Authors: Jennifer Armintrout
And Graf had left her there, alone.
She stood for a long time, unable to move to close the door and shut herself inside the safety of the house. Because it wasn’t safe if he wasn’t there to protect her. Once upon a time, she would have hated that thought. After Derek had abandoned her, she’d learned that she couldn’t rely on anyone. She needed to cling to that lesson now.
The creature wanted her dead. Well, it was going to have a hell of a fight. It had already taken everything else from her; it wasn’t going to have her life. She picked up her gun and carried it with her upstairs. She took a pair of her father’s boots out of the closet, since her shoes had been burned in the fire and her feet would be too swollen to wear any of her mom’s pairs, which didn’t fit great under the best of circumstances.
If Derek was responsible for trapping them all in Penance, then killing him would solve the problem just as easily as her death would.
The walk to Derek’s house was difficult. The burns on Jessa’s feet made themselves painfully known with every step, and every step was impeded in turn by her damaged ankles inside her father’s too-large boots and also by the rain that made the grass slick and turned ditches into mini-rivers. By the time the lights of the house became visible, her tank top and shorts were soaked through, and she shivered despite the warm July air. Her boots had filled with water, and they squished and sloshed like buckets on her feet, but she kept walking, hugging the gun to her chest like a baby.
You can do this. You can do this,
she repeated as a mantra in her head. She could do it, despite the flood of memories that the very thought of Derek’s name brought back to her. Prom. Driving around in his car. Making out in the woods behind her house. Stupid, childish memories she had clung to for too long. That wasn’t love. That had been hormones and teen rites of passage. It wasn’t enough to let someone walk all over her for. It wasn’t enough to die for.
She didn’t knock on the door. It wouldn’t be locked. She pushed her way in, the gun in front of her, cocked and ready to fire, her arms trembling from chill and exhaustion.
“You really think you can do it?”
At the sight of him, Jessa’s resolve quaked. Derek sat in an armchair covered in torn tweed fabric that
had been patched with duct tape. He held a jar of moonshine on his knee, his handsome face made harsh and ugly by shadows of sleeplessness and the yellow light from the floor lamp behind him.
She didn’t lower the gun, but she didn’t fire, either. “You could do it to me.”
“I could. If you were dead, I could leave. I could go find Becky and the kids. I could go down to Richmond and get a job. All of this would be gone.”
“How do you know that?” Her palms sweated, and she wanted to wipe them on her shorts. But she didn’t want to lower the gun.
“How do you think?” he snorted, lifting the jar to his lips to drink.
“Derek, what did you do?”
“I didn’t expect it to be like this,” he said so quietly she almost missed it for the rain on the roof. Was he crying? It certainly appeared that way when he dipped his head and covered his eyes. Then, he spoke loudly and removed all doubt. “I didn’t want it to be like this!”
Jessa had only seen Derek cry one time before. The day he’d gotten his final rejection letter, the one from Arizona State, the twelfth school to break it to him gently that, though he was a talented player, there wasn’t a place for him in college football at their university. It unnerved her to see it then, and it unnerved her to see it now. She didn’t want to put the gun down, but she did want to comfort him. A sick,
pathetic part of her insisted that she should hurry to his side and make him feel better, make herself more important and understanding than Becky.
She shook her head to clear that thought away. “What do you mean? What did you do, Derek?”
He looked at her, like a child admitting to stealing candy from the drugstore. “I did a spell.”
Her finger relaxed on the trigger. She wanted answers more than she wanted to blow his brains out. “What do you mean, you did a spell? That kind of stuff isn’t real.”
He nodded stubbornly, drunkenly. “Yes, yes, it is. I got Sarah Boniface to help me do it, too. She had all these books, and she got on the internet and looked stuff up for me.”
“Why would she do something like that?” Jessa asked, but she already knew the answer. Derek had charmed her. Maybe he’d promised her popularity or a way to get even with all the kids who teased her at school. Derek always knew exactly what to promise to get what he wanted.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen like this!” His face screwed up in anger. “She did it wrong! She did it wrong, and worded it wrong, and lied about it and then that bitch got what she deserved!”
“She was just a kid!” Jessa’s grip tightened on the stock; her finger twitched but did not touch the trigger.
He snorted drunkenly. “She was a witch! She
helped me get this thing here! She just did a bad job, was all.”
“Why? What was she supposed to accomplish? What was that monster going to do, be your pet?” How could he be so stupid? And how could he really believe that a girl like Sarah could competently summon monsters, just because she wore black nail polish and had a spell book?
“It was supposed to make everything better. It was supposed to make everything go back to how it was, before we graduated.” He sniffed as more tears came to his bleary eyes. “I just wanted to go back to how things were. I wanted to play football again. I wanted to mean something.”
“To mean something?” Realization hit her like a fist to the stomach. “You thought you’d go back to being the big football star in town, is that it?”
“I just wanted everything to go back to normal. It was even part of the spell. It was supposed to stop things from changing.” His voice died to a pathetic whisper.
Well, it had succeeded, in some aspects. No one had been able to leave town for five years, for a new job or a new home or college. But life in Penance had definitely changed. The only thing that remained from their time in high school was that everyone still knew Derek’s name, still talked about him. That probably wasn’t what he’d been hoping to accomplish.
“And what, you think killing me is going to make
this whole mess go away? Killing Sarah didn’t make it go away.” The hairs along Jessa’s neck rose, attuned to some electricity that preceded news of the worst kind. She almost feared hearing it.
“It will make it go away,” he said certainly. Deadly calm, he stood and approached her. “It needs your blood. I promised It your blood.”
She took a step back, knowing she should shoot him where he stood but still craving answers. “Why would It need my blood?”
“Because I promised It your family’s blood for what I wanted. See, there’s a price you have to pay, when you do a spell like that. A sacrifice. We used some chickens at first. That’s how I got the idea to arrange them in your barn. Sarah showed me how to do it. But It demanded a bigger sacrifice. And we did it. You came back. It was like it was working.”
“So, you promised It…me?” Her stomach turned sour. She was going to be sick. “But then why—”
“It was an accident! Sarah said the price had to be paid in blood. A blood sacrifice. I had Chad help me fuck up the brakes on your mom’s car. So it would look like an accident.” He looked ashamed. “I didn’t think it would want you, too. I didn’t think it would want so much! But she said she would give It the blood of your family, and I guess… I don’t know. I didn’t realize… I guess that included you… Maybe Sarah knew it included you, but anyway, It came to collect.”
A doll with a dirty plastic face lay on the floor between them, no children to play with it. Her blood ran ice-cold in her veins. “Derek, what happened to Becky and the kids?”
He cried harder, covering his face. For a sickening moment, Jessa thought she knew the answer. Then, Derek raised his head and tossed the jar of moonshine aside. “She left. It was sick. Something hurt It real bad, and she knew.”
“Knew what?” It seemed unlikely that Becky could have known something about the existence of It and hadn’t shared it with the entire town. No matter how much she might have loved Derek, she didn’t love being trapped any more than the rest of them.
“She knew that when It gets hurt, it doesn’t have any real power. That vampire got It and Chad shot It and it made It too weak so she got out.” He wiped at his eyes, his expression hard.
They could have left. They all could have left, and they’d missed their chance. Now, she really would be sick. She doubled over, clutching her stomach.
He rushed at her, and she was unprepared. She pulled the trigger, and the gun kicked back, smashing her in the chest. The bullet ejected and blew a hole in the floor just inches from Derek’s feet. She vomited, shaking, and knew she was safe for minute. Derek had the queasiest stomach on the face of the earth.
“Jesus, Jessa!” Derek jumped back to avoid the
splash of puke. Choking, spitting out the vile remnants in her mouth, Jessa turned and ran.
Derek grabbed the butt of the gun and tried to pry it out of her grasp as she got to door, and she whirled, gripping the barrel. She didn’t like having the gun pointed at her abdomen as they tugged it back and forth between them, but she wasn’t letting go. She would get the gun away from him and, this time, she wouldn’t hesitate.
“You killed my family!” she screamed, and that renewed her strength. She gave one huge, hard pull, and the gun slipped from Derek’s hands, releasing too suddenly and sending her backward through the flimsy screen door. The cinder-block steps scraped across her spine, and the pain shoved all the air from her lungs.
“Jessa!”
It was Graf’s voice, she knew that much through the starbursts of pain that obscured her vision and shot fuzzy static through her ears. What was he doing there?
Not that it mattered as he scooped her up to set her on her feet and took off into the house after Derek. He would kill him, she realized in a moment of panic. She wanted him dead, but it wasn’t Graf’s place. Too many people had been wronged by Derek, and they deserved to see justice served. Real justice, not vengeance born of fear and hatred and prejudice.
“Graf, don’t!” she shouted, but her fears were
unfounded. Derek flew through the door and landed with a sickening crunch on the ground. He coughed, and blood burst from his lips.
“Broken ribs,” Graf said, dusting his hands off as he stepped out the door. “He’ll be fine.”
“He won’t be,” Jessa said coldly, resisting the urge to kick him as he lay there. “They’re gonna kill him.”
“Yup,” Graf agreed. He nodded toward the road, where shapes of something moved in the moonlight.
As the shapes drew closer, she realized what it was.
The town of Penance, angry and urgent, swarming toward Derek’s house.
T
he good people of Penance, still hungry for an execution, converged on the tiny lot like it was the last lifeboat off the
Titanic.
Graf pulled Jessa behind him, completely on instinct, and she pushed his arm aside. So, she was just as hungry for blood as everyone else. Good girl.
She had every right to be. When he’d caught up with June, Graf had been angry enough to kill her. She’d known that, and so she’d readily agreed on a compromise. Jessa wouldn’t die tonight, and neither would June.
“If Derek controls that thing, he’s the one who deserves to die,” he’d reasoned, and June, terrified and pinned to where she stood because of his grip on her braid, had agreed.
“What if we kill him and the demon doesn’t go
away,” she’d squeaked. “What if we need him to get rid of It?”
“Then we deal with that when the time comes.” Graf had pushed her away then, so she could see his fangs, long and intimidating in the moonlight. “Or I could ensure Jessa’s safety by killing you right now.”
Graf hauled Derek up by the back of his shirt and set him roughly on his feet. “We’re here to have a word with you about your monster.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derek sputtered as Graf marched him down the lawn.
The clouds moved away from the full moon, lighting the yard up like a spotlight. Human eyes glittered blackly in darkness, looking more monstrous than any vampires Graf had ever seen, and for a second, he was afraid himself.
June pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “Derek, you wanna tell these people what you told me the other night?”
“No,” Derek spat, as stubborn as a child.
“I think you should tell them, Derek,” Graf encouraged him, and then he twisted his arm behind his back for a little more encouragement.
Jessa hung back on the lawn, as if she were afraid to get any closer to the throng. Graf didn’t blame her. He wasn’t too keen on facing the people who’d almost roasted them alive just a few hours ago.
“If he won’t, I will,” June said, and there was
nothing friendly or hometown about her expression now. “You say a lot of dumb shit when you’re drunk, Derek.”
He hung his head, but said nothing.
“Derek did something he shouldn’t have,” Graf prompted. “Tell them about it, Derek.”
Derek whined in agony as Graf’s grip on his arm tightened, then he sobbed, “Fine! Fine!” He took a deep, shaking breath. “I…I did it.”
Graf leaned close to Derek’s ear and said quietly, “They know you did. We told them all about it. We showed them the picture book you made with Sarah.”
“Get your monster out here so we can kill it!” someone shouted in the crowd, and they erupted in cheers of violence.
“I can’t just call it!” he tried to shout over the mass of voices.
“Liar!” Jessa marched toward him, fist raised as though she would hit him. When she got close enough, though, she restrained herself. “You called it pretty easy to my house to search for me. You called it to the gym when you wanted to trick everyone into believing I was a witch!”
A few loud agreements went up from the crowd, but the reaction wasn’t as vehement as Graf would have liked. He didn’t need them still thinking Jessa was some kind of sorceress. “Cool it on the witch
talk,” he murmured under his breath. He didn’t want them to remember he was a vampire, either.
“He knows where Becky went!” Jessa’s voice rose over the resultant cries of horror and outrage. “They’re okay. They got out.”
“What are you talking about?” someone shouted.
“She’s crazy!” Derek got to his feet, holding his side, and Graf ached to beat him to the ground again.
The crowd seemed less likely to listen to Derek now that their bloodlust had turned away from Jessa and on to him. She kept it short and sweet enough that they didn’t take their eyes from Derek. “He said Becky and the kids got out. If It gets hurt bad enough, we could all leave. He just never had the courage to tell anyone.”
“Call It here, right now,” June ordered over the outrage of the crowd. “We’re all ready for it.”
In the low light, Graf took stock of the weapons they’d brought. Guns, most of them, but some axes and baseball bats. At least one person had brought a compound hunting bow and arrows, which struck him as a little ridiculous, but they would have to take what they could get. He hoped this worked. Otherwise, they would have a lot of angry people gunning for them again.
“If you won’t get it here, I will,” Jessa said. She clenched her fists at her sides, opened her mouth, and screamed, loudly and shrilly. The scream went on and
on, even after she closed her mouth, as it echoed off the trees and the side of the house.
“What’s that supposed to do?” Graf asked quietly. “Other than make them think you’re a witch again?”
“It will come for me, because Derek promised me as a sacrifice,” she said, determination hardening her eyes. She called out to the crowd. “Derek is the reason the monster is here, and Derek killed my family.”
“Now what do we do? To get It here?” June asked Derek.
“We wait,” he said miserably.
They didn’t have to wait for long. A loud roar went up from a stand of trees across the field on the other side of the road. The monster emerged, a distinct black dot charging across the silvery leaves of the cornfield.
“Graf,” Jessa said, her voice high and tight.
“I’m not going to let It get you,” he promised, but she backed away from him, as though she didn’t believe it. He didn’t have time to think about that now. He had a monster to help destroy.
“You won’t be able to kill It,” Derek warned. “It won’t die. It will just keep coming back until it gets what it came for.”
It met the opposition in the middle of the road, its terrible claws spread as if to scoop them in, its
mouth open and dripping stinking, fetid saliva from its jagged teeth.
The first shots popped off, and the creature swatted at its attackers. Its long, knobby fingers, made longer by its claws, swung like a double-dutch jump rope from hell. Someone screamed. Someone else ran.
Graf turned, and Derek was gone. The coward couldn’t even face the monster he’d made.
Blood pounded through Graf’s veins—Jessa’s blood, which made him slightly horny on top of the excitement from the impending fight. He turned to Jessa and gave her an imploring look.
“Go get ’em, honey,” she said with a sarcastic punch to his shoulder.
Graf shook his head and made a mental note to tell her to watch her smart mouth. Faster than she could blink, he was gone, running into the heart of the battle and skidding to a stop just in front of the monster. To his left, a man in overalls dropped to one knee, bleeding from the head.
“Help him!” June ordered, reloading her shotgun.
Though he would like nothing more than to tear into the monster’s hide, the guy did need his help. And, remembering what had happened last time they had gone mano a mano, Graf figured the biggest help he could possibly be was getting people out of harm’s way. Grabbing the man by the yolk of his overalls—he couldn’t trust himself to touch him any further,
with blood flowing freely from his wound—he ran up to the lawn in a flash and deposited the injured man at Jessa’s feet. “This is how you can help,” he told her. “But if that thing comes anywhere near you, you run, got it? If Derek gets near you, you run.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not stupid,” she mumbled.
“I know you’re not. You’re with me.” He winked and raced back into the throng. No one seemed to need immediate rescue, so he took his own run at the creature, hoping the crack shots in the crowd didn’t use the opportunity to pick him off. He head-butted the monster in the abdomen, managing to knock it back a step. Graf himself fell back, colliding with the hard ground with an “oof.” He got to his feet before the beast’s massive claws struck the ground where he had just lain.
“You’re gonna get yourself shot or killed!” June shouted over the seemingly endless volley of gunfire. “Get out of there.”
He grinned at her and shook his head. The monster brought its fist down on a young guy with a shotgun. The massive clawed hand ground the poor kid into paste, but his gun escaped injury. Graf scooped it up and blew two fingers off It before it could attack again. That left It with a pretty wicked thumb, but one claw was better than three.
It roared in fury and turned its beady little eyes to Graf. “You tired of killing these pathetic humans yet? Wanna fight a real monster?”
There had to be some intelligence in the thing, because It responded by swinging away and snatching up a handful of the good folk of Penance. It hurled the bodies at Graf with enough force that a few necks got broken as they carried Graf to the ground. Trapped under a pile of humans, some of them dead, some of them badly injured, was not how Graf had intended to spend this fight.
“Come on,” June shouted, commanding her fellow soldiers with impotent rage. She knew they were losing—that much was evident from the desperation in her voice. Graf struggled to move the stunned and the dead off him, asking all the able-bodied to get themselves the hell out of harm’s way. All the while, the creature swung at the bullets flying at it, sending a few heads spinning off like daisies caught by a weed wacker.
Graf seized one of the broken bodies he’d been pelted with and swung it with all his strength at It’s midsection. It batted the corpse out of the air with its ruined hand, spraying gore over the rest of the fighting force.
“Graf, no!” June shrieked in horror. The fighting seemed to momentarily stop as citizen after citizen of Penance realized that he had just used one of them as a weapon.
“You stick to helping the wounded, you fucking moron,” she spat at him, and Graf sheepishly scooped up a woman with a broken ankle. When he’d gotten
her out of danger, two other men needed aid, the victims of friendly fire.
The beast must have taken fifty hits at that point, the way Graf figured it. But It was still standing, still fighting as hard as ever. He didn’t flatter himself that he’d done more damage with his bare hands than a group of pissed-off avid hunters with firearms could do. Why wasn’t the fucker falling, or at least retreating?
He scooped up an elderly woman who’d taken a small-caliber ball through her ankle and ran her to safety despite her protests that she was fine to fight.
A familiar voice screamed, loud and shrill from inside the fray, and Graf struggled to make his way to June’s side. It had her pinned, a claw through her thigh, and leaned over her with dripping jaws wide.
“June!” Graf grabbed the nearest available object, a pitchfork—Jessa had mentioned those hurt like hell—and slid it across the bloodied grass. He reached It, just barely, and shoved the pitchfork hard through the creature’s lower jaw, screaming and pushing until the tongs protruded through the top of its head. When It pulled its claw free from June’s leg to swipe at the farming implement jammed through its soft palate, Graf used the opportunity to pull June to safety.
“Hold on,” he warned, throwing her over his shoulder. In an instant he dumped her on the grass next to Jessa and the wounded she was tending to.
“I’ll be all right,” she argued, hissing as she bent her leg to examine it. There was blood, a lot of it, but it didn’t gush or spray like it would have if her artery had been nicked. Her luck hadn’t run out yet, even if it was still fairly shitty luck.
Jessa grabbed his arm before he could disappear into the fray once more. “Something’s not right. It should have run off by now.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “But I don’t know what’s going on.”
“It has to be Derek.” She chewed her lip, her gaze far away as she looked toward the monster. “Maybe he’s doing another spell, something to keep It from quitting.”
When she looked up at him, she got a scared, frantic look on her face. Her pupils dilated, and her pulse stopped and started in her throat. Then, almost as fast as a vampire, she dove for Graf. Not for him. Past him.
He whirled and saw Derek, holding Jessa’s shot gun leveled at Graf’s head. Jessa screamed, “No!” and grabbed the barrel, covering the muzzle with her hand. In an explosion of blood and bone, the shot ripped through her hand and into her face. She fell like a doll, her knees folding, then her torso tipping, arms crumpling beneath her.
It roared.
A blast of heat and light blistered through the
air, muting the screams of horror from the people fighting against It.
And then the monster fell to one knee, then appeared to sink into the ground. Nothing but bubbling black remained, and then even that disappeared into the ground.
The people of Penance froze with shock, staring at the place where the monster had been.
Graf didn’t look at them. He couldn’t take his eyes off Derek, who stood, shaking like a man who’d just realized he was facing down a tiger but has run out of ammo. Graf didn’t even give him a warning snarl before he lunged for him. He didn’t bite him. He knocked him down, waited for him to stand, then knocked him down again. Derek scrambled back ward on his hands, like a crab, and Graf pushed him back down.
The people of Penance staggered toward the house, their faces and clothes black with soot and smoke. Some of them dropped their weapons. Others held them tightly. They all advanced on Derek.
When the first strike came—a blow from the butt of a rifle that caused Derek to spit out blood and teeth—Graf was satisfied that Penance’s own brand of justice would be served. He dragged himself, suddenly devoid of energy, back to Jessa.
She lay facedown in a heap, a pool of blood
forming beneath her head. The sticky crimson had oozed through her hair and now rolled around sparse blades of grass, picking up sand as it went. As he looked down at her, Graf took a completely involuntary breath, a hiccup that caught in his chest and intensified the pain that already bloomed there. He knelt at her side and lifted one limp arm, still warm, but rapidly cooling in death. He rolled her to her back and turned his face away.
Gore didn’t usually bother him; it came with the vampire job description. Looking at Jessa, though, was impossible. He didn’t want to see her face ruined and half-gone. He didn’t want to see proof that her fragile mortal life had been snuffed out.