Blood Like Poison (28 page)

Across from the daybed was a shelf that held a stereo and various pictures and mementos, along with rows and rows of CDs.  I trailed my fingers along them, reading the names as I went.   Bo was right; he listened to a little bit of everything. 

There was truly classic rock like Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones.  He had 80’s rock like Tesla, Motley Cru, and Def Leppard.  There was some 90’s music sprinkled in, bands like Nirvana, Dave Matthews Band, and Santana.  He even had a Backstreet Boys CD.  When I saw that one, I had to smile.

On top of that, he had a few country bands, some blues titles I vaguely recognized and a few more current groups like Train, Nickelback, The Fray and even some Pink.  He had a very eclectic palate.

Bo closed the door and walked to the stereo to turn it on.  When he hit play, I was curious to hear what he’d been listening to most recently.  I recognized the beginning guitar riff instantly.  It was Guns ‘n Roses,
Sweet Child O’ Mine
.

He turned to lean back against the wall, crossing his feet at the ankles and his arms over his chest.  He seemed content to quietly watch me as I looked around.

I pointed to a picture of an older man, a face that was featured in all of the pictures scattered around.  “Is this your dad?”

Bo nodded. 

I figured as much.  In some pictures, he was by himself.  In some pictures he was with Bo’s mother.  But in every picture, he was there, like the image of a ghost that refused to fade with time.   I thought of Izzy’s room.  I knew all about those kinds of hauntings.

My heart ached for Bo’s loss.  It wasn’t a shrine really, but I could see that Bo probably got a lot of his motivation from the articles in this room.  His relationship with his dad was written all over the place.

There was a baseball mitt, a football, some tennis balls with faces drawn on them, a floppy fishing hat and fishing pole.  There were some model cars and a model airplane, projects I guessed Bo completed with his father.  The whole room was like the sad history of a life cut short and the evidence of a son who couldn’t let go.

The one thing that I found odd was that Bo was not featured in any of the pictures with his family.  I wanted to ask him about it, but I’d already done enough to taint his good mood.  I could wait until another time to find my answers.

I slid my eyes over to Bo.  He was watching me closely, an inscrutable look on his face.  I glanced away quickly.  I felt as if I was intruding on a very intimate family gathering.

“He would’ve liked you.”  When Bo finally spoke, the thick walls absorbed the words as soon as they left his lips.  Behind the music, the room was an eerie kind of quiet, almost tomblike.

 “What was he like?”

Bo leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes on the low ceiling, a sad smile curving his lips. 

“He was great.  He taught me everything,” he said.  “He always said he wanted to prepare me to do anything I wanted to do, to ‘take the world by storm’, he’d say.”  He laughed, a bitter bark of a sound, and then his eyelids drifted shut.  “He didn’t deserve the death they gave him.”

“What happened to him?”

“As far as I can remember, there were two guys at his throat.  They attacked him so viciously, they almost decapitated him.  He was nearly drained of blood.  The coroner’s report said he was dead within seconds.”

“And you had to watch?”

Bo’s eyes opened to meet mine.  They were fathomless pools of agony.  “They were stronger than you can imagine.  Even after years of playing sports, of football and weightlifting, they held me easily.  There were two more guys holding me and a girl was watching.  She said she wanted me to watch, that she wanted my heart pumping for her.  Pumping hard.”

I covered my mouth with my fingers.  I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to cry or be sick.  Probably both.

“Then what happened?”  It was so gruesome, I could hardly stand it, but I had to know what happened to Bo and to his father, what had caused this need for revenge that was costing him his life.

“When they were finished with Dad, they held me while she bit me.  She went wild when she tasted my blood, said that it was sweet, that she could taste the power in it.

“The other two started complaining about wanting to feed, but she wouldn’t let them.  My guess is that she decided to keep me for herself, but the two guys holding me didn’t like the new plan.  One of them attacked her, just let go of my arm and pounced on her. 

“The other one held on, but he was distracted by the fight.  I guess my adrenaline was jacked up, so I was finally able to get away from him.  I went to check on Dad,” Bo said, closing his eyes again, this time in remembered pain.  “But he was already gone.”

Bo shook his head.  “Anyway, I looked back and they were tearing each other apart, blood and spit flying everywhere.  I took off, ran as fast as I could to an old cabin in the woods, one I’d seen several times when we’d been hunting.  I remember banging on the door, but no one answered.  I knew I needed to get away, but I didn’t have the energy to go any further.  I remember falling against the door and sliding down to the ground.  I guess I passed out there.  That’s all I remember until I woke up like…this.”

“Bo,” I breathed, my heart breaking for him.

“When she bit me, she must’ve injected me.  I found out later that she did it on purpose.  She wanted to keep me as some sort of weird drinking buddy, almost like a mate.”

“How do you know that?”

Bo paused, giving me the strangest look before he answered.  “I saw it in her memories when I drained her.”

I tried to remain calm, not to get all judgmental about Bo talking so casually about murder.  All I had to do was remind myself what they’d done to his father and it didn’t seem quite so bad anymore.  I’m sure, for Bo, it was more than adequate justification for killing them.

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Jolene Turner.”

I remembered the name.  I’d heard the news report about her death a couple weeks ago.

“That was you?”

Bo nodded solemnly.

“They thought it was the...the…”  I couldn’t finish the sentence.  I couldn’t get the name
Southmoore Slayer
past my numb lips.

CHAPTER TEN

A number I’d heard in the news report kept running through my head like a ticker tape. 
Twenty-seven.  Twenty-seven.  Twenty-seven.

“No,” Bo said, casting his eyes down.

“No what?”  My breath was coming in short, quick pants.

“No, I didn’t kill all of them.”

I closed my eyes and a sigh of relief blew through my lips.  “Thank God,” I whispered.  “How—” 

I stopped myself from asking how many Bo had killed.  Information like that would only make things harder, and I didn’t need things to get any harder.

“Never mind,” I said.  “So, you still haven’t been able to find the one who killed your father, right?”

“No.”

“And you won’t stop until you do?”  I couldn’t keep the bitter edge from my voice.

“There’s no point.  I’m dying.  Nothing can change that.  If I give up now, it will all be for nothing,” he said, pushing himself off the wall and stepping toward me.  “My death and the life I’ll never have with you will have been for nothing.”

My chest squeezed painfully.  I couldn’t bear to think about it, much less talk about Bo dying.

As I looked into his eyes, I could see that demons were eating away at him on the inside, and I doubted things were going to get any better.  He’d started down a path that he couldn’t come back from.  He’d chosen a fate that he was locked into—no way out, no going back.  And now, like it or not, I was traveling that road with him.  My fate was going to be just as ugly, at least for my heart.  I could see that our epic love story was going to end badly.  And there was nothing I could do about it.

In an effort to avoid bursting into tears like an emotionally unstable psychopath, I looked back to the framed pictures dotting the shelf to my right.  I saw the smiling, happy faces of Bo’s parents.

“What does your mom think about all this?”

Bo shrugged.  “She’s devastated, of course.  But even though she’s not at all pleased with my choice, she understands it. She’s tried to help me as much as she can.  She gets me bagged blood to help me keep my strength.  She’s been taking samples of my blood to the lab, trying to find a cure, or at least a way to slow the effects of the poison.  She’s been great.”

A cure?  My eyes darted back to him.  I latched on to the mere suggestion of hope with both hands and I held on tight.  “Has she found anything?”

Bo shook his head in defeat.  “No.  And I don’t think she will.  Not in time anyway.”

“Is that why she seemed kind of…sad to meet me?”

Bo’s grin had a hint of irony behind it.  “Yeah.  In school, I guess I was a pretty typical guy.  You know, string of semi-serious girlfriends, lots of texts from lots of different people in between, all that.  She was always after me to settle on one.”

He chuckled at some memory.  “She used to complain and say I left a trail of broken hearts that she had to clean up.  They’d all call and cry on her shoulder.”

When Bo looked at me, his expression changed.  The look on my face must’ve plainly indicated my displeasure.  I wasn’t liking the Bo I was hearing about, the one I hadn’t met, and I doubted very much that I would’ve wanted to know him.

“In that way, what’s happened to me hasn’t been all bad.  I met you,” he said, tucking my hair behind my ear.  “Being…this has changed me in ways that I can’t describe, but not all of them are bad.”

Needing to hear something positive, I asked, “Like what?  What good has come of it?”

“You,” he said, as if that was enough.

“What else?”

“Besides you?”

I nodded.

“I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.  I don’t need much sleep.  I heal almost instantly.  I can hear and smell and see things a thousand times more clearly and farther away.  I can run fast, jump high, move more quickly than human eyes can see.  I can be invisible if I need to be,” he said, adding that last with a sardonic smirk.

“Huh,” I said, at a loss as to how to respond to that.  Tossing my hair over my shoulder dramatically, I said, “Well, little did you know, but I can do all of those things, too.”

Bo’s grin widened and he reached out and set his hands at my waist.

“Is that right?”

“Oh, yeah.  You didn’t know I have super powers?”

“Oh, trust me.  I knew you had some kind of power.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I’ll bet.”

“What about aging.  Do you age?”

“Not really.  You?”

I pursed my lips.  “Occasionally.”

Getting into the spirit, he countered, “Can you grow limbs?”

“No, but my sister’s pet lizard could drop his tail off and grow a new one.”

He smiled at that.  “Touché.”

“See, you’re not so special.”