Damon (33 page)

“Yeah. I’m so sorry.”

“It was Dad. I saw him… and tried to stop him….”

I held him, trying to think of what to say. Trying to surmise where he’d been and what had happened. I couldn’t have left him alone at Corky’s for more than ten or fifteen minutes. But in those fifteen minutes, all hell had erupted. “It’s all right. It’s all over now.”

“They caught him and I ran. I hated him so much… I ran.”

“You did the right thing. He would have got you killed, too.”

His body shivered violently against me. “I wanted them to catch him… and kill him. He was a freak, dressed up in a red suit. But I saw his eyes. I knew those eyes. I knew them.”

“He needed to be caught. He was so dangerous and sick, Damon.”

“I’ll end up just like that.” He let out a miserable moan. “Next year, I’ll be just like him.”

“No, you won’t. We’ll figure something out.”

He didn’t respond, but his muscles stiffened and he pushed himself back. The sight of him again gave me a second stab of alarm.

“We have to get you to the doctor.”

“No, it’s nothing,” he said, reaching up to hold my face. “You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

He kissed me with dry lips and rested his forehead against mine.

“What happened to you?” I asked. “Why is your face all bruised?”

Damon reached up to touch his bruised cheek as if he’d forgotten about it. “He hit me in the face with a fireplace poker. The cops came up and I left him there to be caught. I ran to find you and ended up here.”

Verna arrived with a plate of food and a mug of coffee for me. “It looks worse than it is. I don’t think anything’s broken. I gave him a couple of acetaminophen for the pain.”

He looked so awful I could barely believe that. “Are you sure?”

“Honey, you know I was a nurse for thirty years. But you can take him down to the clinic if you don’t believe me. Anne Wainwright opens the doors at eight.” She lifted an icepack from the table. “Put that back on your eye.”

I held the icepack to his eye and looked around for a clock.

Verna checked her wristwatch. “Almost seven. You two can relax here for a while. Eat up. You need your energy. That was quite an ordeal this morning.”

I didn’t think either really knew how much of an ordeal it had been. I didn’t want Damon to know I’d been at Corky’s, and had seen everything. I wanted all of that to disappear. He didn’t need my descriptions haunting him for the rest of his life. I would have to suffer that alone.

Damon nodded at my plate and gave me a significant glance. So, I forced myself to eat. We’d be leaving soon, leaving this town forever, and we’d both need our energy to make the trip.

When I’d eaten all I could without throwing up, Mrs. Jarvis made a slight moaning sound and leaned forward.

“I promised Chester,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment and shaking her head, “but I think the time has come for you both to know something.”

I sat back feeling more tired than I had before I’d eaten. “They told us. About the beast in the cave and all that. Having to run away and change your names.” I lowered my voice. “Killing a man accidentally.”

She pursed her lips and closed her eyes for another long moment. “Yes, I know. Bella told me. This is something else.”

She got up and left the table. Damon and I passed a glance but could only wait for her to return, which she did within a minute, holding a folded sheet of paper.

“Elliot gave me this,” she said, handing me the paper and sitting again. “He spent fifty years searching, and finally found something.”

I unfolded the paper but only saw a few lines of handwriting before Damon took the paper.

“What is it?” I asked Verna.

“It’s a place,” she said. “We all talked about it and decided it was a mistake. But, now I’m not so sure. Honestly, I think Chester just doesn’t want you to leave. He thinks of you as his granddaughter.” She reached across the table to pat my hand. “As we all do. You were the good one, Magpie. Special to us all.”

I smiled at her. She hadn’t called me that in ages.

“This is it!” Damon yelled.

I took the paper from him. On it was a hand-drawn map and written directions. I turned back to Verna. “Chester already gave us directions to the cave.”

She looked down at her lap and then held out something. A small plastic bag with something red inside. I took it and looked it over. A clump of red fur. Bright, candy apple red fur.

“I got that,” Verna said. “That day in the cave. I never knew I had it in me, and Bella and your Gram would have told you the same thing. When that thing came after us, we fought, all of us, like wildcats. I got a handful of this fur. I ripped it right out of its body. I never knew I had it in me to fight until that day. I wanted to kill that thing. Luckily, Elliot took care of it with his pickax. But I kept that. As proof of what we’d seen and what happened. It’s the only real proof we have. Name an animal that has fur like that. Not orange like a cat or fox but true red like that. I can’t. Don’t open the bag, but you can see follicles still there. I never knew what to do with it. Who to show it to.”

Damon looked at the fur, but was more interested in the written directions. “What’s here?” he asked. He nodded vigorously. “It’s the place, isn’t it? The hidden village. Where they all live.”

“So your granddad claimed. He said he spied on them with binoculars but was afraid to go up. He said he saw one turn from a red beast to a man right before his eyes. Just as happened that day down in the cave. He says he found a village. Whether it’s true or not, I can’t say. Chester says no. He says Elliot drove himself crazy searching. He was desperate to save his son.” She looked at me, her eyes misting. “And your poor mama. Chester says he imagined it and I’m sure he’ll be right vexed at me for telling you about it. But I don’t want to see the police over at your house, sugar, shooting you both full of holes.”

She reached for the bag of red fur. “Like it or not, you both have this thing’s blood in you. It bit Harold… your Grampa Harvey, and Davy’s Grandma Beverly. That’s when I got that handful of fur, when it got Beverly down and was clamped onto her neck like a pit bull. I just started grabbing at it and ripping out hair. When it was dead, I thought to keep some of it. For evidence.”

She smiled at Damon. “We called her Carol Ann back then. Her mama’s name was Beverly. Did you know that? That’s why she chose that name.”

Damon glanced at her but his eyes were glazed and I could see he was already on the road, traveling to this hidden village to find our people. Beast humans who could transform in the blink of an eye, and who probably craved blood. Possible vampires.

Mrs. Jarvis shook her head when she realized Damon had no interest in his own family history. I knew as far as he was concerned, these red vampire beasts were his family. And mine.

And they lived in a village together. Where we belonged.

Elliot must have told Damon about the village sometime before he’d died. Only, he’d failed to give Damon directions.

“They’re everywhere,” Damon said, staring off at sights we couldn’t imagine. “They walk among us. They turn to human form and walk right past us.” He jumped and looked down at his left arm as if something had touched him. “They look us in the eye and smile because we don’t know their secret.”

“Is that something your granddad told you?” I asked him.

He turned to me suddenly, suppressing a grin. “It was tall,” he told me, “as tall as me, and covered in red fur, red as Santa’s suit. And it had eyes just like ours. Silver and powerful. It was dark way down in the cave, but I had a flashlight. He came out of the shadows on all fours and then stood up and walked. He had a human face, except for the fur and these sharp, jagged teeth. I just stood there, too amazed to move, Maggie, and he looked at me with this curious expression. He tried to communicate with me telepathically, but I couldn’t understand most of it. I couldn’t respond.”

I wasn’t sure if he was repeating something his granddad had told him, or maybe something Elliot had written in his novel, or if Damon had actually found a beast in the cave, but I’d come to the point where I had to believe such creatures existed. Like it or not, as Mrs. Jarvis had said.

“Wow,” I said. “I wish I’d been there.”

He scratched my cheek lightly with his fingernail. “It touched my cheek with a claw and smelled me over, then he stepped back, dropped to all fours, and disappeared in the darkness. He smelled his blood in my veins. He recognized me as his own kind and let me go. We’re so close, Maggie.”

Damon picked up the bag of fur and even though Mrs. Jarvis made a disapproving sound, opened the bag and took out the clump of fur. He smelled it and touched it against his cheek. Then he settled down to thoroughly inspect the fur.

“This is real,” he said, speaking softly as if to himself. “Not from a fake suit. I remember this.”

Damon looked up at Mrs. Jarvis. “Why didn’t you kill us?”

“
Kill
you?” she repeated, her eyes widening.

“When you all knew we were poisoned. Why didn’t you kill us? We’re monsters. We’re the children of monsters.”

“Because we don’t go around killing people,” Mrs. Jarvis answered, obviously offended. “And we didn’t know for years what was happening, and why.”

“It seems like you could have told us, though,” I said. I tried not to sound angry, because I wasn’t, really, but I was hurt that I, and Mama, had been lied to all our lives.

“To what end?” she said, her voice rising. “We couldn’t do anything about it. Our story sounds ridiculous. No one would ever believe us.”

I nodded because she was over seventy and I didn’t want to upset her. She’d always been nice to me and she’d helped out a lot with Mama over the years, never asking for anything in return. “That’s true. I understand.”

She let out a hard breath and seemed to calm down, a little. “You know we all feel responsible, not that we could have done anything to stop it. And we never could figure out a way to fix it. So, we just did our best and did what we could.”

“I know,” I told her. “You’re right. You were all like grandparents to me growing up. Well, you still are. I’d have been completely alone with Mama after Gram died if you all hadn’t been there.”

Tears came to her eyes. She reached out as if to pat my hand but then pulled back. “Oh my lord, Maggie. You’re right and I’m still lying to you. Right now. I know something. Something the others never knew. I never told them. I couldn’t.” The tears multiplied and ran down her cheeks. She quickly grabbed a napkin and dabbed her eyes. “I’m so ashamed.”

Damon and I both stared at her, wildly. And waited for whatever she had to say.

She took a sip of water from her glass and then cleared her throat. She glanced at us both, barely, before looking down at her lap. “My husband, Joseph, was killed down in that cave, that day. The beast got on him first before we knew what was happening. I’d heard stories of people getting mauled by a bear but I’d never seen it. But that’s what happened to my poor Joseph. It was like a tornado, tossing him all around. Before we could blink, he was dead. And then it came after us.”

A moment passed before I could think what to say. “I know. Chester told us. I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

She glanced at me, her eyes bloodshot and watery. “We met when I went up to Huntington for a family funeral. It was one of those things you hear about, knowing right off. Love at first sight. We married before I left back for home. A little like you two, I suppose. He come with me. Came. He came home with me. The others were not too keen on the idea because I’d left one day Vivian Davis and came back a week later Vivian Jarvis. It was a surprise. I refused to change my name after we all left. I wouldn’t do that.” She shook her head stubbornly. “I said okay to changing my first name to Elverna, after my grandmamma, but I wouldn’t give up Jarvis. We’d only had seventeen days together but as far as I’m concerned, them seventeen days was my whole life. And I never looked at another man since.”

I could relate to that. But I didn’t understand part of her story. “Why are you ashamed of that?”

“Because I see him,” she said softly, again barely glancing at me. “I see him sometimes. We took him home and buried him. We had to do it in secret because we didn’t know how to explain what’d happened.” She hiccupped and her voice rose to a high soft peak. “He was torn all to shreds. Excuse me.”

She got up and left the room and Damon and I sat in silence. He was still fiddling with the red fur and looking at the directions to the hidden village, and I wasn’t sure he was listening, but I was officially upset.

It broke my heart to think of losing him so soon after finding him. And it broke my heart to think of Mrs. Jarvis suffering all these years, all these decades. More than half a century. I couldn’t imagine how she’d endured it.

Unless….

She’d seen him since his death. What if….

“That makes sense,” Damon said. “He turned into a vampire. He’s still alive.”

I knew I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised every time he read my mind. “But why didn’t the others change? Your grandmother and my grandfather. Why didn’t they turn into vampires?”

“Probably didn’t drink any of the vampire’s blood.”

“And Joseph Jarvis did?”

“During the brawl, maybe,” he said, nodding. He sat back and stared at the ceiling in thought. “Or, he was one to begin with. Maybe the vampire recognized him by his scent.”

“But you said you found the vampire in the cave and he let you go because he recognized you as one of his own kind.”

Damon nodded, still staring at the ceiling. “That might not have been true.”

“Damon,” I said, resisting the urge to snap my fingers in his face. I wanted his attention. “What’s going on?”

He let out a sigh and sat forward, finally looking at me. “I’m not sure. I might have dreamed it or read it in Granddad’s book. I’m not sure. It seemed real. But… maybe it wasn’t. I can’t think straight anymore.”

“Then where did you go when you were gone all that time?”

He shrugged. “I think I went to the mountains.” Tears came to his eyes and he reached for my hand. “No, I went home. I went to Granddad’s in Nashville. I remember that. I needed something…. His notes. I needed his box of notes. My father was there, dressed in that stupid red suit he’d had in the basement for years. He said he was a vampire.”