Vampire Blood (25 page)

The bright blue sky hadn’t lightened Jeff’s mood any, though.

They’d spent the morning at the farmhouse with her mother playing pretend ... pretend that her husband, Ernest, would reappear any minute ... pretend that the Albers were only on an extended vacation somewhere, and that they’d forgotten to drop the Laceys a postcard ... pretend that everything was going to be fine.

At least, Jenny had reflected out loud thankfully, her mother was still sober, even if she was living in a fantasy land.

They’d fixed the broken window in her parents’ bedroom. Estelle had taped a piece of plastic over it when she’d first moved back in, but the plastic was flimsy and hadn’t lasted long.

“All done with the theater?” Joey whistled. “I’m impressed.”

“Yep, finally.”

“Going to the grand reopening tonight?” Joey asked Jeff, leaning on the food counter. “Have you seen the ads in the newspapers about it?”

Jeff and Jenny shook their heads.

“They’re all over the place.” His eyes smiled at the two of them because he liked seeing them together.

Joey pulled the morning’s paper from beneath the counter and spread it out at the entertainment pages. There was a large ad and an article on the theater’s resurrection.

“No, I don’t think we’ll be going tonight. Some other night. Jenny’s exhausted,” Jeff said.
Never. If I have my way.

Jeff snatched the paper from Joey and started reading about the theater’s history, becoming engrossed in it. Then his eyes strayed, and he found the latest article about another missing person. His lips pressed tightly as he read.

“Maybe we will.” Jenny tossed Jeff a perturbed look. They’d gone over this so many times in the last day or so, he knew she was getting irritated about it.

He didn’t want her to go back into the theater now that they were done with it. Not even to see a movie. He couldn’t tell her why, just that he didn’t want her to.

It was stupid. Just a bad feeling he had. A real bad one.

“Ah, well, I need to go looking for Dad anyway. Foster and the police haven’t turned up any leads so far. I can’t just sit around now that the theater’s done and do nothing.” There was desperation in her voice, and her face was pale. The last few nights after work, including the night before, she’d bullied him into helping her search again. They’d gone all over town asking questions of everyone and anyone.

“He,” she crooked a thumb at him, “made me go home early last night.” She didn’t openly cry much anymore, but the strain was in her tormented eyes, in her every movement.

Joey threw Jeff a conspiratorial glance.

Jeff had told him that his sister was having nightmares about finding their father dead. It was turning her into an old woman.

“Jenny.” Joey patted his sister’s hand. “You need to take it easy. You’re a wreck. If you get sick, that won’t help Dad or Mom.”

Jenny rested burning eyes on her brother. “Joey, he’s out there somewhere, I can feel it. Alive. We can’t stop looking, for him now. We can’t abandon him.” There was so much pain in her expression, Joey had to look away or he might have started blubbering, too.

Jeff captured Jenny’s cold hand and met her frantic gaze. “We’ve done all we can. Even the state police are searching for your dad now and the Sheriff is bringing the FBI in since those last murders. There’s nothing else we can do, but wait.”

“No.” It was a heartsick echo of Jenny’s voice. Then she must have seen the pity in their eyes, and she lowered her face. “Everyone seems to be giving up on finding him and the Albers alive, but not me. I’ll look until my legs fall off. I won’t ever give up.”

Jeff could see that the tears were about to fall again, and he squeezed her hand.

She turned and stared out the picture window while he finished his supper.

* * * *

Jeff had been so good to her the last week. He’d taken care of her, helped her, without a whimper.

Jenny couldn’t deny any longer that she loved him and had never stopped loving him. It hadn’t worked once, but now she was different; he was different. Soon they could be lovers again.

She studied his earnest face as he talked to her brother about the Rebel, and suddenly more than anything else in the world, she wanted his arms around her, his lips on hers. She wanted to forget the world.

She met his eyes, touched his arm. “Jeff, take me home, please?”

Joey was grinning like a monkey at Jeff knowingly.

“Okay, Jenny.” Jeff swung towards Joey and lifted his shoulders nonchalantly. “The lady wants to go home.”

“Well, take her then. Make sure she gets some sleep, too.”

“I will,” Jeff said, winking at him, and escorted Jenny out the door into the coming twilight.

* * * *

Jeff lay on the bed and watched her remove her clothes before she turned off the light. Her face was full of the old love, and it seemed to touch him.

He still loved her. Wanted and needed her.
She was giving him another chance. His last one.

“To me,” he whispered as she came into his waiting arms, “you don’t look any different than the first time I made love to you. You’ll always be that beautiful.” He breathed the clean scent of her hair. “I love you so much, Jenny. Always loved you. I’ve learned one thing since I left you ... without you, I’m nothing. You’re the other half of me.”

Jenny knew he was telling the truth and felt the tears flow down her cheeks; the ache she’d had embedded deep in her heart for so long was dissolving, like icicles in the summer sun at his loving words. It was such a relief not to have to pretend she didn’t love him anymore. It was heaven. She belonged with him. He belonged with her. For always and forever.

As he kissed her wet face, and as his flesh conformed to hers, his warm hands trembled as they stroked her naked body, and she murmured, “I never stopped loving you either, Jeff. I tried, but I never could. I never loved anyone else; never loved like I loved you. I’ve known that, too, now for a long, long time.”

In the dark they made love, their hungry flesh melting together with all the passion and longing of the first time.

Chapter Thirteen

Later that night...

It was
a grand opening. The theater was filled to capacity, and the people were ecstatic to be there. The mature patrons, who remembered the Rebel from when they were young, and who liked horror films with lots of screaming and noise, because that was what was playing, walked through the beautiful lobby and marveled at the faithful restoration and relived the old memories. They stood around in the plush halls and in line for refreshments in their cool summer dresses or blue jeans; the younger ones in shorts.

The popcorn machine was tapping away behind its glass windows, and the delicious aroma of butter and cheesy nachos rose in almost palpable clouds over the crowd, covering the stench from the basement below.

Soda was sold in large bright colored cups. The candy counter was an old-fashioned one but stacked with the latest sweets. Business was brisk, conducted somberly by two older looking pale adults dressed rather peculiarly and behaving as if they’d rather not be there. No one noticed, though. They were too busy talking among themselves or getting reacquainted with old friends, making casual comments about the only show being the eight o’clock late show and how unusual that was. Most of the older ones admitted they’d come mostly to see the place again, meet up with friends, not only for the movie offered.

“This is absolutely breathtaking, Gregg. It looks just the same as when I was a child,” a woman exclaimed pleasantly to her husband, as she passed through into the auditorium and the lights went dim.

“Hey, Carl, get those kids to tone it down a little. I can’t hear the damn movie,” someone in the third row complained to a man behind him with kids.

Two teenaged lovers were smooching in one of the dark back rows, their hands entwined, their bodies pressed close.

Children scurried up and down the wide aisles scuffling with each other, dropping candy and giggling like children always do as the movie’s introduction began to roll.

A group of young college men in plaid shorts and neon-colored T-shirts commented quietly among themselves and gestured with white hands in the soft gloom as the movie started.

“Hey, hi there, Tom! Didn’t know you were going to be here,” uttered a short heavy man in the fifth row. His sunglasses were pushed to the top of his head over his crew cut. He had discovered one of his fellow workers sitting in front of him. “Where’s the wife tonight, hey?” Laughter.

More muted laughter, low talking. The movie hadn’t really gotten interesting. No bloodcurdling screams yet. No murders. No special effects yet.

It seemed like a normal night at the movies with normal people in a normal theater in a normal town.

It wasn’t.

For beneath the crowd’s tapping feet and dropped popcorn, under the plush velvet chairs, beneath the flickering screen, under the restrooms was the basement.

In the basement the vampires waited impatiently. Waited for the movie’s musical score to rise in volume, which it would eventually do, and then they’d hunt.

Minutes ticked away. They could
hear
the crowd above them,
smell
the crowd above them, and slowly, one by one, the young vampires went to their knees, on all fours, and metamorphosed into huge wolves that padded silently up one of the secret passages that emptied out into the full, darkened auditorium.

The wolves moved as sinuously and silently as the night, their eyes glittering red coals and their fur rippling over their bunched muscles, up ... up ... into the last tunnel and peered hungrily out into the crowd. Carefully they picked their victims. Old people sitting alone. A young boy there by himself. A middle-aged woman catching a movie before her shift began at the plastics factory across town.

They were good at seeking out their quarry.

As the movie’s soundtrack roller-coasted in volume here and there, and the scenes sunk into near blackness, the furry shapes slunk out between the rows of chairs and hunted. Faster than the human eye could see, wicked saliva-dripping jaws clamped down on vulnerable throats, silencing the victims effectively as they dragged them through the aisles and into the tunnels, before anyone saw them.

Down below in the basement, the wolves hauled the struggling figures into bloody cages. Where no one could hear their screams of horror and pain as the wolves fed ... and fed ... and fed. The wolves were very busy the whole night.

* * * *

“I was wrong. For once Michelson’s made the right move. It’s a perfect cover. The theater. Perfect.” Irene gloated to the others after the crowds were gone as she eyed the haul for the night. Six people, some already dead from loss of blood, their wounds or sheer terror. They were the lucky ones. Of the six caught that night, some were comatose, some were weeping or begging to be set free as they peered out at the vampires from between the wooden cage slats. Cattle. Food. That’s all they were. Their anguish or pain didn’t affect Irene.

“Did a good job on the cages, you two.” She glanced over at her cohorts. She shrugged when they didn’t answer. Oh, well, they were busy.

A shriek shattered the silence as one of the others played a little cat-and-mouse with his victim. Irene’s eager gaze settled on the massive black wolf as its jaws tore at a screaming elderly woman as she tried to drag herself away. The bloody jaws closed down one time too many, and the woman’s body went slack as her severed arm slid across the sticky cement floor.

Too bad, Irene thought, most humans were so puny. A little pain, a little scare, and that was about all they could take. Sometimes the older ones had heart attacks when they were first captured. Not much fun. Weak, repulsive creatures. Ah, well, there was always more from where they came from.

Most would never be missed, and if they were, so what? “We’ll take care of anyone who’s stupid enough to poke their nose into our business, just like we’ve always done,” she hissed to herself. “Just like we’re going to do with that damn meddling sheriff, if he comes around here.” The police didn’t scare Irene. She’d killed her share of law enforcement officers. At least they were more fun. More of a challenge. They had guns.

Michelson wouldn’t dare stand in her way now. She’d taken care of him once and for all.

Irene signaled to the other two vampires. “Leave them. You can finish later. Right now let’s have a little sport. There’s someone I’d like to pay a visit to. Come on, it isn’t far.”

Her lovely nude body moved with the shifting shadows as she floated towards the steps and began to grow fine hair that quickly spread along her body and thickened into a shiny fur pelt. Her blond hair and her human features disappeared. She dropped to all fours as her face contorted with ripping sounds into a long snout full of teeth, and her head grew long pointed ears. What emerged out of the shadows was a great wolf.

It was rare when a vampire was also a shape changer. Not many vampires had the power. It took a lot of strength and mind control to complete the transformation. Michelson and Annie didn’t have the power any longer, but Irene and her two acolytes had the ability to be any number of things. A bat. A spider. A mist. They merely preferred the wolf because of its cunning, speed and strength. Its shock value.