Kissing Corpses (11 page)

The handwriting was beautiful.

Miss Kendall Harker,

From the night we first met, I knew that you belonged at my side. There was something extraordinary about you, even in your most fragile moment.

In all of my time on this earth I have never met a woman as beautiful as you who has the wit and the strength of will to match it. Feeling the pounding of your heart through your breasts, warm against my chest, as we lay together, reminds me of what it feels like to be alive. Not since my death have I felt such excitement and hope for my future. Our future.

All of my roaming through time has been for the sole purpose of finding you. I never wish to be separated from you. Never again will I have to go to my grave alone. My daily death will be a sweet respite with your body next to mine. You are mine, and either you or I or both shall perish before I ever let you go.

Forever Yours,

Rawdon Hale

The last words felt like sleet running down my spine. He was never going to let me go unless he was destroyed. The situation was clear to me now. We couldn't stay in Cody's house forever, holed up, waiting. We would never know where he had gone to ground to kill him and we would never be able to be certain that he wasn't waiting somewhere in the shadows at night. He was stronger. He was faster. Gilchrist had been trying to kill him for fifteen years with no success.

I picked up Cody's car keys off of the end table by the door. I didn't put a coat on, I just opened the front door in my bluejeans and sweater and ran.

“Kendall!” Geneva screamed.

“Get back in here, you idiot!” Gilchrist called after me.

I threw open the door to Cody's truck and hopped up in the cab. I slammed it shut and then Rawdon was at the door, looking through the driver's side window at me. His lips moved, but through the window his voice was muffled. I tore my eyes away before he had time to hypnotize me, turned the key, pushed the shifter, and slammed the gas.

I heard a thunk as I peeled out and looked in the rearview mirror. Cody had climbed into the bed of the pickup and had made it over the tailgate in time for me to pull away. Rawdon stood in the road behind us, the shadows creeping up to swallow him.

Cody slapped the back window of the cab. I reached back and popped the lock before peeling around a corner.

“What the hell are you doing?” he snarled as he climbed through the window.

“I was trying to lure him away from you. This is my problem.”

“In my new truck.”

“To hell with your truck,” I said.

Rawdon was in front of me. I instinctually slammed the brakes. It's a natural reaction, upon seeing a person in the road. As I was screeching to a halt, I remembered that he was dead and that he wanted to kill me. I switched my foot to the gas and struck him. We crashed through a picket fence at the end of the cul-de-sac and he vanished under the bumper of the truck.

“Is he dead?” Cody asked as the truck grinded to a halt on some unfortunate homeowner's lawn. The once flawless, candy-apple-red paint was covered in gouges and splinters of white wood fencing.

“I don't know,” I said. “We should check.”

“Or we could back up, run him over again, and go home.”

“I like that idea.” I put the car in reverse. The engine stopped. “Oh my God, Cody. The truck.”

“He must have pulled the fuel line.”

There was a knock on my window. I turned in time to see Rawdon's fist striking the glass. He came at it again and again. Cody threw open the passenger side door and grabbed the back of my shirt to pull me with him. Rawdon's fist struck the window once more and it shattered. Bloodless gashes covered the hand that grabbed my collar and pulled me away from Cody. I watched in horror as the wounds closed before my eyes.

I opened my mouth to scream, but his hand covered my lips, just like it had when I found the refrigerator of blood.

“Kendall,” Rawdon said calmly. “Why did you run away from me?”

I kicked and flailed, but he had me tight in his arms.

“I found your scent at the house. Did you help Gilchrist burn down my home?”

With my mouth covered, I nodded.

He clicked his tongue. “I would have given you everything,” he whispered. “Did you know that?”

I was shivering. Frost had settled on the street outside and Rawdon's hands, without the warmth of life, were like ice against my skin.

He screamed in my face, “I would have given you everything!”

I began to cry.

Rawdon became calm again. “But I forgive you,” he said. “Because I love you. You're just holding on to life. I can show you, Kendall. I can show you how free you can really become, once you let go of it.” He opened his mouth and his incisors lengthened and sharpened.

I scrunched my eyes shut as tight as I could and shook my head. No, I thought, no. I wasn't going to become a vampire. He could kill me, but I wasn't going to let my body become a walking host to a demon. I wasn't going to consent.

Rawdon's teeth sank into my neck. I cried out, muffled by the palm of his hand pressed tight against my lips. I had never felt so much pain in my life. My nerves were on fire, and the blood was being pulled from me. My life was being pulled from me.

There was a simultaneous crunch and squish and Rawdon' body pushed down against mine. His bite relaxed. I opened my eyes to see him frozen, eyes wide, with surprise on his face. He slumped over sideways, unmoving with a splintered piece of picket fence driven far into his back. Cody stood behind him, panting. “Jesus... you weren't kidding.”

“Cody!” I shouted, relieved.

“I was worried that if it went too far, I might hit you.”

Hot blood continued to ooze out of the wound on my neck. I clasped my hand over it. “You didn't get me,” I said.

Cody stepped forward to catch me just before I fell.

I woke up in a white room with the beep of monitors all around me. Geneva was asleep in the chair next to me. The sun shone in through the hospital window.

“Gen?” I said, with a weak voice because my throat was dry. She opened her eyes and looked up at me. When she remembered where she was, she sat up quick.

“Hey,” she said. “You're up.”

“Is Cody alright?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah,” Geneva moved to sit on the edge of my bed. “The police questioned him. He told them it was a crazy ex of yours. Defense of others. He hasn't been arrested. I don't think they'll press charges. The neighbors didn't see you run Rawdon over, but they saw him pull you out of the truck and bite you.

“Do they know he was a vampire?” I asked.

Geneva shook her head.

“It's over?”

Geneva threw her arms around me and hugged me tight. When she pulled back I touched my neck. A large, flat bandage covered the wound. I hoped it wouldn't scar.

“They had to give you blood.”

“Where's Gilchrist?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Geneva said. “He took the crossbow and left the house when he saw you drive off. I heard sirens a few minutes later and then I got tired of waiting in the house and went to find you. Cody had already staked him when I showed up.”

“My parents?”

“They came by earlier this morning. They're with Noah in the cafeteria.”

I closed my eyes. “Will you be here when I wake up?” I asked.

“I called into work. I can stay all day.”

“Thanks, Geneva,” I said. “I'm sorry I put you in danger.”

“Don't. You had no idea.”

“I'm still sorry,” I said. This had to be the most comfortable pillow I had ever rested my head against.

When I opened my eyes again, Noah was sitting in the chair next to my bed, changing the channels on the TV. I don't know if the sound woke me up or if it was something else. There was a tray placed on the little table attached to my bed. It held a cup of apple juice with a foil lid, a cup of yogurt, a miniature can of gingerale, and some toast with a plastic packet of jam.

My stomach growled. I sat up and reached for the cup of yogurt. Noah looked back at me and smiled. “You're awake!”

“I'm hungry,” I said.

“You should be. It's mid-afternoon. Dad and Mom had to go. Some guy he works with kicked the bucket earlier this week, and they had to be at the funeral.”

I had to search around the tray to find a plastic spoon for my yogurt. Noah got up from his chair and punched the straw through the foil lid on the apple juice for me. “So this British guy turned out to be crazy, huh?”

I nodded. “Among other things.”

“Cody was being really cryptic when I saw him this morning. So was Geneva, actually. Am I missing the big picture here?”

I stopped trying to break into my yogurt and looked up at Noah. I had put him through a weekend of hell. Geneva had set him worrying about me since Saturday night. He deserved to know the truth.

“How about I eat this yogurt, and then we talk,” I said.

Noah took the cup from my hand and nodded before yanking off the lid. “There you go.”

I took my time eating. It wasn't a very large cup of yogurt, though. I managed to stretch it for five minutes.

“Alright,” Noah said. “Talk.”

“Right.” I flexed my hand, which was swollen with IV fluids. “So... have you seen my neck?”

“The guy bit you, right?”

I reached for the large bandage that covered most of the left side of my neck. Every side of it had a long strip of tape, forming a tight seal. I picked at the tape and peeled it back. My neck was sensitive to touch, bruised. I winced as I put my fingers on the holes that I couldn't see.

“Ugh, those look like...” he trailed off. “You're kidding.”

I smoothed the bandage back down. I could only guess, from Noah's expression, how bad it looked. “Fangs. Vampire fangs.”

“But vampires--”

“Aren't real? Yeah. Well, this one is.”

“Vampires, as in, 'I vant to suck your blood?'”

I nodded. “Only this one doesn't fly, and he shows up in mirrors when he's just eaten.”

“And last night he tried to eat you?”

“Last night he was angry because I kind of burnt down his house.”

“What?!?” Noah shouted.

I shushed him and pointed at the door. He crossed the room and closed it. “Why did you burn down his house?”

“It's complicated.”

Noah gave me his trademarked “oh please” look. I clearly wasn't allowed to gloss over any of the details.

“Did you hear anything in the news about a murder downtown last weekend?”

“Some former frat boy got shredded apart, right?”

I nodded. “That was Rawdon. The guy had been a jerk to Geneva and Rawdon took offense. Or maybe he just wanted a snack. Or both.”

“So you torched his house?”

“We figured that out Saturday. But Friday night Rawdon told me that he was going to turn me, and it wasn't exactly like I had a choice.”

“Turn you?”

“Kill me. Make me a vampire.”

“So we're talking about literal vampires here?”

“Yes,” I said. The stress in my voice sent a twinge of pain through my neck. I groaned and flopped back against my pillow.

“I just don't understand how.”

“His heart doesn't beat. He's dead, Noah. I don't know how, either, but trust me, it's real. He doesn't have a pulse and he's about two hundred years old. He can't go out in the sun, and he has to drink blood. He's literally a vampire, and he wanted to make sure that I was literally his for eternity.”

“Well, shit.”

“Well, shit,” I repeated.

We sat in silence for a while. Noah kept glancing up at the muted television. The news ticker on the bottom of the screen flashed “Cheyenne domestic dispute ends in death.” I knew it was about me.