Welcome, new readers! This is Book 4 in the Wayward Son series. You'll want to begin with More Than a Feeling. I looooove hearing from readers, so don't be shy!
Randy Collins lowered his chainsaw and wiped his dripping forehead. It was only mid-June, but the heat and humidity were making it feel like August. Last night's storm had knocked a big dead oak across State Road 40, blocking traffic. Most cars turned around and found detours, but plenty of folks in trucks and SUVs had just gone around it, cutting through Tom White's soybean field. Tom was hopping mad, but too old to clear it himself. Randy surveyed his work. He'd sawed off all the branches, cut them into manageable pieces, and piled them alongside the road. Then he'd cut the fallen oak into fireplace-sized logs. He'd chop them at home. Maybe in the morning, when it wasn't so damn hot. Now, to get them all off the road and into his pickup. He started with the largest log, hoisting it with a grunt and heaving it into the bed of his truck. After five more minutes of work, he had half the wood loaded.
Something in the distance caught his eye. A woman was walking toward him along the side of the road. He tossed another log into the truck, then leaned against the tailgate and watched her approach. He recognized her blond hair and tanned legs. Lori Hutchinson. They'd gone to high school together, and stuck around Coalton after graduation. "Hey Lori," he called. "What're you doing out here?"
"Walking. Until I find a new vehicle."
"Did you car break down? You need a ride?" He'd love to give her a ride. Dreamed about it since they were teenagers.
She stopped in front of him and seemed to consider his words. Her flushed skin gleamed with sweat beneath the midday sun; her hair stuck in wet wisps to the sides of her face. She adjusted the strap of a leather messenger bag hanging from her shoulder. "Yes. My vehicle is breaking down quickly. I'm going to need a new one very soon."
"Uh…okay. Where you headed?"
"I need to go somewhere with more people."
"Oh. So you're moving?" He tried to hide his disappointment. People left Coalton all the time. He thought Lori would be one of the ones who stayed there forever, like him. "Country life finally catching up with you?"
She didn't answer. Her face had turned redder and sweatier just since they'd started talking. She glanced around, looking distracted.
"So, uh, you hear about that warehouse fire over in Chillicothe?" he asked.
"I was there."
"No way! Wait…you mean you were in Chillicothe, or you saw the fire?"
"I was at the warehouse."
Randy waited to see if she'd laugh. She must be messing with him. But she kept looking around at nothing in particular. "So you saw the fire. You don't mean you were actually in the warehouse."
"Yes I was."
Questions buzzed through his head faster than he could ask them. "But why? What the hell were you doing in there?"
"Experimenting." She said it casually, still no wink or anything to indicate it was a joke.
Randy didn't know how to respond. Surely she hadn't started the fire. The newspaper said the fire inspector couldn't figure out what had started it, or how it had burned at ten thousand degrees. Was Lori getting into drugs or something? She was too smart for that, wasn't she? "Experimenting with what? And how did you get out of the warehouse?"
Instead of answering him, she looked past him, at his truck. "Is your truck a manual transmission or automatic?"
"What? It's automatic. Why?"
"Good. I can manage with an automatic; I've had a little practice. I don't have time to learn manual. I must find somewhere with more people. I also need a vehicle that will last more than forty-eight hours. They've been very disappointing so far."
"Lori, what are you talking about? You drove that little foreign stick shift our senior year." Maybe she was on drugs. She looked overheated, too. Heat stroke, maybe? "C'mon, let's go over there into the shade." He led her to a still-standing oak not far from the stump of the fallen one. "It's a scorcher today, huh?"
She looked at him with a curious tilt of her head. "You think this is hot?"
"You don't?"
She snickered as a rivulet of sweat trickled from her forehead down her cheek. Her shirt clung to her curves. It was sexy, despite the big wet spots darkening her armpits. But her face was still getting redder.
"How about you just hang out here while I load up the rest of this wood? Then I'll take you back into town and we'll get you some cold water."
She didn't respond. Just stood there in the shade, gazing down the road. Randy went to the nearest log and hoisted it into his arms. He decided to try conversation again, to see if the shade was helping her out at all. "Hey, you hear about those people burning up for no reason? Spontaneous combustion, or whatever they call it? The guy in Waverly City just burnt up right in the middle of the street. Crazy, right?"
"Yes." Lori held her hand up and turned it slowly, examining it. "I had no idea human bodies were so flimsy. And flammable." She lifted her gaze out over the waving soybeans. "Souls can burn and burn forever."
Despite the muggy heat, a chill tingled Randy's spine. Something was definitely wrong with her. He'd never heard her talk this way before. Shade wasn't helping. He tossed the log into the truck bed and went back to her. The rest of the wood could wait. "Lori, we need to get you to the clinic. You've got sunstroke or something." He held out his hand to her. "Come on. Let's go."
She looked at him with sudden interest. "What do you want most in the world?"
"What? Right now, I want you to get in the truck."
"What do you most fear?"
"Lori—"
"What would you be willing to do to attain what you want most? To avoid what you most fear? Would you sell your soul?" A hungry, feverish spark lit her eyes. She opened the flap of her bag, reached inside, and pulled out some sort of paper cylinder. She unrolled it, and Randy saw writing in black ink covering one side.
"What is that?" he asked, an uneasy feeling fluttering in his stomach. The weird way she was talking didn't help.
"A contract. I've copied a basic template. See the empty spaces? We just fill in your terms." She panted for a moment, seemingly out of breath. "What do you want most? Money? Fame? Women? Name it." She pulled a feather quill from the bag and held it out to him.
Stunned, he took it. As he did, he saw the blisters spreading along her arm. He looked back up at her in alarm. Her face was so red it practically glowed in the afternoon sunlight. Beads of perspiration dotted her forehead, nose, and cheeks.
"Lori, we have to get you to a doctor right now."
She shook her head. "We won't make it back to town. There's not time." She pushed the quill toward him again. "What do you desire? Just write it down and sign your name." She sidled a little closer. "The contract must be sealed with a kiss. You'd like that, wouldn't you? I saw the way you looked at this body when I arrived."
Randy stepped backward. Heat was radiating off Lori's skin, and as he watched, fresh blisters crept up her throat. What the hell was wrong with her? She was burning up and talking crazy. Like, mental patient crazy. "Look, something's really wrong with you. You need help. Come on, let's get in the truck, okay?"
"No. I will need the truck." The white blisters multiplied, streaming up her throat, over her jaw, onto her face. Her eyes flashed. "There's no more time." She stuffed the parchment and quill back into the bag and tossed it twenty feet away, into the grass alongside the road. "Get back. I'll need your vehicle unscathed." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
More crazy talk. "I don't know why you're so obsessed with my truck, or what you're on, but you gotta listen to me. You need help—"
"Get away from me!" she screamed, and her eyes flew open.
They were red. Not her irises—those were gone. Each eye was a solid, blazing, fiery red, with vertical black slits in the centers.
Randy stumbled back, heart jammed in his throat, and fell onto the grass. He crabwalked backward on badly shaking limbs, desperate to get away from her but unable to stop looking. Roadside gravel dug into his palms, then the asphalt burned them, but he kept backing away. Steam and smoke started pouring off her skin, obscuring her face. Randy bumped into the rear tire just as she threw her head back, face to the sky, mouth open wide. A blinding flash; he blinked, then there was a pillar of roaring fire where Lori had been standing.
He threw an arm over his face to shield himself from the wall of scorching heat, but through squinting eyes he saw something else: a thick, twisting column of brick red smoke. It shot out from the pillar of flame—straight at him.
He opened his mouth to scream, and the raging smoke flooded into him.
It had found a new vehicle.