Vampire Blood (28 page)

He looked like he’d been up all night. His face was unshaven, his uniform wrinkled and stained, but that wasn’t what got to Jenny.

It was the expression of helpless sorrow on his face. “I’ve been looking for you for over an hour, since you left the hospital.”

Jenny felt her muscles clench. A terrible forewarning washed over her, that she was about to hear something that would be so horrendous nothing would ever be the same once she had. She had the urge to cover her ears and slam her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to hear it, though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Instead, she waited for what the sheriff had to say.

“I just got back from the morgue, Jenny. I’m so sorry.” He reached out a hand to her in a gesture of pity, his eyes skipping to Jeff, as if he couldn’t stand to meet hers.

“About what?” She blurted out in a squeak.

“We found your dad’s body this morning out in Satter’s old barn at the edge of the property. Looks like he’s been dead since about the time you reported him missing. Found the Albers’ bodies, too. By the looks of ‘em, they’ve been dead for weeks. God, Jenny, I’m so
damn
sorry.”

* * * *

Later, after the Sheriff had left and there’d been a visit to the morgue to officially identify the bodies, Jeff lovingly wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed.

When her tears slowed, he released her and clumped around in the kitchen, making cups of hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows on the top as she liked it. He paused thoughtfully by the blackened window, steaming cups in hand, and listened to her restlessly moving around in the bedroom.

They’d finally gotten back to the trailer for that rest he’d said she’d needed twelve hours ago.

They’d had to go to the morgue first. It’d been heart-wrenching and grisly. The bodies had been badly abused, had decomposed. They were barely recognizable. For as decayed as they’d been, the bites and scratches hadn’t been completely invisible. Jenny had broken down, and Jeff had had to take her away fighting in his arms, weeping as if her heart were broken.

Afterwards they’d had the unenviable task of driving out to the farmhouse and telling Estelle that her husband and oldest friends were dead, and that Joey, her son, was in the hospital in intensive care after a hideous assault.

They’d briefly discussed funeral arrangements and Joey’s condition. Estelle had taken everything pretty well, or so Jeff and Jenny had thought, until as they were ready to leave for the hospital to check on Joey, Jenny’s mother had said, “Jenny, honey, everything’s gonna be all right, as soon as your daddy gets back. He’ll take care of all of it, like he always does. You know? Don’t you fret. Since I’m not feeling so well, you two go on to the hospital to see Joey. Send him my love. Tell him he’s gonna be just fine. He’ll know better next time to race that bike of his across Morley Avenue trying to beat the cars. Tell him that me and his daddy will be up to the hospital later tonight, when I’m not so tired. I think I’ll go take a lie down now.”

Jenny hadn’t disputed her mother as she’d shuffled out of the room; she hadn’t the heart to hurt the old woman any more than she already was.

“Hopefully tomorrow she’ll have it straight in her head, and we’ll take her to the hospital to see Joey.” Jenny made excuses for her. Another truth was she didn’t have the strength to cope with her own emotions, much less her mother’s delusions.

Jenny had insisted on seeing Joey again at the hospital, for reassurance, before they went back to the trailer. As if seeing her father and the Albers dead had filled her with dread that Joey had died on her in the meantime, too. Jenny had stood over her brother’s blanket-covered body, talking to him as if he could hear her. He couldn’t. Joey hadn’t come out of his coma yet. His left arm was in a cast. His face was swollen all out of proportion. She cried, holding her brother’s one good hand, until Jeff had forced her to go home.

She’d been so grief-stricken she couldn’t sleep. She told Jeff she kept reliving the last few weeks and blaming herself for not looking harder, for not finding and saving the Albers and her father.

“It’s my fault they’re dead. My fault,”
she’d kept saying. “Poor Joey. I should have known he’d be next.
Somehow.”

She was making herself sick with blame. Sick with wondering if Joey was going to pull through.

Jeff walked into the bedroom, his thoughts on how he was going to keep Jenny from going over the edge.

“Here, sweetheart, I made you some hot chocolate.” He handed her the cup, and she turned a tear-streaked face up to him in the lamp’s soft light as she reached for it. She was sitting cross-legged in her nightgown in the bed, her hair wispy and loose, her eyes red rimmed from weeping.

She’d never looked lovelier or more vulnerable.

He settled down on the bed beside her with his hot chocolate, and they sipped together silently for a moment or two.

“Back at the restaurant, Jeff, before Samuels arrived, you talked about the Michelsons, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Why?”

“I ... I don’t know. It just popped into my head.”

She leaned her head up against his shoulder. He nuzzled her fragrant hair, sliding his arms around her.

“Come on, Jeff?”

“Ah, Jenny, I didn’t want to tell you this. You’re going to think I’ve gone off my rocker. More than you already think I am.”

“No, I won’t. I’ve known for days that something’s been bothering you. It has to do with the theater, the Michelsons, doesn’t it?”

“It does. The last day we worked on the theater something strange happened, and it scared me.”

Jenny pushed away from him and searched his face. He was serious. “Tell me.”

“It was the end of the day and we’d stayed much later than we usually did. You weren’t in the lobby, you were off doing something, cleaning up, I think. The light bulbs all exploded.”

“I remember.” There was an expression he couldn’t read on her face. “I came out and you were talking to Annie and Terry Michelson, but you seemed distracted, and you ushered me out of there so quickly it made my head swim.”

“I
was
distracted. I never told you what had happened
before
you’d come out. When the lights went out like they did, something in the dark grabbed me, Jenny. It bit me. Not hard. It’s nearly healed now.” He brought his hand up to his neck as if remembering the wound. “I fought with whatever it was. God, it was strong, and it smelled awful. I can’t even describe how terrified I was.” His voice broke.

Jenny reached out and caressed his face.

“I finally got away from it and managed to pull my lighter out of my pocket, but when I snapped on the flame ... there was nothing there.
Nothing.”

Jenny was staring at him, her mouth slightly open.

“I don’t scare easily, Jenny,” he swallowed, “but that scared the hell out of me. That place scared the hell out of me and the Michelsons own it. That makes them suspect in my book, if nothing else. Then I met them and they gave me the willies, like I told you. Do you believe me?”

In Jenny’s mind she kept seeing things: the Albers’ empty house after they went missing, the horses butchered in the field behind her trailer, and her father’s mutilated body. Under it all, buried so deep she couldn’t quite call it up, was something... something about Mister Michelson. The violin. The basement. That last day on the job when she’d found that money in her hand when she got home, money she couldn’t recall receiving. Damn, why couldn’t she remember!

“And to point out, as you yourself must know, it’s been since the Michelsons came to town, almost to the day, that the disappearances and murders have been occurring. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t kept score.” She was so tired of grief, tired of the mysteries. Down to her bones tired.

“Do you believe me when I say they have to have something to do with what’s happened?”

“Yes, I believe you,” she murmured uncaringly, and reached up and pulled him down to her on the bed. She kissed him lingeringly, almost afraid he would suddenly vanish as well.

Her heart under his was pounding.

“Jenny, you need sleep,” Jeff told her and kissed her back more intensely than she believed his weary body was capable of.

“No.” Jenny tightened her arms around him. “I need
you.”
Losing those you love to death always made you cherish those left behind even more. Jenny’s world was dwindling, and she was clinging to anything that would keep her from sinking into the mire of despair.

She reached over and switched the light off.

The whole time they were making love in the dark, she cringed inwardly at every little noise, worried that, for them, too, time might be running out.

Chapter Fifteen

September 7

He’d gone too far this time, and as he awoke, he understood that if nothing else. Memories from the night before crowded in on him: snatching Jenny’s brother away from Irene and the others as Annie created a diversion; whisking him away to safety.

They had been furious! They’d searched fervently for their lost prey, and then had gone on a rampage when they realized the human had escaped, or so they’d believed. After they’d stopped searching, he’d taken Joey to Jenny’s.

Annie had spied on the other vampires, hidden away, and had told him about it when he’d returned. If they discovered that he’d been behind saving the human, they would destroy him and his beloved Annie.

He’d feared that Irene would go after Jenny, so he’d trailed the young ones that night and had ended up saving Joey instead.

He’d killed over the centuries. He’d killed many. He would kill more, but for his life’s blood. Not cruel sport.

Watching them torture that poor boy had been too much. He’d had to do
something,
and so he had.
Stupid, stupid of him.

He sat up in his coffin, naked, the rim of rust-colored blood receding to a lower level as he did. The blood was an old trick he’d learned from another ancient one centuries before. It helped revitalize him as he slept, especially when there hadn’t been a kill for him the night before and when he knew he’d need his full strength upon waking.

The blood didn’t cling to his skin. He didn’t need to wipe it away for it ran off as if his skin were oiled. He reached over to a chair, collected his velvet robe and slipped into it.

The basement below the theater was musty. He loathed the dankness and coldness of it, though now there were candles flickering eerie shadows across the brick walls of his chamber.

The massive wooden door stood slightly ajar, and through the slice he could see some of the cell-like wooden cages that Irene and the others had been constructing.

Horrid cages for their future victims; the ones she wanted to torture or just feed on when she was too lazy to go out and hunt. The cages were an abomination to him, but he hadn’t worked out a way yet to stop her without signing his and Annie’s death warrants.

Mercifully, he’d been able to speed along some of the inhabitants’ inevitable deaths. Irene didn’t know about that, either. It was only a matter of time before she caught on. What he’d do then, he had no idea.

He moved into the chamber adjacent to his. The other coffins were open and empty.

Irene and her followers were waiting for him.

“I lost a victim last night.” Her voice was full of venom. “He just vanished.”

“It happens. Sometimes they do escape.”

“Not to me.” A look of hatred spread over her ivory face, and she stepped from the shadows.

“I should destroy you,” she whispered.

Candy and Tomas leered at him, standing back. Apparently they’d been waiting a long time for this. By the gleeful glint in their eyes, he accepted that he couldn’t count on them for help.

“Irene,” Michelson responded patiently, “you would have made a terrible mistake if you’d killed that boy. It’s unwise, even dangerous, killing our neighbors. The authorities would be swarming all over the restaurant and eventually the theater. The way I figure it, I saved your neck as well as the rest of ours.” He glanced at the others.

No response. Things had changed. When? The power had shifted. It was no longer his.

Whatever sickness Irene had suffered from in Boston, the weakness that had almost been her downfall seemed to be gone now. She no longer needed him.

“I can take care of myself. Even if they suspect, they can’t touch me. They can’t hurt me. I’m too strong for them. You and she are the only ones who seem to be
afraid.”

Her virulent gaze brushed past Annie, who’d risen from her own bloodless coffin and was hiding behind Michelson, and came back around to Michelson.

“You won’t snatch another victim from me.”

There was a rippling shift in the air, and Annie began to groan, her frail hand letting go of his shoulder.

Michelson glanced back at her.

His one true weakness and Irene knew it.

Annie’s hands were at her throat, her eyes now locked with Irene’s, slowly filled with pain.

Michelson could feel Annie’s torment.