Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (4 page)

“Don’t,” the girl said again.

The knife slipped out of Peg’s fingers as she
backed away, but she made no effort to go back for it. Instead she
found herself seized by a raw animal panic. As Peg tried to get out
of the corner and back between the furnace and the water heater the
girl held her grip, causing the girl to be dragged out of the
darkness with her. The girl finally let go as Peg squeezed out,
burning her fingers on the water heater but not caring. She tripped
as she came out and fell to the floor but immediately turned around
to face the corner in case the girl came after her. Without Peg to
support her the girl fell forward onto her chest and stayed there.
Peg waited for her to do something but the girl didn’t move. All
she said was, “Help,” again, her voice back to the pathetic and
scared tone of earlier.

If Peg hadn’t stared for just one second more
she was sure she would have gotten back to her feet, run up the
stairs, and immediately called the cops. Everything afterward in
her life completely turned on that moment and she would always be
acutely aware of it, often wondering how things could have been
different just as she had eleven years before. But she hesitated
and stared, and that was all it took to change everything.

Because now, in the girl’s current prone
position, Peg could see her back. The scum and filth were caked
just as heavily there as on the rest of her, but the greater light
from this angle was enough that Peg could see the pale white skin
beneath. Except it wasn’t all white.

Peg held her breath for several seconds. Her
mind wouldn’t accept what it was seeing. Slowly, making sure not to
make any sudden movements that might startle the girl and make her
grab at Peg again, she went forward on hands and knees and reached
through the gap. No longer caring what exactly was the putrid mess
covering the girl, she gently put a hand to the girl’s naked back
and brushed away enough of the crud to get a clear view of what was
underneath.

Butterfly wings. Beautiful blue and purple
wings tattooed on the girl’s back, just as crisp as though they had
been inked on her only a week before.

“Don’t call anyone, Peg,” the girl mumbled.
“You can’t. It’ll find me.”

Peg’s hands quivered uncontrollably as she
reached up to the girl’s head and turned it to face her. The girl
let her, not resisting in the slightest.

“Help,” Zoey Sellnow said. “Please.”

With the promise
that Peg wouldn’t try to call anyone, Zoey finally seemed satisfied
enough to allow Peg to go back upstairs. Peg didn’t even know what
she intended to do upstairs but she had to step away. If she didn’t
get a moment to herself she was certain her mind would completely
break down.

As it happened, Peg didn’t even make it
completely up the stairs. When she got to the last two steps her
legs suddenly began to shake beneath her and she fell to her knees.
She managed to steady herself with the grab rail to keep from
falling back into the basement and leaned forward at least enough
so her face was over the solid hardwood floor outside the door
before she puked. After three solid heaves, what little food she’d
still had in her gut from breakfast finished coming up and she sat
there, half in and half out of the stairwell, her entire body
shaking, her heart pounding, her eyes watering both from vomiting
and the stench, and her mind frozen and blank. She wasn’t quite
sure how long she sat there. She realized after a while that her
eyes weren’t just wet from watering but that she was actively
sobbing. That was fine for now, she figured. Just let it out.
Whatever the fuck was happening to her, she just had to let it go.
That was what her therapist always told her.

Therapy. That was something for her mind to
attach on while it tried to rearrange itself with this new
impossible situation. Therapy hadn’t always helped before. The
first time she’d seen a therapist had been six months after Zoey’s
disappearance, but she’d only gone twice before stopping. The next
time she went it had been court ordered after her suicide attempt
several months later. That time had lasted longer, almost five
months, before she’d stopped. Finally she’d started seeing a new
one shortly after she’d met Tony. By then she had finally felt like
she was ready to heal, that she
had
to heal if she wanted
things out of life such as a family.

The second therapist, the court-ordered one,
had asked her once what she might do or say if Zoey ever came back.
Peg had told her to fuck off because there was no way that was ever
going to happen. The little bit that the investigation had turned
up pointed pretty obviously to the fact that Zoey had been taken,
not that she had run away. No one ever just took a nineteen year
old girl just to have companionship for a while, and it was highly
unlikely that someone involved in human trafficking had suddenly
decided that a place like Sheboygan would be the next hot spot to
find women. No, it was a fact known by all but said by almost no
one that Zoey was dead. Wisconsin had had its share of serial
killers in the past and it didn’t seem impossible that another one
was out there. The police had even told Peg’s family that there
were one or two other open cases in the southern Wisconsin area
that looked superficially similar, but no hard evidence had ever
been found to put them together.

In that typical stubborn therapist way,
though, she hadn’t been willing to take Peg’s fuck-you as a true
answer. And so Peg had been forced to think about it. As much as
she had wanted to just dismiss the question with a sarcastic
answer, she’d found it a question she’d actually needed to
consider. And it hadn’t been one she could forget about even after
the therapy session. There was of course the obvious answer that
everyone would expect from her: she would be happy to have her
sister back. Any other answer and people would think she was a bad
person. But the more she’d considered it the more she realized it
could never be that simple. The circumstances under which Zoey had
vanished led to many people laying at least some blame on Peg, and
that included Peg herself. Zoey wouldn’t have been there that night
if Peg hadn’t gotten her that fake ID, and Peg hadn’t realized her
sister was gone for an unacceptable amount of time. The police
investigation had looked at family and friends as possible suspects
at first, and even Peg hadn’t been completely outside of suspicion
as having some part in the disappearance. Of course she had been
cleared of suspicion rather quickly. She was only included in the
investigation in the first place because a handful of officers on
the Sheboygan police force had some problems with her. Innocent or
not, though, that blame had hung on her and it had shaped her.

In fact, after some thought Peg had needed to
be honest with herself and admit that if Zoey ever came back Peg
might in fact be angry with her. It seemed like an illogical
response, but then Peg hadn’t always been the most logical person
following everything that happened. If everyone was correct and
Zoey was dead or had been kidnapped, then none of this would be her
fault. But if Zoey returned, if she had just walked out of their
lives for whatever reason, then she had permanently destroyed the
lives of everyone who loved her. And that wouldn’t be something Peg
could ever forgive.

Now Zoey was here, but Peg just couldn’t
process it yet. She didn’t feel the anger she had expected or the
happiness, at least not yet. Instead Peg just felt numb, broken.
Her brain refused to work. She couldn’t deal with this yet.

And what about the lock? Or the teeth?

Oh yeah, she
definitely
wasn’t
prepared to deal with that. Those were details she would file away
for later examination. For now all she could manage was figuring
out what to do in the next moment. And then the next. Maybe after
enough time some of the stuff going on in her thought processes
would begin to make sense.

So the first step was to get up from this
awkward position on the stairs. She used the railing to pull
herself back to a standing position, noting but not feeling any
particular emotion about the way her every muscle felt like it was
about to give out on her again at any second.

Once she was semi-steady on her feet she
stayed there for several seconds and began a mental list of
everything she would need to do over the next few minutes. Don’t
worry about emotions, just let them happen later. For now just
focus and get things done.

The pool of vomit in front of her. That was
one. There weren’t a lot of chunks because she hadn’t eaten lunch
yet. She could clean that up easily enough. And there was the smell
to deal with. She wasn’t sure what to do about that, but it was
another thing for the list.

That’s all great
, she thought to
herself,
but when exactly do you plan on dealing with the naked,
babbling, shit-covered girl sitting in your basement? Hmm? How
about her?

She would just have to deal with Zoey in the
same methodical step-by-step manner that she dealt with everything
else here. The first and probably most important question was
whether she would ignore Zoey’s wishes and call the cops, or at
least an ambulance. Saying that Zoey was unwell would be the
understatement of a lifetime. Her ramblings had implied that
somebody was after her, but practically nothing she’s said made any
sense. Given her ordeal, whatever unimaginable horror that had
been, she was probably being paranoid.

Paranoid nothing, you in-denial ass
,
she thought to herself.
Lock. Teeth. This is not a woman who was
off on some hippy commune. Get your fucking head out of the clouds
and pay attention to the details that are right in front of
you.

As much as she worried for her own sanity
when she was having intense arguments with herself in her head, Peg
had to admit that the little nagging voice was absolutely right.
Zoey didn’t appear to be completely in her right mind, but if she
was afraid of something then all the facts, as unbelievable as they
may have been, pointed to her having some very good reasons. Peg
didn’t know how she would try to explain the lock or the teeth to
the police anyway. They wouldn’t believe her on the phone, and when
they got here and saw for themselves…

Peg suddenly remembered that her arm was
throbbing. She looked down at the place where Zoey had grabbed her
to see a very large, very nasty looking bruise forming. If Zoey had
indeed done something to the lock with her bare hands then what she
had done to Peg’s arm was nothing. If the cops came in here and
Zoey suddenly felt threatened there was no telling what she could
do.

Although it bothered her, Peg had to admit
that, at least for now, it was a better idea to do exactly as Zoey
had asked and leave the authorities out of this. That might change
later, but a lot of things might change later. Peg might wake up
later and realize all of this had just been some nightmare she’d
had while napping on the couch and she was late to pick up
Brendan.

That reminded her. Gingerly stepping over her
own puke, Peg went into the kitchen and checked the clock. Almost
two. Somehow in all this she’d lost nearly an hour. That meant she
had less than an hour before she had to leave to pick up Brendan.
Tony wouldn’t be home for a couple hours after that. She had that
much time to take everything that had happened and somehow arrange
it all into something she could work with.

The first thing she did, while it was on her
mind, was phone Brendan’s sitter and ask if she could keep him for
an extra hour. She made up some story about having to go back into
work for some kind of minor resort emergency. It was a good thing
the sitter didn’t ask for any details because Peg wasn’t sure she
would be able to keep a story straight later if she had to. Instead
the sitter just said it would be fine, and Peg hung up. Okay, so
she had an extra hour. Now was time to figure out what to do with
it.

The puke was simple enough to clean up. It
left a bit of a smell on the floor, but honestly with the rest of
the stench coming from Zoey it was barely noticeable. That, then,
would need to be her next task. If she didn’t want anyone asking
any strange questions, then this whole house would need to smell
like a rose by the time anyone else set foot in it.

And this is also the point where you have
to stop hiding behind being domestic
, she thought,
and start
dealing with the fact that your sister is here
.

She didn’t want to deal with it yet. The
shock was still far too fresh. She had no choice, though. It was
time to go back downstairs and face this. One step at a time. She
didn’t have to know what exactly was happening and where this was
all going. Just one task and then another, just like they were
always saying in AA.

She almost went back down the stairs before
she remembered a trick she’d seen in a movie once and went to the
cupboard in the bathroom. Peg scavenged around until she finally
found an old, seldom used tub of Vick Vaporub near the back, then
dabbed her finger in it and smeared some under her nose. Supposedly
that would block out the worst of the smell. When she went back
into the basement she found that it worked to a small degree, but
not nearly enough to keep out the smell entirely. A little was
better than nothing, at least. Hopefully this would keep her from
needing to heave again.

Zoey hadn’t moved from where Peg had left
her. For a second she thought Zoey was dead since she didn’t appear
to be breathing. That idea sent a shiver through her. Peg’s
feelings on this matter might be too complicated to deal with just
yet, but one thing she did know was that she wasn’t prepared to
lose Zoey so soon after finally getting her back. But as Peg came
closer Zoey turned her head to look at her. Their eyes met. Zoey’s
eyes were dark blue, which was vaguely surprising to Peg. She
couldn’t honestly be certain whether her eyes had always been that
color or not. Peg’s own were brown, as were her mother’s and
father’s. With everything Peg had ever thought about her sister in
the last eleven years, she realized she’d never even bothered to
remember such a simple detail.