Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (12 page)

“Then… then I was there but I wasn’t. I
walked outside but I didn’t. Emotions told me to follow them. There
was a car. I got in it.”

“What kind of car? Who was in it?”

“Eyes that walk. Eyes…” She was getting upset
again, and Peg made soothing noises until she calmed back down.

“It’s okay. What else do you remember? What
happened next?”

Zoey shook her head violently. “Naked. Blood.
Pain. Screaming.”

“Can you say where you were taken?”

“Underground. Dripping water. Fangs in the
ceiling. But a building first. Stinks like dead fish.”

“And… is that where you’ve been?”

“Cages. Waiting for the fruit to ripen.
Harvest time is coming.”

“How did you get away?”

“Screaming and confusion. Door left unlocked.
Screaming.”

“How did you find me though? Why didn’t you
go back to Sheboygan? Mom’s still there. Or Dad. He lives in Beaver
Dam now. Wouldn’t either of them maybe have been closer?”

“Followed the emotions. The ones that loved
me. I felt yours. Can you feel mine?”

What she said didn’t really make sense, but
it was strange. Peg almost could feel like she felt what Zoey felt.
Maybe she was just imagining it too well, but she thought she had a
handle right now on just how confused and terrified Zoey had been.
Or rather, still was. Whoever had taken her and whatever this
harvest time thing was all about Zoey was scared witless.

Peg had assured Zoey that she would be
absolutely safe here as long as she stayed in the basement and kept
absolutely quiet. Between Zoey and her mother Peg now had a little
more information to go on so she might feel comfortable telling
Tony at some point, but not for now. She still didn’t have enough
information that she could go to the police, although even if she
did she had no idea how she might start trying to explain that her
sister was now a vampire.

Upstairs Peg had found Tony playing with
Brendan in the living room and she’d joined them. Tony didn’t ask
how the phone call had gone, but when he looked at her face he
seemed relieved. Peg left it at that. She didn’t want to come up
with any more lies for now, and she was content and happy. Indeed,
she felt lighter than she had in years. After just a few simple
words out of her sister’s mouth it was like all the years of pain
and self-hatred had vanished.

Peg threw off her blankets and stretched with
a pleasured grunt. She was still a little sore after last night,
but not as much as she would have expected. Once Brendan was in bed
(and thankfully stayed there, since he’d started to learn that
mommy and daddy couldn’t say no to his sweet face when he hobbled
in and asked to sleep in their bed with them) they’d made love like
they hadn’t since they’d first started dating. Even Tony had been
surprised and worn out after they were finished. Peg had still felt
like she could go another couple rounds, though. She didn’t know
what it was, but she’d had energy enough for the whole night if
they’d needed it.

The clock on the nightstand said it was 9:20,
which meant she had about forty minutes until V showed up. That
gave her enough time to eat, shower and prepare Zoey for a visitor.
It was even possible that after a full night in a safe place she
might be better able to communicate and they could all figure out
what to do next. Peg had a brief vision of her and V swarming down
on the nest of whatever vampire had turned Zoey and staking him.
That was almost comical, Peg being reborn as Buffy for a new
generation. As ludicrous as the thought might be, though, she felt
like she had the energy for it this morning. She felt like she
could even do sprints around the block, which considering how out
of shape she was proved to be an even funnier vision than her as
Van Helsing.

She instinctively looked in on Brendan as she
passed his bedroom even though he of course wasn’t there. Tony had
said that since she wasn’t feeling good he would get Brendan ready
and take him to the sitter before work. Downstairs she winced at
the brightness outside and shut all the blinds. It was the first
warm and rainless day in far too long, but Zoey wouldn’t be able to
appreciate that. At least it was nice to know she wouldn’t burst
into flames if Peg forgot one. She’d managed to get here during the
day, after all, although Peg still had to ask her how she’d managed
to get through a small town neighborhood during the day while
wearing nothing but dirt and shit.

At the basement door she stopped for a
second, considering whether or not she should call down and ask
Zoey if she wanted any breakfast, although a better question would
be whether or not she could eat breakfast. Peg had never stopped to
ask if she could or needed to eat regular food as well as blood.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t really sure how she was going to
keep Zoey supplied with blood in the first place. She supposed they
could do something like last night, but Peg would have preferred
that be a one-time thing. The moment had passed and they would need
to come up with something more sustainable.

Peg went to the kitchen and opened up the
freezer, looking for any red meat she might be able to squeeze a
little blood from. There was a steak, but it was frozen solid. Peg
would just have to make a stop at the meat market sometime today.
Hopefully Zoey would be able to hold on until then.

She grabbed the handle to the fridge, paying
less attention to what she was doing than the plans she had to make
for the day. Zoey’s introduction to V might be a bit hairy. As she
opened the door she tried to think of some line to V that wouldn’t
sound crazy, although most of the things that came to mind were
movie lines. That would probably be too cheesy, but…

Tony’s head fell out of the fridge and
bounced on the floor.

If there was one
thing Peg took away from her previous experiences with horrible
situations, it was how, no matter what the situation, the mind
would latch onto and remember the least appropriate details. In
this case, the detail was that Tony’s head tried to roll but was
prevented by his bulbous nose. She’d always ribbed him about its
size, saying that if he stayed outside for too long a pigeon was
likely to shit on it. Even now, that nose was doing its best to be
comical.

Then Peg remembered exactly what she was
looking at and she screamed.

She backed away from the fridge, hitting the
counter behind her at an odd angle and finding herself slipping to
the floor. She made no effort to catch herself. That would have
required her to look around at something else in her environment
other than the refrigerator.

The force of the head as it came out had
forced the door the rest of the way open. It swung about three
quarters of the way open and then stopped, allowing Peg a perfect
view of everything inside. From her current place on the floor she
could see the other side of the fridge next to the counter, a thin
space that she hadn’t been able to see when she’d come in from the
hallway. Someone had taken all the shelves and food out, stacking
them neatly off to the side. Their place inside the fridge was now
occupied by the rest of Tony’s body. The interior light was
partially blocked, giving Tony an aura around him like a holy man
descending from a mountain. His limbs were bent and twisted at odd
angles and in some places the skin protruded where the bones
underneath pushed out in ways they shouldn’t. He was still naked,
the exact state Peg last remembered him in after their sexual
Olympics the night before.

Peg was somewhat aware that she was making
noises, probably something like denial of the moment repeated over
and over, but she didn’t really pay much attention to that. She
couldn’t stop staring at the head. It had come to rest at an angle
that made it look almost like Tony was winking at her, like he was
trying to tell one last joke or impart some final piece of wisdom
that she would have to decode.

After several minutes her thoughts finally
pulled themselves together enough for her to recognize two or three
of them from among the chaotic jumble racing through her head.
Somewhere among the
oh no no no
’s and
this can’t be right
this isn’t real’s
the details started to give her something
like a picture of what might have happened. He was naked. There
were no clothes around. So he’d been…

(
killed
)

(
no no he can’t be dead
)

…this had happened to him before he’d even
gotten dressed for the day. Which meant he hadn’t taken Brendan to
the sitter’s, so…

Oh my God, where’s Brendan
?

Even though standing up took a tremendous
mental effort she still found herself fully capable of running up
the stairs and into Brendan’s room.

“Brendan? Brendan honey, are you here?
Brendan!”

His bed was empty. None of the clothes she’d
laid out for him the night before had been moved. There was no sign
of the pajamas he’d been wearing.

That’s because they’re still on his dead
body somewhere in the house
, Peg thought, then, immediately
responding to the voice in her own head,
Fuck you! He’s not
dead! He’s not fucking dead you bitch
!

“Brendan! Brendan honey, answer mommy! Answer
mommy or I’m going to…” Going to what? She knew the ridiculousness
of her words but she was powerless to keep them from coming from
her mouth. She ran into the bathroom, not really sure what she
expected to find but not finding it anyway. Then her bedroom, then
back downstairs. The living room. The dining room. The downstairs
bathroom. He wasn’t anywhere. She found herself back in the kitchen
against her own will. She refused to look at the refrigerator
again, but she knew she had to look everywhere else. Tony was here,
so Brendan might be too. She actually hoped with all her soiled
soul that he wasn’t, though. If he was here he could only be in the
same shape as Tony. He could be…

No! Don’t think it. Don’t you dare think
it
.

She looked in all the cupboards, the pantry,
the tiny spaces here and there where someone might shove a small
body. She didn’t see anything.

Peg stopped in the middle of checking the
trashcan and again collapsed bonelessly on the floor, unable to
control her own body anymore or the giant heaving sobs threatening
to make her pass out from lack of air. There were other places in
the house she could look. The house had a small crawlspace that
passed as an attic, and there were multiple closets, nooks, and
crannies throughout the house. He could be in any of them, possibly
even alive and cowering, but she doubted it. Tony hadn’t even had
time to get dressed, so that implied that whoever had done this to
him was fast, probably very strong too if they were able to
overpower him. If this person could get Tony there was no way he or
she wouldn’t have been able to get Brendan as well.

I know you’re not really in the most
rational state,
the voice in her head told her
, but think
about that for a second. Someone killed Tony. They might have
killed Brendan. So
…

The rational voice didn’t need to complete
the thought because the rest of her mind was finally able to take
back over for itself. She stood up and, even though her hand was
shaking, she reached for the knife block on the counter and grabbed
the largest chef’s knife they had. Because none of this made sense
until she looked at it a certain way. Tony had gotten up several
hours earlier. The person who had done this to him, and possibly
done something to Brendan, should have done it to her as well.
She’d just been sleeping, completely worn out. She should have made
a far easier target than Tony. Unless, that was, the person had a
reason not to kill her specifically.

Even though parts of her mind screamed for
her to stop she got closer to Tony’s head and bent down low to take
a closer look. She felt like she had to shut down a certain part of
herself to get this close to it without losing her mind. Indeed,
most of her emotions seemed to vanish for just that moment. It was
the only way to deal with this in the way she knew she had to.

She took a closer look at Tony’s neck. The
cut that had taken off his head was far from clean. This hadn’t
been done with any kind of blade or weapon. The flesh was ragged
and bits of unidentifiable insides hung out from the throat in
grisly chunks. Several inches of bone stuck out, and although Peg
knew very little about anatomy she thought she could at least
recognize the vertebrae. The head didn’t look like it had been cut
off. It looked like it had been ripped off.

And there were marks around the throat. Marks
that looked suspiciously like ragged teeth marks.

Peg stood back up. There was one last place
in the house where she hadn’t tried looking yet. Quietly, trying to
keep the knife as steady as possible in her hand, she went to the
basement door.

The door opened silently, no squeaking
hinges, the product of Tony’s obsessive need to keep their lovely
home in perfect order. Peg hit the light switch and watched as the
bottom of the stairwell washed in light. She’d half-expected to see
Brendan’s ruined little body or a pool of blood at the bottom of
the stairs, but from here the basement looked just as perfectly
normal as everything else in the house. She went down slowly,
trying to step lightly and avoid any creaking that might alert the
basement’s resident that she was coming, although Peg knew that
wouldn’t do any good. She’d been screaming and crying pretty loud
from the kitchen. She didn’t know whether vampires had greater than
average hearing along with all their other abilities, but even an
average person would have been fully aware by now that Peg had
discovered the gruesome scene in the fridge. She kept the knife in
front of her all the way down the stairs, her hands no longer
shaking and her heart and breathing starting to return to normal.
She felt a strange calm come over her even though she knew that she
should be more frightened now than she ever had been in her entire
life.