Chapter Four

Memories Blooding In

Then memories flooded in.

The room was black except for the TV’s blinking screen. I’d been reading in my room and came out for a drink of water. London and Schroder were making out on the couch. The acid in my stomach turned sour and disgust bubbled up in my throat. I crept into the kitchen, needing that glass of water more than ever. I turned the tap on, scarcely more than a drip.

The truth was her boyfriend terrified me. London said he was a vampire. That wasn’t difficult to believe. He scared me. London said he had made her into a vampire. Whatever. I didn’t know what to believe. She seemed the same to me.

As I carefully stopped the water, I heard London’s sharp intake of breath. I stood there for a second, trying to imagine what that sound meant. I drank my water and as I swallowed, I remembered the last time that sound had come out of my mouth. It was the last time I had needed a vaccine. I put my cup on the counter and snuck through the dining room to approach the living room from another direction. Sinking onto the floor in horror, I watched a streak of red run in a single stream down her neck and pool in the crevice of her collarbone. He licked it out. I put my hand over my mouth to stop them from hearing my gasp. He was drinking her blood.

I didn’t go for the knife right away. I sat there, stunned. Why was he doing this? Wasn’t she already a vampire? Didn’t she already give up her life to be with him? I got the phone and called 9-1-1.

“9-1-1. State your emergency.”

“There’s a vampire in my house. He’s drinking my sister’s blood,” I whispered.

There was laughing on the other end of the line. Vampires weren’t as common in those days. “Listen, kid, you can be fined for making prank calls to 9-1-1. Don’t let it happen again!”

“I’m telling the…”

They had already hung up.

I went back to my hiding place. I started watching the clock. He had been sucking her blood for five minutes. Then ten minutes. Then fifteen minutes. I couldn’t stand this. He was literally draining her. I crept back to the kitchen and got the knife. It was the biggest, sharpest one in my mother’s butcher block. Then I hid behind the armchair and tried to get up the courage to step forward and stop what was happening.

London moaned. It sounded like she was dying. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got up.

“Schroder, stop it,” I bawled, practically crying as I shifted my weight between my feet. I hid the knife behind my back, clenching the handle in my fist.

He continued drinking, not even acknowledging my presence.

“Schroder!” I yelled, gathering up my nerve. “Get off her!”

He let go. She fell limp on the couch. The rip he had cut into her throat was alarmingly large. I could see tendons completely exposed and her gore splattered across her white shirt. I thought he had killed her and I pulled my knife out so he could see it.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked condescendingly.

I lunged.

He jumped out of the way. “She’s a vampire. This is nothing to us.”

“Nothing? She’s dead!” I scraped the blade across his chest, and a trail of blood flowed.

Schroder’s expression changed. “She’s not dead!”

I hesitated.

He continued, his eyes were like death lanterns floating in the river—inhuman. “But I’m going to kill her over and over again until I get it right.” He spat at me and his spittle splattered across my cheek. I touched my cheek with my free hand. It was London’s blood he’d spat at me. In slow motion, I stared at the red liquid and felt its slippery quality between my fingers as Schroder moved toward her.

I sprang forward and grabbed his shoulder. He responded easily to my touch and swung around to face me. I plunged the blade into his chest. He tried to grab my knife-wielding hand, but I wouldn’t let him get it.

He lost blood in torrents as I scraped and stabbed. His hands moved like lightning to fend off my advance, but I fought like I was possessed and he couldn’t stop me. My final stroke hit home, right into his heart, and just as I wrenched the knife free he took hold of my wrist. He squeezed it so tightly I dropped the knife. He gripped my other wrist in his free hand, pushing me against the wall.

I’m dead, I thought.

I cringed and closed my eyes. I didn’t dare look at his expression. I thought I heard him lick his lips.

Then Tate broke through the backdoor. “Sweeper!” I heard him call. I opened my eyes and saw his lank figure enter the room. He picked up a lamp and slammed the stainless steel bottom into the back of Schroder’s head.

“Tate!” I screamed.

In hardly a moment, the gawky teenager jumped on Schroder from behind, and together, he and I brought the vampire down on the hardwood floor.

“Sit on him!” Tate yowled as he forced Schroder’s arms down.

I sat down on his chest, and as I did, the blood overflowed from his wounds and soaked my thighs and between my legs. Under me, I could see his cuts gape, showing the whiteness of his bare ribs. I turned my head and choked down the bile.

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“He’s a vampire. We have to kill him!” Tate said as he snatched up the knife.

“Just do it,” I moaned.

Schroder was screaming and clawing like a maniac, but I managed to crush him under my weight, forcing his wounds open. Tate took the knife and cut, cut, cut, thwack! It was gruesome. The spinal column severed and the head fell loose away from the body. I fell off the dead vampire and puked.

That was the truth.

Dudley was the one who helped me prepare the pyre in the backyard. I remembered the way he looked with his thin arms and large hands carrying load after load of hardwood until he had covered Schroder’s body in the bottom of the fire pit. I sat still drenched in blood; desperately fatigued and so traumatized I couldn’t stop shaking. I thought his strength must be at its limit, but he kept working. He kept trying until he finally lit the pyre. Then he sat and held me in front of the fire all night.

In the morning, there was nothing left of Schroder, but ashes. He was gone.

My parents were out of town, so they didn’t find us, but Tate’s mother did. She helped us clean up my living room and afterward, she sent Tate away. She didn’t want him caught up in my mess.

I blocked every shred of memory—taking all the responsibility upon myself when we had done it together.

He helped me, putting his whole life on the line, because back then… he loved me.

My heart nearly bled at the realization of it.

***

“I remember now,” I heard myself say, though the words seemed inadequate to describe my feelings. Dudley looked at me with an intensity I could scarcely return, so I looked away and kept talking. “I’m really sorry I didn’t remember you on sight. I should have. It’s just that I was kind of disturbed by what we did and I...”

He shook his head. “It’s okay. After my mother sent me away I felt like I needed to be in therapy, except that I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d done. I wanted to contact you a million times just to settle myself, but my mother made me promise not to. She didn’t want me connected to any of it. I think she wanted you and London to be blamed for the whole thing if it were discovered. I’m glad it wasn’t. And I got over my mental problems by killing vampires until I couldn’t feel anything anymore.”

When he said that last bit, a knot grew in my throat. “You aren’t thinking of hunting London, are you?”

“No,” he said, his expression was appalled. “What makes you think I would want to?”

“Marshall is chasing her,” I admitted, and yeah, my tongue was a little looser than usual, but Marshall’s case involved Dudley as much as it did me. Besides, he’d saved my life and my sister’s life once, why not help us again? I might as well lay my cards on the table to see what he could make of them.

“Really?”

“I saw the file.”

“Does he know she’s your sister?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had the chance to figure him out. I know that a vampire asked him to find London and Schroder. The file was mixed in with some old cases. From the history in the file, it looked like Marshall wasn’t having any luck. The case was closed for years until he saw London in a nightclub and took a picture of her.” I bit my lip and continued, “I’m in the picture. I’m in the background and I’m a little out of focus, but I’m definitely there. Everything points to London and me being together. He’s looking for that vamp’s murderers—London and me—”

“And me,” Dudley interrupted.

I smiled wanly and continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “I just don’t know if Marshall has made the connection between me and London yet. I guess he hasn’t talked to you about the case?”

“Not one word, but you know it’s unlikely that he thinks someone other than London killed Schroder. Marshall would probably end her legacy just to close the file. It’s possible that’s what the vamp hired him to do in the first place. Where’s London right now?”

I rolled my eyes. “I moved her back to my parents’ place for the time being. I didn’t want her bar-hopping and lately, there’s been this guy.”

Dudley’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is he her first lover since...”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“I’m sorry, but I meant what I said earlier about London being dead. I am shocked she’s managed to stay alive all these years. She was always such a trembling little rabbit of a girl. I can’t imagine becoming a vampire changed that.”

I put my fingers between my eyes and squeezed my nose bridge. “I know. If I don’t do something, either Marshall, or the monster who hired him, will probably kill her.”

“It’s not the fact he’ll kill her that worries me.”

I pulled my hand away from my face. “What are you talking about?”

Dudley’s face was pale and his dark eyes looked hesitant. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the vampire population never goes down?”

“Huh?”

“If a vampire can’t have offspring and their only way of reproducing is making a new vampire and dying, then why are there always plenty of vampires when they kill each other and vampire hunters like me keep killing them? Shouldn’t the number of vampires go down until they become extinct?”

What he said was true and I didn’t know the answer.

“Groups of humans sometimes catch a vampire to drain it and drink its blood, until all the members of the human coven have been transformed into vampires. It’s against a vampire’s nature and is basically hell for them. It’s supposed to be worse than gang rape is for a human. To make it worse, the process takes months—”

My mouth was dry as I finished his thought. “And then they kill the vampire.”

Dudley nodded.

London’s words filled my head as I remembered what she said before she left. He has some friends that will protect me. Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. London was precisely the kind of vampire who would end up a target for people like that.

“How many people do this? How many people gang up to hunt a vampire?”

“I think three to five is the normal number, but I’ve heard of incidents of covens as large as eleven,” Dudley said. “Obviously, the more humans the longer it takes and the worse it is for the vampire.”

I was on the verge of screaming as I picked up my phone and programmed my parents’ number in. With each ring, I felt my heart would stop if no one responded.

My mother answered.

“Is London there?” I demanded without delay.

My mother’s voice was sweet and patient. “Not now. She went out to meet some friends who were visiting from the city. Do you want me to have her call you when she gets back?”

“No. Do you know where she went?”

“She just said she’d be back later.” I could tell from my mother’s tone she was imagining how jealous I was of London’s beauty and social life. As if!

I shrugged off my response and spoke as normally as I could under the circumstances. “Thanks. I’ll try her mobile.”

I hung up and called my sister’s cell phone. It rang and rang. I ended up leaving a pointless rambling message for her to call me. I had no idea what else to do. Pacing my living room, I was becoming hysterical.

“Calm down,” Dudley said, putting his hands on my upper arms to steady me. Looking in my face he continued, “Do you know where she could be?”

“No!” I shouted, pushing him away, my cheeks flushing with hot blood. “If she left my parents’ house then I have no bloody clue. She could have gone anywhere with that guy.”

“Then there is something we can try.”

“What?”

“Marshall. If he’s chasing her, he might know where her lover is.”

“That’s brilliant!” I exclaimed.

“Let’s go.”