American Vampire (7 page)

“That’s bullshit, June!” Derek shouted, his eyelids fluttering closed as he wiped blood off his chin. “You should ban him!”

“You should mind your own business, Derek, before I throw you out of here with my own two hands. I don’t want to see you beating on any women, I don’t care who they are.” June didn’t sound angry. She didn’t have to. Her word was obviously meant
to be obeyed as law, like she had no reason to expect otherwise.

“June, I’ve gotta find a place for him to stay,” Jessa protested, and that was all she needed to say to get every hillbilly in the place to look away from Graf and into their drinks.

The kindly barkeep would not be swayed, it seemed. She pointed to the door wordlessly.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jessa grumbled, grabbing Graf by the elbow.

The fact that she was put out by this turn of events touched him on a profoundly personal level. The joy that radiated through his whole being was only slightly displaced by the fact that her misery came at his expense, too, because now he was stuck with her.

“Hey, I don’t have a place to stay yet,” he reminded her as he followed her into the deserted parking lot, wanting to prolong the magic.

“You think anyone back there is going to take you in, after what you just did?” She shook her head and kept walking. “You’ll be lucky if they don’t come over with a noose and run you out of town the only way possible.”

T
he tall grass whipped against Jessa’s legs as she cut across the ditch and up the lawn. Graf followed, still silent. It was good that he knew when to keep his mouth shut, because one more wrong word would have set her off in a big way, and it seemed like none of the right words came out when he opened his trap.

It wasn’t that she had wanted Derek to hit her. In fact, the thought that he was perfectly willing to stung her to her core. He’d never raised a hand to her before. He’d been angry and stormed off, and he’d punched a wall once or twice—once in her kitchen, and her father had repaired it while lecturing her on what was and was not appropriate behavior from a boyfriend. She wondered if there had been times before when Derek had wanted to hit her, and if he’d hit Becky. Was it a normal thing at their house?

No, he’d been drunk. Drunk people did things they wouldn’t normally do when they were sober. She knew that from experience.

Still, it wasn’t right of Graf to step in the way he had. It would have been one thing if one of Derek’s friends had, or someone else at the bar. But not Graf. Not when he was staying with her, and everyone knew it. They would start to think things about her, things they already probably thought, but it would give them a sort of confirmation. By the time the people who’d seen it happen had sobered up enough in the morning, the guys wouldn’t be fighting about one of them hitting Jessa, they would be fighting over Jessa. Then rumors would spread all over town that Jessa the slut was screwing around on her married boyfriend. People would love that bit of gossip.

Not that ridiculous, maybe. She’d slept with Derek before, more recently than she would like to remember, and there was something attractive about Graf, even though he acted like a complete jackass.

That must have been the common element in them that had sprung her gears.

She charged up the steps to the porch, then stopped, catching sight of the car from the corner of her eye. “You wanna move that thing before you attract too much more attention? Anyone who walks by here is going to see it!”

“Do a lot of people walk by?” he asked. For a guy who’d just gotten punched in the jaw, he spoke
remarkably clearly. He should have at least a tooth knocked loose, or a puffy lip.

She shook her head in annoyance. “If I’m stuck with you, you’re going to do what I say, when I say it. You got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded, accompanied by a mock salute.

Jessa ground her teeth. “And you’re going to have to pay me rent.” She waited until he reached for his back pocket, then folded her arms across her chest. “Not what I’m looking for.”

Hesitantly, he put his wallet back. “Is this…is this a sexual thing?”

Ugh! She stomped into the house and headed straight for the kitchen, where she pulled a mason jar of clear liquid from the refrigerator.

Graf followed her, and watched as she lifted the jar to her mouth. “Look, I know you’re pissed off because I beat up your boyfriend, but I’m not going to just sit back and watch a guy hit a girl. It’s not my nature.”

Wincing at the burn of the moonshine as it tore a path down her throat, she set the jar down. When she spoke, her voice was rough. “I told you, he’s not my boyfriend. And to be honest, he’s been needing a good ass whipping for some time now.”

“Okay…” Graf sat at the island and braced his elbows against the counter. “If you’re not mad about that, what are you mad about?”

“You’ve never lived in a small town, have you?” When he shook his head, she continued. “Imagine if every time you walked down the street, every person you saw knew your business. They know about all the bad things you’ve ever done, and they know about all the bad things anyone in your family has ever done, and they’re all rooting for you to fail, because if you do, they’ve got more gossip to spread around. That’s what it’s like living here. You said yourself that I have a reputation. I’m not proud of it, but I earned it.

“I showed up with you tonight, and that drew attention to me. They were already wondering who you are and how you got here, and what it has to do with me. That’s dangerous enough. People here are suspicious of everyone for the littlest things, and I don’t want knowing you to become a liability!”

“A liability?” He snorted. “What are they going to do? Burn you at the stake?”

“They’ve done it before!” she shouted, then clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Okay, I can sense by your hyperbole that you’re afraid of people here.” Graf nodded, actually looking sorry for something for the first time since she’d met him. “I didn’t think about how showing up with me might affect you.”

“You didn’t think about it, because you have no idea what it’s like to live here. Since It came around and we all got trapped here, all of the malice and bad feelings have just grown and grown.” She took
another swallow of the alcohol. “You’ll see. The first time you do something wrong, you’ll see.”

He reached for the jar, and she passed it to him. He took a big swallow and grimaced. “Let me guess…the ‘something wrong’ that you did involved Derek?”

She worked hard to keep her expression neutral. Eventually, Graf would know all about her and Derek, every sordid detail. That didn’t mean she wanted to spill it all right now. Still, if he was going to be living there, he’d have to deal with Derek in the future. “People…don’t like the way I behaved after Derek married Becky. And before Derek married Becky.”

Graf nodded. “You beat her up? Key her car?”

“No.” She took another swig of moonshine. “No, I kept sleeping with her husband.”

“Ah.” There was a hint of judgment in Graf’s tone that Jessa didn’t care for. “Well, from what I understand, he was your boyfriend to begin with.”

“June tell you that?” She shouldn’t have bothered to ask. June wasn’t a gossip, but she wouldn’t withhold information from someone she thought needed to know something. If she’d suspected there was something between Jessa and Graf, she couldn’t have been more wrong, but she would have thought it only fair to warn him what he was getting into.

Graf nodded. “She didn’t give me the full history, but she said that Derek wasn’t exactly supportive after your family died. Which I’m sorry to hear about, by the way.”

Clearing her throat, Jessa screwed the top back on the moonshine and shoved it to the back of the refrigerator. She leaned down, hiding her face behind the door long enough to force back the tears that never failed to flood her eyes at the memory. “Well, it’s better off this way. Becky can have him, for all I care.”

“That’s not how it looked this afternoon. And it’s not how it looked at the bar tonight.” His voice startled her, as it was closer than it had been before. When she turned, he stood behind her, gazing down at her with pity.

Yeah, like she needed his pity. She stood and pushed past him. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Derek comes sniffing around here like a hound dog most days, but I haven’t encouraged him.” It was a bald-faced lie, and she had a feeling Graf knew it. She wanted nothing more than to lure Derek away from Becky, knew she could have him in her bed with a snap of her fingers. But she didn’t want to be that person anymore. She didn’t want the guilt when she saw the kids playing in their grandma’s yard, or when she ran into Becky at June’s Place. She didn’t want to be the town tramp. She just wanted her old life back.

“Well, guys like that, they don’t need a lot of encouraging,” Graf said, and there was a sneer in his voice.

“You don’t know him. You don’t know me. You
don’t know any of us, so where’s it your place to judge?” She put her hands on her hips and wobbled slightly. She hadn’t eaten much, and she’d cut way back on her drinking in the past year. Now, the moonshine hit her like a truck. That was probably why she found herself defending Derek right alongside herself.

The booze was making her tired, and she rubbed her eyes with one hand. “You think you have everything figured out.”

“I think you’re in a bad situation with a bad guy who doesn’t treat you right.” Graf fell silent a moment. “But you’re right, it isn’t my place to say anything.”

She opened her mouth to let him know just how much of his place it was not, when the sound of something scraping against the siding stopped her.

“What was that?” Graf turned wide eyes to Jessa. “Seriously, is that—”

“Get down!” she whispered, dropping to the floor. In an instant, the murky drunk feeling fled, replaced with an all-too-familiar fear. She inched cautiously toward Graf, motioning for him to meet her halfway. “Sometimes, It comes sniffing around houses. But if you stay on the floor, and It doesn’t see you, it usually leaves.”

“Usually? How often does this happen?” He put an arm over her back, and she shrugged it off. Though it felt good beyond belief to have that little bit of comfort, she didn’t need him getting used to rescuing
her. She definitely didn’t need him getting used to casually touching her.

“I don’t know. Every now and then. It’s not a nightly occurrence, if that’s what you’re asking.” She nodded toward the living room. “I’m going to crawl out there and get my gun.”

“You didn’t bring your gun back from the bar!” Graf whispered, his voice going almost comically high in fear. It would have been a lot funnier if she wasn’t terrified, herself.

He was right. She ran through her memories of the night. She’d had the gun with her when she’d gone inside June’s Place. She’d leaned it against the bar, like she always did. She’d broken up the fight. She’d been admonished. And then they’d left. In her memory she could see the shotgun, from the corner of her eye, sitting right where she’d left it. It mocked her, because it would have been so easy to pick it up and carry it away with her, but there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it now. She leaned her head against the cool linoleum. All that was left to do now was pray that It moved on, but she’d been doing about as much praying as she had been drinking lately, which was not a lot.

It scraped against the siding again, the screech of bony spikes against metal vibrating through the kitchen.

“What should we do?” Graf demanded. “Should we go into the basement?”

“It isn’t a tornado!” she whispered back. “Just shut up, I need to think!”

There wasn’t a lot of time for thinking. He grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. She shrieked in protest, and the sound was swallowed up by the roar of It, the rending of metal, and the splintering of wood. One wall of the kitchen was gone, and suddenly they were plunged into darkness, the only light coming from the moon outside and the broken wires whipping sparks out of the hole in the house.

Before she could blink, they stood on the lawn, her head swimming. Graf shook her by the shoulders. “You hit your head and blacked out—” a strange thing to tell someone in the midst of an emergency “—run and hide! Do it!”

She wanted to argue that she had definitely not hit her head, but she couldn’t account for the missing time between being in the kitchen and being in the yard. It burst from the wound in the side of the house and charged across the lawn, and she ran, too, every breath that pushed out of her raw throat a cry of terror. She made it to the barn, turned to slide the big door closed, and saw It run past Graf, who stood directly in the thing’s path, toward the barn. Toward her. She pushed the door closed with all her might and sank to the ground, leaning against the weathered wood, expecting It to thrust its massive claws through the wood and grab her at any second.

“Hey! Hey!” Graf shouted. Jessa, certain that It
would shred Graf to pieces, pressed her eye against the crack between the boards and looked out.

It stopped, turned from the barn, and seemed to sniff the air. Its long, curled horns grazed the ground as it lowered its head. One clawed, humanlike hand ripped grass and soil up in a clump, and its forked tongue snaked out for a taste. No, a smell. That was what snakes did with their tongues. It was scenting the trail of its prey.

“Forget about her!” Graf shouted, waving his arms. “Forget her, she’s nothing. Come here! Come and get me!” He pulled his shirt over his head, his muscles rippling, tense for a fight. Like an animal.

Jessa gasped and pushed back from the door, then, unable to stand the suspense, pressed her face against it again.

Graf hunched over, like a football player bracing for a tackle, and cracked his neck. “Let’s go,” he growled at the creature, his voice lower, rougher, than normal.

It tossed the clump of dirt aside, bent into a similar posture, and rushed at Graf. Jessa squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the screams.

They never came. Instead, there were feral growls, more animal than man, and when she opened her eyes, Graf was on It’s back, biting and clawing. It had an impossibly long reach, though, and swiped him down with razor-sharp claws. A spray of blood showed black in the green mercury light, and Graf
howled with rage. But he didn’t fall. He didn’t seem to be concerned with the long strips of torn flesh hanging from his chest. In fact, he pounded his fist against them and roared, “Is that all you got?” before he leaped at the monster again.

Jessa had seen many unexplainable things in the past five years. This definitely had to be one of the stranger ones.

It grabbed Graf by the neck and slammed him into the ground, then hurtled its fist toward the back of his head. Graf rolled, but he wasn’t quick enough, and there was a crunch as It fractured the back of his skull.

“Oh!” Jessa cried before she caught herself, and It turned as if having heard her. But Graf, impossibly, got up. He swayed on his feet, and his scalp hung from the back of his head like a torn dishcloth, but he jumped on the monster’s back again and bit its neck, tearing a huge chunk of the scaly flesh away. It roared and shook him free, then made a ground-shaking retreat through the cornfield.

Trembling, Jessa watched as Graf touched the back of his head, swore, and started for the barn. Her first instinct was to go to him and help him, but the extent of his injuries, the way he’d taken on It…none of it seemed right. She stood, not really feeling the ground beneath her feet, and pushed the door open.