Haylo Kiss <HD>

Her father, a man of hard hands and harder whiskey, blamed rustlers. Her mother, who read her Bible by candlelight, blamed the end of days. Haylo blamed neither. She knew what she’d seen on the third night of the disappearances: a shape that walked on two legs but bent like a broken wishbone, its skin the color of mud and moonlight. It had stopped at the edge of the hayloft’s shadow. And then it had kissed the air—a wet, smacking sound—and the nearest ewe had simply dissolved into mist.

It tilted its head. The slit opened. Inside was not teeth or tongue, but a deeper darkness, a vacuum that pulled the warmth from the air. Haylo Kiss

“I’m not giving you anything.”