Page 3 of Death Valley

Nora didn’t have time to ponder it. She got up and forced her failing legs to move faster. Behind her, the sounds of Amelia’s pursuit faded, lost in the howling wind. Her family rarely ventured far from their shelter, at first paranoid about the other parties, but then it turned into something territorial. The hunger made them brutal but cautious.

The baby squirmed against her chest, alive and warm and human. In that moment, Nora made her choice. If the search party were ordinary humans, she would tell them the child was hers. She would hide the truth of what happened in the lean-to, of what her family had become. And when the hunger finally took her—because she could feel it would, the curse already burning in her blood from the flesh she had eaten in desperation—at least she’d know the baby survived.

She stumbled toward the torchlight, her aunt’s inhuman shrieks fading into the storm. Through the swirling snow, she could make out figures moving closer. Human figures, moving normally, their voices sounding sane.

Safe.

This monstrous curse was already in her veins, but perhaps this child—this miracle born in blood and snow—would find a different fate. Even as the hunger clawed at her insides, Nora smiled. The baby would live.

She stumbled forward just as the search party spotted her, rushing forward to help.

Behind her, three pairs of blue-white eyes watched from the darkness.

Waiting.

Hungry.

1

AUBREY

The woman behind the bar has an eyepatch. She’s been surly to me ever since I stepped into the Three Fingered Jack Saloon, which makes her even harder to read. Still, I have questions and this seems like the place I might get some answers.

“Still nursing that?” she asks me, gesturing with a flick of her dishcloth to the whiskey on the rocks between my palms. If she knew me at all, she’d be proud of me for having so much control, especially on a day like today. Perhaps I’ll get a bottle for the motel room when this is all over. Or maybe I’ll just drive back to Sacramento if this another dead end, even though the idea of being back in my apartment feels like being buried alive.

“Do you know where I could find Jensen McGraw?” I ask her. I keep my voice low, despite it being three in the afternoon on Wednesday and there’s no one else in the bar except for two old timers with matching handlebar mustaches playing pool in the back. The crack of the balls make me flinch every time and I wish the shitty country music was louder to drown it out.

The woman pauses for a moment. To her, I’m sure she felt she had a quick recovery, that it won’t go unnoticed. But I notice. It’s my job.

“Never heard of him,” the woman says with a shrug before turning her back to me and busying herself at the bar.

“Uh huh,” I mutter under my breath and have another sip of the whiskey. I swallow and put it back down, turning the glass over in my hands. I glance behind me at the men playing pool. They’re laughing, drinking Bud Lights. Relaxed is good, it means they’re pliable, especially if I bring my feminine wiles to the forefront. The reason I chose this bar is because it seemed like a place for the locals, located on the outskirts of Truckee toward Donner Lake, and since Jensen McGraw lives in the area, according to the article I read that morning anyway, I was certain someone here would know where I could find him. I couldn’t find anything about him after searching online, but the man exists, and so here I am.

But the bartender is acting stranger than she was before, her shoulders stiff as she organizes the bottles, not to mention flat-outlying, which makes this McGraw even more mysterious. It’s as if she doesn’t want me to find him.

I wait a bit, having another measured sip and letting it burn down the back of my throat, then sling my purse over my shoulder and get off the stool with drink in hand. I rattle the cubes around in the glass as I cross the saloon, dust motes amplified by the stream of light coming in through one of the few windows.

“Who’s winning?” I ask the men as I lean against the pool table. I certainly haven’t dressed to impress—I left in a hurry this morning, shoving a few days’ worth of clothes into my duffel bag, and I’m wearing a red plaid shirt underneath a tan nubuck and shearling jacket. But at least my hair is loose and wavy, the blonde strands looking bright in the darkness of the bar.

“He is,” one of the men says with a gruff chuckle. “But he cheats.”

The other mustachioed man gives an indignant groan before smiling at me, his mouth barely visible below the hair. They tell me their names are Zach and Pete, fraternal twins who operate snowplows in the winter and backhoes in the summer. Being as it’s October, they’re in their off-season, which apparently means pool and beer.

I tell them only a little bit about myself: I’m born and raised in Sacramento, work in Roseville, though of course I don’t tell them what I really do, nor that I’ve been on leave from work for the last three months.

“And so what brings you here at this time of year, Miss…?” Zach or Pete says. I’m usually excellent with names but I’ve already forgotten who is who. For fraternal twins they really lean hard into looking and acting exactly like each other.

“Wells,” I tell them, keeping my first name to myself. “Ms. Wells. Actually, I’m here because I’m looking for an old friend of mine. Haven’t seen him for a long time. I read this article in the news, about this lost hiker that was found, and turns out he’s the one who found them. I had no idea he had turned into such a tracker.”

I watch them carefully, keeping my expression neutral. One of their brows raise slightly before glancing at the other. “And who might your friend be?” he asks.

“Jensen McGraw. You know him?”

I can tell the bartender is looking our way now but I keep my focus on the twins, preparing for them to be cagey like she was.

But instead one of them, Zach, I think, says, “Sure do. Well, I guess I don’t know him very well, keeps to himself you see but?—”

“We knew his father really well,” Pete interjects with a nod. “Ray McGraw was a hell of a guy, God rest his soul.” He lifts up his beer and Zach does the same. I join in and we all have areverent sip of our drink before Pete looks back to me. “How well did you know Jensen?”

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