Throat by R. A. Nelson

drunk on her blood, when he had gorged on my sister’s blood, he would throw her away like a broken doll.
And it would all be my fault
.
    I’m the monster
.
    I had to draw him away.
Now
. I turned and grabbed the first thing I saw—my sunglasses off the nightstand. I shoved them in my pocket, rushed across the room, and threw my shoulder at the window, hitting it full force. I could feel it as I blasted through the glass and wood, and the window exploded outward with the force of my body.
    I was nearly twenty feet off the ground. I fell in a shower of shards and debris and landed in the grass. I shook the glass out of my hair. I didn’t have a plan but to run, just run. Run as far and as fast as I could, before Wirtz could close in on them.
Draw the vampire away
.
    I ran down our little side road, then streaked across four lanes of traffic without waiting for the cars to pass.
    I was barefoot and wearing pajamas. I kept going until I broke through a band of trees. I was in a field, then another band of trees and then another field and a farm road. I put on more speed.
Power
station. Gravel. Pavement, leaves, woods
. I was flying past hills, rocks, fences, walls. I chewed up miles of countryside until I had no idea where I was or how far I had gone.
    I burst through a wood and came to a wide river. I could see a barge moving through the water that looked as if it wasn’t really moving at all. I took a tremendous leap and hit the water hard and then was stroking for the barge, kicking up a wake behind me.
    I grasped the edge of the barge’s nasty saturated wood and threw myself over, sailing past the heads of two men smoking on deck. The smell of their cigarettes filled my nostrils and I could hear a tiny piece of their conversation as I zoomed over—“That’s how you pick up girls”—then I fell into the water on the other side and was swimming again.
    I came up the far bank, battling through river trash and vegetation, streaking through the woods and leaving a trail of drops in the air behind me. I crossed another field and came to a fence. The fence was twice as high as my head and strung with razor wire at the top. It had a large white sign that said:
    US ARMY INSTALLATION
NO TRESPASSING
TEST RANGES
    I took two steps and bounded over, hit the ground running on the far side. I ran through one big field after another, then nothing but thick woods. I came to a hillside with a farm road running along its edge and a broad drainage wash that emptied into a big concrete pipe.
    I ran into the wash and threw my body into the pipe. Lay therelistening to the sounds of the nighttime around me. They were loud. Insects chirruping and creaking and buzzing. Wind in the trees. Twigs crackling as something moved over them.
    I curled up and made myself smaller, holding my head in my hands and drawing my knees up to my chest.
    Had I gone far enough? I could imagine the vampire out there in the dark. Tracking me. Licking his lips, biting them. If he found me here …
    I waited, certain any moment I was going to see Wirtz’s terrible face peer over the edge of the pipe.
    Finally my heart began to slow. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I lay on the rough cement listening and watching. My pajamas were still wet from swimming the river. My hair dripped into my eyes and down my back. I was used to a bed, a home, protection, warmth.…
    I shivered miserably and wept.
    As the hours crawled by, my vampire ears had me jumping at everything that moved. I had never felt so far away from the things I knew. Everything was alien. The sounds, distant lights across the fields, the smell of wildness …
    I think I slept.
    Where was I?
    I blinked and opened my eyes, starting violently. Directly over my face was the grodiest-looking spider I had ever seen. I raked my fingernails on the inside walls of the pipe, scrambling to get out. Flopped on the moist ground, then almost started bawling all over again.
    Sunshine
.
    The unimaginably