “When he was trying to take my bag? When he was jumping out of the plane? Why didn’t you stop him?” He hooked his arm through my elbow and tried to budge me along, but I jerked out of his grasp and leaned harder against the tree, bark be damned.
“I was trying, but it didn’t work. It’s a common problem for me, lately.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked.
“Come on,” he said, ignoring my question. “We have to keep moving. It will help our clothes dry faster.”
“In a place where logic doesn’t live,” I retorted, though I moved my feet all the same.
We walked deeper into the trees, my limbs seeming all the more heavy. Any energy or adrenaline in my system had been used up, and I was running on fumes. The ground was uneven and smelled strongly of old pennies. My feet snagged on roots that rippled up out of the ground. I deliberately ignored the slap of leaves against my shins, sure that I was wading through a sea of poison ivy. We walked for what felt like forever, with the vampire—Finn, his name was Finn—dragging me along half the time, until I could no longer see the glow from the burning plane wreckage.
“Let’s stop,” he said, helping me lower my butt to a felled log. I wondered why, until twinges of soreness rippled up my legs. My heels and the balls of my feet stung with the beginnings of blisters. And despite the fact that I was soaked to the bone, I was so thirsty I could have wept with it. Where was I going to get water? Would the lake have been safe to drink from? Was it a mistake to leave it? Maybe we should have stayed near the wreckage, even if it meant confronting whoever had downed the plane? Finn could fight them off, couldn’t he? I mean, he might need to feed before he did it . . . Wait. I eyed him suspiciously and questioned again whether that was why he was really dragging me along. As a road-trip snack? Was I the human equivalent of Corn Nuts?
I watched as he scrambled up the tree, lithe and graceful as any predator. Well, it seemed he had energy to spare even without turning me into a juice box. He disappeared into the branches above, and I was suddenly sort of jealous. I wanted to be up there with him, moving with so little trouble. I wanted to see the view, to know what it was like to take in the world from such a height. I’d never so much as climbed a rock wall before. I found the number of waivers required by my gym to be off-putting.
“Do you see anything?” I called, and then clamped my lips together. If we were being followed by Ernie or his employers, I probably shouldn’t shout. Or if I did, I should just go ahead and shout, “Here we are!” to save some time. At any rate, Finn didn’t answer.
A panicked thought hit me. What if he was already gone? What if he was swinging through the trees like some sort of vampire Tarzan? What if he’d left me alone in the woods? I had a head full of information but no survival skills.
Once again, I took several slow, deep breaths. I couldn’t respond like this every time Finn got out of my sight, and I couldn’t rely on the lovely white rectangular pills to get me through my anxiety.
A few minutes later, I heard the foliage above rustling, and I sighed in relief.
I grinned widely as Finn dropped to the ground in front of me, then quickly schooled my features into a less awestruck expression.
“What?”
“Nothing, that was just impressive,” I said, shrugging.
He hauled me up to my feet. “Well, I’ve got bad news, and I’ve got worse news.”
“Hit me with the worse news first.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Most people ask for the better news first.”
“I just want to know what I’m dealing with.”
“The worse news is that I don’t see lights anywhere. For miles. No signs of civilization. And I can see pretty damn far.”
I frowned, thinking of an ad I’d seen at the airport, a big, splashy, colorful poster that had taken up a good portion of the wall near the ladies’ room at my gate. Happy families camping near a lake, fishing, kayaking. It had looked so inviting I actually took a brochure, before remembering that I disliked camping, rough living, and the outdoors in general.
“Maybe we’re in the Lakelands Nature Preserve,” I told him. “I saw a bunch of posters and stuff at the airport. It’s the biggest parcel of untouched land in the state. We’re about three hundred miles away from the Hollow, in the middle of what can only be described as ‘lake, undeveloped land, more lake, more undeveloped land, more lake.’ ”