by Bryan Smith
The devil waggled his eyebrows, leering at her. “Gladly.”
Kayla grimaced. “Ew.”
“You won’t be saying that when it finally happens. And it will, I promise. No, then you’ll be screaming for more. Begging for more.”
“Again, I say ew.” What disturbed her most was the shameful feeling he might just be right. She suddenly wanted more than ever to be well away from him, all her nagging questions and concerns be damned. “Look, if we’re done here…”
He smiled brightly. “Of course we’re done here, Kayla. We have been since the moment you presented your trophy. Which, by the way, I accepted in good faith as being honestly procured and delivered. I accept that you have fulfilled the terms of your contract, and that is the end of it until you join me in hell at the end of your long and prosperous mortal life.”
Kayla stared at his smiling face without speaking or outwardly reacting for a while, beginning at last to read between the lines. He wasn’t asking for particulars regarding the sacrifice because he didn’t care how it had been accomplished.
All he wanted was her.
And he had her.
Or would have her, eventually.
She was unable to suppress the shiver that rippled through her entire body. The truth was she hadn’t really freed herself by bringing Lee’s hand to this meeting. She wouldn’t be shunned anymore, but now an afterlife as an obedient servant of the devil was her ultimate, inescapable fate. It might well have been better to burn forever in that ocean of fire. Or to have accepted Daniel’s offer of purgatory when she had the chance.
Then she thought some about the reality of those alternatives.
Okay, so maybe better isn’t the right word…
The devil’s smile became steadily more smug the longer she stood there not saying anything.
So Kayla took a backward step.
And then another.
“Okay, so, like, I’m leaving now.”
The devil lifted a hand and waved lazily at her. “Goodbye, Kayla. For now. Don’t forget. If you ever need help with anything, and I do mean anything at all, you have Bathory’s number.”
Kayla nodded.
Stared one last time into the devil’s amazing ice blue eyes.
Then she turned away from him and walked as fast as she could out of the park.
40.
It’s over, she thought. It’s really fucking over.
She couldn’t help smiling as she crossed Broadway and left the park behind. No one winced when they looked her way. No one tried to get away from her or in any other way treated her like a pariah. Perhaps most gratifying of all, though, were the many long stares she attracted from the men who crossed her path. The devil had been true to his word. She wasn’t being shunned by anyone. And she was an object of desire again.
These things made her happy.
Her brighter mood, however, was tempered by the knowledge of what Lee had done in order to make this possible. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine anyone else who might have been willing to do that. He shouldn’t have done it, really. It was crazy. She wouldn’t have done it for him. But the fact was he had done it and there was no taking it back. So all she could really do was accept and appreciate his mad gesture. And the only way to truly honor the magnitude of his sacrifice was to make the most of it.
She meant to do just that.
It was a promise she was making both to herself and to Lee.
Eventually, as she strolled across the campus grounds, her thoughts turned to Rebecca Galbreath. She no longer believed she was at all responsible for the girl’s death, a conclusion she’d embraced in her darker moments on the night she’d set out with every intention of killing an innocent human being. That was on Rebecca. She alone had made the decision to take her own life. But there was no escaping the fact that she had treated the girl cruelly, and it wasn’t enough to simply say cruelty and teasing were just facts of life in high school. She had wronged Rebecca. Plain and simple. She recognized and accepted that now, but she also recognized that it couldn’t be changed. The damage was done and all she could do now was go forward and maybe try to be a little better a person.
Once she was back in her room, she took off her shoes and stretched out on her bed to stare up at the ceiling. She thought some about practicalities. Her normal life had been restored. That meant some level of damage control was in order. Finals were next week and she’d missed a week’s worth of classes at a critical time. Still, she’d always done especially well academically when her back was against the wall. She was confident she could still catch up on what she’d missed and come out on top. There were some minor papers left to write, but mostly she just needed to crack her books and do some serious cramming.
No problem.
Her eyes were beginning to drift closed when someone knocked on the door. She was still tired from the night before and wanted to nap a little. Ignoring the intrusion seemed like a good idea. But the knock came again, more strident this time as a familiar voice called out her name.
All thoughts of napping vanished as Kayla hopped off the bed and yanked the door open to scowl at a grinning Summer Henderson. “You.”
Summer was dressed in her usual black, including a very tiny skirt that showed off sensational legs. She looked smashing as always. With her perfect hair and makeup--and the dark sunglasses propped above her forehead--she looked kind of like Paris Hilton’s gothic mirror image. Only with bigger boobs and way hotter.
“Stop looking at me like I’m something gross and invite me in.”
“Why should I?”
“Because we’re friends.”
“I don’t even know you. Besides, you work for the devil.”
“What the fuck?”’
“You heard me.”
Summer snorted. “Whatever, crazy lady. I don’t work for the devil. I’m assuming ‘devil’ is generic code for someone lame you hate. Now quit being weird and invite me in. Come on, I’ve been wanting to hang with you all fucking week.”
“I went to room 815.”
Summer’s expression became more guarded. “Oh?”
“Yeah. And you’ll never guess what happened, it’s so crazy.”
“I can explain. Totally. I swear. This ain’t no thing at all. There’s a good explanation. Just invite me in and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
Kayla knew she should slam the door in Summer’s lying bitch face and be done with her forever, but something made her hesitate. Despite everything, that same spark of chemistry that had been there in the beginning was still very much present. Dammit, but she still really wanted to like and be friends with this girl.
So, against her better judgment, she opened the door wide and said, “Come on in.”
Summer sauntered in like she owned the place and dropped her oversized handbag (black, of course) on Kayla’s desk. Then she jumped up on Kayla’s bed and stretched out, making a purring sound as she writhed a little on the mattress.
Kayla pulled out the chair at her desk and sat down. “So what’s your fucking deal anyway? Are you even a student here?”
“Of course I am. Sort of.”
“Sort of? What the hell does that mean?”
Summer fluffed up Kayla’s pillows, propped them against the wall next to the bed, and sat up. “I’m not enrolled or anything, but I attend classes. It’s sort of a hobby. I like to learn things.”
“How is that even possible? For that matter, how are you able to come and go at will around here if you’re not enrolled?”
“Beaucoup powers of persuasion. I can get just about anybody to do just about anything I want. Those girls in 815? They were covering for me. I do stay there sometimes. Totally against the rules, of course, but then you’ve probably figured out I don’t have much use for rules.”
Kayla studied Summer closely for a moment, looking for subtle signs of deceit. The girl was kind of hard to read, though. “So…you really don’t work for the devil?”
Summer to
ssed her head back and laughed heartily. “There you go with that devil shit again. What’s up with that?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me. You might be surprised.”
Kayla figured why the hell not. Summer was clearly unbalanced in her own way. So what if a girl like that laughed and called her crazy?
So she laid it all out, the whole story, from beginning to end.
Summer’s expression turned thoughtful as the story progressed, but never once did she scoff or interrupt except to ask the occasional pertinent question. When it was clear she’d reached the tale’s conclusion, Summer let out a long sigh. “Wow, well, that really is some story.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you. One-hundred percent. Not even lying.”
Kayla frowned. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Kayla studied her face again. She didn’t seem to be making fun of her or holding back a laugh.
In fact, she looked about as serious as she’d ever seen the girl look.
Kayla shook her head. “Okay, I give up. Why do you believe a crazy story like that?”
Summer shrugged. “Let’s just say I have my own experience with things most people think aren’t real.”
“But you don’t work for the devil?”
Summer rolled her eyes. “For the eighty billionth time, no, I do not work for the fucking devil. Maybe you should tell me why you think I do.”
Kayla sighed. “It’s stupid.”
Summer smirked. “No, go on, tell me. You’re the one who keeps bringing it up, so let’s hear your reasoning.”
Now that Kayla sort of most of the way believed Summer’s own strange story, it only seemed fair to explain why she had accused her of being a minion of hell. “That one girl in 815, the little one? She told me she saw you vanish into thin air. But she does a lot of drugs, so she was probably just hallucinating.”
Summer smiled. “Oh. That. That wasn’t a hallucination.”
Kayla’s brow creased. “What? But…if you don’t work for the devil…then how…”
Kayla didn’t know how to complete the thought. What Summer was saying made no immediate sense to her. Because if she really didn’t work for the devil and really could appear and disappear at will, how could there be a sensible explanation for that?
Summer pushed away from the wall and scooted to the edge of the bed. “It’s no big mystery, really.”
Kayla had never felt afraid in Summer’s presence.
Until, for some reason she couldn’t immediately identify, now. She glanced at the door, trying to gauge how long it would take to get there and out of the room if for some crazy reason she should need to flee suddenly. She was probably overreacting. This was just nerves, leftover paranoia from her very recent brush with the most evil entity in all of existence.
She cleared her throat. “So…what’s the explanation?”
Summer’s smile was very wide. “Well, Kayla, you see, the thing is…”
Her mouth opened even wider.
“I’m a vampire.”
Kayla watched in shock as teeth at the corners of Summer’s mouth lengthened into fangs, a thing that couldn’t very well be faked outside of movies. The same shock kept her glued to her chair as Summer stood up and approached her.
Summer was still smiling.
“Yes, a vampire. And you invited me in.”
THE END
(Until Kayla and the Vampires in 2012)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bryan Smith is the author of numerous previous novels and novellas, including House of Blood, The Killing Kind, Depraved, The Dark Ones, and Rock And Roll Reform School Zombies. Most of these were first available via mass market paperback from Dorchester Publishing. Bryan’s entire Dorchester backlist will be reprinted in new trade paperback editions from his new publisher, Deadite Press. Bryan will also continue to venture into the world of ebook self-publishing with several future titles. Bryan lives in Tennessee with a wide array of pets. Visit his home on the web at www.bryansmith.info
Find More of Bryan Smith’s Books on Amazon by clicking here.
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