Lavos Read online

  “Don’t! There’s only three of them. The fourth one might be close to her.” Mark was suddenly there, tearing the tablet out of Brent’s hands. “They run fast, damn it! It’s too quiet without the wind blowing and they might hear your engine start. Sound carries in these mountains. Stay there until the sun rises. You’re the only hope we have!”

  “Shut up!” Peggy hissed. “Listen. They stopped.”

  Mark turned his head, staring at something to the side of the camera. His mouth parted. “They’re gone. I don’t see them on any of the cameras.” He looked at Jadee. “You’re locked in, right? You didn’t open the shutters?”

  “You think they heard us talking to her?” Brent cursed. “Fuck!”

  She abandoned the tablet on the table. Pure fear coursed through Jadee and it helped launch her to her feet, moving fast to the side door. She reached it and threw the bolts and bars that helped secure the door in place. She glanced at the windows, making certain all the security shutters were down. They were.

  “Jadee!”

  She returned to the table and picked up the forgotten tablet. “What?”

  Brent’s eyes were wide with fear. “Are you locked in with all the shutters down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep quiet and turn off the lights. You don’t want to draw their attention if they don’t know you’re there,” he whispered.

  “She said the shutters are down. They can’t see if the lights are on or not,” Peggy whispered. “Be quiet.”

  Jadee didn’t move. No way was she going to turn off the lights and sit in the dark to startle at every sound.

  She remembered the camping trip on her twelfth birthday, when they’d told her Werewolves were coming, and her father’s team had played some recorded wolf howls. She’d damn near peed herself sitting in front of the campfire until they’d laughed, pointing out the speakers.

  Then there was the time they’d left fake gold coins around her bed when she’d been eight, telling her leprechauns had visited while she slept. Saying how luck she’d been not to be carried off by them. She’d believed it until she’d realized the coins were made of chocolate, covered with foil. Other pranks they’d pulled flashed through her mind, too many. It made her think this had to be another joke. They could have put footage together of the so-called Vampires and staged the entire thing.

  It had sucked being Victor Trollis’s daughter at times, thanks to her father and his team of researchers dragging her all over the world hunting for mythical creatures. It had only stopped after she’d demanded to live with her grandmother, to have some semblance of normalcy.

  She got a grip on her hammering heart and glared at the camera. “You guys suck. Put my dad on now. Is this payback for not driving to Arizona for his birthday two months ago? Some of us have to work real jobs instead of living off my dad’s trust fund, pursuing crazy notions of myths. How did that last trip work out for you guys, anyway? Did you find a Chupacabra? No? Big surprise!”

  Something landed on the roof of the RV hard enough to make it rock.

  Jadee lifted her gaze, her mouth parting.

  “Be quiet,” Brent breathed.

  Heavy tread stomped from the kitchen area above her to the back, toward her father’s bedroom.

  She put the tablet down, ignoring it, and grabbed her dad’s gun.

  The handle of the door she’d used to get inside rattled but the lock held. Something smashed into it, sounding very much like a fist. A deep hiss followed.

  “Fuck me,” Jadee muttered. She stood, only glancing down to make sure the safety was off on the gun.

  The stomping ceased for a second. Whoever was up there turned around, walking back. Each footstep was loud enough for her to track easily.

  She slid out the gun’s clip and checked the ammunition. It was loaded with real bullets, not blanks. She’d been raised around enough guns to know the difference by sight. She slid the clip back in and checked the chamber, seeing a round already loaded. “Dad? Not funny.”

  Something smashed into the glass behind one of the shutters. The sound assured her it did enough damage to probably web the safety glass. That had to be either a baseball bat or something equally destructive.

  Her father wouldn’t harm his precious Road Warrior—the title he’d dubbed his RV—for a joke. It had cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars to specially outfit it the way he’d wanted.

  “Shut up!” Mark demanded, his voice coming from the forgotten tablet on the table.

  She turned, glancing down to see all three of her father’s team staring at her, huddled around their camera. She reached over and found the volume, muting them as she stood in the middle of the aisle, body tense.

  A loud boom came from the top of the roof. In seconds, it repeated, and in her mind, she could almost imagine one of those things doing the same thing to her father’s RV that they’d done to the trailer, those freaky, weird leaps into the air only to slam down moments later. A third and fourth loud boom assured her one of them seemed to be testing the strength of the roof.

  Jadee looked at the gun in her hand. The Glock 19 suddenly didn’t make her feel safe. She kept hold of it and inched down the short hallway, going directly under the loud thumps from above to reach the hall closet. She yanked it open, shoving coats aside to get to the hidden back panel. The six-digit code had always been her birthday. She opened the safe and reached for the thigh holster. It took about a minute to secure it on and snuggly slip the handgun into the cradle, the weight of it comforting. She felt a little safer gripping the Bushmaster ACR rifle. It only took seconds to slide in a clip.

  Her hands trembled as she shoved another clip down the front of her shirt. She kicked the closet door shut, hugging the weapon close.

  “I’m loaded for bear,” she yelled. “Break in and I’ll open fire on you. I don’t give a shit what the hell you are. Having holes ripping through your body is going to ruin your fun! I’ve got enough rounds to turn your ass into Swiss cheese.”

  A female scream coming from outside made Jadee jerk, shoving her back against the closet. She was afraid she might fire out of pure fear and pressed her finger down along the underside of the weapon. She used her left hand to chamber a round so it was ready to go if the side door gave way.

  A second set of footsteps stormed closer from above and suddenly what sounded like a heavy body dropped flat. She winced, swearing she could hear something scratching the roof.

  “Do you hear me?” she yelled louder. “I have live ammunition and I will shoot you!”

  Something slammed against the door but the locks held. There wasn’t a window there, and the closed shutters next to it didn’t give her a view outside. She braced her legs, worried her knees might collapse under her otherwise. The last thing she wanted to do was fall over from fright.

  Another loud thump came from up top, near the back. That made three she could count, since the scratching sounds didn’t stop and the person on the other side of the door continued to batter it with what sounded like a heavy object.

  “Assholes!” Jadee shouted. “Enough! I’m not screwing around. I have an arsenal at my back and I’m gripping an assault rifle. My dad is a paranoid gun fanatic who made me learn how to fire anything that took bullets or shells from the time I could walk. I won’t miss, and I’ll keep firing. I can reload faster than you can say ‘oh shit’. Take your freaky circus act somewhere else!”

  Silence reigned. It was eerie and sudden.

  Jadee sucked in a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. It was possible her threats had made them reconsider making her a target. She bit her bottom lip, relaxing her grip on the rifle. The weight of the handgun against her outer thigh seemed suddenly heavy.

  “Goddamn,” she rasped. Her dad and his geek squad had actually found a fucking nest of Vampires. What are they doing in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska? It didn’t make sense.

  “Come out,” a man’s creepy voice crooned.

  Jadee stopped breathing, trapping air