William drove the dusty white van through the Mojave Desert at close to a hundred miles an hour. The Marshall Mathers LP was playing at maximum volume. William was really pushing it along Route 15, heading toward Vegas, the next stop on their tour.  The van was an ingenious idea. It was a damn bloodmobile with all the requisite Red Cross stickers. He and Michael were actually certified to take blood from anyone who volunteered to give it.  ‘It’s up ahead a couple of miles/William told his brother, who was sitting with one bare leg out the open window.  ‘What’s up ahead? Prey, I hope. I’m bored out of my skull. I need to feed. I’m thirsty. I don’t see anything up there.’ Michael whined like the spoiled rotten teenager that he was. ‘Don’t pull any Slim Shady shit on me. I don’t see a thing up ahead.’ ‘You will soon,’ William said mysteriously. “This should snap you out of your funk. I promise it will.’
Minutes later, the van pulled into a commercial parachute center known as a drop zone. Michael sat up, whooped loudly and beat on the dashboard with the palms of his hands. He was such a boy.  ‘I feel the need for speed,’ Michael yelled, doing his best imitation of the young Tom Cruise.
The two brothers had been parachuting since they got out of prison. It was one of the best legal highs around, and it took their mind off killing. They hopped out of the van and headed inside a flat-roofed concrete building that had definitely seen better decades.
William paid twenty dollars directly to the pilot for a ride in a Twin Otter plane. There were two of them sitting near the tiny runway at the airstrip, but there was only one pilot and no one else at the parachute center.
The pilot was a dark-haired girl not much older than William.  Early twenties at most. She had a tight sexy body but a mean little weasel’s face with badly pocked cheeks. He could tell that she liked his and Michael’s looks, but hey, who wouldn’t?  ‘No boards, so you’re not sky surfing. What are you boys into?’the pilot asked in a strong southwestern accent. ‘Name’s Callie, by the way.’
‘We’re into just about everything!’ Michael volunteered and laughed. ‘I mean that too, Callie. I’m serious. We’re into just about everything that’s worth getting into.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Callie said, and held Michael’s eye for a few seconds.’Well, let’s do it then,’she said, and they climbed up into the Otter.
Less than ninety seconds later, the small plane was pounding down the hardscrabble runway. The brothers were laughing and hollering at the top of their voices.
‘You guys really seem pumped up, I’ll give you that. You’re free fallers, right? You’re both certifiable,’Callie shouted over the airplane noise. She had a throaty rasp that William found, frankly, a little irritating. He wanted to rip a gaping hole in her neck, but he resisted the urge.
‘Among other things, yes. Take her up to sixteen thousand/William shouted back to her.
‘Whoa! Thirteen thousand’s plenty. You know, temperature at thirteen thousand feet’s under forty degrees. You lose ‘bout three degrees every thousand feet. Hypoxia sets in at sixteen. Too much for you thin-skinned boys.’
‘We’ll tell you when it’s too much for us. We’ve done this kind of thing before,’ said Michael, a little angry now, his teeth bared, but maybe she took it for a seductive little smil............