Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (15 page)

Peg looked over the back of the building.
Even on closer inspection it still looked like it hadn’t been
disturbed. They hadn’t been able to give the front a very close
look but it didn’t seem likely that they would find anything
different, and the building was surrounded on either side by
businesses that were open. That only left two directions.
Oconomowoc wasn’t large enough that there was likely any kind of
entrance from a sewer or sub-basement, so that only left…

“The roof,” Peg said. “Maybe there’s some
sort of maintenance entrance up there? If the thing that took Brian
is as fast and strong as Zoey then maybe they could jump?”

“That’s great. They can jump but we can’t. So
that still leaves the question of how we…” V sighed and went into
the back of her truck.

“What are you doing?” Peg asked.

“Getting ready to reacquaint myself with some
of the skills of my misspent youth,” V said. She pulled out her
keys and unlocked a metal trunk near the cab. The first thing she
pulled out was a tire iron. She handed it to Peg and then went back
in, this time revealing a shotgun.

“Do I even want to ask why you keep that in
your truck?” Peg asked.

“Hey, you have no idea how idea how often I
need to shoot something on a daily basis.”

V loaded the shotgun and handed it to Peg to
hold as she took the tire iron back and went back to the door. “You
know how to use that thing?” V asked.

“Sort of. I stole my dad’s pistol and shot at
cans in a farmer’s field once. Almost killed one of the cows by
accident.”

“Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.
Just aim it at the door in case anything pops out when I open this.
Remember that it’s going to have a lot more kick to it, so be care
you don’t lose control and shoot me by accident.”

V put the pointed end of the tire iron under
the latch holding the padlock. “You ready?”

“No,” Peg said.

“Too bad,” V said. “Let’s rescue some shit,
huh?”

The rusted metal
snapped after several very hard tugs. Peg held the butt of the
shotgun up to her shoulder, doing her best to mimic the posture of
everybody she’d ever seen use one on TV and being very much aware
that she was probably doing something wrong with it. She wasn’t
even sure what doing it would do for her if whatever took Brendan
had Zoey’s speed. She would probably be dead before she realized
she was supposed to pull the trigger.

V stepped back like she expected the door to
swing open, but it stayed closed. She looked back at Peg and
something in her stance must have worried V. “Maybe I should be the
one to hold that, Peg. Now that the lock’s broken you can open the
door. But let me go in first, okay?”

Peg nodded and handed the shotgun back,
instead taking the tire iron and holding it out in front of her
like a weapon in her right hand. With her left she grasped the door
handle, waited a moment for V to get into position, and then opened
the door.

The door opened outward with a suitable
creak. They both waited for several seconds to see if anything came
out or sounded from inside, but there was nothing. They leaned into
the doorway and peered inside.

Peg had expected it to be pitch black inside
but instead found it surprisingly bright. The interior consisted
mostly of a wide-open empty space, and the light coming in from the
front windows illuminated most of the building. V cautiously
stepped in and Peg followed.

“Careful,” Peg said. “We don’t want anybody
passing by out front to notice us in here.”

“Yeah. I don’t know about this,” V said.
“It’s way too exposed. Doesn’t seem like a very good hiding
place.”

Peg had to admit that it didn’t, but she was
still certain they were on the right track. She tried to reach into
herself and make the sensation from earlier happen again, but she
didn’t feel anything.

She walked further in and carefully surveyed
everything. Peg still couldn’t guess from the interior what had
once been here. Any and all trace had been stripped away. The
carpet had been torn out to expose the bare boards in some places
and concrete in others. The walls were exposed drywall, some of it
with patches of what looked like mold growing on it, and old
electrical cords poked out of the walls where there had once been
light switches and outlets. There was a walled off area in the
corner that looked like it had been an office, but the door was
missing and a quick check inside revealed only a particle board
desk that would probably wimp apart if she touched it. That only
left a door in the other back corner.

“What about that?” Peg asked.

“Wouldn’t hurt to look,” V said. “But I’ve
got to tell you, I really think this place is a dead end.”

Peg looked again at the floor. The concrete
area was near the front, but all the rest was thick, sturdy wood
that only looked unsafe in some areas.

Think for a second
, her inner voice
said.
Why not just use concrete on the entire thing? This
building is old, almost as old as the rest of the city. And a
building like this would have had
…

“A basement,” Peg silently mouthed at V. If
she was right then someone might be directly underneath her at this
very moment listening in on the entire conversation. “Ten bucks
says that door goes into the basement.”

V gave Peg a concerned expression, then
pointed at her ear and then at the floor. Apparently she’d come to
the same conclusion. “Peg, I’m sorry, but I really think this is a
dead end.”

Peg moved as quietly as she possibly could.
The wooden floor looked sturdy and heavy, but she wasn’t sure if
anything beneath them could hear their footsteps through the wood.
“Where else are we even going to go?”

V followed Peg to the door. She pointed to
Peg and then the door before pointing at herself and then the
shotgun. Peg nodded and took a position similar to one she had
outside. There was no reason to assume anything would pop out at
them this time, either, but it was better to be safe.

V talked as she readied the shotgun. “We can
go try that empty house over on…”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her
sentence, nor did Peg even get to grabbing the door handle. The
door slammed open, smacking Peg hard in the arm and throwing her
against the nearest wall. The thing that came out was a blur,
although perhaps not nearly as fast as Zoey. Peg had been unable to
see when Zoey moved, but she could still follow this thing. It
immediately went for V. V all of a sudden seemed sluggish. Despite
the thing’s speed Peg still thought she maybe had enough time to
shoot, but the thing had already batted the shotgun aside by the
time V pulled the trigger, causing it to fire wildly into the
ceiling.

For some reason the thing slowed down even
further, and Peg thought she could finally start to make out its
shape. It was humanoid, at least, with two arms and two legs, but
there was something off about its proportions, especially around
the head. It was wearing something that might have been a black
hoody, but the area hidden under the hood seemed oddly flat.

The thing ripped the shotgun from V’s grip,
and V continued to act like she was moving through syrup. Whatever
it was doing to slow her down, however, didn’t seem to be working
on Peg. Peg pushed herself off of the wall and swung the tire iron
at the creature. Even if it was moving slower she still couldn’t
keep up with it, and the thing managed to dodge mostly out of the
way. The heavy end of the tire iron caught the pocket of the hoody
and got caught for a moment, tearing the cloth and exposing pale,
almost gray, flesh beneath.

At that moment the thing stopped and faced
her, finally giving Peg a clear look. Definitely a human, or at
least it had been at some point. It was a boy, maybe in his late
teens or twenties, and rather tall. He’d probably been handsome
once, but his facial features now seemed wrong, more like the
approximations of a face that someone had made too flat and too
broad. The hood hung over his head in a limp sort of way that
implied maybe his head had been smacked a couple times with a
shovel.

He opened his mouth to speak, exposing the
same mouthful of wicked sharp teeth as Zoey, although something
else in there seemed missing. Peg didn’t have the time to figure
out what it might be.

“Fruit,” the boy said. Such a simple word,
but everything seemed wrong about the sound. It was too harsh, too
raspy, the noise of someone who might have learned to speak from
listening to the voices on a radio station that wasn’t tuned in
properly. Then he ran at her.

Again he seemed to be moving slower, almost
but not quite normal now, and this time when Peg swung the tire
iron the boy couldn’t make it out of the way in time. It hit him in
the arm, harder than Peg would have expected, and she could hear
the audible snap of bones. He didn’t scream or react to the blow in
any way, instead grabbing at the tire iron with his remaining hand.
There was a brief struggle, but the boy’s strength was greater and
he wrenched it out of her hand. He took a swing at her, which to
her surprise Peg dodged. The next one, however, hit her square in
the hip. Pain flared up through her left side and sent her
tumbling. Even as she hit the ground the boy was standing over her,
grabbing her by the front of her shirt and lifting her slightly off
the ground.

“A combination of things will be pleased,” he
said, or at least that was what she thought he said. His voice was
such a harsh slur that it was hard to be sure. Peg might have asked
him what he meant, but she didn’t get the chance. Another shotgun
blast roared and slammed him off her. He flopped off to the side
like a rag doll.

V stood ten feet away, still holding the
shotgun in Peg’s general direction. For several seconds she didn’t
do or say anything. She just stared at Peg. Finally she spoke in
little more than a whisper.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

V didn’t say. She just stood there, never
letting the shotgun lower.

“V? Are you okay? You look like you’re still
whammied.”

“Whammied?”

“You know, whatever he did to slow you
down?”

“Slowed down,” V said, finally letting the
end of the shotgun drop. “Right.”

“Zoey said something about losing control on
the night he took her. Like mind control.”

“Sure,” V said. “Guess that was it.” There
was a really strange look on her face like she was trying to figure
out something in her mind, but Peg didn’t have the time to think
about it. They still had to deal with whatever this guy was.

For the moment they appeared to be safe from
him, but Peg couldn’t guess for how long. V’s shotgun blast had
taken him square in the side and thrown him to the floor several
feet away. He wasn’t moving and certainly appeared dead, but Peg
didn’t believe it. If this guy was a vampire like Zoey then there
was no telling what he might be able to survive. She stood up and
grabbed the tire iron, then slowly approached his body with V
coming up behind her. She kept the pointed end hovering over him as
she bent to get a closer look.

“Peg, we should get moving,” V said. “Maybe
there’s too much shadow in here for someone to see us unless they
were really looking, but there’s no way no one heard the gunshots.
Let’s find them and get the fuck out.”

“No, not yet,” Peg said. She had to get a
closer look at this guy. Not only did she need to be sure he was
dead, but she wanted to understand. If this was the person who had
taken Zoey all those years ago, the person who had permanently
warped both her sister’s and her own life, then she needed to have
more information. He might have some ID on him, or something else
that might give her a clue.

The first thing she noticed was that the
massive wound in his side wasn’t bleeding, or at least not much. V
had gotten him good, but the whole only dripped tiny beads of
thick, dark liquid. It didn’t look like blood, although Peg
couldn’t imagine what else it might be.

But that wasn’t even the strangest thing. As
she looked up to his face the odd proportions of his head appeared
even more off than earlier. His head was slightly turned to the
side, but the hood, still in place, looked oddly deflated. Still
keeping the tire iron ready, Peg reached up with her other hand and
pulled back the hood.

“What the holy flying fuck of God?” V asked
as the both saw what was underneath. “I mean seriously, what the
actual fuck in the ass?”

Peg hoped she didn’t expect an answer,
because she was completely incapable of giving one. Nothing she’d
ever seen or done had prepared her for this. The adrenaline of the
past two days had been keeping her from thinking too hard on
everything, but everything, even the worst most catatonia-inducing
moments, had at least been something her mind could conceive on its
own. Death, kidnapping, beheadings, fucking vampires. All these
were things that her imagination at least had some kind of baseline
for. But this… this…

Major Tom to Ground Control
, the voice
in her head said, oddly more distant than usual,
we have a major
problem here. We are about to lose any and all connection with
reality. Please advise
.

The guy’s head consisted of his face… and
that was it. Beneath the hood there was nothing else, no skin, no
skull, no brain. The neck stopped roughly beneath the area where
the ears should have been. The skin there was torn, gray, and
brittle, flaking off a little when Peg pulled back the hood. At the
front the skin continued to the chin and the rest of the face, but
that too ended around the cheeks and the top of the forehead. Peg
understood now, or at least as much as anyone could reasonably
expect of her, why his face had seemed so out of proportion. The
other side, the part should have been inside his head, still had
some fragments of bone and muscle clinging to it, but most of it
had been removed. The whole thing should have just flopped into a
gory mess on the floor since there was nothing holding it
together.