fucked and wrong about that flashing light.
Need my gun. Got to go…get it…
She tried to stand.
Then the flashing light blinded her again and the world went away for a little while.
Part Two
Feature Presentations
Chapter Seven
But not for long.
Brix also woke up flat on her back in the parking lot outside the theater. But this was not the same version of the parking lot in which Kira and Monroe found themselves after the bright flashes that interrupted the screening of Blood Lust . Here it was not raining and there were no vampire predators prowling the area in enormous automobiles.
But that didn’t mean danger wasn’t present.
She heard something strange. A kind of… groaning .
Was it Trevor? Was he hurt?
Brix’s eyes snapped open. She saw the dark sky above and knew at once this was no dream or hallucination. Somehow those bright flashes in the theater were connected to her inexplicable relocation to the parking lot. She knew intuitively no one had carried her out here. What had happened was more akin to teleportation. Which was the kind of thing you saw all the time in cheesy science fiction movies, but, so far as she knew, teleportation technology did not actually exist. Or if it did, it was the kind of ultratop-secret Area 51 thing few people knew about. And the government sure as shit would never deploy the technology in a dinky theater in a nowhere town showing cheap-ass horror movies. Unless…
The groaning sound came again.
What the fuck was that?
She knew she should get up and check that out. She should also get a fix on Trevor’s location pronto. And she meant to do those things in just a second. But the troubling thought that had flashed through her mind wouldn’t go away. Because maybe a nowhere town was exactly the kind of place government black-ops types might decide to conduct risky experiments with potentially hazardous and unpredictable new types of technology and/or weaponry systems.
Shit.
“Brix?”
Trevor!
Brix was up and on her feet in the next instant. She had already locked on the direction of Trevor’s voice and was turning that way when she froze and stared off into the distance. It was nighttime in Murfreesboro. The college town was no Manhattan, but it was a metropolis compared to where she lived. It was big enough that she should see a sea of electric lights in any direction. There was light in the distance, random flickers here and there punctuating the darkness, but the source of it was not provided by the power company.
Those were fires burning in the distance.
Fucking fires .
Brix gaped at the twisting columns of flame for a long moment.
Holy shit. What the fuck?
“Brix!”
Trevor again, sounding panicked this time.
And then a scream.
Brix gave herself a mental slap.
Get your head in the game, bitch!
She completed the turn toward the sound of Trevor’s voice and got moving. She saw him on the ground some twenty yards from her. It was especially dark in that corner of the parking lot, but she could see that her boyfriend was scooting rapidly backward, desperately trying to get away from a shadowy figure that had emerged from behind a black SUV. The figure took another lurching step toward Trevor, drawing close enough that she could see he was a man attired in a ragged black suit. His hair was a mess and his face looked haggard in the pale moonlight. Some drunk asshole. She wasn’t sure yet why Trevor should be so afraid of someone like that, but he was afraid and that was all she needed to know.
This was one lousy drunk who was about to get his ass handed to him.
Hard.
By a girl .
That last bit was a point she always relished driving home after dealing with pukes like this. Some people were just in especially dire need of having their egos squashed. Mostly bullies and fake hard-asses. She considered it a public service, like holding doors for people or helping old ladies across the street. Brix moved past Trevor just as he was finally getting to his
Need my gun. Got to go…get it…
She tried to stand.
Then the flashing light blinded her again and the world went away for a little while.
Part Two
Feature Presentations
Chapter Seven
But not for long.
Brix also woke up flat on her back in the parking lot outside the theater. But this was not the same version of the parking lot in which Kira and Monroe found themselves after the bright flashes that interrupted the screening of Blood Lust . Here it was not raining and there were no vampire predators prowling the area in enormous automobiles.
But that didn’t mean danger wasn’t present.
She heard something strange. A kind of… groaning .
Was it Trevor? Was he hurt?
Brix’s eyes snapped open. She saw the dark sky above and knew at once this was no dream or hallucination. Somehow those bright flashes in the theater were connected to her inexplicable relocation to the parking lot. She knew intuitively no one had carried her out here. What had happened was more akin to teleportation. Which was the kind of thing you saw all the time in cheesy science fiction movies, but, so far as she knew, teleportation technology did not actually exist. Or if it did, it was the kind of ultratop-secret Area 51 thing few people knew about. And the government sure as shit would never deploy the technology in a dinky theater in a nowhere town showing cheap-ass horror movies. Unless…
The groaning sound came again.
What the fuck was that?
She knew she should get up and check that out. She should also get a fix on Trevor’s location pronto. And she meant to do those things in just a second. But the troubling thought that had flashed through her mind wouldn’t go away. Because maybe a nowhere town was exactly the kind of place government black-ops types might decide to conduct risky experiments with potentially hazardous and unpredictable new types of technology and/or weaponry systems.
Shit.
“Brix?”
Trevor!
Brix was up and on her feet in the next instant. She had already locked on the direction of Trevor’s voice and was turning that way when she froze and stared off into the distance. It was nighttime in Murfreesboro. The college town was no Manhattan, but it was a metropolis compared to where she lived. It was big enough that she should see a sea of electric lights in any direction. There was light in the distance, random flickers here and there punctuating the darkness, but the source of it was not provided by the power company.
Those were fires burning in the distance.
Fucking fires .
Brix gaped at the twisting columns of flame for a long moment.
Holy shit. What the fuck?
“Brix!”
Trevor again, sounding panicked this time.
And then a scream.
Brix gave herself a mental slap.
Get your head in the game, bitch!
She completed the turn toward the sound of Trevor’s voice and got moving. She saw him on the ground some twenty yards from her. It was especially dark in that corner of the parking lot, but she could see that her boyfriend was scooting rapidly backward, desperately trying to get away from a shadowy figure that had emerged from behind a black SUV. The figure took another lurching step toward Trevor, drawing close enough that she could see he was a man attired in a ragged black suit. His hair was a mess and his face looked haggard in the pale moonlight. Some drunk asshole. She wasn’t sure yet why Trevor should be so afraid of someone like that, but he was afraid and that was all she needed to know.
This was one lousy drunk who was about to get his ass handed to him.
Hard.
By a girl .
That last bit was a point she always relished driving home after dealing with pukes like this. Some people were just in especially dire need of having their egos squashed. Mostly bullies and fake hard-asses. She considered it a public service, like holding doors for people or helping old ladies across the street. Brix moved past Trevor just as he was finally getting to his
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