Prologue

A rush of angry beasts woke her. Swift, angry beasts whose large bodies breaking through air caused the angry noises. Whoosh! And sometimes they made their own noises. A deep, piercing resonance. Wordless sounds. Angry sounds.

“No!” Karissa realized. Consciousness flooding her mind like the sun washing away the night, not gently, but violently, hence the bloody hue. Crimson stained clouds across the horizon.

Despite the sudden awareness, reality took its time coalescing. Why was she there, in a copse bordering a wide highway, frequented by trucks, beasts that were semis, and on the other side, flatness? Lines of green. Some crop beginning to rise from its seed, becoming gradually something substantial.

She took inventory. A coat, her coat, with stitching like a quilt, but all one color, a dirty navy blue, and one fabric, plastic. And with plastic filler within the stitching. Not the far more expensive and warmer down from geese or ducks. It covered her torso and some of her thighs, a blanket, but not quilt. A coat for a blanket. And a backpack for a pillow. Which raised her head, but even more raised because, as she felt beside the backpack, it sat on a root from the closest tree. The leaves of which jutted out three ways and zig zagged along the edges. Maple. Alongside trees with needles instead of leaves. And beneath her, she realized, their old shedding. A mattress of needles, softened by age. A bed above dirt.

Jeans, also a dirty blue, covered her legs. And ankle high brown leather lace boots covered her feet. The lace hanging down from the top eyelets like brown spaghetti. At least she untied them. Socks appeared in the loosened opening of the boots. Thick and colorful. A rainbow of colors. Circle atop circle, each a different hue. At least they matched.

But why was she there? Why had she slept there? Beside the concrete freeway where semis whooshed by, the noise, and the air horns proclaiming their place on that surface waking her?

More inventory, this time internal, got her there. Mouth and throat dry, needing moisture. And to wash away an acidic taste. Stomach needing sustenance. But further down, pain. A dull pain radiating from her loins. Pulsing at the rate of her beating heart. Had she been raped? Yes. She felt another pain at her throat. Touched it. Bruised she figured, but of course couldn’t see.

She had put herself there. Enabled the rape. Been vulnerable. Because she needed the ride and desired the sex. But he ... wanted it rough. She told him she didn’t. Begged him not to. He didn’t listen. And then ... after ... after he plunged himself into her and held her throat ... she ... just reaching her backpack ... inside ... her knife ... her protection ... and she did the plunging ... into his throat. She could taste his blood.

And when she moved from beneath him, wiped the blood from her face and body using his clothes strewn about his van so as little as possible would end up on her clothes when she dressed, she fought back her vomit. Waited to slip out of the van, to enter the trees that bordered the truck stop, called the Oasis, in which the man had parked at the back edge, before letting out all she had eaten less than an hour before, what the man had bought her before bringing her to his lair.

The thing was, she had liked the guy. Quiet yes, but she didn’t think in a creepy way. Didn’t say much, but got her talking. She told him her lies, necessitated because he wasn’t the first person she’d killed. Sometimes for similar reasons.

Chapter 1 »