by Nina Pierce
The final strains of her ringtone sang. Alex was too rung out and too overwhelmed with the mess she’d made of everything that she didn’t bother to look at the number before she answered. “Hello, this is Alex.”
“Now! I need you now!”
The desperate words sounded like they’d been scraped over sandpaper. “Who is this?”
“John Sampson. Who the fuck do you think it is? I need to see you.” His words were slurred with anger and something else that raised the hair on her arms. “The professor’s death has caused all sorts of problems.”
“I know.”
“What’re you going to do about it?”
“Why would I—”
“Because you worked with him. I’m sure he shared everything with you. And now I’ve got a problem and I suspect you’ve got the solution!”
Alex wished the professor hadn’t been so protective. Worried for her safety, the man hadn’t shared any of his secrets with her. Without any idea how to save herself, she wondered how many other vampires like John would be looking to her for help. Her head fell hard on her desk. Tired. She was so freakin’ tired. “I’m working on it. I’ll be in touch when something—”
“Now! I’m on my way to the tavern.”
“No.” She sat up straight, panic gripping her throat. He couldn’t come here and possibly put humans in danger. She desperately needed Glenn. Confessing everything to him hadn’t been in her plans, but she was beginning to think she’d need his wisdom to sort through the mess the professor’s death had left. “Meet me at Royal Mills. We can talk in my apartment.”
He laughed, a deep rumbling sound that echoed with evil. “No, I think I’ll just go to Glenn’s. Perhaps it’s time to bring him in on this.”
“Glenn already knows.”
“Right.” John dragged out the word. “And when I die, I’m going to heaven.” She heard him gasp in pain, his labored breathing accentuated by moans. “Quit fucking lying! Thirty minutes. Not a second more, Alexandra. Or so help me, I’ll stand on the top of Glenn’s barn and announce to the world everything you’ve done!”
“John, please be—”
“Glenn’s farm …” he sucked in a great gulp of air through clenched teeth. “Thirty minutes.” He clicked off the line before she could respond.
Alex wasn’t sure she could do this anymore. She’d only wanted her life back, not to carry the hopes of so many on her shoulders.
How many times would this scene play out before she found a way to save them all? Alex pulled the cork out of the wine bottle and forced herself to swallow several mouthfuls of blood wine, praying her body would accept enough of it to get her through this night.
Pushing out of the chair, she stood, every muscle in her body screaming in protest. Alex wasn’t sure she had the energy to come up with more lies. She had to lie to her staff about Chris. Lie about where she was headed. Lie to Glenn when he asked why she’d left. And lie to John about how she could save him.
Funny thing those lies—when you repeated them enough—you began believing them.
Chapter Five
Despite staying in bed for several hours, sleep had been an elusive veil Hope hadn’t been able to capture. Tossing restless through dreams filled with fires and warped images of Alex, she’d finally given up and soaked in a tub of lavender-scented bubbles. Even that, and a glass of Chardonnay, hadn’t quelled the uneasiness in her gut.
She’d only been in South Kenton a couple of years, but had been a reporter since her first Barbie sat down with Ken and grilled him on his relationship with Midge. Hope had started a newspaper in middle school and uncovered the ham salad vs spam fiasco in the cafeteria. Her love of justice in journalism continued through high school with an exposé of sports teams’ budgets. It hadn’t slowed down in college where she’d garnered a Mark of Excellence award for standing up to the university in a series of articles regarding hiring/firing practices. So, yeah, Hope knew a thing or two about guilt and innocence. And there was something about what she’d uncovered that was niggling at her psyche, and it had nothing to do with Alex being her best friend.
Hope had had every intention of setting it right when she’d shown up at the tavern to talk with Alex. Only, she’d gotten to the front door just in time to see Alex peeling out of the back parking lot like a madwoman, gravel spewing from her tires, blind to everything in front of her—including Hope.
That had been nearly half an hour ago.
Hope had jumped back in her car and followed her friend at a reckless speed, careening over the back roads of South Kenton as if the devil himself were chasing them. So why was she sitting in her VW Bug in a shadowed corner of Glenn’s driveway, spying on Alex from afar? Fear. Few people ran from the truth, but the guilty were known for fast escapes and covering tracks. Hard to imagine it wasn’t secrets that had Alex hiding her black Honda in the deep shadows beside the barn.
What the hell was her friend up to?
Hope checked her watch again as if it held the answer. She’d watched the sun slip below the horizon, dragging the shadows of dusk across the landscape and still Alex hadn’t emerged from the barn. Glenn’s truck wasn’t around. There were no lights on in the house. No one else had shown up. The woman was probably doing nothing more than tending the animals. Simple. Innocent. Routine. Right. And Glenn’s pigs were going to take flight any moment.
There didn’t seem to be a better time to clear up this mess then right now. Hope had no idea what she was going to say to her friend as she threw her keys under her seat and dragged herself out of the car. She’d been going over all the facts, trying to find the one chink in the shield of guilt hovering over Alex. There’d been nothing. And didn’t that just suck? Hope had never done a story where her heart was wrapped around so many of the people involved. Being an impartial reporter was nearly impossible when emotions were involved.
A muffled scream stopped her in her tracks. It had come from behind the barn. Hope ran around the building, heading toward the escalating sounds of panic, not thinking of her own safety. A wedge of light from the open back door illuminated the panic on Alex’s face as an assailant gripped her by the throat. Hope grabbed a shovel stuck in a pile of dirt. Running at the two of them, she swung it like a bat, aiming for the attacker’s back, praying she didn’t harm Alex.
The impact sang up Hope’s arms, but did nothing more than anger the man. He let go of Alex and turned to Hope with a menacing growl that brought every hair on the back of her neck to full attention. High on drugs or alcohol, the man’s movements were jerky and unbalanced. His eyes were unnaturally large in their sunken sockets. Washed in the yellow haze of light spilling from the barn, the skin pulled taut over bony features gave him an otherworldly appearance. The fear clogging Hope’s throat and holding in the scream had nothing to do with her own safety and everything to do with the man’s wild gaze assessing her as if she were his next meal.
“Hope, this is John. He’s not going to hurt you.” Alex held her hand out to keep Hope from swinging the shovel again. “He met me here for a little chat and there’s been a slight misunderstanding.”
He scented the air. “She’s human.” The words slurred out around teeth hanging unnaturally long from the man’s mouth. “She a friend of yours?”
Human? What kind of hallucination was he having?
“She is,” Alex replied. All three of them moved in some bizarre synchronized ballet that kept Alex positioned between Hope’s shovel and the crazed lunatic. “But she’s leaving. She thought you were going to hurt me. And since you didn’t mean to attack me, she’s just going to get back in her car and meet me at the tavern. Right, Hope?”
“Only if you come with.” No way in hell was she going to leave Alex alone to become the bi-line of tomorrow’s obituary section.
“John and I aren’t quite finished. He just needs a ride—”
“I don’t need a fucking ride!” The man inhaled as if trying to find his sanity among the chaos flashing across his f
eatures. “I. Need. The. Stuff.” He laughed, a deep, barking sound that clawed its way up Hope’s spine. “You’re feeling it too, Alex. I know you are. We both need a fix. Just get me the stuff.”
“Alex, what the hell’s he talking about?”
“Hope, seriously, just leave. I’ve got this under control.”
“Guess she’s hanging out in the dark, just like the rest of your friends. Obviously, she doesn’t know about you and the professor, does she?” Saliva dripped from the man’s mouth and insanity gleamed in his eyes. “Maybe we can do a little human education tonight.”
He jumped in the air so quickly, Hope saw him only as a dark shadow headed in her direction. She held up the shovel, shielding herself from the impact that never came. Alex had mirrored his movement and they landed together in the dirt, a tangle of arms, legs and teeth. They moved much too fast for Hope to have any chance of swinging the shovel.
She searched her yoga pants in vain for the cell phone she’d left in her car. Seconds dragged into excruciating minutes. The sounds emanating from their struggle were more animalistic than human, and Hope began to wonder what the hell Alex fought.
“No!” The man’s cry split the darkness, reverberating through the barn. “I won’t let you do this.” The man broke free and, in two great leaps, was swallowed in the shadows of the forest.
Alex turned to Hope, her hand held in the air. “Don’t ask. I don’t have time to explain.”
The woman wasn’t even out of breath.
“Go back to the tavern. Tell Glenn.” Alex turned to the forest then back to her, sadness contorting her features. Hope wasn’t sure which one of them Alex grieved for. “I have to find John. Hurry. Get Glenn.” In an astounding feat of athleticism, her best friend bounded into the night after the monster.
Hope stood dumbfounded, her confusion making coherent thought impossible. Somewhere, she’d crossed the threshold into some alternate reality—or nightmare. The shovel slipped out of her hands, banging against a rock and shaking her from her stupor.
Hope turned, sprinting through the barn, praying she wouldn’t be too late. She had no idea what Glenn knew or how he could help Alex, but Hope damn well understood there was nothing she could do to save her friend. Her fingers brushed the door handle of her Bug at the same moment a shadow materialized from the darkness, slamming her head against the roof of the car. A hand covered her mouth, trapping her cry for help.
“I didn’t want to do this, but you’ve seen too much.”
The whispered words barely cut though the haze of pain as her head was wrenched back by her hair and agony radiated from her throat. Heat burned over every nerve. The metallic odor of blood filled the air and the sickly sound of slurping echoed in her ears. Hope’s world became a dizzying cacophony of disjointed thoughts and sensations that tripped over one another, tumbling her into a sleepy confusion.
Her body became a weightless entity. Limbs and vocal cords unable to function, she wasn’t sure if the motion she felt was real or imagined. It really didn’t matter. Whatever her attacker was doing to her—she wasn’t going to survive.
* * *
Glenn pulled the truck around the dirt drive and parked in front of his farm house. Though he’d driven well over the speed limit from the bus station straight home, darkness had beaten him here. Night and its shadowed secrets now reigned over the farm. A full moon hung eerily over the trees, its blood red color a harbinger of death. Glenn refused to acknowledge the cold weight of fear pressing in his gut.
He stared at the battered leather briefcase sitting on the passenger seat. Though the search had taken him to three different bus stations, this discovery seemed almost too easy. He wondered now if he’d been set up. Pulling the key from his pocket, Glenn examined the thin slip of metal hanging from a pink numbered fob.
A bus locker had held a boat load of the professor’s research.
No doubt, Dr. Paul Morgan, dear friend and colleague of Alexandra Flanagan, had given his life protecting research that had taken Glenn nearly an hour to sort through. The chemical formulas and scientific theory made no sense to him. But there was no denying Alexandra Flanagan was up to her dimpled little chin in this deadly crap. He wondered if she also knew about the fires the professor had documented. Glenn hoped like hell she’d had nothing to do with burying evidence in the ashes of those fires. It was one of the things that worried him the most.
As he’d read through each piece of evidence against her, the fog surrounding her late night excuses and mysterious illness had lifted, and he saw with absolute clarity who’d she’d become. The fact that she’d done it all under his nose and without talking to him, broke his heart. How could her existence have been so narrowly focused that she only thought about the research?
Questions swirled in his thoughts, but had no clear place to land. Without the professor, everything was just a jumbled mess of conjecture rolled in speculation.
Glenn had a clear picture now of the earlier fires. But what the hell was happening now? He was beginning to suspect they somehow centered on someone’s knowledge—and hatred—of the professor’s dirty experiments. The information contained in the leather satchel on his seat would, without a doubt, blow the RISEN investigation wide open, which was exactly why the tribunal couldn’t get their hands on it until he’d purged Alexandra’s involvement from the pages.
On the one hand, Glenn wanted to protect the impish woman who held his fatherly heart captive. But what Alex had done was unethical even by vampire standards. If only she’d told him, perhaps he could’ve helped before it had gone this far. She hadn’t.
On the other hand, he wanted to help Reese and his RISEN operatives avenge the needless executions of the vamps and, more recently, the innocent humans. And he wanted to do both without Reese or Alex falling off the short end of the pier into a quagmire of shit.
He fell back against the seat. The paradox sucked beyond belief.
Hanging the key on the shifter, Glenn grabbed his cell phone. He’d call Tony to help Alex with the Friday night crowd, feed the animals, then read through the research and identify the most damning evidence. After the tavern closed, he’d bring the pig blood to the wine cellar and confront Alex. If he was satisfied with the explanation of her actions, they would sort through the papers together and cull out the details implicating her. Tomorrow, they’d deliver the briefcase to Colton’s team and satisfy RISEN with a sanitized version of the facts.
He hadn’t come up with any other solution.
Of course, Glenn didn’t even want to consider the train wreck scenario if Alexandra had no explanation for the most recent deaths. At the moment, blind with worry, he couldn’t even see down that track.
Glenn slid the briefcase under the seat, punched the tavern’s number into his cell and got out of the truck and headed down the path to the barn. As the phone at his ear rang, he shook his head at the state of his life. He’d left the barn lights blazing this morning when he’d left. That wasn’t like him at all.
A person picked up at the same time the answering machine began playing Alex’s recorded messages about tavern hours. When it stopped, he heard the raucous sound of firefighters and the Friday night pool tournament.
“Hey, Alex, it’s Glenn.”
“She’s not here. This is Tony.”
Tony only came in when things at the bar were really busy. Shit. Obviously, not a good night to be telling the guy he wasn’t going to make to the tavern. “Busy night?”
“You could say that.” Frustration colored his words. “Where are you?”
“Let me speak to Alex, I’ll explain to her.”
“I just told you. She’s not here. Katie said Alex headed out to your barn about a half hour after she got here.” Tony spoke briefly to a customer before returning to the phone. “Listen, is everything all right with you two?”
“Yeah, it’s good.” That would explain why the lights were on in the barn. “I must’ve just missed her.”
A heavy
sigh filled Glenn’s ear. “Listen, I hate to ask, because obviously you’ve got your hands full with something else, but we could really use another bartender and waitress. It’s a regular night at the fire station around here. When you coming in?”
Glenn wasn’t sure when O’Malley’s had become the hangout for the local boys on their off hours, but he rather enjoyed their humor and their rowdy manner. Firefighters were definitely a breed all their own.
“I’m not coming in tonight either.” Worry quickened his steps. Where the hell was that woman? It wasn’t like Alex to call out on a Friday night. Something was up. Glenn quickened his strides. He hoped to hell she’d simply come to feed the animals. Then he could talk to her without anyone else around. Maybe she’d actually tell him the truth. “You should be all set. Let Bob handle the kitchen and pull Chris to help at the bar. Katie can handle the crowd.”
“Chris left on Alex’s heels.”
“Where the hell’d he go?”
“Not sure. But the way he stormed out, I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“Shit.” What the hell was happening to his family? It didn’t seem possible that Chris was also rolled up in this mess, but what the hell did he know? He’d missed all the signs of Alex’s deceit.
“Yeah, you can say that again.”
“Listen, I’m sorry to do this to you, but just call in a couple of the college kids. They’re always looking for extra hours.” The wind shifted and even the pungent odor of pigs couldn’t mask the copper odor of death floating on the breeze. Glenn spun in circles, trying to locate the source.
“Listen, we can shut the tavern down for the night if you need me to,” Tony said. “If you and Alex need—”
“No. It’s all good. Nothing going on I can’t handle.”
“If you’re sure …”
“Yeah, I’m sure. But damn it all, if you hear from Chris or Alex, tell ‘em to call me.” Glenn disconnected the call. He hated losing his temper, but with his patience wearing thin and the vampire rising within him, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his wits about him.
