Read Page 33

I stumbled off the couch, disoriented and dizzy, braced myself on a wall, then hurtled through my small house.

"Anthony!" I screamed.Advertisement

I was in my son's room in a blink, and what I saw took a second or two to absorb. The bedroom window was broken. The sound of running feet. My son standing there in the center of his room, breathing hard, fists clenched.

"It's okay, Mommy. They're gone now."

I looked my son over wildly, then hurried over to the broken window. Our house abuts the Pep Boys parking lot, separated by our backyard fence. From inside the house, I could just see a white van peeling away from the fence, zigzagging briefly.

Sweet Jesus.

I considered pursuing, but there was no way in hell was I leaving my son. I noted the broken glass wasn't inside the bedroom, as I had expected. The glass was outside, littering the dry grass, sparkling there under the last of the setting sun. A sun that was even now burning me alive.

I fought through it, grimacing, trying to piece together what had happened. The glass was broken out, which meant...

And then I saw it, a few feet away. Anthony's Xbox controller was lying in the grass, too, broken into two or three pieces.

He had thrown it. Through the window. I looked back at my son. But he wasn't looking at me. He simply stood in the center of the room, fists clenched, looking out through the broken window.

"What happened, Anthony?"

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"There were two of them," he said calmly. He did not sound like my little boy. He sounded years older. "I saw them climb over the wall. One of them looked in the window."

"And you threw your controller at him." My voice, still shocked, was now full of something close to awe. "Through the window?"

He nodded. "It hit him in the face. He screamed and fell down. When he got up, he was bleeding bad. I think some glass was in his face. Maybe his nose was broken."

Holy shit.

"Then both of them ran off again. They jumped the wall, and that's when you came in."

My God.

"You need to get out of the sun, Mommy."

My son took my hand and led me away, out of his room and into the hallway. I could smell my own burning flesh. If I looked hard enough, I might even see steam rising off my skin.

I said, gasping, "Are you okay, honey?"

"Of course, Mommy."

I pulled my son in close and held him tight. Two men with crossbows. Vampire hunters. Here at my house. Following me.

"Who were those men, Mommy?"

"Bad men."

"Were they robbers?"

I nodded but didn't say anything. I pulled him in closer, and we stood like that in the hallway, holding each other tight, while the cool wind came in through the broken window, rattled the blinds, and eventually found us huddling together in the hallway. pqdm.com