American Vampire

by Jennifer Armintrout

  The lawn had never looked so welcoming as when her feet finally landed on the grass, and her whole body ached to drop down and rest now that she was beneath the sheltering arms of the oak in the front yard. But she pressed on, her breath wheezing from her lungs, the steps to the porch almost her undoing. She reached the door and pushed it open, summoning as much air as she could to scream, “Graf!” as Derek finally overtook her and carried her to the ground.

  Derek’s hand twisted in her ponytail and he wrenched her head back, slamming her face forward into the floor. Then, he lifted off her, and in the mind-blowing pain that paralyzed her, all Jessa knew was that Graf had saved her, and now everything would be okay.

  She rolled to her back in time to see Graf open his mouth and rip the skin just beneath Derek’s ear. Smoke rose off Graf’s shoulders from the light streaming through the windows, but it didn’t deter him from sucking down Derek’s blood. Before Jessa could cry out a warning, Derek ripped the HOME, SWEET HOME placard off the wall beside the door and bashed Graf in the face with it. Stunned, Graf let go, just for an instant, and Derek elbowed him in the chest and took off through the door, leaping over the porch railing as Graf ran after him.

  Jessa shot to her feet and caught Graf by the arm before he could reach the top of the porch steps. She tugged, hard, bringing both of them crashing to the floor just inside, and covered him with her body as she tried to kick it closed.

  “What were you doing?” she screamed as he struggled from under her. She climbed to her feet almost as fast as he did and blocked the door with her body. “You’re going to get killed!”

  “He knows what I am now! I’ve got to go after him!” Graf argued, but he didn’t make another at tempt to leave.

  “You’ll never catch him now, not before you burn up.” She knew he already had given up for that reason, but it felt like it needed to be said out loud. They weren’t giving up. Their hands were tied.

  “Look at you,” Graf said, reaching for her face. She flinched, and the motion made the contact between his fingers and her flesh more painful.

  “He’s going to tell everyone,” she said, ignoring Graf’s hand gently cupping her jaw. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Where are we going to go? It’s full daylight out—I can’t leave. And we can’t get out of town.” He said this as though she were a child being told she couldn’t have a birthday party. Gentle, understanding, but firm. “Let’s get some ice on your nose.”

  She marveled at Graf’s calmness as he got ice from the freezer and towels from the kitchen drawer.

  “You got a first-aid kit?” he asked.

  She nodded. “In the bathroom.”

  “Let’s go up there, then,” he said, almost cheerfully reassuring. She’d expected him to say, “I told you so,” and possibly even do a jackass end-zone dance when he said it. His kindness really threw her for a loop.

  Jessa showed him where the kit was, and watched with fascination as he removed alcohol swabs and bandages. She covered the single window with a towel, then looked in the mirror and saw a long scrape across her forehead, and blood clotting at both of her nostrils, two long tracks of blood across her lips and down her chin.

  “Sit,” he ordered, lowering the toilet lid. She obeyed, and he tore open a swab and began to gently dab at her forehead.

  “We should be boarding up the windows and preparing for siege,” she said, drawing in a breath at the stinging cold.

  “Why do you say that?” He frowned as he wiped the blood and dirt from her wound.

  Jessa thought of the binder downstairs, lying forgotten on the floor. If anyone walked in and saw that, she’d be in a world of hurt. She’d be right where Sarah was now. “I found something in Derek’s house. A notebook. He’s going to want it back, and he can definitely use the fact that I’ve got it in my possession against us.”

  “Like what kind of a notebook?” Graf leaned close and blew a stream of cold breath over the liquid on her forehead. “That help?”

  “My mom used to do that with peroxide,” she said lamely.

  “I’m a nurturer. Wait, did you say, ‘in Derek’s house’?”

  Jessa sucked in a breath, and waited until he looked up, into her guilty eyes.

  “Oh, come on. You didn’t go over there.” His frown deepened into one of disappointment.

  “I had to know. I don’t expect you to understand.” She looked down at her hands. They were torn up from fighting.

  “Damn it, Jessa!” Graf threw something at the bathtub, and it ricocheted loudly around the porcelain interior.

  “You don’t have to yell,” she said meekly. It was a ploy to keep him from being too mean, too loud. If he was, she wouldn’t be able to stay calm. She would respond in kind, and she didn’t know if she had enough energy for more fighting.

  Thankfully, his anger seemed to diminish. “That was stupid,” he admonished, dropping to one knee and taking her foot in his hands. “And now your ankle is all fucked up.”

  She winced and pulled her leg back. He was right, it did look bad: swollen and purple with bruises. He pulled her shoe off carefully, though it couldn’t have been done completely painlessly, and tossed it aside. His hand was cold against her calf.

  She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t stop the tears from coming.

  “Don’t, don’t,” Graf murmured, his arms closing around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder. Though his body was cold and his shirt was soaked with blood, he felt safe to her. Safer than she’d felt in years.

  “There’s only so much of this a guy can take,” he whispered. “We’re not going to do this holding-and-crying thing every day, are we?”

  Despite the sadness swelling under her ribs, she laughed through her tears. “This is ridiculous.”

  His breath was strangely warm as it stirred her hair. “Yeah, well, don’t tell any of my friends. If this gets out, I’ll lose a lot of vampire street cred.”

  She laughed again, and he continued. “I’m serious. It would be like someone finding out you console ice cream cones.”

  “I’m an ice cream cone?” she asked, sniffling. “That’s not very flattering.”

  “I could have said ‘side of beef,’ but I’m a gentleman.” He leaned back and hooked a finger under her chin, tilting her face up to his. “Fine. A strawberry sundae.”

  “That’s not much better,” she began. “What about a coo—”

  His lips gently brushed hers, and the rest of her sentence was lost to a sharp, startled breath. As suddenly as the kiss had happened, it was over.

  “Sorry.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Your ankle, right.”

  She sat, silent, as he fumbled with the first-aid kit. He pulled out an Ace bandage and began unwinding it. With surprising quickness, he bound up her sprained ankle and immobilized it, then got a washcloth and wiped the blood from her face with efficiency that lacked the tender concern he’d shown before.

  It wasn’t a difficult change to adapt to. Derek had been a master of expressing, then immediately withdrawing, affection.

  The fact that she’d compared Graf to Derek bothered her more than it should have.

  “We need to think about what’s going to happen when Derek tells everybody in town that you’re a vampire,” she said, taking up Graf’s cues to stay detached.

  “It’s all going to depend on whether or not they believe it.” Graf tossed the washcloth over the side of the pedestal sink. “Or whether Derek is stupid enough to tell them how he found out.”

  “He won’t be. He’ll make up some story.” But Graf had a point about them not believing. “Maybe they’ll think he’s drunk. Or stupid. But we still have that binder.”

  “They already know he’s stupid… But you’re right. We might have a fight on our hands, eventually. What’s in that binder that he’s going to be so hot on keeping under wraps?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s Sarah’s.” She cleared her throat. “Sarah Boniface’s, that girl I told you about. Eve
ryone thought she was a witch, and with the way things in town are…”

  “Right, angry mob. Hue and cry. Gotcha.” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “Okay, so what do you think we should do? Hide someplace else?”

  The thought of leaving her house sent flutters of panic careering through her body. “No! No, we’re safer if we stay here.”

  “Why?”

  That was a good question, one Jessa wasn’t prepared to answer. If she wasn’t safe here, where would she be safe? “We have the gun. And supplies.”

  “Yeah, and we could take that stuff with us,” he countered. “There has to be a bomb shelter or a cave or someplace we can hide where no one would look for us.”

  “Until when? Until they just give up? Anyplace we go, they’ll find us. We have limited options, and they have unlimited time to search us out.” She hadn’t realized the sense to that before she said it. She just wanted to stay here, where she felt safe, where it seemed nothing bad could get to her.

  Graf considered a moment, then agreed. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I’m not use to thinking with the ‘trapped rat’ mind-set you all have. I don’t think I like it.”

  “None of us do. All we can really do is wait and see what happens.” She hated waiting. She hated the entire situation. “If we start barricading ourselves in here, or we run, we’re going to look like we have a reason to be guilty. It’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to deny that you’re a vampire if we don’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

  “I can’t say I’ve convinced tougher audiences.” Graf paced the length of the bathroom, his index finger tapping his lips. “Usually, people don’t realize I’m a vampire until I’m eating them.”

  Her stomach went sour at that. “I might never eat ice cream again.”

  He looked up and said, “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be.” She struggled to stand, unable to stay in one place any longer.

  She expected him to put out an arm to steady her, but instead he scooped her up in his arms again. “Let’s get you somewhere you can elevate your ankle. If we do have a fight coming to us, it’ll be easier if we have four working legs between us.”

  He carried her to the door of her bedroom, then, seeing the sunlight streaming in, turned around and headed for her parents’ room. She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off before he could even begin. “I know, you have issues. That’s terrible, and I feel really bad for you. But not bad enough that I’m going to get burned twice in one day. You can stay in here while I sleep, so if you need anything, or any thing happens, I’ll be able to get to you.”

  “If the angry villagers storm in with pitchforks and torches?” She bit back a noise of pain as he lowered her to the mattress.

  A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “Don’t joke about that. It actually happens.”

  Their eyes met, just for a second, and she raised her head, tried to make their mouths connect, but he turned away.

  “I want to kiss you,” he said, before his rejection could sting her any deeper. “I want to do a lot more than kiss you. But I don’t want it to be because Derek hurt you.”

  “It’s not—” she began, but he shook his head, cutting her off.

  “It’s a big thing for me to admit, about a human. Don’t make it harder to turn you down.” He kissed her forehead, then grabbed a pillow and propped her foot up on it. Then he pulled the bedspread off the bed and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, a little desperately.

  “I’ll be out in the hall, if you need anything.”

  The door closed behind him, and Jessa flopped back on the pillow, staring up at the popcorn ceiling, and listened to him settle down just on the other side of the door.

  Thirteen

  Graf couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t just because every seam and join in the hardwood floor had some personal vendetta against his spine.

  What the hell had happened? He pored over every second of the last few days, scrutinizing every one. Jessa sure hadn’t gone out of her way to welcome him when he’d first gotten into town. And she hadn’t been pleasant…ever. Maybe he didn’t like pleasant. He sure liked Jessa.

  Maybe it was some kind of cabin fever. Maybe it was inevitable, if you were stuck with someone for long enough, you’d start to like them. You’d have to, or go crazy.

  All he knew was that when he’d seen Derek putting his hands on her, he’d wanted to kill. And the night before, with Chad.

  That was it. He was feeling bad for her because two people had tried to kill her since he’d arrived.

  No, he couldn’t convince himself of that, either. Normally, he hated helplessness. If he hadn’t depended on her so much, he would have killed her the first night he’d been here. And she wasn’t right in the head. She was too attached to this damned house, and to the past. And she was human.

  So, why did he want to go into that bedroom and hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right? Nothing else—he’d meant it when he’d said he didn’t want to be consolation for Derek. That was just more to worry about. Why not go in for the kill, figuratively? She was rejected and hurting and willing. Totally easy lay. But he couldn’t do it.

  He dozed off for a while, and woke to a dark hallway. His internal clock told him it wasn’t sundown yet. A soft roll of thunder prompted him to get to his feet, and stretching the kinks out of his back, he went to the window in Jessa’s room. Outside, fat drops of rain pelted the house, and an electric gray coated the underside of the clouds. On top of the vanity with too many coats of rubbery white paint sat framed photos. Jessa and Derek, in their caps and gowns, and Becky at Jessa’s side, beaming. Jessa and Derek at prom. Jessa and her parents. He picked up the graduation picture and tapped the frame against his palm.

  He carried it with him to the next room, where Jessa lay asleep, a tattered paperback open over her face. An unwilling smile twitched Graf’s mouth, and he lifted the book off her, wondering how she hadn’t suffocated. The motion was enough to stir her, and her eyelids fluttered open. “I fell asleep.”

  “I noticed.” He set the book on the bedside table, facedown to keep her place.

  “What time is it?” She sat up, yawning.

  He checked the alarm clock. “If that’s right, it’s five o’clock.”

  “It’s right.” She frowned at the picture he still held. “Snooping in my room?”

  “I was checking the weather, accidentally snooping.” He sat beside her. “Nice picture.”

  He’d expected Jessa to look sad, maybe shed a few more tears for Derek the dickhead. But she actually smiled as she studied the picture. “Ah, the good old days.”

  “So, what happened between then and now?” He took the frame from her hands and placed it on the nightstand.

  “The usual stuff,” she said with a shrug.

  “I don’t think it’s very usual for a best friend to steal someone’s boyfriend.” Then again, he wasn’t familiar with the female concept of friendship. It seemed like a lot of backstabbing and bitching, from what he’d seen of Sophia’s relationships with other women.

  “She didn’t steal him. I threw him away.” The sadness in her voice was different now when she talked about him. Like someone talking about a person who’d done them wrong a long time ago, not just this morning. “After my parents died, he tried. He wanted to be there for me, but we were so young. And we were stuck here… It was a lot for anyone to take.”

  “You lost your parents,” Graf said, surprised to find himself arguing on her side. “He couldn’t have expected you to—”

  “No, I know. That’s what everyone said. But if I couldn’t be a good girlfriend for him, how could I have expected him to be a good boyfriend? I isolated myself for months. I didn’t want to leave the house or have anyone come into it.” She paused. “That hasn’t changed much. If we had stayed together, I would probably have kept shutting him out. And the college thing—I came back here when the accident happened
.” An audible wobble hit her voice when she mentioned it. “And the morning I was supposed to go back, we got trapped.”

  “Bad timing.”

  “You’re telling me.” She laughed bitterly. “But even going to college was the real beginning of the end for Derek and me. He thought he was going to get some big football scholarship, but it never materialized. So, he started working on Becky’s parents’ farm. And from there…”

  “He started working on Becky.”

  She nodded and grimaced. “It’s amazing how clear it all is when you look back on it. At the time, I thought it was the ideal situation. He was going to be making enough money that he could move to Columbus to be with me, eventually. But I guess he’d always had a little crush on Becky, and vice versa.”

  A louder crack of thunder preceded a knock on the door downstairs, and they both jumped.

  “I’ll get it.” He got to his feet. “Stay here, unless I tell you otherwise.” He would be damned if whoever it was would hurt her. Not after he’d kept her alive through two attempted murders. Three, if monsters can be said to “murder” people.

  He realized halfway down that he still wore the stained T-shirt, so he whipped it over his head and tossed it behind him, hoping it landed bloody-side down.

  The visitor knocked again while he made his way down the stairs, and again as he paused to kick the black binder under the couch. One more knock brought him impatiently to the door. He opened it in the middle of the next knock. “What do you want?” he snarled, before realizing who stood before him.