Prey by Stefan Petrucha

Author:Stefan Petrucha
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780061975295
Publisher: HarperCollins

6

Night clouds shrouded the Bilsford sky with a clay-gray color as dark as a lizard’s skin. As it thickened into blackness, drawing even more heat away from the December air, it ultimately smothered the light from even the brightest stars. But mere dark couldn’t keep the town’s denizens inside, safe and warm, not on Hobson Night. As Derek and Chelsea drove through town after dinner, it seemed as if everyone under thirty was out having fun.

Everyone except them.

Groups large and small wandered the grassy commons, laughing drunkenly as they tromped the frosty grass. Banners and holiday lights hung from all the streetlamps. If you peered inside the garish fluorescent-lit windows of the supermarkets and convenience stores, you could see long lines of people with their IDs—both real and manufactured—already out as they bought cases and six-packs of beer.

Hobson Street, three blocks of ramshackle off-campus student housing that lay just a quarter mile from Eve Mandisa’s, was the nexus for this dying-of-the-light debauch, but the party always spiraled out from there, sucking the whole town in. University classes had ended yesterday; the campus shutdown would occur tomorrow, but this was a night when college students rewarded themselves for work well done, or drowned their sorrows over opportunities lost. It was rumored, and likely true, that Bilsford scheduled its high-school midterms during this week specifically to keep the younger kids in the town busy and out of trouble.

Like that could ever work.

Derek slowed for a crowd in the crosswalk. Among the people, Chelsea recognized six kids from her classes, singing, “We Will Rock You.”

Derek caught her longing expression as she looked out the window. “Do you want to go later?” he asked hopefully. “Just for a few minutes? Just to drive down Hobson Street and look? We can drink seltzer.”

Chelsea shook her head. “Bah. Humbug. No. Maybe. I don’t know. I think I just want to go home and go to sleep after this.”

“Are you sure?”

She reared. “My lizard ate a dog! I’m feeling a little drained, Derek.”

“Fine. Sorry. I thought the whole idea was to distract your inner reptile.”

“That’s the idea, but not tonight. You should go. Really. I won’t mind.”

Much.

“Maybe. Maybe I should.”

He sounded defiant and annoyed and she didn’t blame him. Who would want to be stuck with her on Hobson Night? Last year, when she was fifteen, she’d actually finished all her tests and her friends begged and begged her to sneak out and play. Her father even made a point about how the lock on the back door was broken and, hell, anyone could sneak out and join the party for an hour or two and no one would notice. But Chelsea stayed in her room, curled up under a book lamp, startled by every crashing bottle or good-natured scream.

Tonight, though, Chelsea was on her way to tell a woman she didn’t particularly like that her dog had been eaten by a lizard she was sitting.

My, how times had changed.

She told her parents everything, but they didn’t seem to believe her until Derek displayed his as-yet-untreated wound.

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