A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters (7 page)

Two figures in white gowns were bent over the bed to the left of Annabelle’s. The feet of the person lying in the bed kneaded the sheets, as if she were struggling. As if the two were hurting her.

Before I knew what I was doing, I sat up and half-crawled, half-fell out of my bed. Swaying, I crossed the room, advancing as quietly as I could, aware that I could barely stay on my feet.

“It’s done,” whispered one of the girls—for they were girls—in the white gowns. I saw now that the fabric of the one who spoke was tattered and moldy; spider webs and moss clung to the long sleeves. The dress of the girl beside her was lovely and fresh.

The tattered one straightened and turned around.

Her eyes were large and very blue; her face was a pale oval. Her blond hair, coiled in a braided chignon, was covered with cobwebs. And her mouth was painted with fresh blood.

I gasped; she held up a warning hand and the second girl—the one in the nicer dress—looked at me. Her mouth was bloody, too. She wore her black hair pulled from her face; her dark eyes widened as she stared at me, then at the blond girl—the
vampire
—at her side.

 

I tried to scream but I was too stunned. The two advanced; and as I backed away, they both stopped and held up their hands, as if shading their eyes from a light that was too bright. Then the blonde grabbed my arm and covered my mouth with her hand. Her skin was so cold it burned me, and I nearly fainted.

She dragged me out of the room. No one else stirred. The sleepers were drugged. I was certain of it. There had been something in the gruel, and I hadn’t drunk enough.

And I was about to die.

The moon shone overhead as the vampire pulled me down corridors and out into the chill night air. The little brunette followed behind, silent.

My bare feet sank into moist earth. I couldn’t see where I was going; the vampire in the tattered gown had clamped a hand over my mouth, and her hair was hanging across my face. She smelled like wet earth and rose petals.

I whimpered once and she said, “Shut up or we’ll rip your throat out.”

Then she jerked me to a stop. “Listen, you. You know what we are, Annabelle and me. And what you are. Food, see? So if you scream we’ll eat you up.”

“Sarah, please, don’t be so mean,” the dark- haired vampire protested. I knew she was Annabelle. Newly risen from her grave, and taken by the older vampire to our room, to drink blood.

“Why were you awake?” Sarah demanded of me. “Did Father Mark put you up to something? Did he tell you to attack us?”

I was at a loss. I began to cry.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Annabelle said, smiling kindly at me. “He’s a good man.”

Sarah laughed. “There are no good men. He gave
you
to me, Annabelle. And picked out Maria for you to kill.”

I remembered the cloth over the crucifix. It had been a signal . . . for murder.

“No,” I gasped. They both turned to look at me, almost as if they’d forgotten I was there. I arranged my fingers in the shape of a cross, and Sarah’s lip curled. Annabelle looked stricken, and kept her distance.

“Maria was a horrible little troll. A beast,” Sarah said.

I kept my fingers in the cross-shape, backing into something cold and hard. It was a gravestone, but the cross that had been atop it had been broken off, and lay half-buried in mud. There were no crosses anywhere in the graveyard.

I glanced to my right and saw a newly turned mound of earth. Roses were placed upon it.

“That’s my grave,” Annabelle whispered. “My resting place.”

“We have a bargain, see?” Sarah told me. “The vampires of Los Angeles. We want new kin. And they want food.”

“They . . .” I said.

“The humans. Father Mark and Mother Mary Patrick. Human food,” Sarah elaborated. “Bread, apples, whatever we can get.”

“But . . . it’s not enough.” Annabelle glided toward me and ran her fingers down my cheeks, and it was not unpleasant. “There’s not enough in the world any more to feed all of you.”

I began to heave. Weak, terrified . . . I bent forward, dry retching, and Annabelle put her arm around my shoulders. She cooed, holding me, and I felt her lips brushing against my neck.

“I agreed,” Annabelle told me. “Sarah, Father Mark, and Mother Mary Patrick. They asked me to become what I am now, and I consented. I wasn’t well.”

She stroked my cheek again. “You came to the chapel. You prayed for me. I was watching.”

I remembered the little scratching noise.

“I would have died, and so will you,” she said.

I shuddered, hard, wobbling on my feet. She held me up. I was going to be sick or faint. “Why-why will I die?” I asked her.

She stroked my hair. “You’re too delicate. You were taught to allow people—men, servants—to take care of you.” Her voice was mournful. She pitied me. “But no one will.”

“No one will,” Sarah concurred. “No handsome knight in shining armor. No government. No one is coming to save you.” She waited a beat. “Or your mother.”

“No,” I whispered.

“Your mother is beautiful,” Annabelle said. “But the world will be too much for her. Humanity has shown its true face. Men don’t care for widows and orphans. They care for money. Gold. And they dare to call
us
monsters.”

“We are what God intended,” Sarah said. “Born to new life, through the blood.”

Together the two vampires gazed rapturously toward heaven. Moonlight washed down on them; the alabaster beams bleached their foreheads, the hollows of their cheeks. Blood was drying on their lips.

“Who did you kill tonight?” I asked Annabelle.

“Maria. That horrible girl who took your stole,” she replied. “We were watching. We saw everything.”

“They’ll eat you alive here,” Sarah said. “You’re too soft.
We
can save you.”

“Yes, please,” Annabelle urged, “be our sister. You will never die, or be hungry.” She smiled at Sarah. “And the feeding is most pleasant. It’s like a holy thing.”

Sarah smiled back.

I burst into tears. Annabelle gathered me into her arms, holding me, comforting me, as no one had since my father’s death—my mother had been too shellshocked, too undone, to do anything but lock herself in her room. To watch Our Lady of the Vampires roaming in the hot sunlight, withering, dying inch by inch. I had had no one. Annabelle held me, and rocked me, and I began to forget that there was blood on her lips.

Someone
was
coming to rescue me. Someone had come: two vampires.

Two angels.

“We should do it now,” Sarah said, “before it’s light.”

“No. Please, let her consider,” Annabelle murmured, cocking her head at me. “Do for her what you did for me, Sarah. Give her some time to think.”

“She’ll tell.” Sarah glared at me in the same way that Mother Mary Patrick had. I was a threat.

“I won’t,” I promised. “I swear I won’t.”

“Tomorrow night, then, give us your answer,” Annabelle pleaded sweetly. “We can change you, and take you away. You don’t have to feed here, among the girls. We can find you someone else. Somewhere else.”

“You’ll never be hungry again,” Sarah said. “You can take the starving, the hopeless. It’s a sort of mercy.”

“Maria felt nothing,” Annabelle assured me.

I frowned. “Her legs kicked—”

“A reflex.” Annabelle crossed her arms over her chest, posing like a dead girl. “I promise.” Then she took her hands. “We’ll teach you everything. Crosses burn us. Wooden stakes through the heart destroy us. You’ll learn to be cunning. And strong.” She glanced at Sarah. “So I have been promised.”

“You will,” Sarah assured her.

“And if I say no?”

Sarah blinked as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. But Annabelle stepped forward. “We will let you go. If you leave this place and tell no one, we will not harm you. I give you my word.”

I swallowed hard and looked at the other vampire, the one who had been dead longer. She lowered her head in assent.

Sarah said, “We’ll let you go.”

Go where?
I thought, as they escorted me back to my dormitory room, and watched as I climbed into bed.
To the streets, to starve?

Did I have a choice?

I drew the sheets up. The two vampires stepped into the hall, and closed the door. There was still light in the room: through two high, arched windows, the dawn was coming.

I saw then the statue of the Blessed Mother at the far end of the room. I hadn’t noticed it before. She looked very young. I had been taught that the Virgin gave birth to Jesus when she was fourteen.

I was fourteen.

The Blessed Mother’s world had been filled with turmoil—her people were slaves under Roman rule; she had nearly been stoned to death when her pregnancy became apparent. She was unmarried. Her husband had spoken for her, telling the rabble and the priests of a dream, a holy vision.

My mind raced; my heart thundered. I rolled on my side to face the statue and clasped my hands in prayer, sliding them beneath my pillow. I tried to pray, but mostly, I cried.

My fingertips brushed something beneath the pillow. I jerked my hands away, then sat up and lifted it up.

In the hollow sat a folded piece of paper. On it was written:
BESS (THE NEW GIRL).

I unfolded it, and read.

Maria, who was dead. I could never tell her now that yes, I would be her friend. Yes, it would be easier. I remembered the nameless Irish woman who had also died. My father used to talk about the Irish problem—too many immigrants, taking the jobs of the “real” Americans. Stealing the wages of men who’d been there first.

Vampires.

I looked at the statue of the Blessed Mother. I looked at the drugged girls, who were as hungry and frightened as I was.

I reread the note from Maria, and kissed her name.

Then slowly, unsteady as a lamb, I stood on my bed and turned around. I stared at my wooden crucifix. I remembered that Father Mark and Mother Mary Patrick had covered the one over Maria’s bed so that the vampires could approach. That they had shied away from the cross over my bed as they’d dragged me into the graveyard.

I took a deep breath, and laid my hand on the cross. I took it off the wall.

We can make a garden,
I thought, looking at the sleeping girls.
We can grow our own food. We can work together. We can be sisters. And I’ll find my mother and Our Lady of the Vampires, and they can live here, too.

Then I broke the cross in two, as if I were making a wish on the turkey wishbone at Thanksgiving. The edges were very jagged.

Two pieces.

Two stakes.

I slipped them under my pillow.

My decision, my bargain, was made.

When darkness fell, I would lead these girls out of the land of the vampires.

We would have a table—ours—in the presence of our enemies.

And the world would call us blessed.

“Y
ou can’t be serious.” I pushed my bangs back fretfully, I hadn’t had a trim in ages. I wanted to wriggle out of my damp bikini top, but I hadn’t brought a T-shirt. “He’s just your stepfather. Or going to be, anyway, since your mom’s . . . well.”

Kate sighed, a sound of sharp metal frustration. “Look, do you think I’d be telling you if I wasn’t sure? I’m not crazy, Becca.”

I eyed her for a long critical moment, sucking on the straw. Finished my chocolate milkshake, set the paper cup down, and slid my shades down the bridge of my nose. We both smelled like chlorine and sunscreen, because you can’t ever wash pool-smell out of your hair in the showers at the Y. Kate’s blond braid dripped, soaking a dark patch through the shoulder of her Frexies T-shirt. Her burger was half-eaten. She hadn’t even touched her fries.

It was unheard-of. Usually, Kate finished her potato products first, and a healthy helping of mine as well, world without end, amen. But today she had a few lone survivors on her spread-out cheeseburger wrapper.

She hadn’t been eating much lately.

It was a ninety-plus day, but I shivered. “Okay. So what are we gonna do?”

Kate’s face crumpled. For a moment I was sure she was going to cry, so I looked down at the ruins of my lunch, to give her some privacy.

But Kate just picked up a napkin and blew her nose. A hot breeze from the Tasty Freeze parking lot made the tattered umbrella over our table flap. Everyone else was inside enjoying the air conditioning. Sitting outside on a day like this could fry your brain.

“He’s awake sometimes during the day, even if he never goes outside.” Kate’s voice was small, as if she was six again. “He hates garlic, too. And at night he’s just bouncing off the walls. Mom thinks it’s cute. They’re really into each other since she brought him home.”

It was what she’d said before. But my gaze came up and fastened on Kate’s hand. She’d taken to wearing that fashionable buckled leather cuff everywhere, even into the pool. Now it lay on the table, getting lighter as it dried. The two marks on the pale underside of her wrist where she hardly ever tanned had worn, white- looking edges. Their centers were dark and angry, though. Scabbed over.

Right where they taught you to take the pulse in First Aid.

Kate made a restless movement. “I thought he was just creepy. But he . . . God.”