And then the monster fell to one knee, then appeared to sink into the ground. Nothing but bubbling black remained, and then even that disappeared into the ground.
The people of Penance froze with shock, staring at the place where the monster had been.
Graf didn’t look at them. He couldn’t take his eyes off Derek, who stood, shaking like a man who’d just realized he was facing down a tiger but has run out of ammo. Graf didn’t even give him a warning snarl before he lunged for him. He didn’t bite him. He knocked him down, waited for him to stand, then knocked him down again. Derek scrambled back ward on his hands, like a crab, and Graf pushed him back down.
The people of Penance staggered toward the house, their faces and clothes black with soot and smoke. Some of them dropped their weapons. Others held them tightly. They all advanced on Derek.
When the first strike came—a blow from the butt of a rifle that caused Derek to spit out blood and teeth—Graf was satisfied that Penance’s own brand of justice would be served. He dragged himself, suddenly devoid of energy, back to Jessa.
She lay facedown in a heap, a pool of blood forming beneath her head. The sticky crimson had oozed through her hair and now rolled around sparse blades of grass, picking up sand as it went. As he looked down at her, Graf took a completely involuntary breath, a hiccup that caught in his chest and intensified the pain that already bloomed there. He knelt at her side and lifted one limp arm, still warm, but rapidly cooling in death. He rolled her to her back and turned his face away.
Gore didn’t usually bother him; it came with the vampire job description. Looking at Jessa, though, was impossible. He didn’t want to see her face ruined and half-gone. He didn’t want to see proof that her fragile mortal life had been snuffed out.
Her mortal life. His fangs ached and descended from his gums. There was no question that he wanted to save Jessa. There was no question that it would still work, and he’d seen vampires created from far messier deaths than this one, ones that had healed to perfection. But did she want to be saved? There was nothing for her in Penance. Her family was dead. Her house had been destroyed. She had been deeply unhappy when he’d arrived. Did she want an eternity of that unhappiness?
It was hard for Graf to imagine anyone not being happy as a vampire. It was harder to imagine waking up tomorrow night and Jessa not being there with him.
Could he make her happy? Happy enough to want to live forever?
While the good, salt-of-the-earth people of Penance beat Derek to death on his lawn, Graf scooped Jessa up in his arms and quietly walked away.
Twenty
The room was dark, and eerily quiet. Despite the lack of light, Jessa saw the shapes of her bedroom furniture clearly, and she relaxed, sinking back to the bed she’d sat bolt upright from. She pressed a hand to her chest. Nightmares like that always made her pulse race and her lungs ache from panting.
Her hand remained still where it lay. Her chest didn’t move. She sucked in air in a violent jerk; her hand rose and fell with the motion, just once.
She reached to her hair and smoothed it back. It wasn’t damp from sweat. And she was thirsty. So, so thirsty.
Beside her, Graf sat up. He smelled so good, so familiar, she wanted to bury her face in his neck and breathe him in.
Wait, Graf didn’t have a smell.
“You feeling okay?” he asked, rubbing her arm, the way people had done to her at her parents’ funeral. Feeling okay? “How are you holding up?” It was an odd question from Graf. It lacked his typical humor…
“I’m fine,” she said mechanically, then corrected herself. “No, I’m not fine. Something is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong.” He pulled her into his arms, and she went to him because she had other things to worry about than where her body was. He kissed her cheek and smoothed her hair. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
The last thing? She could barely remember the last night, as a whole. “I guess it was fighting It… I remember It’s claws, and I remember a lot of people shooting…”
Shooting. That was something. “Derek had a gun?”
Graf made a noise of affirmation low in his throat. “He did. You’re remembering, that’s good.”
“Wait.” She remembered the gun, and Derek pointing it at Graf. She recalled putting her hand over the barrel and— “He shot me!”
“Don’t panic!” Graf held out his hands, like he was trying to keep her from jumping off a ledge. “I can explain.”
The gun had gone off, the shot had scattered, plowing through her hand, splattering over her face and chest. She smoothed her hands over her face, which by all rights should have been missing.
“You made me into you.”
“I can explain,” he repeated, but his expression said, “Oh, shit.”
“What’s to explain.” She shrugged, thinking that she should be stiff and sore from sleep, but she wasn’t. She felt amazing. Not just her body, but her spirit, if there was such a thing. “You saved my life.”
“No, I kind of killed you.” He cocked his head to the side. “You’re taking this awfully well.”
“I am, aren’t I?” She shrugged again. “It’s better than being dead.”
“It is.” He scratched his head. “I’ve got to be honest, I was expecting you to freak out.”
“I still might.” Maybe the full impact of what had happened to her hadn’t sunk in yet. When it did, she reserved the right to freak. At that moment, there were far more important things on her mind. “It’s gone?”
“Yeah. And Derek is…”
“Dead,” she filled in for him. A lump of mingled sorrow and anger rose in her throat. “That I might freak out about.”
“You’d better not.” Was that jealousy she heard in his voice? It pleased her in the most disturbing and shameful way.
“Did you make anyone else a…a vampire?” She thought about those people lying all bloody on the grass.
Graf shook his head. “Only you, as far as I’m aware.”
Hearing about your own death was definitely an experience Jessa had never expected to have. She laughed at the absurdity of it.
“I need to tell you something.” Graf looked mildly annoyed with her mood. Maybe whatever it was he was going to tell her would have been more appropriate for a brand-new, freaking-out vampire, instead of a brand-new, calm one. “I don’t want you to think that what I did was so that you would be obligated to me.”
She nodded, indicating that she was listening.
He went on. “You don’t have to come with me, so don’t think I’m forcing you to. I’m going to get out of here. I have a life outside this place, and I need to get back to it.”
Was he brushing her off? She carefully fixed her expression so he wouldn’t see her disappointment and hurt. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t.” He gripped the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to his, kissing her like it was a different language, one that he could easier communicate his meaning in. When he broke his mouth away, he leaned his forehead against hers. “I’m just saying that I’m not forcing you to come with me. I need you to come with me. I need you, period. And I’ll drag you out of here, kicking and screaming if necessary.”
It wouldn’t be necessary. She looked around her room, the room with pictures of her and Derek and Becky at graduation, the room with wallpaper covering the spot where she’d colored a unicorn on the painted wall in permanent marker when she was five. The room in the house where she’d lived another life, when her parents had been alive, when things had been so, so much different than they were now. The house that was an empty shell now that all of that was gone.
In the distance, she heard a siren wailing, an ambulance screaming toward its destination. An ambulance. In Penance. She laughed, even as the alien sound conjured a picture in her vampire brain of the plump Midwestern EMTs who would be riding along in it, the bleeding accident victim strapped helplessly in the back. Her mouth watered. She smiled slowly at G
raf.
“What is it?” he asked nervously, clearly anticipating rejection.
She arched an eyebrow and wetted her lips. “Have you ever stolen an ambulance before?”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8768-0
AMERICAN VAMPIRE
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Armintrout
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