Detective Giancarlo breaks eye contact with me and shakes his head at my parents. “We think he was trying to make his way out of state on foot. A guy happened to stop by the side of the road to water the bushes, and Deacon jumps in his vehicle and takes off. Wound up driving clear off the road not far from there. Rolled it down a hill and the car burst into flames.”
Mom and Dad cringe in unison.
“Well, we certainly didn’t want him dead,” says Mom. “But it’s better than Sarah having to live in fear that he might come after her again.”
“And cheaper for the taxpayers,” says Dad.
Mom shoots him a look.
“What?” He shakes his head. “I’m not going to mourn the son of a bitch who tried to kill Sarah. Not even a little bit.”
“Anyway, I’ll let you folks get back to your dinner.” Detective Giancarlo nods once. “Just wanted to let you know that in person so you can sleep easier.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Dad shakes his hand.
Mom also shakes hands with him. “It’s thoughtful of you to stop by. Not easy news to bear.”
The detective offers a brief nod of acknowledgement. He’s probably thinking telling us is easy compared to visiting Scott’s parents. Them I do feel kinda sorry for, even if they did raise him spoiled. Like, he could’ve robbed a bank, on camera, with a gun in his hand, and they’d think their little Scottie couldn’t possibly have done it.
So, yeah. Ugh. I haven’t spoken to them since the attack, and I really don’t have much of a desire to. They’d been sweet to me while I dated their son, but something tells me they’d turn on me in an instant if I ‘accused’ him of stabbing me. Right. Leaving that can of worms sealed.
Mom shuts the door behind the detective, waits a moment for the whump of a car door outside, then spins to look at me. “You know more than you let on here.”
“She ripped his head off,” says Sierra, adding a pop noise after.
Dad stares at me.
“What? I already told you guys about that.” I sigh. “And that didn’t kill him. Not only was he technically already dead at that point, he ran off carrying his head like a football.”
“Eww,” says Sophia.
“So why do I get the feeling I’ve missed something?” asks Mom.
“Okay, maybe I hunted him down and made sure he died for good.” I offer a cheesy smile. “It’s not murder if he’s undead, right?”
Mom’s eyebrows knit together. “I don’t think there’s any legal precedent for that.”
“Mutilating a corpse?” asks Sophia.
I raise a finger. “That corpse was trying to mutilate me.”
“Are you sure he was already dead?” Mom cringes.
“Allie, she tore his head off and he kept walking. I think that’s fairly definitive.” Dad escorts us back to the table. “Food’s getting cold.”
“He mind controlled Bree, too.” Sierra shrugs. “Not that it took much power to do that.”
I giggle.
Sam stares at me, silent the whole time. Damn, he’s hard to read. I can’t tell if he’s curious, sad, or freaked out.
The kids, already done with their food, remain at the table to listen in as I relate a shortened and ‘edited-for-children’ version of Scott’s final ride while our parents finish eating. Dad seems pleased, but Mom looks horrified.
“You totally cremated him,” says Sierra.
Mom gasps.
“Beat me to it.” Dad gives her a high-five.
“Jonathan!” snaps Mom.
“At least his last date with you was hot,” mutters Sierra.
“She gets the punning from Dad.” I laugh.
“It’s disrespectful. We are not making jokes about a person we know dying, even if he did… umm…” Mom pinches the bridge of her nose. “Whatever. Forget it. Forget him.”
“What was the last thing you said to him?” Sierra looks at me. “Was it a good burn?”
Dad clamps a hand over his mouth to avoid spraying spaghetti.
I almost laugh, but I’m too preoccupied with my memory of watching him go up in flames. Talk about mixed emotions.
“You know that really bad word that starts with an f that I’m not allowed to use?” asks Sophia. “Well, that word Scott.”
Wow. I blink. Sophia hates cursing. She hates hearing people curse, like to the point if people keep cursing around her she’s been known to cry. That’s probably about as close as she’s ever going to get in her life to actually dropping an F bomb… at least until she drops a twenty-six pound frozen turkey on her foot straight out of a freezer―like Grandpa did when I was eight. First time I ever heard that word. First and only time I ever heard it come out of him. It’s still simultaneously shocking and hilarious.
Sierra points at her. “Does that technically count as swearing?”
“I’ll allow it,” says Dad.
“You’re not the lawyer.” Sierra looks at Mom.
“Objection, ambiguous language,” says Mom.
“I could say it if you want,” says Sophia.
“I could ground you if you want.” Mom raises an eyebrow.
“Withdrawn.” Sophia looks down.
A weird, heavy mood hangs over us for a moment before Sam cracks up. That gets us all laughing… and dinner resumes as though we hadn’t been talking about me killing Scott a moment ago.
We do the family routine for the rest of the night. Mostly. It takes the form of us all being in the same room while doing our own things. Dad’s working on his laptop. Mom’s reading her Kindle, as is Sophia. Sam’s got his PlayStation Portable and has decided to plop down next to me, which is kinda unusual. Sierra’s monopolizing the main TV with the PlayStation and ripping up a Destiny map.
For my part, I’m just enjoying being around them―and trying really damn hard not to think of them getting old.
I’m lying in bed staring at the ceiling. It’s only two or so in the morning, but I don’t really feel like doing anything but trying to pretend I’m a normal person with insomnia. Once my parents went to bed, I ducked out for a quick snack since even being active inside the house today had been brutal on my energy.
My door creaks open. For no real reason, I pretend to be sleeping.
The door clicks shut, and the sense of someone walking up to me follows. It’s a small body, and my nose tells me it’s Sam before he’s halfway to the bed. Not that he stinks or anything, but everyone’s got a unique smell. Most people can’t detect it without some serious BO going on, but my nose, as Dad would say, has gone to plaid.
He climbs up onto the bed. When he crawls closer, into my army of stuffed animals, I sit up and grab him before he can write on my forehead again. Sam startles at my sudden motion, but doesn’t make a sound. He also doesn’t have lipstick in his hand. What little color he had in his face vanishes.
“Sorry, kiddo. Thought you were going to write on me again.”
Sam shakes his head. “No. I just wanted to sleep in here. Near you.” He flops on his side next to me.
Somewhat stunned by this, I wind up watching his pajama shirt rise and fall with his breathing for a few minutes. “Is something wrong?”
He lays there in silence for a little while before rolling to face me.
“Sam?” I ask.
“I had a bad dream that made me sad,” he sheepishly whispers.
“Bad dreams stink,” I say, ruffling his hair. “Sure, you can crash in here tonight.”
A tiny smile flickers on his lips but doesn’t last long.
Guess I’m trapped in bed at least until he falls asleep. Not like I’d planned on doing anything tonight really. I’ve gotta be the world’s lamest vampire. Or at least the one with the lamest social life. L-O-L, look at her, she still spends all her time with mortals, says a Bree Swanson-like voice in my head. Ugh. I am so glad there aren’t any undead cheerleaders around.
“I dreamed Mom and Dad told me you died. And it was just like when they did. But I dreamed we went to
the funeral and you were in the ground and stuff.” Again, he stares at me for a moment… and erupts in silent tears. “I don’t want you to die.”
“Sam…” I’m too thrown by my brother in tears to think of anything more than his name to say. I pull him close and let him cry.
Sam has never shown emotion like that, neither good nor bad. I’ve kinda been wondering if he might be mildly autistic, though other than being super stoic, he never did anything my parents deemed weird enough to take him to a doctor.
“You’re not allowed to die again, okay?” whispers Sam.
“Okay.” I pat him on the back.
“It’s not your fault. It’s Scott’s.” He lifts his face from my shoulder, looks me straight in the eye, and says, “I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Sam, what he was when I, umm, had to fight him… he wasn’t Scott anymore.”
“A monster?” Sam’s tears stop like I pushed an off-switch.
“You know how I’m a vampire now?”
He nods. “But you’re still Sarah. You’re not a monster.”
“Right. The man who saved me attacked Scott for what he did to me. They fought, and Scott died.”
“Okay,” whispers Sam.
“But… that man was a vampire a lot older than I am. Something went wrong, and Scott got back up.”
“A zombie?” Sam’s eyebrows shoot up.
I chuckle. “Heh. Almost. He wasn’t a full vampire. Only a little bit. Kinda like a turd that comes back up after you try to flush it.”
Sam laughs.
Ahh, mention poop. A sure way to cheer up a nine-year-old boy. Or Dad.
“What’s it like being a vampire? Are you still really here? Are you going to go away? Does it hurt to be a vampire? Do you still have dreams?”
“I’m still your big sis, only I have a bunch of superhero powers.”
He grins. “What’s it like to fly?”
“It’s kinda like… umm, flying.” I shrug. “It’s really hard to explain.”
“Oh.”
I sit up. “I can’t explain it, but I can show you.”
His eyes go wide.
“Wanna go for a fly? You’re small enough. I could probably carry you.”
“Yeah!” He bounces up and down on the bed.
I hop over him and head for my pile o’ clothes. No way am I going for a fly in only a long T-shirt. It covers enough that I pull on underpants without any awkwardness, then jeans. Hmm. He’s got long pajamas on and neither of us have shoes, but it’s an unusually warm July night. Heck with it.
“Hop on.”
Sam climbs up like a backpack.
I carry him out of my room, across the basement, and up the stairs to the sliding glass door in the kitchen. The whole way, he bounces with excitement. We step outside into a warm breeze. Wow, even dark, it’s gotta still be in the upper seventies, a real heat wave.
“Hold on tight.”
“Okay.” He clamps his right hand on his left wrist and tries to hook his legs around my middle.
I grab on to his hands and leap into the air.
Sam’s squeal of delight is the most awesome sound I’ve ever heard.
We careen up and over the house, and I notice his Frisbee stuck on the roof again. After swooping around to kick it back into the yard, I take him up toward Cottage Lake (the actual lake, not the town), flying maybe sixty feet off the ground and not too fast.
Other than his initial yell, he stays quiet aside for whispers of “wow” or “this is so cool” or “I can see Daryl’s house.” Hopefully, he’s smart enough to understand a lot of screaming will get us seen, which is going to require some telepathic surgery.
When we reach the water, I glide down toward the surface, skimming a few feet over it.
“Go faster,” he whispers.
“I don’t wanna go too fast so you don’t fall.”
“I won’t fall… and we’re over water. I’ll only get wet if I do.”
“Uhh. If you hit the water at 140 MPH, you’ll get more than wet.”
He oohs. “Whoa. You can go that fast?”
“Yeah.” Okay, I guess I am still an eighteen-year-old with weak impulse control. I reach down and grab hold of Sam’s legs behind the knees. “Hang on.”
His arms tighten around my neck.
I line up for a straight shot across the lake and zoom as fast as I can make myself move, racing across the water. Seconds before we reach the opposite bank, the wet flapping of his cheeks scares me into slowing down. Fortunately, he’s giggling.
“Heh. That felt funny,” he says.
“Are you okay?”
“You squeezed my legs a little hard, but it was worth it.”
Oops. Please don’t bruise. That’s going to be hard to explain to Mom. She’d totally freak if she found out I went flying with Sam. But, really, he needed it. And maybe I did too. We spend another maybe half hour flying in random directions, cruising among trees, and generally trying to avoid areas where we could be seen. I’m utterly amazed at his total ambivalence to heights. So bizarre. Being a couple hundred feet in the air on his older sister’s back is no big deal, but a toy flashlight turning itself on in the middle of the night made him scream bloody murder.
Eventually, I get the ‘he needs to go back to bed’ urge, and steer toward home.
We encounter a guy out walking his dog on the way back, and Sam leans forward trying to spit on him from above. I swerve, ensuring he misses.
“Sam! Be nice.”
“Sorry,” he mutters.
Ugh. Boys.
“Hey do you ever poop in the air like a pigeon?”
“No, Sam. I do not.”
“That wouldn’t be funny. Birds are gross, but a person would be way worse. You could knock someone out.” He starts laughing at the scene he’s picturing.
“Ugh. You are so gross. And overtired. Time for bed.”
“Aww.”
I land in our yard a minute or so later and set him down. He promptly yawns, then looks up at me.
“Can I still sleep in your room tonight?”
“Sure.” I take his hand. “C’mon.”
He grins.
Soon, I’m once more staring at my ceiling. I’ve got a new teddy bear affixed to my side. He’s cute, warm, and cuddly. Even if his knee’s a bit bony and keeps jabbing into my leg. At least he’s asleep.
And with any luck, he won’t have another nightmare.
Unseen
14
The next day isn’t as warm out, but it’s bright enough to keep me trapped in my room again.
Fortunately, my sibs are reasonably awesome. I’ve also found out that with enough warning, and a thick comforter, I can tolerate the brief blast of light from someone walking in or out of my room with only some mild discomfort. It’s only about as bad as if I’d taken a swan dive into a deep fryer for a few seconds.
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little… but it still hurts.
Sam hangs out with me for a couple hours working on this plastic model kit. I have no idea what a Gundam is or why he’s so into it. My claws come in super handy for both trimming the pieces after snapping them off the mold as well as captivating my little bro. Of course, he demanded to know how sharp they are, which led to several experiments on random things he found in the outer basement.
So, yeah, my fingernails can dig gouges in steel. Not terribly deep ones though. If I ever got attacked by a real Gundam thing, it’d squish me and I’d do little more than scratch the paint. Sophia and Sierra knock at the door around six, after returning from their friend Nicole’s house in anticipation of dinner. I comforter dive again so they can come in. For a while, I sit cross-legged on the floor helping Sam with his model on my right and playing a board game with the girls on the left.
By dinnertime, the sun’s gone away enough that the ambient light in the house is no longer dangerous.
Hunter stops by a little past eight, and we head downtown together. We walk around for a while hol
ding hands with no particular destination in mind. Upon me noticing this cute little mom-and-pop coffee place, he pulls me along by the arm and we go inside. I get this thing they call the ‘Snickers mug,’ which comes out in a giant bowl with a little loop attached to it that’s supposed to make it into a mug. The latte, however, smells like a warm Snickers candy bar. He gets a ‘Charleston,’ some manner of marshmallow-chocolate mixture based on a candy bar, too.
We head to a little table in the back with our huge mugs and sit by a wall covered in random kitschy things that look like they’re from a 1950s Kansas farm.
“Sorry about the other night,” says Hunter.
Ugh. “That was so not your fault.”
“That’s not what I mean. We kinda went a little fast for what I thought you were comfortable with.” He stares into his mug for a second or two, but forces himself to look at me―and blushes.
I reach across the table and take his hand. “It’s all right. If I wasn’t comfortable, I wouldn’t have gone there.”
His eyebrows go up.
“You know if things didn’t happen to me, and I’d just broken up with Scott like a freakin’ normal breakup, you’re right. In that case, I’d probably be weeks away from wanting to get close to someone else. But, that’s not what happened.”
“Oh.” He nods and lifts the enormous mug to his lips to take a sip, nearly coughing on it. “Whoa. That’s hot.”
“Yeah… and so sweet.”
“Good though.” He looks up from the mug with a foam moustache. “So you’re not upset about what happened?”
I shake my head. “No. Not at all about what we did. I’m more upset at your father for being such a shit to you and your family. He did kinda kill the mood.”
“Yeah.” Hunter nods.
“If you’re uncomfortable, I’m totally fine with slow.”
He takes another sip. “Cool. Whatever you want to do.”
I grin. “Well, maybe when we’re done in here, we can find a nice quiet place in the woods and watch the stars for a while.”
“That sounds nice.” He squeezes my hand.
Wow, this coffee… it’s like drinking a Snickers bar, and probably as many calories as eating six of them. It’s so damn good though.
A Beginner's Guide to Fangs (Vampire Innocent Book 2) Page 17