11
DAWN
Darkness falls with a quickness, a blanket that spreads out from the horizon like ink. The Tennessee mountains make the night more intense — the guard rails that snake around the corners, the only thing separating the car from certain death, turn the space beyond the cliffs into the empty void of eternity.
I doze off and on, then climb into the back seat when I need to stretch out, my feet on Silas’s lap. I wake to him massaging the arches of my feet with his strong thumbs — he must have taken my boots off. I stretch my arms against the back window. The world beyond the window is blank — not even close to sunrise. “What time is it?”
“Three o’clock.”
Twelve hours down. Fifteen to go. “Can’t you do some whacky vampire s**t and just … run us there in half an hour?”
“If we want t
