Fatal Allure Collection

by Woods, Martha

  After I have downed an entire bottle of wine, Cara gets me up off the couch. I try to talk to her, but my words are coming out in strange jumbles. She gets me tucked into bed and sits there brushing through my hair in that soothing way. I can see the worry on her face.

  “I can stay the night if you’d like,” she says.

  “No, it’s ok,” I squeak out.

  “I feel like you’re not telling me everything. Like you’re pushing me away,” Cara says.

  My heart clenches along with my teeth. The words are so close to the surface, with the world spinning around me. I wish it would stop so I can get control of the situation.

  “I mean, when you lost Bella you didn’t tell me or call. I figured that would be something you would share with me, so we could both grieve over her. I was with you when you picked her up from the pound,” Cara says.

  I clench my fist tight enough I can feel my nails digging into my palms. The pain is real. I try to concentrate on that pain instead of the truth she speaks of. I didn’t tell her Bella was gone; I didn’t know how to explain how my lovable mutt had been mutilated and laid out all over my apartment. I can’t even remember the lie I did tell her when she inquired. By that point, I had lost the ability to cry over my dog, and Damon was there, Damon who understood.

  “I’m not trying to cause you more pain, Amy, but you’ve pulled away. You never brought Damon around your friends, never had us over. Since you started to see him, it was like we didn’t exist. Love works that way sometimes, but you have to remember other people love you.”

  “I know,” I croak out. I want her to stop talking.

  “I’m so sorry you’re hurting, but maybe it’s better this way.” She cringes at her own words and I can tell it’s hard for her to say something so harsh. I want to hate her for it, but I can’t. After all, how can I expect her to understand what’s been happening? “I’m going to plan a night out next week,” she continues. “Why don’t you come? You don’t have to dance, just be around your friends.”

  I feel myself nod my head. Regular friends. I should go out with normal friends.

  “Maybe parting with Damon isn’t a bad thing. Maybe he was just that door to open your heart up to other people. You’ve got more to offer than just to Damon. I just… I want my best friend back,” Cara says. I hear the tremor in her voice.

  “I’m right here,” I whisper.

  “But a million miles away,” she says, pulling the covers snugly around me. I wonder if she’s saying all this because she thinks I’m too tipsy to remember it in the morning. Maybe I am. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I don’t move from my cocoon.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says, and I feel her weight lift off the bed. I watch her walk out of my bedroom. She turns all the lights off in my apartment, and I hear the door closes as she leaves. She has a spare key, and I hear it turn, locking my door, locking mine safely in. Alone. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding as a chill overtakes my body. I try to think of ways I can mend it with Cara, but she just walked out the door. And I get this gut feeling she won’t be coming through it as often as she once did.

  Chapter 7

  The next week goes by in a muted blur. I throw myself into my gym routine, go for runs every day, show up to the office on time and do my job like nothing is wrong. It almost feels like I am outside my body. Cara has set up a night for us to go out and I try to look forward to it but can’t. I don’t see Damon, but then, I’m careful not to see him. Dating him quickly taught me his habits: when he would be coming home or going out. One night I catch the one-eyed hunter Tristian in the lobby of our building. He glowers at me, says nothing, and I quickly flee to my apartment so he won’t see me cry.

  The pain of losing Damon doesn’t seem to lessen. It just keeps getting worse. I think of how Cara said I should fight for that kind of love, but that means going up against the Sisters, and while Damon was training me in defense against vampires, I am not anywhere near well enough trained to kill them.

  I look at my phone and see the excited text from Cara saying that she can’t wait to see me tonight. I’m looking for ways to get out of it. I know this depressive episode has to pass eventually and being around people who love me will help, but I can’t take lying through my teeth about Damon.

  I go through the motions of getting ready. I put on a casual blue dress that is just above my knees, nothing fancy, and brush out my dark hair. I apply a lot of make-up, trying to hide the bags under my eyes. There have been no nightmares, but it is hard to go to sleep to an empty bed, in my empty apartment. I’ve taken over the counter sleeping pills to knock me out, but they do a poor job of it. Especially since they don’t produce a person to cuddle me into a safe sleep.

  Dressed, I grab a jacket and head out. I get lost in the warped reflection of my face on the metallic surface of the elevator doors as I ride down. Shit. I freeze as the doors open at Damon’s floor, leaving me face to face with him. He looks straight at me and steps onto the elevator without a word. Damon looks like he hasn’t slept well over the past week either; his green eyes are sunken in. He wears a long-sleeved shirt and a jacket, but I can imagine the bandages underneath, I imagine the smooth feel of his body. I remember every scar, the ones whose stories he told me, and the ones too painful to discuss. He gives me a smile that shows his dimples. But it’s not the smile of someone in love. It’s just a friendly, neighborly grin.

  “Hey there. Amy, right?” he says.

  “Y-yes, hi. Damon?” I say.

  “You look lovely tonight.” He winks at me. My heart clenches as the elevator doors shut us both in. I press the door open button at the last possible moment. It’s a split-second decision, and I know I'm being rude because there is that look in his eyes that says he wants to talk to me more. But the doors open again and I step off, even though this isn’t even my floor.

  “I forgot something,” I say, and stride away as quickly as possible. I wait until the doors close again, obscuring his puzzled expression, then turn and go down the stairs. I linger on each landing. There are four flights; I want to make sure he isn’t waiting for me at the bottom to talk to me some more. He can’t be too surprised by my odd behavior. Before we were together, I couldn’t string a proper sentence together when he was present. When he was just a crush I’d met at a crime scene (severely unusual, I know), he would flirt with me relentlessly. He told me later it was because he liked the way I blushed. I have this quirk, to put it gently. When I actually like a guy, I can’t talk to him, but a with a stranger for whom I have no attraction, the words just come out naturally.

  I practice breathing when I get to the lower staircase, peeking around the corner to make sure he’s not there. Damon is gone, likely off to fight another vampire.

  “Stay safe,” I whisper to the night air. I pull my jacket around me closer; it’s a chilly evening, but I know the cold I’m feeling is inside, and harder to get rid of. I have no intentions of getting drunk, so I drive my own car to the Cosmopolitan, my friends’ favorite Italian restaurant-bar, which I often frequent. Well, I used to frequent.

  I walk inside and see Cara sitting with a couple of my friends. Tommy, my ex before Damon, is there with his girlfriend. The Cosmopolitan has a dim, yet casual setting, with a wall that has the Italian flag, painted on it. There are dining tables and a dance floor where the music isn’t so loud that it drowns out any ability to talk. The place gets crowded quickly, but since it was early in the night there are not many people there. Adam, the owner, sees me and excuses himself from the guests he has been talking to, immediately heading in my direction. I do a quick wave and walk to the table where Cara and our friends are waiting for me. I know Adam has a thing for me, but I’m not in the mood to pretend to flirt.

  “You should really talk to Adam,” Cara says as I take a seat.

  “Hi, Amy,” Tommy says. I nod to him and his girlfriend, Julia forcing a smile.

  “I will later, I don’t really have the energy righ
t now. It’s been a long week,” I say. They all look at me with knowing eyes. Tommy squeezes my leg under the table. I pull back from the touch and watch as his face closes off to me. I’m finding it unnervingly easy to keep people who care about me out of my life. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to do the whole lone hunter thing.

  “I don’t understand why you and Adam never hooked up,” Cara says, her voice a little higher than normal – a little too perky as she tries to ease the tension I’m causing at the table.

  “He’s just not my type,” I say, looking towards Adam. Adam is staring at me with puppy dog eyes. He’s wearing his signature look, black pants and a vest with no shirt to show off the muscles he is so proud of.

  “Sometimes the best way to get over a person is to get with another,” Tommy says lightly. I watch his girlfriend Julia nudge him in the ribs.

  “Maybe I don’t want to get over Damon,” I snap. I don’t mean to, but hell, I am not here to get relationship advice from a guy I dumped almost a year ago. Tommy and I work well as friends, at least I thought we did.

  “He’s just trying to help,” Cara says, picking up her drink and taking a sip.

  “Damon made me happy,” I say.

  “Damon made you forget your friends,” Tommy says. “If I remember correctly when we dated that was the last thing you wanted.”

  Tommy and I were a couple for six months. Cara set us up, and it was one of my longer relationships. I broke up with him because my eyes were wandering and I couldn’t picture spending the rest of my life with him. I’m not the type of person who believes in long-term monogamy, but I’ve never been interested in an open relationship. I try to picture my life with Damon and draw a blank – that should be a sign, but the sign is just not bright enough to make me steer away.

  “It’s only a little awkward you’re talking about dating Amy in front of me,” Julia says, trying to keep her tone light but failing.

  “Sorry, I just want Amy to know we care about her,” Tommy says.

  “I know you care. I know you all care, but maybe it’s time you stopped caring,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Don’t say things like that,” Cara says sharply.

  “Look, I shouldn’t have come out.” I get to my feet. I can’t take this right now. I imagine invisible threads that tie me to all my friends and watch as scissors cut those threads. I watch my mouth open and say things I don’t really mean. Sometimes when a person is upset they take that pent-up emotion out on people that genuinely care, and that’s exactly what I can see myself doing. I just can’t restrain myself from doing it.

  “Cara I’ve been with you through all of your bad relationships, you do the same thing over and over. At first, you tell me to go after Damon, and now it seems like you want me to just forget about him,” I say.

  “I just want my friend back,” Cara says.

  “And Tommy, you have no right to compare my relationship with someone else to our past relationship. We work better as friends, but sometimes I feel you don’t realize we are just friends,” I say to him. I watch him sit back in his chair, his eyes cool. Julia is glaring at me, but I ignore it.

  “Want me to go whore myself to the bartender? Do you really think that will make me feel better?” I say.

  “No, I was just—” Cara starts.

  “Whatever makes me get back to being your shoulder to cry on,” I snap.

  The table falls silent. I watch Cara’s face begin to falter. I want to apologize, but I can’t find my tongue to form the syllables. She pushes herself from the table and darts to the bathroom. I watch Julia stand up to follow her, leaving Tommy and me at the table.

  “What has happened to you?” Tommy asks me.

  “Absolutely nothing. I’m just a bitch, and no one bothered to notice.”

  “This isn’t you, Amy. Sometimes heartache brings out the worst in people,” Tommy says.

  “No, this is me, Tommy, and it’s time you started forgetting about me and concentrate more on your own life. I want you out of mine,” the words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them, and I suddenly feel sick. “I – I need to go,” I say, grabbing up my stuff and hurrying to the door. Tommy doesn’t try to stop me. Adam calls my name as I walk past but I don’t stop walking till I reach my car. I don’t remember the drive home, only that I’m suddenly at my apartment, sitting in my car crying again. I shouldn’t have gone out. I’m just hurt so badly that maybe I wanted others to feel just a portion of my pain, so I hurt them too. Well, Amy, I think to myself. You got one thing right. You are a bitch. I smack the steering wheel in anger. I made Cara cry. I never wanted to make her cry. I should send her a text and apologize, but I can’t bring myself to do even that.

  It takes all my energy to get out of my car and walk to the elevator. It’s energy I just don’t have anymore. I waver in my heels and take them off before the elevator hits my floor. I stumble to my door like a drunk person because there’s just so much confusion in my head. I’ll just take the sleeping pills, and everything will be okay in the morning. Friends say cruel things they don’t mean sometimes, and I can fix this. Somehow, I can erase those harsh words, but I just have to figure out what to do with my life first.

  I open the door to my apartment and step in. It’s as chilly inside as it was outside and my eyes fall on my balcony door. It is open. I drop my shoes and my tears stop suddenly, as my fight or flight reflex starts to kick in. The adrenaline is feeding into my brain like cocaine to an addict. My place is on the 8th floor, and I know I keep my balcony locked. The last time someone came through my balcony door it was Elric, and he painted my entire apartment with the blood of my sweet dog.

  I should run, get out of my place, but I’m not sure where to go. I can’t go to Damon for help. I can never ask for his help again. I think of calling Faye, but what can she do from across town? All the nightmares try to flood back into my head: what Elric did to me, the scars I have on my body because of that werewolf. Damon has wards on his apartment that could keep those kinds of creatures out; I have no such thing, and my gun is in my bedroom.

  I leave the door slightly cracked so I can run out if I need to and walk further into my place. I’m not the type to just run and hide, and a small voice in my head tells me it could be Vincent. At the thought that Vincent, I feel a tinge of excitement I haven’t felt for a while, but I shove that down deep inside the bottle where I have decided to keep all the emotions I don’t want to explore. It would be best if I could get my feelings for Damon inside that little bottle as well.

  I approach the balcony door slowly, cautiously, and I see blood there. There is blood on the door handle, and smears of it on the glass down the side. I look and see there is a small trickle of it leading towards my bedroom door, which is cracked open. Whoever came in either brought in a bloody meal or is the bloody meal. In my head, I start telling myself I could be the damn meal. I pinch myself just to make sure I’m not dreaming; whenever I have nightmares with blood involved, there are usually ghosts in them. I don’t see any ghosts and my skin hurts from the pinch.

  Be calm. Breathe, I mentally tell myself as I follow the trail of blood into my bedroom. I hear the bed creak, and someone whispers my name. Part of my brain says I should run now, the other part tells me to flip on the lights. Since I have nowhere to run, I hit the light switch.

  It’s Vincent, the vampire who started all of this, lying on my bed with a stake impaled through him. His hands are covered in blood, wrapped around the base of the wooden stake. There are crimson streaks coming from his eyes, his lips; he looks deader than he usually does. There are no breaths coming from him, but he doesn’t actually need to breathe. His steel blue eyes lock with mine, and I can almost feel the agony that resonates inside of them.

  “Help,” he mutters, and I know it has to sting for him to ask me. Vincent is arrogant, and he’s old – though I’m not sure how old. He has a thing for me because he can’t control my mind, but ever since he saved my life six months ago, he has be
en absent from it. Now he’s bloodying up my bed. I want to ask why he decided to come here now, but it’s obviously not the time. Vincent isn’t exactly in the best condition to answer the millions of questions I have going through my mind.

  It is a type of compulsion that makes me walk over to the bed, though. I look down at the stake, so clearly a hunter’s tool, and feel my mind getting pulled in several directions. I want to be let into the hunter’s circle, back into Damon’s life; that means I will have to remember that all vampires are evil. They are the bad guys that force-feed on human beings but looking at Vincent, I can’t feel that. I never thought he was actually a villain – a little strange, a little creepy, a little bit of a jerk, sure. And I never forget he is dead, but from what he told me he never killed when he drank blood. And he hunted down and killed Elric because the shaman-werewolf was on a killing spree, saving my life in the process. There are good vampires in the world, and this one is the reason I am still alive. I can’t just turn my back on him.

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask.

  “Pull it out,” he gasps as his hands slip over the stake again. Whoever the hunter was who did this, they were sloppy; they’d missed his heart. I know it has to burn him. Each stake is blessed with holy water – I know it is searing into Vincent. I also think it will be a slow, agonizing death if I don’t rip it out of him. He can’t heal with the holy object embedded into his chest but can still bleed freely. I don’t know if a vampire can die from blood loss, but I don’t want to find out tonight. I place both my hands on the slick wood and look down at Vincent, but he has his eyes closed.

  So much trust. All it would take is me wiggling this stake a bit to the left and he would be dust. There would be no more Vincent in my life, no more vampires – thing might actually go back to normal. I get a good grip on the stake, I see Vincent’s body tense, but he still doesn’t breathe. Just an animated corpse, that’s what Damon would say.