Fate of the Vampire (25 page)

“Stay there!” Jessie shouted at him in such a commanding voice that Don became instantly rooted to the spot. Whipping his head around, Jessie said, “Aurora, you must leave. Go!”

“No,” I said, thrashing against Fred’s grip. “You know what will happen if I do. You know I can’t.”

“Oh, for pity sake,” Mr. Vanderlind snarled as he stormed forward. “Get out of the way,” he said, shoving Jessie aside so that he could stand the closest he possibly could to me without stepping into the sunlight. “Boy!” he called to Fred, his eyes starting to glow like two embers. “Listen to me.”

That’s when Jessie snatched up Don and physically hurled the teen with all his might at his grandfather.

Mr. Vanderlind went sprawling into the sunlight as Don crashed into him. The vampire let out a scream of pain and rage, his body instantly beginning to smoke as soon as the light touched his skin.

Don immediately rolled off of the man, surprised and disoriented. But Fred was right there. He abruptly released my hand and dove on top of the vampire, tackling him as he tried to stagger to his feet.

The senior Vanderlind wasn’t going down without a fight. He hadn’t survived in the middle of the ocean for eight decades without being tough. He flung Fred off with a swing of his arm and sent the boy smashing into the trunk of a nearby tree. There was a loud crack. Fred let out a shriek of pain and slumped to the ground.

“Aurora, silver!” Jessie shouted.

Yanking an earring out of my ear, I dove on top of the vampire, slapping the silver mesh against his face. I was aiming for his eye, but only got his cheek. The vampire shrieked and thrashed violently. I felt a sharp blow to the side of my head, knocking me to the ground. Everything went fuzzy then dark for a moment. When I was able to see again, the vampire was towering over me.

“Aurora!” Jessie shouted, trying to rush out into the sunlight.

“Stay there!” his grandfather commanded, pointing at him with the full expectation that his orders would be obeyed. “I will deal with you later.”

Jessie desperately wanted to disobey his grandfather, I could see that written across his face, but he couldn’t. He had to do as his maker
decreed.

I started crab walking backward on my hands and feet, my butt dragging on the ground, trying to put a little space between me and the member of the undead who was now looking at me with the crazed eyes of a rabid dog. I scrabbled at my sweater, trying to free a piece of one of the shattered stakes that were slicing into my skin.

“I am going to drain you now, you little slut,” the elder Vanderlind said, grabbing me by the hair and dragging me back to the shade of the tunnel. “I am going to suck out every ounce of your blood and then spend the next hundred years teaching my grandson a lesson about loyalty,” he told me as he flung me to the floor.

“No,” I whimpered, giving up on the stakes. I’d landed on the wood too many times. They were nothing but splinters.

“Leave her alone!” Jessie bellowed, straining against his own body to come to my aid.

I tried to get to my feet. I tried to run. But Mr. Vanderlind shoved me back down, pinning my shoulders to the ground. “You should be happy,” he told me. His skin had stopped smoking
; it was starting to heal. His fangs glinted in the shadows. “You’re about to experience a true vampire kiss.” As he bent his head to drain me, I could see his eyes. They were gray like the ocean after a storm. They were Jessie’s eyes.

“No,” I shrieked, thrashing beneath him, flinging my head from side to side try
ing to avoid having his fangs pierce my flesh.

The vampire let out a hiss of pain and jerked away from me. I had been writhing so violently that my remaining silver earring had grazed his face. “You bitch,” he snarled
, raising his hand to strike me.

That’s when Fred came up behind him and smashed him upside the head with a broken tree branch
, doing his best imitation of a pro ballplayer swinging for the fences. Grandpa Vanderlind was caught so unaware that he partially slid off of me, freeing my left hand. I ripped the remaining earring out of my lobe and aimed it for his eye. This time I didn’t miss. The vampire fell backward, shrieking and clawing at his face.

“Stake him!” Jessie yelled. “Stake him
, now!”

Fred stood frozen for a moment, unsure what he should do. “You want me to
… what?” he stammered.

I leapt to my feet. “Give me the damn stake,” I shouted, grabbing the broken branch and yanking it out of his hands. I raised it high in the air and then, without hesitation, drove it down with all my might straight into the vampire’s chest.

“No!” the vampire screamed, a spray of blood spurting from his lips. “I can’t have lived this long to die by the likes of you.”

But it was already too late. His body started to shake and twitch as soon
as the wood pierced his flesh. His skin split and cracked and peeled away from his bones. His eyes, so much like the beautiful gray eyes of the man I loved, shriveled in his skull. A blanket of black gas escaped his mouth, filling the air and making me cough and gag. I ran for fresh air with Fred hard on my heels.

I don’t know if it was the black gas or just the horror of having staked my second vampire in
the space of a few months, but whatever was in my stomach came out in a hurry. I found myself retching against the tree that had so helpfully provided us with a branch to conquer our enemy. I felt profoundly grateful to the tree and knew that kneeling on the ground and puking on its roots was not the proper way to show my appreciation.

Once I had stopped heaving, Fred came over and slumped to the ground next to me. “I think I need to go to the hospital very soon,” he said in a voice that had a disturbing wheeze to it. He closed his eyes. “I’m worried that Liz might be dead
, and I can’t find Don.”

I lifted my head. “Don?” I called. “Don!” I called louder.

I held very still, listening for the reply. That’s when I heard the sirens. I whipped my head around to look at Jessie. He was standing over a pile of rags that used to be his grandfather. “Can you bring Liz out here?” I called to him, finding it hard to get to my feet without the world spinning. “I think those sirens are for us.”

Jessie immediately grabbed Liz’s limp body and carried her over to the edge of the shadow. I heard him take a few deep breaths
; then he rushed forward. His skin immediately started to smoke. I could see layer upon layer burning away.

“Throw her!” I shouted. “Just throw her away from the door.

Jessie flung the girl’s limp body over the threshold of the door and then scrambled back inside. His face looked like he had been in a fire. The sirens were getting closer. “I’ll come to you tonight,” he called, smoke still radiating off his body. But he was already starting to heal. He must have hit an emergency release bar on the garage door because it abruptly slammed shut. We were left staring at a perfectly normal-looking garage door in somebody’s backyard.

The sirens were only a block or two away. “Let’s move Liz away from the garage,” I said, limping over to her body.

“I don’t think I can,” was Fred’s faint reply.

Fred was not looking good. I hoped he only had a few broken bones, but I shouldn’t have wanted him to try to move Liz. I felt like a jerk for even asking. Unfortunately, there was one more favor I felt compelled to bring up. “Fred, I know it’s a lot to ask, but is there any way
you can avoid telling the police about the vampire?”

“The what?” he said, giving me a funny look.

A police car squealed into the driveway. “The vampires. Please don’t mention the vampires,” I said hurriedly.

“I’m sorry,” Fred replied. “I’m not feeling great. What are you asking?”

“Nothing,” I told him as two officers jumped out of the squad car, guns drawn. “It was nothing. I just wanted to thank you for my beautiful earrings.”

“You’re welcome,” he said with a faint smile. “I’m glad you like them.”

A few hours later, I was released from the hospital. I had some pretty bad bruises and they wanted me to take it easy for a few days, but I apparently didn’t have a concussion and nothing was broken. Fred’s shoulder was a mess. He also had some broken ribs and a punctured lung. The doctors were amazed by how well he was functioning given the state of his injuries. I knew it was mostly adrenaline from fighting the vampire, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone else that. Don was fine, just a little low on blood. He had run to a neighbor’s house and pounded on the door, telling them to call 911. Liz was in a coma, but they were transfusing her some blood and thought she would make it.

Once I was patched up, the police wanted to talk to me. I took my cue from Fred’s behavior as the emergency vehicles had arrived. All knowledge of what had happened to him seemed to quickly melt away. He was in pain but not all that upset. Just happy to see the paramedics.

My mom was almost instantly at the hospital. I could imagine her running red lights and breaking speed limits. She insisted on being in the room with me when I was questioned by the police. They tried to bar her, but she was so ferociously adamant that they decided it was easier just to let her be there.

I couldn’t tell them much. I said that I’d gone to the public pier. I had, after all, left my
bug there. I told them I’d gotten out of my car and was headed along the shore when I heard footsteps coming up fast behind me. I turned to see who it was and then … I let my eyes grow vague. They peppered me with questions, but I wore a puzzled expression and said things like “I’m not sure.”

They did also ask me if I was fighting with my boyfriend. Had I heard from my father lately? Was anyone bullying me at school? Those answers I gave clearly, all to the negative. The two police officers questioning me, both women, had a quiet conversation between themselves. They agreed that they had to wait for the blood
work to come back from the lab to see if I’d somehow been drugged.

The one question they asked me that I stumbled over answering was, “Why did you go to the pier?”

I really didn’t have a good reply. “Uh …” I said, completely caught out. Then I just shrugged my shoulders and added, “I like the pier.” But I’m not sure they believed me. At least to my own ears, I sounded insincere.

As mom drove me home, I began to worry about things. Would anyone in the neighboring town remember me from the bank or the hardware store? There was the package I’d shipped general delivery. Would that be remembered and somehow traced to Viggo?

There was also my backpack still in the tunnel. It had my cell phone and keys and wallet. I hoped Jessie would pick up the backpack because it could also be a problem if the police or some maintenance workers found it. I knew I wasn’t that great of an actress as far as playing the role of a girl with memory loss. My only hope was that since the other kids didn’t remember anything either, I didn’t look too suspicious.

“Are you doing al
l right, honey?” Mom asked. “Did you remember something?” She’d obviously observed the grim expression on my face.

I looked over at her, surprised. I had been so lost in my own thoughts, I kind of forgot she was there. “I don’t have my car keys,” I said. “Did you bring the spare?”

“Honey, we’re not picking your car up now,” she told me. “I’ll figure something out to get it later, but right now we’re taking you home.”

I really, really wanted to go home. The idea of being snug in our house where we were safe from the undead held a lot of appeal for me. I could still see Jessie
’s grandfather very vividly in my head, his weird skin making him look both young and old. So much sun exposure over the decades seemed to have somehow made him able to withstand it much longer than Jessie. I could see the scar slashing across his face. The hatred he felt toward me radiating off of him. And those horrible gray eyes. I knew those eyes would haunt my sleep for the rest of my life.

It was a hard thing to reconcile in my head. I loved Jessie so deeply
, and when I looked into his eyes I felt pure happiness. But they were the same as his grandfather’s eyes. They were the same unfathomable gray. They were the eyes of a vampire.

How could I keep on going, loving Jessie the way I did but constantly under attack from the undead world? I knew deep in my heart that Jessie had been right the first time he had tried to end our relationship. He’d done it to try to protect me. He’d done it because he loved me. I wish
ed I had been smart enough to know that, but I’d let my emotions overrule my head. I’d put myself in danger, my mother in danger, and everyone I’d ever met in danger because I was in love with a vampire.

I hung my head, completely ashamed of how selfish love had made me.

By the time we finally got home, it was pushing nine o’clock. I was exhausted
, and every bit of my body hurt. Even the roots of my hair ached a little. “I’m going to bed,” I told my mom as I started shuffling for the stairs.

Mom hurried over to my side and put her arms around me. “I’m not going to squeeze you because I know you’re in pain, but I just have to hug you for a moment to know that you’re here and that you’re al
l right.” She sniffed, sounding a bit tearful. “I was so scared when the police called.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her, hugging back, feeling a guilt so heavy that it was literally weighing down on my chest. “I really wish I knew what happened.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to remember something after you get some rest,” she suggested.

“I hope so,” I said as she released me and I headed for the stairs. “I really hope so.” If I was being honest, what I really wanted to do was forget.

Before I met Jessie, I didn’t know about love, but the world wasn’t that scary of a place. Sure I had to watch out for random perverts and had to keep an eye on a friend if she passed out at a party, but I had never been truly terrified. Since meeting him, I had been constantly pursued by the undead, who were determined to end my life in the most painful ways imaginable. For how good and loving and loyal Jessie was, a lot of other vampires were seriously demented. They didn’t care about mortals. They didn’t think of us as equals. Jessie had told me that many times when a mortal is turned into a vampire it changes who they are. They become twisted and distorted to the point that who they are as the undead doesn’t even resemble who they were when alive.

I shed my clothes, just letting them fall on the floor. I’d bag them up and throw them out in the morning. I was too tired to even take a shower. I started to put on my pajamas but then just sagged on the bed cradling my head in my hands. I didn’t know how to fix my life. I didn’t know how to love Jessie and yet stay safe from the undead world. How could I still keep Jessie in my life and yet live vampire free?

I saw the pendant Grandma Gibson had given me for Christmas sitting on my bedside table. I had to give her credit; she’d almost been right again. And someday she would be right. If things kept going the way they were going, someday a vampire would kill me. I took off my Pools of Light and then snagged the pendant, fastening it around my neck. I knew Jessie would be over soon, but he would just have to deal with me wearing a little silver. After the day I’d just had, I didn’t think he’d begrudge me that.

Gingerly
, I pulled on my pajama bottoms and then painfully shimmied into the top. I knew my shoulders were nothing compared to Fred’s, but there was definitely still some discomfort. I couldn’t imagine what he must have gone through fighting the vampire while in excruciating pain. Still, he was alive. They were all alive, so that was good. It was just poor Mervin who was probably dead. At least that death couldn’t really be laid at my feet. Jessie’s grandfather would have come to Tiburon no matter what. And he was always going to eat with an appetite that showed no mercy. The town was lucky that Fred and Liz and Don were still alive. I was lucky to be alive.

I inched my robe up over my shoulders. I wondered how late Jessie would be. I assumed he had to report in to the Bishops about his grandfather. There would probably be another investigation. That would not be good. I was pretty positive that the Bishops would not look positively upon a repeat offender. Jessie had developed a bad habit of prioritizing my life over that of fellow vampires. On the other hand, Mr. Vanderlin
d was acting pretty out of control. Vampires weren’t allowed to just snatch people off the streets anymore. Not if they didn’t want to get locked in a coffin for a few centuries. I sighed, feeling completely drained. I really didn’t know what was going to happen.

I was tired. And I was miserable. I wanted to just lie down and shut my eyes. I had some pain pills from the hospital. The ones they had given me before I’d left had worn off. I really wanted to take a few more and then just sleep. I wished Jessie could simply tell me when the hell he was going to show up.

And then a delightful thought occurred to me. He could just tell me. We were living in modern times, and Jessie’s girlfriend had just rather thoughtfully given him a smartphone. My plan was briefly interrupted as I thought about my cell phone tucked safely inside my bag somewhere in the bowels of the Tiburon sewer system, but then I remembered that I could just as easily use our land line to call his cell.

We had two phones for our land line. One was in the kitchen
, and the other was on a small table in the upstairs hallway. Mom used to have it in her room until I became a teenager. Then she figured that I would probably want more access. That was kind of her, but she was thinking with a brain that was reliant on old technology. She wasn’t thinking that modern teens were usually always within hands reach of a phone.

I peeked out in
to the hallway. I could hear my mom watching television downstairs. I hurried down the hall, snatched up the cordless phone from its cradle, and then dashed back into my room. I pushed the buttons for Jessie’s number. I could never remember the formula for a quadratic equation to save my life, but I had memorized the seven digits to Jessie’s cell phone almost instantly.

I wandered around my bedroom, waiting as the phone rang. But it didn’t surprise me when he didn’t pick up. I listened to his honeyed voice asking me personally to leave a message.

“Hi, Jessie, it’s me,” I started, suddenly feeling embarrassed for no good reason. Just then, there was a tapping at my window. I peeked out through the curtain to see Jessie with his long coat swirling about him, striding away from the glass to the edge of the roof. I continued my message by saying, “Okay, I was going to ask you when you thought you were going to drop by, but you’re here now, so never mind.” Then I quickly added, “I love you,” which was kind of silly seeing that I was just about to be in his arms.

I hung up the phone, tossing it onto my bed. Throwing back the curtains and opening the window, I called out to him in a quiet voice, “Jessie.” He was sitting on the edge of the roof with his legs dangling over the side, looking out at the night. “Are you coming in?” I asked softly.

He looked down at his hands and shook his head.

“Okay, I’m coming out,” I told him. “I just need to bundle up a little.”

Shutting the window so all of the warm air didn’t escape from the house, I looked around for something to wear. I didn’t know why Jessie wanted to sit on the roof, but I didn’t see any reason why I should have to freeze in the process of him explaining. Was the loss of his grandfather bothering him? Or maybe he knew that another vampire death would bring more trouble from the Bishops. In a weird way, I didn’t want to know. The last several hours had been so stressful that I didn’t feel I could handle any additional bad news. Still, I was eager to be with him, even if it was on our porch roof in late December.

I pulled a pair of sweatpants over my pajama bottoms. I already had on some thick socks, but also stuck my feet into my sheep’s wool slippers. I grabbed a sweater and wrapped it around my neck like a scarf. That would have to do until I could lure Jessie back into the house. My shoulders were in no mood for me to try to pull anything over my head.

I expected Jessie to get up when I opened the window again, as I was hooking one leg over the sill. He rustled a little, glancing over his shoulder in my direction, but made no move to assist me or come any closer.
Great
, I thought.
Is he going to try to break up with me again?
I had to admit I was freaked about staking another vampire and about the undead lifestyle in general, but I never for one minute doubted wanting to be with Jessie Vanderlind. I knew with every fiber of my being that he was the love of my life.

“Jessie,” I said as I came up next to him on the roof. “Are you okay?”

He turned his head away.

“Jessie,” I said again, reaching out to put my hand on his shoulder. “I know things are bad right now, but as long as we’re together, then I’m sure everything will be al
l right.”

He sprang to his feet, crushing me in his arms, his eyes two burning embers. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he hissed. “Nothing is going to be right ever again. Not for you and not for my dear brother.”

I realized after it was too late that it wasn’t Jessie sitting on my porch roof. It was his brother, Daniel. The roof fell away from my feet as he launched us into the air, one of my slippers tumbling to the ground.