The Vampire Next Door (17 page)

Eddie took the news surprisingly well. “You made friends with a vampire?” he asked, and I was actually almost relieved that was the part of the story he was focusing on.

“Yes. Well, technically I guess you could say he made friends with me. He saved my life twice. He even gave me supplies. He was going to help me find a car so I could get out of here.”

“You were already planning to leave?” Eddie scowled as he stood up and shrugged into his vest.

Crap. Now he would be pissed that I hadn’t left with him in the first place. “Yes. After you left, I realized that you were right. I decided to go after you.” It was a white lie, and hopefully not one that would come back to bite me in the ass later. It was true that I cared about Eddie, but I hadn’t intended to follow him. I’d only meant to go find my family. But right now I didn’t want Eddie to be pissed off at me. I wanted his help.

I zipped up my own vest, which had a number of stakes strapped into it, and secured the 9mil in its holster. My quiver was already in place, and I strapped my crossbow onto my back.

“The boyfriend they’re threatening to kill- that’s the vampire next door?” The banging on the wrought iron fence had stopped, and Eddie paused, listening. There was silence outside.

“Yes.” I could taste the fear on the back of my tongue; it was fear for Reeve, not for myself. His house wasn’t secure like mine was. There had been no need for it. Vampires didn’t hunt down their own unless their own had already turned against them.

Saving a human’s life probably qualified Reeve as a traitor.

Eddie sat down again and draped an arm across the back of the couch, resting his shotgun casually across his knee. “Maybe they’ll all kill each other, and then you and I won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

I stared at Eddie, feeling sick to my stomach. “Reeve saved my life, Eddie. They’re going to kill him unless I go out there.”

“The guy can probably defend himself. Don’t worry about it.”

“There are
three
vampires out there! He could take on one, maybe even two, but not three!” Although I didn’t know for sure that the blonde woman was a vampire now, it seemed unlikely that she was still human, so I didn’t think I was exaggerating.

“Why do you care? It’s just another bloodsucker.”

There was a sudden pounding outside, fainter and sounding like it was coming from a distance. Were they trying to break into Reeve’s house already?

I should have known Eddie would be like this. “He’s not just another bloodsucker. He’s my friend. And he saved my life twice. I’m not going to leave him to fend for himself.”

Eddie’s mouth was set in a straight line. “You’re not going out there, Kennedy.”

His dismissal of my concern and my feelings was infuriating. “Like hell I’m not,” I snapped, and stood up. “If they’re going after him, I’m not about to sit here and twiddle my thumbs.”

Eddie stood up, too. “Yes, you are.”

I tried to move past him, but he grabbed my arm and shoved me back down on the couch. I wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to resist him, and I fell on my butt on the sofa cushion. My jaw dropped. I hadn’t expected Eddie to get physical.

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded. “He’s my friend. I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for him. And they’re going after him because of me, because I wanted him to let that stupid woman go.” A lot of good it had done. She’d been turned into a vampire within days.

From outside, I heard a cry that ended in a low growl. The voice was deep and raspy.

It was Reeve.

They’d gotten to him.

Before I could lose my nerve, I yanked the 9mil out of its holster and pointed it at Eddie, who remained standing in front of me.

“Get out of my way now, Eddie,” I said, and I was surprised at how level and calm my voice sounded. “If you don’t let me leave, I will shoot you.”

Eddie had always told me to be clear and concise about what I planned to do in the event of a stand-off. I’d done it before, with the redheaded man that Reeve had killed. It was obvious that Eddie hadn’t ever expected me to use that little tip on him. He stared down the barrel of the gun, then met my eyes, and the confusion on his face actually made me feel a little guilty.

“He’s a vampire,” Eddie said. “He’s the entire reason the world is ending. Why the hell would you want to save him?”

“He’s not just a vampire,” I insisted. “He’s my friend. Now put the shotgun down.”

Eddie dropped the weapon on the couch. He still looked dumbfounded as he held his hands up, indicating his compliance.

“Move towards the stairs,” I ordered. “You’re going to let me out of here.”

“Kennedy, this is crazy-“

“Move!” I shouted. I could hear the snarls and screams from the fight outside, but I couldn’t identify Reeve’s voice.

Eddie moved. He went up the stairs in front of me, keeping his hands up, and lifted the bar from its resting place across the basement door, then unlocked the deadbolts.

“Move out of my way. Into the kitchen. You stay here,” I said to Holloway, who had followed us up the steps. My dog pinned his ears to his head and whined, but he stayed where he was.

I followed Eddie out onto the ground floor, and the familiar taste of fear was in my mouth, metallic enough that I actually wondered if I’d bitten my tongue in my nervousness. It was dark, with the only illumination coming from the pale blue nightlights I’d plugged in through every room in the house.

“Open the front door,” I told Eddie.

I wasn’t entirely sure that I could have followed through on shooting him, but Eddie seemed to believe I was capable of it, and that was good enough. He walked to the front door and unlocked the deadbolts. As he was turning the doorknob, I checked to make sure I had my house keys. They were in my pocket.

“Get back,” I said after Eddie had opened the door. He took several steps backwards, raising his hands again, and I moved past him, keeping a good distance between us in case he tried to lunge and get the gun away from me.

When I’d stepped outside into the breezeway, I stopped for a moment and looked at Eddie, feeling bitter regret for what was happening.

“Lock yourself in,” I said. “If I make it back…”

I didn’t know if I’d make it back, or if Eddie would even accept me back if I did survive this. A line had been crossed, and I didn’t know if he would ever forgive me for the pain of betrayal that I saw in his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” There was nothing else I could say. “Close the door.”

Without a word, he moved forward and closed it, and I immediately holstered the 9mil and pulled the crossbow off my back. The fighting was still going on, but I could only hear the girls screaming now. I couldn’t hear Reeve’s voice at all.

I looked over as I stepped out from behind the brick wall that blocked off half the breezeway. In the moonlight, I could see that the front door of Reeve’s house had been smashed in. The sounds were coming from inside, and light streamed out the front door. Reeve never turned on the lights in his house. Even if the door hadn’t been smashed in, I would have known something was wrong, just from the light.

I was more scared than I could ever recall being before, even more scared than I’d been on the day the teenage vampire had attacked me, because I knew that no matter what kind of skirmish I walked into right now, Kellie would be there. I’d spent the better part of the last year avoiding any kind of confrontation with her, just as I’d done when she was alive.

This would be the moment that I would finally confront the woman who had made my life miserable for the past five years, and I was only doing it because she was attacking my friend.

My feet felt heavy as I jogged down the sidewalk towards Reeve’s house, favoring my injured knee only a little as adrenaline surged through my veins. I snapped my crossbow up and stepped onto the front porch. Something made of glass shattered inside, and I heard Reeve growl. Relief flooded through me. He was still alive.

I moved into the foyer quickly, keeping my bow up. The door had splintered and split, and large chunks of wood littered the tile floor. Wood chips crunched beneath my boots as I moved towards the hallway.

“Just die already!” I heard Kellie scream from the living room, and I stepped into the hallway, turning towards the sound of her voice.

It was chaos.

Reeve was shirtless and barefoot, wearing nothing but jeans. He had the blonde woman pressed up against his torso, the back of her head against his chest, his arm hooked around her neck and holding her to him. Her eyes glowed bright crimson in the lamplight, and I knew that my instincts had been right- she’d somehow been turned into a vampire after Reeve had let her go. She was snarling, spitting and scrabbling at his arm, drawing blood, but he didn’t release her.

Kellie was standing in front of Reeve, crouched slightly, her arms held away from her sides and her fingers curved like daggers. The teenager was slumped on the floor, his head propped against the couch, which had been shoved so hard against the wall that it had dented the drywall behind it. The coffee table was smashed into pieces, its glass top shattered on the carpet.

Blood ran down Reeve’s face from a cut on his forehead, and I could see a bite mark on his neck in addition to the wounds the blonde woman was currently inflicting to his arm.

I focused my sights on Kellie. “Get down on the floor,” I ordered, and my voice shook as I spoke the words.

Reeve and Kellie’s heads both turned in my direction, and a slow, wicked smile spread across Kellie’s face at the same time that an expression of horror crossed Reeve’s.

“Kennedy, go home!” he shouted, not mincing any words. “I can handle this.”

“No, stay,” Kellie purred, turning towards me. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

As my gaze flitted back and forth between the vampire I’d come to consider a friend, and the vampire who had spent the last eight months trying to kill me, I had the sinking feeling that at least one of us would not be leaving this house alive.

Considering I was the only human in the room, my odds for survival were not looking so good.

CHAPTER 13

“Go home!” Reeve repeated, and I shook my head, keeping the crossbow aimed at Kellie.

“It’s me you want,” I said to her, ignoring Reeve. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“He has everything to do with this!” the blonde woman screamed, and she sank her long, claw-like nails into Reeve’s forearm. Cursing, he threw her down on the floor.

She sprang up and ran for me, but Kellie reached out a hand and grabbed the woman’s arm, stopping her advance.

“She’s mine,” Kellie hissed, and turned back to me. Malice was evident in her scarlet gaze.

For the first time since the pandemic had started, I was standing face to face with The Ex. It was the first time in several years that we’d encountered each other without Cole present, and the first time since this entire nightmare had started five years ago that I had genuine hope of making amends.

“Kellie, you’re not yourself,” I said, and my voice trembled. With shaking fingers, I dug my photo of Pearl and Priscilla out of my pocket and held it out, keeping my other hand on the trigger of the crossbow. The weapon was awkward to hold with one hand, but I knew that the picture was more important at that moment.

“Look,” I said. “Look at your girls. Aren’t you worried about them? Don’t you want to find them?”

Behind Kellie, Reeve stood in silence, keeping a wary eye on the tiny blonde woman, who was looking back and forth between all three of us uncertainly.

Something shifted in Kellie’s face as she stared at the photo in my hand. There was a shine to her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “My girls,” she said hollowly, and reached out to me. I flinched, but she was only taking the photo from me, staring down at it in wonder.

“Pearl and Priscilla,” I said, putting my other hand back on the crossbow. I didn’t dare lower it now. “Listen to me, Kellie. You’re not acting like yourself. You were always a mother, first and foremost. I know you love the girls, but when you became a vampire, you lost your memory. All you can remember is the bad stuff- the parts where you were angry at me.”

She glanced up at me, and a little bit of rage had returned to her expression. I continued in a breathless rush, “But they’re not with me. They’re with Cole, and if there’s ever a time they’ve needed their mother, this is it. Think about it, Kellie. Think about how much you love them, and how much they love you. They won’t care that you’re a vampire. Heck,
I
don’t care that you’re a vampire. All they want is their mom back, and I know they need you now more than ever.”

I held my breath as she stared at the picture. Even with my bolt aimed right at her, I didn’t know if I could actually kill Kellie. With my own life on the line, I supposed it was possible, but I didn’t know if I could ever face the girls again, knowing that I’d killed their mother.

My reluctance at murdering Kellie had intensified after I’d met Reeve and realized that not all vampires were evil. She still had a chance at redemption. She just had to remember that I wasn’t the center of her universe. She had to remember her daughters.

Kellie lowered the picture and looked at me. “You married Cole,” she said dully. There was no condescension in her tone this time, no anger. There was nothing, just a great, horrible emptiness.

“Yes,” I said cautiously, “but I didn’t take the girls.”

“No,” she agreed with me, looking down at the photo again. “But Cole did.”

The teenager on the floor, who until now I’d thought was dead, moaned suddenly and brought a hand to his head.

“Cole meant to bring them back,” I blurted out, sensing that this conversation was not going in a positive direction. “They might need help. We need to find them, Kellie.”

“
Don’t
say my name, bitch!” she snapped, and crumpled the photograph in her fist. “Cole would have been out of our lives forever if it wasn’t for you! The girls would be with me
right now!”

“No,” I said, taking a step back and tightening my finger on the trigger. “The girls would be dead right now, if not for Cole. You know him. You know he’d do anything to protect them. Don’t you want to see them again?”

“I want to see you bleed, you whore! I want you to beg for mercy!” She flung the crumpled photograph at me and lunged forward, and in the moment between life and death, I knew that I had to either kill Kellie and put an end to all this, or die myself.

But I didn’t squeeze the trigger.

As she smashed into me, I let go of the crossbow and reached out to grab her shoulders, trying to keep her at arm’s length as we fell backwards into the hallway.

I heard Reeve call out my name, and from the corner of my eye as I struggled to fend off Kellie’s attack, I saw him tangling with the blonde woman. The teenager was struggling to his feet, eager to jump into the fray.

“You!” Kellie snarled, and spittle flew off her fangs and hit my cheeks. “You home-wrecking whore!”

“Get off me!” I shouted in her face, and tried to bring my legs up so I could push her off, but she was straddling my hips, my legs trapped between hers.

I drew back one fist and punched her in the mouth as hard as I could- which wasn’t very hard, given my limited mobility. She grabbed my wrist and tried to sink her teeth into my arm, but I brought my other fist around and smashed it into the side of her face.

She was much, much stronger than me, and I knew I didn’t have a chance, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. When she lowered her face, attempting to bite my neck, I head-butted her, our foreheads cracking against each other.

I saw stars.

She moaned and lifted a hand to her head, and I used the opportunity to roll her off me, pinning her against the wall beside me. I could barely move my left leg, but I pulled my right leg up and pinned it into Kellie’s midsection, then braced myself against the opposite wall of the hallway.

“Let me go!” she screeched, and slashed at my jeans with her nails. Her claws cut through the denim, slicing my skin underneath, and I cried out with pain, tears streaming down my face.

It was either her or me, and I couldn’t bring myself to kill her. I just couldn’t do it. We could stay this way while she tore at my legs, I could keep her pinned against the wall until I bled out from my wounds, and I still wouldn’t be able to end her life. I didn’t have the right.

A figure emerged from the doorway to the foyer, and I yanked a stake from my vest, looking up at what I desperately hoped was not another vampire.

It wasn’t a vampire.

It was Eddie, and he was carrying his shotgun.

I knew then what Reeve must have felt like when he saw me walk in. I knew that this was my battle, and that there was next to no chance of my survival. I didn’t want Eddie to get sucked into this nightmare, too.

“Go home, Eddie!” I shouted, echoing Reeve’s words from earlier.

He reached down and grabbed my arm, yanking me up and dragging me back into the foyer with him. Kellie crawled to her feet and ran after us.

“Go home!” I cried, pulling at Eddie’s shoulder as he forced me backwards. “This is my fight. You’ll only get hurt.”

He ignored me, pointing the shotgun at the doorway as we exited the house. I knew what he intended to do. He was going to end this, once and for all.

My mind was racing, and while I was reluctant to acknowledge it, I knew in my heart that there was no way to save Kellie. Whatever good had been inside her while she was alive was gone now, erased by the rage and bloodlust of vampirism. And though I knew I couldn’t bring myself to kill her, I wasn’t going to risk Eddie’s life to save hers.

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I felt every trickle of blood down my legs from where Kellie had shredded my calves, could feel the denim of my jeans sticking to my flesh.

My heart ached inside me, knowing that if I did someday find the girls, I would have to tell them that their mother was gone. I would not say, however, that although I had refused to harm her myself, she’d died while trying to kill me.

I was crying so hard that my vision was blurry, but I could still make out Kellie’s form as she emerged from the house and ran towards us. The sounds coming from her mouth were inhuman- growls and snarls and hoarse, barking laughter unlike anything I’d ever heard before. All remnants of sanity had disappeared.

The shotgun went off, and I wiped the tears from my eyes, watching in mute horror as Kellie’s body jerked. She fell to the ground, screaming in pain, her hands clutching at her injured midsection.

For all his frustrating ignorance, Eddie was a merciful killer, and he didn’t waste any time. He advanced on Kellie, pulling a stake from the sheath on his thigh. She had been writhing, but when she saw the weapon in his hand, Kellie’s body stilled.

I took a step forward, wanting to spare her life, wanting to tell her to run, wanting this to not be the end, and her eyes flicked to me.

In the moonlight, I could see the curve of her lips as her expression changed. There was something in her face…resignation? No…was it acceptance?

It took me a moment to realize that the nearly unidentifiable emotion flickering in the scarlet depths of her eyes was relief.

Eddie drove the stake down, and Kellie exhaled heavily, the breath rushing from her lungs in one long sigh, her back arching off the pavement for a brief, agonizing moment before she collapsed again, and was still.

Mindful of my aching knee and bleeding legs, I knelt awkwardly beside her, my hand finding hers and holding it tight.

There had been no love between us, no affection save for the strange parallels in our lives. We had both fallen in love with the same man, and had both had our hearts broken by him. We had both adored two little girls beyond all reason, though our mutual love for Pearl and Priscilla had driven us to distinctly different behaviors.

For all the misery she had caused me in her life, Kellie hadn’t deserved to die like this. Her daughters would never see her again, and they deserved better than that, too.

The inside of my wedding ring clinked against something on her hand, and I looked down.

She was wearing her wedding ring, too.

I supposed it could have been the wedding ring from her tragically short second marriage, but somehow I didn’t think so.

The yellow gold glinted in the moonlight, the diamond in her engagement ring flashing white.

Her daughters would want these rings, I realized, and glanced up at Kellie’s face. Her eyes were closed, her features slack. I carefully worked the rings over her knuckle and shoved them into the pocket of my jeans.

“I’ll give these to the girls,” I promised her softly.

It was then that I realized that when she had fallen silent, so had everything else. The blood that had been roaring in my ears had subsided, my pulse slowing and evening out. There was no noise at all, not even coming from inside Reeve’s house. Struggling to my feet, I limped past Eddie, who had been standing a few feet away.

He followed me, and grabbed my arm. “It’s done. There’s nothing you can do now.”

“Reeve might need my help,” I said, trying to shrug his hand off.

At that moment, Reeve appeared in the doorway. The light from inside silhouetted his huge frame, and his shoulders were slumped, his head down. He was either exhausted or injured, or maybe both. As he moved forward into the moonlight, I could see that he was horribly battered, with blood seeping from countless wounds all over his body.

I started forward, but Eddie’s hand clamped down on my arm again. “Kennedy, don’t,” he said, and the poison in his voice was undeniable. “He’s a vampire. You’re a human. Just come home. Tomorrow we can leave and forget this ever happened.”