I walked toward the service bar and was surprised to see Gina still at work. She usually went home at midnight and left Frank to lock up.
“Gina, is everything okay?” She looked odd. Worried.
“Who’s that man? He say anything weird to you?” Her voice was high-pitched.
I tried to ease away whatever had caused her to worry like that. “He asked for a beer. That’s all, Gina. It’s fine. He didn’t even hit on me.” Not really. “You can check on Jill, though. That animal print bodycon dress she has on must have ‘fondle me’ printed out in the spots.”
“No...no.” Gina shook her head as if saying the words weren’t enough and started toward his table.
I called to her. “Really. It’s okay.” But she was too far away to hear me over the music. I considered letting it play out in case her concern caused him to walk out and I was left trying to sell an open beer, but I ordered from the bartender Charli anyway. If nothing else, a free beer might calm him down if she really was overreacting.
As Charli tilted the frosted glass under the tap and let the caramel colored liquid fill it, I watched Gina in the mirror that covered the wall behind the bar. She approached Gray Eyes and looked like she was really grilling him. I knew he wasn’t a regular, but was that really a reason for her to be so suspicious? I mean, it was possible he was responsible for the recent killings, but that was a reach. Besides, I was safe. No one had said either of the two victims were women. Serial killers, if that’s what this was, stuck to the same gender. At least, that’s what I’ve read. In fiction books. That made me wonder how much research authors did. I had completely lost my focus, and when I looked up again, Gina had her hand on her pocket. The pocket. She always threatened customers, but I was sure she’d never actually pulled a gun on anyone before. Whatever it was about this guy that had her so worked up was serious. She was all-out screaming at him and pointing with her non-trigger finger toward the door.
The truly odd thing was that Gray Eyes paid her no attention. Those eyes weren’t on her. They were looking at the bar. I knew I had to be mistaken, and the mirror effect was playing tricks on me. I turned around to make sure...those steely eyes were locked straight on me.
He started toward me, but Gina pushed him back. He was a good foot taller than her, but that wasn’t stopping her a bit. What the fuck was happening? As if in slow motion, I watched him reach behind his back and under his shirt. When his hand came back into view, it held a gun. A really fucking big-ass gun. I screamed as loud as I could for Gina to look out and prayed she could hear me, but it didn't matter. That gun wasn’t pointed at her. Like a nightmare I’d had a million times, the gun was aimed directly at me. I didn’t know how I knew it, but when it went off, the bullet would find its mark buried right between my eyes. I’d be dead, and he would walk off knowing that his job was done. He was a professional. And the name I feared came to my mind. I knew who’d sent him. Jorge.
The moment I thought his name, everything in my sight went fuzzy and a roaring invaded my ears. It was fear that did it. Twenty-two months of running, being shuffled city to city and promised I’d be safe, and none of it mattered. He’d found me. The man I’d once thought was my knight in shining armor, but was much closer to Death on a white horse holding a sickle. Except he was too much of a bastard to kill me himself.
As if time suddenly rushed to catch up with itself, I felt myself being knocked onto the ground, covered with a body that, for some reason, I was sure belonged to Freddie. I heard one shot—pop!—then screams from the crowd and two more shots—pop! pop!
“Don’t look, Kayla. You’re safe. But don’t look.” The soft words tickled my ear right before a soft kiss was placed on my cheek. Then, the weight was gone from my back. I rolled over and he had completely disappeared. I had to wonder if he was ever there in the first place.
Gina...
As the crowd stampeded out of the bar, I looked back to where she was fighting with Gray Eyes. I didn’t see her at first. Not until I looked down toward the ground where her petite frame lay, and I only got glimpses of her from beyond shuffling feet.
I pushed myself up and through the crowd to check on her. As I did, I noticed that everyone trying to get out was leaving red footprints all over the tiled floor. The closer I got, the more I knew things weren’t right. Jillesa had gotten to her before me and let out a keening sound I’d never heard a human utter before. Frank and I arrived at the same time, but he, in a surprisingly level-headed fashion, dropped down to her side and started checking for vitals. I, on the other hand, stood there dumbfounded as crimson pooled under and around Gina’s prone form.
It was then that I lost my mind.
For the briefest moment...she looked...tasty.
What. The. Fuck?!
I have to snap out of this. I’m still sick. That’s it. It’s the only logical explanation for the obvious hallucination I just had. Can a random craving be classified as a hallucination? Yes...That’s got to be it. Snap out of it, Kiera. Get out of your own fucked up head and do something. Now!
I violently shook myself until I was right in the brain. Frank looked up and said he still felt a pulse. I’m not sure what he saw on my face, but it had to be bad because he turned to Jillesa instead and told her to call the police.
How much time had passed? It had only been a few seconds, right? I had to do something. This was my fault. If she died, it would be because she was protecting me. I couldn’t let the shooter get away.
As soon as the idea dawned on me, I took off running as fast as I could in the heels I wore. I needed to figure out which way he went. I could give the police a description of the car he got in or the license plate number. If he was running away on foot, I could tell them which way he headed, and the cops could track him using traffic cameras and stuff. That was the way I thought it worked, so that’s the plan I stuck with.
I knew he didn’t go out the front. He would have passed by me if he did, and I know I didn’t see him. It made sense for someone to flee through the emergency exit, or at least try to. When the shots went off, some of the bar patrons would have bee-lined toward that one. He would have blended in with the crowd and hoped no one recognized him. But this guy was smarter than that, wasn’t he? Yeah...he took the third option.
With my head finally cleared, I turned toward the service doors that led to the kitchen. I heard the microwave beep, and it scared the shit out of me. Robert must have been heating up something for a last-minute order before all hell broke loose. I didn’t see him around, though, and couldn’t ask if Gray Eyes had come this way.
I continued a bit more slowly and cautiously, through the kitchen, past the office, and around the dry stock area. The door to the back of the building was open halfway, the scent of cedar from the smoker that Gina used to cook ribs overnight wafting back toward me. He’d gone out that way and if I didn’t hurry, I’d miss which way he went.
Determined, I pushed my way out the door and turned to the right toward the alley, praying that I hadn’t missed him.
I got five steps, slipped, and fell flat on my face.
I should have hit pavement. That would have been the obvious outcome of a fall in the alley. But no. That wasn’t how this week was going.
I felt the thickly muscled mass that cushioned my fall before I saw it because my eyes had reflexively closed on the way down. I knew I was lying on a body. I just fucking knew it. But I was frozen in fear. It had to be Robert. He’d gotten caught up in all of this, too. I’d caused two deaths, and I couldn’t look either victim in the eye. I just lay there on the rapidly cooling body, smelling the tangy scent of fresh blood all around me. I realized I was wet. Very wet. And there was no question why.
Get up, Kiera. Get up now.
I pushed myself up and off of the night cook’s body. I looked at his face with tears welling in my eyes. But it wasn’t the face I expected to see. No deep brown skin and warm brown eyes. This face was handsomely bronzed, but that coloring was negated by
the victim’s eyes. Two cold, dead, steel-gray eyes stared at me from the face of the man who’d almost shot me.
I jumped up, wildly flailing, my heels slipping again in the slick substance on the ground. I tore my gaze from his and looked down his body. Nothing was right about any of this. He wasn’t shot by a hero cop or even a neighborhood gangbanger. Either of those would have made perfect sense. But that wasn’t what fate had for this guy. I could only imagine that he went through hell before his heart made its final beat.
It made sense now that I was wet. It was also obvious why his body was already so cold. Gray Eyes had been sliced straight from his belly up to his sternum. He was covered in blood. I was covered in blood. It drained rapidly from his body, flowing out onto the pavement and making the puddle under my feet grow wider. He was dead. I wasn’t. I should have been happy about that, but I couldn’t muster up gratitude. There was no explanation for any of this other than the maniac who’d sliced up two other men recently had been close enough to catch this one here. Was he waiting out back and Gray Eyes just happened to be readily available? Or was he in the club and followed him out? Were the murdered victims connected to my obvious assassination attempt? Nothing made sense.
“I think she went back here, officer.” I heard Jill come up behind me along with the heavier footfalls of the cop with her. Funny...I hadn’t heard sirens, but when I finally looked away from the body, I saw flashes of red and blue bouncing off the brick walls of the buildings around us.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The cop’s deep bass voice got slightly higher with every syllable. “Back up, miss.” He tried to usher me away, but I couldn’t move. My eyes just wandered right back to the body of Gray Eyes.
“Kayla! Oh, God, look at all this blood! Are you hurt?”
I needed to answer her, but I couldn’t make my mouth move.
“Jesus!” I heard gagging and a wet splash to my left and knew that the cop was throwing up. I felt Jill come around me and knew the moment she saw the body because her shrill scream pierced my fucking eardrums. My eyes still never left Gray’s.
At some point, two more cops joined the first. They both gagged, but neither threw up like the other one did. They said something about the smell of bowel, but I couldn’t smell anything over the richness of the blood. Someone pulled me back and sat me down on a milk crate. Another voice shouted at the others saying they needed to set up a perimeter.
Jillesa appeared in front of me with a towel and helped me wipe off my hands. I was glad she didn’t notice that the index finger of my right hand was already free of the man’s blood. I rolled my tongue around in my mouth, savoring the tangy, metallic flavor that lingered there.
What’s happening to me?
Sorry, My Bad
The police kept all the employees and the few customers that hadn’t left the parking lot until almost four in the morning questioning everyone. Obviously, they were majorly interested in me since I was the one covered in the shooter’s blood, but I really didn’t have much to tell them. Thankfully, none of the witnesses realized that he was trying to shoot me in the first place. I wouldn’t have been able to explain that. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone who I really was, not even law enforcement.
Frank had gone to the hospital in the ambulance with his mom. He’d called Jillesa around three to tell her that Gina was in surgery, and it was going to be a long one. Jill, Charli, Robert, and I stood in a circle and prayed for a good outcome. I assumed that we should have been holding hands, being that it was a prayer circle and all. No one really wanted to touch me, though. I didn’t blame them. I couldn’t even imagine what I must’ve looked like.
Once we were given the go ahead to go home, Jill shuttled me to her car. She grabbed an overcoat out of her trunk and laid it across the seat before I sat down. Smart. During the short ride to my apartment, she asked me if I was okay no less than six times. Of course, I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to worry her or give her any reason to come into my apartment with me while I was feeling so damned fucked up.
“I just want to toss this dress in the trash and take the hottest shower of my entire life.” It wasn’t a lie.
She pulled up in front of my two-flat. “I get you, girl. Try your best to sleep. Call me when you wake up, okay. I’m going to go to the hospital to see what’s happening with Gina.”
“I want to come too.”
She smiled softly at me, and I realized that Jill hadn’t had her typical attitude since the shooting. She’d been nothing but caring. Mothering even. It was as if she knew that Gina was the only person who’d remotely fulfilled that role for me, and I really needed it now even though Gina wasn’t around. “That’s what I figured.” She went to pat me on the knee, but pulled her hand back when she saw it had a bit of reddish-brown crustiness on it. “Call me. I’ll be ready to pick you up.”
“Thanks, Jill.” I open the car door, got out, and waved. I walked a few steps then looked up and realized that Freddie’s lights were still on. It reminded me that I hadn’t seen him in the bar parking lot after everything that went down. Had he really run off and gone home?
I jogged up the four steps and went in, waving again to Jillesa before I let the heavy door slam behind me. I shuffled over to my door but then stopped and looked up the stairs to the landing outside of Freddie’s grandfather’s apartment. Something wasn’t sitting right with me. He’d disappeared so quickly after the shots were fired. I had questions running around in my head that had to be answered.
I slowly climbed the steps to his apartment, almost losing my nerve several times, but the curiosity was too much to bear.
He answered as my fist hovered mid-air, about to knock. “Kayla.” My name on his breath was tainted with concern.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. He was bare-chested, just like the first time I’d seen him. Instead of sweats, he wore nothing but black boxer briefs. And yet, my suspicions kept me from looking at him and feeling the fire he usually ignited in me.
“Where did you go, Freddie?”
He started. Like he hadn’t expected those to be the first words out of my mouth. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You saved me. You knocked me out of the way of that man’s bullet...then you just disappeared.” I almost mentioned the kiss on my cheek, but I wasn’t sure if I’d just imagined that part.
He stared into my eyes. Something played in his mind behind his own brown irises, but I couldn’t tell what. After a few moments, he said, “I didn’t do that. You’re mistaken. I got bored and left early.”
“You haven’t asked me why I am covered in blood.” His eyes left mine for the barest second to take me in. It wasn’t long enough to convince me that he didn’t know exactly what happened.
“Ar-Are you hurt? What happened?” he asked too quickly.
“Wrong.” Anger welled up inside me. Why was he pretending to be clueless? “You know exactly what happened. You saw that man try and kill me. You saw him shoot Gina instead. You knocked me out of the way. Told me not to look. Then...you just left, Freddie! I found him outside. The shooter. He was dead.” My voice was rising in both pitch and volume. “I fell on him, Freddie. Where did you go?”
He took a long inhale, then stepped toward me, grabbing my elbows with each of his hands and leaning in close. I smelled fresh soap and, underneath that, a scent that was all him. One that had tickled the edge of my senses twice before, even layered under the smell of his sweat, but this time it was thick and heady.
I looked up into eyes that seemed to brighten the deeper he looked into my own. Into my soul. It was almost as if we’d become one.
“Darling...I wasn’t there when the shots we’re fired. I’d left, remember? I even waved to you as I walked out. You were getting a drink for a table at the bar.” He let go of my elbow to caress my face. “I came straight home. You know this.”
I did know that. I’m not even sure why I’d imagined Freddie there. “Who saved me then?”
“You saved yourse
lf. You are a smart woman. I bet you saw that he was going to shoot and ducked in time. You trusted your instincts, my beauty.”
“God, I am such a fucking idiot. I’m so sorry for coming up here. It’s so late. You probably want to go to bed.”
He smiled at me and continued to stroke my face. I was a puddle in his arms. I wanted to stay there. I wanted for him to never let me go...
“I will soon. You should too, Kayla.” He leaned in close to my ear, putting my nose close enough to his chest to get a good whiff of him. Mmmm... “Go home. Shower. Sleep.”
I said goodnight and turned around, ready to strip out of my clothes and feel the warm spray of my shower. I was even imagining the sleep shirt I’d put on before crawling into bed.
Taking the stairs one by one, I never looked back at Freddie, but I heard his ragged exhale of breath and the door click softly shut. I reached my own door and unlocked the deadbolt with the keys I didn’t remember pulling out. I stuck the nights tips in my coffee can at the back of the cabinet. I tossed my purse on the kitchen counter. I kicked my shoes haphazardly into the vortex I called my living room.
Then I peeled off my ultra-cute skull-print dress from Hot Topic. It was no longer cute. It crackled with the sound of dried blood. I tossed it into the garbage can, and wasn’t bothered by that a single bit. I wasn’t bothered by anything anymore. It was as if my earlier worries had simply faded away, replaced with the need to get some rest before going to check on Gina later.
I barely remember the shower I took, only that all my cares rinsed away with the rust-colored water that sluiced from my skin. Right down the drain. I slipped into my sleep shirt and crawled into bed. As my eyes drifted shut, I heard soft, creaking footsteps coming from the ceiling above me.
I smiled.
And sighed.
And fell into a deep sleep.
Kiss Me, I'm Undead Page 5