My Beautiful Sin

by Heidi Lowe

  She didn't say a word. And eventually he lowered his weapon. His deputy breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I'll be back, and back, and back until you get the message. I know it was you, and I don't know what you did to that little fuck Tommy Vogel, but I know he lied.” He was waving the gun around like a madman. “We don't want you here, and you'll leave, dead or... permanently dead.” He pushed over a table, its glasses smashed everywhere, then he thundered out of the bar.

  Up until then we'd managed to keep our public displays of affection away from the bar. Although everyone knew we were together, we didn't want to make them uncomfortable by canoodling in front of them. But I didn't care what they thought anymore. I hurried out from behind the bar and threw my arms around Jean before giving her a long kiss. She needed it, I realized, as her body trembled slightly against mine. Whether through rage or fear, I couldn't say.

  And then I made a decision that I should have made a long time ago. Why did I want to spend the few hours I had with Jean working in a bar, cleaning tables, getting infrequent glimpses of her throughout my shift? Life was far too short to waste what little time we had together.

  “If I quit, can we go home now?” I whispered.

  A little smile crept to her lips. “You just don't want to sweep up the broken glass.”

  “No, I just don't want to spend a minute longer away from you.”

  We were going to be happy. I knew it as we walked out of the bar hand in hand, nothing and no one standing in our way. I knew it as we drove home, smiling at each other the whole journey, whispering I love you and kissing at the traffic lights. I knew it when she carried me up to our bedroom and placed me on the bed. I knew it when I suggested toys, and she told me where to find them in the back of the closet.

  Then all of a sudden I didn't know anything anymore. Because the sex toys weren't there, but something else was. A picture.

  I took it out and studied it. It had been a long time since I'd seen this image; a long time since we'd looked like that. It was April's first birthday. She was dressed as a ladybug, I was dressed as Snow White, pulling a face at the camera. Most of my pictures were like that, me pulling faces. But this one riled me so much because I outgrew the princess stage when I was about seven, but my dad insisted on displaying the picture on his dashboard, in his car. We saw it every single day, going to school, coming home from school, going to the park... everywhere. Both April and I complained for him to take it down. He never listened. It never left his car.

  It was in there the night he died.

  I spun round to Jean, whose smile vanished as soon as she saw what I was holding in my hand. She sat up on the bed.

  “Where did you get this picture?” I asked slowly, my heartbeat speeding up, pounding in my chest, threatening to thump its way out.

  “You know where I got it,” she said steadily.

  “This was in my dad's car. Why do you have it?” Now I was screaming because I knew that something wasn't right, and so did she. She looked as guilty as sin.

  She lowered her head. I saw her swallow, and then I watched the red tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “No! No! You don't get to cry. Tell me why you have this,” I screeched, throwing my arms about like a woman possessed. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Tell me,” I screamed in her face, before bursting into tears. “Tell me it wasn't you.”

  She didn't speak, just wept.

  “It was you. Oh my God. Oh my God.” I covered my mouth, then pulled at my hair, then covered my mouth again. I didn't know what to do, what action, what words would make any of this feel better. This couldn't be happening. No fate was this cruel. “It was you. You killed my father.”

  “No, I didn't,” she screamed back. “I didn't kill your father... I killed your mother.”

  I could barely see her through my tears.

  “What?” I stopped crying, thinking that I had heard incorrectly. I frowned, confused. “What?”

  “I was having an affair with her. She didn't leave you, she was coming back for you and your sister. She came by the night I was turned. She came to tell me that she left your father. I didn't even know what I'd done until I came to and found her lying on the floor in my hallway. The hunger was so strong.” She bawled into her hands.

  I couldn't comprehend any of it. The room, our voices, everything was a blurry haze, like I was in a dream. I wished I was in a dream.

  “My mom's dead?” The words didn't sound like they were coming from my mouth. “All this time I've been hating her, thinking she ran off, and she's been dead?” I fell in a heap on the floor, the picture floating from my hand. How could any of this be real?

  “She loved you so much. She never would have left. She wanted full custody.”

  I shook my head over and over. “That's why you look so familiar. That's why I thought I'd seen you before.” Suddenly it all made sense. A memory I didn't realize I'd had came flooding back to me. A day at the park, when I was seven, just a few months before my mother disappeared. She introduced me to her friend. She called her J. It was Jean.

  “That's how you knew me, and that's why my blood made you sick... I tasted like her.” It was all finally coming together. That big truth she was keeping from me, this was it. It was far worse than anything I could have imagined.

  “After I did what I did, I vowed to protect your family. You, April and your father. But I got there too late for your father. His car crashed; there was nothing I could do for him. He was already dead when the vampires came and drained him. He wasn't murdered.”

  My whole life was a lie. Every aspect, every facet was one big, fucking lie. My mother leaving, my father's death, my happily ever after. One person was at the center of it all.

  I turned a look of pure venom, pure hatred Jean's way as I climbed to my feet. “You sick fuck!” I bellowed. “You dead piece of shit! You fuck my mother, kill her and then you fuck her daughter? The daughter you watched grow up. I bet you planned this whole thing. You realized you couldn't raise me with her so you fucked me instead. Made me fall in love with you.”

  “That's not how it happened. I just wanted to protect you. That's all I've ever wanted. I tried to keep away so you would never have to see me. I was never supposed to fall in love with you the way lovers do. I tried to stop it, you know I did.” A sea of red streamed down her face. Those hideous, disgusting red tears. “And I was never going to raise you with your mother. We weren't serious about each other. She didn't leave your father for me, she left because she was unhappy.”

  “Don't!” I yelled, pointing a finger in her face. “Don't you ever talk about their marriage.”

  “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Lissa.”

  “All the times I let you touch me. All the times you screwed me knowing you'd done the same to my mother. Knowing how much you ruined my life.” My skin felt like it was crawling. I wanted to scrub all traces of this evil bitch from my flesh, erase every memory of her touch, her kisses, her voice, her scent, her taste. “Every bad thing that has ever happened to me was because of you.”

  My eyes scanned the room crazily, looking for something sharp and platinum, but knowing there wasn't anything.

  “If I could find a piece of platinum right now I would ram it through your cold, dead heart. I'd be doing you a favor. Doing everyone a favor. That organ inside you has never worked. You can't love, you can't feel. You're a monster who fooled me. You deserve to die.”

  “I know!” Now the red river was sullying the sheets and the carpet. “I do deserve to die. I never deserved you, Lissa. But don't ever think that I don't love you. I never lied about that.”

  “Go to hell, you crazy, rotting bitch! That's the only place you belong.”

  I couldn't stay in that room with her. I couldn't think straight enough to pack my things. I yanked off the gold necklace she'd given to me for my birthday, and tossed it at her. Then I ran and ran and didn't stop running until her mansion of hell was far behind me.

  TWENTY-SIX />
  Each dawn, when the sun began to make its ascent, she sat by the window, the curtains open, and waited. Waited until her flesh started to sizzle and steam, until her insides began to boil as though enclosed in flames. Waited until her eyesight blurred, and a screeching, deafening sound began to pierce her eardrums. Waited until she tasted acid-like blood on her tongue. All the symptoms of impending death. But then she would stop it, and just before the sun rose completely she would return to her chamber and take the big sleep.

  She wasn't trying to kill herself, though she wanted to die. It was punishment. The light of a new day hurt like hell. Not just because it scorched her skin and organs, but because each day reminded her that she was alone. Each day reminded her of Lissa.

  In truth, she didn't need daybreak to reignite that memory, she only had to look around her room and all over the house to see bits of the girl there. She'd left her mark everywhere. What once made her smile now made her heart sore. Daybreak had nothing on a broken heart. And, unlike every other wound, her condition could not heal it.

  There was no going back now. A part of her felt relieved that everything was out in the open. But mostly she just felt horrible, and alone, and lethargic.

  “Do you need to feed?”

  It was Robyn's voice. She'd asked a couple of times but had gone unnoticed, unheard by her boss, who had been spaced out for a whole month, since Lissa's departure.

  “Jean?” She waved her hand in front of Jean, who was sitting on her armchair in her basement hideout, where she had been spending most of her time – both sleeping and awake.

  “What?” She finally came back to Earth. “No, no,” she answered distractedly.

  “Come on, Jean. You haven't been feeding directly from anyone this past month. You know direct feeding makes you stronger.”

  “Why the hell do I need to be strong? I have nothing to be strong for. Nothing matters anymore, don't you see that?”

  Robyn stared at her boss, perplexed. This was a side of her she had never seen, and didn't understand. She knew Jean loved the girl, but to just give up because she was gone? Vampires simply didn't function that way. Robyn had worked for several vampires in the past; Jean was her longest and most treasured employer. She was also the most confusing. It was as though she had never truly let go of her humanity and embraced her vampirism.

  “She's not the only one who needs you,” Robyn said, but wished she hadn't. The last thing she wanted her boss to think was that she was making moves on her, when the wounds of her recent split were still so fresh.

  Jean wasn't paying attention to her, not really.

  “You should come back to work. The distraction will do you good,” Robyn suggested.

  “What will do me good is to get the hell out of this town.” It hadn't been a sentiment she'd held for long, but now that she'd said it, she realized it was true. Several of her businesses had been forcibly closed down, some of her local suppliers had stopped doing business with her, and Lissa hated her. She'd loved the town once, but had hated it much longer. Too many foul memories.

  “You don't mean that, Jean.”

  “I think I do.”

  “Where will you go?” Robyn asked. There was no point trying to talk her out of it. When Jean made up her mind to do something, she did it.

  “It doesn't matter. Wherever I go she isn't going to be there.” She slouched back in her chair.

  She felt foolish for not having prepared herself for this – for picking up the pieces when Lissa discovered the truth. Because she'd always known it would come out eventually. She'd planned to tell her, but it got harder and harder the happier they both became together. Happiness was far too addictive to destroy, especially for someone like her who, by virtue of being a vampire, was never supposed to experience it.

  “Maybe you should go to a less restrictive town. Somewhere with a larger limit, or no limit.”

  Jean shrugged. “Maybe.” But Robyn still didn't get it. No matter where she went, Lissa wouldn't be there with her. “See what you can find in the morning. You know my requirements.”

  The Lox Ridge Lounge was ten years old the day it burned to the ground. Luckily there was no one inside when it happened. Well, some called it luck, others suspected it had been planned that way. As Lissa stood in the parking lot and stared at the pile of rubble and ashes that had once been her workplace and secret love-nest, she knew this hadn't been an accident. The sheriff had only been going for arson, not murder this time. Local news claimed a faulty wire had set it off. No one refuted that. But many suspected, as Lissa did, that the Lindleys were behind it.

  She half expected to find that her old home, the Posey mansion, had also gone up in flames. But it was still standing, as big and grand as ever. She didn't want to feel homesick, but she did. There were a couple of moving trucks parked in the driveway. The SUV, she realized with relief, was still there. She was just in time.

  She expected Sandra to open the door when she knocked, and wasn't prepared to see the lady of the house. Jean also wasn't prepared to see her.

  “Lissa,” she said, mouth agape, her face looking paler than ever before.

  Lissa didn't need to ask to be invited in, but she crossed the threshold hesitantly, still unsure if she had made the right decision in coming.

  The two women stared at each other for a long time, silence filling the void where their words couldn't. Jean didn't want to speak first because she had nothing to say that would ever be enough. Lissa didn't want to speak first because she could never convey her mixed emotions efficiently. But she eventually did go first.

  “I just want to know one thing. That's all. Do you love me because I look like my mother?”

  That was easy. “No, of course not. I never loved your mother. I told you, it wasn't like that.”

  “But I have her eyes. Don't tell me you didn't notice that.”

  “I did, but they were never her eyes. They were always yours. She had your eyes.”

  Lissa released the breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She looked around at all the cardboard boxes.

  “You're leaving?” she asked, though she already knew. She'd known for days and had only just worked up the courage to see her again. If she hadn't come she would have regretted it forever.

  Jean nodded. “It's time. After the bar burned down last week, I knew I couldn't stay here.”

  “So you're just going to let them win?” Suddenly she was furious. About everything, not just this move. “You're just running off like a coward. What about all that crap you said to me about always being there to protect me?”

  “I want to be there to protect you, but you hate me. You don't want me near you.” Just when she'd gone a couple of days without crying, here the tears were again.

  “Yeah, I do hate you. I have every reason to,” Lissa shouted. “But... but I love you more than I hate you. So much more.” That was the problem. She'd realized a couple of weeks into their separation. She felt as though she was missing a limb when they were apart.

  “What do you want me to do? I'll do anything,” Jean pleaded.

  “Fight for me, like you said you would.”

  Jean threw up her arms in hopeless despair. “How do I do that after what I've done to you? How can I ever make it right?”

  “Let me come with you.”

  The hand Jean felt wiping the tears from her face wasn't her own, but Lissa's. “I know you didn't mean for any of this to happen. I know about the hunger, I know you couldn't have controlled it if you'd tried. I know you tried to keep me away, to not love me the way you do.” She knew so much more now, now that she'd had time to grieve, to think, to finally grow up. “And I'm not saying that it will be easy to forgive you, but I want to try. Will you take me with you?”

  Jean nodded. “Of course I will. Of course. I love you so much, I want you with me always.” And when her lips pressed to Lissa's, after yearning for them for six weeks, there was a part of her that thought the girl would pull away. But she didn't
. Lissa held her and told her that, as long as they were together, everything would be okay, no matter where they ended up.

  They both believed that.

  THE END

  SINNING AGAIN – PROLOGUE

  "Are you guys ready to order some food now, or do you need more time? Can I get you another drink maybe?"

  I pulled my eyes away from her, from the woman who sat across the table from me, finally remembering that we were not alone. All the usual sounds, sights and smells of a busy diner invaded my senses once more.

  "You need a minute, hun?" the waitress added, chewing lazily on gum. Her hair was multicolored, her eye makeup dark and heavy. Did she know how much of a walking cliche she was?

  "The special sounds good," I said absently. I didn't know if it did, I just wanted her to go away again, to leave us alone, to allow me to think.

  "Good choice." She scribbled in her little notepad, then turned to Jean. "What can I get you?"

  Although I'd taken the time and had the courtesy to look at the woman when she'd addressed me, Jean's eyes remained fixed only on me, almost unblinkingly.

  "Nothing for me, thanks."

  I looked at her glass of water – barely touched. This late night trip to the diner wasn't about her thirst or my hunger, this was about trying to figure out where we went from here. And we were no closer to that than we had been when we'd left Lox Ridge three hours prior.

  "All right. One daily special coming up." The waitress took our menus. I could feel her eyes on us, watching, wondering what this setup was. The older, beautiful, dark-haired English maiden with her less elegant, younger companion. "You folks new in town or just passing through?"

  "We're still deciding," Jean jumped in, before I could.