Pretty When She Dies (4 page)

Her fingers traced down her sternum. She drew in a quivering breath she wasn't even sure she needed as she sought out the beating of a living heart. Tears flowed down her face as she felt nothing for a terrible, panicking moment, and then she felt a thump.

“Oh, God,” she gasped with relief, falling back against the cold tiles.

Both hands pressed tightly between her breasts, she both heard and felt the steady, slow beating of her heart. Swallowing hard, cold tears slid down her cheeks to mingle with the hot water. Looking down, she saw that her tears were turning the water a slight pinkish color.

Frightened, she rubbed her fingertips under one eye and drew them back from her face. They were tinged with what looked like blood before the hot water washed it away.

Crying out with the sheer terror, she fell to her knees and laid her forehead against the stained bottom of the tub. The hot water beat down on her as she gave in to the overwhelming despair inside of her.

***

The mirror was empty. Not a whisper of reflection was there.

Amaliya blinked slowly. She stared into the empty mirror, willing herself to see her image. But there was nothing; just the empty shower behind her. Reaching out, she pressed her hand firmly to the fogged surface.

Nothing. Not a flicker.

She pushed harder, as if she could literally shove her reflection into the silvered glass, but nothing happened. Her hand remained against the empty mirror without a doppelgänger’s hand pressing against her own.

Closing her eyes, she lowered her hand and slowly took hold of the sink. Her whole body trembled as she tried to gather her wits about her. The horror of her new reality washed over her, fresh and terrible.

Opening her eyes, for a moment, she thought she saw her reflection. A brief, stark image of a woman with dyed, black hair laying heavy and wet against her neck and shoulders, staring with desperate need into nothingness. The image flashed out of existence. She reached out a desperate hand. The mirror shattered as her fingers slammed into the reflective surface. The shards tinkled into the sink. Sobbing, she sat sharply on the edge of the tub.

She ran a hand over her wet hair as she sat in silence, her lips quivering. She could just go to bed and go to sleep. This wasn't real.

None of it was real. She was sick. Maybe she had the flu. It was all a dream. A horrible, terrible dream. There were no such things as vampires. She didn't even have sharp teeth! She couldn't be a murdering, bloodsucking fiend! Vampires didn't exist.

Shoving her fingers into her mouth, she ran the tips over her teeth to fearfully search for sharp little teeth. Nothing. She felt nothing. Just the smooth edges she should feel.

“I just need to go to bed and wake up,” she decided.

Pulling a towel securely around her body, she walked into her messy room and sprawled across the narrow twin bed. The alarm clock lay right in her view. Its bright red numbers stated it was nine o'clock.

Red like blood
, she thought idly, then shoved the terrible allegory away from her thoughts.

Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the poster over her bed. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails glowered down at her in all his dark beauty.

Closing her eyes, she lay her hand over her face and willed herself to sleep. If she slept this would all go away. She would wake up and...

What?

She would suddenly not be living dead? Her battle to be out of the grave would suddenly not exist? Her blood soaked clothes wouldn't lie in a heap on the floor?

“Dammit!” She sat up and shook her head.

Drops of water splattered over the wall and clock as her wet hair fanned around her. Gripping her hair with both her hands, she pulled it over her shoulders and held onto it as she rocked back and forth.

She could not stay here. She knew it. Too many questions would be asked. They would find the bodies. For all she knew, they would be able to track her to the scene. The police had all sorts of fancy ways of tracking down killers nowadays.

Oh, God, she was a killer. Her teeth had torn into the flesh of humans and she had drunk blood.

Blood!

The memory of that first bite filled her thoughts. Instead of repulsion, she felt the sting of pleasure. It had been exquisite. An erotic pulse of power rippled through her as she leaned back slowly on her bed. The lovely sensations she had felt as she had fed overwhelmed her senses.

Her panic faded away. She relished the memory of the blood, the fear, the power; it had been delicious and wonderful.

Her tongue scraped against something sharp in her mouth. She bolted upright. She shoved her fingertips into her mouth again. She gasped as something sharp tore them open. Staring at her bloodied fingers, she ran her tongue slowly along her teeth. Amaliya shivered as the tip of it discovered two sharp teeth pressing down on either side of her mouth.

“Fuck,” she blurted, launching herself off the bed.

What had just happened to her? She had lost herself in the memory of her feeding. Dammit, she had enjoyed killing and she knew it.

Looking back at the event through the bloody pleasure of her need, she felt no remorse. Panicking, she pulled deep inside of herself to find guilt and fear. She mentally shoved away the part of her that had relished her killing bites.

“I have to get the hell out of here,” she muttered.

In a frenzy, she shoved clothes, underwear, shoes, and anything else that looked remotely useful into her large duffel bag. Realizing she was naked, she dropped the bag. She snagged a clean pair of jeans and a tank top from the laundry basket. She looked around the room, trying to collect her thoughts into a workable plan. As she slid her tank top on, she abruptly remembered her father's phone call. Her student loan had come in!

“Oh, yeah,” Amaliya breathed.

She fell to her knees beside the dresser. Pulling out a drawer, she felt under it for the envelope that she had duct taped under it. Her searching fingers found it and yanked it off with a sharp tearing sound. Inside the little envelope was over $5,000 of student loan money. It was all the money she had in the world. In her bank account was just a few dollars. Her paycheck from her work-study wouldn't hit until tomorrow.

Opening the envelope, she quickly recounted the money, then thrust it into her jeans. It would have to do for now.

Shoving a few more pairs of thong underwear into her bag, her gaze swept over the room one last time. The bloodied clothes and forest grime lay at her feet. She started to reach down, then hesitated.

Unsure, her hand hovered over the bundle.

She was a vampire now. Fuck it. Let them come after her. She must have some sort of superpowers. Besides, maybe if she left her clothes here, they would think she was dead.

Tears were threatening again, but she fought them.

Time to go home. Time to get help. Time to-She hesitated as she picked up her keys.

“Time to sort this shit out,” she decided, heaving the bag over her shoulder.

She walked out of her dorm room for the last time.

The road was nearly empty of cars. It was still early; people weren’t heading home from their Easter festivities. It would be a late night for a lot of families, as they enjoyed barbecues and family time.

Sweeping her hair back from her face, her gaze flicked to the rear view mirror. A sole car followed behind her. Biting her bottom lip, she drew her bag a little closer to her. The possessions shoved in her bag were all she owned in this world. She felt fragile and afraid.

You're a vampire,
the professor's voice taunted.

Her tongue slid over her teeth for the hundredth time. The sharp teeth she had felt earlier were now gone. Maybe they only came out when she was hungry.

The steady hum of the road was soothing to her frayed nerves. She resisted the urge to turn on the radio. The wind pouring in through the rolled-down windows tossed her hair into disarray around her face, but was effectively blow-drying her tresses.

The car tailing her flipped a turn signal on and disappeared down a side road. The road was barren ad dark behind the truck.

The night was so dark. She couldn't remember it being this foreboding before, but maybe she was just working herself up again.

Now that she thought about it, she could see very well. In fact, she could see perfectly into the velvet darkness surrounding her, but at the same time the world seemed--

“More ominous,” she decided.

It's him.
He makes it like this. So horribly dark and wrong.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she have given into him like that? And now her life was gone, just like those students at the frat house, she was dead, too. Nothing she had worked for mattered anymore. Her hard work, her sacrifices, her triumphs, her failures, everything she had ever done, was now wiped out. Years of saving for college swept away. The years she spent working at crap jobs, with hardly any pay and bosses' roving hands, were for nothing.

The time sitting at her sister’s side, nursing and loving her as she slowly faded from the world didn’t seem worth it anymore. And her friends, having gone off to get married and have children, seemed like a cruel joke. She had sacrificed her own happiness, but for what?

“He owes me,” she hissed.

She realized as soon as the words left her lips that she was talking about her father. Not Professor Sumner.

He had guilt-tripped her into going home from Austin when her sister had been diagnosed with cancer. Her brave little sister had actually insisted that Amaliya stay in Austin and finish her schooling. Despite her sister's urgings to remain in school, Amaliya had been so devastated by her father's berating that she had come home.

What followed was three years of sheer hell. She watched her sister struggle to win a battle that she seemed destined to lose from the moment she was diagnosed. It had been the hardest thing Amaliya had ever done. Throughout the ordeal, she had told herself that she would one day go back to the University of Texas and get her degree in psychology, but her sister's illness hung on and her scholarship expired.

Amaliya had stayed out of love for sister, but also because her father had made it damn clear that it was her responsibility to take care of her sister. After losing his first wife to cancer, Samuel had wanted nothing to do with his youngest daughter's treatment. He had staunchly avoided even dealing with the illness and rarely visited his sick daughter. In the end, little Rachel had died wondering if her father loved her.

Wiping a tear away and letting out an angry noise, Amaliya set her jaw. She would go home, tell him to sign over the truck, tell him not to say he had seen her if the police asked, then instruct him to forget she existed.

Cold tears began to flow down her cheeks. It had always been like this with her family. Tense and coarse. They both had little or no tolerance for each other and lived in an uneasy truce. She believed he loved her, but hated who she was. She had always been different from everyone else in the family. It wasn't just because she was the only girl until her sister Rachel had been born; her entire being just seemed at odds with her family's culture.

“Spic blood,” someone had once said to her father. “It just made her lazy and weird.”

Amaliya hadn't understood what the neighbor had meant. It wasn't until her teen years that she finally understood that her grandmother's Hispanic heritage was blamed for a lot of what was wrong with her.

Her beloved mother was revered, but Amaliya was considered off.

What no one seemed to realize was that it was Marlena who had encouraged her daughter to embrace her uniqueness. Her mother had sacrificed her own dreams to marry the man she loved. She spent her whole life playing the role he had determined for her. It wasn't until her death that Amaliya had understood how her mother had subjugated her hopes and dreams to her handsome, East Texan husband.

That lesson had stayed with Amaliya. It had spurred her to aspire to an education and take risks in her life.

Maybe too many risks
, she thought.

She had been enthralled with her secret date with Professor Sumner, but now her life was over.

The highway began to fill up as other cars began to turn off country roads as people began to make their way home to the bigger towns and Houston. The landscape, even at night, was familiar. It made her weary. Going home was never a pleasant experience for her.

Her slim fingers found the turn signal. She flipped it upwards. The familiar clicking seemed abnormally loud when she maneuvered the vehicle off the highway and down a long country road. The old Wilson house listing in an overgrown field brought back so many memories.

She slightly smiled as she remembered tearing across the field after her brothers had tried to lock her in the “haunted house.” She had been so terrified; her fear had infected them. They had all run home screaming. Her mother had tanned their behinds something fierce, then spent a half-hour on the phone laughing with the neighbor over it.

A burned-out blue trailer was her next childhood landmark. It had been the home of her best friend, until the fried chicken cooking on the old stove had started a grease fire. Luckily, everyone had survived, but her best friend, Leslie, had moved far away to the big city of Houston.

She took a right and the truck barreled down the narrow lane that lead to her family's property.

The Vezoraks had lived in East Texas for years since they had come over from Europe. A twenty-acre piece of land was now whittled down to five. The old farmhouse met its end after the elements had worn it down and a strong wind finished it off. Her Dad's new place was a double-wide trailer with multiple additions built onto it. The smell of barbecue smoke and wet earth filled the truck when she turned down the drive.

Her brother, Damon, was standing near the “Y” in the drive. His manufactured home was well lit. Behind him, a few of his kids were running around with sparklers, playing happily. Up near her Dad's home, the lights were dim where she suspected things were winding down. Her Dad was an early-to-bed type.