Cuddling Sucks in Coffins

by Holly Ryan

  How to answer that? Even if I could tell him the truth about why I often visited the graveyard, he’d never believe me. Humans forgot about vampires as soon as they looked away. And if I told him about Paul...well, then I would be asking to be strapped in a strait jacket and thrown in a padded cell. So I kept my gaze leveled with his, silent, maybe frustratingly so if the tick in his jaw and his thinning lips were any indication.

  He sat back, the overhead lights searching every individual hair of his blond buzz cut. “Have you ever been inside the Appelt mausoleum?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” I said. “I take it you’re a relation?”

  “Yes. It had quite a bit of damage inside it the same night Tim was murdered. The casket my great grandfather was buried in was destroyed as was the stained glass window made by my own great grandmother’s hands.”

  A pang of guilt shot through my chest. I’d only been trying to escape Paul. The destruction was an unfortunate side effect.

  “Detective, I didn’t kill Tim. You have evidence that puts me at the scene of the crime, but I have no motive. Absolutely none.” All that time I’d spent falling asleep to Law & Order was worth something, at least.

  “If you didn’t kill Tim”—he leaned forward—“if, did you see anything that night?”

  I sealed my mouth shut, once again answering his question with a blank stare.

  He scowled. “Is there a reason you wear sharp pieces of wood in your hair, Belle Harrison?”

  I didn’t anymore. The police had taken all my stakes, my seraph knife, and even my Kevlar vest. But that hadn’t taken the necklace with a silver and glass eye that Sawyer had given me for my birthday or my sass. “I’m sorry. Have I been arrested by the fashion police?”

  He leveled me with an impressive hairy eyeball, a look he’d no doubt practiced in the mirror for several weeks to scare the pants off criminals. It might’ve worked on me if I were, in fact, a criminal. Or if I were wearing pants. Kidding. I was wearing pants. Just trying to keep my mind off of peeing them.

  “It’s an accessory.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”

  Honestly, couple the obvious stake in my hair with my being at the cemetery, and it was pretty easy to put two and two together, whether he knew of vampires’ existence or not. The stories of vamps and slayers went way back, even to humans as myths and legends. But he might very well have realized this and just thought I was cray-cray for showing up at the cemetery with a stake. In a lot of ways, he’d be right.

  He stood, crossed to the door, and rapped on it. “I’m keeping you in custody.”

  “So you’re charging me with Tim’s murder?” Somehow my voice didn’t crack as the walls seemed to close in, a prelude to what might be my permanent future.

  Oh shit. This couldn’t be happening.

  Detective Appelt left, and another officer strolled in, a pair of handcuffs dangling from his finger.

  I needed a lawyer. I also needed to let my three vampires know what had happened.

  The officer led me out in cuffs, his hand squeezing my elbow and helping to keep me upright. I felt positively sick at not being able to do my slayer duty. The police station swam in front of me, a wall of offices on my left and rows of cubicles stretching to my right. As the officer led me toward an elevator, I pushed past the extreme cramping, fiery feet, and the pain in my bladder and focused on the individual bites all over my body until they tingled.

  “Help,” I whispered.

  Hopefully they heard me, tracked me, and then figured out what had happened.

  The officer stared straight ahead, even as another female one came toward us. She skipped her gaze right over me and then stuck it to the man at my side. Curiosity sparked across her face, and then she frowned.

  Goose bumps rolled up from my cuffed wrists behind my back. I side-eyed him, but all looked normal, or as normal as this situation warranted. But it didn’t feel normal, and I wasn’t just talking about being torn from my slayer duties. I had to get out of here. And fast. But it wasn’t as if I could just start running. The place was swarming with badges.

  The officer stopped in front of an elevator with dull, dented doors and pushed the down button.

  The cold metal handcuffs bit into my skin and bones painfully. I pulled and wriggled so they wouldn’t cut off my circulation and then happened to glance left. Right into the eyes of Paul.

  He stared back from a black and white photo of him pinned to a bulletin board with the word Missing over it. My heartbeat stalled. Scraggly blond hair, watery blue eyes. That was him, all right, or at least the body he’d stolen. I hated to imagine what he might look like without wearing a human. Like a nightmare, probably. Like my nightmare.

  My eyelids drooped as I stared at him, and I jerked as if I really had been dreaming. I blinked hard at his picture. Had I just fallen asleep?

  A voice echoed behind us, calling again and again, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It sounded as though I had permanent wads of cotton in my ears, but...that couldn’t be right.

  “Can you...” I swallowed, my tongue feeling like it had swollen three sizes. “Can you loosen these...?” What were they called again? Handholders. Handfucks. What? A giggle bubbled out from my mouth.

  The elevator door opened in slow motion, and the officer dragged me inside. I slumped to the back wall, trying to keep my eyes open. The officer produced a black key with a skull at the top and plugged it into a slot at the bottom of the rows of buttons, his movements mechanical and detached.

  Beyond him, the woman officer we’d passed had shot back toward us and was almost inside the elevator with us. “Who are you? What is your badge number?”

  The male officer blocked her in the elevator doorway, reared back his fist, and punched her square in the jaw.

  That was highly irregular. Another giggle burst out of me while deep, deep down I was screaming. I folded myself into a corner, as far away from this stranger as I could get while the elevator doors sealed us in. But there was nothing I could do other than laugh about it. I was trapped inside my own body, only a witness to what was happening around me.

  A side effect of not slaying when I should be, maybe. Or something much, much worse.

  Once the elevator stopped its descent, the officer led me out, guided me down a row of barred cells, and stopped in front of one on the end. He released my hand thingies, then shoved me roughly into the cell. The loud click of the lock penetrated my mind fog, as did a beautiful sight within the cell.

  “Oh, look. A toilet,” I muttered.

  And then I slumped to the floor, out cold.

  Chapter Six

  When I stepped out of my vampires’ house, I’d noticed that the night had felt like it was bound by a rubber band. Silent. Still. Waiting for just the right moment to snap.

  Later that night, while I lay inside a jail cell covered in my own pee, it did.

  I jolted upright, hardly daring to breathe as I listened for what had awakened me, for how I knew that something had changed. The walls, floor, and ceiling of my cell were painted black, and I searched each crack and corner for answers. In between my bouts of unconsciousness, I’d thought I’d seen flecks of golden light rising off of my skin and disappearing into the ceiling. A dream, surely. But I remembered it had filled me with panic, though I had no idea why.

  “Hello?” I called, but my cell seemed to swallow my voice. I tried again. “Hello?” Not much better.

  Exhaustion clung to my limbs, my head felt like my brain had been plugged into an electrical outlet, and it was the weirdest sensation, but a part of me felt like I’d dropped something important. Not my cell phone. Not my Pebbles stake. Something...else.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Someone was coming.

  Taking a deep breath, I hauled myself to my feet and then swayed.

  Drugs. They’d drugged me. Detective Appelt or that strange officer or someone. No wonder I felt off. That was grounds for a lawsuit right there. And a very strongly worded
letter of complaint.

  The footsteps thudded closer. I glanced down at myself, my gaze catching on the large wet spot on my jeans and the puddle on the floor. Whoever was coming had likely seen worse. Smelled worse, too. I positively reeked.

  The shadow of the approaching figure slanted across the gray-tiled floor in front of my cell. Unease flickered inside my gut. The shadow was as black as melted tar, a shapeless mass oozing closer. It triggered an itch at the base of my skull, like a memory about to surface—a nightmare sight in a graveyard filled with nightmare static sounds. Except I couldn’t hear a thing over the thud, thud of approaching footsteps.

  I ticked my gaze up just as the figure stepped into view, and then I reeled back. The officer’s—the same one from before—body was warped and twisted, his bulging eyes unblinking as they melted down his face. Long, horrific fangs stretched to his chin, where muscles and veins pulsed without the cover of skin.

  A tremor stormed up my back. It was just like in the graveyard, except instead of statues melting toward me, it was humans, which was ten times worse.

  But how was this happening? What was happening?

  He reached through the bars of the cell, almost snagging my shirt. His flesh sloughed to the floor with wet splats.

  This wasn’t real. This was Paul fucking with me.

  Focus on my slayer sense. I could almost hear Sawyer’s voice in my head telling me this. My slayer sense would tell me what was real and what wasn’t. I closed my eyes, waited several heartbeats while I concentrated hard, and then opened them again.

  Nothing had changed. My stomach dived toward the puddle on the floor.

  The officer grabbed a baton from his belt and swung it at my head. I dodged out of the way, just barely, my reflexes feeling like I’d drowned them in pudding.

  Maybe it was this cell dampening my slayer powers. The drugs. Who the hell knew? I wasn’t going to waste any more time living here in a waking nightmare.

  The guard swung the baton again. I brought my arm up to block my temple, and the baton cracked against my elbow. Pain flared. I focused on it instead of my revulsion as I surged forward and reached for his collar, my knuckles skidding over the raw tendons in his neck. Some of the flesh clinging to one of the eyeballs sliding down his face touched the back of my hand. No time to vomit. With every bit of strength I had, I jerked him forward into the bars as hard as I could. He slammed into them head-first and then dropped like a board.

  Wasting no time, I sank to my knees and reached through the bars for his keys on his belt. Almost there. I adjusted my angle, and with the side of my face pressed against the metal bars, the static noise blared outside my cell. It sank chills into my skin and throttled every bone and muscle in my body.

  Paul. Paul was here.

  I needed out of this cell. Then I could replace everything with reality by my slayer sense. Inside this cell, that sense didn’t seem to want to work.

  A little farther, and then my fingertips brushed the keys. I swiped them, and with my hands trembling, my knees knocking, I stood and fit the key in the lock. The cell swung open, and I stepped out. Static roared, crowding everything else in existence out.

  Focus. Focus. FOCUS.

  Nothing. No slayer power.

  A sob welled in my throat, but I didn’t have time for a nice mental breakdown. I stared down at the officer, who was thankfully still, and then ripped my Gumby T-shirt off. No way I could just walk out of here, but I would sure as fuck try. Maybe it wasn’t the cell dampening my slayer powers but the whole police station. I ripped the fabric from the bottom hem of my shirt and then plugged my ears with it so I could hear myself over the thundering static. I just wished I could plug my eyes too. Shadows dripped off the walls and contorted the long hallway of cells into one long hellscape. A hellscape I’d have to pass through to get out of here.

  After I ridded myself of my rank, wet jeans, I quickly undid the officer’s uniform and his Kevlar vest and put them on.

  “Eddie! Jacek! Sawyer!” I shouted.

  If it was the police station affecting my powers, maybe they couldn’t sense me. But if there was ever a time where I needed their help, it was right now.

  With the officer’s keys biting into my palm and his uniform swallowing my frame, I strode down the long hallway. Some of the cells I passed appeared empty, except for the shadows swarming into shapeless beasts. They lunged and rattled the bars so hard I thought the metal would snap. Melted humans lurked in other cells, their faces warped into murderous rage. They reached through the bars and tried to snatch at me. Some spat. Others threw shivs and broken glass that sliced at my bare forearms and face.

  “I will fuck your cunt until you are dead,” one of them growled, and it sounded as ancient and rustic as Paul. “Then I will fuck you again, you hear me?”

  Even through my stuffed ears and ringing static, I could hear his voice as clearly as if I’d said it myself.

  “Kill. Kill,” another one chanted.

  “—cry. You’ll cry for your mommy when I’m done with you.”

  No. No, there would be no crying. None of this was real. This was Paul, trying to break me so he could kill me easier.

  I fisted my hands at my sides, chomping down on my back teeth, as I shot for the elevator. Once inside, I jammed the black skull key into the panel, then smashed my finger into the close doors button to silence those threats of violence against me for good.

  Too bad it didn’t last.

  As soon as the doors opened again, a red laser dot swept the inside of the elevator. I ducked to the floor just as an explosion of bullets battered the wall behind me.

  When the gunfire went silent, the static roared even louder. My heart pummeled the floor beneath my ribs. Cold sweat clung to the back of my neck. I didn’t dare breathe.

  Then a voice rose up above the static and hissed, “She’s here.”

  It was there on the floor of the elevator, more frightened than I’d ever been, that I realized what was happening. Yes, this was Paul trying to break me, but every one of the prisoners downstairs and the hissing voices had sounded just like him—like broken bones rubbing against dead leaves. It was as if the stroll he’d taken had been through everyone, loud enough that I could hear the static. He was pulling the strings of everyone here and was directing them to take me out. The whole police station. No, not just the police station. All of Podunk City since everyone’s doors had crashed open. That had to have been him, demanding entrance so he could stroll on in on that not-so-lovely night.

  That realization had only taken a second.

  Spying a doorway on my right, I chucked the keys in my fist to the left. They clanked against something metal several feet away, providing the distraction I needed. Hopefully.

  Gunfire erupted in the direction of the keys. I surged to my feet and flew to the doorway. Once inside the room, I shut the door and then ducked to all-fours, navigating the dark room by touch alone. Outside, glass exploded, blinking out the light through the frosted glass window in the door. Then the gunfire stopped.

  I likely had seconds before they found me.

  If I had luck on my side, I would’ve found myself inside a weapon storage room or the evidence room where my stakes were surely kept. If I had luck on my side, I wouldn’t be in this damn situation to begin with.

  Just as I thought, no such luck. I was in an office with metal chairs and a wooden desk, the drawers of which held files, paper clips, pens, and pencils. I took a handful of pencils since they were close to stakes. Though they would do jack against a gun, they were better than nothing.

  I crawled across the tile floor and felt my way along the wall, hoping for a second exit. In the corner of my eye, a shadow moved beyond the window in the door. Someone was coming.

  My breaths grew ragged. My movements jerky and frantic, I slid my fingers along the wall. They slid into a dip. A door! The doorknob on the one behind me began to turn. I stopped breathing. My knuckles hit a doorknob, and I shoved my way through
and closed the door within the span of three wild heartbeats.

  No time to waste. I shot across the dark room to where I thought the door to the hallway should be. Once I fumbled my way through, I sprinted across to the maze of cubicles and chose a random one to squat in so I could catch my bearings. Pushing my lips together to keep myself quiet, I stretched my neck to see over the three-foot-high barrier that separated this cubicle from the next one. There, about fifty feet away, was the exit sign in bright, beautiful colors. So close and yet so far. I had no idea how many people were after me in here, but if I could make it out, then maybe my slayer powers would work again. Strength, speed, healing—all good powers to have.

  Fifty feet.

  I slinked out of the cubicle and started forward.

  At the first cross-section of pathways I came to, a figure moved just to my left. I froze, my body coiling to spring and fight or spring and run. It was a man from the shape of him, walking away, his black uniform writhing in the creeping darkness as if it contained nothing but snakes. I crossed behind him on silent feet to the next section of cubicles.

  Forty feet.

  Up ahead, someone rounded the corner, into the pathway I was headed down. I dove left behind a cubicle wall and pressed my back against it, biting down hard on my tongue. Had he seen me?

  I waited and waited, my muscles screaming at holding still for so long. Finally, moving with the speed of a turtle so I wouldn’t make a sound, I peered out from behind the wall. And couldn’t see shit. It was too damn dark with the swarming shadows. But I did see the exit sign shining like my last hope.

  With my breath held, my ears perked for any sound over the static and my Gumby shirt wedged inside them, I flashed out onto the pathway again.

  A blast lit the police station with a burst of white light. Something tugged at my back from behind. Hard. Sharp. Almost powerful enough to lift me off my feet and drop me to my knees. Somewhere in my mind, pain registered, but I wasn’t about to stop and think about it.

  Thirty feet. Twenty-five. I didn’t stop. Even as the pain stormed through the side of my back, I didn’t stop. Most blasts ricocheted around me, but I kept my head low as I zigzagged between cubicles.