American Vampire

by Jennifer Armintrout

  “What, she didn’t tell you all the stuff she’s said about me over the years?” She slowly pulled one cigarette from the pack. “You know what? I don’t even want to talk about it. I haven’t had a real cigarette in five years, and I’m going to enjoy this one.”

  As much as he would have loved to sit in his car all night while this gem of a woman talked shit about her enemies and smoked all of his cigarettes, Graf cleared his throat and asked, “So, is there somewhere I can drop you off, Becky?”

  She moaned as she exhaled, a look of pure rapture on her face as the smoke drifted in perfect rings from her mouth. “Yeah,” she answered, coming to her senses. “You can drop me at June’s Place.”

  “June’s Place is in the opposite direction,” he pointed out. “What were you doing way over here?”

  She shrugged, taking another long draw off the cigarette. “I wanted to see the service station.”

  “At the risk of getting killed by It?” He pulled cautiously away, a sick feeling in his stomach. He’d thought he’d been so close. He’d thought he’d been free. Now, he headed straight back into the very hell he’d sought to escape.

  “I had to see if she was lying,” Becky said with a snort. “She says all kinds of crazy shit for Derek’s attention. She’s the only person in town who’s been attacked by It more than once. It leaves everyone else alone, if they survive getting attacked.”

  He nodded, pretending to be sympathetic. As annoying as Jessa was, he’d take three of her to one Becky any day. “So, she’s lied before about the thing attacking her?”

  “She claimed it got some chickens not too far back, but for all I know she could have killed those chickens herself. And everyone just fawned all over her for it. But folks are starting to come to their senses now.” She tipped the ash off the end of her cigarette out the window. “People in town don’t have patience for drama anymore. She needs to keep her head down.”

  “You’ve been attacked by It, then?” He tried to catch her expression when he asked, but the threat of demonic deer rushing in front of the car kept him facing forward.

  She blew out a long stream of smoke. “Nah.”

  “So, you risked your life coming out here, then? Just to prove Jessa wrong? If no one believes her, anyway, what’s the point?” He had his own idea about why she was out there, on the edge of town. He had a feeling she wasn’t the only one to do it.

  “I was testing,” she admitted, almost daring him to call her out on her earlier lie. “Every now and then, I test.”

  He’d been there a day, and he’d already tested the barrier keeping him there. “Has anyone ever gotten out before?”

  She took another draw off the cigarette. “There’s some controversy there.” Now that she had him hooked, she took her time, exhaling loud and long. “There’s one guy who got out. At least, I think he did. About a month after we all got stuck here, he got in his car and just drove off with the last of his gas. Some people think he escaped, but others think he drove into a field and killed himself.” She took another midstory smoke break, then added gravely, “But if he did, wouldn’t we have found the car by now?”

  She carefully stubbed the cigarette out, leaving half unburned. “I’m going to save this for later.”

  “Don’t tell anyone where you got them,” he warned. He didn’t need to get jumped by a bunch of hillbilly muggers who thought he had pockets full of goodies.

  “Suit yourself.” She tucked the stub of the cigarette behind her ear. “But you could get a lot in trade for those. Everybody is kinda wondering when you’re going to come back to town and start trading.”

  He pulled into the parking lot of June’s Place. Several faces, drawn by the sound of the engine and the crunch of tires on gravel, crowded at the window. His eyes flicked from them, back to Becky. “You better get in there, before they come shake this thing down for parts.”

  She laughed. It was a phlegmy laugh that turned into a cough. “Thanks for the ride. Hope I’ll be seeing you.”

  He leaned across her to open the door. What the hell, give the married lady a thrill. She got out and crossed through the headlight beams in front of the car, a smirk on her face. She thought she’d seduced him. She thought she’d stolen something from her enemy. What sick, vicious creatures women were.

  “Hey,” he called to her through the car window. “You say people want to trade? You think somebody would trade me for lodging?”

  “I don’t know who has room,” she replied, clearly disappointed that he hadn’t called her back for some thing more intimate. “And they don’t like getting beat up.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” He wasn’t, really, but it was good manners to apologize for trouncing someone’s husband.

  She smiled. “The way Derek tells it, he should be apologizing to you. But he’s an asshole when he’s drunk.”

  And pretty much every other time, too, Graf thought. “Well, I’ll try to keep my fists off him.”

  “Good,” she said with a pout. “He’s my baby’s daddy. I need him to stay around for a long time.” She patted her stomach, and flounced through the door of the bar.

  Graf shook his head and pulled out of the parking lot.

  The house was oddly quiet once Graf had left. That didn’t stop Jessa from jumping at every slight noise. She sat on a stool at the kitchen island, glass of water in her hands, staring at the steady drip from the faucet. The knowledge of what her houseguest had been, what he had planned on doing… She forced a shiver away. It had been hard to accept the existence of the monster that kept Penance captive. Now that it was part of reality, it wasn’t as difficult to accept that another monster might be here. But there was a difference between a monster being out there, and a monster being in her house.

  This week, there had been two.

  She shot a nervous glance to the plastic-covered hole in the kitchen wall. Before, her house had been a fortress. She’d never had any actual illusions that its walls could keep her physically safe. But it had kept her from cracking up. Now, the wound to the house was a wound to her security. The presence of a vampire within her sanctuary made it unclean, and, worse, uncertain.

  The reminders were all over the house. The closed curtains in the living room, which bore stripes of fading and dust from hanging too long in one position because her mother had never closed them, and Jessa had never thought to, either. The ruined towel on her bedroom floor. The blood and dirt in the bathroom. She’d gone to shower and, standing under the spray, had seen the gouges his broad fingers had made in the jar of soap. Everything had been tainted by the presence of a monster, and now that he had left, he seemed more present than before.

  The problem was not knowing what he was doing. Had he actually managed to leave Penance? Good riddance. But what if he returned? What if he rounded up his vampire pals and came back to finish off the whole town? What if he was already busy decimating the whole town, by himself?

  What if he came back and got her? No one would ever know what had happened. Even fewer would care. But they deserved to know, didn’t they? So they could protect themselves?

  She could go down to June’s Place and tell them all about what had happened, but only a handful would believe her. June might, but she wouldn’t press the issue with those that didn’t. She had a business to run, a town to run, really. The town council wouldn’t believe her, and they thought they ran everything. Thanks to Becky’s rumor-mongering and Derek’s insistence that she was crazy, it would just look like Jessa crying wolf again. Jessa: trying to get attention again.

  She should have given Graf a list of people to eat before he left. She snorted at the thought, but her amusement was cut short by the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. It was a strange sound after five years without it, and she knew it could only be one person. One vampire.

  She jumped off the stool and contemplated diving out the hole in the wall and running to Jack Tilly’s across the field. Strangely, her fear of Graf the vampire was overcome by
her annoyance at Graf the ob noxious man, and she decided instead to march out to the front porch and face him. She waited until he sheepishly emerged from the car to say, “You’re back.”

  “Happy to see me?” He put his hands in his front pockets as he walked up the lawn. “You were right. I’m not heartless enough to leave all you people trapped here. I came back to make it right.”

  “You came back because you couldn’t leave,” she responded flatly. “I suppose you think you’re just going to come back in here and make yourself at home in my basement?”

  “I was hoping you’d let me stay in a bedroom, actually, but yeah.” He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.

  She shook her head slowly. “Not a chance in hell.”

  He looked seriously surprised at that. “Why not?”

  It was so absurd that she had to laugh. “Because you’re a vampire!”

  “So? You saw what’ll happen to me if I go out in the sun! I need a place to stay.” This was a side to him that she’d seen before. The calculating, wheedling, look-how-pathetic-and-in-need-I-am side that disappeared the second he got what he wanted.

  It had been hard to deny him the first time. This time, it was easier. “You were going to eat me.”

  “I’m a vampire!” He threw up his hands. “It’s what we do!”

  “I’m not going to let a mass murderer into my house just because it’s what you do!” She looked up at the sky. “You’ve got the whole night ahead of you. Go out and find some other dumb sucker to take you in.”

  “Fine, then some other dumb sucker can have my stuff,” he said, backing up.

  She didn’t want to, but she had to ask. It was almost a sick curiosity. The unbelievable gall of him, to come back here, after everything he’d said to her, after he’d admitted to wanting to kill her. She had to know what stupid thing would pop out of his mouth next. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, I met Becky out on the road tonight, and she said that my stuff, like my cigarettes and my jacket, were things people wanted to get their hands on.” He turned away slowly. “But I guess if you don’t want it…”

  She did want it, damn it. “Becky is a moron. No one is going to want your flimsy jacket.”

  He turned back. “When have you seen my most excellent jacket?”

  She didn’t meet his eyes. “When you picked me up the other night. I saw it in your car.”

  “You were snooping. When you were planning on siphoning my gas, you snooped,” he accused. “Did you take anything out of my car?”

  She lifted her chin and looked down at him, like he was a really gross bug she wouldn’t stoop to viewing. “No! I’m not a thief like you.”

  “I’m not a thief. I’m a vampire.” He held out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”

  “No.” She gestured to the door. “Come inside and we’ll talk. Lock up your car, though. If Becky knows where you’re staying and what you have, you won’t have it for long.”

  He followed her into the house, not heeding her warning. “She didn’t have much nice to say about you, either.”

  “I’ll bet she didn’t.” Jessa went to the kitchen junk drawer and pushed aside screwdrivers, rubber bands, one of Dad’s old watches, to retrieve a pen and a small legal pad. “Sit down. We’re going to make a contract.”

  “A contract?” He looked at her doubtfully.

  “A lease agreement, then.” She dragged one of the stools to the opposite side of the island. “Sit. Get comfy. I have a feeling this is going to take a long time.”

  “Fine.” He leaned on the counter on his elbows.

  “First condition,” she said, drawing a number one on the paper and circling it. “There is going to be absolutely no eating me.”

  “I couldn’t now, anyway,” he grumbled. “Too many people know I’m here. If you disappeared, it would look suspicious.”

  “That’s very comforting.” She rolled her eyes as she wrote it down. “But I’ve seen you fight. Maybe you could take them all down if need be. So, second, you have to give me all your stuff of value, so that I can trade it as needed.”

  “And what do I get?” he asked, putting out his hand to stop her from scribbling down rule number two.

  When his hand touched hers, it was ice-cold. She jerked her fingers away. “You get to not roast alive, and I keep your secret so that the town doesn’t do to you what they wish they could do to It.”

  “Fair enough,” he said after a moment. “But you know, I’m going to need to eat something. So I think condition number three should be that I’ll obey your first two conditions as long as you find a way to feed me.”

  She scrawled his demand down with a shaking hand. “I hope you like chicken blood.”

  “No, none for me, thanks. I want the real stuff. And I know there are some people in town you don’t care for.” He raised an eyebrow. “Derek? Becky? The jerks down at June’s Place?”

  She slammed the pencil down on the counter. “No. I won’t help you murder innocent people, even if they are jerks.”

  “I’m not talking about murder. I’m saying, you know, maybe get a guy back here, get him drunk, and I’ll have a little while he’s passed out.” He sounded almost ashamed of the idea. “Look, I’m more than happy to feed off a willing donor, but I don’t think I’m going to find one of those around here. Unless you want to do it?”

  “Uh, God, no!” Not that it looked all that bad in the movies. Against every rational thought in her head, she imagined Graf holding her to his chest, bending his mouth to her throat as she moaned in ecstasy like a soft-core porn actress. She closed her eyes and slapped her hands on the counter to bring herself back to reality. “Fine. We’ll see what we can do. I know at least one guy in town who can’t hold his liquor, but that doesn’t stop him from drinking it.”

  “Condition number four,” Graf continued. “I want a bedroom. A real bedroom, one of the ones upstairs. And I don’t want to be locked in.”

  Her heart pounded in her chest. Of course, she’d seen how strong he was when he was battling the monster. And fast. Even if she locked him in the basement, that was no guarantee that he wouldn’t get out and hurt her. Letting him sleep on the same floor seemed like she was inviting disaster with open arms, though.

  Not to mention, the only two rooms besides hers were Mom and Dad’s…and Jonathan’s. “You couldn’t sleep up there. There are windows.”

  “I can cover them. Let’s be honest, I’m going to be stuck here for a while, right?”

  She began to write it down, then paused. “What are we talking about, exactly? I mean, in terms of the stuff you have?”

  “Do we have a deal, or not?” He stood, as if to go. “If not, I’ve got to go see a man about a horse.”

  Wouldn’t everyone just love that? The new guy in town, and Jessa turned him out, turned down a fair trade. It would be plenty of ammunition to make her seem even crazier.

  Jessa quickly filled in line number four, and stuck her hand out, meeting Graf’s cold one. “We have a deal. You can have the first room on the left upstairs.”

  “Your parents’ old room, right?” Why did he say it like that, like he knew she was avoiding talking about it? Didn’t he know things would be so much easier if she just ignored the past?

  “I won’t mess anything up, or throw anything out,” he continued. “I’ll just cover the windows and rumple the sheets.”

  She stood speechless. He had admitted to wanting to kill her, had asked her to help him steal blood from people, and he’d been incredibly rude to her since they’d met. Now, he was worried about her sentimental attachment to her parents’ bedroom? “Get your shit together, and we’ll walk down to June’s Place.”

  “Why not just take the car?” he asked. “They’ve all seen it, when I drove Becky down there.”

  “You drove Becky to June’s Place?” Why did that make her strangely unsettled?

  “Yeah. I don’t know what she’s doing down there, in her condition, but that’
s where she wanted to go.” He paused. “I really didn’t like her.”

  “Welcome to the club.” She sighed and rubbed her suddenly pounding temples.

  Eight

  The walk to June’s Place was more pleasant than the one they’d taken before. Jessa wondered if she had subconsciously realized something was wrong with Graf before, and if that had made her nervous. But she was probably giving her intuition too much credit.

  The night might have been more pleasant because Graf was in a better mood. It wouldn’t be hard to top any of the moods he’d been in, but at least he wasn’t giving snotty answers to her questions. And she had a lot of them.

  “So, sunlight is a no, garlic isn’t a big deal, you can’t turn into a bat, but you’re really strong and fast?” She ticked the points off on her fingers and struggled to keep the satchel under her arm.

  Graf took the bag of his stuff from her and slung it over his shoulder. “You got it. Also, shockingly few of us are from Transylvania.”

  He was teasing her. That was a nice change from sarcasm. It was as if their knock-down, drag-out fight had been cathartic, and now they could be at least civil to each other. Like one usually was with new roommates. “Well, pardon me. All I have to go on here are the movies.”

  “That’s how it is for most people. Not that I tell a lot of humans.” He smiled, and she could see his teeth in the dark. No fangs.

  “So, ‘human.’ Do you consider yourself not a human?” Wrapping her mind around the vampire experience was weird, but not as uncomfortable as she had anticipated when she’d first begun interrogating him.

  “I was human, once.” He said it like the thought made him uneasy. Like admitting that he’d been a drug user, or an alcoholic. “And then I met Sophia.”

  “And Sophia is, what, your girlfriend?” Jessa imagined the vampire brides in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, all exposed breasts and writhing body parts, and got strangely jealous. It wasn’t like he was going to get out of this town and see her again, right?

  No, that wasn’t the point. She tried again. It wasn’t like she cared if he had some exotic bride of the damned waiting at home for him, right? Much better.