Well, It probably had nothing on Graf. And he’d be adding to his body count by the end of the night, if he played his cards right. As she launched into a forced-cheerful description of the local waitress who’d been killed by the monster and exactly what extracurricular activities she’d been involved in back when they’d been in high school, Graf gave Jessa a good once-over. She looked a lot better when she hadn’t just been running for her life. Her thin cotton tank top clung to her body from the humidity, and the light sheen of sweat that made her bare arms sparkle in the low light wafted her scent to him. He breathed it in, and his mouth watered. Her nipples stood out against the ribbed cotton of her shirt, and her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, swished against her neck. He imagined gripping her by that hair, winding the length of it around his fist as he jerked her head back.
That was where the fantasy ran into a snag. He didn’t know if he wanted to pull on that ponytail while he was eating her, or fucking her.
They came to the junction of the gravel road and blacktop and took a right. It wasn’t the road he’d come in on, Graf realized, and added it to his mental map. Not that it would be accurate in any way. If he was good with directions, he wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
A few more minutes of walking in tense silence brought them within view of a long, low building with a flickering neon OPEN in the window. A weathered wooden sign in the empty parking lot proclaimed it JUNE’S PLACE.
“Is anybody here?” Graf asked, frowning at the lack of cars. Then, he recalled Jessa’s reluctance when he’d suggested driving there. “Oh, I get it. No gas…”
Jessa nodded. “No cars. Right. And I thought you should keep your fuel for when you needed to barter for something. If you brought that car here, you’d come out to find all the useful parts stripped off it.”
“Like, someone might try to siphon the gas out of it while I was inside?” He enjoyed her guilty expression for a moment before he said, “I saw the hose and the gas tank on the lawn.”
“Right. Well, I do what I have to.” The proud set of her chin didn’t match the still-remorseful look in her eyes.
They entered June’s Place through a small mud-room, its walls little more than the clapboard siding that covered the rest of the building. Jessa pushed open the door to the interior, and the thick, heavy smell of alcohol and something else—sweet and smoky and skunky—assaulted Graf in a cloud.
“Is that…pot?” he asked, covering his mouth with his sleeve.
“We can’t grow tobacco here,” she answered with a shrug. “People need something to smoke.”
Graf made a face. He liked a cigarette, and even a joint, every now and then, but he preferred his humans keep the oxygen in their blood free from pollutants. He looked around the room, trying to find one acceptable meal to replace Jessa when he finished her off, but everyone in June’s Place looked rough and leathery, and they all puffed on pipes or joints, big jars of clear alcohol in front of them. If he ate one of them, he’d be buzzed for a whole night.
He noticed the hungry way he was surveying all of the people in the bar. And they were all looking back at him, he realized with a shock.
“Who’s your friend, Jessa?” someone asked, and Graf turned toward the bar, where a slender woman with hair in a long, sandy-brown braid stood wiping a glass with a rag.
Jessa nudged him forward, and they walked to the bar, Jessa’s back stiff under the stares of the rest of the patrons.
“June,” she said with a smile as she hopped onto one of the bar stools. “This is Graf. He’s looking for a place to stay.”
“He picked a hell of a place,” June said, her ruddy face breaking into a smile. She reached across the bar to shake Graf’s hand with surprising firmness. Her smile faded as she looked back to Jessa. “Where’d he come from?”
“I ran into him out on the road last night.” She lowered her voice. “Out at the service station.”
“What were you doing there?” June had a way of talking without moving her mouth, and the words came out as though they were tied together with string. Graf liked that. It made everything she said seem tense and important.
Jessa shrugged casually, but leaned in so as not to be overheard. “I was running from It. Chased me all the way out there.”
June looked up from the bar with a plastered-on smile and nodded to the rest of her patrons. Then, she leaned back down. “Jesus Christ, are you okay?”
“She’s fine,” Graf said, slapping Jessa on the back. “Aren’t you? I got there just in time.”
The door opened, and a group of five guys stumbled in. Their entrance was loud and rowdy, but they didn’t draw the rapt attention of the patrons away from Graf and Jessa. They all held mason jars, half-full of clear liquid, and they could barely stand up straight. One of the guys was Derek.
“Oh, here we go,” June said with a sigh.
“What are they drinking?” Graf asked, his eyes watering from the drunken stink that nearly overpowered the smell of the marijuana smoke in the bar.
“Shine.” June jerked her thumb at the wall behind her. “It’s all we got. For a while, we tried prohibition, but with our situation…well, people deserve to numb the pain whatever way they can.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, June,” Graf said, slapping his hand down on the bar.
“They’re drunker than skunks,” Jessa said, making a face. “What the hell do they think they’re doing? Derek knows what happened last night. Why would he go out?”
“Probably celebrating,” June said, then, with a cautious glance at Jessa, went back to wiping down glasses. “You knew him and Becky were pregnant again, right?”
Graf stole a look at Jessa’s face. Apparently, she had not known, and the information wasn’t sitting well with her. She slid from her bar stool with a quiet “Excuse me.”
“So, what’s with that?” Graf asked, watching Jessa make her way to the corner booth the men had crowded into.
“How do you know Jessa?” June asked, her icy blue eyes fixing him like a straight pin through a specimen bug.
“I don’t,” he admitted. “I met her last night, when my car…ran out of gas by her house.”
June nodded, the wry smile on her lips letting him know that she didn’t believe his story, but she wasn’t about to argue with him. “No one’s been able to stop in Penance for years. Why you?”
He shrugged. “I guess I’m just lucky? I honestly didn’t have any trouble at all, until I got out at the gas station and nearly got killed by Godzilla.”
“Godzilla is a guy in a rubber suit,” June said, turning to take down a bottle. She poured him a shot, saying, “Our monster is very real. Here, this is for you.”
“I don’t have any money,” he said, shaking his head as she set the glass in front of him.
She pushed it toward him with the tips of her fingers. “What would I do with money?”
He took it and threw it back, knowing that refusing wouldn’t exactly ingratiate him to her. Human food, human intoxicants, what next? Would they demand that he use the toilet?
Raised voices from the corner caught his attention, though it seemed everyone else in the place was trying to ignore the fight going on between Derek and Jessa.
“A lot of people aren’t happy with Derek and Becky, having more kids when there already isn’t enough to go around in Penance as it is,” June offered by way of explanation.
A noble try, but Graf wasn’t buying it. “Yeah…I think she’s probably angry about being the other woman.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know her,” June teased. Then, with a sad sigh, she continued. “She wasn’t always the other woman, though. Becky was, until she swooped in and got the ring.”
Graf made a noise. He wasn’t as interested in the tragic romantic history between Jessa and Jethro Clampett as he was in the fight between them right now. The four guys with Derek all exchanged amused looks and open laughter as their buddy fought with his jealous ex-girlfriend. G
raf experienced a pang of secondhand embarrassment for Jessa.
“Does this happen a lot?” he asked June.
The woman shrugged. “Not so much anymore. It used to happen a lot before Becky had the first baby. Now, she stays home with the kids, so things stay pretty civil between Jessa and Derek.”
After a long silence, June continued. “It’s a shame, though. He wasn’t good to her. Her whole family died, and he expected her to just get over it and go back to normal. But I don’t think there is a normal after something like that happens.”
Graf nodded, guilt pricking him. He still had living family, siblings and nieces and nephews. He hadn’t seen any of them since it had become too hard to cover up the fact that he wasn’t aging. Jessa probably wanted her family, and they’d been killed. Maybe he’d been a little harsh to her.
“Oh, shit,” June said suddenly, and Graf looked up in time to see Derek stand and grab Jessa’s arm, wrenching it toward him.
“Stop it!” Jessa shouted, pulling back, but Derek was stronger.
Before he could realize what exactly he meant to do, Graf was on his feet, pushing through the maze of tables in the center of the floor. He willed himself to slow down, to look less like a supernatural creature and more like a human, but it was damned difficult to do when Derek was raising his hand to smack her.
Sure, he was planning on eating her, but that didn’t mean Graf liked to see a woman get knocked around. And he didn’t treat the ladies bad, either. They never saw it coming. Hitting a woman was a low, vulgar thing to do, and he’d be damned if he sat back and watched a punk like Derek do it.
“I suggest you put your arm down, before I break it,” he said, and though he kept his voice low, he knew everyone in the bar had heard. Not that they needed any inducement to eavesdrop; they’d all been watching him, waiting to see what the new guy was up to.
This was a sticky spot. If he hit Derek, would the cast of Deliverance decide they didn’t like some mysterious stranger wandering in and beating up the locals? Or would it establish a kind of grudging respect, like all those prison movies claimed?
There was only one way to find out, and Derek wasn’t going to give him much of a choice. “Don’t tell me how to treat my woman!” he shouted drunkenly, pushing Jessa back. She stumbled backward into a table, but at least she was out of striking range of Derek’s fist.
“Far as I can tell, Pilgrim, that’s not your woman. Your woman is at home, probably waiting for you. Why don’t you run along back there.” Pilgrim? Graf cursed his love of John Wayne movies, and prayed he still knew how to throw a decent punch. He was more of a lover than a fighter. More pertinently, he hoped that if he did land a decent hit, it wouldn’t shatter Derek’s head like a pumpkin thrown into a mailbox. That would be embarrassingly difficult to explain to all these people, and he didn’t have the energy to kill this many witnesses.
“You son of a bitch,” Derek shouted as he lunged. He grabbed the front of Graf’s shirt and hauled him off his feet, literally wiping a nearby table with him.
So much for worrying about not appearing weak and human enough. The inbred yokels at the tables around them scooted the chairs back and howled with laughter.
“Don’t you ever talk about my Becky that way!” Derek warned, and while Graf tried to remember if he’d said anything derogatory about Derek’s wife, Derek got a swing in. His fist connected with Graf’s jaw, and, vampire or not, a hard punch from a strong man was not a pleasant experience.
Graf swore and held up his hands. “I don’t want to have to hurt you,” he mumbled. That made the yokels laugh again, and Graf couldn’t blame them. He was getting his ass handed to him.
He waited for Derek’s next swing, and ducked it, taking advantage of the human’s momentum to grab him and hurl him to the floor. When he flipped onto his back, confused at his suddenly changed perspective, Graf took a handful of Derek’s T-shirt and pulled him up as his fist shot down. Derek’s head snapped back, blood gushing from his nose.
“Now, are you going to keep your hands off Jessa?” Graf growled, pulling his arm back again. When Derek didn’t answer, Graf punched him again.
“Stop it!” Jessa shouted, running to pull Graf back. She shot him a dirty glare as she knelt on the floor beside Derek. “What are you trying to do, kill him?”
“I’m trying to stick up for you!” Graf got the distinct impression that his valor was unappreciated. “Unless you want to be his punching bag?”
“I don’t want you to make him your punching bag!” She helped Derek to his feet and pushed him toward his friends. “Get him out of here, you guys.”
“And you best get your friend out of here, too,” June called from behind the bar. “He can come back when he cools off.”
“That’s bullshit, June!” Derek shouted, his eyelids fluttering closed as he wiped blood off his chin. “You should ban him!”
“You should mind your own business, Derek, before I throw you out of here with my own two hands. I don’t want to see you beating on any women, I don’t care who they are.” June didn’t sound angry. She didn’t have to. Her word was obviously meant to be obeyed as law, like she had no reason to expect otherwise.
“June, I’ve gotta find a place for him to stay,” Jessa protested, and that was all she needed to say to get every hillbilly in the place to look away from Graf and into their drinks.
The kindly barkeep would not be swayed, it seemed. She pointed to the door wordlessly.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jessa grumbled, grabbing Graf by the elbow.
The fact that she was put out by this turn of events touched him on a profoundly personal level. The joy that radiated through his whole being was only slightly displaced by the fact that her misery came at his expense, too, because now he was stuck with her.
“Hey, I don’t have a place to stay yet,” he reminded her as he followed her into the deserted parking lot, wanting to prolong the magic.
“You think anyone back there is going to take you in, after what you just did?” She shook her head and kept walking. “You’ll be lucky if they don’t come over with a noose and run you out of town the only way possible.”
Five
The tall grass whipped against Jessa’s legs as she cut across the ditch and up the lawn. Graf followed, still silent. It was good that he knew when to keep his mouth shut, because one more wrong word would have set her off in a big way, and it seemed like none of the right words came out when he opened his trap.
It wasn’t that she had wanted Derek to hit her. In fact, the thought that he was perfectly willing to stung her to her core. He’d never raised a hand to her before. He’d been angry and stormed off, and he’d punched a wall once or twice—once in her kitchen, and her father had repaired it while lecturing her on what was and was not appropriate behavior from a boyfriend. She wondered if there had been times before when Derek had wanted to hit her, and if he’d hit Becky. Was it a normal thing at their house?
No, he’d been drunk. Drunk people did things they wouldn’t normally do when they were sober. She knew that from experience.
Still, it wasn’t right of Graf to step in the way he had. It would have been one thing if one of Derek’s friends had, or someone else at the bar. But not Graf. Not when he was staying with her, and everyone knew it. They would start to think things about her, things they already probably thought, but it would give them a sort of confirmation. By the time the people who’d seen it happen had sobered up enough in the morning, the guys wouldn’t be fighting about one of them hitting Jessa, they would be fighting over Jessa. Then rumors would spread all over town that Jessa the slut was screwing around on her married boyfriend. People would love that bit of gossip.
Not that ridiculous, maybe. She’d slept with Derek before, more recently than she would like to remember, and there was something attractive about Graf, even though he acted like a complete jackass.
That must have been the common element in them that had sprung her gears.
She charged up the steps to the porch, then stopped, catching sight of the car from the corner of her eye. “You wanna move that thing before you attract too much more attention? Anyone who walks by here is going to see it!”
“Do a lot of people walk by?” he asked. For a guy who’d just gotten punched in the jaw, he spoke remarkably clearly. He should have at least a tooth knocked loose, or a puffy lip.
She shook her head in annoyance. “If I’m stuck with you, you’re going to do what I say, when I say it. You got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded, accompanied by a mock salute.
Jessa ground her teeth. “And you’re going to have to pay me rent.” She waited until he reached for his back pocket, then folded her arms across her chest. “Not what I’m looking for.”
Hesitantly, he put his wallet back. “Is this…is this a sexual thing?”
Ugh! She stomped into the house and headed straight for the kitchen, where she pulled a mason jar of clear liquid from the refrigerator.
Graf followed her, and watched as she lifted the jar to her mouth. “Look, I know you’re pissed off because I beat up your boyfriend, but I’m not going to just sit back and watch a guy hit a girl. It’s not my nature.”
Wincing at the burn of the moonshine as it tore a path down her throat, she set the jar down. When she spoke, her voice was rough. “I told you, he’s not my boyfriend. And to be honest, he’s been needing a good ass whipping for some time now.”
“Okay…” Graf sat at the island and braced his elbows against the counter. “If you’re not mad about that, what are you mad about?”
“You’ve never lived in a small town, have you?” When he shook his head, she continued. “Imagine if every time you walked down the street, every person you saw knew your business. They know about all the bad things you’ve ever done, and they know about all the bad things anyone in your family has ever done, and they’re all rooting for you to fail, because if you do, they’ve got more gossip to spread around. That’s what it’s like living here. You said yourself that I have a reputation. I’m not proud of it, but I earned it.
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