American Vampire (8 page)

“Jessa,” he said, almost guiltily as he walked
toward her. The bones of his ribs showed through the slashes on his chest.

“Stay away from me!” she screamed, and ran. It was possible that he would catch her, if he tried. No, more than possible. He’d gotten her out of the house so fast. She hadn’t even felt him move. But he didn’t come after her. Maybe he’d fallen down and died. She didn’t care. All she cared about was that she made it into the house, up the stairs, and into the bathroom before she vomited up the little dinner she’d eaten.

Doubled over the sink, the moonshine burning her throat again with every retch, she remembered the hole in the house. He could get in. There was no way of keeping him out.

“Jessa?” He was right outside the door. She hadn’t even heard him come up the stairs.

Wiping her mouth, she straightened. She could lock the bathroom door. If she dove for it right now, she might be able to lock it before he came in. Her stomach disagreed, and she gripped the edges of the porcelain sink and groaned.

Graf, whatever he was, opened the door. He’d put his T-shirt back on, covering the wounds in his chest, but blood still flowed down his face and neck from the back of his head. “Oh, God,” he said quietly. “You’re bleeding.”

She shook her head, and it felt like the inside of it had been put together too tightly. “No, you are.”
Still, she pushed her hair back from her face, and her hand came away wet with blood.

In that horrible moment, she knew that Graf was dangerous, not to be trusted. And that she was about to lose consciousness.

I
diot. You’re a fucking idiot. Always have been.
Graf whipped a towel off the edge of the claw-footed tub and wound it around his head, turban style, to try to hold his scalp in place, or keep his brain from falling out, or something. Then he knelt beside Jessa and examined the bloody patch at her temple. It wasn’t a serious head injury, or at least, it didn’t look like it. The vomiting and passing out weren’t great, but she had drunk a lot of moonshine and had a pretty big scare. He was no doctor, but he guessed she’d probably passed out from shock.

He lifted his fingers to his lips, but didn’t taste her blood. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop. She smelled so sweet, and her body was so warm. He’d probably sink his fangs right into her skull. And that would be very bad.

While he had intended to eat Jessa, that had been
before he’d called such massive attention to himself at the bar. Now that everyone in town knew that he was staying with her, it would be the dumbest idea in the history of dumb to kill her. If he were staying somewhere else, or had some other alibi, a little nibble would be no problem. Of course, the giant hole in the kitchen, that could be a good alibi. A couple of whacks to the head. Whoops, the creature, whatever It was, got her.

That was a dangerous line of reasoning. It would look too suspicious, a death right after he’d arrived in town. And if Jessa had been serious about the burning-at-the-stake thing, he didn’t want to anger locals. He wiped her blood on her tank top and lifted her in his arms. In the hallway, he examined his choices. The door with the cheerfully painted wooden sign proclaiming J
ONATHAN’S
R
OOM
probably wasn’t the right one. He kicked another door open to find a queen-size bed with an ugly, upholstered headboard and a thick layer of dust on everything. The next room he checked out was soft and white, with an iron bedstead painted to match the walls and fluffy white pillows piled on top of it.

“So much for the fallen woman’s boudoir,” he said to the unconscious woman in his arms. He dropped her in the center of the bed and slid to the floor, head throbbing. Whatever that thing was that he’d fought, it wasn’t anything he’d want to see again. Easily fifteen feet tall, its chest and arms made him think that
a human and a dinosaur made a baby together, and then that baby grew up to be Dinosaur Mike Tyson. Huge muscles and slimy scales, not a good combination. Then, there had been the long tail, and the bony spikes down the spine. The head could have belonged to a particularly ugly bull, or maybe a dog with a smashed-in face that had grown horns like a handlebar mustache out of its head. It was like a monster built out of entirely spare parts. But the worst thing about it had been the stink.

Once, Sophia had called in a favor with Graf. One of her other “babies” had gone off the deep end and holed up in a house with some ghouls, humans who survived off vampire blood, and, as a result, had became dangerously insane. She’d wanted Graf to go in and kill the ghouls, retrieve the vampire, and return him to her, so she could make sure that it didn’t happen again. When Graf had gotten to the place, though, the vampire had been one up on him. The ghouls had been dead. Long dead. Tarry black stuff seeping out of them and into the carpet dead. The house had been completely shut up, in June, in Utah, with six dead bodies in it for God alone knew how long. The smell had been unbelievable, a combination of rotting meat and the sweet scent of almonds and the stink of human excrement.

This hillbilly creature had smelled ten times worse.

Cursing, Graf unwound the towel from around
his head and gingerly felt the edges of his torn skin. The bleeding had stopped, and things had started to fuse together. He needed a shower to get the stink of blood—It’s and hers—off him.

He didn’t know how long Jessa would be out, but he could guess that it would be a while. As far as he was aware, she hadn’t slept all day, or all the night before. And there was no chance of her waking up and hightailing it back to town, if he judged her right. She would be too afraid of It to leave the house.

Really, the only danger was in her staking him while he showered, he thought as he turned on the taps in the ancient tub. First, she would have to figure out that he was a vampire, and then remember, in her state of shock, how to kill one. He would hear her if she tried. The house was so full of squeaky boards and loose joists that it was a miracle the whole thing didn’t come crashing down around them. With a missing wall now, it just might. He would have to try to do something to shore that up, he realized. The house, and the girl, would be no good to him if either fell apart.

Not that the girl was much good to him in the first place. He stepped into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed along its oval track. He had to duck under the arched shower head to sluice water over his hair, and he wiggled his toes in the bloody pink stream that cascaded toward the drain. Jessa really was a waste, now that he couldn’t eat her.

Well, not entirely useless. She was hot, in a girl-next-door way that drove Graf crazy. The rush of blood that headed straight for his groin argued valiantly for her usefulness. But Jessa was damaged goods. Dead family? Ex-boyfriend? Definitely not something he was interested in dealing with. He grimaced. Jessa: not good for sex or food. All he really needed was her house, but now, unfortunately, she was there to stay. And he had a lot of explaining to do.

When he’d scrubbed the blood from his scalp, which was still tender but healing into place nicely, and soaped the smell of the creature from his body with horrible homemade soap, he dried, dressed, and headed downstairs to survey the damage. He felt as weak as a human, with the amount of blood he’d lost.

The creature had been big, but it had created damage ten times its size. Nearly an entire wall was missing. The kitchen door was gone. Cabinets were strewn across the yard, broken dishes in their wake. Electrical wires hung, deceptively calm, from the ragged edges of the hole.

Graf was no independent contractor. The biggest building project he’d ever done was a birdhouse he’d made in sixth grade. And the roof of that had fallen off in a stiff breeze. Still, he knew that the splintered wooden beam in the center was some kind of framework, and its absence would probably be missed by
the rest of the house. With a sigh, he hopped through the hole and walked toward the barn.

The stink of It still hung in the air, thick like the smell off an open manhole on a hot day. Graf had never been a fan of barnyard smell, but it would be a welcome change.

Chickens scattered and clucked nervously at his intrusion. He hadn’t really seen one up close before. Now that he had, he was glad that he wasn’t human anymore and didn’t have to eat them. Graf had no idea what the inside of a barn was supposed to look like, but he had expected more hay, maybe a tractor. All he saw were ugly chickens, some rope, some yard tools, and, pushed against the wall, a workbench and a tall, red cabinet that would most certainly hold tools.

The job took less time than he thought it would. Once he came up with a plan, he went back to the kitchen, tapped the bowed, splintered ends of the support beam back together with a rubber mallet, then braced it on either side with smaller pieces of wood that he screwed together. Like metal plates on a broken leg, he thought, feeling pretty good about himself.

Another look around the barn yielded a big canvas car cover and some blue waterproof tarp, which he used to cover the hole where the kitchen used to be, fixing it in place with a staple gun. It took more time collecting up the crap from the yard than it took
fixing the house. By the time the sun rose, he’d done all he could do, and he pulled the curtains in the living room and sank onto the couch, tired, but too wired to sleep.

He made a list of all the problems facing him, and it looked something like this in his head.

None of these problems could be solved on his own steam. He was going to have to enlist help. Which meant convincing Jessa not to rat him out to the townies. They seemed like the pitchforks-and-torches types.

When Jessa stumbled down the stairs, holding her head, he sprang to his feet to help her. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, in his best sensitive-guy voice. “I was worried about you.”

She pulled back, bleary eyes uncertain. “Stay back!”

“What?” He injected a little laugh into his statement. “Jessa, what’s the matter?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s the matter?’ You should be dead! I saw It attack you last night. I saw
what happened to you.” She retreated up a couple of steps. “What are you?”

He reached out a hand to soothe her, but she jerked violently away. Okay, so she wasn’t buying the concerned, nice-guy act. “You’re confused. You hit your head last night. I tried to get you help, but I couldn’t remember how to get back to that bar. And I was worried It would return.”

“No—you’re some kind of freak. I remember.” She glared at him, her anger overcoming her fear. “What are you?” she repeated.

He conjured up an image in his head of Sophia, what she would do when caught in a lie. The result was an imperious declaration of “You’re being ridiculous.”

“What are you?” Jessa shrieked, flying at him with fingers bent like talons. “What are you?”

He could either get his face scratched off by a demented hellcat, or do something that could potentially hurt her. He chose hurting her. He gripped her by her arms and tossed her from the landing to the floor at the bottom of the stairs. She writhed where she fell, gasping for the air that had been knocked out of her lungs. “Okay,” he said, dusting his hands off on each other as he leaned over her. “You want to know what I am? I’m a vampire. And I’m not in a very good mood.”

Her eyes widened and she struggled to her feet. He lunged for her, but she was surprisingly fast, and he
came up with empty arms as she threw open the front door and flooded the living room with sunlight.

The brightness and heat hit him like a special-effects explosion. He recoiled with a shout. Jessa crossed the porch, her tennis shoes the last thing he could see as she jumped from the top step and fled into the burning white.

He had to stop her. The sun—his most feared enemy—stood between him and her escape. If she told anyone, he would be in deep shit. If he went out there…

It was best not to think about it. He plunged headfirst through the door, trying to shield his burning eyes and still keep a bead on her as she raced across the lawn. She went for his car, not bothering to open the door—smart girl—but he got her as the top half of her body disappeared through the window. He grabbed her by one ankle and pulled her, fighting and screaming, onto the lawn. His skin blistered and charred, stiffening his movements, and he screamed as his exposed parts burst into flame. With as much strength as he could muster, he pulled her up the porch steps and into the house, slamming the door behind them.

He sank down, pain arcing like a 120-volt charge through every square inch of his body. His head lolled to the side. His eyelids, baked to his eyeballs, tried to close, but stuck open. Jessa scrambled forward on her hands and knees, and started to climb to her feet.
“If you take one more step I will not hesitate to kill you,” Graf wheezed, and she stopped, trembling, to face him.

“Vampires can’t go out in sunlight,” she whispered.

His natural inclination was to respond with “No shit, Sherlock,” but he restrained himself. She was in shock, and at this point, sarcasm would be lost on her. “No. We can’t.”

“Are you going to die?” There was something hard and hopeful in her voice that would have killed him if he were one of those sparkly movie vampires who gave a shit about what humans thought of him.

He tried to shake his head, but it hurt too much. It would be hard for her to believe, faced with some one who looked like a campfire-roasted hot dog, but he would be fine in a half hour. “No. Sorry to disappoint.”

Tension started at her feet and worked its way up. The muscles of her calves tensed; her fists clenched. The dumbfounded expression on her face tightened to cold fury. “You’re a part of It, aren’t you? You’re here because of It.”

“I’m here because I couldn’t get my fucking GPS to work.” The healing had started, deep in his muscles, working toward the burned surfaces like pieces of barbed shrapnel from an old war wound. “Whatever It is, I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve
never heard of a town being trapped for all eternity, either.”

“We’re not trapped for all eternity,” she snapped. “We’re going to get through this and get out of here. But I thought vampires knew about stuff like this. Aren’t you linked up with the rest of the oogie-boogie stuff in the world?”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug, the pull of his burned skin making the movement harder. “Not that I’m aware of. I know other vampires. I’ve never met anything like your It out there.”

“You’re lying.” She folded her arms over her chest and took a deep breath. “So, what do you eat, blood?”

“Yes.” No getting around that. If she knew about the sunlight, she’d know that vampires drank blood.

“Were you going to eat me?” She tapped her fingers on her arm, waiting.

“Yes,” he answered honestly. “But I can’t, now. Everyone has seen us together.”

Her eyes flared in anger, and she turned, as if she’d leave.

“Don’t do that,” he called after her. “I can still chase you. And I’m giving you this one chance.”

She turned again, stomped up to him, but didn’t touch him. Instead, she glared down at him, and he had no doubt that if he had cared, the hatred in her eyes would have burned him far worse than the sun
had. “You think I’m afraid of you? After you saw what I’ve been running from night after night? You think I’m afraid to die? I live in a tomb. If you think you’re going to intimidate me by threatening to kill me, go ahead. Kill me.”