Blood and Guitars

by Heather Jensen

  Chapter 52

  The blackness of the room was disorienting when I awoke the next morning. Turning my head slowly, I glanced at the clock to see that it was already eight.

  “Sleep good?” Aurora’s voice was absent of the morning grogginess I knew mine would have. Her head was resting on my chest and she hadn’t moved, except for the slight bobbing up and down motion caused by my breathing.

  “I crashed hard,” I admitted, unable to recall even a dream.

  “You needed it.”

  “How about you?”

  “I slept great.” Though I couldn’t see her face, her smile was evident in her tone “I fell asleep and woke up to the sound of my favorite song. What more could a girl want?”

  I furrowed my brow in confusion. There wasn’t any music playing. Aside from the constant rain falling on the window and the occasional passing car, it was quiet. Then Aurora tapped my chest intently with her finger and I realized she meant my heartbeat. I couldn’t help grinning as I ran my hand over her long, dark hair.

  “Your favorite song, huh?”

  “It’s true,” she said. “I’m sort of fascinated by it.” She snuggled up next to me on the pillow and smiled innocently.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Her gaze drifted up to the ceiling. “Maybe because I haven’t really felt alive since I lost my family. Not even becoming a vampire changed that. And then you came along and reminded me what it’s like to really live. I guess I associate the sound of your heartbeat with all of those feelings. You could compare it to a soundtrack in a movie. It’s always there in the background whenever we’re together, constant and comforting.” She smiled and played with my hair. “Plus, your heartbeat is strong and warm and pure … like you.”

  “And yours isn’t?” It sounded like a stupid question the second the words left my mouth, but Aurora didn’t seem to think of it that way.

  “Come here,” she said. “Listen for yourself.” She gestured for me to lay my ear to her chest and I complied. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but the sound of her vampire heartbeat surprised me. It was quieter than I would have guessed, and it created an echo inside her chest. Ken would have used the word ‘tinny’ to describe it. If my heartbeat sounded like a bass drum, hers was a snare with the treble cranked up.

  “Wow, you’re right. That’s amazing,” I said. We both sat up and she leaned her head on my shoulder, sighing in content. “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”

  “I know.” She was silent for a moment but I could tell she had more to say. I waited patiently, enjoying the fact that she was in my arms again. “I haven’t been this close to someone since….” Her voice trailed off in uncertainty for a long moment. “Since my brother Aden.”

  My heart sank. It was obvious how painful it was for her to talk about, but I sensed that she needed to.

  “Tell me about him,” I urged. “I want to know all about your family.”

  Aurora flipped on the lamp and picked up a framed picture I’d been too tired to notice last night. I spotted her immediately in the photograph. She appeared to be about seventeen. She was as beautiful as ever, but there were some subtle differences between the human girl’s face in the picture and the face of the vampire that was so familiar to me.

  “This is my mother,” Aurora said, pointing. “Her name was Nakia. It’s an Egyptian name meaning pure. My father met her on a business trip to Cairo. Her family disowned her when she chose to leave her country behind and marry him.”

  “You look like her,” I said. It was obvious now where Aurora had inherited her exotic features. Everything but the eyes. The man in the picture had Aurora’s7-Up-bottle- green eyes.

  “My father’s name was Jerod,” she added. A boy sat next to Aurora in the picture. He looked only slightly younger than she was. The boy had her dark hair, but his eyes were brown like his mother’s. “That’s Aden,” she said softly, reaching out to gently touch the glass that covered the picture. “He was my shadow.” Aurora smiled, and I got the feeling she was lost in a memory for a long moment before she cleared her throat and spoke again. “He was only a year younger than me. We were basically inseparable. He was the only one who really ever understood me.” I squeezed her gently to my chest, not wanting to interrupt her train of thought. “He was really into photography. We had plans to own a gallery together full of his photographs and my paintings. When he died in the accident with my parents, I wasn’t sure that I could do it alone.”

  “But you have,” I said, hoping I sounded encouraging. “I mean, you have The Waking Moon and you’re making a name for yourself.”

  “Yeah.” She turned her head to look up at me. “If Antonio hadn’t found me when he did, it never would have happened.”

  “How did he find you?” I’d been wondering ever since I’d met her maker last night.

  “In the park,” she answered. “Depressed and miserable. I’d been accepted into the art school Aden and I had always wanted to attend. He was going to join me there the next year after he graduated high school. After the accident I was pretty much on my own. My parents left behind a good amount of money, and I stayed in their house for a couple of months but I couldn’t get myself to attend the school … not when it was supposed to be something that Aden and I were going to do together. The park near our house was our favorite place to paint and take pictures. I went there, night after night, hoping against hope that he’d show up and everything could go back to the way it used to be. Antonio found me there. He watched me secretly for almost a week, probing my mind to learn my story. I was so lost that I couldn’t refuse him when he came forward and made me the offer.”

  “He just offered to make you a vampire?”

  “Not in so many words. He said he could give me a new life. Any hope I had of salvaging my old one had dissipated, so I accepted the offer.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Antonio took me to the apartment he keeps in Chicago and changed me. After a few days of adjusting to my new self, he brought me back to Florida with him. I’ve been part of his Brood ever since.”

  “So, exactly how long have you been a vampire?”

  “I had just turned nineteen when I was changed. That was four years ago.”

  I don’t know why that surprised me. Maybe it was because Aurora didn’t look like most nineteen-year-olds. She’d told me once she was 23, a year older than me, and technically she was. She was just frozen in time as her nineteen-year-old self.

  “Does that make me a cradle robber?”

  Aurora laughed and turned her head to gaze at me. “Maybe it does.”

  “I managed to rob the cradle and date an older woman all at the same time. Look at me go.”

  Aurora grinned and I leaned down, pressing my lips to hers. My heart fluttered, which she would definitely hear, but I didn’t care. When I pulled back she gave me a dreamy look.

  “I’m still young,” she said wistfully. “In the world of vampires.” It sounded like a loaded statement to me, but I realized she wasn’t going to explain further when she spoke again. “Whatever your plans are for today, I hope you don’t mind bringing me along. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be apart right now.”

  “I like the sound of that,” I said with a grin. “Besides, I’m just meeting the guys at the studio to work on a song later and I’ve sort of gotten used to having you around for that.”

  “We should decide where we’re going to stay tonight, then,” she suggested.

  “As much as I’m going to regret it when I climb out of these sheets, we’d better make it my place,” I said. “My dog is going to think I abandoned him if I don’t get back.”

  “Okay then, your place it is,” Aurora said. “I’ll throw some of my stuff together in a bag and maybe we can drop it off at your place this morning. That way you can check on Cowboy and we can bring him with us to the studio if you want.”

  “It’s a plan.”

&
nbsp; “There are clean towels hanging up,” Aurora said, gesturing to the bathroom with a wave of her hand. “If you want to take a shower I’ll be ready to go when you get out.”

  Fat raindrops beat against the windshield of my car as Aurora and I drove to my place. Despite the stormy weather, I was feeling more optimistic. More like me. The smell of the rain was invigorating, and the constant rhythm of it put my mind at ease. I was perfectly content as I rounded the corner onto my street and neared my house. There was no warning, no feeling of foreboding, to prepare me for what I saw next. It took me several seconds to process the scene in front of my house. I slammed on the brakes, squealing to a stop on the side of the road. Aurora’s grip on my right arm tightened apprehensively.

  “What in the …?” Aurora’s voice trailed off as we studied the scene before us. A black car had smashed into the stone fence separating my property from my neighbor’s. Steam was rising from the crumpled hood. And that wasn’t the strangest part. There was a huge dent in the driver’s side of the car which couldn’t have been caused by the stone wall. Muddy tire tracks led from the dented side of the car and back out into the road. Before I could work out how that might have happened, I realized with a pang of shock that I recognized the damaged vehicle. It was a Mazda RX8 just like mine.

  “Wes!” I said as I threw the transmission into park. I climbed out of the car and found that Aurora had gotten around to my side with supernatural speed.

  “Wait,” she said as I started for the damaged vehicle. “Maybe you should let me go first.”

  But I wasn’t about to stand around when one of my friends could be hurt. I reached the driver’s side door, which had been mostly crushed from impact with some unknown vehicle, and peered inside the space where the window should have been. Wes was nowhere to be seen but the passenger side door was ajar. I glanced around frantically and noticed that Aurora was doing the same.

  “There’s no one here,” Aurora exclaimed. “I would be able to hear them.” It wasn’t until later that I realized Aurora had been listening for the sound of a human heart other than mine. She followed when I headed around to the other side of the vehicle, almost slipping on the wet grass. I hadn’t had a clear view of the other side from where I’d parked on the road. That’s when I spotted Wes. He was lying a few feet away sprawled out on the ground, motionless. I rushed to him, falling to my knees at his side on the soggy lawn. There was a bloody gash on his forehead, and his left leg was bent grotesquely, along with a lot of other cuts and scrapes. I leaned my head against his chest to listen for a heartbeat, but there wasn’t one.

  “No,” I said, gritting my teeth. “This isn’t happening.” I quickly positioned my hands on Wes’s chest and started doing CPR. After five compressions I moved to give Wes a breath of air but Aurora beat me to it. I shook my wet hair out of my face and started pumping his chest again. We continued that process for what seemed like an eternity, but really only spanned a few minutes. “Damnit Wes, don’t do this!” I slammed my fist on his chest.

  Aurora was there across from me, a knowing sadness in her eyes as she glanced from me to Wes and back.

  “Come on,” I urged. “You are not dying on me!”

  “Trey?” Aurora spoke my name so softly that I almost didn’t hear her above the pounding in my ears. “He’s gone.”

  But I couldn’t believe that. Wes wasn’t gone. He was right here in my freaking front yard. He was hurt but he couldn’t be gone….

  “I’m not giving up on him,” I stated, continuing with the CPR alone.

  Aurora squeezed my shoulder gently and said, “I can smell death on him. There’s nothing you can do for him now. You have to let him go.”

  Chapter 53

  I didn’t want to hear it but the reality of Aurora’s words went straight to my core. In that terrible instant, I knew she was right. Wes wasn’t coming back, no matter how bad I wished he would. I stubbornly pumped Wes’s chest a few more times before I choked on a sob and collapsed back onto the grass. Aurora was next to me in an instant, wrapping her arms around me and trying to comfort me.

  “How could this happen?” I demanded. The icy numbness that washed over me was suffocating and had nothing to do with the pouring rain. I was only somewhat aware of a man’s voice calling out to us from behind until he stood at Aurora’s side.

  “I saw it happen from my kitchen window,” the older man explained, short of breath from jogging across the street to us. “I’ve already called 911. They’re sending the police and an ambulance.” He paused there, probably recognizing from the state of Wes’s lifeless body that a hundred ambulances wouldn’t make a difference. “I hurried out here to see if I could help right after I made the call.”

  Still holding onto me, Aurora addressed the man, a neighbor I’d seen a few times but never really talked to. “Can you tell us what happened?”

  “A big black SUV smashed right into the poor guy as he was slowing down. He was signaling like he might be trying to pull into this driveway here.” I glanced up just long enough to see him point at my driveway. “Barely started to turn at all when they plowed into him from the side and pushed him into the stone wall. I’d have run out here sooner but I didn’t think it was safe. The three men in the SUV got out like the collision hadn’t bothered them a bit. They drug this guy out of the passenger side of his car, but he was acting like he didn’t want their help even though he seemed to be hurting pretty bad. That’s when I ran for my telephone. They were gone when I looked out the window again, just before you folks pulled up.”

  “You mean he was alive? Wes was alive after he hit the wall?” The thought horrified me just as much as it confused me. Wes had survived the crash, at least long enough for somebody to pull him from the car. But here he was in front of me, growing cold and stiff before my eyes.

  “He was alive all right, but he couldn’t walk very well.” The man paused to give me a sympathetic look. “Friend of yours, kid?” I nodded. “I’m sorry to hear it. Most likely some internal damage from the crash,” the man continued, although I was only partially aware of his babbling on and on, like I hadn’t just found one of my friends dead. “Must have scared the other fellows cuz they got outta here real quick.”

  “Did you happen to get the license plate of the other vehicle?” Aurora asked, sounding like a detective on TV.

  “Wish I could have. Wasn’t time. They were gone before I made it back to the window.”

  Sirens wailed in the near distance as I scrambled to my feet, ignoring Aurora’s protests. I couldn’t stand to sit there next to Wes’s lifeless body for one more second. I forced my feet to carry me toward the house, though I only made it halfway before I felt my knees give out. Aurora was there, helping to balance me, although I had no idea how she’d done it so fast without the neighbor seeing.

  She helped me sit back on the grass and then took my face in her hands, forcing me to meet her gaze. “I’m here, Trey.” That was all she said … and I loved her for it. Anyone else might have tried to convince me that it was going to be okay, but Wes was dead and nothing about that would ever be okay. Then Aurora sat next to me, her arm around my waist. “Put your head between your knees and breathe,” she suggested. I hadn’t realized my breath was coming in short, quick gasps until then and I followed her advice. The sirens were getting closer now, and I could tell when the first police car rounded the corner. The ambulance came next, followed by another police car. I glanced up once after a moment to see a cop talking to the neighbor and two paramedics who were leaning over Wes’s body. People were starting to come out of their houses to see what was going on. I wanted to disappear. Unfortunately, the police had a different idea.

  Aurora got to her feet when the first officer approached us. He was over six feet tall and was built like someone who might have played football in school. He handed Aurora an open umbrella and introduced himself as Officer Murray. I moved to stand but he placed a firm hand on my shoulder and shook his head.

  “You
don’t look so great, son. You best sit there a while.” His voice was kind and I nodded in relief, not sure my legs would hold me up anyway. He opened another umbrella he’d had tucked under his arm and Aurora sat next to me, shielding me from the rain with hers. Officer Murray waved a third paramedic over in our direction and I thought I heard him mumble something to the guy about me being in shock.

  The paramedic went back to the ambulance and returned a moment later with some towels. I thanked him for the towel and wiped my face. Then he kneeled down and scrutinized me for a second before reaching out to pinch my wrist. Aurora watched me in concern while he shined a penlight in my eyes.

  “I should probably get a blood pressure on you,” he said.

  “I’m fine, really. Just peachy,” I stated.

  The paramedic frowned at my sarcasm but didn’t budge. Officer Murray shrugged and the paramedic got to his feet and reluctantly joined the others who were huddled around Wes. Aurora gave Officer Murray our names and he scribbled in a small notepad.

  “You live here?” He gestured to the house.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Your neighbor tells me he didn’t see you until after the accident. Is that true?”

  “It looked just like this when we pulled up.” I tried to swallow the lump in my throat while Officer Murray took more notes.

  “But you know the victim? The neighbor seems to think he was going to your place.”

  Again I nodded, taking a shaky breath. “His name is Weston Leavy.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  I ran my hands through my hair. “Going on six years, I guess. Feels like forever.” I sighed, and for a fleeting moment I wondered if this was all just a horrible nightmare. I’d have given anything to wake up in Aurora’s silk sheets just then and call Wes to tell him about the crazy dream I’d had. “Someone did this to Wes,” I stated, finding that my voice was stronger now. “Somewhere not far from here there’s a black SUV with a messed up front end.”