Pale Immortal (14 page)

That got Graham's attention. He looked a little startled.

"This isn't going to be easy, but we'll get through it. We'll figure it out."

"So . .. what now?"

"I think you should continue to see the school counselor. Maybe twice a week if possible. At least for a while. I'll call and see what we can arrange. Maybe once a week we can both meet with her."

"No, I mean, what
now?
Am I staying?"

"No matter what happens, you'll always have a home here."

"No matter what happens? What will happen?"

"We have to find your mother. Legally she still has custody."

"But I'm sixteen."

"That doesn't matter." Evan paused. "Sixteen? I thought you were fifteen."

"I turned sixteen."

"When?"

"The ninth. The day after you sprang me outta jail."

Something else to feel guilty about. ..

After Graham was asleep, Evan went to the kitchen cupboard and pulled out the red box. Empty. What difference did tea from England make at a time like this? He had a son. A son he hadn't been aware of until recently.

Sick, confused and distracted, Evan prepared a cup of tea from the antique tin.

How could he have had a son all these years and never known it? How could he fix it? What did the future hold for Graham? And Lydia—where in the hell was Lydia?

He drank the tea.

When he was finished, he broke out in a sweat, his heart beating oddly in his chest. Had the shock been too much? Was he having a heart attack?

The room began to spin. He reached for the edge of the table, missed, and tumbled to the floor.

Consciousness slowly returned, and Evan found himself staring up at the ceiling, hyperaware of his body. He could feel blood pumping through his veins.

He rolled to his knees and staggered to his feet. Upright, he shrugged into his coat and left the house, plunging into the darkness of the streets, pulling the night air deep into his lungs.

One hundred years. Seventeen years. Death. Birth.

Rebirth...

He came upon a frat house that vibrated with music and light and loud voices. A girl drunkenly lunged out the front door.

"Kristin!" another girl shouted after her from inside.

Kristin waved her away with a floppy hand, stumbled and weaved ten feet, then fell forward on the ground. She spotted Evan in the shadows and started to smile, then stopped. "Hey. You're that guy." She pointed. "The vampire."

Alcohol and drugs took over, and she passed out.

Evan's ears picked up sounds. Voices and shuffling feet.

Coming toward him on the sidewalk was a group of kids—teenage males dressed in black clothes, their boots unlaced and dragging over the cement. As they drew closer there was a moment of mutual recognition. The Pale Immortals.

Pain jerked Kristin March into unconsciousness, and she screamed.

"Shut her up! Shut her up!"

She sucked in air to scream again. Something was jammed in her mouth. Fabric. Rotten, stinking fabric.

"Screaming's not cool," said another voice.

"Nobody can hear her here."

The sharp pain in her wrist that woke her up now gave way to warmth.

Drip, drip, drip.

"Don't miss any."

Her head felt swollen; her arms were heavy, deadweights. She tried to raise a hand to her face, but couldn't. Her fingers felt thick and fat as sausages.

Moving. Things were moving. Sick. She felt sick. But the fabric ... stuffed in her mouth. What would happen if she vomited?

Swaying. Turning.

She opened her eyes.

Flickering lights.
Candles.
Dark shapes of people.

She blinked. And blinked again. Things were messed up. Things weren't right. Everything was upside down.

Someone touched her. That started the swaying motion again.
She
was upside down. That's why her head and arms felt so heavy.

The last thing she remembered was being at a party. She'd done a keg stand. She was the queen of keg stands. Wasted. Staggered outside for some fresh air. She remembered seeing that guy. That vampire freak, Evan Stroud .. .

Now this.

Sleepy.

Getting sleepy. Couldn't keep her eyes open.

"Don't let her bleed out," one of the voices said. "We want to keep her alive, at least for a while."

Keep her alive. At least for a while.

Above her something creaked and groaned.

More from the disembodied voices: "How much do you have?"

Who was that? Somebody she knew?

"The bowl is almost full. Eight, ten ounces anyway."

"That's enough for now."

Fingers on her arm. Something wrapped around her wrist. Then they moved away.

Must be a dream... had to be a dream ... bad weed. She'd always heard bad weed could make you see crazy shit.... Bad weed laced with something. Poison or something. Or a roofie. Maybe somebody slipped her a roofie....

Open your eyes, Kristin.

Was that her voice? Didn't sound like her voice.

Open your eyes.

She forced her eyes open. She was so fucked up, so tired, and everything was upside down and dark. But she could see them. Standing in a cluster, drinking from a bowl.

Drugs and alcohol made you stupid. That's what her mama was always saying. Kristin finally believed it. Because it wasn't until that second that she put it all together. That she realized the buncha funky-assed white boys were drinking her blood. And wiping it on their faces and bare chests. The Pale Immortals, that's who they were.

Someone else showed up, but he was behind her, out of her field of vision. She could tell by his voice that he was an adult and the boss. He was angry about something. He lifted her arm, her wrist, and began sucking....

Wake up, girl.

Kristin slowly came around.

Creak, creak, creak.

She opened her eyes.

Dark.

She listened, but all she heard was the creaking overhead.

They were gone.

With a burst of adrenaline, pissed and scared, she bucked and twisted.

Something cracked and gave. A second later she hit the floor, smacking her head, landing hard, the wind knocked out of her.

She recovered quickly and didn't waste any time. The sound of the breaking beam would bring on the crazies, if any crazies were close. She tugged the fabric from her mouth—a sock—and untied the rope from her ankles. She didn't wait for shit. She just ran. And she could run like hell.

Seymour Burton pulled into the hospital parking lot, cut the engine, and entered the building through the main doors. He'd gotten a call about a girl named Kristin March found wandering barefoot and half naked along the old highway outside Tuonela in the predawn hours by a farmer up early to check on his calving heifers. Seymour had already looked the girl up and found she'd been arrested a couple of times for underage drinking. Not a big offense, as far as Seymour was concerned, but drinking often led to other things kids that age weren't mature enough to handle.

Seymour met with the victim's doctor first. Best to have pertinent details going in.

"She's had a concussion," Dr. Ruth Ellison said when Seymour caught up with her in the doctors' lounge. The only people in the room, they sat across from each other, Dr. Ellison taking the chance to eat a bagel and drink some coffee. Behind Seymour, the soda machine kicked on.

"She can't remember much of anything between doing a keg stand and the farmer pulling up beside her in his truck and asking if she needed a ride. Upon arrival in the ER, she had a blood-alcohol level of point-oh-five. Says she was drinking before ten o'clock last night, so she was probably well over the limit at one time. The concussion alone could explain the loss of memory. A concussion along with drinking? Double whammy."

"Think she was slipped something?"

"You mean a date-rape drug? Very possibly. We're running more tests."

"The person who called me said her feet were a mess."

"Judging by their condition, I'd say she walked miles."

So she could have been anywhere. "And her wrist?"

"Ten stitches. One thing you should know about Kristin is that she's tried to kill herself a few times. Been under psychiatric care off and on. Antidepres-sants right now." Dr. Ellison sighed and looked at her coffee. "Kids have a lot to deal with these days."

"Any sign of rape?"

"No bruising, but we ran a rape kit on her anyway."

Seymour nodded. "So what's your medical opinion?"

"Attempted suicide."

"How does that explain showing up in the middle of nowhere?"

"She could have easily walked that far from the party. She was found three miles from Tuonela."

"Antidepressants have been linked to suicide in teens. Mix that with alcohol..."

With no evidence of rape, it made sense. And yet, another girl the same age as Kristin had been murdered and drained of blood ....

Seymour thanked the doctor, then went to meet Kristin. Her parents hovered anxiously nearby, looking sick, glancing at each other, brows furrowed.

Kristin was holding court, sitting up in bed, pillows behind her. Seymour got the idea she was enjoying the attention.

Now that they were face-to-face, Seymour remembered seeing her picture in the paper. She was a pretty girl with strong features. "You're the track star," he said. "What do you run?"

Kristin smiled and relaxed. "Fifty and one-hundred-yard dash."

"No relays?"

She shook her head. "Could never get the hang of passing the baton."

"I used to run distance," Seymour said. "And high jump."

She looked surprised.

"Believe it or not, they had a high jump when I was in school."

They all laughed, at ease now.

Seymour worked his way around to Kristin's ordeal. "Do you remember anything?"

"Just being at the party ... I remember going outside. I got sick." She shot her parents a guilty glance. "I think there was a guy there. Yeah, there was. But I can't remember who."

"A guy? Someone your age?"

"An adult." She struggled to recall the incident. "I almost think he was around later ... somewhere ...." She gave up. "Sorry."

"That's okay. Mind if I see your injuries?"

She held out her wrist. It was bandaged. "Ten stitches." Near the white bandages were a couple of bruises. Small. Round. About the size of someone's fingertips.

"Did you have these before?" Seymour asked.

She shook her head.

"What about your feet?"

Gingerly she slipped her feet from under the sheets. They were swathed in bandages. But it wasn't her feet that drew Seymour's attention. It was the rope burns on her ankles. He'd seen those rope burns before. On the body of Chelsea Gerber.

Graham stared at his knitting needles with the intensity of a mind reader. Isobel had taught him to cast on, and now he was doing the real thing. He'd produced an inch of knit red yarn so far—soon to be a scarf. The small scrap had some holes in it, but Isobel had assured him that was normal for a first-timer.

"Do you think Ouija boards are real?" Isobel asked, not looking up from her knitting.

Graham couldn't knit and talk at the same time. He paused, needles in his hands. "I think it's a subconscious thing."

"But one time I used a Ouija board and asked it a bunch of things the person with me didn't know."

"But
you
knew."

"I wasn't doing it!"

"You didn't think you were. That's how the subconscious works."

They were sitting in the school's enclosed outdoor area, which had turned into their noon spot. Isobel sat on the cement bench; Graham was on the ground, legs crossed, shoulders hunched over his knitting. Even though it was almost seventy degrees, he was wearing a blue-and-gray-striped stocking cap Isobel had made and given to him.

He planned to have nothing more to do with the Pale Immortals. What they'd done was wrong, but they hadn't killed anybody, and he wasn't going to turn them in. He just wasn't going to hang out with them.

Life was good. It had been only four days since Stroud had gotten word of the DNA match, but already Graham wasn't looking over his shoulder as often. He wasn't constantly thinking some trickster was going to pull the rug out from under him.

He walked to school by himself, just like anybody else. He walked home, sometimes hanging around and talking to Isobel for ten or fifteen minutes after the last bell.

Except for his two visits with the counselor and one with Social Services, his week had been perfect. The counselor had to dredge up old shit Graham didn't want to talk about, like his life before coming here, and his relationship with his mother. The social worker had been more interested in the Evan part of his life. She'd wondered if Evan's disease and inability to leave the house would eventually make Graham feel resentful. She asked about his unusual lifestyle. She wanted to know if Evan slept during the day and was awake at night.

"It's the only way he can go outside," Graham had said with a shrug.

"Won't that become a problem for you? How can he take care of you if he's always asleep when you're awake?"

"I can take care of myself." Didn't she get it? Didn't she know his life was more normal now than it had ever been? Even if his biological father was considered a freak by half the town?

"Isobel."

They both looked up to see Phillip Alba looming over them, hands in the pockets of his brown corduroy pants. He was dressed in a black sweater, his hair wavy and dark.

"Don't forget play practice tonight," he said.

Two days ago Isobel had talked Graham into coming to play practice with her. Just to hang out, she'd said. But it ended up that they'd needed help with the set construction, so he found himself agreeing to lend a hand. Now he was part of the play crew.

"I won't." Isobel had stopped knitting to stare up at Alba with open admiration. It was obvious she had a crush on the guy, and Graham wondered if the sick feeling in his belly was jealousy.