by Terry Spear
“We are. Though at the time, I thought you needed my help.”
Marissa chuckled. “Always.”
Someone knocked on the door. “Are you guys decent yet?” Kate called out, her voice still sounding groggy.
“Just a minute!” Marissa yelled back in a panicked tone.
“Yeah, just as I suspected. I almost fell asleep waiting for you guys,” Kate grumbled.
As soon as Marissa and I were dressed, I lifted Joshua off the floor. Luckily, Marissa’s blood had rejuvenated me, and Joshua weighed no more than skin and bones. We hurried down the stairs, past the living room and into the kitchen.
Before we reached the door to the garage through the kitchen, we heard a key in the front door lock. As it twisted, metal grinding against metal, all of us froze.
Marissa grabbed my arm, and Kate seized the other as if I could protect all of us. I stood in the middle of the two girls holding the mummified-looking form of Joshua, wondering who was breaking into Marissa’s house—with a key—and what we were to do next.
Chapter 18
MARISSA
Would a vampire seek to enter my parents’ home using a key? Mom and Dad weren’t due to come home until Friday. No way could it be them.
“Shit,” my mother said, totally unlike her. I knew something was really wrong for her to be swearing, on top of being home from their vacation two days early. I guessed they’d gotten a taxi to drive them home or I’d hear my aunt’s chatty voice about now. The situation was as strange a scenario as me standing next to one weary, but live vampire, carrying one half-dead vampire, who stood beside my blood-drained, extremely weakened girlfriend.
Something clanked against the tile entryway floor. But, as if Medusa had turned her gaze upon us and changed us all into stone statues, none of us could move. Thank God my mother couldn’t see us from where she stood.
“Damn,” my father groaned, his voice huskier than normal and full of pain. Then he rushed down the hall, slamming the door to the downstairs half bath.
“Make it to the toilet this time, will you, dear?” my mother called after him. “Damn tainted food. Ruin a good vacation every time,” she mumbled. Then the front door banged shut and the lock clicked.
Finally breaking free of the spell, I wheeled around and opened the door to the garage for Kate and Dominic, who still cradled the wizened-up form of Joshua in his arms. We all hurried out to the Ford Taurus, then I poked the opener to the garage door and cringed when the metal groaned, creaking its displeasure all the way.
“Jeez, I hope they don’t hear us leaving,” I whispered, then turned to Kate who opted to sit in the front seat with me while Dominic sat in back with Joshua. “Did you shut my bedroom door?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “No need to.”
My heart took a dive. “My mother will look in on me and find I’m not there. If the door’s shut, she’ll assume I’m tucked away in bed like I should be at this hour and won’t bother to disturb me. Then when she discovers I’m not there, they’ll find the car gone and call the police.”
“Wait for me,” Dominic said.
Before I could object, he vanished, and the moisture in my throat evaporated, too. I couldn’t help worrying that Mom would catch him. What a disaster. The scenario would be slightly different then, but the final result the same. A call to the police.
After a few minutes of trying to control my rapid heartbeat, I gave a jump when Dominic finally reappeared in the backseat of the car. “Bedroom door is locked. If they try it, they’ll think you’re sleeping soundly.”
Then a new worry began to nag at me. “What about the guest bedroom?”
Dominic stared at me, his look blank.
I bit back a curse, knowing any second we could get caught, knowing, too, there was no talking our way out of this one. My parents would never leave me home alone again, though I couldn’t blame them. “The door is always shut, but I’m afraid if she looks in, she’ll see there’s a puddle of water on the carpet and the bed is a mess—if the open door doesn’t create enough intrigue.”
“Be back in a jif.”
Hoping he wouldn’t get caught, I took a deep, settling breath. It was bad enough Kate and I wouldn’t be home, the car would be gone, and we had a wizened-up form of Joshua in the backseat, but if my parents caught sight of a gorgeous guy popping in and out of the bedrooms…
I rubbed my temple. The anxiety pooled into my brain, giving me one splitting headache. Or maybe some of it was from Dominic’s feeding off me. I turned to Kate. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and leaned her head back against the headrest. “I was half asleep when he pounced on me. I feel no remorse for having to do what we have to with him. He hurt me, Marissa. Does it hurt with you and Dominic?”
“No, but he’s gentle and warned me if I tensed it could hurt.”
“Well, I tensed all right. Getting me to relax was not uppermost on Joshua’s mind.”
I touched Kate’s neck where he’d left two bloody gashes. My stomach revolted. I jerked open the car’s console, then pulled out a large-sized bandage from our emergency first-aid kit.
“Okay,” Dominic said from the backseat, nearly making my heart leap out of my chest.
I finished bandaging Kate’s neck, relieved that Joshua hadn’t killed her. How would she explain the bite marks to her parents?
Then I drove down the driveway as quietly as I could, and shut the garage door, hoping that the grinding monstrosity wouldn’t alert my parents. I headed into town toward Kate’s aunt’s shop, praying we wouldn’t have any further problems tonight.
With the utmost caution, I drove the speed limit, obeying all the traffic rules, terrified we might get stopped by a policeman for some minor infraction.
By the time we arrived at the shop fifteen minutes later, both Dominic and Kate were sound asleep. I shook my head, wishing I hadn’t had to take them with me as worn out as they were, but knowing I couldn’t have left them behind at the house. What if my parents had discovered them?
After fumbling around in Kate’s purse for what seemed an eternity, I found the key. First I’d unlock the door to the building. Then I’d sneak Joshua in. Seemed like some grade b horror movie where none of the actors were well-known or good at their job. I was the main character, and all of my accomplices had abandoned me.
I shuddered every time a car passed down the street. Half hidden in the dim lights of the buildings closed up for the night, I hoped no one would notice me. I wished fervently that there had been a back door for my clandestine operations. What if someone saw me carrying a body into the building?
I had never even considered that.
But another anxiety wormed its way under my skin. What if one of Lynetta’s minions caught us?
Finally, I managed to unlock the metal door and shove it open. Afterwards, I hurried back to the car, my tennis shoes slapping the asphalt like a warning bell, announcing to any vampire in the area I was out and about: “Come get me.”
Neither Kate nor Dominic stirred when I opened the rear car door, and truthfully, I was relieved in part that they rested comfortably, knowing they needed the sleep much more than me. But part of me hated that I had to do this alone, and anxiety gripped me like a boa constrictor. I couldn’t shake loose of the feeling, no matter how much I tried to use the calming spell on my mind. I pulled the remains of Joshua from the backseat, then locked the car doors, figuring it would be easy enough to destroy his body without anyone else’s help.
Already perspiration trickled between my breasts and down my forehead, despite how cool it was at this ungodly hour of the morning, the mist cloaking the darkness in a gray shroud.
Within seconds I was inside the tanning salon, the front door shut and locked, and my heart pounding as fast as if I’d run a marathon.
I carried Joshua into one of the rooms. A stand-up shower stall faced me. I thought a lie-down, coffin-type would work better. Did she have one of those?
I’d never
been into the tanning ritual thing. My fair skin went from white to blistered anytime I’d tried to get a tan, and consequently I had given up on the notion early on in my life. Like when I was about ten or so.
I hurried to the final room at the end of the hall, my last hope. I peered inside—a nice comfy, normal kind of tanning bed. After laying Joshua on it, I considered him. Without any water in his body, he didn’t look much like the cute Joshua I had known. I knew, too, from the hatred burning brightly in his eyes earlier, he was evil to the core. How could Dominic be so good under the vampiric influence and Joshua so wicked? It must have been an inborn thing, something about their true natures. I closed the lid to the coffin, turned on the setting to high, and started the tanning process.
For an instant, I felt remorse. I’d never killed anything in my life—well, except for bloodthirsty mosquitoes and filthy flies and the like. But I would never think I’d be killing a warlock, one who I had known forever, and horror of horrors, had also had a crush on.
Having the demon remove all of Joshua’s water from his system had been pretty wicked. But I feared worse the reprisals he would have unleashed upon us if I didn’t take care of him now. Certainly, all I had to do was consider Kate’s poor neck and his unbridled savagery and know I was next. Plus, I knew when he had the opportunity, he’d kill Dominic without a care in the world.
I set the timer on the maximum minutes it would allow, then left the room, not wanting to be in the same room as the death machine. In the meantime, I sat in one of the manicurist’s chairs and closed my eyes, nearly drifting off to sleep. But when the timer on the machine shut off, I shook the weariness from my system and hurried back into the room. Staring at the coffin, I couldn’t compel my hand to lift the lid. Heartbeat thundering, I hesitated. What if he wasn’t dead? What if he lunged out of the tanning bed and tried to rip my throat out?
Every strange little creak inside the building made my skin crawl. But no sound came from the tanning bed. Still, I wondered. Was he waiting, sensing me terrified, standing there, ready to pounce on me?
Gritting my teeth, I touched the lid, again unable to gather the strength to lift it. Coward, I chided myself. Just do it.
Then I reset the timer for the longest time allowed and waited.
I might be a coward, but not a dummy. Once the minutes had passed, I quickly cast a protection spell. Then before I could change my mind, I jammed up the lid, breaking two fingernails in the process, and stared into the tanning bed. All that was left of Joshua was a pile of ashes and his clothes. His parents would be stricken to learn their son had disappeared—yet if they knew what he’d become, would they be so upset? Probably. I stifled my own upset, trying to keep in mind the monster he had become and not the cute guy I’d had a crush on for years.
I stared at the ashes, wondering how I was going to clean up the mess. Then I noticed cloths used to wipe down the bed nearby. Quickly, I shoved the ashes into a plastic sack-lined garbage can, then pulled the sack free.
Without any further waste of precious time, I headed back to the door and walked outside. After relocking the door, I tossed the garbage sack into a dumpster. But when I hurried for the car around the bend in the building, an odd aura of lights flashed in the dark, catching my eye. I immediately stopped, my heart skipped a beat, and I quit breathing.
Peeking further around the corner, I saw police lights swirling, painting the night like a disco club’s flashy, colored illumination, as the patrol car parked behind my parents’ vehicle.
I stood petrified, my heart beating again at a breakneck speed, my skin chilled all the way through to the bone. In a panic, I couldn’t think of what to do now. I was usually pretty good at coming up with a plan. Why not now? My brain was half dead from lack of sleep.
How would I explain to my parents that I was at Kate’s aunt’s nail shop in the middle of the night, while Kate had a terrible neck wound, had suffered a severe blood loss, and there was a strange boy in the car?
The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end. What was I to do?
I was making sure the place was locked. That’s what I’d say. We worried that someone was trying to get in. Or something like that. And a wild animal had bitten Kate. I was taking her to the emergency room to get blood.
I took a step toward the car, but a hand grabbed my wrist, and another clamped over my mouth to stifle my scream. My blood rushed into my ears, and all of a sudden, my bones felt like rubber.
Then I smelled Dominic’s spicy scent and at once felt his heated, hard body against me, cradling mine, his warm breath against my cheek, and I calmed. Relaxing in his arms, I asked, “What will we do now?”
“They’re taking Kate to the hospital. She needs blood. They’ll make sure she gets it.” Dominic gave me another reassuring squeeze, then nuzzled his face against mine.
“But you can go places with a wave of your hand. How will I make it home in the dark with Lynetta and her minions looking for us?” I couldn’t help the panic rising in my blood. We weren’t safe by a long shot.
“I won’t let you go anywhere by yourself. We’re in this together, remember?” He tightened his hold on me as if to emphasize his point, and he truly felt like a godsend.
Still annoyed he’d tried to take her on his own when he was so weak, I haughtily reminded him, “Yeah, but the last time you planned on eliminating her all by yourself—”
“I changed my mind. After Joshua zapped me with that little electrical storm, I decided I wasn’t so all-powerful.” He wrapped his arms tightly around me and pulled me behind the dumpster. “Were you able to get rid of Joshua properly?”
I pointed to the trash receptacle.
He nodded. “I’ve got to get you someplace safe for the rest of the night. Right now, the police are looking for a missing girl and concerned about another girl who’s been badly bitten and lost a lot of blood. Kate’s pretty groggy, but realized it was best to keep her mouth shut in the event you were still in the tanning salon. I, of course, quickly vanished. They might have assumed I had something to do with Kate’s bites otherwise, and I figured for now it was probably best we didn’t have to explain who I was anyway. Plus, I had to look out for you.”
“Thank God for that. So now what?” I still couldn’t come up with one iota of a plan, no matter how much I wracked my brain for one. Maybe because Tall, Dark, and Handsome’s touch was making me forget everything.
“It’s time for you to meet my parents,” he said matter-of-factly.
I stared at him, the words still lingering in my mind from what Lynetta had said about him killing his family centuries earlier. I flung my arms around Dominic’s neck, gave him an octopus squeeze, and a long and lingering kiss.
He smiled and returned the kiss. “I should have suggested seeing my parents sooner.”
Chapter 19
DOMINIC
To my relief and Marissa’s, my brother came to the rescue once more that night, only the stakes had considerably increased by that time. The police were combing the city for Marissa, assuming the poor girl was dead at the hands of the same beast who tore into Kate, and possibly the same one who had killed the other people in town.
James opened his mouth to speak a couple of times, but clamped it shut. Marissa slept in my arms while we sat on the bench seat of the old blue pickup, its engine grumbling as we made our way to the outskirts of the city. I was glad to be going home, if only for a brief visit. And I was even gladder Marissa was safe with me. I kissed her forehead, loving the peach fragrance that scented her hair and the way she slept against me, as if I were her savior after all, able to protect her from the evil of the world.
Then James said softly, “We have to let her parents know she’s alive and well, and get the police to quit searching for her. Even her friend Kate’s going to be worried she’s been killed.”
“Remember what happened when I told you a vampire had turned me? None of you had believed it. Not until I vanished and reappeared and did some of the other
stuff I could do. Then I thought Dad was going to have a heart attack and Mom a stroke. Even you looked like you were close to giving out, and you’re definitely the most open-minded one in our family, besides me. Well, at least most of the time.”
James shook his head, his lips curving at the corners a smidgeon. “You’ve got to admit when you climbed up the side of the house, it was pretty shocking.”
Still annoyed I’d told the truth, had been living a horrible hell since the change, and no one had believed me, my stomach muscles tightened. “None of you would buy it. Not by the bite marks on my neck. Even now, the police and everyone else are saying it’s some crazy killer. No one will consider that vampires have moved into the city. So how will we explain this? Besides, we need to wait until daybreak when Lynetta can’t get to Marissa as easily. Then we can call and say we found her wandering around lost in the woods.”
“No. You said you’ve been to the witches’ and warlocks’ school. How will you explain that you knew her, and then happened to find her? It’s too convenient and sounds way too suspicious.”
“We were searching for her?”
“Okay, listen, she called you and said something was wrong at the nail place, and when she didn’t report back to you, we both went looking for her. But we have to call her parents tonight. If they allow her to stay with us, fine. If not…” James shrugged and let me conclude what I would.
I didn’t like that Marissa and I would be separated if her parents made an issue of it, but I had to agree my brother was right. Maybe it was because he was a freshman in college, or maybe not. He always did have a more psychoanalytical brain when it came to figuring the human—well, rather, psychological—factor out. “All right, thanks again, James, for the rescue.”
“I’m just sorry I didn’t keep you from getting turned by that vamp in the first place.” His voice was filled with regret.
