American Vampire (18 page)

Jessa held her head high and replied, “No, I don’t expect it will. They aren’t going to find anything they can use against me. Just Derek’s testimony, and yours. Derek’s a drunk and liar, and you…well, the town council doesn’t like you always trying to run things behind their backs.”

“That’s true,” June said, accepting the criticism without complaint or defense. “But they did find something.”

“Bullshit.” Jessa’s glare never wavered. “Whatever they found, you all put there.”

“I didn’t put anything anywhere,” June said, bristling at the accusation. “I was on your side, Jessa. Even when you let this vampire come to your house—”

“
Not
a vampire,” Graf interrupted.

June continued, as though he hadn’t spoken. “—even when everybody else thought you were
telling tales. But I can’t defend you against the whole town, not when they found the stuff they did at your place.”

“What did they find?” Graf asked, dreading the answer. Of course, they would have uncovered something. Derek would have made sure of that.

“They found what you two were up to in the barn,” June said, without elaboration.

“They found out I was cleaning up chickens that someone killed when they snuck onto my property?” Jessa asked, moving her hands to her hips in a defiant pose. “The chickens that have now gone to waste?”

“If you were just cleaning them, why did you make that circle on the floor? Why did you have a knife and a cup out there with blood in it?” June wanted to understand, Graf could see that much, but she had reached the limits of belief.

“There was no circle!” Jessa insisted. “There was no circle. No cup. There were just some dead chickens. Derek put all that stuff out there! Derek was leading It around. It might as well have been on a leash!”

Graf’s heart ached for her. She didn’t realize that it was too late; there wasn’t anyone on her side anymore.

“Jessa, how can I believe a word you say, with the evidence they found?” June sighed. “I didn’t come here to argue. I just wanted you to have something to eat before they came and got you tonight.”

“It’s going to be tonight?” That took a load off Graf’s mind. He’d been terrified that they’d drag them outside in the daylight and he’d get his execution quicker than they’d planned.

“Well, thanks for thinking so kindly of me,” Jessa spat, then turned away, refusing to face June like an insulted cat.

June waited a few moments, compassion and doubt warring with themselves on her face, until finally her jaw set and her eyes hardened. She left, locking up the door behind her, and Jessa and Graf were alone again.

The silence stretched between them. “Do we get a lawyer, or…”

Jessa laughed, a loud burst of disbelief. “Do you think we get a lawyer?”

“Okay, we’ll have to represent ourselves, then.” Graf scratched his head. “At least they didn’t find that fucking binder. Why is Derek going to such crazy lengths to frame you? What’s he think is going to happen when you’re dead and the monster is still around?”

“I’d like to be there to tell everyone ‘I told you so,’” she said with a weary smile. “Maybe I will be.”

Probably not, he thought miserably. The way out of this thing was looking pretty bleak.

After a few hours of sulking with a rumbling stomach, Jessa ate, and Graf watched silently, seated across the lunch table from her. It seemed highly unfair that
he’d found a woman who looked sexy eating corn on the cob and now they were both going to die. As demented as it seemed to him, he wanted to see her eat all kinds of things. He wanted to know her more than he knew her, outside of the context of a tragedy. He wanted to spend time with her out of choice, and not because they were trapped somewhere.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow.

He shrugged. “I don’t get a lot of chances to watch a human eat.”

“I’m not a zoo animal. Quit staring at me, it’s creepy,” she ordered, dropping the stripped cob to the table.

“Tough.” He reached for her hand across the table, had it in his when keys jangled outside the door.

Her eyes went wide as they met his. He squeezed her hand. “I guess this is it.”

“I trust you,” she said definitely, nodding just once.

Sheriff Stoke opened the door, a wicked grin curving in the depths of his beard.

Graf was glad that Jessa had so much faith in him. Because he had none.

S
heriff Stoke and three other men led Jessa and Graf to the school gym. Excited voices echoed down the hallway. All that was missing was the sound of squeaking shoes on the hardwood floor, and Jessa would have thought they were on their way to a basketball game.

Beside her, Graf stared straight ahead, his jaw tight, mouth drawn into a grimace. Jessa hoped he was pretending to be nervous, and secretly had a plan, because she certainly didn’t.

They went down the stairs that led to the gym floor, through the narrow hall past the door to the boys’ locker room, and out to face the population of Penance, which filled the bleachers, both “Home” and “Away,” and lined the wall by the doors to the parking lot.

At the other end of the court, two huge piles of
firewood, pine branches, and fallen kindling surrounded railroad ties that had somehow been braced into a vertical position.

“What the fuck?” Graf muttered.

Sheriff Stoke slapped him on the back and cracked an unfriendly smile. “We did some of our own research on vampires. Fire works just as well for you as for a witch.”

“I’m not a witch!” Jessa shouted. “If I were a witch, wouldn’t I just cast a spell or something to escape?”

The sheriff didn’t seem to have an answer for that question. He shoved her toward the center of the gym, to stand on the emblem of the school mascot at center court; the Penance Blue Devil, copied right off a pack of candy cigarettes, smiled up in evil profile. Beside her, Graf raised an eyebrow that echoed the expression on the Blue Devil’s face.

“Today, you’re all witnesses to justice here in Penance!” Stoke shouted to the roaring crowd, and the din grew louder. They didn’t have the rally towels or the pep band, but if they had, the scene would have looked a lot like the one the year that they had beat the Madison Mohawks in the state semifinals.

“This is not good,” Graf whispered to Jessa, apparently under the impression that she couldn’t guess a room full of people cheering to see them burned at the stake was a bad sign.

Sheriff Stoke raised his hands and walked in a
circle around them, hushing the crowds on both sides. “We have witnesses who will testify to the evil nature of this woman, and her familiar, this vampire, and put to rest any doubts a body might have about the vile impact their presence has made on our town.

“We have evidence, studied by myself, and by an expert in the field of religious study. I will call him, first, to read his statement. Pastor Baird?”

Jessa’s stomach dropped out at the mention of her old church pastor. He’d known her family since he’d come to Penance Baptist during her teenage years. He’d brought his family with him, four daughters that had been sent to school in dutifully modest outfits purchased from the Walmart in Richmond. Jessa and Becky had made it their personal mission to mock the Baird girls every chance they’d gotten, and Pastor Baird had made their behavior the barely veiled subjects of plenty of Sunday sermons.

The past five years had taken a visible toll on Pastor Baird. Two of his daughters had gone off to Bob Jones University before the town’s borders became a prison, and he’d taken up the drinking that he’d so often decried in his sermons. He shuffled to the center of the floor like a man much older than his years, and began to speak softly, reciting lines from a crumpled notebook page. Several people called out helpfully that he should speak up, more shouted angrily that they could not hear, but Baird seemed not
to notice until someone ran across the gym floor, a wireless mic in hand.

“…time as pastor here… Oh, thank you,” Baird mumbled to the person who’d handed the mic to him, and then, not bothering to begin his speech again, continued. “Jessa was raised in as loving and Christian a home environment as any family could provide. Her father, James, struggled to keep his daughter in line, often calling me for advice as the family’s spiritual leader about troubles with Jessa’s boyfriends sneaking over in the night, Jessa’s lying and staying out past curfew, and her insistence on wearing inappropriate attire.

“In these things, Mr. Gallagher could not have been more concerned, but her mother, a good and Christian woman until the last four years of her life, often opposed him. She began taking yoga classes on the weekend in Richmond, or driving to Columbus for ‘women empowerment’ seminars. She believed that Jessa’s promiscuity and lying weren’t hurting anyone. I tried to counsel Janis away from her dangerous addiction to New Age spirituality, but she was, unfortunately, still lost to the devil’s lies when she passed on.”

Jessa wanted to scream at Pastor Baird, or jump on his back and beat him until he couldn’t stand, but that would only condemn her further. Graf watched her, and she met his gaze to reassure him that she wouldn’t do anything stupid. She would just follow
his lead, because he was the one who was supposed to have the plan.

Sheriff Stoke, who had been listening with his head bowed and his hands clasped behind his back as though listening to a particularly moving eulogy, stepped forward and shook Pastor Baird’s hand. Then, taking the mic from him, asked, “Would you say that Jessa was exposed to her mother’s interest in New Age practices?”

He leaned the mic toward Pastor Baird, like a television reporter interviewing an eyewitness. Baird nodded certainly. “My daughters once reported that Jessa wore a pendant of an I Ching coin, which is a fortune-telling device.”

A fortune-telling device, or a cheap souvenir from my seventh-grade pen pal,
she thought angrily.

“And, Pastor, can you tell the good folks of Penance what it was you examined in the Gallagher barn this morning?” Stoke canted the microphone at Baird’s face again.

“There were a number of mutilated animals, chickens specifically, arranged in a pattern inside a chalk circle. There were various satanic symbols around them, and ritual tools lying nearby.” The pastor turned to stare Jessa down. “It was most certainly evidence of a witchcraft ritual.”

“Thank you, Carl, you can sit down now,” Stoke said, patting the man on the shoulder. The sheriff motioned to the bleachers, and his wife, Marjorie, got
to her feet, her angry mouth scored with even deeper lines for the special occasion. She came forward with a stack of four books in her hands. No sign of the binder, though. She handed them over to her husband, who fumbled awkwardly to balance them and still hold the microphone, but he managed. “Here we have further evidence that Jessa, instructed, apparently, by her mother, engages in witchcraft.” He lifted one book up with the hand that held the mic, and turned around so everyone could see the cover. When he lowered it, he read the title aloud. “
To Ride a Silver Broomstick,
by Silver RavenWolf.” He proceeded to do the same with the next three books,
Goddesses in Everywoman
by Jean Shinoda Bolen,
The Path to Love
by Deepak Chopra, and
Many Lives, Many Masters
by Brian Weiss.

Jessa thought she saw Graf’s mouth twitch, as though he held back a laugh. All well and good if he thought this was funny, but he didn’t know how scary the predominately Baptist population of the town would find these books.

“You can’t be serious.” Graf snorted, and Stoke turned. Graf didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “Okay, so Jessa’s mom was having a menopausal midlife crisis and started meditating and trying to fulfill her potential or something. I think that’s a far cry from witchcraft.”

“Demon, speak no more!” Pastor Baird shouted
from his seat, his voice impressively commanding in spite of his withered physical appearance.

“Now, Carl, let’s let him hang himself, if he wants. It’ll save us some of the work,” Stoke quipped, and the crowd chuckled in near-unison.

Jessa closed her eyes. It was difficult to trust Graf’s plan, not knowing what it was, not knowing how it would work. When she opened her eyes, her gaze locked on a familiar face in the front row on the “Home” side. Derek.

A few more townspeople stood to give their testimony. Times that Jessa had lied to them, as though lying were a talent available solely to witches. People who had never gotten along with her mother, who’d acted “high and mighty” and hadn’t helped with pot-lucks and church socials. Jack Singer took the floor to explain that he knew Jessa had murdered Chad, because the morning he went missing a new bird came to his bird feeder, and he interpreted it as a sign from God.

“You’re going to allow that as evidence?” Graf argued. “You’re hell-bent on killing us. We get it. Don’t make us sit through this bullshit first. C’mon, I’ll light the fire myself.”

“Graf!” Jessa snapped, but she actually agreed with him. Burning alive probably wouldn’t be as bad as listening to everyone trying to involve themselves in the hottest gossip in town since Derek and Becky’s shotgun wedding.

“Don’t worry, vampire. We’re getting to you,” Sheriff Stoke assured him. “June, you wanna come up here?”

Normally, June walked like she was sure of her place in town and on the earth. Now, she kept her head down and tried not to meet anyone’s eyes.

Sheriff Stoke seemed to enjoy her humility a whole lot. He placed his hand on her back and gently led her to the center of the floor, like an invalid walking for the first time. “Ms. Dee, you were the one who brought it to my attention that our guest here is a vampire. Can you tell the people of Penance why you would have cause to think something like that?”

She didn’t take the microphone, but spoke loud enough that it carried her words through the gym. “He’s kind of still. He’s just
too still
. You can tell that he’s thinking about moving before he does it. That’s because they move faster than humans, if they don’t try not to. And he doesn’t blink. Least, not that I noticed.”

“How often do you notice whether people blink or not?” Graf asked, his lids closing and opening rapidly, like he had something in his eye.

Jessa hadn’t realized it before, but now that she did, it seemed so bizarrely obvious. He didn’t blink. He didn’t tap his feet nervously or do anything clumsy. He was still; it was the only way to describe it. That was what the air of danger was around him when she’d first met him. She’d known he was a vampire,
but not knowing about the existence of vampires, she hadn’t been able to put a name to it. So, how had June?

“June, do you feel comfortable sharing with these people the reason that you’re acquainted with the ways of vampires?” The concern in Stoke’s voice wasn’t a put-on, not now. June shrugged and unbuttoned her checked-plaid shirt, then drew it off her shoulders to stand before them in a ribbed-cotton undershirt. Her shoulders, arms and chest, every visible inch of skin, were marred by bumpy scars. Teeth marks. And when Jessa recognized them, she unconsciously raised her hand to her neck, touching the bite disguised by the curtain of her hair.

The sheriff strode to her side and gripped her wrist, prying it away from her neck, then pushed her hair aside and revealed the scabbed punctures and ugly bruise Graf had left behind.

“Guilty!” someone in the crowd shouted, and the chant was taken up like a mantra.

“What are you going to do when you kill us and the monster’s still here?” Graf challenged the sheriff. “What are you going to tell people?”

“The people won’t care,” Stoke replied quietly, then he whistled, calling four men from the front row. Two of them were the other council members. The other two were friends of Chad’s, and they looked as though they were disappointed to see Jessa and the vampire killed by fire, instead of by hand.

“What are you going to do?” she whispered to Graf, and instead of answer, he gripped her hand in his and squeezed it.

A cold sweat broke out on her brow. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have any idea how they were going to save themselves. When two men grabbed her and dragged her backward, toward the stakes, she thrashed and screamed.

“Wait!” Graf shouted as he was similarly carried off. He cursed and shoved his captors off himself, and a group of ten people rushed forward to help them. Jessa’s executioners pulled her arms behind her back and secured them around the stake, but she was too engrossed in Graf’s struggles to put up a fight. He landed punches, even bit a couple of the townspeople, but there were too many of them. The stands were nearly empty by the time they managed to get him to his stake, men and women both leaving their seats to help wrestle him into place. They used the same nylon rope to bind his hands as they had used on hers. No stretch to those. No way to get themselves free.

“Wait!” Graf shouted again. “If she’s a witch, couldn’t she just call It here, right now, to kill you all and get her free?”

They were too far gone to their bloodlust, Jessa thought with a panic. She looked to the stands, where Derek still sat, his eyes intense. She turned to the
crowd assembled on the floor. “He’s right! I’m going to do it! I’m going to call It here, right now!”

Someone produced a blowtorch and set it to the dried pine boughs in the pile. Pine burned fast; smoke began to rise immediately. The kindling stuffed into the cracks between the logs started to pop, and Jessa’s eyes watered as she called out words that she hoped sounded like a witch’s incantation. From the corner of her eye, she saw Derek rise from his seat, and she prayed he was going where she thought he was heading.

The flames began to rise around her, and she screamed, backing up against the stake to stand on her tiptoes. The log beneath her feet had thankfully not caught yet, but it would. How long did she have? Had she waited until it was too late?

“Jessa, hold your breath!” Graf shouted above the terrifying cheers of the people as his pile was lit. “Don’t breathe it in!”

It was good advice, but sadly not any that she could follow. Fear drove her lungs to gasp at double speed, each breath full of stinging, punishing smoke. Her vision swam with the waves of heat, her eyes burned as though the fire originated in them. She caught a glimpse of Graf’s face, twisted in a grimace of agony, and then the flames closed a wall between them.

The screams of the people faded behind the violence of the fire, then rose again. An unearthly roar
rang in Jessa’s ears, louder than the buzz of pain that originated in her wrists, where the nylon rope melted into her skin. The general sense of chaos outside of the flames came to her, and she wished she could see beyond them. She didn’t feel the heat anymore, except in her chest, but even that was getting better as her breathing slowed.