Vampires of the Plains (Book 2): Blood Tells True

by Alan Ryker

  She said, “If they live, you die and your mom dies. You know that.” Jessica knew that she should have tried to be convincing. Maybe encouraging. Maybe sympathetic. It came out flat.

  But Jack knew the truth of what she said. She could see that in his eyes. There was fear, but not yet the total, overwhelming panic that would have forced her to kill him. They were still together, and Jessica felt some hope.

  Then Jack nodded at her in agreement.

  It was the wrong thing to do. As soon as he did it, her eyes shifted back to the hand around his mother's throat. He should have pretended to be torn. He should have looked like he was considering their offer. It would have bought them a few seconds.

  The hand tightened, but with fingertips, not claws. His mother's head rose as she was dragged backwards out of the living room.

  Jessica stepped into the trailer and followed Jack, who followed his mother.

  In the kitchen, the back door opened. A dark shape slipped out. Douglas. Willie still held Mrs. Benson's throat.

  “You should have taken my offer. Jessica's right. We would have killed you. But we will anyway. And it would have been better than this.”

  Suddenly, Jack's mother jerked and let out a muffled scream. Then Willie was gone.

  “Mom,” Jack said. But Mrs. Benson was distracted. She spun, trying to see over her own shoulder. As she turned, Jessica saw that Willie had bitten a soft fold of flesh on the back of her arm.

  Jack dropped his gun and ran to hold her.

  Jessica's mind spun around a still center. Emotions she hadn't let arise since the night her family had died surfaced and raged. That night, she'd killed her uncle. It was happening again, to Jack now. And the center that the thoughts raged around was this: before Jack's mother changed, she had to die.

  Jessica slowed her breathing, which had begun to come in tiny sips that had her heart pounding as if she were sprinting. The black around the edges of her vision became clear again. If she lived, there would be time to lose her mind later.

  “Do you know what happens when a vampire bites someone and they live?” she asked Jack.

  Jack had his face pressed in his mother's hair. She had her hands wrapped tightly around him.

  “Jack, do you know?”

  He nodded.

  “What do you know?”

  He jerked from his mother and spun toward Jessica. His eyes blazed through tears. His clenched jaw didn't move as he said, “I know.”

  “So you know what has to be done?” Jessica looked at Jack's mother. She'd slumped to the floor without his support.

  He glared without responding.

  She could end it for him. As if he'd heard her thoughts, his eyes went to her shotgun, then snapped back up to her face.

  He could read her. That meant something.

  He shook his head no.

  “You're sure?” But she didn't have to ask.

  “Leave.”

  Jessica nodded. “Where's the sheriff live?”

  “On Birch. North four blocks, east two.”

  She nodded and turned to leave the kitchen. She'd go out the front. In the living room, her flashlight flitted over the couch, then snapped back. Bobby, completely eviscerated. He wouldn't be coming back, at least. She walked back to the kitchen.

  Kneeling on the floor, Jack held his mother.

  “Your cousin is dead in the living room. You've probably got ten minutes with your mom. Once her vision starts to go—”

  “Leave!”

  “I'll be back. It'll be worse if I have to do it when I get back.” She saw him stiffen. “I'm sorry,” she said, and left.

  Chapter 17

  Sheriff Yoder sat in his chair in his dark living room. Down the hall, in their bedroom, his wife slept. She finally slept soundly. She'd spent the day crying over Amy. Crying herself to sleep, crying in her sleep, then waking up crying.

  The sheriff knew he wasn't a good man. Maybe at one point, but not anymore. But for all the evil he'd allowed to happen under his watch, he couldn't lie to his wife like that. Not about Amy. He couldn't grieve with her. He couldn't comfort her. Because he knew the truth, it would have been too false. So he'd left her to deal with her grief on her own until Amy and the others decided to make it known that they hadn't died in the fire.

  It would be so much easier if they had.

  They were out there, hunting that poor girl. He would have to become involved soon, he just didn't know how yet. So he sat there, in his chair, in the dark, and waited.

  His heart leapt as the doorknob turned. It turned slowly. It hit the lock. Whoever turned the knob didn't just let it spin back, but soundlessly returned it to the neutral position.

  Yoder stood and drew his revolver, but when the key entered the lock, he knew who was on the other side.

  The door opened, and there stood Amy.

  Not a bit of blond showed through the moist soil that coated her hair, plastering it to her scalp and neck and back. Her eyes shone at him, huge and black. She was still naked from the waist up, her tattered shirt clinging around her hips.

  In one hand, she held the doorknob; in the other, a pistol. A big one, though it didn't look so in her oddly large hand. Her index finger barely fit through the trigger guard.

  “I need help,” she said.

  Yoder held a finger up to his lips. “Your mother can't handle this. Let me get you a shirt, and we can talk on the porch.

  He walked down the hallway as quietly as a big man in boots could. Amy's room came before their bedroom. They'd left it for her. Her mother never lost hope that Amy would grow out of her bad ways and come home one day to get her life together.

  The walls were covered in heavy metal posters of sneering effeminate men in tight pants. So ridiculous. The furniture was still the white bedroom set she'd gotten for her thirteenth birthday.

  Yoder opened up the small, white dresser and took out a black t-shirt.

  He could hear his wife breathing the heavy air of sleep in the next room. She wheezed through a raw throat.

  In the dark living room, the sheriff handed his daughter the t-shirt. She stuck her gun in the back of her jeans and slipped it on. She pulled her hair through, a gesture which would have seemed human, like the old Amy, if the hair hadn't been sodden with mud.

  He led her out to the front porch. Leaning forward on the railing, he stared across the street at the toys in the Davis's yard—the Big Wheels, the plastic picnic table, the sit-n-spin—barely illuminated by the sparse streetlights. He looked at anything but Amy's black eyes.

  “So…”

  “It's time for this bullshit to end,” Amy said.

  He glanced at her, surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “Those assholes have kept me a prisoner. I figured that would last until I lost my use and they killed me.”

  “They won't touch you as long as they want my help.”

  “They're not going to want your help much longer. They've changed. They're getting worse, more—I don't know—alien. With the house gone, they're not going to stick around. But they'll kill me just the same. Only one of us will survive.”

  “Why?”

  “That's just how we are. But we've got a chance now, Dad. With Jessica.”

  “They haven't got her yet?”

  “I don't know. If they have, you and I are both as good as dead, anyway.”

  “So let's assume she's alive. What can she do?”

  “She can kill them. We can help her.”

  Yoder snorted. “The way those two boys talked about her, I figured she'd be seven foot tall with six arms. I figured she'd roll up here in a tank lead by a pack of hellhounds. Amy, she's just a girl with a fat beagle. She's not even old enough to buy cigarettes. What can she do?” He glanced at her, then away.

  “You don't understand her.”

  “You do?”

  “When I looked into her face, everything made sense. She doesn't have anything to lose.”

  “Everyone living has somethin
g to lose.” He winced and glanced at her again. “I'm sorry, I—”

  She flicked the sentiment away with a clawed hand. “Then what she has to lose, she wants to lose. She has revenge and death. She hunts death. When she survives it, she pushes further. She takes revenge, but what she really wants is to die. That's why she's here. And that makes her more dangerous than any of us.”

  “So what, we let her take care of Douglas and Willie?”

  “Willie's too smart. Douglas is an idiot, but Willie will keep ambushing her and fading away. They'll get her eventually. She had a chance when she knew where we slept, but not anymore.”

  “I don't get it. What are you suggesting? How do we change this?”

  “I can make Willie stand and fight. Her dog can't find them, but I can. I always know where they are. They have to stand and fight or I'll lead Jessica right to them, and then she'll have the advantage.”

  “You can sense them?”

  “It's terrible. Every cell in my body wants to get as far away from them as I can. So yeah, I always feel them.”

  “What'll you do once they're dead?” He looked at her, and he held her gaze.

  “I don't know. Maybe there's a cure.”

  He peered into the black eyes. There was nothing there for him to read. All he saw were white pinpoint reflections of the streetlight down the block. But what could he do but help her?

  She stiffened, crunching her claws into the wooden porch rail. “They're coming.”

  “Okay, it's okay.” He put a hand on her shoulder. Her head whipped around to stare at it, and he withdrew it. He said, “They still think we're all on the same side.”

  “I don't know. We don't trust each other anymore. We all know not everyone's walking away from this. They're coming really fast.”

  “Where do we do this? If Jessica is still alive?”

  “Main Street.”

  “That's crazy.”

  “What then? Out in a field, in the dark? Main Street has lights and two solid blocks of stone buildings. It's the closest to pinning them down you can get. And there are no people.”

  “There are people one block to the north and south.”

  “That's as good as it's gonna get, Dad. I've thought about this. They're here.”

  A block down, a big car flew around the corner. As it raced under a street light, Yoder could see something clinging to the top.

  Chapter 18

  Behind the wheel of Jack's Cutlass with Fatty riding shotgun, Jessica didn't know why she was heading for the sheriff's, exactly. All that she knew was that it was better than waiting to be ambushed again. She could make him talk. He had a wife.

  And he had a daughter, kind of. Amy hadn't been at Jack's. Maybe even vampires hightailed it home when things got too rough.

  But before she'd made it two blocks, something heavy landed on the roof, crushing it down. Fatty began barking like crazy. Jessica stomped down on the gas, the V8 in the big old car roared and the Cutlass leapt forward. Out of her peripheral vision Jessica saw a blur streak from the darkness of a lawn and barely miss ramming into the driver's side of the car. In the rearview, she watched Douglas slide to a stop on the gravelly asphalt, regain his balance, then take off after her.

  So it was Willie on top of the car. Five claws crunched through the roof. They closed together, and a handful of steel disappeared just to the right of Jessica's head. She started to swerve back and forth, and both sets of claws appeared above her as Willie clung to his perch. The top of the car groaned with every juke, but Willie held on.

  Jessica glanced in the rearview as Douglas launched himself through the air at the Cutlass. He'd chosen just the wrong moment. As he thumped down on the long trunk, Jessica cranked the wheel and hit the gas, turning east. The car fishtailed, and Douglas flew off, rolling and then coming up on all fours.

  But Willie still held on.

  He thrust his arm down through the hole he'd torn open in the roof. His claws snapped open and shut, his hand darting about like a blind animal. Jessica ducked as low as she could, barely peaking over the steering wheel, then dropping down again, driving blind. Fatty bounced around, half the time on the seat, the rest on her crouched form. He snapped viciously at the hand. But Willie would get her hair eventually.

  Jessica reached for her pistol, then had another idea.

  Willie had his arm in the hole past the elbow. His upper arm swiveled back and forth, but was otherwise stationary. She pulled a hunting knife and stuck it through his bicep.

  Willie shrieked. He yanked his arm, but stopped when the knife wouldn't fit through the hole and started widening the hole instead.

  Jessica stomped the gas to the floor, then the brakes.

  The dismembered arm fell into her lap. The hand still snapped open and shut in its spasms, tendons flexing the massive claws. Willie's inertia had broken the bone, and the ripped metal of the roof had sliced neatly through the meat of his upper arm.

  Willie flew forward and hit the asphalt rolling. He got to his knees and looked at the short stump that had been his right arm.

  Jessica hit the gas. Willie got to his feet and dove to the side, but Jessica clipped him, and he rolled up and over the passenger side of the Cutlass, smashing that side of the windshield into a massive, sagging web.

  Grabbing her shotgun, Jessica hopped out of the car. She ran around and looked for Willie in the dark of the yards, but couldn't see him. She saw Douglas though, sprinting from tree to tree. He stayed low, almost on all fours. Jessica tracked him with her gun, but couldn't wildly spray buckshot into houses in the hopes of getting lucky and hitting him. She backed into the street.

  “Douglas, Willie,” a woman shouted, “stay where you are!”

  Jessica looked over her shoulder, and there stood Amy and Sheriff Yoder. They both had guns, but pointed past her, not at her. She looked back across the street in time to see Douglas duck behind the car. She still couldn't see Willie.

  Fatty whined at her feet.

  It was over. They had her surrounded. She couldn't fight all four of them by herself.

  As adrenaline pumped through her, the moment slowed. She didn't understand why the Yoders hadn't shot her in the back before she even noticed them. She didn't understand why they aimed their guns past her, toward the other vampires.

  But if she was going to die, she'd take a vampire with her. She turned to face Amy.

  “We're on your side, Jessica. They're going to kill me, so I'll help you kill them.”

  Jessica hesitated. “Why would they kill you?”

  “Because we're vampires.”

  Jessica knew the truth of that statement, but still held her shotgun on Amy.

  “I can find them for you. They can't run and hide if you have me.”

  Jessica knew that Amy was the weak one, and had barely spent any time thinking about her except for her relationship to Sheriff Yoder. She hadn't expected this at all, and it stopped her. Her brain spun in her skull, trying to get a grip on the new situation.

  A roar from behind Jack's Oldsmobile brought her back to the moment, as Douglas sprinted into the street, then hurled himself through the air. “Traitor!”

  Amy aimed up at Douglas and fired. She hit him twice. Each time, the impact of the bullet visibly changed his momentum, but neither stopped him, and neither changed the expression on his inhuman face.

  He held his arms wide with muscles strained to bursting beneath his pale skin. The fingers of his huge, blood-encrusted hands curved like meat hooks, and if he had gotten them into Amy, they would have dragged her into a mouth like an abattoir.

  But his claws didn't grab Amy, as Sheriff Yoder knocked her aside with his bulk. He caught Douglas and dragged him to the ground.

  The sheriff wasn't nearly as strong as Douglas, but he was heavy, and he locked his big arms around the pale creature's waist and held. It only lasted moments, as Douglas raked his claws straight through Yoder, slicing open muscle, pulling out ribs and guts. He crunched his enormous mou
thful of fangs into the sheriff's face and jaw, tearing them away. Still, for a few moments, Sheriff Yoder clutched the monster to him.

  Jessica put her shotgun to Douglas's head and pulled the trigger. The night exploded, and so did Douglas's skull.

  One down, two to go.

  Amy barely looked at her father, instead shouting into the night, “Main Street in ten minutes, Willie. You don't show, and when the sun comes up, I ride in the back of Jessica's van and lead her straight to your hole.”

  Jessica didn't own a van. She looked at the gun in Amy's hand. It was her .40 Smith & Wesson. She didn't trust her with it. On the other hand, Amy was also more dangerous to Willie if she had a gun.

  No, she couldn't do it. She turned her shotgun on Amy.

  “For now, we have a truce. But give me back my gun.”

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  Amy looked down the barrel of the shotgun, nodded, and slowly handed the pistol over. Jessica shoved it in the back of her pants. She looked around at the lights coming on up and down the streets. She felt invisible eyes peeking through blinds.

  “Let's go.”

  Fatty followed though he growled back at Amy.

  “Let me say goodbye to my dad.”

  Jessica nodded. She didn't like Amy behaving like a human. She didn't think she could let Amy walk away.

  From the driver's seat, Jessica watched Amy roll Douglas's headless corpse off her father's corpse. Amy knelt down and cradled him to her, and Jessica watched her closely.

  Then a realization came over Jessica: there was no arm in the car.

  She tensed and scanned the interior, but if Willie had been near, Fatty would have warned her before they got into the car. She looked on the floorboard. She even checked the backseat as if it might have crawled around. No arm. Blood, but no limb.

  Amy got in the passenger seat and watched Jessica blankly.

  “I cut off Willie's arm.”

  “That'll make things easier.”

  “It's gone.”

  “He probably has it back, then.”