Page 42 of Pretty Nightmare

But a dead body in this heat?

That’s probably not good.

I turn to the screen door and walk through it.

Nathan isn’t dead.

He’s moaning and writhing face down on the pea-pebbled garden path, a short trail of blood behind him, like he was trying to crawl away.

I stand over him. My head is clearer now than it was inside, but I would not call my thinking sharp. So I just consider him for a moment.

And then I wonder aloud. “What the fuck just happened?”

Nathan attempts to lift up his head, maybe prodded to do so by the sound of my voice. Gets it an inch or so above the pathway. Enough for me to see all the pea-pebbles stuck to the blood on his face.

But I can’t see his eyes.

She fucked. Him. Up.

“Help me.” I bend down to Nathan and he says it again. “Help me, McKay.”

“I think… actually… I’m supposed to finish you off, Nathan.” These words come out cold. I’m talking arctic. And for a moment I don’t even recognize my own voice.

I feel like Adam in that moment.

And then I blink and reach for Nathan. I pull him up so he’s sitting and consider my options.

They’re not good ones. Not ones I’d even consider if I wasn’t in the middle of an out-of-control situation. But I only have two. So I’m gonna spell it out the best way I can, in my present situation.

“Look at me, Nathan.”

He can’t, of course. He has not reached a point in this—event?—to open his eyes. But he goes through the motions and his head tilts up in my direction.

“I’m gonna let you live, boy. But we’re gonna come to a little agreement right now. You hear me?”

He nods, then chokes and begins coughing, blood spilling out of his mouth. Probably swallowed it. You can only swallow so much before you get sick and it comes back up. There are plenty of monsters living in the Louisiana woods, but none of us are vampires.

“You’re supposed to be dead. I think. But… lucky you, I guess. You’re not. And”—I sigh and look up at the sky—“I don’t know. I don’t really feel like killing anyone right now.”

He hangs his head and spits out more blood between his legs. “She would never forgive you if you did.” His words come out weak and low and also, a little bit gurgled, on account of all the blood in his mouth.

“Did you see what just happened here?”

He wipes the blood from his eyes. Doesn’t help much. Just smears it around, mostly. But I manage to see a sliver of silver blue in the one eye that isn’t completely swollen shut. “I saw it.”

For a moment I’m confused because I had forgotten what he walked into. He saw more than Indie kicking his ass from the ass-kickee perspective.

He saw us.

What we were doing in the pavilion. What we had been doing all day.

And how that all started in the kitchen.

I turn away from him and start walking down the path.

She tried to kill us.

“McKay!” He coughs. “Where are you going?”