Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (14 page)

“‘We I have boy Give us fruit or hurt he,’” V
said. “What the fuck does that even…” She looked up from the note
as she finally realized its implication. “Oh my God. Brendan.
Where’s Brendan?”

“Gone,” Zoey said. “Gone away. All things go
away, even if you don’t die.”

“He’s been taken,” Peg said. “That much I’m
able to figure out.”

“Jesus H. Fucking Christ on shit-covered
toast!” V said. “Peg, I’m sorry, but we’ve got to call the
cops!”

“You promised,” Peg said.

“Yeah, I promised, but that was when I
thought, I don’t know, that Tony was beating you and you’d taken a
meat clever to his Johnsonville bratwurst!”

“Wait, what?” Peg asked.

“Your husband has been murdered and your son
has been kidnapped. Now I don’t care how much I hate the pigs, in
this situation I think, oh, maybe we should
fucking call
them
!”

“We can’t,” Peg said.

“Why the flying fuck not?”

Peg hesitated, staring down at the floor.

“What?” V asked. “What is it? There’s still
something you’re not telling me?”

Peg sighed. “Zoey? Show her.”

“I don’t want to,” Zoey said.

“You have to. Just like we talked about. It’s
the only way she’ll believe.”

“Believe what?” V asked.

“She might try to kill me,” Zoey said
softly.

“No she won’t,” Peg said, silently adding in
her head,
Only I’m the one who would apparently try that
. “I
trust her.”

“Peg, why do I have the feeling that I’m
really not going to like this?” V asked.

“What’s to like?” Peg asked, then looked at
Zoey. “Do it.”

Peg didn’t see Zoey move. One moment she was
huddled in her corner, the next she was standing in front of V,
only inches from her voice, and flashing her sharp pearly whites at
the older woman. Then Zoey was back in her spot, but not before V
did something Peg had never heard her do in the entire time they
had known each other. V screamed.

“Fuck!” She nearly tripped over her own feet
as she belatedly tried to back away from the girl that wasn’t even
in front of her anymore. “Shit fuck! Holy… fuck fuck!”

“That was kind of my reaction too,” Peg said
wearily. “Except with fewer fucks.”

“What is… I don’t… Holy shit,” V said. She
stopped stumbling and took up a position on the far end of the room
from Zoey. Surprisingly it didn’t take too long before V caught her
breath. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all. If she could
walk into a kitchen and not freak out over a head on the floor then
maybe it would only take slightly longer to regain her composure in
the face of a vampire. “Peg, tell me what the shit is going on
here.”

“I still don’t really know,” Peg said. “All
I’m sure of is that Zoey’s a vampire.”

“Horse shit,” V said. “There’s no such
thing.”

“Apparently there is,” Peg said. She was
amazed at just how easily it was for her to say that now. Just over
half a day ago she still hadn’t been able to make herself even say
the v word, yet now she was talking about it as though she were an
expert. “You’re going to have to trust me on this one. You know I’m
not the gullible type. I wouldn’t be saying this unless I had seen
more than enough proof.”

V stepped away from her place and cautiously
came closer to Zoey. Zoey didn’t look too comfortable with the
attention. She shifted in her spot, turning away from V and
scrunching up into an even tighter ball. V must have taken this as
a hint and took a few steps back again.

“Okay, so maybe I’ll say I believe you for
now,” V said. “Although I think I’ll probably have to have a little
proof later, like I’ll need to see her turn into a bat or, I don’t
know, sparkle or some shit.”

Zoey looked up with obvious confusion. “Why
would I sparkle?”

“Nothing, honey,” Peg said. “You really don’t
want to know.”

“So if she didn’t kill Tony, what did?” V
asked. “Another vampire?”

“Eyes,” Zoey said.

“I don’t know,” Peg said. “Every time I ask I
get the same string of word salad. Whatever it is, it has her
scared shitless. Although given… uh, the mark… on Tony’s neck, I
guess maybe it’s some kind of super vampire?”

“No,” Zoey said. “No no no. Worse.”

“Worse how?” V asked.

“Eating eating,” Zoey said. “All things eat.
Everything is eaten by something. Plants eaten by animals. Animals
eaten by people. Humans eaten by vampires. It doesn’t stop.”

V looked to Peg. “Is any of this making sense
to you?”

Peg made the motion of her hand whooshing
over her head. V shrugged and looked again at the note. “Well,
whoever wrote this seems to have taken the same piss-poor teacher
in coherent speaking. So I’m guessing that ‘We I have boy’ refers
to Brendan. What about all this other gibberish?”

“From some of the other things Zoey has been
saying I think she’s supposed to be the fruit.”

“Why is she fruit?”

“Hell if I know. But when you put that all
together…” Peg trailed off. She knew V could figure it out for
herself and she really couldn’t bring herself to admit the choice
in front of Zoey. She just hoped V had the tact to not say it
either.

Thankfully V took the hint and just nodded at
Peg. “Right,” V said. She flipped the note over to look at the
back, but there was nothing there. “Um, I think whoever did this
made a serious mistake. If this fucker wants… the fruit in exchange
for Brendan, then how would we even do that? There’re no
instructions here for the trade off.”

“I don’t know,” Peg said. “I… guess I haven’t
been thinking clear enough to wonder that far ahead yet.”

“Dark,” Zoey said. “Eyes are not fruit, but
they remember being fruit. Fruit grows best in the darkness.”

“Kid, I don’t think you know very much about
gardening,” V said.

Zoey acted like she didn’t hear. “Dark,
abandoned. Near the water. Eyes are part of the body. The body is a
combination. The combination has a home. Home is wet.”

“I give up,” V said to Peg.

“No, wait,” Peg said. “I think that makes
sense.”

“If you think that makes sense then maybe
you’re becoming a Fruit Loop, too.”

“But I didn’t tell you about my talk with my
mother last night,” Peg said. She gave an abbreviated version,
cutting out the worst of the mental abuse and every single thing
that had come after. “Based on what she said and what Zoey said, I
think the place she was kept was somewhere near Lake Winnebago.
There’s old limestone caves around that whole area along the east
side.”

“How the hell would you know that?” V
asked.

“A field trip in elementary school. We went
to some park around there, I don’t remember the name, but I thought
it was all cool enough that I actually paid attention. For all the
caves that have been found and are public knowledge there’s
probably a whole bunch that no one knows about. I think Zoey said
something about an old or abandoned building hiding it. Or at least
that was the best I could interpret.”

“So you think whoever has Brendan would be
hiding in some place similar?”

“I guess. That’s what Zoey seems to be
implying, at least, and whether we understand her or not she would
be the one to know best.”

“So what fits that profile?”

“I don’t know. Are there any empty houses
along any of the lakes?”

“The way the housing market is? A whole
bunch, I think,” V said. “There’s that building on Main Street just
across and over from Kowabunga Comics, too. It’s been empty for
awhile.”

“Hiding on Main Street? That doesn’t seem
like it would work.”

“Except behind it there’s nothing but that
tiny parking area and then the lake. They could go in through a
back door and not many people would see them, especially if this
thing can move as fast as her.” She pointed in the corner, then did
a double take. “Oh fuck me running.”

Zoey’s corner was empty. Peg looked to the
front door to see it still in the process of swinging open. There
might have been a blur just outside, but it was gone before she
could be sure.

Peg knew that she
had to be strong. She had to be tough. She had to be the closest
she could possibly come to some action movie heroine. She just
couldn’t do it, not right now. V thankfully took that role so Peg
wouldn’t have to, allowing her the time for a much needed moment of
pure breakdown.

It started as they were leaving the house. V
had her truck here and said they would need to move quickly if they
were going to find Zoey—and hopefully Brendan along with her—before
something terrible happened. At those words Peg turned around and
walked right back into the house. V called to her from outside,
practically screaming in a way they probably shouldn’t if they
didn’t want the neighbors any more alerted than they already might
be, but Peg ignored her. Before something terrible happened. Of
course, V had apparently forgotten in her take-charge mother-hen
moment, something terrible had already happened, was still
happening, would not stop happening any time soon. Tony was still
in the refrigerator and his head was still on the floor. It
wouldn’t occur to her until later how irrational it was, but Peg
had a sudden and undeniable need. She calmly walked into the
kitchen, found a hand towel under the sink, then went to Tony’s
head and carefully wrapped it. She didn’t want anything to damage
it more than it already was. She then opened the fridge, barely
registering the thing inside as something she should have
recognized as more than bloody meat, and put the head inside,
carefully tucking it under an arm so it wouldn’t fall out
again.

When she closed the refrigerator and turned
around V was standing there. She slowly came up to Peg and wrapped
an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, sweetie. I promise you we’ll
take good care of him later.”

Peg knew how crazy it was to find that
comforting, but she did anyway.

Once they were in the truck V started
driving, but they didn’t know where exactly to go first. “If she
can really stay that fast she could have checked all the empty
houses around here by now,” V said. “I don’t really know where to
start.”

“It’s… not any of the houses?” Peg asked, not
really certain why the words came out as a question.

“What do you mean?” V asked.

“I don’t know, it’s just… not in any of the
houses.” She was certain this time, but she didn’t know why. When
she thought of any empty houses around here she felt a sudden
annoyance and impatience. For some strange reason she almost felt
like she’d already checked them. “The empty store. We should try
there.”

They passed a liquor store on the way
downtown. Peg couldn’t help but stare at it as they went by. She
also noticed that V slowed down in front of it before speeding back
up and heading on their way.

Oconomowoc was small enough that downtown
wasn’t terribly busy at this time of morning on a weekday. They
probably could have stopped out front and gone to look in the empty
windows without anyone getting too suspicious, but V went right
past the building and instead turned on the driveway that led to
the back. The parking lot behind the buildings was small, holding
only one other car at the moment behind the Chinese place, and just
a few feet away from the lot a path led to the wooden boardwalk
around the lake. The water level was high right now after the
incredibly wet and cold spring, and the town might need to prepare
itself for the possibility of a flood soon, but for now it was
peaceful and innocent-looking. It was not at all the kind of place
anyone should have thought to look for vampires.

“Sorry Peg, but this looks like a dead end,”
V said.

“What do you mean?” Peg asked. She absently
scratched at the skin on her arms. She felt oddly exposed out here,
even a little sick.

“Well, just look,” V said. She pointed at the
back of the building. Peg had never really paid enough attention to
downtown to remember what had once been here, but it looked like it
had been empty for a long time. Leaves and litter had piled up
against the back door and the padlock holding it closed had
rusted.

“I don’t know,” Peg said. That strange
annoyance when they’d started hadn’t come back. She wasn’t
experiencing that deep conviction that this was the incorrect
place. But then she didn’t know why she should be paying that
feeling any mind in the first place. It was irrational and she knew
very well that she couldn’t trust herself to think clearly.

The emotions hit her hard and fast, invading
her brain and then disappearing before she could physically react.
As they passed Peg stumbled slightly and V immediately moved to
steady her.

“You alright?” V asked.

“I don’t know. I think so?”

“What was that?”

Peg shook her head. Trying to explain it
would take too long. The sudden burst of emotions had been so clear
and decipherable, but they hadn’t been hers. The most predominant
had been fear, but not like any she’d felt in her life. Even after
this morning she couldn’t say she’d ever been that terrified of
anything. Peg didn’t even know what could possibly create that
level of mind-numbing horror. And yet under that had been a
conviction that was she was doing was absolutely the right thing, a
certainty powered by one final emotion beneath all the others: a
deep, pure, unquestioning love.

“This is the place,” Peg said instead.

“What? How can you be sure?”

“I don’t know. I’m not… really sure what is
happening to me. But I know. She’s in there right now. And I don’t
think she’s alone.”

V gave her a glance that lasted less than a
second, but in that simple gesture Peg could see so many things
going on in V’s head. She was probably concerned, and she had every
right to be. Peg knew that what she had just said was not rational,
and under the circumstances she could be forgiven for not being
able to embrace logic. But V said nothing about it. Peg wasn’t sure
if it was just V humoring her or if she actually trusted Peg’s
judgment on this, but all she said was, “Then how do we get in? How
did
they
get in?”