by Lia Kane
“Maybe physically,” I observed. “She had to have been pretty shaken up, though.”
“Of course,” he said. “The mental and emotional effects from the wreck were much more enduring. After the accident, I was hospitalized for a month. I had to have blood transfusions and went through multiple surgeries to repair the damage done to my body. Alyssa stayed by my side the entire time. But while I was getting better, she was getting worse.”
I furrowed my brow. “How?”
“She became depressed. Distracted. Detached from everything that was going on. I think she was suffering from post-traumatic stress after the wreck, but it was never diagnosed.”
“Poor Alyssa,” I said softly. “I’m sorry, Victor.”
“I begged her to get help but she wouldn’t listen to me. After I went home, she continued to decline. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know how. She stayed for a month after I came home, and then one day, she was just gone.” He rested his elbows on his knees and sank his head into his hands. “If only I could turn back the clock and figure out what I could have done to keep her there… to save her…”
“But you can’t,” I said with sympathy.
“I don’t know if she went somewhere and committed suicide or if someone took advantage of her and killed her. I guess I’ll never know.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Have you considered that she might not be dead? That she might come back to you someday?”
“I know in my heart that she’s dead,” he said. “And tomorrow it will be official. A missing person is declared dead seven years after their disappearance is reported. Tomorrow is the seven year mark for Alyssa, and I’ll officially be a widower. I don’t mean to sound callous. I’ll always love her, but I’m lonely. I’m ready to move on with my life.”
We sat in silence for a long moment. Then he took me by surprise when he reached for my hand and laced his fingers through mine.
“I really like you, Jerrika,” he said.
“I like you too,” I confessed.
“I know this may seem sudden, seeing how we just met the other day, but I feel a connection with you, and I’d like to explore it.”
I took a deep breath. “I wish I could, but I’m scared, Victor.”
“Is it the age difference? I know I’m a bit older –”
“It’s not the age difference. I promise.”
“Is it that I’m the mayor? We politicians aren’t all bad, I swear.”
I laughed. “No, it’s not that either. There’s just a lot that you don’t know about me.”
Are you already involved with someone else? If that’s the case, then I’m sorry I’ve assumed –”
“No, no,” I interrupted. “There’s no one else. There hasn’t been anyone else, not for a very long time.”
“Then what, Jerrika?”
“I swear, it has nothing to do with you, Victor. It’s all about me. I’m just not ready – not able – to be in a relationship right now.”
“Then I’ll wait until you are,” he said softly.
We sat for a long while with our hands still gripped together. My heart was pounding in my chest. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to tell him that I would be his, and he would be mine.
But I couldn’t.
Part of me wanted to tell him that I was VAM-Positive in hopes that it would send him running in fear, and I simply wouldn’t have to deal with the pressure of him wanting to be with me. Once he found out my secret, what else could he do? I tried to imagine him sweeping me into his arms and saying something like No problem, Jerrika darling. I’m so taken with you that I can overlook the fact that you’re a bloodsucking VAMP. Even though we’ll never be able to have an adult relationship with any degree of physical intimacy; even though I won’t even be able to so much as kiss you, I’m still madly in love and want to be with you.
Right.
That was a fairy tale, and I knew it. There was no way for me to win. I looked up at the topiary of the dancing couple, lovingly entwined in each other’s arms. The realization that it could never be me in Victor’s arms made me so depressed I wanted to lay down and die.
“Victor?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to ask you this, but could you please take me home?”
“Of course,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, just a little overwhelmed. I just want to go home.”
He rose from the bench and helped me to my feet. “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable,” he apologized as we walked toward the front of the Arts Center building.
“It’s not your fault. I told you, this has nothing to do with you.”
When we reached the valet, Victor gave his claim check to the attendant, a teenage boy in an ill-fitting tuxedo. Moments later, the boy returned with Victor’s Humvee. As the vehicle came into view, I felt my jaw drop. It definitely wasn’t in the same condition we’d left it.
“Sir,” the boy said as he hopped out of the driver’s seat and onto the pavement, “I… I don’t know what happened.”
“Call the police,” Victor ordered as he started a slow walk around the Humvee to view the damage.
The words BURN IN HELL VAMPS were spray-painted in black along the passenger’s side of the vehicle. On the hood were the words DIE BLOODSUCKERS. The message on the driver’s side was VAMP BABIES GROW UP INTO EVIL VAMPIRES! The headlights and taillights were shattered, as were the front and rear windshields.
“Why would anyone do this?” I screamed, breaking into tears. “What the hell is wrong with people?”
“Jerrika, it’s okay.” Victor rushed to me and tried to wrap his arms around me.
“No it’s not!” I yelled, pushing him away from me. “Jeffries did this! It had to be him! He threatened me and the children, Victor!”
He turned toward the attendant. “Call the police, please. I need to file a report.”
“Yes sir.” The teenage boy reached for the cell phone in his pocket and dialed 911.
“Are there cameras in your valet parking lot?” Victor asked.
“No sir. The area is usually very secure.”
“How secure can it be when someone can get in and do this?” I cried.
People inside the Arts Center heard the commotion and gawked through the doorway. I heard the music stop again. A few brave souls stepped outside to catch a glimpse of me losing my cool. I really didn’t care.
“This is wrong!” I wept.
“Jerrika, it will be okay,” Victor assured me. “It’s just a car. All of the damage can be repaired. Please calm down.”
“It’s not okay.” I finally buried my face on his shoulder and cried. “This will never be okay.”
He shouted at the onlookers that the situation was under control and that they should go back into the building. Two officers arrived minutes later and completed a vandalism report. They searched the valet lot on foot with high-beam flashlights, but didn’t find any sign of the person who had tattooed the Humvee with VAM-hating propaganda. Victor recounted to them my confrontation with Bill Jeffries from earlier in the evening, and the police offered to take a report from me for assault on a female. I politely declined and asked them to just go find the hypocrite. Without any direct evidence, they explained, all that they could do was question him.
When all was said and done, Victor drove me home. He shut off the engine and we sat in the driveway at the orphanage for a long while.
“I’m sorry about the way this evening went,” I said.
“You don’t need to be.” He reached for my hand again. “It’s certainly not the last time you’ll ever have to put up with this kind of ignorance and cruelty. Don’t let this shake you, Jerrika. You’re stronger than this. I know you are.”
“How did Kelly handle it?” I asked.
“With grace,” he said. “She always laughed it off. Never took it seriously. I’m sure you’ll learn how to do the same thing.”
“I hope so.” I rea
ched for the door. “Good night Victor.”
He squeezed my hand before I got out of the car. “Good night.”
I stepped softly through the dark house as not to wake any of the children. Once inside my room, I stripped out of my dress and pulled on my pajamas. I checked my phone to find that I hadn’t missed any calls or texts from Whitney.
My stomach was rumbling with hunger but fatigue overpowered my need to feed. I fell asleep just after I crawled into bed.
• • •
I awoke to the sensation of searing heat all around me. I sat up with a jolt to find that my room was filled with thick, dark smoke. Outside my window, flames were licking the glass. I opened my bedroom door and immediately slammed it shut after finding more flames in the hallway.
“Fire!” I screamed at the top of my lungs while I scrambled to the floor. “Everyone, get up, now! The house is on fire!” I reached for my phone and tried to call 911, only to receive a ‘call failed’ message. Then I remembered that the only way to make a cell phone call was to walk several feet away from the house in the back yard.
I sent a text to both Whitney and Victor:
HOPE HOUSE ON FIRE CALL 911
It was a long shot. Both of them were likely asleep and the chance of one of them being awakened by an incoming text was slim to none. Even if Whitney or Victor got the message and called 911, it would take time for the fire trucks to arrive. How much time, I didn’t know. I had no clue where the closest fire station was. I looked at my phone again, and although the smoke was making it hard to see, I was pretty sure that a ‘failed to send’ error message, complete with a big red ‘x’ was glaring back at me on the screen.
I heard the muffled sound of children screaming from down the hallway. I was powerless to help them. Without knowing what else to do, I curled up in the fetal position on the floor where the last traces of clean air were dwindling away by the second.
Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe.
Chapter Twelve
“BREATHE,” SAID A muffled voice as I regained consciousness. “Just breathe.”
I startled to find my nose and mouth covered. Instinctively, I reached up to brush the obstruction away, but the uniformed man in front of me caught my wrist and stopped me. “No, sweetheart, no. It’s an oxygen mask. It’s there to help you breathe.”
I blinked furiously and struggled to sit up, only to be seized by a coughing fit. Gagging on the taste of smoke and blood in my mouth, I spit up on the floor. As my eyes came into focus, I glanced around to see that I was on a gurney in the back of an ambulance. A paramedic was starting an intravenous line on my arm. A second one knelt next to me, holding the canister of oxygen.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Shhh,” the paramedic said. “Just rest for now. You were in a house fire, but you’re going to be okay.”
As the memory of waking up to find the house filled with smoke came flooding back into my mind, I reached again for the mask, ripping it off my face before either of them could stop me. “The kids?” I cried out. “What about the kids? And Sarah and Claudia?”
“Everyone is out,” they reassured me. “The children are on their way to the emergency room. You and the other two ladies will be right behind them. No one has any external burns, but all of you will need to be checked for smoke inhalation injuries.”
“How did the fire start?”
The two men exchanged a dire glance. “It appears to have been intentionally set,” said one of the paramedics, “but the fire marshal will be doing a full investigation over the coming days.”
“I think I know who did it,” I told them. “Where are the police? I need to talk to the police.” I stood and pushed my way through the men after they tried in vain to convince me to lie down. When I saw the burned remains of Hope House, I wanted to vomit. The firefighters were still blasting water at the remnant flames on the roof. Smoke clouded my vision and left a heavy stench in the air.
In another ambulance, I spied paramedics at work on Sarah and Claudia, both of whom appeared to be conscious and free from harm. Parked next to them was a police car. Two uniformed officers stood outside the vehicle, talking in low voices.
“I need to talk to you,” I said as I approached them. “I think I know who set the fire. It was Reverend Bill Jeffries. I saw him just a matter of hours ago, and he threatened me and the children. Then he vandalized a vehicle –”
“Ma’am,” said one of the officers, holding up his hand to stop me, “we think this was a teenage prank.”
My eyebrows shot up on my forehead with surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“The 911 call came in from a 16 year-old girl who said she was walking through the woods and just happened to see that the house was on fire.”
“Who would be walking through the woods at this time of night? There’s nothing out here but Hope House.”
“Exactly,” chimed in the other officer. “We think maybe a bunch of kids came out here to start some trouble. The girl panicked and made the call to 911 after things got out of hand.”
“Why do you think that? And how do you know it was a 16 year-old girl?”
“Because we picked her up,” he explained. “On the way out here, we saw the kid running on the side the road. We stopped to ask her what she was doing out at this time of night. She told us she saw the house on fire and was running to get help. She admitted to making the 911 phone call. Other than that, she won’t give us any information. She won’t tell us her name and she doesn’t have any I.D., but we’re going to take her downtown and hold her overnight. Maybe she’ll open up and give us the names of who else was involved.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“We’ve got her in the back of our cruiser. There’s a midnight curfew for minors, so we pick up any unaccompanied kids we see roaming the streets anyway.”
I peered into the open door of the police car. To my shock, I recognized the girl.
“Naz!” I said with surprise. “What’s going on?”
The girl looked up at me, wide-eyed with fear. “Miss Rand, I didn’t do this, I swear! I’m the one who called for help, so why am I in trouble?”
I turned toward the officers. “I know this girl,” I explained. “May I talk to her? Maybe she’ll tell me what happened.”
They exchanged glances and nodded to each other. “Go ahead, ma’am.”
I scooted into the seat next to Naz. “What were you doing out here at this time of night?”
“You told me I could come,” she started to cry. “Remember the other day at school? You said I could call you on Saturday, but if I couldn’t wait, I could just come to the orphanage.”
“Yes, I remember saying that. But why this time of night?”
“My dad flipped out,” she wept. “He went to some kind of party, and I guess something bad happened. He got thrown out.”
“It was an exhibit at the Arts Center,” I said. “I was there too.”
“Anyway, he came home all pissed off and was ranting about VAMPs, saying they’re evil and they’re children of the devil… and I got so sick of hearing him say all of those terrible things, I just kind of lost it. I started screaming at him, telling him that he was a hypocrite because he was full of hate. Then he slapped me. That’s when I asked him if he thought that I was the child of the devil too, because I had VAM.”
“Oh Naz…”
“He held the door open for me and told me to get out. He told me I was dead to him.”
I cringed. That certainly sounded familiar.
Naz sniffled and tried to regain her composure. “I didn’t know where else to go, so I just started walking to the orphanage. It’s so far away from Blue Sky, I walked for like three hours, and it was past midnight when I finally got here. I was just down the road from Hope House when I saw that it was on fire. That’s when I called 911 on my cell phone. The lady who answered started asking me all of these questions, like what my name was, and if there were people in the hous
e, and if I knew how the fire started. I panicked and hung up the phone. Then I took off.”
“Why did you run away, Naz?”
“Why do you think? I was scared I’d get into trouble. I’m out past curfew as is, and the orphanage was on fire. Everyone blames stuff on teenagers, just like the cops are doing to me now. They keep asking who else was involved, and I keep telling them no one, but they don’t believe me! Now they want to call a parent. That’s why I won’t tell them who I am. If my dad gets pulled into this he’s going to be even madder at me than he is now. He’ll never let me come back home.”
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“He said I was dead to him! He kicked me out of the house, and now the orphanage is burned down, and I have nowhere to go… except maybe to jail.” She cried into her hands, which were bound together by police cuffs.
I touched her shoulder. “Losing your cool isn’t going to help right now. I need for you to be strong. I promised you I’d help you, and I will. Do you trust me?”
She looked at me with red, bleary eyes. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “Now that I have VAM, my family has disowned me. My friends are backing off. I’m sitting in the back of a cop car and I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know who I can trust right now, Miss Rand.”
“Me,” I assured her. “You can trust me. I’m a VAMP too.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “You are?”
“Yes, and I understand what you’re going through. I’ve been through all the same things that you have. Well… except for being stuck in the back of a cop car. Can’t say that I’ve done that.”
“You’re here with me now,” Naz said. “I guess that counts.”
“Maybe it does,” I sighed. “I won’t let you be homeless. Wherever I stay, you’ll have a place with me. And I don’t think you’re going to be in any trouble with the police. I can’t guarantee that your father won’t find out about it, but I will do what I can to protect you if he should try to cause any trouble. What I need for you to do, though, is tell the police everything you just told me. If they ask me, I’ll confirm that I invited you to come to Hope House any time, day or night. But you have to tell them the truth about everything else. If you don’t, it makes you look dishonest; like you have something to hide. Since you’re innocent, just tell the truth, and everything will be okay.”