Die By the Drop: Shivers and Sins Volume 1

by Kaia Bennett

  I blinked. I tried to recall why I felt ready to fight to the death.

  “Where… where…?” My words masqueraded as squeaks. He held the jacket up with one hand, and the other palm out, fingers splayed.

  “You look like you’ve been through hell.”

  I’ll be waiting for you in hell, Jesse!

  I saw the sun glint off long dark hair. I saw my hands caress a bronze cheek. My nails dug into the same cheek drawing blood.

  “I get it.” The man with the kind eyes took another cautious step. “I’m not gonna touch you. I just want you to take this jacket, okay? It’s freezing out here and you’re soaking. You could end up with hypothermia.”

  As if in agreement, a violent shudder wracked me.

  I let him place the jacket around my shoulders, then tucked my knees under the black leather.

  A girl in a leather jacket cowered, surrounded by beasts.

  “I thought it was just gonna be you and me? Liam?”

  “T-thank y-you…” I forced out through chattering teeth.

  He nodded and knelt in front of me. “My name’s Jay. What’s your name, sweetie?”

  “Evie.”

  “I don’t know if these will fit but you need something on your feet.” The girl had her phone braced against her shoulder and ear, a gym bag grasped in her hand. My heart galloped because I hadn’t seen her cross the street. She dropped to her knees and rifled through the bag until she found a pair of sneakers. She winced when she touched my feet. I let her put her shoes on me. The pinch of foreign shoes felt familiar.

  “W-where a-am I?”

  The girl paused. She and the man shared a glance.

  “You don’t remember where you are?”

  I shook my head, unable to bear speaking anymore. I used up all of my remaining energy clenching my jaw.

  The girl stared at me, tears swimming in her eyes.

  “You’re in Austin. Where you from? Where’s home?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  I couldn’t remember. The place teased the tip of my tongue. I knew the woods, the stores. I knew I had a mother, father, brother. I saw a handsome man with close-cropped hair and a killer smile wrap his arms around me. My boyfriend. M-something.

  I couldn’t remember home, but I knew I’d landed a long way from there.

  I knew I hadn’t left by choice.

  24

  I stared up at the ceiling, feeling everything and nothing. Tears streamed down the sides of my face, falling into my ears as the doctor swabbed my vagina. I winced at the pinch of pain, but my heart ached more than the discomfort of the exam.

  Was I raped?

  I didn’t know if I’d been blessed or cursed with the inability to remember everything. I felt I’d borrowed my body from someone else, like everything that made me feel like me had been washed away. Maybe my brain still needed to thaw. Hours after I’d been picked up and taken to the hospital, I still felt the chill of the lake in my bones.

  And when I closed my eyes, I saw opaque water, the slash and froth as my body struggled to rise. Fear and the struggle to breathe assailed me at odd moments. Bubbles floated to the surface, but not me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, till sparks and darts of light flickered, then opened them and settled on the present moment.

  I knew my name. Evelyn Pierce. I’d been missing, the cops said, for ten days. I’d ended up a long way from Guthridge, New Jersey. My family were convinced I’d been taken, and here I lay, trying to remember if anyone had been inside me and how I’d ended up face down in a lake.

  “All done, sweetie, we’re all done.” The doctor’s voice seemed a soothing substitute, if no true match, for my mother’s. I stared into her large blue eyes and told myself distantly to smile, to give her some encouragement for her kindness. I sensed the girl I used to be would have tried to force a smile, polite to the last, for the benefit of a stranger. The girl I’d become now closed her eyes and turned her face away.

  Someone knocked on the wall. A nurse rounded the corner and whispered about a detective. The doctor said something I couldn’t hear. The nurse nodded.

  “A detective is here to see you, Evie.” I couldn’t remember the doctor’s name, which seemed grimly fitting. “I’m just going to brief him real quick and then send him in to see you, okay?” I nodded and she hustled out.

  God, I just want to go home. I want to put my clothes on.

  They’d bagged my clothing for evidence, so a paper gown barely covered my knees. Hospital issue socks flapped off the end of my feet. I flexed my frozen toes.

  I heard the doctor relate the results of my exam in professional tones. No bruising. She couldn’t tell if sexual activity had taken place. My body seemed to be in good condition, but malnourished and dehydrated, hence the IV.

  A deep voice rumbled questions, but I couldn’t sort out individual words. The nurse returned.

  “Just making sure you’re all fixed up.” She tugged the paper blanket that matched my gown a few inches toward my neck. “There we go.” I said nothing. I doubted I’d be ready to meet with anyone if they’d given me a parka and winter boots. I’d have still felt naked and lost.

  If I could have described myself as a cup of water, I’d describe the man who entered my room as a significant ripple in that cup. I felt him on a frequency I couldn’t describe before he rounded the corner. I paused in the middle of wiping the tears from my face and tried to remember if I knew him. A name didn’t tickle my tongue. I’d never seen him before.

  I knew him all the same. I stared into blue eyes so clear I felt I could find every answer I sought in them.

  A vision of another pair of blue eyes, glacial and full of malice, made me break my stare, though before I did, I noticed something.

  The man stopped in his tracks the second he saw me. I could see him see me. He could feel me weighing his presence and the goose bumps that stood out on my thighs lined his own skin. I didn’t think I’d gone crazy, despite how crazy that sounded in my head. The feeling left me thinking I’d been exposed somehow, and that in my exposure, I’d become safe for the first time in a long time.

  “Hi, Evelyn.” I swallowed at the slight shiver of calm his voice imparted. If fleece blankets came in sound form, his voice would have been one. “I’m Detective Joshua Stark. I’ve been looking for you since you disappeared.”

  “Hello.”

  He took a seat beside my bed and brushed a hand through dirty blond hair.

  Blond hair… blue eyes… this man had a thicker build, but I remembered the lanky build of another blonde. I remembered pain and hatred and the sink of a blade into alabaster flesh.

  I turned away from the detective and bit down hard on my bottom lip to steady the tremble. Suddenly, a cop felt like the last thing I needed.

  “The people who found you said you looked a little beat up, that you couldn’t remember much.” I didn’t meet his gaze, though I felt his earnest focus. “Can you tell me what happened, Evelyn? Were you hurt?”

  Death. Body after body. Blood everywhere and screams.

  Of all the times for things to start coming back to me.

  “I don’t remember much. It’s coming back in bits and pieces.”

  Why did I feel guilt for lying to him about the vivid flashes? “I woke up by water, soaked through.”

  I woke in the water.

  “I just…walked. As far as I could away from—”

  Away from the man who murdered me.

  I saw Jesse’s face. I saw Vaughn’s blistering stare, then the blank glaze over his eyes after I slit his throat and stabbed him to death. I saw black tears slide from Liam’s bourbon eyes.

  When I breathed deep, I felt water in my lungs. I darted a glance toward the detective and saw him note the way I twisted my fingers in the paper sheet. I forced my hands to relax and looked straight ahead.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Det. Stark said. “You’ll be released into my custody and I’ll make sure you’re e
scorted back to Guthridge. We’ll get you help, whatever you need, and find out what happened. Okay?”

  I nodded and his phone rang.

  “One second. I just have to go over the logistics of getting you back home.”

  My gaze held his, and he searched mine, but for what? His lips parted and his brow furrowed slightly with concentration. He jolted back to the phone call. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. I’m at the hospital now.” He darted me a quick smile and strode out the door.

  I didn’t smile back.

  How could I, when I knew the man who killed me lived? Roamed free.

  We already got your money, Evelyn Marie Pierce.

  Two of them were dead, but Jesse lived. Jesse knew my full name, my address.

  Leave no one to tell the tale.

  I’d survived. Somehow I’d lived, and if I and the people I loved had any hope of continuing to do so, I couldn’t tell anyone what happened.

  My memories drifted to the surface of my mind one at a time. Everything around me became a trigger. I saw pain. Blood everywhere, dead bodies marking my way across the country like mile markers.

  I saw the people I’d killed. My teeth chattered as I tried to block out the sensation of Vaughn’s knife in my hand. I rubbed my left wrist. What was missing?

  My reminder.

  But, of what?

  I’d been numb when they helped me undress, so I hadn’t noticed if the nurse had taken anything besides my wet clothes. Cradling the thin bone on my right wrist should have been a silver wrist cuff with cat eye stones. I felt only skin. Then, horrible sinking dread hit me like a fist.

  They’d bagged the bracelet marked Margot Jane as evidence.

  No matter how well I’d washed the bracelet, blood had to be on there somewhere. They’d want to know how Margot’s blood and her bracelet ended up on my wrist.

  I glared at the detective—Stark—when he strode back into the room.

  Warm eyes matched his smile. He wanted to help me, but I couldn’t let him.

  When he asked me questions, I said, “I don’t remember,” even as memories gut-punched me. The truth rose like endless bubbles, one at a time, until I couldn’t see past the translucent circles.

  I'm screwed. Best case scenario I’m going to prison or a padded room.

  Leave no one to tell the tale.

  If I was lucky, Detective Stark would lose interest. The case would go cold. I’d live to old age and never see Jesse again. I would live and tell no tales.

  If I was lucky.

  If the past ten days were anything to go by, I had shit for luck.

  I flinched, then heat flooded my cheeks when Stark opened his hand to reveal a pack of Juicy Fruit. “For your ears. Mine always make me crazy, unless I have gum on a flight.” Stark’s smile seemed genuine, but I couldn’t return it. Instead, I plucked the gum from his hand and tucked it into the pocket of my police-issue sweats, beside the motion sickness pills I’d palmed while he talked on his cell. A passerby looked askance, and edged past me with a grimace.

  “I’m staying behind.” The startling pronouncement drew my attention to the detective once more. “Austin PD and I are going to search the area where you were found. They think the lake you woke up by was Lake Austin, so I’ll go door to door, to see if anyone saw you, or can describe anyone who may have been with you.”

  My heart seized. “Later, then.” Turning on numbed legs, I croaked at the male cop who was to escort me home. “Gotta pee.”

  I raced to the closest bathroom, leaping a suitcase that blocked my path, while the owner yapped on his cell. Clapping my hand over my mouth—and oh, God—the memories that act stirred only made my nausea worse.

  I shoved through the door marked Men, because it was the closest. A stall door stood ajar. Vomit leaked between my fingers as I shouldered my way inside.

  Hitting my knees, I wretched into crystal clear water, but the water that danced in my mind was dark and clouded with air bubbles.

  I’d soon have to look at my parents, my brother, and lie to them.

  Dragging the handle down, I stared at the swirling water, and felt the former me slide into the hole at the bottom of the basin. I realized how much of myself I’d suppressed. From the age of eight, I’d pretend to be anything but what I was. I’d lived and died in my last days as a captive, but I’d done so as a witch. Someone with abilities that grew stronger and had been acknowledged. Recognized.

  My parents and brother didn’t know that girl. My boyfriend—Manny, his name is Manny—didn’t know that girl. My family knew the Evie who got good grades and could mediate an argument. They knew a girl who laughed easily and wasn’t scared to be touched. They knew a girl who hadn’t killed people.

  I laid my arms across the seat, tipped my head to my forearms, and sobbed.

  Get it out of your system, the beast ordered. But she wasn’t in the cage anymore. The door swung open and I sat inside the bars this time. Even with the door open, I couldn’t move from my place.

  You made it out alive. You survived. Now run free.

  Crawling out of the stall, I used the counter to pull to my feet. Men darted each other looks, then stared, but I splashed water on face and swished my mouth. I wished I could brush my teeth. I stared at my reflection, recalling how many times I’d stood before a strange mirror and brushed my teeth alongside Jesse. I could almost feel him behind me, leering at my weakness.

  Exhaustion settled around my shoulders like a heavy quilt. My tummy rumbled, but nothing I ate satisfied my hunger. Thirst that wouldn’t abate raged inside my mouth. I ripped the box of air sickness pills open. Only four? Tossing all of the chalky tablets into my mouth, I tugged my water bottle from the opposite pocket and took a long swig, wishing the cool liquid would coat my throat and soothe my aching belly.

  I rifled in my pocket for the gum, wondering how I’d keep up the façade.

  I shoved two pieces of fruity gum into my mouth and burst into tears again.

  No. I slapped my palms over my eyes.

  I’ve killed people. This is the easy part, the Faustian bargain made in order to survive.

  I wiped the belligerent drops from my face, raked my fingers through my curls, and forced my feet to bear me out of the bathroom.

  “Flight eight-seventeen to Philadelphia, last call.”

  The deputy reached for my arm. Flinching away, I stalked onto the plane and claimed the seat by the window. The big engine blocked most of my view, but I breathed a bit deeper once Texas shrank to a toy-sized landscape, then disappeared behind fluffy clouds.

  “Would you like anything?” The flight attendant meant a drink, or peanuts, I supposed, but what was the point?

  “A blanket and pillow.”

  She handed the items from the overhead bin. I settled the thin blue shroud over me, jerked the shade down to block out the unsettling, bright white on the other side, and shoved the pillow into position against the shade.

  See you in hell….

  It took forever, it seemed, for the pills to kick in. Dark shadows chased me through an endless field of white, I darted inside a dilapidated farm house to rest. Beady red eyes glared at me. The rat hunched over a bag of chips. I drove my toe into his soft side and seized the first bite in days that sated my hunger.

  But a different hunger flared to life between my thighs.

  “Miss Pierce?”

  I started awake, glaring at the unfamiliar man who dared touch my arm. Men leaned over us, dragging bodies out of white boxes overhea—stop! They’re briefcases. He’s a policeman.

  “You’re home.”

  Home. Did I have a home now?

  My deputy escorted me through the gate.

  “Your parents are here.” He waggled a cell phone. “They’re waiting out front of the terminal. I’ll just see you into their arms, ma’am.”

  People everywhere. Unnerved, I nevertheless searched the faces around me. Which were the vampires? Could vampires fly or would their thrumming hearts burst from the air pressure?
I paused, feeling the press of a hummingbird-fast beat against my back, the weight of an arm around my waist pulling me close.

  I marched across the street to the parking lot at the direction of the deputy, my breath caught in my chest.

  When I saw my mother, father, and brother in a huddle, waiting for me, I froze. My mother covered her mouth with her hands. My father pulled off his glasses to wipe away his tears, his face crumpling with relief. My brother dipped his head. I saw his heaving shoulders, and my legs moved at last, propelling me toward them. Shame swept me, but I wondered if I had the ability to soothe their pain. I feared that, in a few days, their relief would wane and the questions they’d ask, the ones I couldn’t answer, would tear a rift between us. How had I been better equipped to calm a murderous vampire than my own family?

  Worry melted when they all wrapped their arms around me at once, our embraces were awkward and beautiful. My mother kissed my cheeks over and over, and I did the same to my brother. I clutched TJ’s hand in a vice grip while my father pulled me against his chest and kissed the crown of my head. My mother nuzzled my neck as she wrapped her arms around me. I sobbed into my father’s shirt, remembering all the times he’d held me as child, all the times I’d felt so perfectly content and safe.

  You want a letterman jacket, baby? Want me to meet your parents?

  Mommy and Daddy will love me.

  I pulled away and rubbed the tears and snot off my face with the ugly sweatshirt.

  My parents thanked the deputy and we hustled into my father’s Lexus SUV.

  Familiar roads flashed past, but in the back seat, I still squirmed and clenched my fists. Much of my life for several days played out in cars and an SUV Jesse totaled. The residual mental sting of everything that had happened rocked me. The ping of glass yanked out of my flesh and dropped into a metal bowl chimed in my head like a doorbell, pressed by a furious hand. Crimson tips glinted on the shards. I felt light-headed, felt every rip and hollow that remained in my meaty flesh when the glass had been plucked free.