Ashe’s arms ached as she took down books from the higher shelves. She wondered if she was coming down with the flu. Lately she had been tired all the time, and the stress headaches she had associated with college life had come back with a vengeance. She told herself she would sleep it off on the weekend. For now she had work to do.
She was deep in the stacks when a voice called her name. Will was coming towards her from the door leading to the town archives. Ashe looked up and smiled. “You aren’t coming over to let me take a crack at the town archives, are you?” she said.
Will laughed. “Not a chance. I don’t want to lose my job. If you need any information you can make a formal request like everyone else.”
Ashe pouted exaggeratedly. “You’re no fun.”
“Chin up,” Will said, brushing her chin with his finger. Ashe smiled. It was easy being around Will. He was human, simple. He said what he thought and never hid anything from her. Best of all, he couldn’t read her thoughts. He reminded her of the old Peter, the laid-back, confident man she had first fallen in love with. Though she still loved Peter more than anything, sometimes she wanted to escape from the vampire world back into the world of the living. Will afforded that escape, if nothing else.
Will crossed his thick arms across his chest and leaned back against the bookshelf. “There’s a town meeting of sorts tonight after work and I’d like you to come along. You’ve been here for a while and it’s about time to involve you in some of the town’s activities.”
“Sounds boring,” Ashe said, though in truth she wasn’t feeling up to attending the meeting. She wanted to stay in bed with the curtains drawn, not socialize with members of the town. Her headache was getting worse.
“I’ll be there,” Will replied, raising an eyebrow.
“I’ll pass.”
Will’s smile faded and was replaced by an intense look that made Ashe’s heart beat faster. She had seen that look before in Peter on the day he had pinned her against the living room wall. She couldn’t understand what had brought on the sudden change.
“You know, the people here really care about you,” he said. “I think it will do you good to come to the meeting. There’s things about this town I want to be able to share with you, and this meeting’s a start. You’ll come to find out that this place is a lot more special than you might think.”
Ashe had to admit that Will’s words had sparked her curiosity. What could possibly be so interesting about a town meeting? If her condition didn't get any worse in the next twenty-four hours she would consider it. For whatever reason, Will seemed to really want her there. His eyes held hers intently.
“I’ll think about it,” Ashe replied.
There was a pause, and then Will said, “You’re really beautiful, you know.”
The comment took Ashe by utter surprise. She felt her cheeks flush. She should have known from his expression that something was up. She hoped he didn’t mean to try and make their friendship more than it was.
Will suddenly leaned down to kiss her. Ashe was too shocked to react. His lips brushed her cheek as she turned away. Her breath heaved in her chest as she tried to process what had just happened.
“I know. You have a boyfriend,” Will said. His voice was quiet.
Ashe didn’t know what to say.
“You love him. That’s good.”
The look in Will’s eyes she had noticed before had gone leaving the Will she was used to seeing. Ashe couldn’t stand the awkward position Will had put her in, and she hated him for thinking he could kiss her like that. Especially after she had made it clear that her heart belonged to Peter.
“You’re my friend,” Ashe said turning back to face him. “I thought you understood that.”
Will looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” He turned and walked away down the row of bookshelves as Ashe tried hard to understand what had come over Will all of a sudden.
Will was warm and fun to talk to, and always greeted Ashe with a smile, but Ashe hadn’t expected him to feel so strongly about her in the few weeks she had known him. The kiss had been without warning too, like he had been possessed by something outside of himself. Ashe couldn’t shake the unexplainable feeling that Will was being manipulated in some way. The Will she knew would never have tried something like that.
Ashe thought with dread about what Peter would think. He had been trying to control his mind-reading, but there was no guarantee that he was making any progress. If he saw what had happened, he wouldn’t understand. Ashe feared Peter’s reaction if he found out Will had tried to kiss her. She would have to avoid thinking about it around him. It was the only thing she could do.
As Ashe made her way towards the back of the library, not wanting to run into Will again on his way out, she noticed that the door to the town archive room stood ajar. Will must have forgotten to close it all the way when he had come to talk to her. Now was her chance to get into the town archives and maybe dig something up about the theater, the insignia, and any other questions she might have about the town. Ashe looked over her shoulder and, seeing no sign of Will, slipped into the archive room and closed the door behind her.
Immediately she noticed a difference between the archive room and the rest of the library. The air was almost too still, as if the place had not been visited by a living human in years. There was no dust to be seen but the room itself was dark and poorly maintained. Ashe couldn’t understand how Will could stand to work in such an environment.
Not knowing how the place was organized, Ashe started at random on the bookshelf nearest the door. It seemed to hold birth and death records, the most recent where she was standing and going back through the years along the wall away from her. If a tragedy had struck the town, the death records might reflect it. Ashe didn’t know the exact year that the theater had closed, though what she had heard around town placed its closure about twenty years prior. Will would have been a small child then and not likely to remember much about the incident itself. Ashe pulled out a thick stack of files from the years she had estimated the theater’s closure to fall within and got to work. She was lucky the town had few residents. It made her work considerably easier.
After a few minutes, Ashe found what she was looking for. There was a group of entries all dated the same day that indicated the causes of death to be a fire in the old theater. That was strange, Ashe thought, as Peter hadn’t mentioned any fire damage and the theater did not show any outward signs of such damage either. Ashe noticed that one of the victims bore the same last name as Will. The man was thirty-five. Will’s father, perhaps. But if there was no fire, then how did these people really die? There must have been a reason why the town felt a need to lie about cause of death.
Ashe replaced the files and moved to a different shelf containing blueprints and plans for public works. She wouldn’t find anything of use there. She moved to the next one and the next, but nothing seemed remotely useful. She started to pull out documents at random and scanning them, frustrated that she couldn’t find what she was looking for. Will could be back any minute. She had to get out of there fast.
In the back corner of the archives the shelves ended in a small alcove. There was a small desk here and a leather book bag lying at its side. The desk had a lived-in feel to it that contrasted with the rest of the room. It must have been where Will did most of his work. Ashe went over the shelves making up the alcove. At first, she couldn't believe what she saw. They filled with personal journals and records, first-hand accounts of the history of the town dating back to when the town was first founded. Each one was written in a different hand. Reading through them, Ashe felt as thought the ghosts of the town were speaking to her all at once. She understood why Will liked his work and wished she had more time with the records. She quickly located one of the diaries corresponding with the year on the death certificates she had found and flipped through it.
The letters were brutish and the words coarse. Clearly a man had written this entry,
one not used to expressing himself in writing. He wrote of a plague tearing through the youth, one that made them act immorally and threatened to bring the town to ruin. According to the man, the young people stayed up all night and slept through the day. Their complexions became waxen and they took part in satanic rituals. They killed wild animals and left their bloodless bodies to rot in the forest. Ashe felt sick, immediately recognizing the signs of vampirism. She tore another diary from the shelf, then another and another. Ashe’s dread grew as the story unfolded before her eyes, told in the words of the people of the town.
From what Ashe could gather, a vampire clan had established itself in the town of Morris, at first only content to feed on its citizens but then later turning some of the youth into members of its ranks. As concern grew, a council was formed which bore the insignia Peter had found on the flyer in the theater. For a while they deliberated on what to do before finally reaching the decision to fight the vampires and save their town. A trap was set at the old theater, an attempt to destroy all of the vampires at once. The plan succeeded, but with the loss of many of the town’s citizens who had shown up to fight that day. None of the vampires survived.
Ashe closed the diary in her hands feeling numb. No wonder they had gone through such pains to cover up the truth. Vampires didn’t exist, at least not to most people. A town couldn’t attribute a theater’s closure and the deaths of its citizens to a plague of vampirism without raising a few eyebrows. Morris was a small, quiet town. They no doubt wanted to keep it that way.
The town wasn’t safe for Ashe or Peter, that much was certain. It didn’t matter if the vampires had been bad or that the people of the town had only been protecting their home. She and Peter would have to leave. They would have to go on the road again and find someplace new.
Ashe shoved the diary back onto the shelf and left the archive room wishing she had never gone there in the first place. Even if no one knew that Peter was a vampire, Ashe couldn’t live in the town any longer knowing what she did.
The library was deathly quiet, the atrium too. Will was still missing which Ashe was thankful for. She couldn’t face him, not now. His father had been one of the men who had fought, and died, with vampire blood on his hands.
Ashe left the library without care that her shift was not over yet. The buildings that had once seemed beautiful were now menacing, their shadows bearing down on Ashe as she hurried towards the theater. She had to warn Peter about the town’s history as soon as possible. She didn’t know if the council still operated, but it wasn’t a chance she was willing to take. Morris was no longer her home.
Peter was back at the door. The thought of what lay behind it had been nagging him and making it hard to focus on his work. He grabbed hold of the doorknob, bracing himself for the ill feeling that had gripped him the first time he had made contact with the door. He felt faint and uneasy but he didn't give in this time. When he wrenched the door open, the feeling hit him full-blast and he reeled back from the open doorway. The stench of death was strong, and whatever was inside had the power to repel vampires. Peter felt an unfamiliar twinge of fear.
The air that had been trapped in the room dissipated and Peter found himself able to approach the doorway without as much trouble as he had had the first time. The room was rather large but entirely unfurnished. A window on the opposite wall let in a hazy shaft of light that filled the space with its weak warmth. A dried bouquet of mayflowers was hung above the door, but it no longer held its potency and crumbled under Peter’s touch. He stepped inside.
Something terrible had happened in here. There were scratch marks along the floor and deep gouges in the wood paneling of the walls. Peter approached one of the bundles of cloth lying on the floor and pulled away the fabric to reveal a pile of bones. The sharp fangs in the skull told Peter who the bones had belonged to. They were vampires, all of them. There must have been around twenty of them in total. Some had hawthorn stakes lodged in their dusty ribcages, but others did not. The ones without must have been trapped in the room and starved. The light coming in the window was not nearly strong enough to harm Peter, but it would be deadly to a vampire weakened by starvation. He could imagine the desperation of the vampires who had died in here, surrounded by their dead friends and clawing to get out before the sun rose again. The oldest among them would have died first and the youngest last. Peter shivered. Whoever had closed them in here must have done so with pure hatred in their heart.
Peter became aware of the sound of footsteps in the hallway. They were approaching quickly and there was no time for Peter to leave the room without being seen. Though he had never been told explicitly that this area was off-limits to him, Jerry’s insistence on keeping him busy in the main theater gave him the impression that Jerry would not be happy to find Peter back here. The footsteps were nearly at the door. He would soon find out just how much trouble he was in.
“Peter?” The soft female voice made Peter feel instantly relieved. Ashe was standing in the doorway, her auburn hair glowing like fire in the soft light cast by the window.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” he asked. It couldn’t already be evening. He didn’t think he had lost track of that much time wandering around back there.
Ashe shook her head dismissively. “Work isn’t important. I have to tell you what I found out about the theater.”
Peter felt the same. He had to tell Ashe what this place was.
She caught sight of one of the stacks of bones. “What is that?”
“Bones,” Peter replied. “Vampire bones. Let’s get out of here first and I’ll explain back at the house.”
There was no protest from Ashe, who seemed fully aware of the danger of the situation. He tried to remain casual as he led her out into the atrium and past Jerry who was carrying in something large and flat and covered by a sheet.
“Quitting time already?” Jerry asked pausing to greet them.
Peter gave his best apologetic smile. “Boss said I could duck out a little early today. I’ll make up the time on Monday.”
Jerry nodded. “Don’t want to keep your girl waiting. I get that.”
He resumed carrying the large flat object, but nearly dropped it as his foot got caught in the sheet covering it. The sheet slipped off of it, revealing a shiny new mirror underneath. Peter caught a glimpse of Ashe’s reflection and the empty space where his own should have been before jumping in to help Jerry get the sheet back in place. He hoped the man hadn’t caught the lack of Peter’s reflection in the mirror.
Jerry said nothing, and went back to his work. Peter quickly led Ashe out of the theater.
“The mirror,” Ashe said once they were safely outside. “Do you think he saw?”
Peter shook his head. He could only hope it was the case that Jerry hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
The sky outside was orange but growing darker with every minute. The air felt electric and smelled of oncoming rain. Peter held Ashe’s hand tightly as they walked briskly down the sidewalk towards their neighborhood. They said little to each other until they were inside the house. Peter knew that Ashe had something to tell him about the theater that might better explain what he had found in that back room. One thing he knew was that they couldn’t stay in town much longer. He hoped Ashe could accept that.
Ashe was the first to speak as she poured herself a glass of water at the kitchen counter.
“We can’t stay here any longer.”
Peter could see that her hand was shaking. She looked thin, ill, and Peter worried that she was sick. She put the glass to her lips but sputtered as soon as the water hit her tongue. She set the glass down.
“I got into the town records today, to see if I could find out anything about the insignia you showed me or the closure of the theater.”
“And you found something about vampires.”
Ashe smiled grimly. “About twenty years ago there was a battle inside the theater between the people of the town and a group of vampi
res. The vampires were slaughtered, though quite a few humans died with them.”
Peter knew how much Ashe had wanted a place to call home. It must have broken her heart to find out the truth about the town’s past. “That room you found me in was filled with bodies. There must have been twenty or more of them.”
“It’s not safe for you here,” Ashe said quietly. “I’m ready to leave as soon as you are. We can pack our things tonight.”
Peter could feel the tug of Ashe’s emotion but fought to keep it out of his head. It wasn’t working. It seemed the harder he fought, the stronger the telepathic bond became. He could feel Ashe’s longing to stay in the town despite her own words. Something was making her reluctant to go.
“Are you sure?” Peter asked. “I can sense you don’t want to go.”
Ashe sighed. “It’s not so much that I don’t want to leave Morris. I know that staying in town would be stupid. It’s just, I’m sad that it didn’t work out here. I would have liked to see the theater re-open and this house become a real home for the two of us.”
“We’ll find somewhere else,” Peter said. “Somewhere better.”
Ashe bit her lip. “I guess I should go pack.”
Peter could tell she was still conflicted about leaving, but she said nothing more as she turned towards the bedroom. Images of Ashe and Peter’s brief life here streamed through Peter’s head. Though he enjoyed the memories, Peter knew that he needed to tell Ashe that her thoughts were transmitting. He had promised her to do so whenever it occurred.
Kissed by The Dragon: (The Dragon Lords - Book 2) Page 45
