Grrr! Did Johnna really think that she was going to follow her and Kyle and somehow wind up finding her very own brooding and tortured vampire boyfriend? Well, it obviously wasn’t working out that way! Had the girl not just witnessed Gretchen die right before her eyes!
“Johnna, I’m not talking about this anymore! You’re staying here with your mom and dad!” she hissed at her friend.
“Pft!” Johnna responded. “I’m outta here in a few months anyway. I’m coming.”
Lanie let out a breath and then let it drop. Johnna could think she was coming all she wanted, but it wasn’t going to happen. Period. This was not Johnna’s problem and she was not going to spend even a minute away from her family!
Something flashed by the kitchen window with startling suddenness, bringing both Lanie and Johnna to their feet. Only a few seconds later there was a desperate pounding at the kitchen door.
“Lanie! Lanie, open the door! Please!” the shrill voice shrieked.
Devyn! It was Devyn!
Lanie jolted forward toward the kitchen door, her heart thumping in her throat. She threw the deadbolt back and jerked the door open, finding Devyn standing outside, her eyes huge and terror etched on her features.
“Devyn!” Johnna gasped, surging forward past Lanie to grab hold of the girl. “Oh my God! Get in—“
“No!” a deep voice exploded and in the same instant Johnna was jerked backward so hard she lost her grip on Devyn.
Lanie shrieked and spun around to find Kyle holding Johnna, his hand covering her mouth. “Kyle! What are you doing! We have to let Devyn in!”
A wild shriek shook the kitchen and a heavy weight hit Lanie, knocking the air from her lungs and then she was on the floor with no memory of how she’d gotten there, staring up into the face of her friend…or what had once been her friend. Before what was happening really sank in, Devyn opened her mouth and Lanie’s body braced to feel teeth puncturing her flesh.
And then Devyn was gone, ripped away from Lanie with such speed Lanie didn’t even see it happen. When her stalled mind finally caught up, she jerked herself upright, her gaze landing on Kyle, who had his hand wrapped around Devyn’s throat, holding her high up off the floor.
Devyn…what was supposed to be Devyn…was shrieking like a cornered animal, kicking and clawing and swiping at Kyle, her ashen face twisted into a demonic mask and her ruby red eyes flashing fire.
In a swift and sure move, Kyle reached beneath his coat, swept out a gleaming shard, and plunged it right into Devyn’s chest, tearing a scream from Johnna and sending an ice cold wave of disbelief crashing over Lanie.
Lanie watched as Devyn went still, as her arms fell limply to her sides and a river of crimson blood began to soak through and spill down the front of her pink tee shirt. Her ashen face went slack and slowly turned as white as paste…but then something else happened. The mask, that demonic mask with the hollow cheeks and the wild red eyes, began to fade away. It only took a few seconds and just as easily as that, as easily the morning fog fading in the sunlight, Devyn was…Devyn again.
Only now Devyn was dead.
As that realization hit Lanie like a fist and she thought of how much like a little girl Devyn looked, with her pink tee shirt and her blonde hair pulled back away from her pretty, still face, Kyle abruptly spun around and flashed out of the room.
The kitchen was thrust into silence and neither Lanie nor Johnna moved. They both stood, staring with opened mouths at the spot Kyle had been standing in only a second before.
Devyn was dead. Devyn…sweet, kind hearted Devyn…was dead. Oh God. This would kill Brady. He…he’d always loved Devyn. He’d always waited for her to…figure it out…and love him back. And what about Devyn’s mother? The woman had always been so afraid that something would happen to her daughter. Maybe…somehow she’d known.
Kyle suddenly reappeared in the kitchen, hurrying across the room to slam the back door shut before turning to face Lanie and Johnna, his sparkling green eyes filled with the guilt of losing yet another soul.
Johnna was the first to speak. “Wh-what happened?” she whispered, sounding stunned.
“He turned her,” Kyle answered roughly.
“H-how did you know?” Lanie asked past her tight throat.
“She had no heartbeat,” Kyle answered.
“Where did you put her?” Johnna asked.
“In the upstairs bedroom…with Gretchen,” he said.
The house was filling up with corpses and there was nothing they could do to stop it. First Gretchen and now Devyn. Devyn! Devyn…was dead. She was wandering away from this world and onto the next all by herself. She’d always hated to be by herself.
“I don’t understand,” Johnna rasped in a watery voice. “How-how did this happen? I-I thought Devyn was at home with her mom!”
Kyle walked over to Lanie and reached out to take her hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze. “She was one of the ones who went missing,” he answered Johnna, but kept his gaze on Lanie.
“What! How! Why…why didn’t you say something!” demanded Johnna.
“It’s easy for him to call people out of their houses and right into his hands,” Kyle stated sorrowfully. “I didn’t say anything because I figured she was dead. I had no idea he was…turning them.”
“Them? How…how many more people are…are…” Johnna couldn’t finish the question.
“Three people are still unaccounted for,” came the reply.
Dread and disbelief rose up inside Lanie and she found that she could barely catch her breath.
“I don’t know how many he’s killed or how many that he’s turned, but we have to get out of here,” Kyle said to Lanie. “I can’t keep you safe if he has a horde coming after you.”
A horde? That phrase sent a chill running up Lanie’s spine. “Kyle, if he’s made…others, you can’t just leave town!” she pointed out. “Won’t they kill people, too! Won’t they have to feed?”
“Frederik will follow you and they’ll follow him. I hope,” answered Kyle.
“Kyle, we can’t just—“
“I have to get you to a safe place, Lanie!” Kyle growled at her. “You are my only concern right now! If there are others I’ll just have to worry about them later!”
Was this really happening? This could not really be happening. There were more people out there, maybe more of her friends, all of them turned into monsters who wanted to kill her.
“Can we make it to Lanie’s car?” Johnna asked firmly.
“We?” Kyle asked, whipping his gaze over to Johnna. “What do you mean we?”
Just when Lanie thought they were going to have the same argument all over again, a deafening sound echoed through the house, a sound that Lanie’s startled mind likened to a small explosion. It actually seemed to shake the walls of the house. A delayed shriek escaped Lanie, followed closely by a scream from Johnna and the very next instant, Kyle was gone.
Stunned and confused, Lanie’s legs were suddenly carrying her out of the kitchen and toward the living room, which is where she thought the sound might have come from. In the foyer, she saw the open doorway and the door still lying on the floor by the stairway, but nothing else. Then, from the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of something through the living room window and she veered in that direction, running to the window with Johnna right on her heels. Once there, she pulled back the sheers and glanced out, but saw only the hedgerow that separated her house from Mr. Neely’s.
“What’s going on?” Johnna asked just as the explosion of sound happened again.
Whatever it was shook the entire wall of the living room and shot right through Lanie’s eardrums. She couldn’t begin to imagine what was making that deafening sound, which must have been loud enough to wake the neighbors from a dead sleep, and there was no way to find out unless she was willing to open the window and peek out.
“They’re tearing the house apart,” Kyle’s voice blasted in Lanie’s ear like a gunshot, causing her t
o screech.
She decided at that point that she was getting really, really tired of screaming.
“What do you mean!” Johnna questioned, sounding more angry than scared.
Instead of answering, Kyle took Lanie by the hand and led her out of the room and up the stairs, taking her into the bedroom at the end of the hallway. They entered and Lanie tried very hard not to look at the two sheet draped bodies stretched out on the bed.
She could not think about that right then.
Lanie was rushed over to the window and Kyle flung it open, allowing her to lean out and look down onto the side yard of the house. There, in the dim shadows, she saw Frederik and two other shapes, which she instantly recognized as Heath Roderick and…Chase Wylie.
No. He’d gotten Chase, too!
Shocked, Lanie stared down at the three people, the three vampires, watching as they busily went about tearing her house apart with their bare hands.
All three of them would grab hold of a piece of the wooden siding, give it a massive tug, and then it would tear away from the house, sending large splinters high up into the air. They would toss that piece of wood aside and then reach up for another, ripping it from the house with just as much ease. As she watched them, Frederik suddenly glanced up at her, his ruby gaze capturing hers, making her muscles clench tight, and a slow, sardonic smile slowly spread across his face.
Fear spiked inside Lanie and she jerked herself back inside, stumbling backward away from the window. “What’s he doing!” she breathed, looking at Kyle.
“I have no idea. But, I can find out,” Kyle said. “Can I borrow a phone?” Johnna quickly whipped hers out and handed it to him. He punched a few buttons and pressed the phone to his ear, waiting a few seconds before speaking. “Father Cristos? It’s Kyle Vincent. I have a situation!”
Kyle turned and walked across the room and Johnna grabbed hold of Lanie’s arm, pulling her out into the hallway. “Lanie, what’s going on! What’s happening?”
“He’s…he’s…it looks like they’re tearing the house apart with their bare hands!” she said in a quavering voice.
“They? What do you mean they?” Johnna asked.
“It’s Chase and Heath,” she told Johnna. “They’re…with him now.”
Clearly, it was a lot easier to turn people than Kyle thought.
The sound of splintering siding again echoed through the house, causing both of them to jump. Surely, the neighbors would hear that racket. Lanie only hoped no one came out to investigate because Frederik would probably kill them, too.
“What! Chase! He got Chase, too!” Johnna cried after a stalled moment, her hands going up to clutch at her chest.
Lanie nodded, feeling her throat swelling shut. Yes. He’d gotten Chase, too. Even though, if things were normal and she’d gotten the chance, she would have probably had Chase Wylie arrested, she didn’t want to see this happen to him. She didn’t want Mayor Wylie to lose his only son, his only child.
Mayor Wylie was so proud of Chase. He bragged about him all the time, to anyone who would listen. There was a room in the Wylie household dedicated to all Chase’s achievements. There were trophies on every surface of that room.
Another piece of siding was ripped from the house, filling the air with the sound of breaking wood. Hearing the jarring crack of her house being torn down around her filled Lanie was a sense of despair. There was nothing she could do. There was nothing anyone could do. She either went out to Frederick willingly, or Frederik was apparently going to find a way to come inside and get her. And with three vampires outside, how would she and Kyle ever make a run for it? They’d never even make it off the front porch!
The sound of another piece of siding being stripped from the house exploded through the air and Lanie felt her pulse speed up. She didn’t know if Frederik could actually get into the house this way, but if he could, it wasn’t going to take him long.
“We have a problem,” Kyle said, appearing in the hallway and handing Johnna back her phone. “All he has to do is tear through the house and down to the foundation. If he removes even a couple of stones from the earth the house sits on, he can pass through and come inside.”
“But…but…it’s not that easy to tear a house down to the foundation!” Johnna breathed. “It’s a house!”
As Johnna said that, another sound filled the air, one resembling the scratching of a rodent behind the walls. A very big rodent. There was a lot of scuffling and scraping and some very unsettling noises that Lanie couldn’t place. Those sounds made it seem as if Frederik was already inside the walls, scurrying around, just looking for an opening so that he could get out.
Another barrage of explosions sounded out, louder now, so loud that Lanie was afraid the entire side of the house was actually being ripped down all at once.
Kyle spun around and hurried back into the bedroom and Lanie and Johnna both followed, standing back while he took a look out the window, both of them pretending the shapes beneath the crisp white sheets weren’t even there.
“They’re breaking through the outside wall,” Kyle said. “It won’t take long before they’re tearing down the studs and breaking through the sheet rock. After that, they just have to make a hole in the foundation.”
“Damn! What do we do!” Johnna exclaimed, looking around as if she could find the answer she sought somewhere about.
Kyle stood for a long minute, his jaw set, clearly weighing out the options in his mind. But, as the sound of splintering wood rocked the house, Lanie knew they had no options. They were trapped. Which meant at least two of them were going to die.
“They’re coming in!” Johnna screeched as another small explosion rent the air. “What do we do!”
Fear took hold of Lanie as her mind tossed up a picture of Frederik bursting through the living room wall, swooping down on her, and sinking his teeth into her flesh. And then she would be a monster, a devil willing to kill even her own friends, just like Devyn. Just like Chase and Heath.
Kyle suddenly pulled himself up and set his jaw. “I’m not letting him take you, Lanie,” he said with a measure of vehemence. “We’re getting out of here.”
“How?” Johnna croaked out, desperation threading her voice. Johnna, who had been so calm and at ease with the situation this entire time, was starting to crack.
The house vibrated as another blast of splintering wood shattered the air and Lanie knew that whatever Kyle was thinking, they had to try it soon because Frederik was coming inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Lanie and Johnna stood back as Kyle wrenched the lock from her dad’s gun cabinet, the metallic sound of the lock snapping filling the room. They had a plan. It might not have been the best plan, but it was a plan. They would either make it to the Bug parked in the driveway or they would be descended upon and torn limb from limb by three slavering vampires. Of course, if they did nothing they would be killed anyway because those three vampires were almost inside.
Both Lanie and Johnna found the ammunition to load the two 9mm weapons they had chosen, doing so as quickly and quietly as they could. Once the filled clips were locked in, they left the den and hurried out to the entryway to retrieve the two tactical can of blessed water and then made their way into the living room, which was filled with the horrid sounds of people tearing their way inside.
With all three of them armed, Kyle with his crossbow and gleaming, petrified shards, there was nothing to do but wait.
The living room was beginning to look like a small war zone. The pictures that had been hanging on the wall were all lying in the floor, a guilt framed mirror had been knocked down, as well, and lay smashed into hundreds of pieces. All the furniture that had been against the wall was now pushed several feet forward and the small curio cabinet that belonged to Lanie’s mom, that was filled with all the sentimental things she had valued most, was toppled over onto its front, with probably everything inside smashed to dust.
Seeing that…desecration filled Lanie with
fury. She had lost her mother and now, thanks to a soulless devil, she had lost all the things her mother had treasured!
If she’d had any fear inside her about facing down the three vampires clawing their way into her house, that fear evaporated once she saw what had happened to her mother’s curio cabinet. She could be afraid later. Right now, she had to put some bullets into the monster that was destroying everything, and everyone, she loved.
Lanie, Kyle, and Johnna were all facing the living room wall, all of them holding their weapons at the ready. Lanie’s heart was pounding with adrenaline and anger, but when all the noise suddenly ceased and the room fell eerily quiet, a little thread of fear snaked its way back in. Kyle’s shoulders stiffened and he shot both Lanie and Johnna a glance that clearly said this was it.
It was time.
Lanie pulled in a deep breath and tightened her grip on the handgun and the canister, ignoring the sudden wave of dread sweeping over her. If Frederik was going to get her, at least she could put up a fight to try and save herself.
After a very long moment of complete silence, there was an eruption of rafter shaking noise that caused both Lanie and Johnna to shriek. The sound of cracking wood rent the air and then another silence swiftly fell. It was during that stretch of eerie calm that Lanie found it difficult to stand her ground instead of turning and running away. Only, there was nowhere for her to run, so what would be the point?
Without warning, the painted sheetrock seemingly detonated outward into the room in a hail of chalky dust and shrapnel that hit Lanie and the others full force, stunning her so that she reeled backwards several steps. If Kyle hadn’t reached out and took hold of her, holding her steady, she just might have turned and fled after all.
A slight feeling of terror surged up inside Lanie as through the cloud of dust filling the living room, she could see an onslaught of fists and boots and hands, kicking and clawing at what was left of the sheetrock, tearing it away from the house and revealing the dark night outside. It all happened within a matter of seconds, and then there was no more wall, only a thick film of white powder hanging in the air and the towering forms of three vampires standing just outside, their ruby red eyes glowing through the haze.
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