Page 34 of Don't Bite the Boy Next Door
Dragging my eyes away from the terrible scene before me, I gasp as Lars spins and, placing his hands around my throat, pulls me up to him. He is so strong, and so tall, my feet dangle and kick like a puppet as I stare into his eyes, my own shocked, pleading, despairing.
“If you had just killed yourself like you were supposed to, this wouldn’t be happening,” he shouts, as his hands tighten, and his tormented eyes meet mine. “I didn’t want this to happen. You were supposed to bite the Irresistible and kill yourself, Tess. All this could have been avoided. Why did you have to go and make me do this? I don’t want to do this!”
I want to shout; ‘well neither do I, so let’s stop,’ but I can’t. I can feel my neck separating from my head, slowly but surely, tendon’s snapping, veins, arteries breaking. Little lights begin to sparkle in my eyes, and I know I’m going to die any second. Strangely, his words though, reach some part of my brain not yet concerned with decapitation, and I realise he was the one who must have snapped Ryan’s rope that day in the well. He must have tried to force my hand, worked to put me so close to my neighbour that I couldn’t possibly resist killing him, and myself shortly after from guilt. Which is exactly what I would have done. But his plan had failed because Ryan was already dead when I got there. And when resuscitated, he was no longer irresistible to me.
No wonder Lars had not seemed as excited as I expected when I’d told him about this miracle.
As I face this revelation, a million other little clues start to add up. Lars had said the very first day he arrived that he dropped a body in Dane Weir – a tiny little disused watering hole only really known to old-timers around here – how could he possibly have known about that? Unless he was the John who Shelly had mentioned…. unless he was here months ago, posing as a photographer, spying on me. Which means I gasp, Shelly was right. Shelly who is now missing. My Shelly.
“You killed Shelly,” I squeak with my last remaining breath, my legs no longer kicking, toes pointing to the ground like a limp ballerina.
His eyes meet mine, only they don’t seem quite so pained now, they seem triumphant. It’s as though now he has committed to this terrible deed, to kill one of his oldest friends, it is a done deal, and not so bad after all.
“Yes,” he mutters, as his fingers dig into my spinal cord, ready to give it one final snap and pull.
He is so intent on his task now he doesn’t see Ryan’s approach, and I close my eyes as the shovel smacks into the top of Lars’ head, felling him and pulling me down with him, his hands still embedded in my skin.
Seeing all the blood, my pale face, and I don’t know what in my expression, Ryan brings the shovel down again, decapitating Lars in one decisive swipe.
Before his shocked gaze, our attacker turns to dust, and there is only me on the ground at his feet. My hands to my throat, concentrating on not bleeding out, as the last of my blood spurts out through my severed jugular onto his bare feet, in one final flamboyant fountain.
As he kneels down before me in agonised horror, I have only one word I can say, and I pray to all the powers of the universe he will understand.
“Fridge.”
I lie on the couch and suck greedily on the paper straw attached to the blood bag, the eighth he has fed me so far, and watch as he rises from where he has been kneeling by my side and walks slowly to the window.
It is late afternoon, and he has nursed me all night and all morning through the worst of my injuries, where I felt sure I might die. I will heal, I know that now, but it will take time, perhaps weeks.
“How did you know to feed me the blood?” I croak, my larynx still squished.
“You have them labelled,” he murmurs, “breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“Oh, yeah,” I smile wanly and whisper, “I guess I do.”
“And I just watched a man explode into a shower of dust after picking me up like a baseball and throwing me for a home run,” he sighs, “so, working on the presumption he was superhuman I figured you must be something else too. After all, I’ve only ever seen you at night, and it looked like you somehow punched holes into the solid rock walls of my well to rescue me - I put two and two together.”
“And didn’t get Snow White,” I whisper.
“No,” he shrugs, “I’m still not sure what you are. But I’m guessing this is what you meant when you said you were not good.”
“Yes,” I feel a lump in my throat rising, there’s no point in hiding now. “I’m a vampire. A monster, a murderer, a blood-sucking creature of the night, a killer.”
“And what does that make me then?” he whispers, turning and limping back to where I lay. “That pole should have killed me, I should have bled to death by now, instead,” he shakes his head, “the hole in my stomach is healing.”
“Oh,” I swallow hard, my mind racing.
“Am I like you now, Tess? Am I a vampire?”
“I didn’t bite you,” I whisper, my eyes wide, hands beginning to shake. “I didn’t bite you.”
“When you revived me,” he buries his hand to his face, his words muffled, “what did you do?”
“I gave you mouth to mouth,” I croak, beginning to cry, “but I didn’tbiteyou.”
“Your blood,” he removes his hands to stare at me, “you had it all over your face, your lips. If I ingested some, could that change me?”
“I don’t know,” I sob, truly horrified at what he is suggesting. “I only think you turn if you have been bitten – but I don’t really know.”
