The Blood Files, Case #1: Before I Wake

by Joelle Ayers

  The hairs on my arms stood upright as my eyes searched the dark corners of my room. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I wasn’t as alone as I once thought.

  Responding to the fear I couldn’t shake, my body went numb and each breath came in short, choppy spurts. My eyes darted in all directions. Each shadow seemed ominous now.

  “Chill out, Vi,” I whispered, trying to calm myself. I was a bit too old for teddy bears and nightlights, but… yeah, I kinda wished I had both at the moment.

  My back rested against the headboard and I told myself the cold could have been a latent vamp side-effect. Made enough sense to me to relax a bit. I glanced over at the clock and wasn’t surprised by the late hour. It was almost the exact same time I was startled from the nightmare yesterday.

  Tonight, I was determined to try getting back to sleep, though. Sinking down beneath my comforter, I found my pillow on the floor and settled in. Hopefully, there would be no more bad dreams and, if there were, I felt zero shame about screaming out for Josh. It wasn’t like he needed sleep anyway. As a dhampir, it was more of an option than a necessity.

  I’d just set my mind on happy thoughts—things like puppies and cupcakes—when I was snatched from this newfound peace and wrought with fear once again. Only this time… I was wide awake.

  Slowly, the blanket began to slip down my shoulder as… someone or something dragged it toward the floor. I sprang up like a jack-in-the-box just as the hauntingly-loud snap of bone that plagued my dream filled my bedroom.

  I lunged toward the nightstand to turn on the lamp, simultaneously screaming out for help.

  “Josh!”

  At the very second that the light blared to life, the noise and the pulling of the covers stopped and everything was quiet.

  The quick thudding of Josh’s footsteps as he plowed down the hallway matched my racing heart. There was a commotion outside my door and some cursing, making me pretty positive he’d slipped and fallen before bursting in.

  I could hardly breathe. My hands trembled in my lap as my eyes darted wildly across the room, searching.

  But searching for what? Was she, Liz Hardy, really haunting me? Did I even believe such a thing was possible?

  “What happened?” Josh waited to ask until he was beside me on the mattress, one leg hanging off as he brought me into his arms. I couldn’t even find the words, so I simply wrapped my arms around his waist, embracing him, waiting for my mind to catch up and tell me I wasn’t dreaming all of this.

  The room was silent now and all I could hear was Josh’s labored breaths. I imagine I scared him quite a bit waking him up like I did, but he couldn’t be nearly as scared as I was. Not even close.

  The temperature even seemed to be returning to normal. Had I imagined that, too? The noise, the cover being pulled? Was I losing it? It was possible that the lack of sleep lately was catching up with me, but it felt so real.

  I ran one hand through my hair and squeezed Josh with the other. Of course I imagined it. I needed to believe that because… I was afraid to believe anything else.

  —Chapter Six—

  Dozing in class was a no-no. As was dozing in my cubicle. Granted, we were a small press, a college newspaper, but our editor took what we did very seriously.

  Had it not been for Josh’s well-timed, “Feed me,” text, I would’ve still been asleep when said editor, Tori Davis, walked past. I returned to consciousness just in time to wipe the drool off my desk with a tissue and type gibberish into a doc, pretending to be deeply engrossed in my next article. It was enough to keep Tori walking by without a word and I breathed a sigh of relief as I texted Josh back.

  “Won’t be home for about thirty minutes. Think you can wait that long without snacking on nearby squirrels? Or, perhaps, you’re craving bunnies tonight.”

  He wouldn’t think that was funny, but the volume of the snort I let out as I re-read my message made it clear that I did.

  The most recent nightmare left me fearful to fall asleep. I didn’t want to see Liz again. Didn’t like feeling as though she followed me out of my dreams. So, for the past few nights, Josh and I had been lounging on the couch while I was schooled on vamp-ology. I didn’t realize being a dhampir was so different from being a full-on vampire. As a half-human hybrid, Josh had choices. Sleep or no sleep. Breathe or don’t breathe. He could choose to eat actual food or feed on living things—hence, the bunny joke. While blood made him stronger, he was equally satisfied with a burger and fries, which was exactly what his next text requested.

  “No prob,” I answered, and then shut down my computer to head out.

  Josh and I had a system and it worked for us. We took care of each other and it was like second nature by now. I generally fed him—whether it was something from a drive-thru or homecooked—and he took care of things like vehicle maintenance on the car we shared—before it was totaled, that is—and cleaning our apartment. With most of his classes ending early in the day, he typically went home and straightened up before napping. Sometimes even tidying my room for me if I was particularly busy and let it get out of hand.

  When we were about ten, Mom started teasing that we were like an old, married couple. To which our ten-year-old selves responded with a symphony of dry heaves and an exchange of insults to explain why one would never see the other ‘in that way’. But that was back when boys were icky and girls had cooties. Now that we were adults, I didn’t gag at the idea of him being attractive to someone. Any girl would be lucky to have Josh.

  Provided he ever gave one a chance.

  He was notoriously hard to pin down in relationships. Just ask the trail of hearts he left behind in high school. Girls would show interest, they’d make plans to hang out, then he’d cancel at the last minute and we’d spend half the night in his basement playing Minecraft instead.

  I was barely behind the steering wheel of my rental when a yawn ravaged me and I forgot everything else I was thinking about. My body longed for sleep. I didn’t even entertain the idea, though. In fact, after grabbing fast food, I stopped for a latte, too.

  Anything to help me stay awake.

  The simple truth was, even if I asked Josh to stay with me through the night, when I dreamed, there was no one there but me and Liz Hardy. The thought of her sent a chill down my spine as I approached the apartment door.

  “I come bearing gifts,” I announced, passing through the threshold.

  An emerald-colored gaze came my way as Josh yelled at someone through his headset. Right after, he quickly dropped the video game controller to the rug when he noticed I was struggling with bags and drinks.

  My arms were relieved of the burden completely when his massive man-hands balanced it all with ease. Guys had it so easy. He always made me aware of how small I was compared to him—my short stature barely brought me to his shoulder. Where I was compact and narrow, he was broad and took up space.

  He passed a smile my way as he set everything down on the coffee table before digging into the bag.

  “Nothing like a side of fries to go with a nice, juicy bunny.” He grinned, playing along with the tasteless joke I started earlier.

  As I settled in on the couch beside him, I had to ask.

  “Have you ever actually… you know… eaten one?”

  What looked like a bouquet of golden-fried potatoes was shoved into Josh’s mouth and his smile grew right after.

  “Are you asking if I’ve ever eaten a bunny?”

  It looked like he was enjoying this conversation a little too much already. I sipped my soda with a nod.

  “I suppose I am.”

  Large shoulders shifted when he laughed.

  “…Yup, and I prefer mine alive and squirming.”

  My stomach turned and I realized this wasn’t dinner talk. At least it wasn’t for me. Couldn’t say the same for Josh.

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “You asked,” he said with a wink, stuffing his mouth right after.

  I still wasn’t sure if h
e was joking, but I no longer wanted to know, because… eww.

  It got quiet after that. Too quiet. So, I reached for the power button of the stereo beside me. And by ‘reached’ I mean I used my toe to turn it on. Of course, I barely made it because my legs are, admittedly, short.

  “Lazy,” Josh mumbled with a chuckle.

  To which I replied, “One-hundred percent.”

  He shook his head and I felt no shame at all. It was customary for us to have music going while we ate, so I asked what his preference was.

  “Are we going with tunes from the 60s or 80s tonight?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “Hmmm… will it be the sweet sound of synthesizers and one-hit-wonderfulness only the 80s can provide, or will it be the awe-inspiring British invasion of the 60s? Decisions, decisions.”

  I laughed, covering my mouthful of food behind my hand. We usually opted for one throwback station or another, deeming ourselves too evolved to listen to the dribble that passed as music these days.

  “60s,” was Josh’s final answer, so I tuned the dial of my Dad’s old console and the song was one I’d heard a few times before. Often enough that I knew the artist and title—Coral Road, “Out of Time.”

  I knew some of the words and sang the ones I could remember in my head as we ate. Josh took a sip of his soda and waited until he got his food down to ask a question.

  “You’re okay? I mean with how things went the other day.”

  I knew exactly which day he was talking about and I didn’t want to think about or talk about the failed attempt to reach out to Olivia. It sucked. Majorly.

  I replied with a simple, “I’m fine,” and then changed the subject. “But since we’re interrogating on another tonight, let’s talk about this little thing you’ve got going on between you and Hanna.”

  I smiled deviously, knowing he was about to deflect like a politician caught leaving a sleazy motel.

  “Two things,” he began. “One: me asking you if you’re okay is a far cry from interrogation. And two: you using me to get information out of Hanna hardly counts as something ‘going on’ between us.” He bit into his burger and went on while chewing. “Poor girl’s defenseless against all this manly goodness you’ve got sitting next to you. You know we only utilize my powers in extreme emergencies.”

  I snorted and he shook his head at the sound of it.

  “You’re so humble,” I sing-songed. There was no missing the sarcasm.

  My mind shifted to the new article I’d just been assigned and I was getting ready to share the idea with Josh, but the sound of my phone buzzing beside me interrupted. The number that flashed across the screen wasn’t familiar, but I answered anyway.

  “Hello?”

  The first sound I heard was sobbing—light, but distinguishable.

  “What’d you do, break in while I wasn’t home?”

  Confusion spread through my expression pretty quickly. I put the call on speaker and set it down on the table between Josh and I so we could both listen.

  “I beg your pardon? Who is this?”

  “Don’t play stupid. You know exactly who this is. And I know what you did.”

  Josh looked just as dumbfounded as I did.

  “I’m sorry… I’m trying to follow, but I seriously don’t have a clue what’s going on.”

  A heavy sigh on the other end of the line made it clear the caller was frustrated.

  “I don’t know how you did it, but no one else could have. Those were Liz’s private thoughts,” the woman went on. “They were hidden for a reason. She knew that, if those things ever got out… lives would be ruined. She… she never wanted this.”

  Liz.

  Private thoughts.

  I was so lost right now.

  “Is this Olivia?”

  “Stop pretending you don’t know why I’m calling,” she said coldly. It was her. “I had a feeling you’d try something when I wouldn’t cooperate with you the other day, but this, what you’ve done, it’s disgusting.”

  My mouth gaped open and sound sputtered, but I couldn’t get my words out.

  “What are you talking about?” Josh intervened. “We haven’t acted on anything because you didn’t give us anything.”

  There was silence on the other end for a long time, but when Olivia’s voice returned, she didn’t sound so sure anymore. Not like she did when she first called accusing me.

  “It… had to be you.”

  Josh shook his head as if she were here in person.

  “We haven’t done anything,” he repeated.

  “Tell us what happened,” I chimed in, finally finding my voice.

  Olivia sniffled on the other end and I pushed my meal aside, focusing only on her now.

  “Liz’s diary,” she breathed. “She wrote in it at the end of every week, but there were… things,” Olivia shared. “She didn’t want her secrets to get out and… I thought for sure you were the one who leaked it. Who else would—”

  Her voice trailed off and my eyes darted back and forth across the surface of the table as I thought of what to do next.

  “Who else have you told about this?”

  “No one. A couple friends called to ask if I’d been on ShoreFire today and, when I logged on to see what was going on… there it was; the pages of my best friend’s diary plastered on the internet for the world to see. For people to judge her and she’s not even here to defend herself.”

  Olivia fell silent again. Josh had already gotten up to grab my laptop off the desk and set it down on the coffee table. He unlocked it and went straight to ShoreFire—a hack blog started on campus, led by some unknown super-jerk people were putting way too much stock in these days.

  And there it was—scanned pages straight from Liz Hardy’s diary, publicly available for anyone to read.

  I skimmed the pages quickly while Josh scrambled to take screenshots of each one before they were discovered and taken down. It was very likely to happen with a case as widely publicized as Liz’s.

  “Have the police seen this? Was this presented during the trial?”

  More silence. I touched the screen of my phone to see if I’d lost Olivia and didn’t realize it. She was still there, but wasn’t speaking.

  “This is very important,” I explained. “Did the attorneys have access to this when Cody Cicero was on trial?”

  My voice was hard and unwavering. I needed to cool it before I blew my cover. To Olivia, I wasn’t the sister of a convicted killer. I was Kristen, a curious, college journalist looking for answers.

  “No,” she finally answered.

  I felt my brow knit together, wondering how they’d miss something that could have been quite significant in the trial.

  “No?”

  Olivia let out a breath into the phone.

  “They didn’t have access to it,” she explained. “…Because I hid it.”

  Josh and I turned to stare at one another as the proverbial elephant entered the room.

  “You hid it? Olivia, why would you—”

  “Because she didn’t deserve for them to look at her like some whore,” she cut in, rendering me silent with the solid declaration. “There were… things about Liz. Things no one knew but me and a couple others,” she explained. “And, because it had nothing to do with what happened to her… I hid it. To protect her. To protect her parents from knowing things no parent ever wants to know about their daughter.”

  I was anxious to dig into the pages now more than ever.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” I assured Olivia. “And you can’t think of anyone who might’ve had access to the diary?”

  She answered quickly. “No, Liz kept it pretty well-hidden. So much so, I was able to leave it where it was and just didn’t tell the cops where to find it. The only thing I can think of is that I wasn’t the only one who knew it existed.”

  This felt like a solid lead and my heart beat wildly at the thought of the dead-end Josh and I found ourselves at being an
illusion. There was still hope.

  For us.

  For Cody.

  —Chapter Seven—

  “King Midas—the man with the golden touch,” I sighed, staring up at the ceiling form my bed. “One has to wonder what kind of magic a guy has to work with his hands to earn himself a nickname like that.”

  I laughed, needing to lighten up the tension of trying to crack this latest code. Josh paced, which meant he was frustrated, too. We’d been trying for days to figure out who the mystery man was Liz only referred to using that name.

  King Midas.

  Was it an online identity? Was it just her cryptic way of talking about the man she’d been secretly seeing and sleeping with for the better part of a year? Which brought us to our next question… why the need for secrecy in the first place?

  “This is like searching for a needle in a haystack,” Josh breathed. “I say we comb the pages of Liz’s diary and take a different approach. She clearly didn’t want anyone knowing who this guy is, so we may have to accept that it’s a dead end. There might be something else we can—”

  “We can’t,” I cut in. “We can’t just move on and pretend this isn’t important. I mean, for all we know, this guy is suspect number one.” I stood, pacing opposite Josh.

  There were a few details about the night of Liz’s death that were important, things that made it even easier to pin her murder on Cody. For starters, they spent the evening hanging all over each other at the party we all went to. Which means there were several witnesses who also saw her leave with him, too. Then, the pair ended the evening in the backseat of Cody’s car, so the DNA evidence was a given. Including his blood and skin underneath her nails that he tried to explain came from the scratches she left on his back when they were intimate. His explanation fell on deaf ears, though. He was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong girl.

  Liz Hardy left the party with him and never made it home. To the judges, that was enough.

  But… if there was another guy, one Liz had been with for so long, maybe he was there that night, too. Maybe he’d seen her leave with my brother, followed them, and snatched her during those crucial seconds Cody couldn’t account for her whereabouts. The blind spot from the moment she left his car and turned the corner to enter her building. She never made it inside that night.