Starlight & Shadows: A Limited Edition Academy Collection by Laura Greenwood, Arizona Tape, Juliana Haygert, Kat Parrish, Ashley McLeo, L.C. Mawson, Leigh Kelsey, Bre Lockhart, Zelda Knight by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub

There were at least three more hours of daylight left, so I headed east to explore the little creek I’d spotted on an earlier walk.

It cut a path through a sun-dappled forest of birch and maple and then cascaded in a tiny waterfall that fed a small lake. It looked so inviting. I wondered if anyone ever swam there.

The very moment I had that thought, a swimmer surfaced like a dolphin spy-hoping, and I realized the water was deeper than it looked.

I also realized the swimmer was not just about the handsomest guy I’d ever seen in person—and that’s saying something when you’ve lived in Los Angeles your whole life. And he was also stark raving naked.

He saw me at almost the same time I saw him, when it was too late to pretend I’d somehow not seen him. He didn’t turn away, just treaded water and looked at me calmly. He inclined his head invitingly. “Join me,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”

“I won’t mind.”

It was such a cheesy thing to say that I laughed and waved off the invitation. “Maybe next time.”

I was still smiling as I turned onto the street where I lived and saw the thing crawling out of the underbrush.

At first, I thought it was a coyote. I’d seen plenty of them in Los Angeles, trotting across Beverly Glen Canyon, totally oblivious to the traffic. Uncle Ned’s house backed up to one of the hiking trails that wound through Stony Point and I’d seen them skulking there, hoping to make a meal of a young deer or a fat raccoon or one of the many feral but friendly cats that roamed the city.

Coyotes won’t usually attack humans, but anywhere humans and wild animals live in close proximity, there’s always the potential for something bad to happen.

The creature had appeared out of a thicket lining a side street running perpendicular to the street where our house was. I quickened my pace, wanting to put as much distance between me and it as I could.

It sped up too, and as it got closer, I realized the thing pacing me wasn’t a coyote. Wasn’t any kind of animal I recognized at all, but some kind of mutant thing. Some horrible, mutant thing.

What looked like a pair of vestigial paws hung from its chest, limp and boneless and disturbingly like human hands.

I saw this as it passed me, trotting ahead as if on its way somewhere important. I breathed a sigh of relief that caught in my chest as I saw it turn and plant its four feet squarely in front of the steps leading up to our front door.

We contemplated each other. Its compact, muscular body was more pig-like than canine, but its head was almost triangular—wide at the top with a pointed chin. It seemed to have no nose at all, just slits, like a pit viper. There was a sickly green haze leaking from those nasal orifices, and that was scary enough, but then I saw his eyes.

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