“I’ll miss you,” he breathed, before suckling a bit and feeling his erection strong as he rubbed it against her hanging legs. One hand cupped her buttocks and he remembered the hot joy of entering her….

“In the next lifetime, my sweet,” he vowed, turning his attention to Rylee…perfect, petulant Rylee. He hadn’t had enough time with her. Her perfect, icy body called out to him and he thought of saving her, playing with her bloodless body, but he knew it was best to take her away as well.

He kissed her frozen, twisted lips and stared into her open eyes. Then he smiled as he viewed her neck, so perfect, arching back, the icy strands of her hair falling away to show the two perfect holes at the base of her throat, and he imagined the taste of her blood. Salty. Warm. Satisfying.

Yes, it would be difficult to let her go.

But there would be others…so many more.

He smiled in the darkness as their faces came to him.

Kristi couldn’t sleep. The clock at her bedside table told her it was nearly one in the morning and the events of the past few days had been swirling in her mind. Over and over again, the pictures of the missing girls revolved and she remembered the phone calls she’d made between classes and work and a few face-to-face meetings with students who had known the girls who disappeared.

“Always knew she would come to no good…bad blood just like her father.” It was Tara’s mother’s words that kept her awake the most. “He’s in jail, y’know. Armed robbery, not that it’s any of your business. My guess? She took off with some boy and somehow I’ll end up having to pay the loans she took out to go to school. You just wait and see. And me with two other kids to support….”

But Monique’s mother had been no better, seemingly pissed off that her daughter had gone away to school and left her to deal with a husband with Alzheimer’s disease. “She couldn’t deal with it…not that she could deal with anything. That girl!” Monique’s mother had snorted from somewhere in South Dakota.

Dionne’s brother had thought she was a “cheap-ass ho,” while her last boyfriend Tyshawn Jones was still MIA, or so it seemed. Dionne’s coworkers at the pizza parlor had insisted they didn’t get to know her and that she’d kept to herself.

Rylee’s mother was a nightmare, inferring her daughter would just get herself “in trouble” as if that were the worst thing that could happen.