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)
Kyle swallows, still rattled, but manages a perfectly natural, “That’s right. Drunk as an elephant’s trunk.”
Jessica’s eyes don’t leave Elias’s for quite some time. All trace of sweetness is gone. No smile. Her face has become hard and unforgiving, showing her age, cracks in makeup, weariness.
Then: “I … wasn’t sure if it was you, Kyle, of course,” she goes on slowly, piecing the sentences together, “on the camera, the security camera … but I knew Brock came here to this town looking for you … after seeing that … disturbing video. What was that, by the way?” She turns her glassy eyes onto Kyle now. “Was it just for shock value? Part of some short film project? It seemed somewhat scripted to me. Ash thought it was real. I had to tell him that of course it wasn’t real. Can’t believe everything you see on the internet. Even those heart-string-pulling videos showing a guy with a man-bun giving food to the homeless are faked, all for the views, the phony feel-good vibes and clicks …”
“That’s all it was,” Kyle agrees with a hasty nod. “Just a big fake thing. I didn’t want to do it. I hated doing it. I think most of the postings were taken down by now, actually.”
“I noticed that, too,” she admits, pursing her lips. “It was a shock to learn even my pastor had seen it. He believes in many things, you see, strange things that might make you laugh.” She lets out that choked noise again, shakes her head. “You aren’t a vampire or some strange supernatural being, of course not, how absolutely ridiculous.” That choked noise becomes a full laugh. She brings a hand to her face, gazing off somewhere, lost in her mind, and the humor quickly evaporates. “Vampires are … are terrible abominations of nature. Unnatural and foul. Those are the parting words my pastor gave me before I left on this … oh, this psychotic mission we’ll call it, hunting down my husband, like I expect to find him dead, blood sucked out of him, or worse.”
Kyle drops his gaze to her glass of water, hardly touched, a single teardrop of condensation running down its side. He can’t be sure what he’s feeling, with Elias’s hot emotions surging in from one side, Jessica’s frosty, prickling suspicions on the other, and his own feelings suffocated by both of theirs, forgotten.
And a somewhat clueless teenager in a vehicle outside, his emotions bouncing to every extreme as he focuses on whatever game occupies his attention.
These aren’t insignificant facts that Jessica is sharing. Her congregation literally believes in his kind. Or at the very least her pastor does. Kyle is an “abomination of nature”. How many others believe in their existence? Did Kyle’s video have a more devastating impact than previously thought?
And worse: would word of this reach Lord Markadian?
“Oh.” Jessica peers down at the floor. “You have a cat.”
Kyle and Elias look, noticing the cat a few paces from the table studying Jessica, uncharacteristically brave, not her usual, skittish, run-off-and-hide self, tail twitching.
“Little Lion,” Kyle absently states for an introduction.
Jessica doesn’t smile, but she looks like she tries to. “Cute.”
“I just think Brock’s passed out at the penny slots,” says Elias, bringing her back on track and again employing that carefree tone of his. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“No?” murmurs Jessica coolly.
“Nope,” confirms Elias with a warm, reassuring smile.
Jessica glances at each of them a few more times. Then she lets out a sigh that seems to drop ten pounds off her back. “You know what? I think I will stop worrying. This isn’t the first time Brock’s gone off. He and I, we haven’t really been … the best lately. We disagree … a lot. You know Brock,” she says with a frayed look toward Kyle. “Same as he’s always been deep down inside, does whatever he wants, never apologizes for anything. I thought he had made progress over the years, but …” She lets out another laughter-twisted sigh, shakes her head. “You know what? I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’ll go.”
She rises suddenly from her chair, causing Little Lion to take off running.
Kyle and Elias rise too, as if synchronized.
She clutches her wallet purse to her chest, clicks her long fingernails on it in thought, then offers a tightened smile back at them. “Actually, I just had a thought. Can we do something else before I go?”
Kyle nods. “Of course. What do you—?”
“Let’s pray.”
She comes up to them with unexpected swiftness, sets her purse on the table, takes hold of Elias’s and Kyle’s hands. After an uncertain glance at one another, the men hold hands, too, all three of them forming a circle.
“Lord, please guide Brock back to the path of goodness, to bring him back home to his wife and son. Lord, please give him the strength to overcome the demons he faces, to see the light, to come home where he is loved, away from the dens of sin that he is so often seduced by, from the places of evil, from devices of Satan that lead him astray. I asked you what I should do. You sent me on this journey, to follow my heart, and my heart is with my husband Brock. I pray, much like you brought Kyle and Elias together for their own journey of love and delivering Kyle away from a path of darkness with Tristan, that you also deliver my husband from his own darkness, my Lord, I’m but your humble servant, begging your assistance in this dark time, oh merciful Lord, thank you, blessed be, amen.”