Page 27 of Evil Hearts

I wake to the sound of a drip, drip, drip. That same familiar dripping sound of the sewers—the spot in the ceiling on the other side of our salon that got worse when it rained.

If this is heaven, then I suppose it’s not so bad. I was kind of hoping for sunshine and an endless supply of beer, but this works, too.

But then I hear humming, and I bolt upright. I grab the wool blankets covering my body and pull them up to my face. Looking around, I notice the familiar candles on the crates and the phonograph in the corner. I’m back in the salon, but how? I’m supposed to be super dead right now. The last thing I remember was being staked by that paladin and Juliette sobbing over my body.

“Shhh, mon couer. You’re finally awake,” Juliette says as she moves to my side and dabs my forehead with a damp washcloth.

I open my mouth to speak, but my throat is so dry it could be used as kindling. Fuck me, I’m supposed to be dead, right? That’s what happens to a vampire who gets staked through the heart.

“H-How?” I finally croak out.

Juliette drops the damp cloth into the bowl of water and worries her lip. I eye the bowl and furrow my brow, horrified by the implication.

“It’s not sewer water,” she says, reading my mind. “I got it fresh from the store on the corner. Don’t worry.”

Got it from the corner store? Look at my baby girl, all grown up and going to the shops by herself. Smiling, I push myself up to sit, but the pang in my chest almost takes me out again. When I look down at myself, I notice that I’m completely naked save for the bandages wrapped tightly around my chest. It hurts, yeah, but it definitely doesn’t feel like I’m dying anymore.

“I thought I was dust,” I mutter.

Juliette nods. “Me, too. But when your body did not explode, I knew that the paladin missed your heart. By half a hair, to be exact.” She winks at me, and I’m rendered speechless.

God, it’s so good to hear her lovely French accent again. To see her gorgeous round face and those upturned ears that make me think of elves, or pixies, or—

“You sustained serious injuries, but your body pulled through it,” she says before getting up to busy herself with the—the laundry? Since when did Juliette have laundry to do?

Suddenly, I’m aware of the shopping bags in the corner. One is from a nearby department store that I’ve never stepped foot in. How did she even go shopping? And with what money?

Juliette follows my line of sight and smiles weakly before taking a sweater dress out of one of the plastic bags. It’s green and fuzzy, and when she slips it on over her head, I feel like I’m going to keel over from how adorable she looks in it.

“Juli, um.” My gaze licks up and down her body. “Okay, I have so many questions.”

“You were out for two weeks. I wasn’t sure if you would ever recover, and I made you a promise,” she says, looking down at her feet. Mary Jane shoes? The cuteness overload never ends, evidently. “So, I went shopping,” she says with a little curtsy. “What do you think?”

I stand up and make my way over to her to pull her in for a tight hug.“What do I think? I think you’re incredible,” I murmur. “But where did you get the money from, love? And what happened in the two weeks I was unconscious?”

Juliette tilts her face up to meet mine. “You know those paladins you killed?”

I nod.

“They had their wallets on them. And credit cards,” she says, shrugging. “I simply compelled the staff at the store to ring up my purchases with them. And there were many more paladins where those two came from. They were conducting a city-wide purge, in fact. Hundreds of vampires were killed in what the media is calling ‘the Purge of Fire.’”

Wincing, I brush my lips against her forehead. She came so close to death. Hell, we both did. It’s hard to feel sorry for a bunch of stranger vampires when the main emotion I’m experiencing right now is relief. Relief and elation that my love is alive and definitely not dust. It’s almost as if my brain can’t believe it, though. I was so sure I died. That she’d perished, too.

“What happened to the purge, then?” I ask, though I’m too afraid of her answer.

Juliette shrugs. “On a temporary reprieve.”

My brows slam together as I stare at her. No, this is not okay. Not in the slightest.

“I … may have killed too many of the paladins after I thought they killed you.” She raises her hand to inspect her nails, which I only just now realize are painted pink. My girl’s been taking care of herself these past two weeks, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. “A Nosferatu is a deadly thing on a good day. But when you steal her beloved?” She looks back and gives me a salacious grin. “There was no hope for them.”

Yeah, when she puts it that way, I can’t help but sit back and stare at her with wonder. That’s my girl.

Sugardove City is no longer safe for us, or any vampire who wasn’t killed in what the media is now spinning as the most “successful purge of vampiric activity” in human history. Juliette’s face glows from the light of her new cell phone as we huddle underneath the bus shelter and watch the live broadcast. Neither of us even notices the pouring rain as it rattles against the glass.

“Not most successful,” she mutters and shakes her head. “How easy humans forget their own history.”

I lean over her shoulder and gently pluck the phone from her hand.

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