Bloodlust

by Alex Duval

  It was too late for Jason to help her. Too late for anyone.

  She was dead.

  Nine

  Jason climbed out of the police car and headed up his driveway. His mom, his dad, and Dani were waiting for him on the front lawn. Mrs. Freeman wrapped him in a tight hug and didn’t let go. He hugged her back, then pulled away, trying to muster up a reassuring smile for his mother. It didn’t work—the concern remained in her eyes. He had the feeling she was imagining him lying there on the sand, with blue lips and fingernails. Cold. Dead.

  “Mom, it’s okay. I’m okay,” Jason said. His mother slowly nodded, and his dad took over, giving Jason the father-patented rib-busting special.

  “You’re not going to have to hug me too, are you?” he asked Dani when his dad let go.

  “No. Don’t worry. I’ll let you off,” she teased, but her gray eyes were serious.

  “When the police called…” Mrs. Freeman shook her head. “I knew we were right not to let Dani go to that party. I shouldn’t have let you go either. Where were the parents? That’s what I want to know. They just waved from the dock as a bunch of teenagers and enough alcohol to kill a—”

  “Mom,” Jason interrupted her, “not now.”

  “I can’t even imagine how that poor girl’s mother is feeling. Did either of you know her?” his mother asked.

  “A little,” Jason admitted.

  “We talked about surfing once,” Dani said. “She promised to show me the best boards.” Jason suspected that that conversation had taken place at the party, hours before Carrie died. But he wasn’t going to rat out his sister. “She was only a year older than me,” Dani added, her voice choked with tears.

  Now Dani got the parental hug treatment. “You see why we didn’t want you at that party?” Mr. Freeman said.

  “Yeah,” Dani answered quietly. “You were right.”

  “Well, we were going to fire up the grill and have a barbecue,” Mrs. Freeman announced, clapping her hands together. “We have those steaks.”

  Jason appreciated the change of subject, even though he doubted he could eat. His own emotions weighed pretty heavily right now: guilt over not telling his parents that Dani had been on the yacht, horror over the memory of Carrie’s dead body, and just a basic queasiness over the realization that he’d been making out with Erin and obsessing about Sienna when Carrie had fallen overboard to her death. “Barbecue sounds good, Mom,” he said.

  “We’ll do the corn, too,” their mother said, “and a salad.”

  Dani and Jason stood in silence as their parents disappeared into the house. “Thanks for not telling,” she said when they were out of sight.

  “You think I want to kill our mother?” Jason asked. The joke landed with an almost audible thud. Right now it was way too easy to imagine any of the people he loved being snatched away from him. The world suddenly felt dangerous.

  Dani just looked at him, her big gray eyes still serious.

  Jason looped his arm over her shoulders. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Was she…like, deteriorating?”

  With the school day less than half over, this was the eleventh time someone had asked Jason about finding Carrie’s body. The morbid curiosity disgusted Jason. He probably would have gotten twice as many questions, except that Zach Lafrenière had chosen today to reappear at school, and that was also a big topic of conversation. Almost as big as a classmate washing up dead onshore.

  For the first time, DeVere High struck Jason as being a pretty twisted place. Somehow, with all of its sunshine and beauty, it had seemed above this type of sordid gossip. But it obviously wasn’t.

  Jason slammed his locker shut and turned around. A tall girl with long, golden brown hair stood there looking at him, biting at her lip, eager to hear the details of what he’d seen. It took a moment for him to realize that she was Harberts’s friend, Maggie, from the girls’ swim team. He’d met her at the party.

  Do you want to hear about the crab that had eaten off part of Carrie’s left little finger? he thought. He didn’t say the words out loud. He was afraid Maggie might say yes. “I didn’t really look that closely,” he told her.

  “You’d have to be completely out of it to fall off the yacht. I mean, the rails are rails,” Maggie said. “How much do you think she’d had to drink?”

  “No idea. Got to go,” he replied, and pretty much racewalked away from her toward the cafeteria, even though the last thing he wanted to do was eat. His stomach had been doing a slow roll every time he’d looked at food since yesterday. He grabbed a smoothie from the juice bar, figuring he could deal with that without puking, and a peanut butter sandwich that he thought he’d be able to choke down before swim practice.

  “Zach, here’s somebody you should know. This year’s new guy.” Jason didn’t have to look to know it was Sienna speaking. Her voice alone made his pulse quicken.

  “That’s me,” Jason said as he turned around, cafeteria tray in hand. “Jason Freeman, new guy until the next one comes along.”

  “Jason’s on the swim team with Brad,” Sienna added. She stood next to a tall guy with short, kinda spiky black hair. Clearly the famous Zach Lafrenière.

  Zach nodded. He didn’t say anything. But he seemed to take in everything about Jason with one sweep of his dark brown eyes. His expression wasn’t exactly unfriendly. It was more like…impenetrable. Jason stared back. He’d been hearing about Zach since day one at DeVere High; people talked about him constantly, and today, especially. Jason couldn’t help feeling curious about him.

  The most popular guy in school—here he was at last—possessed an almost tangible intensity. He seemed to radiate energy and life.

  “Line. Not moving,” Van Dyke called cheerfully from a couple of people down.

  Jason nodded to Zach and Sienna, quickly paid for his food, and then headed to what had become his regular place. He was surprised to see Adam sitting there. He’d been MIA in history this morning, but he clearly hadn’t used the free time to shower or comb his hair. His clothes looked slept in, while Adam himself looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  Adam stood up before Jason could grab a seat. “Take a walk with me.”

  “Okay,” Jason said. They didn’t walk far, just over to the edge of the cafeteria terrace.

  “You doing all right?” Jason asked as they stared out at the surfers dotting the ocean.

  “She’s never going to be out there again,” Adam said grimly, and his words hit Jason like a punch to the gut. He’d been thinking about Carrie’s body pretty much constantly, unable to force the vision of her dead eyes out of his head. But he hadn’t gotten as far as thinking about her, and the things she’d never do: surf, graduate from high school, turn twenty-one, have any kind of life.

  “Did you see anyone doing drugs at the party?” Adam asked.

  “What?” Jason tripped over the sudden change of subject. “No. I wasn’t really looking or anything, but no.”

  “Me neither. But that’s what the police are thinking. I heard my dad talking about it on the phone with one of the deputies. They don’t think she got drunk and took an unplanned dive. They think that she shot up and—” Adam pressed his palms together and made a diving motion.

  “Shot up? Why shot up?” Jason asked.

  “Needle marks on her arm,” Adam replied. He glanced over his shoulder, then pulled a photo out of the front pocket of his backpack. “I snagged this from my dad. There were a bunch in the file he brought home. He probably won’t miss it.”

  Jason lifted an eyebrow.

  “What?” Adam asked defensively. “Don’t worry—I’ll put it back tonight. I just wanted to show it to you.” He handed the photo to Jason. It showed a close-up of a girl’s arm—Carrie’s—with two small red marks, not much bigger than pinpricks, on the smooth, pale skin inside her elbow. A little bruising surrounded the punctures.

  “Needle marks. Hardcore,” Jason commented, running his finger lightly across the picture of the wounds
as if that would tell him something.

  “I didn’t see anything like this on Carrie when I was with her last week. She didn’t seem like she was on anything the night of Belle’s party, either, even though it was a party.” Adam shook his head. “But what the hell do I know? It’s not like we were even friends.”

  Not true, Jason thought. Maybe Adam and Carrie hadn’t been exactly exclusive. But they had definitely been friends.

  “I keep thinking it could be something else,” Adam continued. “I keep thinking…I could be crazy here, but I’ve seen some things. If I’d put it all together faster. If I’d had the balls to actually accept the truth, maybe I could have saved her.”

  Jason didn’t know what Adam was talking about. But he knew one thing. “This isn’t your fault,” he told his friend, gently but firmly.

  Adam turned away from the water and faced Jason. “I want you to look at something with me.”

  “Sure. Now?” Jason asked.

  “No. The video editing suite is full of Tarantino wannabes during lunch. But meet me there after school. Oh, but I guess you have practice?”

  “I can get out of it if this is important,” Jason told him.

  “It is,” Adam said. His eyes glittered and his cheeks were flushed, almost like he had a fever. He turned his face away for a moment, and Jason saw his jaw clench. When he looked back, his expression was grim—and filled with pain. “That footage I shot at the party?” Adam muttered. “I think it might prove what really happened to Carrie.”

  Jason stepped into the dim video editing suite after his last class of the day. He spotted Adam at the station in the back corner, hunched close to a monitor. Had Adam really caught something revealing on film? he wondered. Or was this just a reaction to Carrie’s death?

  “Hey,” he said as he pulled up a chair next to his friend.

  Adam’s body jerked in surprise. “Didn’t hear you come in,” he muttered.

  “Got here as fast as I could,” Jason replied. “What you got for me?”

  “It could be dangerous for you to see,” Adam said, his voice so low, Jason almost couldn’t make out the words.

  “I don’t give a crap. Show me,” Jason told him. He was a lot more worried about Adam than about anything he might see on the film. His friend was acting pretty crazy.

  Adam brought his hands to the keyboard, then hesitated. “You know how I’ve been making this movie….”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, for a while—since before you got here—it mostly hasn’t been a movie. It’s been…well, research, I guess you’d call it,” Adam went on. “Because while making the movie, I started noticing things….” He stared at the monitor. An image of Carrie and Scott Challon was frozen on the screen, Carrie and Scott on the bed in one of the Moulin Rouge’s cabins. “Things somebody like me shouldn’t see,” Adam finally added.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Somebody like you?” Jason asked. He wanted to cover the image of Carrie and Scott with his hands. Adam was in even worse shape than Jason had thought. He didn’t need to be looking at that right now.

  “There are two groups at DeVere. Everyone knows it,” Adam said. “I don’t know why it took me so long to see exactly what they were…I suspected, made lists, took notes, and kept filming. But I didn’t say anything. I should have told Carrie, warned her.”

  “Look, maybe it would be better if you just showed me what you want to show me,” Jason suggested gently. Once he had facts, maybe he could figure out how to help Adam. Right now, he had no idea what was going on in his friend’s head.

  “Okay.” Adam’s fingers flew over the keyboard, and a new image appeared on the screen: Brad and Lauren stretched out on one of the lounge chairs on the fore-deck of the yacht. Both dripping with water, clearly just out of the hot tub.

  “I saw the coming attractions for this. Didn’t make me want to see the movie,” Jason said uneasily. The joke was limp, and he knew it, but he had to say something to hide the wave of humiliation that crashed over him as he remembered what a fool he’d been scolding Brad like some wrinkled-up prude while Sienna was—

  Focus! Jason ordered himself. This isn’t about you. “What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asked Adam. Because it couldn’t be Brad hovering over the base of Lauren’s throat, which is all Jason saw on the monitor. The action crept forward, frame by frame, on super slo-mo.

  “Wait,” Adam said. “It’s coming up. Right…here.” On the screen, Brad raised his head. “Look at his mouth and her neck,” Adam instructed, hitting a button on the keyboard to freeze the scene.

  Jason leaned closer to the monitor. Something dripped from Brad’s mouth—something red—and Lauren’s throat was smeared with crimson. “Is that blood?” he asked.

  “You see a ketchup bottle anywhere?” Adam replied. He grabbed the police photo of Carrie’s arm from a folder on the table and shoved it into Jason’s hand. “You tell me. Don’t you think those marks could have been made by teeth instead of a needle?”

  Jason suddenly wished he hadn’t had that smoothie at lunch. It was trying to come back up. He swallowed hard. “You…you think Brad bit—”

  Adam didn’t let him finish. “There was blood on his mouth and on Lauren’s neck. You saw it.”

  “Yeah, but…” Jason found all this a bit too bizarre. “Why would Brad want to bite someone? That’s crazy.”

  Adam hit a few keys, and the scene replayed itself: Brad at Lauren’s throat; Brad glancing up with blood on his lips. “Look at it,” Adam insisted. “Just look.” He replayed the scene again.

  Jason stared at the monitor, leaning in close to make sure he was getting a good look at Brad and Lauren. There was definitely blood—on her neck and his mouth. “One more time,” Jason muttered.

  Adam replayed it, pausing the image when Brad faced the camera, Lauren’s blood on his mouth. Jason’s stomach clenched. Adam was right: Brad had definitely bitten her.

  Jason pushed his chair back, wanting some distance between himself and the image on screen. He felt a wave of revulsion toward Brad. “You’ve got to show this to your dad,” he said quickly. “Brad’s some kind of twisted freak. You think he killed Carrie after he bit her? Maybe she freaked and he knocked her out and—”

  “No. You’re not getting it,” Adam interrupted. He ran his hands through his already messy hair, leaving it standing straight up. “I didn’t get it, either, at first. It’s too weird. It’s hard to take in.”

  “Just tell me,” Jason demanded impatiently. He was getting freaked out. He could tell something messed up was going on here, but he couldn’t find the connection Adam wanted him to make. “What’s the deal?”

  Adam took a deep breath, his eyes fixed on the picture of Carrie. “That other group at school I was talking about—the rock stars of DeVere Heights? Brad is one of them. And so is whoever—whatever—killed Carrie.” He shifted his gaze to look Jason straight in the eye. “They’re vampires.”

  Ten

  Jason laughed. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t stop himself. The horror of finding Carrie’s body, the anger of having to describe it over and over to morbidly curious people all day, and now Adam going totally off the deep end. It was all too much. He felt a little hysterical.

  “Vampires?” He couldn’t even say the word without laughing harder.

  “Go ahead. Get it out of your system,” Adam muttered.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Jason managed to get himself under control. “I agree that Brad is…There’s something wrong with the guy, definitely. And maybe he did even have something to do with Carrie’s death. But he can’t be a…vampire. I mean, come on. You’ve seen too many movies, man. There are no vampires in real life.”

  “I spent months telling myself the same thing,” Adam answered. “If I’d just accepted the truth a little earlier, Carrie might still be alive.” He shut off the monitor. “So what’s it going to take to open your mind?” He stabbed his finger at the police photo of Carrie’s arm. “How ab
out two little puncture marks like these, on Lauren’s neck? Because she has them. I guarantee it.”

  “I admit that would be pretty damning evidence,” Jason agreed slowly, mostly to humor his friend, who was clearly losing it. “Um, in fact, we should confirm it. If Lauren does have the marks, that will show a connection between Brad and Carrie. Essential info. Not about vampires, but still essential. Any thoughts on where to find Lauren?”

  “Yeah. She has—and this isn’t all that uncommon among DeVere High students who live outside the gates—a job,” Adam answered. “I’ll show you the way. You can follow me.”

  “If I can keep up with your superfly Vespa,” Jason said, glad to hear Adam sounding more Adam-like. It was the first time all day that he’d made a rich kid–poor kid joke.

  Less than ten minutes later, Jason found himself in front of Under G’s, a lingerie store.

  “We’re going in there?” he asked.

  “Just remember they only carry European labels,” Adam advised.

  “I don’t really need a new bra anyway,” Jason said as he opened the door and stepped inside, to be greeted with an astounding array of bras and panties and other items he didn’t want.

  “Can I help you?” asked a frighteningly thin woman with slicked-back hair. She looked the boys up and down and wrinkled her tiny nose as if she smelled something bad.

  “Is Lauren around?” Jason asked.

  The woman frowned. “She’s not allowed visitors at work.”

  Adam slapped Jason on the shoulder. “This is her cousin from Michigan,” he said firmly. The thin woman looked dubious, but before she could say anything, Lauren bustled over.

  “Cousin Jason,” she said, putting on a big fake smile for her boss. “I thought we were going to meet up after I got off work.”

  “Change of plan,” Jason said. His eyes immediately went to Lauren’s throat, but a necklace with large painted beads blocked his view.