Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror by Charlaine Harris, Tim Lebbon, David Wellington, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dan Chaon, Brian Keene, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Kelley Armstrong, Michael Koryta, Scott Smith, Joe McKinney, Laird Barron, Rio Youers, Dana Cameron, Leigh Perry, Gary A. Braunbeck, Lynda Barry, John Langan, Seanan McGuire, Robert Shearman, Lucy A. Snyder

entrance that goes nowhere? That’s an adit.”
    “Okay. Good to know. Anyhow, I was hoping to get some pictures of them in the right light. You know, right at dusk. When they look good and spooky.”
    Jim smiled, but it wasn’t returned. The stranger looked out across the Sunlight Basin and when he spoke again, his eyes were someplace far away.
    “They’re spooky enough. Just be careful which ones you pick.”
    “Some held on private lands?” Jim asked, having run into that licensing issue before.
    The stranger swiveled his head back to Jim. “Maybe. But some are damned dangerous. There are gates up for a reason, you know.”
    “I don’t intend to go inside of them. Just take some photos.”
    “All right,” the stranger said. “Go have fun, kids. But next time, fill ’er up. Not everybody around here is as helpful as yours truly, and those mountains?” He waved a hand out over the basin. “They look mighty pretty in your pictures, I know, but they’re not jokers, either. They’re the real deal. You want to pay attention out here. I’m serious.”
    Jim felt a flush of embarrassment—he’d taken pictures in rugged areas all over the country, and to be talked to like a child was infuriating, but he couldn’t argue, because the stranger was right. Jim had fucked up, and in different circumstances and different places, that could cost you. He settled for thanking him again and shaking his hand and then turned back to the car and Kristen’s wide, mocking smile.
    “How’s that male ego feeling?” she said when he opened the door.
    “Bruised and battered, but still kicking.” He put the car into gear. Below them, the aptly named basin held all the light of the day, a tease that suggested there was no need to rush, but the surroundingmountains were already catching shadows. They needed to get a base camp up in a hurry, and then, if things went just right, they’d catch the abandoned mines at twilight.
    S ome part of Jim expected another delay—missing tent stakes, a broken bootlace, any further harbinger of bad luck—but they reached their intended campsite and had the tent up and the bear bag hung with daylight still lingering. Kristen laughed at him for placing the bear bag so far away, every bit of three hundred yards from the camp, dangling from a branch twenty feet in the air.
    “Overkill?” she said.
    “Say that now, but you’ll thank me in the middle of the night when you hear something big rustling around here. I was talking to a wildlife photographer who saw fifty-nine grizzlies in one day in this mountain range.”
    “You’re serious?” Some of the amusement was gone from her face.
    “I can show you the pictures.”
    “No need.” She held up a hand. “I’d rather not imagine them, thanks.”
    “Wolves, too. There are several wolf packs in this area. I watched a documentary before we came out. I think it was about the Druid pack, up closer to Yellowstone. But they’re out here. It’s not a fiction in this part of the world. You have to take precautions.”
    Jim looked up at the jagged peaks that guarded the western sky and saw that dark clouds were massing, the descending sunlight breaking through here and there in long, slim beams that caught the western-facing slope of the mountain at their backs perfectly. About halfway up, maybe five hundred feet, maybe a thousand, he could see the rusted remnants of an ancient ore catch basin. He removed his camera and lens cap and took a few test shots.
    “It looks gorgeous,” Kristen said.
    It was more than gorgeous. The way those slim beams were illuminating the abandoned mine shafts created a sense of bridged worlds, a place where past and present lived with an odd, eerie connection. He could camp in this spot for a month and never see the same tricks of light and shadow.
    “I’m going up,” he said. “You want to stay here, maybe get the cookstove going, and—”
    “Did you really just ask the woman to stay back and cook?”