Blood Candy Read online

  The main street through town was illuminated with regular intervals of streetlights and it was mostly empty at eleven o’clock at night. The family owned shops crowding the street were closed, but the bustling activity of encroaching corporate America was interspersed here and there. The fast food joints stayed open well into the night, capitalizing on a small town’s desire for greasy burgers and overloaded burritos outside of normal eating hours. Candy had lived here all of her life and she quickly walked along this familiar route, her mind focused on a million different things. At the moment, Julie’s attitude was the least of her concerns.

  She slipped her hand into the pocket of her work pants, feeling the note inside. What did he mean by “it’s not over yet?”

  The eight-bit noises and flashing lights of the arcade prompted her to jog across the street. The arcade didn’t close until midnight during the summer and it was a place for teens—and adults who thought they were still teens—to hang out all night long without worry of the police hassling them. Once Candy was across the street, she flipped open her cell phone to send a text message to her boyfriend. Jimmy and his friends would know what to do about Blake. They were shapeshifters, after all, and they’d been dealing with vampires for years.

  The parking lot of the local market was a shortcut she often used to access her neighborhood as well as a throughway for drivers intent on skipping the light at the end of the street. As her feet led the way along the familiar path, she brought up Jimmy’s entry in the cell phone and started typing out a message for him to call as soon as possible. They had to suffer a long distance relationship over the last week since the end of their ordeal with the vampires, but they talked on the phone at every available chance. Candy figured if love can conquer the vast distances of oceans, then it can surely overcome the measly distance of a small state like Massachusetts. Separation made the heart grow fonder, or something like that.

  Halfway through the text a rock skipped across the asphalt. Candy glanced over her shoulder and saw two figures approaching along the same route she had taken away from the arcade. She picked up her pace, if anything because her nerves were already on edge. The sound of shoes scuffling against the blacktop told her the figures had picked up their pace as well. She checked over her shoulder again, ready to run to the safety of the distant streetlights in her neighborhood if need be.

  “Look at what we have here.”

  Candy yelped when she walked right into a tall man wearing a wicked grin on his gaunt face. She instinctively took a backwards step away, but the two figures behind her meant she had nowhere to turn, and nowhere to run.