The Late Night Horror Show Read Free Page B

That didn’t surprise Kira. One of the things they’d first bonded over was their shared enthusiasm for all things vampy. “Shitty site.”
    “Shitty movies, too, probably. Superlow-budget indie films made by nobodies. We’ll get really drunk and make fun of the movies. It’ll be fun and you could use a distraction. What do you say? You don’t really want to stay in by yourself, do you?”
    Lashon continued to scroll down the page and began to smile. “Maybe not. I, uh, still, you know, don’t have any money.”
    “I’ll pay.”
    Lashon beamed and stood up straight. “Fabulous. I’ll go home and get myself ready.”
    “Pick you up at six?”
    Lashon picked up her book and started toward the door. She raised her latte cup in a salute. “Sounds good.”
    Then the bell above the door jangled again and she was gone.
    Kira stared after her for a long, pensive moment. Then she reached under the counter for her purse and took out her wallet. She extracted a sufficient amount to cover Lashon’s latte and opened the register.
     
     
    Hidden behind a corner of the liquor store on the other side of the street, Greg Nelson watched her come out of the coffee shop and start off at a brisk pace down the sidewalk going in the opposite direction. Clad in black tights and a clingy black T-shirt, the willowy, dark-haired girl cut an angular figure against the glare of the bright sunlight. There was an extra spring in her step that hadn’t been there prior to her entering the coffee shop. He’d even caught a glimpse of a smile on her face before she’d turned and gone in the other direction.
    The change in her demeanor wasn’t too hard to figure out. Her closest female friend, a flaky little blonde named Kira Matthews, worked at Mondo Mocha. The apparent lifting of Lashon’s spirits had something to do with an exchange between the two, no doubt. He didn’t like Kira much. She was a little too weird, with her interests in obscure music and movies no normal person had ever heard of. And—he could admit it—she was a little too smart. He had never been able to comfortably converse with her in any sort of depth on just about any subject. He didn’t hate her, necessarily, but she was sort of like an alien life form. Too different and, ultimately, unknowable, at least for the likes of him.
    He watched Lashon until she turned down a side street and disappeared from his sight.
    His car was parked at the curb.
    He got in and used an alternate route to drive to the apartment building where she lived.

Chapter Three
    The gun boomed and the bottle perched at a wobbly angle atop the rotting old tree stump exploded in a spray of green glass fragments. Silence descended over the rocky rural setting again as the gun’s report faded in the shooter’s ears. The field was a gentle slope descending toward a line of green trees. It was at the southern perimeter of the many acres of rural land owned by the McKinley family for generations. Tucked away in a remote corner of Rutherford County, the property was just about as private a place as one could hope for in modern America. The nearest neighbors were miles away and not apt to complain about the sound of gunfire even if they could hear it from there, which wasn’t likely.
    Brix Harris took aim at another green bottle. This one was balanced on a large rock some thirty yards down the slope. She dipped her head, squinted down the sight of the gun, and squeezed the trigger. Another spray of green glass fragments suddenly littered the countryside.
    She smiled tightly in satisfaction. “Let the bodies hit the floor.”
    In her mind, it wasn’t green glass flying across the landscape. Instead, she saw red. An explosion of it. Blood and brain matter blowing out of exit wounds, each squeeze of the trigger resulting in a flawless head shot.  
    There were more empty bottles spread across the sloping field. Some were propped on rocks. Some were on tree stumps. Others were wedged into various