Daniel saw Jean’s old Chevy in the driveway and didn’t even shut the garage door after pulling inside. He grabbed his satchel, jumped out of the car, and nearly tripped over his trough full of sculpture material, ready to mix. A roll of chicken wire lay alongside.
“Diana!”
In the living room, he saw Jean’s bag and coat atop the side table. He glanced around the room, then sniffed the air. He felt his stomach drop.
“Shit!”
He clambered up the stairs and slammed open Diana’s door. Diana and Jean lay in the dim red light side-by-side on Diana’s bed. The nightlight revealed a small black pool of blood next to Jean’s neck, and a smear across Diana’s nose, mouth, chin. Diana’s head lolled back on her pillow, her eyes heavy-lidded, barely open.
Daniel felt for Jean’s unwounded carotid, hoping, hoping.
There!
Thin and thready but there, and none of the usual ripping, tearing, shredding Diana preferred. The wound on the other side opened that carotid vertically about two inches, its edges pale and puckered. Diana stirred, lifted her head without opening her eyes.
“Must be the salt air,” she murmured. “I’ve been ravenous.”
Daniel ignored her. He stroked Jean’s hair, bent down and kissed her forehead. His fingers trembled with fear, anger, rage.
Diana propped herself up on her elbows and opened her eyes. They weren’t tracking well.
“I’ve done the thing you couldn’t do for yourself,” she said. She grunted, and fell back onto her pillow. “Now you have each other. Forever.” She picked up Jean’s limp hand. “We can be family, now, of a sort.”
Her deep breathing always preceded her post-feeding slide into oblivion. She roused, opened her eyes and whispered, “Of course, you could stake her like the others. It’s up to you.” She snuggled against Jean and began the fall into torpor.
Daniel calculated what needed to be done, and whether he had time to get to storage in Port Angeles and retrieve the truck containing his backup electronics. He checked his phone for the ferry to Canada and felt his stomach go cold.
Only two runs a day. Both in daylight!
Darkest Knight had forgotten, or disregarded, their most important requirement for safety—night passage. And Daniel hadn’t double-checked.
“All the other ferries run most of the night!” he told himself. He’d made assumptions. “Careless!” he snapped.
Now Daniel was grateful for the instinct that had urged him to take one complete set of backup IDs to Salish Landing with him.
Time to get creative!
He opened their passports, checked the photos provided by Darkest Knight, and found them both passable. Darkest Knight had followed his description of the necessary stand-ins to the letter. He’d been most worried about Diana’s, but it was better than he’d hoped for.
Daniel stuffed his protective gear into his bug-out bag with his cedar puzzle-box of Canadian IDs and credit cards. He gathered up the bag, his satchel of Matrix and his appliance and put them into the back of Bill’s pickup. He lifted a gas can out of the back of the pickup and set it on the workshop floor. He started Bill’s truck, pulled it into the driveway and stepped onto the pile of survey stakes. He selected a stake and stuck it into the back of his belt, then he drove Jean’s car into the garage and parked it next to his Mercedes. He used his cutting torch to remove Bill from his pedestal and dragged him through the laundry door and into the house where he wrestled it onto the couch. He hurried back to the workshop to grab his short-handled sledgehammer and the gas can, then hustled them up the stairs and into the bedroom.
He gripped the survey stake in a trembling fist and moved the body to place the tip correctly.
Diana mumbled, “Brother Dear, family?”
Daniel slammed the hammer onto the top of the stake. A grunt, the wet suck of a chest wound in the final struggle, a wheeze. Daniel lifted Jean’s body and navigated the stairs without falling. He carried her out to the driveway and laid her across the passenger seat of Bill’s pickup. He hurried back to the workshop and fumbled through his tool chest for the wrench for the propane line. He ran back up the stairs and used the gas can to wet down the body on the bed, the sculpture on the couch, his clean room, a trail of gas to his car in the garage. He opened the gas caps to both cars.
Daniel disconnected the propane line behind the laundry room door. He pulled the garage door almost down, scratched a spark from his welding lighter and ducked the hot flash under the door. He yanked it down all the way and ran to Bill’s truck. Already he could see a fire-flash through the upstairs window. Daniel started the truck and raced the old rattletrap down the driveway to beat the failure of that propane tank. He made the highway just as Odd-Job Bill’s rearview mirror lit up. A propane fireball boiled above the treetops.