The Vengeful Vampire (11 page)

Serenity sighed. Beautiful things filled the house, items she had worked hard for; stupid little trinkets to make her miserable life happy—pretty picture frames, delicate wine glasses, embroidered cushions. She shouldn’t get sad about such frivolities, but she couldn’t help it.

They’re just things,
the little voice whispered to her.
They can be replaced.

The voice spoke the truth. Material belongings didn’t matter. What mattered was getting out of her present situation with her dignity, soul, and most importantly, her body still intact.

Somewhere, at the back of her mind, Sebastian lurked. Two days had passed since they’d visited the pier together. She knew he wouldn’t come to the house with her husband home. The two days felt like a lifetime. Serenity wished she could tell him she was finally leaving Jackson. She wanted to see the look in his eyes, knowing how proud he would be of her.

But she wasn’t doing this for Sebastian. Serenity was leaving for herself, for her life and sanity. He had opened her eyes to the possibility of another life but that didn’t mean she was leaving her husband for him.

Did it?

Serenity sighed again. She didn’t want to be a woman who couldn’t stand to be alone, always jumping from relationship to relationship.

No, it wasn’t like that. She had no idea if she would see Sebastian again. She had no way of getting in touch with him and didn’t know where he lived or worked. Tomorrow she would leave the city and never come back.

She wasn’t only leaving Jackson, Serenity realized. She would be leaving Sebastian too.

A hard lump tightened in the back of her throat and her eyes flooded with tears. She reprimanded herself. She needed to focus; she had bigger things to worry about.

Filled with sadness, the thrill of possibility gone, she pulled open her top drawer and pulled out a selection of underwear. From the other drawers, she took out t-shirts and sweaters and stuffed them in the bag. She packed her toiletries and then wondered what else to take.

Serenity looked around the bedroom she had shared with her significant other for the last ten years. Bad memories lingered everywhere; the dresser he had pushed her up against when she knocked over a glass of water in the middle of the night. The door he slammed her fingers in when she’d been late home from work. The wall he threw her against because she dared to ask how much money he’d spent at the bar.

This place held nothing but bad memories

She was nearly thirty years old and, once she left, wouldn’t have more than a few hundred dollars and some old clothes to her name.

The threads of depression threatened to bind her heart and drag her down.

Jackson had done this and she’d let him. If she didn’t get out of her marriage, she would look back when she was forty, fifty, or God-forbid, sixty and realize her life had amounted to nothing and she could never get the time back.

She glanced at the clock. Almost five. Jackson wouldn’t be home for hours but she had no reason to hang around.

Except this is the only place Sebastian knows where to find you.

Serenity shook her head. She needed to stop thinking about him. This was her life now and she had to take control.

She remembered a photograph of her mother as a teenager, which she kept in her nightstand. Despite Serenity’s feelings about the woman, it felt wrong to leave the photo behind, so she fished it out of the drawer and added the picture to her bag. She didn’t have a passport, but kept her birth certificate in the same drawer, so she stuffed the slip of paper into the side pocket of her bag.

She picked up the pack and slung it across her shoulder. A compulsion to say goodbye to her bedroom, as though the room was a person, swept over her.

From downstairs, came the sound of the front door slamming open.

Oh God.

Serenity’s breath caught in her chest, every muscle in her body tensed, ready to run. Her head swam with the sudden rush of blood and she forced herself to focus.

What the hell was he doing back so soon?

Her heart pounded and her eyes darted around the room, searching for somewhere to stuff the bag. He would notice something was wrong, he would see it in her face.

“Serenity?” Jackson called up the stairs.

“I’m here, just putting away some laundry.” Her voice was unnaturally high and she cleared her throat. “You’re home early.”

“I forgot my pills,” he said, his voice growing louder as he started to climb the stairs. “Figured I would have more fun with them.”

“I’m coming down!” she shrieked. “I’ll bring them with me.”

His footsteps paused and then, to her relief, he turned away and she followed the sound of his progress as he headed to the kitchen instead. Her palms were slick with sweat and she pulled open the closet door and shoved the bag into the bottom, quickly covering the backpack with a pile of shoes and an old golfing jacket Jackson had never worn.

Her legs almost gave way as she raced to the bathroom and grabbed Jackson’s bottle of pain medication, knocking his toothbrush and some hand wash in the sink in her haste. The items clattered against the porcelain, the noise echoing in the confined room.

“Serenity?” His voice had changed; cold and hard. “What the hell is this?

He knows you’re leaving him!

Panic made her head swim and the room blurred around her. Totally irrational thoughts raced through her head. Did she leave something out—something to give herself away? Did she write him a ‘Dear John’ letter?

Slowly, she walked down the stairs, the bottle of pills held against her chest as though they could protect her.

Jackson stood in the kitchen, leaning up against the table. In his right hand he held an opened piece of mail.

I did write it,
she thought.
I wrote him a goodbye letter!

He held the paper out toward her.

“What the hell is this?” he said again, his voice even.

“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. She reached out for the letter but he snatched the paper out of reach and her fingers grasped nothing but air.

“Shall I tell you?” He started pacing, a restless, caged animal pacing he did when he was building up to something really bad. Serenity tried to back away, to retreat out of the door she’d just entered through, but he quickly blocked her only escape route with his body.

“It’s a bill from the hospital.”

“What?” Her heart picked up the pace. “There must be some mistake!”

He flicked the letter out in front of him as though reading from a scroll.

“Dear Mrs. Hathaway, I regret to inform you that due to your recent change in employment, you are no longer covered by Stanton Medical Insurance, therefore, please find enclosed a statement for your husband’s recent stay. We will expect payment as soon as possible.”

He didn’t even look up at her but she recognized the signs, how he focused on the boiling anger, concentrating on the emotion as though channeling it into his fists.

“So when were you planning on telling me about your ‘recent change of employment’? Is that why your boss was so good about giving you time off, because you don’t actually have a job to go to?”

Desperately she shook her head. “It’s a mistake,” she begged. “Please, Jackson, I’ll sort this out in the morning. Someone must have made a mistake.”

He finally looked up and studied her face. His brown eyes bored deep into hers as though he saw straight through her, reading every single thing etched on her mind.

Why now? She had been so close, so damned close.

“Don’t lie to me, you little bitch.” He spat the words in her face.

She backed away, her lower back hitting the metal of the sink. “Please, Jackson, please…” she whimpered, cowering against the onslaught of blows sure to follow.

I can’t do this again! I can’t let him do this again
…

“I’ll teach you,” he stepped toward her. “I’ll teach you what happens to bitches that lie to me in my own home.”

As if someone flicked a switch in her head, all of the fear turned to anger. She wasn’t going to let him frighten her any more.

“I’m leaving you!” she screamed. “I’m leaving, you son of a bitch!”

Her words stopped him for a moment, made him stand up straight, astonished. Then a smile spread across his face and he started to laugh, a full bodied, belly-ache laugh, doubling him over and leaving him red in the face.

The fire burned inside of her, an anger so strong she could barely see. That the idea of her leaving him was so ludicrous made her furious.

Jackson managed to get a hold of himself. He stood up straight, a smile fixed on his face, though it didn’t reach his cold eyes.

“You stupid, fucking bitch,” he said, shaking his head. “You could never leave me. You
will
never leave me.”

Blind with anger, panic and fear, she squashed herself up against the sink. She reached back, scrabbling around in the metal bowl, trying to find something to protect herself.

Her fingers closed around cold metal and she threw herself forward, screaming, her mind blank. She wanted everything, all the pain and torment and fear, to
stop!
She lunged at him, swiping with the hand holding the metal object.

There was a strange sinking sensation and a resistance against her arm. Then the resistance was gone and Jackson fell to his knees, clutching at his throat. Blood spurted
everywhere.

What was happening? What the hell happened?

She’d never seen so much blood; it covered her arms, splashed across her chest, but Jackson was worse. Blood spilled down his chest like an apron.

Her mind detached itself, as if she watched everything from someone else’s point of view.

Oh God, what have I done?

Jackson reached out toward her, his bloodied hands grasping for her throat. Paralyzed with shock she stared, waiting to be strangled. He only managed to hook his fingers around her silver ‘S’ chain, eyes looking up at her with a mixture of confusion and fear.

Then the paralysis broke and she gave a little shriek of fear and leapt away. Her chain broke in his hold and he looked at it dumbly, hanging off his fingers, as though not understanding where the jewelry had come from.

Slowly, Jackson slumped to the floor, the knife sticking out of his throat. Not thinking, she reached out and pulled the blade from his skin with a deep sucking, slurping movement. Jackson’s eyes went blank.

Serenity dropped to her knees and screamed.

Around her, the air moved
, but Serenity didn’t notice. In the next moment, Sebastian stood beside her.

He stared in shock at the scene before him.

Serenity’s husband lay dead on the floor. His glasses skewed half off his face, blood smeared across the glass. More blood pulsed weakly from a gaping hole in his throat. The sight of the blood stirred the dark part Sebastian tried to keep hidden and he clamped down on the instinct, not wanting to lose control.

Blood slicked the kitchen floor and Serenity knelt in the middle. As Sebastian watched, the knife she held dropped loosely from her fingers, hitting the floor with a clatter.

Blood covered most of her torso; all down her arms, all over her clothes.

As though she had only just seen the blood, she held her hands out in front of her and let loose an ear piercing shriek of madness.

“Serenity?” he said, gently touching her arm.

She jumped at the contact and twisted around to face him. Her eyes focused on him, but no recognition lit in their dark depths. She blinked twice and then took a short gasp of breath before bursting into tears.

Serenity threw herself into his arms, clinging to him in desperation.

“What have I done?” she cried. “Oh, God, what have I done?”

“Shush,” he soothed her. “It’ll be all right.”

“He wouldn’t let me leave. He wouldn’t let me go.”

Sebastian gathered her up in his arms and she clung to his neck like a child being carried to bed. She buried her face against his skin, hiding from the horror spread out on the floor beneath them.

Serenity shook violently, her eyes glassy with shock.

“What have I done?” she asked again. “Oh, God. What have I done?”

As though she were no heavier than a doll, he carried her up to the bathroom. Reaching into the tub, he turned on the showerhead and waited for the water to run hot. Shifting her from one arm to the other, he removed her bloodied sweater and jeans.

Sebastian shrugged off his own overcoat and boots, pulling them off with his free hand. He stepped into the shower, fully clothed, with Serenity in his arms. Hot water rushed over them, taking with it the blood and tears, the guilt and shame.

She clung to him like a child.

When the water ran clear, he stepped out of the shower and wrapped her in a large cream towel. Her dark hair was plastered to her face, her skin ashen white.

As he carried her to the bedroom, Serenity lay limp and unresponsive in his arms. Carefully, he laid her down on the double bed and she curled up in the fetal position, crying silently. Tears poured down her face, soaking the pillow beneath her head.

From the midst of the shock, the sensible part of her somehow broke through. “I need to call the police,” she said. “I need to tell them what I did.”

“Okay,” he whispered, but turmoil halted his actions. It would be her word against the law, a battle rarely won.

The silent tears suddenly turned to loud, wretched sobs, and she turned away, burying her face in the pillow.

“I don’t want to go to prison,” she managed, her voice muffled. “Not for him. Not for that son-of-a-bitch.”

“You won’t,” he said, unsure if he believed his own words. “The police will see what he was doing to you. A half-decent lawyer will easily mount a defense.”

“What proof would they have?” she asked through her tears.

“There must be hospital or doctor’s records?”

She laughed, an empty sound. “He was too clever for that. He never did enough to get me admitted. He hit me just enough to cause pain without me needing to get medical attention.”