by A. P. Wayne
It seemed her obsession had bloomed from talking with Jordan and her friends. Jordan didn’t think any of them knew anything, but they’d pretty much heard the entire story. While Jordan and Walker had been the only people on that farm the last time Ilya had opened the door, Lawrence was a receptor, meaning everyone was connected to that other world in more ways than they could imagine. Many of the specifics came to them in dreams. Many of them simply arose in stories and rumors. It was a small town. People talked. And since it was a pretty boring town, when they spoke they had a tendency to elaborate if for nothing more than to make things more interesting.
There was also a part of Melanie that resented Jordan. Why did the interesting things always happen to her? Melanie had been with Stasia and Mark and Anthony and they had all been drinking and one of the guys decided they should do something as a kind of joke. Maybe they got the idea from Carrie. Although, at the beginning anyway, it was a more watered down version. They’d found a pig farm and caught the smallest pig they could, drained the blood into a metal bucket, and left it in front of Walker’s door.
That first time, one of the guys had knocked on the door before running back into the woods to join the rest of them. Walker had opened the door. From what Jordan had said, he probably didn’t sleep at night. He’d looked down at the bucket of blood and the note. He’d quickly looked up and scanned the surroundings and Melanie had had a panicked thought that he could see them but didn’t really care because she figured he was mostly harmless anyway.
The next week she had the urge to do it again. Stasia agreed and Mark agreed because he and Stasia were sleeping together and he agreed to everything she requested because he was afraid if he didn’t then she would stop sleeping with him. Anthony said he was out. He’d probably only done it originally to score points with Melanie since it seemed like Jordan was already taken.
Melanie was fairly persuasive. Maybe manipulative was the right word. She wasn’t the prettiest or most popular girl at school but people seemed drawn to her. Her parents were loaded and left town a lot so she had a lot of parties at her house. Her dad must have been friends with Chief Bowsman or something because her parties never seemed to get broken up. There were always a lot of people from the high school there. Sometimes, there were even people from Wright State and UD. Very occasionally, there were people there from Dunham. Sometimes Melanie didn’t even know half the people there. Maybe it was just the power of social networking.
Therefore, to be on Melanie’s bad side was to effectively eliminate yourself from having a high school social life.
So when Melanie had told Stasia and Mark that, this time, she wanted to use human blood, they had initially refused but still listened to her argument.
And maybe it was more than just her good social standing or her powers of persuasion. The Fangs’ power was all-pervasive in Lawrence. It had a way of touching people as though it rose from the very soil. Ilya supposed, in a way, it did. The powerful ones had mostly gone away or moved to places where the hunting was easier. There were very few as powerful as she was. But there were hundreds of them, mostly in spirit form, who could move into people, simply for amusement or, sometimes, to influence them. When the door to that other place was closed, as it was now, their powers weren’t as strong. But they were still there. That could have gone a long way toward explaining the familiarity Ilya felt when entering Melanie’s body.
Melanie explained to the two others that they wouldn’t have to kill anyone. She would do the killing. She just wanted them there. Mark had said something about accomplices and she said there wasn’t any way they’d be caught so there wasn’t anything to worry about. She worked their morality by telling them she would go into bars and pick up guys so whoever she ended up killing would basically be a pedophile.
Mark tried to argue with this. He told her that sixteen was hardly a child and said he and Stasia had had sex and wondered if that made them both pedophiles.
Melanie had said it didn’t because they were both underage and it was still wrong for an adult to do that with a teenager. She didn’t believe that at all, but she would make any argument to strengthen the case. She knew she already had them, anyway.
So the first victim had been a kitchen helper at Chef Uncle’s. She had waited for him outside the Nilbog Roadhouse and hooked him before he went in.
Sometimes, she had thought, it took doing something you were never expected to do to unlock something inside of you.
Stasia and Mark had gone wild that first time. Technically, Melanie had been the one doing the killing but both Mark and Stasia went above and beyond in the “clean-up”.
They were progressively into it over the next two killings, eventually culminating in the loser they had killed a couple of nights ago. She had been seeing Jordan for about the past month and telling herself it wasn’t because of the girl’s close proximity to Walker. Melanie saw how much Stasia and Mark enjoyed this and she had been working up the courage to ask Jordan to join her. She really thought she would say yes but she needed to get past the feeling that Jordan would think she was using her. Which really wasn’t true. She did love Jordan. She just wanted to be what Walker was. She wasn’t really too concerned with pursuing Walker because, try as she had, she just wasn’t really into guys. Another part of her had just contemplated waiting. Melanie thought, eventually, Walker would turn Jordan and then Jordan could turn her and they wouldn’t really have much of a need for Walker.
Melanie had told her mom she felt sick that morning because she had had an odd feeling about that house. More and more, Melanie had learned to trust those feelings. As she got closer to it, she started to think maybe it was just the usual post-murder panic. It was usually dark when they did their clean-up and she was sure they missed things but the house was so in the middle of nowhere that it usually didn’t bother her. So, anyway, she figured she could go clean up a little, sure the porch could use it, at least, and just check to make sure things were generally okay.
And she had seen Walker there.
And then the two of them were not alone.
Ilya opened her eyes, feeling informed and somewhat rested. Now the only thing she had to decide was whether to stay in this body or try to enter Jordan.
But she didn’t think she would do that.
She wanted to watch the bitch suffer from the outside.
Twenty-six
It was dark by the time Hunter awoke. He felt good. Maybe he’d had a good dream but he didn’t remember the specifics of it. There was a moment of confusion before the specifics came back to him.
He checked his phone to make sure it still had power.
It did. That was good.
He’d decided he was going to look for the Fang in the house. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know if anything would come of it. Mainly he just wanted to see if he was still in there. Maybe that was his base. Maybe he lived there.
Or it was possible the transformation he’d seen was just a mild hallucination and he was looking for someone to pick a fight with.
Or just simple curiosity.
He had one vampire book languishing somewhere other than the bookshelves of America and it was probably time for him to write another one. Before writing his other books, he’d gone through a similar pattern. Happiness that he’d finished a book. Intense depression once he started sending it out and the rejections started to come back. In the case of Vampires Drink Blood that was followed by another period of happiness once the book had been accepted and continuing through the whole publication process. Followed by intense depression at mostly nonexistent sales. During those periods of mania and depression, he tended not to write much of anything. Maybe the occasional short story if he could complete a first draft in a night or two.
There usually then had to be some vaguely to flagrant life changing event that threw him into gear.
Meeting Alison had been one. Getting his bachelor’s had been another. The birth of Major, of course. Moving into a house wher
e he thought they would be spending much of the rest of their lives had been the latest.
Now he would have thought that divorce, returning home, and finding both of his parents had died in a house fire would have been enough.
But, apparently not. As with most other things, he found himself wanting more and more.
He ascended the creaky steps to the porch. The door wasn’t even shut all the way. He opened the flashlight app on his phone and shined it into the darkness of the house.
He didn’t have to go far before he nearly stumbled over the Fang. He didn’t look so much like a Fang now. Just a boy. Well, maybe not really a boy. A young man. No older than early twenties though. As Hunter had grown older, he’d become a terrible judge of age.
He shined the flashlight on the kid’s face.
No response.
His chest rose and fell with his breathing so Hunter knew he had to be alive. He guessed he was okay but felt like he should make sure, more out of curiosity than any kind of goodwill. He nudged the guy’s leg with his foot.
“Hey,” he said, not too loudly. He didn’t want to startle him. Hunter knew he hated to be woken up from naps.
The nudge didn’t elicit so much as a change in his breathing.
Maybe that girl had drugged him or something. Or maybe the Fang got really tired after fucking and biting an attractive-at-least-from-a-distance girl.
The proper thing to do would have been to call the police and tell them he’d seen a suspicious person entering an abandoned home so he didn’t sound like a raving maniac but Hunter didn’t want anything to do with Chief Bowsman and his goons ever again.
He reached down to grab the guy’s shoulder and really shake it proper but his hand passed through it and he found himself using his hand to prop himself on the wall so he didn’t fall over.
He straightened up and looked down at the guy.
Only there was no guy.
What the hell was going on?
“Fuck me,” Hunter said to no one. Then he paused to think about it, wondered if that girl was still around somewhere and said, “No, seriously, fuck me. Please.”
That would have been too good to be true.
He looked down where the guy was only a moment before. His phone had fallen asleep so he turned it back on, the bright glow of the flashlight app beaming out.
There definitely wasn’t anything there.
Now he guessed the only question was if he had ever been there.
Hunter seriously doubted that was the case. He wasn’t the type of guy to see things or have hallucinations. If he were, he would have experienced one by now. Few people wanted to believe in things like ghosts and monsters more than him but, up until a short while ago, he hadn’t had any inclination to believe those things existed. Plus he was a masochist, so he’d naturally lean toward the belief that made his life the most difficult. In this case, that was the belief that there was something seriously fucked up going on here.
The easiest thing to do would have been to get back in his car and drive out to the interstate until he found a cheap hotel, buy a twelve pack from a gas station, take a long shower, drink until he felt like throwing up or, hell, going all the way and drinking until he couldn’t physically drink any more, passing out in a bed that was probably crawling with things but had mostly clean sheets, getting into the car the next morning and driving back to Illinois. Maybe not necessarily back to Alison but ... close.
He wiped a hand over his face. He felt crusty. He wiped his hand over it again.
He wasn’t going to do the easy thing at all.
If anything, he was going to do the most difficult thing imaginable.
He was going to believe it all.
He thought about this on his walk back to maybe his/maybe his aunt’s burned out house.
He rationalized it thusly:
He’d grown up hearing all the rumors and legends about the Fangs in Lawrence. All rumors, no matter how preposterous, had at least a grain of truth to them. Hunter, basically an atheist since his best friend had died of brain cancer in the third grade, had chosen not to believe any of them. Even while writing Vampires Drink Blood the connection was lost on him. He thought he could write something like that because it was something he was interested in but not necessarily invested in. He could have probably written about Jesus just as easily if the texts surrounding him weren’t so incredibly dry. So, maybe, if he chose to believe in everything, he would see Lawrence with new eyes. It was like the first time he’d drunk coffee made the way it was supposed to be made or drank a microbrew beer. He’d found both of them almost pungently strong. But after finding out that was the way they were supposed to taste, he had a greater appreciation for them. And then it was hard to go back to the weak stuff.
Maybe he was just trying to appreciate Lawrence.
Once back at the house, he checked his email.
There was one with the subject: “Money From Africa!!!”
He almost deleted it until he saw that the sender was Gregory Seymour, his publisher. The only reason Hunter could see for Seymour giving it that subject was because Seymour was an ass. He’d probably open it to find a deposit with the almost sarcastic total of five dollars or something.
But he did a double take at the bank notification in the body of the email.
It was nearly 1500 dollars.
Not a staggering sum but, at its previous rate, that was more than Hunter stood to make off Vampires in three years.
Either something really good was happening to it or Seymour was laundering money somehow.
Hunter didn’t care either way.
He was looking at the town with new eyes.
1500 dollars was enough money for a really good bender.
What better place to start exploring the town than Chef Uncle’s?
Then he remembered the vomit.
Maybe he should try Bunk’s or Nilbog’s instead.
He decided to go to Nilbog’s because it sounded weird and, from what he remembered about his high school days, Bunk’s was more of a biker bar.
He checked his wallet to make sure he hadn’t thrown his debit card out in a fit of rage. Once he confirmed its rightful place, he hopped in the car and headed toward town.
Twenty-seven
Jordan sent Melanie a message letting her know she was there. It was Friday night, she’d swiped a bottle of wine from the store and she planned on taking Melanie back to her house, plying her with aforementioned wine, and then grilling her about Walker. But, after Melanie slid into the passenger seat all freshly showered, gave her a beaming smile and a kiss, and said, “Hi, I’ve been waiting all day to see you,” she kind of forgot about the trial she had planned. Now she just wanted to take her back to her bedroom and fuck her until both of their tongues were raw and their legs shaky.
Jordan’s parents usually went out on Fridays and sometimes didn’t come back until two or three. That was if both of them weren’t too drunk to drive and they decided to get a hotel wherever they were “going out”. Obviously, there weren’t a lot of places in Lawrence for them to go so they usually ended up going to Dayton or Cincinnati.
That was good. Jordan thought she might want to cause Melanie make some noise.
When they pulled up into her driveway, Jordan turned to Melanie and said, “So, are you in the mood?”
She laughed softly and said, “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Jordan grabbed her giant purse with the bottle of wine in it and, once outside the car, grabbed Melanie’s hand, started to lead her up to the bedroom and then changed her mind. They’d never done this anywhere except her bedroom. A change of scenery seemed exciting. She led Melanie through the house and out the sliding glass back door until they stood on the porch. While getting caught was a small part of the thrill, Jordan thought if her parents did come home while they were in the act, and they left the porch lights off, they probably wouldn’t even know she and Melanie were out there.
“Out here?” Mela
nie said.
Jordan said nothing. Just laughed.
Jordan was still in her work uniform, unshowered, and felt kind of like a pig. Still, something about this kind of made her hot. She probably wouldn’t let Melanie go down on her, but there were plenty of other things they could do.
Jordan put her small hands around Melanie’s thin neck and pulled her close. They kissed slowly, their tongues playing in each other’s mouths. Jordan thought this was one of the reasons she preferred having sex with Melanie than Walker or some other guy. There wasn’t any big rush. And, since Melanie had the same parts as her, she knew how to make her feel really good. With Melanie, there wasn’t a big erection waving in front of her like a balloon that it was her job to pop. It was just a slow, almost maddening boil of sensation. Sometimes a number of climaxes. Sometimes just a steady build to one huge climax. And sometimes numbness and fatigue set in before the big climax was reached but, as the old saying went, sometimes the journey was the best part.
Melanie wore a skin tight t-shirt with no bra and equally tight skinny jeans. Jordan lifted up the hem of her t-shirt and rubbed the small of her back and the almost invisible down that grew there, let a couple of fingers sneak into the waistband of her pants, between the tops of her ass cheeks. Melanie sucked on the side of Jordan’s neck.
“You smell ... like a grocery store.” She laughed.
Jordan liked the way Melanie’s mouth and tongue felt too much to laugh or say anything.
Jordan backed away from her and stood there. Since the porch light was off and they hadn’t bothered to turn the kitchen light on, the only thing illuminating them was the dim light of the moon.
Melanie stood there, looking kind of clueless, like she didn’t know what to do without Jordan in her arms. Jordan liked it. It made her look vulnerable or something.