Page 26 of Vampires Don't Give Hickeys
With a deep breath, I plucked the stake from my bun and forced myself to get this patrol over with so I could go back to the nest, back to where I felt safe and cherished. What woman didn’t want that?
I honed my senses as I walked down the path, separating the low thunder from my footsteps from the dead leaves rattling over the path. I kept my eyes sharp during the flashing moments of lightning and searched around every corner usually hidden in shadow.
The next gust of wind tugged my jacket around my Kevlar vest. It carried a touch of static noise, just enough to taunt me. A shiver chased up my back.
Paul was sizing me up, it seemed, feeling at my vest and strategizing his plan of attack since it would be harder to make me stab myself in the chest again. Of course I had no idea if that were true. I couldn’t feel him watching me. Not yet anyway. But he was close. He was likely always close, and would be for the next three hundred sixty-six days unless I did something about him. Tomorrow was Halloween and my twentieth birthday at 11:59 p.m. First I had to make it until then, and then I had to make damn sure I saw twenty-one.
Movement shifted up ahead, behind a couple of tall gravestones. I pivoted toward them, my lips pushed tight in an attempt to control my erratic breaths. Was that Paul? The wind swept the moisture from my mouth while my stake hand grew slick with nervous sweat.
As I drew closer, the static noise sounded again, louder this time, a sinister warning. My body jolted, but I didn’t let the surprise slow me down.
Out came two vampires from behind either side of the tallest headstone. Lightning glinted off their fangs and shone in their red eyes as they stalked toward me.
“I’m almost happy to see you,” I said.
Vampires I could do. Double meaning totally intended.
Trying to bend over the bulk of the Kevlar vest cost me the moment I needed to grab a second stake from my boot. But no worries. One would do just fine. I kicked one of them in the stomach hard enough to leave me alone for the second I needed. Then I buried my stake into the heart of the other. When he disintegrated into a shower of bloody mist, I turned on the first vamp, just now standing up straight again. Boom. Staked him too. I was so much better at handling situations I was familiar with, especially when those situations wanted to kill me in a nice, straightforward way, rather than trying to make me do it myself.
“Are you lazy, Paul?” I asked the night as fat raindrops began to plink down. “Is that it?”
“Lovely...”
I whirled at the sound of his voice. The rain fell harder, dripping into my eyes and warping the graveyard into a dark blur before I blinked. My ears burned for another sound over the rush of water and thrashing tree branches blowing in the wind. I started forward, back the way I’d come in the direction of the shorter gravestones so I’d be able to see if something lurked behind them. My stake grew slick with the remnants of blood and rain, so I dug my fingernails into the wood to keep from dropping it like an idiot.
And then I stopped. Something was different. I’d been here literally thousands of times, even in the rain, and I’d memorized every curve in the path, every dip between the graves, every flower and trinket left for the dearly departed. It wasn’t a new gravestone, not in this older part of the cemetery, but something I couldn’t immediately place.
My gaze skipped over a stone bench farther along the path and then sliced back toward it. Was that...? I blinked through the sheets of rain plummeting from the sky. Was someone sitting there? They sat hunched over, almost bent in half so their head hung between their knees as if they’d dropped something on the ground. Their sanity, maybe? This was not a night to lose something in the middle of a graveyard.
From this distance, I couldn’t tell if it was a vampire, Paul, or some homeless person who’d followed me through the unlocked gate. The latter had never happened before, but this week had been filled with firsts.
I started forward again, my stake gripped tight, all of my senses on alert. Whoever it was wore a bulky coat with the hood hiked up over their head. Beyond that, they were a shapeless, sexless, rain-soaked mass that was bent double. I skated my gaze over my surroundings, blinking the rain from my eyes, as I drew closer to the figure. Just like the cemetery itself tonight, this didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t as if I could just run away.
It didn’t evenlookright. Not just the bent-in-half position, but also the way the figure’s back jerked spastically, as if something inside the coat wanted out. Not the best thought to have at a time like this.
My stomach tightened, and I forced down a loud gulp. “Hello? Are you all right?”
The wind chose that moment to whip everything sideways, scattering my voice and pluming an odd smell toward my nose. Something hot and coppery. The breakfast-for-dinner I’d had at the vamp nest made a steady climb and kicked at the back of my throat. I breathed through it, burying my nose into my jacket collar, and willed it back down. If that stink was coming from this figure, then this whole scenario couldn’t be good.
“Hello?” I marched toward the bench, determination quickening my steps until I stood in front of it.
The hot smell intensified, so I breathed through my mouth instead. Lightning zippered across the sky and reflected off a silver thermos by one leg of the bench. And next to it...
My lungs congealed. I stumbled backward as a violent tremor ripped down my back. What...?What...?
Bloodied hands fumbled at the pile next to the thermos between a man’s work boots. They scooped up entrails and then pressed them to his middle. Tim’s entrails. The cemetery grounds man. The man who unlocked the gate for me. The man who’d forgotten his thermos and had come back to get it.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
I stepped closer, as if there was some way I could help, but it was too late for him. Even with the rain slanting down in sheets, it couldn’t wash away the rush of his blood. There was too much. It drenched the legs of his pants and streamed from his fingertips. His hopeless attempt to pick up his own organs jerked his back as the life oozed out of him.
Which begged the question—where were the vampires? The two I’d just dispatched hadn’t acted like they’d scented blood, so this... this violent assault must’vejusthappened.
He nodded as if agreeing with me, and then he froze. A sound like a whimper sliced through the wind and rain, chasing a shiver across my shoulders. One panic-stricken eye peered out from underneath his hood, to a point just over my shoulder.
I whirled, but an unseen force slammed into me from my left, not behind me. Rough hands righted me and twisted my head around to stare up into Paul’s watery blue eyes. His fingertips dug into my jaw with brutal strength, and I wondered briefly if he could snap it as easily as he had disemboweled Tim.
“Lovely night for a stroll, isn’t it?” he hissed and then shoved me away.
