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Twelve
Years Ago
You’re
here to kill me, aren’t you?
The
ghosts beneath Annabel McIntyre’s silky willow trees wouldn’t
answer, but fifteen-year-old Dessa Collier thought the question
anyway. Someday they would reply. Someday they would nod their
ghostly gray heads. Someday they would say yes.
When
they did, she would… well, she still didn’t know what she would
do. Go quietly. Try to be dignified about it.
“I
saw a vampire last night in Little Five Points.” Waiva Jones’s
smug declaration was anything but dignified.
“You
see vampires everywhere.” Dessa looked away from the ghosts. A
battered pair of Doc Martens swung at her left side, suspended by
their laces. Dessa flexed her fingers and relished the sting of shoe
strings biting into her skin. The small pain distracted her from her
headache.
“What
were you doing in Little Five, anyway?” The warm dregs of a Coke
sloshed in the bottom of the plastic bottle in her right hand.
“I
went with Eight Ball,” Waiva replied, sing-song. “He wanted to
take me out in his new car. Besides, what difference does it make
why? I saw a vampire.”
Waiva
stopped and turned, her beaded braids swinging lightly behind her
shoulders. White teeth flashed a bright smile in her dark face.
“Maybe they’ll come to Garrett River and you can see one.”
Dessa
shook her head and kept walking. The ghosts kept pace, slithering
through the ink of the deepening gloom. She didn’t want to think
about vampires in Garrett River or anywhere else. Better the
abominations kept to Atlanta and left Garrett River to its own
monsters.
Her
grandmother was getting too old to keep up with requests for
protection from spirits she did understand. Haint blue paint, long
believed to protect a home from malicious spirits, was only as
powerful as the mixer’s knowledge. The Colliers’ haint blue had
its limits. Vampires? Beyond those limits.
Waiva
huffed behind her. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be
excited. You never believe in anything.”
“I
do so. I go to church.”
“You
don’t believe. Don’t tell me you do. Aunt Rose says Colliers
don’t know what faith is, and when I’m around you, I think she’s
right.” Waiva came abreast of her only to sidle away. “Maybe I
should stop hanging out with you. You might be contagious, all that
not-believing.”
“You
don’t know what you’re talking about.” And Waiva was wrong.
Dessa believed in plenty. She believed in her grandparents. Aida and
Clement Collier had refused to turn her out even when Dessa’s
mother begged Clement to put a bullet in his only granddaughter’s
head.
She
also believed in her mother’s fear. Marie Collier had known
something, something about Dessa, and the knowledge drove her to
choose taking life over nurturing it.
More
than anything, Dessa believed in getting home before dark. Her
stomach rolled with nausea because she and Waiva weren’t going to
make it before sundown. On the edges of her vision, the ghosts
seethed.
To
either side of the road, fields of brown grass stretched off toward
farm houses. Suddenly, the road she traveled every day after school
felt too isolated.
“I
don’t feel good,” she said. “Let’s cut across the McIntyre
farm.”
Waiva
shrugged and veered left, past a “No Trespassing” sign and onto
the field. Dessa hunched her shoulders and followed, glowering at the
grass as if the dry, crinkly blades were responsible for her
problems. She tried not to see the blank faces of the dead as she
crossed their grim picket line.
The
McIntyre shortcut wasn’t really short, but it took them on a
westerly path home instead of forcing them to round back to the east.
It took them toward the setting sun, away from the encroaching dark.
Not fast enough. Dessa’s heart rate spiked, and a chill spread from
her nape to her lower back.
“Someone’s
following us.” The soles of her feet cramped, ached to run, but
muscles and instincts were at odds. Dessa’s stomach gnawed
painfully at her spine. Run. No, stay. Hold still, pretend to be
invisible.
Provide.
Up
ahead, Waiva tossed her braids. “Nobody’s following us. We’re
the only people for miles not sitting at a dinner table, and it’s
too early for vampires.” Waiva’s voice took on a sly edge. “Maybe
in another hour it’ll be vampires.”
“I
have a feeling.” Dessa lowered her head and focused on putting one
bare foot in front of the other. Shiny black polish tipped her toes.
She and Waiva continued in silence until they reached the gnarled,
walking-stick stump of a long-dead tree. The stump marked a mile to
the Collier farmhouse.
“Race
you!” Waiva took off in a sprint.
Dessa
didn’t follow. Instead, she looked over her shoulder. The bottom
dropped from her stomach, and her muscles went slack. A dense,
squirming mass of shadow obscured her view of the road. Someone
else’s memory rippled between her ears, filled her head, and gave
the black cloud a name. Hungry.
She
couldn’t make her legs move. The blob came upon her quickly, so
fast she didn’t have time to scream before fingers of darkness
shoved into her mouth. Midnight bands wrapped around her biceps and
dragged her to the ground. Dessa lashed out, punching the air. An
inhuman cry reached her ears just before the dark filled those
openings. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t shriek
when the first bite tore at her forearm.
Burning
pricks of pain dotted her exposed skin and sapped her strength.
Weightless phantoms took the shape of greedy, clawed hands. Heavy
bodies crushed her chest. They savaged her, teeth tearing and
ripping. Hungry.
After
an eternity of pain, a man’s voice cut through the sounds of
feeding.
“Get
them off her,” he commanded. “Destroy the new ones here and don’t
take any back.”
“Better
death than a cell,” another man replied.
The
instructions didn’t make sense and they weren’t for her, but
Dessa tried to focus anyway. Running footsteps and quiet curses
filtered through the noise of strange, hissing pops. The scent of
blood clogged her air passages and made her gag. Blood. Hers. Oh,
that was bad.
Awareness
of her arms and legs, her burning skin, returned. Dessa started to
shake. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to roll onto her side,
but she couldn’t move. Paralyzed.
Large,
strong hands cupped the back of her head and lifted it from the
ground. The authoritative voice came again. “Can you hear me?”
Masculine
scents of leather and tea tree oil penetrated the reek of blood. She
wasn’t completely paralyzed. She could move her head and she did,
turning her face, pressing her nose and mouth to his forearm. She
breathed through the odor of blood. Gradually, sensations beyond pain
and fear filtered through her brain. Waiva’s voice. Vampires.
She
shuddered and opened her eyes to stare at the man above her. Broad
shoulders blocked the darkening violet sky. He was layers of brown
against the bruised backdrop. Coffee skin, walnut hair twisted in
thick dreadlocks, amber eyes.
Long
fingers pushed purple tangles of hair from her face. He tilted her
head at an uncomfortable angle, pressed his fingertips beneath her
jaw, and muttered, “Fuck.”
Dessa’s
eyelids drooped heavily. He wasn’t supposed to use that word around
her. She was too young, and she was female. Clearly he wasn’t from
the South.
“You’re
here to kill me,” she whispered. However many times she’d thought
the words, she’d never spoken them aloud.
“Yes.
I am.” He tilted her head, golden gaze intent on her face. “Do
you know why?”
“My
mother knew why.” She swallowed and closed her eyes. “How are you
going to do it? With your fangs?”
“No
fangs, baby. Never fangs.” He slid his arms beneath her shoulders
and knees and lifted her off the ground. She should have resisted his
hold. The notion of good sense lurked in the back of her head,
struggling to penetrate the fog that divided her rational brain from
her feeling brain. Feeling rose to the top and floated like sea foam.
She
felt safe. Sure, he was going to kill her, but death was going to
happen eventually anyway. She didn’t have the energy to delay it by
struggling. Flopping limp in his arms required no effort at all. So
what if he said “fuck”?
Someone
approached. The man who held her lifted her higher against his chest.
Distantly, she labeled his body language as possessive. But that was
stupid and romantic. She was no princess even if he was a knight. And
he wasn’t a knight.
“Call
for a car,” he said. He muttered something else. Maybe the f-word
again. Dessa blacked out and lost more time.
When
she came back to herself, the thick scent of blood was gone, replaced
by tangy pine. Dessa squinted at the outline of a tree-shaped air
freshener dangling from the inside of a car door.
Her
killer’s hand skimmed her butt, and he swore. “No ID. How am I
supposed to know where to take you?”
He
whispered the words. Why was he whispering?
“She
doesn’t look good.” A new voice, low and grim. “We destroyed
nine. How the hell is there anything left of her?”
“She
could create a hundred more.” Her knight-killer again.
“A
hundred new creations would damn us all,” the other man, the one
who wasn’t touching her, said. “Our own laws make us murderers.”
“We
agreed to them. Get out and wait for me.”
The
car door slammed. Dessa didn’t want to look. She turned her face to
his shoulder. Warm lips stroked her ear, followed by a hot, wet lick.
He held her still and drew his tongue down her throat to her
shoulder, eating her pain.
Don’t
ever give your blood away. It’s more valuable than gold and the
minute someone else possesses it, you’re lost to yourself. Don’t
give it away, baby girl.
She’d
forgotten those parting words from her mother.
The
vampire’s tongue dipped behind her ear, and she shivered. She’d
given her blood away, and she didn’t want to take it back.
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