Original: "To Strangers You Meet Along the Road," F/F, explicit
The same day a review said "torture and gore" were par for the course with me, and I was like, "What? Torture? Gore? Me? Noooooo," I go and post something like this. It's dark and eerie. And I admit it, some of it creeped me out. But I stand by it! This is for the Academy of Bards' Halloween extravaganza, even though I'm not technically invited to it yet. I'm sure it's just delayed. ::g:: Anyway, enjoy! With the lights on.
Summary: A young runaway has an alarming encounter with a woman she meets in a diner. (5,589 words)
To Strangers You Meet Along the Road
by Geonn Cannon
http://www.geonncannon.com
Copyright © 2015 Geonn Cannon
She stopped depending on futures a long time ago, and she’s learned not to let the past dictate her present. The only things that matter are the things she can see at the moment: ketchup and mustard flanking a battered napkin holder that reflects the lights behind the counter; a framed picture of the woman who served her coffee standing next to a celebrity who is only vaguely familiar; a man in a white T-shirt moving from side to side as he works (or cleans) the grill that made her hamburger. The whole world consists of four other people. The man and woman in the corner booth, a trucker and his wife or girlfriend. The waitress, occasionally looking up from her magazine to see if her services are required. And the short-order cook, who is now singing something under his breath. A standard. Sinatra.
“It’s funny they call them standards,” a smoky-voiced woman says. “Standard implies at least some measure of mediocrity. They are the heights so many others wish to attain and so seldom do.”
The woman is sitting beside her, only one empty stool separating them. She’s pale and dark at the same time. Her skin is white or maybe gray-blue. It’s difficult to tell in the harsh light. At first her hair looks black, but after a moment she sees hints of dark, dark red hidden in the ink. She’s wearing a black leather jacket over a white blouse unbuttoned at the collar. She glances toward the door as if it might explain how the new arrival got in without being heard, but it gives nothing away. There was no creak of vinyl as she sat, no squeak of her leather jacket had betrayed her movements.
The woman looks at her and reveals sea-green eyes. “Hello.”
She nods a greeting and hopes the interaction doesn’t go further. She’s close to finishing her coffee. Once it’s gone, she’ll head back out.
“My name is Wanda. What’s yours?”
She considers not answering. She’s made it this far without making connections, but it’s an innocent question. “Penny.”
“Penny.” She sways a little on the stool and faces forward again. “It tastes like copper on my tongue. Sharp and electric. I like it.”
Penny ignores her. There are maybe two more bites of her burger, a few too-crispy fries, but she’s willing to sacrifice them to get out of a conversation. She leaves money under the edge of her plate and slips off the stool. The waitress sees her going and gives a polite wave as Penny shrugs into the straps of her backpack. The straps pull hard against her shoulders before she adjusts them into rest in the trenches they’ve dug in during her journey so far. The body of the bag presses like a fist in the small of her back. She half-expects Wanda to offer her a ride, follow her out, something, but the sneaky brunette remains where she is. Penny pushes out the door into the frigid night.
It was raining earlier and the parking lot is shining black as she crosses it to the road, a slick ribbon of oil cutting through the clusters of trees in the foothills. Penny turns up her collar and starts walking in the same direction she’s been going for the past three weeks. Always east. Sometimes northerly, sometimes taking a southern route. She aims toward the cold with no particular destination in mind. It helps when she finds a ride, not knowing where she wants to end up. People just drop her near wherever they’re going and she continues on.
There are three million, nine hundred and eighty thousand, eight hundred and seventeen miles of road in the United States. Some paved, some not. She figures she’s walked one percent of one percent, even though she’s worn out more pairs of shoes than she can count. It comforts her knowing there’s more road than she could ever walk. Even if she never sat down again, she would never have to walk down the same street twice.
Her current road wound through central New Hampshire. Tall thin trees marched alongside like prison bars. She could hear the gentle rushing of a river somewhere to the south. The creatures that had been out and loud earlier were silent now, but a fog has pushed in behind the storm. She ignores the cold and keeps moving even as the world around her shrinks to a hundred yards, fifty, twenty-five, ten. She slept a few hours earlier at a motel where a sympathetic maid let her use one of the empty rooms. Motels in the middle of nowhere are easily manipulated. The maid looked like she was a mother, and Penny looks like a little girl in need of somewhere warm and safe.
Headlights cut through the fog behind her and she steps to one side of the road. Night and the fog conspire to manipulate the engine noise, refracting the lights into twin suns that seem to wrap around her as she walks. She turns and uses one hand to shield her face. She wants time to get out of the way if it seems the driver doesn’t see her. The car escapes the fog by inches, wisps clinging to its crimson body and the black walls of its tires. It seems to fill the right-hand lane of the road and Penny steps closer to the grassy edge in response.
The car slows to a stop and the window rolls down. The interior is black and yellow, just bright enough that she can make out the shape of the seats. The woman from the diner is seated behind the wheel, although it doesn’t seem as if she’s driving. Her pose is too casual, her hand resting on the bottom curve of the wheel too relaxed for her to be in control of the behemoth. The fog swirls into the opening she’s made by rolling down the window and obscures her face. It looks like she’s been smoking; it looks like she’s exhaling the smoke when she speaks.
“I don’t know how I could live with myself if I drove on and left you like this.”
“It’s okay. I prefer to walk.”
Wanda smiles. Penny is still walking, the car rolls along at her pace. “How far do you expect to walk? Have you been here before, do you know this area?” Wanda nods down the road. “The nearest town is thirty miles from here. The nearest motel is forty-two miles. I suppose by the time you reach it, you’ll be exhausted enough to sleep.”
“I’m not in a hurry.”
“But are you scared?”
Penny is thrown by the question. “Of you?”
“Being out alone after dark in the deep woods.” She moves her hand, rests it on the horn, and presses down three times. The car sounds like a wounded animal in its death throes, and the sound echoes off the trees and mountains and the water-slick road. Wanda waits for the silence to return before she breaks it by speaking again. “No response. But it’s not those who would respond you need to be concerned about. It’s those who remain silent so you won’t know they’re here.”
Penny has slept in bus and subway stations. She’s woken with shabby men and well-dressed men alike touching her body and she’s fought them all off. In Philadelphia she slept on the floor of a shooting gallery while people got high all around her. She broke into a barn and slept in the back of a broken pickup truck. In Detroit she went to sleep in an alley next to a homeless man, waking to find him gone with a smear of blood where he had been huddled.
“I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can, Penny.”
She walks on. The car rolls along beside her. The engine purrs. Penny’s shoes smack against the pavement. It is wet, she admits, and cold and miserable. If the storm comes back, she’ll be soaked by the time she reaches the motel. She could get sick.
“Have it your way,” Wanda says seconds before Penny accepts her mind has been changed. The engine grumbles to life and the car pulls ahead of her.
Penny says, “Wait...” The fog closes around the scarlet snake eyes of the car’s back lights. She considers running after it, but she refuses to look that desperate. The sound of the engine fades. In its absence, the night seems more silent and the road more ominous than it did before. The rushing water suddenly conceals rushed footsteps. The trees provide cover for people in black, people stalking her until just the right moment. The road hasn’t seemed this long since she started out. The motel seems impossibly far away.
She considers going back to the diner. The trucker might offer her a ride, and the woman with him would hopefully prevent him from making any untoward advances. Unless she was complicit. Unless she helped him lure victims into the back of his truck where they could do whatever they wanted. She’s heard of it happening, but surely just in urban legends and campfire stories to dissuade children from hitchhiking.
“Are you scared?”
Penny jumps at the voice, barely stops herself from crying out as she spins toward it. She expects to see Wanda next to her, just as she had appeared in the diner. The road was empty. She was shaking now and not only because of the cold. She looks around to make sure no one has snuck up on her in the past few seconds but she’s still alone. Somehow that is just as frightening. When she starts walking again, her pace is faster. Jogging won’t help. Forty miles yawn between her and safety, like a chasm has been opened at her feet. She feels herself sweating under her clothes even though her hands are shaking.
The road slopes slightly downward as she runs. It follows the shape of the mountain that is currently hidden by the fog and darkness. Penny tells herself she’s alone in the dark; she tells herself there are others nearby who can help her. Neither is comforting. The diner seems impossible now. A warm place with people and payphones and connections to real life. She remembers passing through New York. The crush of people seemed like a hallucination.
She hears a low rumble that surrounds her, carried and amplified by the fog. She’s certain it’s a beast come to devour her. What else could it possibly be? But then the wisps break around the back of the car. It idles in the center lane, the rumble sharpening down into an engine’s hum. She stops and stares at the back window. It’s far too tinted to see within, but she can almost feel Wanda’s eyes on her in the rearview mirror. Watching, waiting.
Penny’s fear remains, but is now tempered with indignation. She considers walking around the car as a show of independence and pride, but she knows how foolish that would be. The wind has picked up from the west again and she can smell rain carried on it. If she keeps walking she’ll be soaked to the bone before she gets anywhere close to civilization. She circles to the side of the car and opens the passenger door.
Wanda is turned to face her, her arm stretched across the back of the passenger seat. She has a knowing smile on her lips and a mischievous glint in her eye. Penny looks in the backseat to make sure no ax murderer is lurking in the darkness, but all she sees are suitcases and a garment bag hanging from a hook. The car smells of patchouli, violets, and oddest of all, oranges. She can smell the petrichor from the woods and thinks for a moment the forest smells are mingling with the car, but she would have smelled it before opening the door. This strange miasma is coming from within, she has no doubt.
“Have you rethought my offer of a ride?”
“I don’t have money to pay you for gas or anything like that.”
Wanda shrugs. “As long as you’re going to same direction I am, there’s no reason to make you pay for gas.”
Penny hesitates, but another gust of wind roars through the chasm created by the wall of trees on either side of the road. It cuts through her and smells of storms. She shrugs out of her bag and climbs into the car. She puts the bag on the floor between her feet and pulls the remarkably heavy door shut behind her. It closes with a heavy metal “THUD” like a bank vault or the hatch on an airplane. It sounds very final. Penny leaves her fingers on the door handle in case she needs a quick escape.
Wanda faces forward again as the car comes back to life. The fog rolls across the hood and breaks against the glass like ocean waves. The warmth of the car closes around Penny and thaws her starting at the tips of her fingers and flowing up her arms. She hugs herself, only now realizing just how cold she is, and looks out the window.
The car is silent and large. Almost impossibly large. Penny feels as if she could curl up in her seat without overlapping the edges. Despite that, she’s very aware of Wanda’s presence. Wanda fills the space effortlessly. Even if there was anything to see outside the car, even if the fog wasn’t choking them, she doubted there would be much to see this late at night. She focuses her attention to the car’s interior in a way she hopes doesn’t look like snooping. The console between their seats is stuffed full of road maps hastily folded and stuffed wherever they will fit. There’s a plastic bag in the floor wrapped around the shape of something large and square. A book, or several books based on the thickness.
“The radio is broken,” Wanda says, startling her.
“Oh.” She has an iPod, considers offering it. Somehow she doesn’t think any of her music will appeal to this mystery lady. “We could... talk about ourselves...”
Wanda’s lips curl. “You don’t strike me as the type to volunteer information to a stranger.”
Penny sits on her hands, grateful for the warmth. She’s shivering now.
“Perhaps a story.”
“A story? You mean a ‘once upon a time’ kind of story?”
Wanda nods her head, a single forward motion. “Not exactly. Truth be told, this story begins before recorded time. When humanity was little more than clusters huddled along riverbanks struggling to survive from one season to the next. Muddy things that didn’t know how long they would live or what the next difficulty would be. The only constant was mortality. Death. Everything was in decay. Every action a step taken to stave off the nothingness that would come after. You see, we hadn’t invented religion yet. After light came dark, so after life came nothingness. The purpose of life was to continue living.
“There came to be a young woman in those days who wished for something more. Her life was like everyone else’s. Wake, piss, eat, fuck, sleep. Give birth to new children who would continue the cycle. If only she could defeat death, it would give her the chance to find a new purpose. Another way to fill her existence.”
The road curves. Penny feels herself sway with the movement of the car.
“These were the days before reason. Before rational minds explained away the spectacular. There have always been strange and magnificent things just out of sight, and in those days it was much easier to come across them. A shade or a whisper from an empty crevasse in the desert. Burning bushes spoke prophecy to those who cared to listen. A woman in search of life everlasting wouldn’t have had to search long before she found what she sought.
“He was a trickster and a thief, this man she found, and she was a beauty of her clan. Full breasts and rounded hips. Her skin was the color of the clay. She told him what she wished, and he told her his price. It was a small fee to her. Many had done the same thing to her for nothing in return. She spread her legs for him and he came to her in the night. He used her body for ten days. When he finally returned to his dark abode, she was deathless and with child.”
She falls silent. The tires hiss through the water accumulating on the road; Penny realizes it’s started raining again. Skeleton fingers drum on the roof of the car so loudly she can’t believe she didn’t hear it before. It feels cold again.
“The boy is born healthy, but pale and sorrow-eyed. I don’t mean pale as in Caucasian; they came from elsewhere. This boy was ashen. His limbs grew long and gnarled like branches on a tree in winter. He rarely spoke. No one saw him eat. He grew gaunt as the years went by. Often he would go into the fields to tend the flock, but no one wanted him there. So many beasts always seemed to go missing when he was on watch. He blamed lions and other predators, but no lion had ever been so voracious or crafty.”
Penny draws her legs up, feet on the seat, hugs her knees. “I don’t think I like this story.”
Wanda says, “They found him one day in the field hunched over a fresh kill. Blood stained his lips and hands. He was chewing through the mule’s throat. His eyes were black and red when he turned on his clan members. They attacked him and he had no choice but to respond in kind. He tore the men limb from limb. He tasted human blood for the first time that day and realized what he had been missing. Sustenance.”
Wanda’s tongue, pink and lively as if it was a separate creature, touches her upper lip. She slides her hands along the curve of the steering wheel in a caress that makes Penny uncomfortable.
“The word for this creature, the name they gave it, is forever lost and written in a tongue so ancient we’d be fools to try translating it. But you know what he was called. You know what his kin have been called through the ages. Mythologies to literature to film to ridiculous fantasies catering to young girls. Inuring an entire generation of their preferred victims to their dangers. Say ‘vampire’ and girls swoon and dream of dashing young stalkers who prey on them when they sleep.”
Wanda turns to look at Penny, still driving but no longer looking at the road.
“You’re not swooning are you, Penny?”
“No.”
“And you know what I am now.”
Penny swallows the lump in her throat. “Yes.”
Wanda faces the road again, just in time to follow the curve around a stand of paper birches.
“Most people think of bats or black cats when they think of vampires.” She says the word so casually, brings it sharply into focus. “The truth is we’re more like spiders. People have a primal reaction to spiders, and the same goes with us. We’ve been around so long that regular humans evolved a fight-or-flight response.” She chuckles. “A human will cause themselves more pain trying to smash a spider than any potential bite would have caused. That hardly seems reasonable.”
Penny swallows the lump in her throat. Up ahead through the fog, she sees the town Wanda mentioned earlier. It’s like a faded black-and-white photograph, fuzzy on the details while retaining the idea of the original picture. A gas station appears to still be open, but the rest of the town is reduced to a half-dozen streetlights that turn the fog into a pale vanilla color.
“Can I tell you a story?” Penny asks.
Wanda seems surprised, but pleasantly so. She moves her hands to the apex of the steering wheel and nods slowly. “Yes. You may.”
Penny tries to decide where to begin. “At the beginning of the world, a woman went to a demon to gain power over death. She gave birth to a son who had to take life from others to repay that gift. He lived for ages, I’m assuming, by taking life from others. You were called vampire, churel, pontianak, civateto. They called you upir. Lamia. Dhampir and bruja. Your kind was legend wherever you roamed.”
She can sense Wanda’s interest now. The vampire keeps her eyes on the road but her body language indicates Penny has her full attention.
“You asked if I was frightened of you, but the answer is no. Only fools fear vampires who have just fed. In the diner you were like porcelain, but now your skin is flush. You fed well. On the trucker? The cook? Maybe you took them all. The diner might be a bloody ruin behind us. All I know is that you had your fill. I smell them on you. Patchouli and oranges.” She breathes deeply and lets it out slowly.
Wanda says, “Who are you, little pet?”
The interior of the windows has fogged a bit. It was clear when she got in, and that should have been the deciding factor. Until she got in the car, no one was breathing in it. There was no body heat to accumulate on the glass that’s being chilled on the outside. She draws her finger through the moisture and draws a line, then smudges it out.
“You were born in the dawn of time. There was a time before that, when humanity was numbered only as two. A man named Adem and a woman named Layil. She was born to be the mother of mankind, but she refused to live in servitude. She had been given life and consciousness, a soul and a mind, and she would not waste it churning out children. The choice cost her paradise, and she wandered into the same shadows your ancestor would one day find. Angels had fallen. But Layil, called Lilith in her exile, was the first mortal to fall. She was a human amongst devils.
“Lilith enjoyed sex. The physical act of love, the release of orgasm. It was an act intended for reproduction but Lilith discovered the pleasure in it. She lay with demons while she was outcast and gained strength from their coupling. She became something different. Something new that God had not intended. When humanity spread out from Eden, Lilith and her new kin were waiting there for them. When the first men huddled in caves to sleep, Lilith came to them. She drew strength from congress with them. She gained power from their climax and left them weakened. Soon the men gave name to these seductresses.”
Wanda says, “Succubi.”
Penny draws an X on the fogged glass of her window, then turns her head to look at Lilith. “So, vampire... are you scared?”
#
The room nearest to the vending machines is vacant. Penny waits by the door while Wanda goes into the small office situated at the far end of the nearly-empty parking lot. Penny’s legs are crossed at the ankle and her shoulder presses against the chipped paint of the wall. The road seems to be fifty yards long at most, amputated at either side by an almost opaque barricade of white. The fog is mobile, swirling and growing as the storm circles somewhere to the north of their location. Wanda comes out of the office at last and walks toward her. She has two keys and she offers one to Penny. Their fingers touch. Penny closes her hand around Wanda’s fingers and Wanda invades her space, crowds her against the wall, and angles her head for a kiss.
Their lips meet. Penny pushes her tongue into Wanda’s mouth and tastes the blood from the clerk. The past few years on the road she’s paid her way with blow jobs, sympathy, and the occasional nocturnal visit from the desk clerk. She always got more out of those encounters than the people who thought they were using her, but it was demeaning nonetheless. The copper taste in Wanda’s mouth is a sign that things are changing.
Wanda unlocks the door and ushers Penny inside. Neither of them want the lights on as they collide again, kissing again with more passion. They are two predators without prey, hunters on an evenly-matched field. Wanda is the more aggressive of the two. She has hunted and killed for decades and knows how to deal with victims. Penny is an accidental killer who avoids violence whenever possible. She jumps nervously when her shirt is ripped open, tenses up when Wanda grabs her hips to walk her backward toward the bed.
The kiss ends when Wanda decides. Her eyes seem to shine in the darkness, illuminating her face as she gently takes both of Penny’s hands in hers. She rests them on her chest and guides them lower, and Penny molds her hands to the shape of Wanda’s chest. She finds and loosens the buttons, never taking her eyes off Wanda’s. Clothes fall to the floor and are quickly forgotten, leaving Penny in mass-produced cotton underwear in front of Wanda’s elegant designer lingerie.
Their lips have barely been apart since entering the room, but now Wanda moves her head to the curve of Penny’s neck. Penny bows her body, pressing her round hips into the sharp angles of Wanda’s. Wanda breathes deeply, the inhalation somehow feeling like a caress before it’s replaced by her wide-open mouth. She feels the sweep of a tongue first, like liquid fire, and then the sharp scrape of teeth. She shivers. She curls her fingers and drags the nails up the outside of Wanda’s arms.
Wanda bites down hard and then, after a split second, applies the inch of extra pressure required. The skin breaks and blood wells. Wanda’s arms erupt in gooseflesh from Penny’s rough touch and the taste of blood heightens her arousal. Penny closes her eyes as her blood seeps out of the wound - a rough tear rather than the pristine pinpricks the movies have always shown. The air around her fills with the scent of Wanda’s arousal. It settles on her like a fine mist, seeping into her pores.
Wanda moans and presses harder against her. Penny puts her hands on Wanda’s waist and throws them both backward onto the bed. She spreads her legs and Wanda rests between them. She drinks deeply as energy seeps out of her body, both women squirming at the sensation of feeding and being fed upon. Wanda guides Penny’s hand again. This time she puts it between her legs and Penny extends her middle two fingers.
“I’ve never... felt anything like this,” Wanda moans, her lips tracing smears of blood on Penny’s shoulder as she speaks. The wound is already closing. Wanda strokes the spot with her tongue to gather up any spillage she missed. The touch of her mouth and tongue are making Penny light-headed, a side-effect of the feeding she’s often suspected. The victim becomes numb and complacent to the feeding so the vampire can take their fill. But feeding on Wanda’s energy is keeping her alert. There’s a surge, like water spurting from a tap, and the potency increases tenfold.
Penny comes just from the feeding. It’s stronger than she’s ever had, and she’s never experienced a lover staying conscious through the ordeal. She lost her virginity to a boy who died on top of her. That was the reason she left, the starter’s pistol that sent her down the road. She soon discovered what she was and what she had to do in order to survive, but that didn’t make it easier. She tried to take as little as possible the bare minimum, but she couldn’t control it.
“Don’t stop,” Wanda whispers. “Make me come, Penny.”
Head swimming, tingling in her extremities, Penny does as she’s told. She bites Wanda’s arm. Not hard enough to break the skin, but to cause pain. Wanda growls and laughs in response. When she lifts her head, her lips are smeared with bright shining red. On either side of her smile, serpentine fangs extend down and hook back. Dangerous and deadly under ordinary circumstances. They should be white but they glisten with the same redness of her mouth and chin.
“I feel you drawing on my energy,” Wanda says. She grinds against Penny’s center, growling as she skims a hand along Penny’s curves. “It’s making me feel...”
“Weak.”
“Vulnerable.” Wanda’s voice is a low purr. She lowers her head and flicks her tongue against Penny’s mouth. Penny tastes blood, but it’s overwhelmed by the taste of a vampire’s life essence. It’s flooding her, a dam broken that she can’t possibly plug or contain. She turns her head to the other side to reveal a virgin expanse of pale skin. Wanda’s lips pull back against her fangs as, for the first time in a very long life, she’s offered seconds.
“Are you certain?”
“I need it,” Penny mewls.
Wanda moans as she descends again. This time the bite doesn’t take any effort. Her lips slide over the skin and her teeth break through. Penny arches off the bed and wraps her legs around Wanda’s waist. She realizes that she’s never had sex before. Sex is just friction without the climax, and she’s finally going to feel what it’s like to finish. She thrusts upward as Wanda clenches around her fingers. Blood trickles down her neck from the first bite, the wound closing a bit more slowly as it rushes to attend to the new wound.
When it happens it feels like she’s shedding her skin. Her eyes open and she focuses on the ceiling, unsure which parts of her body - if any - are still in contact with the mattress. Her orgasm and the joy that comes with a feeding more satisfying than any she’s ever had combine to lighten her head. Her brain swims, her free hand claws at Wanda’s skin, as her lips spread in a wide smile.
“I’m coming,” she whispers, and she doesn’t know anything that follows that declaration.
#
The storm has passed. It rolled somewhere to the south in the predawn hours and left clear skies in its wake. Even though the sun was shining, the day is brisk. Penny put on her sunglasses and turned her gaze to the sky. A few clouds, but none of them were even large enough to make an animal shape or a clipper ship. She used to love finding clipper ships in the sky. Her father told her there were pirates onboard. She smiled at the memory. It was one of the rare good recollections from her family, so she cherished it.
The air still smelled of rain. It was a glorious smell. Natural and proper. No metal or oil, nothing manufactured about trees and grass soaking up rainwater. She put her hands in her pockets and scuffed her boot against the loose gravel of the parking lot, pacing forward to the end of the car before she turned to walk back the other way. It seemed to be taking a long time, not that she knew how long these things usually took. She was always long gone by this point in the proceedings.
Finally the office door opened and Wanda emerged. Two police officers came out with her, one of them casually lowering his sunglasses as he spoke to her. Wanda smiled and nodded. She touched his bicep as she turned to the other one. Her body language was flirtatious when it should have been fearsome, but the men didn’t notice. Both men were wondering if they could get her to suck them off in the back of their cruiser. If they suggested it, Penny knew Wanda would do it if they asked. But the men dismissed her and she walked back toward her car.
“What’s going on?” Penny asked.
“Terrible tragedy. Night clerk was killed by a thief.”
Penny said, “We were right next door. We could have been killed, too.”
“I expressed my horror to the kind officers. I assured them we heard nothing, saw no one, and remaining here to assist in an investigation would only distress us further.”
“What kind souls.”
They climbed into the vehicle and departed the motel. Wanda didn’t ask for direction and Penny didn’t offer a suggestion. She had woken feeling more rested and complete than she’d ever felt. Wanda seemed vibrant and electric as well, like she was walking two inches off the ground. The car seemed smaller today, as if they were filling it with their energy.
They left the motel behind them and headed east. There was still a bit of country left before they reached the edge and had to turn around. Penny had given up on planning futures a long time ago, and now the past meant less than it ever had before. She reached across the console and touched Wanda’s hand. It wasn’t cold as she would have expected but warm and welcoming. It was warm with Penny’s blood, and that thought made her smile. Wanda turned her hand around and linked their fingers.
Penny was standing on all new ground, but fortunately she had found a hell of a guide.
Summary: A young runaway has an alarming encounter with a woman she meets in a diner. (5,589 words)
To Strangers You Meet Along the Road
by Geonn Cannon
http://www.geonncannon.com
Copyright © 2015 Geonn Cannon
She stopped depending on futures a long time ago, and she’s learned not to let the past dictate her present. The only things that matter are the things she can see at the moment: ketchup and mustard flanking a battered napkin holder that reflects the lights behind the counter; a framed picture of the woman who served her coffee standing next to a celebrity who is only vaguely familiar; a man in a white T-shirt moving from side to side as he works (or cleans) the grill that made her hamburger. The whole world consists of four other people. The man and woman in the corner booth, a trucker and his wife or girlfriend. The waitress, occasionally looking up from her magazine to see if her services are required. And the short-order cook, who is now singing something under his breath. A standard. Sinatra.
“It’s funny they call them standards,” a smoky-voiced woman says. “Standard implies at least some measure of mediocrity. They are the heights so many others wish to attain and so seldom do.”
The woman is sitting beside her, only one empty stool separating them. She’s pale and dark at the same time. Her skin is white or maybe gray-blue. It’s difficult to tell in the harsh light. At first her hair looks black, but after a moment she sees hints of dark, dark red hidden in the ink. She’s wearing a black leather jacket over a white blouse unbuttoned at the collar. She glances toward the door as if it might explain how the new arrival got in without being heard, but it gives nothing away. There was no creak of vinyl as she sat, no squeak of her leather jacket had betrayed her movements.
The woman looks at her and reveals sea-green eyes. “Hello.”
She nods a greeting and hopes the interaction doesn’t go further. She’s close to finishing her coffee. Once it’s gone, she’ll head back out.
“My name is Wanda. What’s yours?”
She considers not answering. She’s made it this far without making connections, but it’s an innocent question. “Penny.”
“Penny.” She sways a little on the stool and faces forward again. “It tastes like copper on my tongue. Sharp and electric. I like it.”
Penny ignores her. There are maybe two more bites of her burger, a few too-crispy fries, but she’s willing to sacrifice them to get out of a conversation. She leaves money under the edge of her plate and slips off the stool. The waitress sees her going and gives a polite wave as Penny shrugs into the straps of her backpack. The straps pull hard against her shoulders before she adjusts them into rest in the trenches they’ve dug in during her journey so far. The body of the bag presses like a fist in the small of her back. She half-expects Wanda to offer her a ride, follow her out, something, but the sneaky brunette remains where she is. Penny pushes out the door into the frigid night.
It was raining earlier and the parking lot is shining black as she crosses it to the road, a slick ribbon of oil cutting through the clusters of trees in the foothills. Penny turns up her collar and starts walking in the same direction she’s been going for the past three weeks. Always east. Sometimes northerly, sometimes taking a southern route. She aims toward the cold with no particular destination in mind. It helps when she finds a ride, not knowing where she wants to end up. People just drop her near wherever they’re going and she continues on.
There are three million, nine hundred and eighty thousand, eight hundred and seventeen miles of road in the United States. Some paved, some not. She figures she’s walked one percent of one percent, even though she’s worn out more pairs of shoes than she can count. It comforts her knowing there’s more road than she could ever walk. Even if she never sat down again, she would never have to walk down the same street twice.
Her current road wound through central New Hampshire. Tall thin trees marched alongside like prison bars. She could hear the gentle rushing of a river somewhere to the south. The creatures that had been out and loud earlier were silent now, but a fog has pushed in behind the storm. She ignores the cold and keeps moving even as the world around her shrinks to a hundred yards, fifty, twenty-five, ten. She slept a few hours earlier at a motel where a sympathetic maid let her use one of the empty rooms. Motels in the middle of nowhere are easily manipulated. The maid looked like she was a mother, and Penny looks like a little girl in need of somewhere warm and safe.
Headlights cut through the fog behind her and she steps to one side of the road. Night and the fog conspire to manipulate the engine noise, refracting the lights into twin suns that seem to wrap around her as she walks. She turns and uses one hand to shield her face. She wants time to get out of the way if it seems the driver doesn’t see her. The car escapes the fog by inches, wisps clinging to its crimson body and the black walls of its tires. It seems to fill the right-hand lane of the road and Penny steps closer to the grassy edge in response.
The car slows to a stop and the window rolls down. The interior is black and yellow, just bright enough that she can make out the shape of the seats. The woman from the diner is seated behind the wheel, although it doesn’t seem as if she’s driving. Her pose is too casual, her hand resting on the bottom curve of the wheel too relaxed for her to be in control of the behemoth. The fog swirls into the opening she’s made by rolling down the window and obscures her face. It looks like she’s been smoking; it looks like she’s exhaling the smoke when she speaks.
“I don’t know how I could live with myself if I drove on and left you like this.”
“It’s okay. I prefer to walk.”
Wanda smiles. Penny is still walking, the car rolls along at her pace. “How far do you expect to walk? Have you been here before, do you know this area?” Wanda nods down the road. “The nearest town is thirty miles from here. The nearest motel is forty-two miles. I suppose by the time you reach it, you’ll be exhausted enough to sleep.”
“I’m not in a hurry.”
“But are you scared?”
Penny is thrown by the question. “Of you?”
“Being out alone after dark in the deep woods.” She moves her hand, rests it on the horn, and presses down three times. The car sounds like a wounded animal in its death throes, and the sound echoes off the trees and mountains and the water-slick road. Wanda waits for the silence to return before she breaks it by speaking again. “No response. But it’s not those who would respond you need to be concerned about. It’s those who remain silent so you won’t know they’re here.”
Penny has slept in bus and subway stations. She’s woken with shabby men and well-dressed men alike touching her body and she’s fought them all off. In Philadelphia she slept on the floor of a shooting gallery while people got high all around her. She broke into a barn and slept in the back of a broken pickup truck. In Detroit she went to sleep in an alley next to a homeless man, waking to find him gone with a smear of blood where he had been huddled.
“I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can, Penny.”
She walks on. The car rolls along beside her. The engine purrs. Penny’s shoes smack against the pavement. It is wet, she admits, and cold and miserable. If the storm comes back, she’ll be soaked by the time she reaches the motel. She could get sick.
“Have it your way,” Wanda says seconds before Penny accepts her mind has been changed. The engine grumbles to life and the car pulls ahead of her.
Penny says, “Wait...” The fog closes around the scarlet snake eyes of the car’s back lights. She considers running after it, but she refuses to look that desperate. The sound of the engine fades. In its absence, the night seems more silent and the road more ominous than it did before. The rushing water suddenly conceals rushed footsteps. The trees provide cover for people in black, people stalking her until just the right moment. The road hasn’t seemed this long since she started out. The motel seems impossibly far away.
She considers going back to the diner. The trucker might offer her a ride, and the woman with him would hopefully prevent him from making any untoward advances. Unless she was complicit. Unless she helped him lure victims into the back of his truck where they could do whatever they wanted. She’s heard of it happening, but surely just in urban legends and campfire stories to dissuade children from hitchhiking.
“Are you scared?”
Penny jumps at the voice, barely stops herself from crying out as she spins toward it. She expects to see Wanda next to her, just as she had appeared in the diner. The road was empty. She was shaking now and not only because of the cold. She looks around to make sure no one has snuck up on her in the past few seconds but she’s still alone. Somehow that is just as frightening. When she starts walking again, her pace is faster. Jogging won’t help. Forty miles yawn between her and safety, like a chasm has been opened at her feet. She feels herself sweating under her clothes even though her hands are shaking.
The road slopes slightly downward as she runs. It follows the shape of the mountain that is currently hidden by the fog and darkness. Penny tells herself she’s alone in the dark; she tells herself there are others nearby who can help her. Neither is comforting. The diner seems impossible now. A warm place with people and payphones and connections to real life. She remembers passing through New York. The crush of people seemed like a hallucination.
She hears a low rumble that surrounds her, carried and amplified by the fog. She’s certain it’s a beast come to devour her. What else could it possibly be? But then the wisps break around the back of the car. It idles in the center lane, the rumble sharpening down into an engine’s hum. She stops and stares at the back window. It’s far too tinted to see within, but she can almost feel Wanda’s eyes on her in the rearview mirror. Watching, waiting.
Penny’s fear remains, but is now tempered with indignation. She considers walking around the car as a show of independence and pride, but she knows how foolish that would be. The wind has picked up from the west again and she can smell rain carried on it. If she keeps walking she’ll be soaked to the bone before she gets anywhere close to civilization. She circles to the side of the car and opens the passenger door.
Wanda is turned to face her, her arm stretched across the back of the passenger seat. She has a knowing smile on her lips and a mischievous glint in her eye. Penny looks in the backseat to make sure no ax murderer is lurking in the darkness, but all she sees are suitcases and a garment bag hanging from a hook. The car smells of patchouli, violets, and oddest of all, oranges. She can smell the petrichor from the woods and thinks for a moment the forest smells are mingling with the car, but she would have smelled it before opening the door. This strange miasma is coming from within, she has no doubt.
“Have you rethought my offer of a ride?”
“I don’t have money to pay you for gas or anything like that.”
Wanda shrugs. “As long as you’re going to same direction I am, there’s no reason to make you pay for gas.”
Penny hesitates, but another gust of wind roars through the chasm created by the wall of trees on either side of the road. It cuts through her and smells of storms. She shrugs out of her bag and climbs into the car. She puts the bag on the floor between her feet and pulls the remarkably heavy door shut behind her. It closes with a heavy metal “THUD” like a bank vault or the hatch on an airplane. It sounds very final. Penny leaves her fingers on the door handle in case she needs a quick escape.
Wanda faces forward again as the car comes back to life. The fog rolls across the hood and breaks against the glass like ocean waves. The warmth of the car closes around Penny and thaws her starting at the tips of her fingers and flowing up her arms. She hugs herself, only now realizing just how cold she is, and looks out the window.
The car is silent and large. Almost impossibly large. Penny feels as if she could curl up in her seat without overlapping the edges. Despite that, she’s very aware of Wanda’s presence. Wanda fills the space effortlessly. Even if there was anything to see outside the car, even if the fog wasn’t choking them, she doubted there would be much to see this late at night. She focuses her attention to the car’s interior in a way she hopes doesn’t look like snooping. The console between their seats is stuffed full of road maps hastily folded and stuffed wherever they will fit. There’s a plastic bag in the floor wrapped around the shape of something large and square. A book, or several books based on the thickness.
“The radio is broken,” Wanda says, startling her.
“Oh.” She has an iPod, considers offering it. Somehow she doesn’t think any of her music will appeal to this mystery lady. “We could... talk about ourselves...”
Wanda’s lips curl. “You don’t strike me as the type to volunteer information to a stranger.”
Penny sits on her hands, grateful for the warmth. She’s shivering now.
“Perhaps a story.”
“A story? You mean a ‘once upon a time’ kind of story?”
Wanda nods her head, a single forward motion. “Not exactly. Truth be told, this story begins before recorded time. When humanity was little more than clusters huddled along riverbanks struggling to survive from one season to the next. Muddy things that didn’t know how long they would live or what the next difficulty would be. The only constant was mortality. Death. Everything was in decay. Every action a step taken to stave off the nothingness that would come after. You see, we hadn’t invented religion yet. After light came dark, so after life came nothingness. The purpose of life was to continue living.
“There came to be a young woman in those days who wished for something more. Her life was like everyone else’s. Wake, piss, eat, fuck, sleep. Give birth to new children who would continue the cycle. If only she could defeat death, it would give her the chance to find a new purpose. Another way to fill her existence.”
The road curves. Penny feels herself sway with the movement of the car.
“These were the days before reason. Before rational minds explained away the spectacular. There have always been strange and magnificent things just out of sight, and in those days it was much easier to come across them. A shade or a whisper from an empty crevasse in the desert. Burning bushes spoke prophecy to those who cared to listen. A woman in search of life everlasting wouldn’t have had to search long before she found what she sought.
“He was a trickster and a thief, this man she found, and she was a beauty of her clan. Full breasts and rounded hips. Her skin was the color of the clay. She told him what she wished, and he told her his price. It was a small fee to her. Many had done the same thing to her for nothing in return. She spread her legs for him and he came to her in the night. He used her body for ten days. When he finally returned to his dark abode, she was deathless and with child.”
She falls silent. The tires hiss through the water accumulating on the road; Penny realizes it’s started raining again. Skeleton fingers drum on the roof of the car so loudly she can’t believe she didn’t hear it before. It feels cold again.
“The boy is born healthy, but pale and sorrow-eyed. I don’t mean pale as in Caucasian; they came from elsewhere. This boy was ashen. His limbs grew long and gnarled like branches on a tree in winter. He rarely spoke. No one saw him eat. He grew gaunt as the years went by. Often he would go into the fields to tend the flock, but no one wanted him there. So many beasts always seemed to go missing when he was on watch. He blamed lions and other predators, but no lion had ever been so voracious or crafty.”
Penny draws her legs up, feet on the seat, hugs her knees. “I don’t think I like this story.”
Wanda says, “They found him one day in the field hunched over a fresh kill. Blood stained his lips and hands. He was chewing through the mule’s throat. His eyes were black and red when he turned on his clan members. They attacked him and he had no choice but to respond in kind. He tore the men limb from limb. He tasted human blood for the first time that day and realized what he had been missing. Sustenance.”
Wanda’s tongue, pink and lively as if it was a separate creature, touches her upper lip. She slides her hands along the curve of the steering wheel in a caress that makes Penny uncomfortable.
“The word for this creature, the name they gave it, is forever lost and written in a tongue so ancient we’d be fools to try translating it. But you know what he was called. You know what his kin have been called through the ages. Mythologies to literature to film to ridiculous fantasies catering to young girls. Inuring an entire generation of their preferred victims to their dangers. Say ‘vampire’ and girls swoon and dream of dashing young stalkers who prey on them when they sleep.”
Wanda turns to look at Penny, still driving but no longer looking at the road.
“You’re not swooning are you, Penny?”
“No.”
“And you know what I am now.”
Penny swallows the lump in her throat. “Yes.”
Wanda faces the road again, just in time to follow the curve around a stand of paper birches.
“Most people think of bats or black cats when they think of vampires.” She says the word so casually, brings it sharply into focus. “The truth is we’re more like spiders. People have a primal reaction to spiders, and the same goes with us. We’ve been around so long that regular humans evolved a fight-or-flight response.” She chuckles. “A human will cause themselves more pain trying to smash a spider than any potential bite would have caused. That hardly seems reasonable.”
Penny swallows the lump in her throat. Up ahead through the fog, she sees the town Wanda mentioned earlier. It’s like a faded black-and-white photograph, fuzzy on the details while retaining the idea of the original picture. A gas station appears to still be open, but the rest of the town is reduced to a half-dozen streetlights that turn the fog into a pale vanilla color.
“Can I tell you a story?” Penny asks.
Wanda seems surprised, but pleasantly so. She moves her hands to the apex of the steering wheel and nods slowly. “Yes. You may.”
Penny tries to decide where to begin. “At the beginning of the world, a woman went to a demon to gain power over death. She gave birth to a son who had to take life from others to repay that gift. He lived for ages, I’m assuming, by taking life from others. You were called vampire, churel, pontianak, civateto. They called you upir. Lamia. Dhampir and bruja. Your kind was legend wherever you roamed.”
She can sense Wanda’s interest now. The vampire keeps her eyes on the road but her body language indicates Penny has her full attention.
“You asked if I was frightened of you, but the answer is no. Only fools fear vampires who have just fed. In the diner you were like porcelain, but now your skin is flush. You fed well. On the trucker? The cook? Maybe you took them all. The diner might be a bloody ruin behind us. All I know is that you had your fill. I smell them on you. Patchouli and oranges.” She breathes deeply and lets it out slowly.
Wanda says, “Who are you, little pet?”
The interior of the windows has fogged a bit. It was clear when she got in, and that should have been the deciding factor. Until she got in the car, no one was breathing in it. There was no body heat to accumulate on the glass that’s being chilled on the outside. She draws her finger through the moisture and draws a line, then smudges it out.
“You were born in the dawn of time. There was a time before that, when humanity was numbered only as two. A man named Adem and a woman named Layil. She was born to be the mother of mankind, but she refused to live in servitude. She had been given life and consciousness, a soul and a mind, and she would not waste it churning out children. The choice cost her paradise, and she wandered into the same shadows your ancestor would one day find. Angels had fallen. But Layil, called Lilith in her exile, was the first mortal to fall. She was a human amongst devils.
“Lilith enjoyed sex. The physical act of love, the release of orgasm. It was an act intended for reproduction but Lilith discovered the pleasure in it. She lay with demons while she was outcast and gained strength from their coupling. She became something different. Something new that God had not intended. When humanity spread out from Eden, Lilith and her new kin were waiting there for them. When the first men huddled in caves to sleep, Lilith came to them. She drew strength from congress with them. She gained power from their climax and left them weakened. Soon the men gave name to these seductresses.”
Wanda says, “Succubi.”
Penny draws an X on the fogged glass of her window, then turns her head to look at Lilith. “So, vampire... are you scared?”
#
The room nearest to the vending machines is vacant. Penny waits by the door while Wanda goes into the small office situated at the far end of the nearly-empty parking lot. Penny’s legs are crossed at the ankle and her shoulder presses against the chipped paint of the wall. The road seems to be fifty yards long at most, amputated at either side by an almost opaque barricade of white. The fog is mobile, swirling and growing as the storm circles somewhere to the north of their location. Wanda comes out of the office at last and walks toward her. She has two keys and she offers one to Penny. Their fingers touch. Penny closes her hand around Wanda’s fingers and Wanda invades her space, crowds her against the wall, and angles her head for a kiss.
Their lips meet. Penny pushes her tongue into Wanda’s mouth and tastes the blood from the clerk. The past few years on the road she’s paid her way with blow jobs, sympathy, and the occasional nocturnal visit from the desk clerk. She always got more out of those encounters than the people who thought they were using her, but it was demeaning nonetheless. The copper taste in Wanda’s mouth is a sign that things are changing.
Wanda unlocks the door and ushers Penny inside. Neither of them want the lights on as they collide again, kissing again with more passion. They are two predators without prey, hunters on an evenly-matched field. Wanda is the more aggressive of the two. She has hunted and killed for decades and knows how to deal with victims. Penny is an accidental killer who avoids violence whenever possible. She jumps nervously when her shirt is ripped open, tenses up when Wanda grabs her hips to walk her backward toward the bed.
The kiss ends when Wanda decides. Her eyes seem to shine in the darkness, illuminating her face as she gently takes both of Penny’s hands in hers. She rests them on her chest and guides them lower, and Penny molds her hands to the shape of Wanda’s chest. She finds and loosens the buttons, never taking her eyes off Wanda’s. Clothes fall to the floor and are quickly forgotten, leaving Penny in mass-produced cotton underwear in front of Wanda’s elegant designer lingerie.
Their lips have barely been apart since entering the room, but now Wanda moves her head to the curve of Penny’s neck. Penny bows her body, pressing her round hips into the sharp angles of Wanda’s. Wanda breathes deeply, the inhalation somehow feeling like a caress before it’s replaced by her wide-open mouth. She feels the sweep of a tongue first, like liquid fire, and then the sharp scrape of teeth. She shivers. She curls her fingers and drags the nails up the outside of Wanda’s arms.
Wanda bites down hard and then, after a split second, applies the inch of extra pressure required. The skin breaks and blood wells. Wanda’s arms erupt in gooseflesh from Penny’s rough touch and the taste of blood heightens her arousal. Penny closes her eyes as her blood seeps out of the wound - a rough tear rather than the pristine pinpricks the movies have always shown. The air around her fills with the scent of Wanda’s arousal. It settles on her like a fine mist, seeping into her pores.
Wanda moans and presses harder against her. Penny puts her hands on Wanda’s waist and throws them both backward onto the bed. She spreads her legs and Wanda rests between them. She drinks deeply as energy seeps out of her body, both women squirming at the sensation of feeding and being fed upon. Wanda guides Penny’s hand again. This time she puts it between her legs and Penny extends her middle two fingers.
“I’ve never... felt anything like this,” Wanda moans, her lips tracing smears of blood on Penny’s shoulder as she speaks. The wound is already closing. Wanda strokes the spot with her tongue to gather up any spillage she missed. The touch of her mouth and tongue are making Penny light-headed, a side-effect of the feeding she’s often suspected. The victim becomes numb and complacent to the feeding so the vampire can take their fill. But feeding on Wanda’s energy is keeping her alert. There’s a surge, like water spurting from a tap, and the potency increases tenfold.
Penny comes just from the feeding. It’s stronger than she’s ever had, and she’s never experienced a lover staying conscious through the ordeal. She lost her virginity to a boy who died on top of her. That was the reason she left, the starter’s pistol that sent her down the road. She soon discovered what she was and what she had to do in order to survive, but that didn’t make it easier. She tried to take as little as possible the bare minimum, but she couldn’t control it.
“Don’t stop,” Wanda whispers. “Make me come, Penny.”
Head swimming, tingling in her extremities, Penny does as she’s told. She bites Wanda’s arm. Not hard enough to break the skin, but to cause pain. Wanda growls and laughs in response. When she lifts her head, her lips are smeared with bright shining red. On either side of her smile, serpentine fangs extend down and hook back. Dangerous and deadly under ordinary circumstances. They should be white but they glisten with the same redness of her mouth and chin.
“I feel you drawing on my energy,” Wanda says. She grinds against Penny’s center, growling as she skims a hand along Penny’s curves. “It’s making me feel...”
“Weak.”
“Vulnerable.” Wanda’s voice is a low purr. She lowers her head and flicks her tongue against Penny’s mouth. Penny tastes blood, but it’s overwhelmed by the taste of a vampire’s life essence. It’s flooding her, a dam broken that she can’t possibly plug or contain. She turns her head to the other side to reveal a virgin expanse of pale skin. Wanda’s lips pull back against her fangs as, for the first time in a very long life, she’s offered seconds.
“Are you certain?”
“I need it,” Penny mewls.
Wanda moans as she descends again. This time the bite doesn’t take any effort. Her lips slide over the skin and her teeth break through. Penny arches off the bed and wraps her legs around Wanda’s waist. She realizes that she’s never had sex before. Sex is just friction without the climax, and she’s finally going to feel what it’s like to finish. She thrusts upward as Wanda clenches around her fingers. Blood trickles down her neck from the first bite, the wound closing a bit more slowly as it rushes to attend to the new wound.
When it happens it feels like she’s shedding her skin. Her eyes open and she focuses on the ceiling, unsure which parts of her body - if any - are still in contact with the mattress. Her orgasm and the joy that comes with a feeding more satisfying than any she’s ever had combine to lighten her head. Her brain swims, her free hand claws at Wanda’s skin, as her lips spread in a wide smile.
“I’m coming,” she whispers, and she doesn’t know anything that follows that declaration.
#
The storm has passed. It rolled somewhere to the south in the predawn hours and left clear skies in its wake. Even though the sun was shining, the day is brisk. Penny put on her sunglasses and turned her gaze to the sky. A few clouds, but none of them were even large enough to make an animal shape or a clipper ship. She used to love finding clipper ships in the sky. Her father told her there were pirates onboard. She smiled at the memory. It was one of the rare good recollections from her family, so she cherished it.
The air still smelled of rain. It was a glorious smell. Natural and proper. No metal or oil, nothing manufactured about trees and grass soaking up rainwater. She put her hands in her pockets and scuffed her boot against the loose gravel of the parking lot, pacing forward to the end of the car before she turned to walk back the other way. It seemed to be taking a long time, not that she knew how long these things usually took. She was always long gone by this point in the proceedings.
Finally the office door opened and Wanda emerged. Two police officers came out with her, one of them casually lowering his sunglasses as he spoke to her. Wanda smiled and nodded. She touched his bicep as she turned to the other one. Her body language was flirtatious when it should have been fearsome, but the men didn’t notice. Both men were wondering if they could get her to suck them off in the back of their cruiser. If they suggested it, Penny knew Wanda would do it if they asked. But the men dismissed her and she walked back toward her car.
“What’s going on?” Penny asked.
“Terrible tragedy. Night clerk was killed by a thief.”
Penny said, “We were right next door. We could have been killed, too.”
“I expressed my horror to the kind officers. I assured them we heard nothing, saw no one, and remaining here to assist in an investigation would only distress us further.”
“What kind souls.”
They climbed into the vehicle and departed the motel. Wanda didn’t ask for direction and Penny didn’t offer a suggestion. She had woken feeling more rested and complete than she’d ever felt. Wanda seemed vibrant and electric as well, like she was walking two inches off the ground. The car seemed smaller today, as if they were filling it with their energy.
They left the motel behind them and headed east. There was still a bit of country left before they reached the edge and had to turn around. Penny had given up on planning futures a long time ago, and now the past meant less than it ever had before. She reached across the console and touched Wanda’s hand. It wasn’t cold as she would have expected but warm and welcoming. It was warm with Penny’s blood, and that thought made her smile. Wanda turned her hand around and linked their fingers.
Penny was standing on all new ground, but fortunately she had found a hell of a guide.