The Vampire Next Door (6 page)

“You should have said something, Kennedy,” he scolded, walking towards me. Before I could protest, he had picked me up, tattered sweats and all.

I sucked in a breath at his closeness, reflexively putting my hands on his broad shoulders to steady myself. The spicy scent of his skin had an immediate effect on my body, sending shivers through my core and prickling up my arms. Every part of my body was screaming at me to fling my arms around this man and beg him to touch me- but the rational part of my mind was horrified at my own weakness.

Was I so sex-starved that I couldn’t resist a vampire?

He carried me to the flowered couch against the opposite wall. “Stay here,” he said, and deposited me on the couch. “Put a pillow under your knee. I’ll see if I can find aspirin, and something you can eat.”

It happened so fast that I barely had time to react, and as he left the room for the kitchen, I struggled to comprehend how he’d managed to pick me up so easily- and without causing further injury to my knee. I was having a difficult time adjusting to the entire situation. My predicament seemed so outlandish. A vampire showing compassion to a human was nothing I’d ever seen or heard of.

I rolled up the leg of my sweatpants and examined my knee. It didn’t look too bad- just swollen up to the size of a softball. There was a bruise coming up on one side, probably from where I’d struck the pavement. I wedged a pillow under it, relaxing a little when the added elevation eased some of the ache.

Most of my hair had come free from its ponytail and was sticking to the back of my neck in the hot, humid spring air, so I re-did the ponytail, finger-combing the strands into some semblance of order. My hair was long now, almost to my waist, and more trouble than it was worth. I’d vowed to myself that if I ever found a hairstylist during my adventures, I’d have her chop it all off, but I wasn’t about to risk a hatchet-job by cutting my hair myself.

The sounds of cabinet doors being opened and closed echoed from the direction of what I assumed was the kitchen, and I folded my hands in my lap, looking down at my neatly bandaged arms. The road rash stung like crazy, but my knee hurt worse. I needed to make it back to my house- but even if I managed that, I’d only have enough supplies to hole up for a week or so. I wasn’t sure if my knee would be healed by then.

This was exactly the predicament I’d looked to avoid by visiting the dollar store today.

What a screw-up this day had turned out to be.

I glanced at Cole’s pocket watch and was mildly surprised to see that it was past midnight. I’d slept for a while.

I looked around the living room. I’d never been in my neighbors’ house before, but I imagined that it hadn’t changed much in the last eight months. There were still paintings on the walls, a small TV in the corner. A matching flowered loveseat sat against the wall by the back door. All the windows were boarded up, and there were some empty spots on the walls that had probably held family photos, but that was the only obvious sign that anything had changed since the pandemic. I wondered how long Reeve had been living here.

“Success,” he announced, appearing just as my thoughts turned to him. He carried two small cans in his left hand, and two bottles in his right hand- an Advil bottle, and some Arrowhead water.

“Bottled water?” I said. “Wow, first class service.”

“Don’t get too excited,” he said, sitting next to me on the couch and being careful not to jostle my legs. “Dinner choices are limited.”

He held out the cans, and I squeaked in excitement. “Vienna sausages! Are you serious? This is what I was trying to get today before everything went to hell!” I snatched one of the cans out of his hands and tore the lid off. “I can’t believe you have these! Are these the only ones?”

The corner of his mouth was curved upwards as he watched me chow down on the processed meat. “I didn’t see anything else, but I can go look again.”

“No, it’s okay- but thank you, thank you so much. I love these things. Eddie hated them, I mean, he even hated watching me eat them, but that was fine with me, because I don’t like sharing anyway.” I popped another sausage into my mouth and chewed blissfully.

“Eddie? Is that your husband?”

“No, that’s the guy who…” I stopped myself, suddenly unsure if I wanted to reveal the fact that Eddie was gone, and I was alone.

“…The guy who is living with you?” Reeve finished for me.

I nodded, trying to swallow around the sudden lump in my throat.

He unscrewed the cap on the Advil bottle and tapped two capsules into his hand. “Here,” he said, holding them out. “This should help with your knee.”

I took the pills, and also accepted the bottle of water from him. “I don’t suppose you’re a doctor with an x-ray machine in the other room so you can tell if anything’s broken.”

Reeve shook his head. “No such luck. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to, though.”

“Thanks, but I have to get home as soon as it’s light.” I didn’t want to say too much. I was finding it difficult to have a conversation without revealing the fact that I was all alone in the world, with the occasional exception of a scruffy mutt named Holloway.

“You want to get back to Eddie?” Reeve said dryly. “He must be worried about you.”

I nodded. “Yeah.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Eddie probably was worried about me, wherever he was.

Reeve stood and moved across the room, his massive frame dwarfing the loveseat as he sank down into the cushions.

I picked up the second can of Vienna sausages and peeled off the lid. “So how long have you lived here, Reeve?”

“Here in this house?”

I nodded.

“I’m not sure,” Reeve admitted, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his chin with one hand. “I woke up here. I think maybe I lived in this house before I became a vampire.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “I’ve lived next door for two years. The couple who lived here before the pandemic were in their seventies.” I paused, only just realizing what he’d said. “Don’t you remember your life from before you were, um, turned?”

“Not much,” he said. “Bits and pieces have been coming back. I know I was a mechanic, or at least that I worked on cars and motorcycles a lot. I remember that I had a wife. But I don’t remember what she looked like.” He looked up at me. “The first time I saw you, through the window, I thought you might be her.”

I blushed under the intensity of his stare, and laughed weakly. “Sorry to disappoint, but my husband looks nothing like you.” Cole’s arresting green eyes flashed in my mind, unbidden.

“I figured.” Reeve shrugged. “I don’t remember much else.”

Still trying to push Cole from my thoughts, I pondered Reeve’s admission. It had never occurred to me that vampires might experience memory loss when they first came back from the dead. Kellie certainly hadn’t seemed to have any problem accessing her memories of me.

“How long ago did you wake up here, in this house?” I asked.

“It’s been almost a month.”

I nodded, chewing thoughtfully on my last Vienna sausage. “I guess that explains why we haven’t met before.”

“I don’t go out much,” Reeve said. His eyes darted up to my face, then back to the floor, and he cleared his throat. “Actually, Kennedy, I think I need to be honest with you.”

My heart skipped a beat when he said that. I hastily swallowed my food, and sat up a little straighter, bracing myself to grab the stake from my vest if he relayed some kind of horrible plan to fatten me up for ritual sacrifice or something.

“You haven’t been honest so far?” I couldn’t hide the tremor in my voice.

“Not completely. I didn’t want to scare you.” He looked a little unsure of himself, his hands twisting together as he looked at me. “When I saw you, I had this- I don’t know- like a flash of recognition. I know you from somewhere. I think you might be why I’m here. But you were always with that guy- and I didn’t know how to approach you.” He smiled crookedly. “Until you showed up on my back patio. I didn’t know how I was going to get your attention- and I wasn’t sure if you’d want to listen to what I had to say.”

I probably should have been freaked out at his confession, if only because I’m sure stalkers all over the world start off their own expositions similarly. But considering how much less frightening
this
was than my previously-mentioned theory of a human-skin coat, I was actually relieved.

“Is that all?” I asked, and sighed. “Well, I can straighten that out. We’ve never met. I’d definitely remember you. But maybe you knew somebody as a human who- who looked like me. Your wife, maybe. We might look alike.”

“Yeah.” Reeve looked disappointed. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

I almost felt sorry for him- until my inner voice told me to grow up and stop being a pansy, and I remembered that Reeve was still a vampire who drank people’s blood. I took a long swig of lukewarm water to clear my head. My rescuer tendencies hadn’t done me any favors in the past, and they certainly wouldn’t help me now, when I was drawn to this undeniably broken man.

Actually, broken didn’t even begin to describe Reeve accurately. As far as I knew, there was no cure for vampirism, so he was just about the worst rescue case I could have found.

The realization hit me hard, and I blinked. My sudden attraction to Reeve made more sense now. I was a rescuer, and he was damaged goods! I silently cursed my dad for passing on the rescuer gene to me. That particular inclination was not in any way advantageous during a vampire apocalypse.

I’d go home tomorrow, I decided, and with any luck, I’d never see Reeve again. That was assuming he didn’t pull out some dastardly leather coat plan in the hours between now and sunrise.

I looked ruefully at my knee. Hopefully it would support my weight in the morning- and hopefully it would heal up quickly. I didn’t have the supplies to warrant any significant downtime.

“Where is your husband?” Reeve asked, jarring me out of my reverie. I was momentarily surprised that I’d managed to let my thoughts wander while sitting in a room with a vampire, but then, Reeve didn’t appear to be a typical vampire, either.

“He went on vacation, right before the pandemic crossed the border,” I answered quietly. “Eight months ago.”

“Have you talked to him since then?”

“Just once.” I felt depressed, thinking back to that phone call. Considering the way our last conversation had ended, the odds of Cole’s survival were not good. I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to the girls, Priscilla and Pearl.

Don’t even get me started on the girls’ names- especially Pearl. Kellie named the poor kid after her grandmother, and though it was a nice name, it did seem somewhat dated for an American twelve-year-old. The name had been an endless source of teasing from Pearl’s classmates at school.

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

My thoughts came to a screeching halt at that, and I glared at Reeve, suddenly irritated. “I don’t
know,”
I said. “He told me to wait here for him. So I’m waiting. But it’s a long way from Florida, and he might have gotten held up on the way.”

“Sorry,” Reeve apologized immediately. “I didn’t mean anything by it. But…well, you know…with Eddie…”

He didn’t have to say anything else. I knew what he was implying. “Eddie was a friend. Nothing more,” I said. “And since you’re so intent on prying into my personal life, I might as well tell you that Eddie left yesterday, because I wouldn’t sleep with him. Because I, unlike every man in the world, took my vows seriously when I got married, and I have no intention of having sex with anyone if there’s even the slightest possibility that my husband is still out there, trying to get back to me.”

I stopped to take a breath. I hadn’t intended to rant, or even to hint at my man-hating tendencies, but Reeve had hit a nerve. “I’m not going to be Lori Grimes, okay? She thought Rick was dead but she didn’t even know for sure, and all of a sudden she jumps in bed with Shane like she didn’t just lose the love of her life.”