Page 40 of Banished From the Pack

“Hey, we all have jobs. Why not give her one? I mean, if you don’t want her cleaning up after us, I can think of another job she could do on her hands and knees.”

I ignore him and storm ahead, trying to erase the image he put in my brain. Being outside always calms me. I love where we live, though maybe not the mosquitoes and chiggers that bite the shit out of us. The land on the edge of the swamp is a magical place. I love the smell of the cypress trees, the wildflowers and herbs that grow around here, even the smell of the swamp itself. Humans think the swamp stinks, but unless you’re mucking around in it, stirring up the gasses and decaying matter, it’s got a scent all its own, like wild things live here. And they’re right.

Wild things is exactly what we are.

“Where the fuck did you stash the body?” I ask as we tromp deeper into the brush. The sun has sunk below the trees, but it’s still light enough to see. Just the time of night the mosquitos come swarming.

“Oh, we dragged him some way out. Didn’t want Miss Luna to see the carnage.”

“What did you do to the guy?” I ask, stepping over a fallen log.

“I didn’t do shit to him.” He side-eyes me and waggles his eyebrows. “But I did leave his woman in a satisfied state of mind.”

I shake my head and pick my way through some muddy terrain. “When will you learn that sometimes it’s better to keep it in your pants?”

“This cock is meant for pleasure. Why waste a good thing?” He grabs his dick through his jeans and then pauses, pointing to a cluster of flies swirling around some bushes. “There he is.”

I wave the flies away before lifting the Fetterbush branches before us. The corpse lays in a mangled heap, barely recognizable.

“Fuck, he stinks.”

“Right?” Ethan says. “It’s a wonder Frank hasn’t found him. I thought we’d feed him to that old son of a bitch.”

“Good idea,” I say, grabbing the ankles of the body and hauling him out to where I can look at him. The dude’s chest is torn apart like a wolverine got to him. “Shit.”

Ethan chuckles. “You have to kill these motherfuckers with wood, so we used an old wooden spoon.”

“You know you don’t have to use wood if you just tear his head off, right?”

His chuckles turn into a raucous laugh. “Where’s the fun in that?”

I stare at the dude’s bashed-in skull. “You used a wooden spoon to bash in his head?”

“We used the shovel to bash in his head,” Ethan corrects me. “Once he was down, I grabbed the old spoon I saw in the shed the other day and carved open his chest cavity.”

“Where’s the heart?”

“Warrick ate it,” Ethan says, watching me heft the vampire’s remains over my shoulder.

“He gagged down the whole heart?” I ask as we trudge toward the water. The stench of dead vamp fills my nostrils, and I’m more than ready to dump the body and be done with it.

“You know vamp blood only makes us stronger,” Ethan says. When we get close to the swamp, he whistles. “Here, Frank, come get supper.”

A set of eyes sinks into the reddish water, and ripples stream in our direction. A few seconds later, the oldest, meanest alligator in these parts waddles onto the shore, looking at us speculatively.

“Here, boy…catch,” Ethan says.

I hurl the dead vamp, and it soars through the air and lands in a heap near Frank’s seventy or so sharp teeth. I blow out a lungful of air and wipe the sweat from my neck and face.

My brother and his goddamned conquests…

As Frank goes to town on the body, dragging it to wherever he’s going to consume it, Ethan and I head back toward the house.

“You been keeping your mitts to yourself with Luna, right?” I ask, sporting for a fight after hauling another one of Ethan’s sexual messes through the woods.

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Ethan says with a smirk. He lifts a branch and holds it for me to trek past.

I swat his hand aside. “She’s too young for you,” I snap. “And too sweet to deserve your twisted ass fucking her up.”