Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Above, the shape of La-La eclipses the gaping hole in the sky filled with violent wind, grinning madly. When he jumps down, he lands so close, Kyle falls back. La-La’s raspberry eyes are wet with laughter. Lips parted, his grin never abating in the slightest, his teeth shiny, his bloodied sword scraping the floor.
Kyle kicks away, pushing down the aisle. He glances to his side, spots 4 hiding under the body of her dead boyfriend. By his limp hand on the floor, a scalpel.
Kyle snatches it at once, out of breath, then scrambles to his feet as nimbly as he can, brandishing it.
La-La’s beady, raspberry eyes drop to Kyle’s weapon. “My blade is longer than yours.”
“Tell me what you want,” pleads Kyle.
La-La seems to catch the giggles as he slowly advances, throat dancing with his excited titters as Kyle backs away.
“Drake is your nephew, isn’t he?” Kyle will say anything to reach the vampire, to connect to him somehow. “He called you Uncle La-La. I’m Drake’s friend. That makes me a friend of the family. Why would you hurt a friend of the family?”
La-La raises his sword up like a lightning rod, still giggling. With it held in the air, the blade sings as sand whips past it.
“Talk to me,” pleads Kyle, though it comes out more like a demand. The more he backs away, the closer he brings La-La to the front where his injured brother is. There is only so much aisle left. “Everyone wants something. What do you want?”
La-La’s mane of white hair flies wildly in the wind. “Is one of these people … someone you love …?”
Kyle’s heart grows cold at the words.
Then the vampire lifts his foot, places it on Kyle’s chest, gives a delicate shove that might be described as gentle.
Kyle flies back as if he was just rammed by a rhinoceros.
Out of breath, Kyle tries picking himself up, fails, drops back to the floor. “Don’t you have …” Kyle can barely hear himself, his words swallowed in the screaming turmoil of sand. “Don’t you have someone you love? A family? Anyone?”
La-La’s foot returns to Kyle’s chest, but only the tips of his toes, pinning him almost daintily to the floor. “Everyone I have ever loved,” he says through his incessant giggles, still grinning, lips never quite closing between his words, his sword still held straight up into the air, “I have killed by my own hands. It is so, so exciting to me. The betrayal on their faces. Tears. All of the delicious begging. To feel the pain they feel in their hearts. To live it, one agonizing moment at a time … I hurt as they hurt. I feel it, too … and I crave more … the sadness, the regret, I love how it tickles. And oh, the despair … I taste their despair in the same way I taste their blood. Would you like to try it?”
Kyle can’t shake La-La’s foot off of his chest, even while he grips it. “Get off of me!”
“Someone you love is here …” sings La-La playfully.
Kyle’s heart thrashes wildly as he fights to get out from underneath La-La’s foot. “Please!”
La-La turns it into a little song. “Someone you love … yes, someone you love, love, love … is here, here, here … I will find them, yes, yes, yes, I will find them, too …”
Kyle’s heart pounds with intensifying despair at his words. There is no negotiating with La-La. No reasoning. His mind is so detached from reality, Kyle wonders if the vampire is even aware of what he’s doing, of who he hurts, if he even cares. Like a force of nature itself. Does anyone blame the tornado when it levels a house? Or the hurricane when it drowns a city?
Or a fire when it burns?
“Has anyone ever told you,” comes Raya’s voice, entirely unimpressed, “how desperately you could use a singing lesson?”
Kyle twists his head to discover Raya standing behind him, whose dress has torn in a few places from all the activity, the fabric thrashing in the wind of the storm like crazed tentacles.
La-La peels his eyes from Kyle, appears to delight in seeing Raya. “My sword’s name is Thirst,” he states happily.
Raya yawns.
The reaction only seems to inspire more manic giggling from La-La. Then he grows quiet—deathly quiet. “And do you know what Thirst is made of?”
“What?” asks Raya dryly, bored. “Your baby sister’s teeth? Your mother’s bones? Oh, what a shocker, we’re all so shocked, shocked by your whole shocking act.” She takes a step forward, her sleeves billowing in the wind, flapping everywhere. “If you want to feel true despair, go stand in the desert somewhere and wait for the morning sunrise. You’ll feel all the delicious despair you desire as you turn into cigarette butts in the wind.”