Authors: Jennifer Armintrout
“They’re going to find Chad’s body here, close by the house, and they’re gonna know we did it.” She dropped her head to her hands. “I wish we could run, just get out of here and never look back.”
“Says the woman who didn’t want to leave her house just a few hours ago.” Graf took her by the shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. Just keep doing what you did tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better liar.”
“Thanks?” she said tentatively.
“Believe me, that means a lot coming from me.” He stepped back. “Do you think we need to talk to June? Handle things with her?”
“I don’t know. I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea. But what are we going to tell her? ‘Hey, he’s a vampire, don’t say anything’?” Jessa chewed her lip. “Maybe we could ask her what the town council wanted with me, and if there’s anything I should be worried about… We can go after I get my chores done.”
“How are you going to do chores with a sprained ankle?” He didn’t like the idea of her just walking around on it. If they were in as much trouble as she thought they were, it wouldn’t help if she didn’t at least try to heal.
“I’ll get by. This isn’t the first sprained ankle I’ve ever had. And chickens get hungry regardless of how you’re feeling.” Farm-girl logic.
Graf wondered if she knew how stupid she sounded. “Look, this storm doesn’t seem to be letting up. It’d probably be safe for me to help you out.”
“But it’s daytime.”
“The cloud cover will protect me. If it breaks up, you’d be free of at least one problem, right?” He laughed a little, but it sounded lame when she didn’t laugh with him.
She sighed and said, “If you think you’ll be okay,” but it was obvious that she didn’t want his help, and didn’t even think she needed it.
He took a T-shirt out of the bureau upstairs, then helped her limp out to the barn. They were barely halfway across the backyard when Jessa said softly, “Oh, no.”
Graf caught the tang of blood above the electricity in the air. The warm rain battered down on the white and brown feathers scattered in front of the barn door.
When they reached the animals, Jessa bent down and lifted one limp body. “Oh, no,” she repeated, tears that she didn’t shed coming out in her voice.
“I don’t think It was here,” Graf said, scanning the yard. “I don’t see any tracks, or smell it.”
“You could smell It?” she asked, dropping to one knee to inspect another dead chicken.
“It has a very distinct scent.” He knelt beside her and gingerly lifted one torn wing. Ugh, chicken blood. “This is all crawling with salmonella, you know.”
She sat back on her heels, making a pained face as she jostled her wrapped ankle. “No, It has taken chickens from me before. All that’s left are feet and feathers. It eats the rest. Someone else did this.”
“The council guys?” It didn’t seem like a good way to get reelected, but they had also put someone to death for witchcraft and scored votes.
She shook her head. “No, we saw them go, and they wouldn’t have had time to double back. This was a warning.”
“Oh, that was nice of Derek.” He paused. “That is who you’re thinking of, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Let’s take these into the barn and start butchering them. No sense wasting the meat.”
Graf helped her, unenthusiastically, to bring the chickens into the barn. Fifteen of the poor bastards, hacked to pieces by the chicken-murdering son of a bitch.
“Go in the house and get the big silver pot out from under the sink,” Jessa ordered. “Fill it up and put it on to boil, so we can scald ’em. I’ll wring the heads off the ones who still have them.”
There was really no place he would rather be than away from something that involved twisting the heads off anything. Unless it was him doing the twisting, and the head being Derek’s. He stepped out of the barn, back into the rain, and immediately the smell of It hit him in the face like a dead chicken. “Jessa, we have to get back in the house right now!” he hissed over his shoulder.
And as soon as he spoke, It came around the corner of the house. He got back in the barn and had his hand over Jessa’s mouth before she could say a word.
“Listen very carefully,” he whispered. “It is out there right this second. Where is the best place to hide?”
She raised one finger and pointed up. He tossed her trembling body over his shoulder and scaled the
ladder into the hayloft. When they reached the top, he dumped her down onto a pile of folded burlap sacks and whispered, “King Kong made that look a lot easier.”
“Quick, get behind the engine.” She stabbed her finger toward the rusting shape of a tractor engine sitting on a platform of cinder blocks. A rope sling looped around the hunk of metal from when it was first lifted up to be forgotten in the hayloft.
Graf let her crawl into the space behind the engine, right up against the wall. If It somehow made it up to them, It would have to go through him to get to Jessa. It would probably still get her, at that point, but at least he would put up a fight.
She pressed her face to the light seeping in between the boards and said, “Oh my God. Derek’s out there.”
Good, was the first thing Graf thought. Then he thought of what it would look like if Derek turned up dead on Jessa’s property, and Chad not far from it. “I’m going out there.”
“No—” Jessa whispered harshly. “Don’t. It…”
“It doesn’t see him?”
“No—no. It’s…” She covered her mouth. “He’s leading…It!”
Graf joined her at the wall. Outside, Derek walked five steps in front of the creature, taking a slow path around the house. They circled it two or three times, then headed toward the barn.
Graf held his finger to his lips in warning, but he was pretty sure Jessa couldn’t have spoken if she’d wanted to. Shock and confusion were plain on her face, but anger was there, too, as though she had some idea what was going on.
Which was good, because Graf sure as hell didn’t.
Derek stepped inside the barn, and Graf and Jessa ducked. “Jessa?” he called cheerfully. “Jessa, baby, are you in here?”
Jessa’s fingers curled into a fist as she crouched beside Graf.
“Honey, we need to talk about what happened this morning,” he continued, his boots falling heavily on the floorboards below. “We both lost our tempers, is all. I thought you were a burglar at first, you know? We were both just freaked out and reacted badly. Why don’t you come out, sugar?”
Just when Graf thought the jackass would wander around and talk to himself all day, Derek swore and stomped out of the barn. They waited until they saw him walk toward the house again, the monster tagging behind him like a pet dog, before they spoke again.
“What is going on?” Jessa asked, her voice low. “What was Derek doing with It?”
“Well, I think it’s pretty clear how It got here.” Graf shut up when he saw the creature whip its massive head around to stare in their direction.
Mercifully, Derek called out, “Come on, you stupid demon,” without looking over his shoulder. The creature sniffed the air, big puffs of steam issuing from its nostrils, then turned and followed its master.
“Derek can’t even do his own laundry, how’d he manage to get that thing here?” Jessa hissed, pushing away from the wall. “And why would he want it?”
“I don’t know.” Graf stood to get a better view of the two leaving the yard. “The important thing is that now we know who’s behind It. If he did it, he can undo it.”
Jessa rubbed her temples. “He has to have something to do with it, but I don’t know that he’s smart enough to actually do it.”
They waited in the barn until sundown, to be sure It was gone and Graf was safe to be outside. Then they climbed down from the hayloft and retrieved the gun from the house. Immediately, Jessa turned right back out the front door and Graf followed after.
“Who do we go to with this info?” he asked over the crunch of their shoes on the driveway.
“June.” Jessa had the gun over her shoulder, and, even with her ankle banged up, she marched like a toy soldier on some kind of revenge mission. Graf kept up with her, and hoped her anger would last until they reached the bar.
June’s Place was even more crowded than usual; Graf could tell from the shapes moving in the
window. Bicycles stood in parking spaces that cars used to occupy. Jessa slowed as they entered the lot. “Something isn’t right.”
“I was just thinking that.” The nagging feeling that they should run prickled in the back of his mind. “I guess the only way we find out what is by going in there.”
Jessa went in first, her fingers clenched tight on the butt of the gun. The second they stepped through the door, the loud conversation ceased, and all eyes turned to them.
Derek stood on the bar, and at the sight of them, he grinned an evil-looking grin.
H
ands closed around Jessa’s arms, and she saw Dave Stuckey going for Graf.
Please, don’t do any vampire superstrength thing,
she prayed silently. Graf wasn’t dumb, though. He shrugged Dave’s hand off his arm, but when he grabbed him again, he let him.
“What the hell’s going on?” Graf demanded angrily.
June wasn’t behind the bar. For once, she sat on the other side of it, watching the commotion with an expression of sadness.
It was Sarah Boniface all over again. Jessa’s knees went weak, but she forced herself to stand. They weren’t going to get any sign of guilt, real or imagined, out of her.
Sheriff Stoke rose from his seat behind June and hitched his pants up by his huge oval belt buckle. “You two are under arrest on suspicion of witchcraft.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Graf growled. “Witchcraft? Do I look like a witch to you?”
“You look like a vampire to me,” Derek shouted, and everyone else in the bar began shouting. It was clear that some didn’t believe him. But worse, it was clear that some did.
“Quiet!” Sheriff Stoke yelled over the noise. “I said quiet, goddamn it!”
Jessa looked to June and, once the crowd had quieted, said, “Are you really going to sit there and listen to that? In your bar? Tell them how ridiculous he’s being!”
She shook her head, true regret written on every feature of her face. “I’m sorry, Jessa. I can’t do that.”
The hush that fell over the bar was eerie, and strangely convincing that Jessa and June were the only two standing in it. Jessa shook her head slowly. “You don’t really believe—”
“I’ve thought for a long time now that there was something not right about him. And Derek shows up with a scar that looks like somebody bit him, saying Graf’s a vampire…. There was blood on your rug when I was there today.”
A chill ran down Jessa’s spine. “This is crazy.”
“If you want a witch,” Graf said, nodding toward Derek, “look at him. He’s the one who brought that demon here.”
“How’d you know It is a demon?” Sheriff Stoke
asked, like a detective in a TV show. “Seems to me the woman who’s hanging around with a vampire might have more call to consort with a pet demon than a man who lost his wife recently.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Graf shouted, incredulous. “In the first place, I’m not a vampire. That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows vampires don’t exist. And you can’t say that Derek wouldn’t summon a demon because his wife just left—the demon’s been around for years and his wife just left yesterday.”
“Summoning sounds like some witch talk, if you ask me,” Sheriff Stoke said with satisfaction, and several people cheered.
“You’re out of your minds!” Graf shouted, but it was pretty clear no one was listening.
“I know why she did it,” Derek called over everyone’s voices. “She thought if she trapped me here, I’d have to marry her. Or I’d leave Becky for her. She came over to my house and told me all about it this morning.”
Jessa opened her mouth, but closed it when she realized that anything else she said would be even more damning. The entire town believed she was some kind of crazy, desperate mantrap. And a liar. It wasn’t too big a leap to witchcraft, she guessed. They’d taken Sarah for less.
“Are we even going to get a trial?” Graf asked Sheriff Stoke, his jaw clenched.
“We aren’t barbarians. You’ll get your trial.” It
was clear he was proud of his efficiency. “We’ll need about a day to gather evidence. In the meantime, you’ll be held at the jail.”
“Just let us go home,” Jessa pleaded. “Where are we gonna run?”
“There are procedures that have to be followed,” the sheriff said, his chest puffed up with the posturing of his office. “Come on, boys, let’s move ’em.”
Jessa fought against whoever it was that held her—she couldn’t get a good look—and glared at Derek as she got dragged toward the door. He looked back guiltily, like a dog that’s done wrong and knows he can’t hide it. She hoped the sight of her being dragged away to die haunted him to his final days.
She held out hope that once they were outside, Graf would fight their way free, but he didn’t resist as they marched them out. His hand found hers for just a second as they were jostled by the throng that followed, and it gave her some comfort.
The “jail” wasn’t far up the road. The combination police and fire and ambulance station had housed a single, lonely jail cell that had rarely been occupied for more than a few hours before the state police would come and pick up the detainees to take them to the county jail. That building was long gone, destroyed by It in the first, early days of their confinement. They hadn’t had much call for a proper jail, so since then, if someone caused trouble they spent
a few days in the teachers’ lounge at the old high school.
“Are you kidding me?” Graf said with a laugh as they walked up the long drive. “We can break out of here in no time.”
Sheriff Stoke panted a little as he tried to keep up pace. “Don’t be foolish, boy. We’re going to watch you like a hawk. You step one foot out of your cell, and we’ll put a bullet in your heart.”
“My heart? Not my head?” he asked. “That sounds cruel and unusual to me.”
“Not for your kind,” the sheriff said, and he elbowed him in the chest. The blow wasn’t as hard as it was meant to be, because the sheriff was having a tough enough time talking and walking.
When they reached one of the three entrances to the school, Sheriff Stoke found a key on his key ring and unlocked the double doors.
Jessa hadn’t been inside the building since she’d graduated five years ago. Despite being abandoned and shut up for so long, the halls smelled exactly the same as when she’d left on that last day of high school. When the sheriff flipped on the lights, every illuminating bulb took her back to strolling the halls with Becky, slipping notes into Derek’s locker. As Sheriff Stoke marched them down the hall, Jessa took note of her old homeroom, the stairs down to the gym.
They reached the teachers’ lounge, and Sheriff
Stoke opened the door and motioned them inside. “I’m locking you in, but if you get any bright ideas about escaping, know that there will be some real angry folks waiting on the lawn all night to see you put up to trial. They’ll rip you apart, if I don’t shoot you first.”
“Thanks for the hospitality, Sheriff,” Graf said dryly as he followed Jessa inside. The sheriff didn’t bother with a retort, just closed the door, leaving them in total darkness.
“There isn’t a window in here,” Jessa said, trying to sound positive about it. “At least there’s that, right?”
The sound of a light switch flipping back and forth filled the darkness. “They could have at least turned the lights on.”
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jessa could make out the general shape of the furniture in the room. A couch and two armchairs surrounded a low oval table, and an area rug covered the space. Where the carpet ended and the default school tile resumed there was a taller lunch table and heavy plastic chairs, beyond that a kitchenette. Jessa inspected the sink, where a slippery stalactite hung from the faucet, proving that it was still connected to a water source. A small bathroom stood to the left, and nearly a whole roll of toilet paper was still on the dispenser. She made a note to come back and steal it somehow, if they weren’t sentenced to death.
“Did you see how ready they were to believe him?” Graf asked, flopping down on the couch. “It’s like they were just waiting for some excuse to come after you.”
“That’s how it works in a small town,” she said, pushing on the pump top of the soap dispenser on the sink. Jackpot. “Why didn’t anyone think to loot here?”
“I’ve never been to a small town that tried people for witchcraft. I mean, I went to Salem as a tourist, but centuries after the fact.” He got up and paced from the refrigerator to the couch and back again. “Is this how it’s going to end? Death by hillbilly? I’m not even a hundred years old yet.”
“Don’t open that refrigerator,” Jessa warned. “Nobody’s been here for five years, it looks like. It won’t smell pretty.”
Graf stopped his pacing, and though it was dark, she could tell he stared at her. “Are you completely suicidal or something? Aren’t you the least bit worried about what’s going to happen to you?”
“Not really. You’ll figure something out.” She truly believed that. “You said you weren’t going to let anybody hurt me, and you haven’t gone back on any of your promises yet.”
“Oh, no pressure or anything, Graf.” He went back to the couch and sank down. “I don’t know how we’re getting out of this one. If I do anything that shows them I really am a vampire, we might be able to
escape somehow, but they’re still going to come back. Even when I’m gone, they won’t leave you alone.”
His words struck her as painfully obvious, but painful nonetheless. “What do you mean, when you’re gone?”
He sounded a little embarrassed when he said, “Well, it’s not like I can stay around here forever, is it? I’ve got a life outside of Penance.”
“Right, your life. Your vampire parties and your slutty friends,” she said, recoiling inside at the naked hurt in her voice.
“What the hell?” Graf said angrily. “You want me to rescue you from these redneck witch hunters, but you’re going to insult my friends?”
No,
she wanted to say.
No, but you’re the only good thing I’ve had happen to me in five years, and I don’t want you to go.
But she was wounded, so she just shrugged, deliberately exaggerating the movement so he could see it in the dark.
“That’s really nice of you. Really nice.”
“I never pretended to be nice,” she shot back, though she had to struggle past a lump in her throat to speak.
Silence pressed down on her, filled with his anger, as she went through the drawers and cabinets. There wasn’t anything to eat, the people who’d been incarcerated before her had taken care of that, but behind a box of trash bags under the sink she found a six-pack of Coke. She smiled at the thought of her old teachers
hiding their food from one another in a futile effort to keep their coworkers from consuming their lunch. She didn’t figure Coke would go bad, not even in five years, so she pulled one out and popped it open.
As she stood, she became suddenly aware of Graf standing behind her. She turned to face him, steeling herself to feign anger again, when he gripped her shoulders and pulled her against his chest, smashing their mouths together painfully. She dropped the can in surprise, and before it could hit the floor, Graf caught it and slid it across the counter.
“You’re mad at me,” he said, breathing fast. “You’re mad because you don’t want me to leave.”
“Don’t be stupid.” She shoved at his chest, but it was a halfhearted effort. “I’ve been trying to get rid of you since you showed up in town.”
He didn’t bother with an answer, but kissed her again, and though she thought it might be wise to resist, she couldn’t help herself. She put her arms around his neck, opened her mouth to the cold slide of his tongue. It was all she could do to keep from wrapping her legs around him and climbing him like a tree.
“Don’t leave,” she begged against his mouth. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, smearing a kiss across her jaw.
“I know you’re not,” she said with a laugh that dissolved into a moan. “But don’t.”
He lifted her up to sit on the edge of the counter, kissing a wet path across her neck as his arms slid under the back of her T-shirt to unhook her bra.
It had been so long since she’d felt this good. So long since she didn’t have to shut down the voices in her head telling her that she was a whore, filthy, just reaffirming everyone’s suspicions of her. And it felt good to be wanted, not because she was comfortable and familiar and stupidly willing. Well, she was stupidly willing to let a vampire put his mouth on her neck, but she trusted him. Maybe that was stupid, too.
“I swear to God, if some inbred redneck busts in on us, I’m going to rip their goddamned throats out.” And as if to prove his point, he yanked her shirt up, and she had no choice but to raise her arms to let him pull it over her head. He turned fast, taking her with him, and she locked her legs around his hips. The cold Formica tabletop shocked her as he laid her on the table. He stood between her legs and pulled his shirt over his head, exposing the ridges of muscle she had covertly admired earlier in the day. God, it had been hard to concentrate on keeping her lies straight in front of June and the town council while he stood not two feet from her, all shirtless and looking like a naughty firemen calendar. Just the sight of him before had made her wet and achy, and now anticipation tightened muscles she rarely acknowledged.
He smoothed his hands over the cups of her plain
cotton bra, and the look in his eyes as his gaze drifted over her breasts made her feel sexier than if she were wearing black lace. He slid the straps down her arms, then tossed it aside with a helpless groan as he leaned down to suck one tight nipple into his mouth.
She threaded her fingers through his hair and stroked his neck, then over the wide planes of his shoulders. His tongue swirled over her skin, taking a wandering path over her other breast, then down her stomach. He reached the waistband of her jeans and she sat up, pushed him back. The look of shock on his face was almost funny as she hopped down from the table and pushed him again, backing him into the cupboards. When she dropped to her knees, her meaning became clear, and he swallowed audibly as she reached for his zipper.
When she unzipped it and slid her hand inside, he brushed her hands away and pulled his jeans down over his hips. Not trying to be cool or in control, like Derek would have done. She pushed that thought right out of her head. Derek wasn’t going to be in this room right now.
“Oh, wow,” she said on a sigh as she gripped him, and on a throaty exhale he laughed, “Well, thank you.”
She slid her hand down the considerable length of him, then trailed her tongue up, around the wide head, before closing her lips over him. She’d forgotten how much of a turn-on it was to give a guy head, how
hot it was to hear him make nonsensical sounds and repeat the same words over and over, like a prayer, only profane instead of sacred. She certainly wasn’t an expert, but from what she could tell, Graf was enjoying himself.