Many Bloody Returns

by Charlaine Harris

  Stella rewound to the part where Jane emerged from the bathroom. “She looks a lot younger like that. Even her body language changed. Before she was so sure of herself—now she looks almost timid.”

  “Part of the disguise?”

  “Maybe.” Stella watched to the end again, shut it off, and announced, “I’m getting hungry.”

  They decided not to risk returning to the lakeside park from the previous night and instead went to the North Carolina State Fair, which was in full swing. After Mark won a stuffed version of Seasame Street’s Count from the milk bottle throw, they started looking for a likely target.

  “There,” Stella said, nudging Mark in the side. A group of women who looked like college students was discussing what ride to go on next, and when they decided on the Ferris wheel, one of them begged off, saying she wanted to get something to drink. The others kidded her for being afraid of heights and joined the long line for the ride.

  “Perfect,” Mark said. They followed the acrophobic girl for a few minutes, then flanked her, and Stella made eye contact to bespell her instantly. It took only a few minutes to find a secluded spot between trailers, and Stella fed while Mark kept watch. Then they escorted the girl back, Mark bought her a Coke, and Stella implanted the idea that a very attractive man had flirted with her.

  They were halfway back to the hotel when Stella said, “That’s it!”

  “That’s what?”

  “Why did we pick that girl to feed on?”

  “Because she was temporarily alone.”

  “Because she was vulnerable. Now think about how Jane looked. Before she changed clothes, she looked tough and streetwise. People stared at her but nobody messed with her. Afterward, she looked vulnerable.”

  “Okay.”

  “Norcomb thought she changed clothes as a disguise, and that may be it, but maybe that’s not why she was killed. What if she was killed because she was vulnerable? What if somebody saw that and marked her as his prey?”

  “Another vampire?”

  “No—the autopsy report had nothing about her being drained. But we’re not the only predators around.”

  “Meaning what?” Mark said, thinking uncomfortably of those other things Stella had referred to before. “Werewolves? Zombies? Ghouls?”

  “I’d have smelled any of them at the graves we found,” Stella said matter-of-factly, and Mark didn’t know if she was kidding or not. “I’m talking about a human monster.”

  “A serial killer,” Mark said, momentarily relieved, “with a penchant for young girls.”

  Stella nodded. “We know Jane was at Benny’s before she went to Wal-Mart, but we don’t know where she went next. If she was passing through, wouldn’t she go back to the truck stop to look for a ride? And if you lived in Allenville and wanted a steady supply of victims, wouldn’t you hang around Benny’s to find them?”

  “May I point out that Benny’s isn’t far from where Jane’s body was found and from where the other bodies still are.”

  “Right you are, Ned.”

  “Ned?”

  “Ned Nickerson. Nancy Drew’s boyfriend.”

  “So what would Nancy and Ned do in a case like this?”

  “Set a trap for the killer.”

  “A trap requires bait.”

  “Who do we know who looks younger and more vulnerable than she really is?” Stella said, batting her eyelashes.

  Despite his teasing before, Stella really did look older than the eighteen she’d been before making the Choice. Mark didn’t understand how—something about the way she moved, or her clothes and makeup—but she looked like a woman, not a girl. At least, she always had until retreating into the bathroom with the bag of stuff she’d bought at Target on the way back to the hotel.

  Mark was watching CNN when he heard, “Excuse me?” in a timid voice.

  He looked up to see a girl in khaki crop pants with a peacock blue cami that did nothing to hide the pink bra strap beneath or her generous bosom. Her soft brown hair was held off from her face with a glittery headband, and her makeup was frosted pastels. Her necklace said “Princess,” with a heart dotting the i.

  “Stella?” he said wonderingly.

  “How do I look?” She spun around.

  “Like jailbait. If you were my daughter, I would order barbed wire for the fence and a chastity belt for you.”

  She dimpled—he hadn’t known she could dimple—and said, “Do you think you could, you know, let me use your car?”

  “Dear Lord, you even speak young! I’ll drive—you don’t look old enough to have a license.”

  Damned if she didn’t dimple again.

  Mark was still a bit unnerved when, halfway to Allenville, Stella reached over and stroked his thigh. “Do you want to, like, park somewhere before we go in?”

  “God, no!”

  “I beg your pardon?” she said as she drew her hand back, sounding like her old self.

  “No offense, but I never cared for Lolita, and you’re just too damned convincing.”

  “I thought all men fantasized about young girls.”

  “I prefer women.”

  “I see,” she said, sounding more thoughtful than offended.

  “Were you like this when you were eighteen?”

  “Well, I probably would have dressed in comparable fashion, given the choice, but for one, we didn’t have the money, and for another, Mama would never have allowed it.”

  “Good for her,” Mark said self-righteously. “Now, if you could make yourself up as a coed, maybe midtwenties…”

  “Pervert,” she said amiably.

  Mark exited at a rest area they’d seen a mile before the Allenville exit, and parked around back. Stella got out and, after checking to see that nobody was watching, slipped into the bushes to make her way to Benny’s over land. Mark returned to the highway to drive the rest of the way.

  The truck stop was bustling with vacationers, locals, and truckers. Mark snagged the last open booth and ordered a cheeseburger with no onions, fries, and a beer. Then he pulled out his laptop and a stack of paperwork so it wouldn’t look suspicious if he stayed around for a while.

  Mark knew Stella had arrived before he saw her, thanks to their sire-vampire, or dam-vampire, relationship. But he tried not to watch as she found a seat at the counter, made a show of counting out how little money she had, and asked for a burger and a small Coke. When he finally risked a glance in her direction, he saw that she’d let herself get a touch grubby during her trip through the woods, making the illusion of a runaway that much more convincing.

  For the next hour and a half, Mark ate, sipped his beer, fiddled with papers, and watched as people wandered past Stella. She made eye contact with every lone man she saw, and some of the women, but while reactions included delight, disgust, and lust, nobody reacted like the predator they were looking for. She even asked a couple of the men for rides, but nobody took her up on it.

  The crowd thinned, Mark was running out of things to do, and Stella had been nursing the last quarter inch of her Coke for half an hour when Mark decided that their quarry hadn’t come in that night. They might well have to stake out the place for weeks, especially if the killer was a trucker or commuter. Stella’s repeated presence would be noticed, even if she changed her look, so he’d started considering other young-looking vampires they could enlist to play bait when he saw the cook coming out of the kitchen.

  The man looked like he was in his midthirties, stocky, with greasy hair Mark hoped was caused by his own body chemistry and not the food he prepared. He slipped an order of fries in front of Stella along with another glass of Coke.

  She tried to thank him, but he scurried away before the waitress could see him.

  Stella, still in character as a hungry runaway, scarfed the fries down. Mark was impressed. She could still eat regular food, but her body gained no nutrition from it, and since her senses were so refined, she rarely enjoyed the taste. Eating the burger must have been a strain, and to add
fries on top showed how seriously she was taking their investigation.

  Another half an hour passed. Mark was about to gather his belongings and give Stella their prearranged signal to call it a night when the cook snuck back out of the kitchen and placed another full glass in front of Stella, again not meeting her eyes when she tried to thank him.

  The hairs on the back of Mark’s neck prickled. Random generosity wasn’t unheard of, but something about the man’s furtive movements bothered him. Besides which, the man was supposed to be working in the kitchen, not watching customers.

  While Mark was trying to work it out, Stella drank down the Coke and left enough money on the counter to pay her check. Then she stood up and wobbled, as if she’d lost her balance. Mark’s eyes narrowed. Vampires, at least vampires as old as Stella, didn’t lose their balance.

  Their plan had been to leave separately, with at least five minutes between their exits, so Mark stayed put, despite his consternation. What was Stella playing at anyway? Trying to look more available by pretending to be drunk, even though all she’d had was Coke? Cokes, he corrected. Two of which had been given for free by a man who was acting decidedly odd. “Jesus!” Mark whispered. The bastard had put something into Stella’s drinks!

  He shoved his things into his briefcase, threw money onto the table, and headed for the door. He stopped by the car, hoping Stella had used her key to get in, but when she wasn’t there, he tossed the stuff into the trunk and grabbed a tire iron.

  He slowly walked through the parking lot, checking for Stella’s scent, and caught it leading out across the field in the direction of the chicken barn. There was another scent mingled with hers, the strong sweat from the truck stop cook.

  They’d lured out their predator, and in normal circumstances, Mark would have had no doubts about Stella’s safety, but the way she’d been weaving as she went out the door worried him. He couldn’t have been too far behind, and he was moving with the speed even a young vampire could muster, but he couldn’t see them, and he quickly lost the scent.

  Had his nose misled him? Had the man gotten Stella into a car or even met up with a confederate? Where were they? He was alone in a field, with nothing in sight but the truck stop behind him and the chicken barn before him, when he realized where they had to be. He ran toward the barn.

  As he got closer, he heard talking and recognized Stella’s voice, even though it was slurred.

  “Where are we? Who did you say you were anyway?”

  “Just a friend,” a man’s voice said, and Mark guessed it was the cook. “I thought you might need a place to sleep. See, there’s a bed here.”

  “It smells funny.”

  “That’s just the chickens. If you lay down, you’ll be asleep in no time, and it won’t bother you anymore. Here, let me help you take your shoes off.”

  Stretching up, Mark could peer into the window of the room where Stella and the man were, and even from the outside, he knew the smells in that room had nothing to do with chickens. While he watched, he saw Stella’s eyes drift shut, and she slumped to the floor.

  “That’s my girl,” the cook said, and reached for her.

  Mark had seen enough. He ran around the building until he found the door. It was locked, but he shoved his shoulder against it, splintering it. More chickens than Mark had ever seen at one time fluttered wildly, clucking and shrieking and making even more protesting noises as he ran through them to get to the door that lead to Stella. The man had heard him coming, of course, and was waiting behind the door as Mark burst in. Mark had been expecting it and dodged at the last minute, which was enough to deflect the knife thrust from his back to his arm.

  Unfortunately it was the arm with the tire iron, which slipped from Mark’s grasp as he whirled around to face his attacker.

  It took Mark only an instant to take in the scene, the man standing in front of where Stella lay sprawled on the bed. He was about to launch himself when a hand moving so fast it seemed to appear from nowhere latched itself onto the killer. Between his legs. Gripping his genitals.

  He crumpled with a sound that would have been a scream if he’d had enough breath for it.

  Stella went down with him, still squeezing. The expression on her face had nothing to do with the nymphet she’d been pretending to be and everything to do with a vampire.

  “All right, you son of of a bitch,” she said. “Tell me who Jane Doe is before I rip your prick off!”

  “I don’t know,” he wheezed.

  “Are you telling me you don’t know one of your victims is buried in the Spivey family plot?”

  “I know she’s there, but I don’t know her name. I don’t know any of their names.”

  “You lying sack of shit,” Stella said, squeezing harder. “You kept her clothes, didn’t you? I bet you jacked off in them. There must have been something.”

  “Nothing. I swear. Only a little money.”

  “Tell me!”

  The man’s face was starting to change colors.

  “I don’t think he knows,” Mark said.

  She didn’t let up.

  “Stella, he doesn’t know. Trust me—no man is going to let you keep doing that if he has any way to stop you.”

  For a long moment she still didn’t react; then, with a last squeeze, she let go. The man rolled into a ball and whimpered.

  “Are you all right?” Mark asked.

  “Of course. You know drugs can’t affect me.”

  “I wasn’t sure,” Mark admitted. “You’re a very good actress.”

  “What about you? That bastard stabbed you,” Stella said, and Mark finally noticed that his arm was bleeding freely. “Does it hurt?”

  “Quite a bit, actually.”

  Stella stepped over the killer, touched the blood with one finger, and brought the finger up to her mouth. Then she gave Mark a kiss that almost made him forget the pain.

  “You’re welcome,” he said breathlessly. “What do we do now?”

  “First we take care of your arm,” she said, and leaned over to start lapping at his wound. Not only did it stop the bleeding, but it felt damned good, too.

  With that done, Stella dragged the killer from the floor, grabbed his chin to make him look her in the eyes, and bespelled him so thoroughly he’d have laid still for her to finish squeezing his balls off, if she’d asked him to. Then she told him exactly what he was going to remember about this night. How he’d drugged the girl at the truck stop and brought her to his nest, meaning to rape and kill her the way he had the others. But the girl had fought back, gotten in a lucky blow, and left him unconscious on the floor. Meanwhile Mark did a bit of stage decoration, leaving threads from Stella’s clothes on the bed and dropping the princess necklace on the floor. Then they picked up the tire iron and made their way out through the still-agitated flock in the barn.

  Their next stop was the pay phone outside the truck stop, where Stella called the police to tell them who had attacked her and where. When they asked who she was, she hung up.

  Mark already had the car running, and they lost no time in taking off, driving away just as the first police car arrived, siren blaring.

  Despite the lingering pain in his arm, Mark was feeling pretty pleased with himself. “What do you know? We solved the case.”

  “No, we didn’t. We still don’t know who Jane Doe is.”

  “But we did catch a serial killer. Nancy Drew never did that, I bet. Not only will he not kill anymore, but now they’ll find his other victims. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “Of course it does. I’ve been thinking of all those mothers who must have been wondering what happened to their daughters. It’s made my coming home worthwhile. I just wish we could have found out who Jane is. Her mother needs to know, too.”

  They were quiet for a few miles.

  Then Mark said, “Stella, about coming home. Why now?”

  “I told you. For my birthday.”

  “You’ve never come back for your birthday be
fore, and eighty-two isn’t a particularly meaningful birthday.”

  “No, but it’s been a meaningful year. Because of you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re the first vampire I’ve sired. Or damned. My first child.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “No, but you are the closest thing I’ve got to a child. You’re my bloodline. Is it any wonder that I’ve been thinking about my human bloodline?”

  “And about your mother?” he guessed.

  She nodded. “Granted that my feelings toward you aren’t precisely maternal—”

  “Thank God for that!”

  “But it has made me think about being a mother and how I’d feel if anything happened to you. How Mama must have felt when I died. God, Mark, I was a terrible daughter!”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “I told you—when Vilmos gave me the Choice, I never looked back. Ever. I lived the high life in Europe for decades, and by the time I even thought to check on Mama, she’d been dead for years. I forgot she existed. And I guess she forgot me, too.”

  There was no way Mark could answer her, no way he could comfort her, so he didn’t even try.

  Only when they were in bed did he say, “If I’m your child, does this mean I’ve got to give you a Mother’s Day present?”

  Her smile was his reward. “Damned straight! I want breakfast in bed, flowers, and a bottle of perfume, too.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  The results of the night’s adventures were all over the news the next morning, and Mark spent most of the day watching the story unfold, as the newscasters put it. He was still watching when Stella woke for the night.

  “Did it work?” she asked him.

  In answer, he pointed to the TV screen, where the local news was discussing the case, complete with film of Officer Norcomb with the killer cook in cuffs. “They’ve found two bodies already. This guy has been working at the truck stop for several years, so there’s no telling how many more there are.”

  “Has he said anything about Jane?”

  “Only that he killed her but got interrupted by hunters before he could bury her, and she was found before he had another opportunity. Nothing about who she was.”