Damon (34 page)

“You were at your granddad’s house in Nashville? Not the mountains?”

He looked up again, struggling to remember. “I don’t know. I think…. I know I was there. I know Dad was there. But I get lost. Flashes here and there – Dad, the dead body, my car, the hidden village - and then nothing but endless swirls of terrible dreams. And then we were in Corky’s bed. I’m only awake when I’m with you.”

Dear god, I thought when I noticed him shaking all over. He was losing time again. Soon, he might not remember me at all.

My mind jerked back to his father lying dead on the floor, police standing all around, the stench of blood and smoke in the air. That would be Damon one day. One day soon. Not a year from now. He might not even make it through the summer.

Unless I did something. Fast.

I left the table and went to find Mrs. Jarvis. She was the only chance we had. The only person with answers. Our last, best hope.

She was sitting on the foot of her bed staring down at a picture when I lightly knocked on the doorframe. She looked at me but didn’t move, so I timidly stepped into her bedroom. I’d never been in this room before and it seemed foreign and strange and smelled like rose potpourri. The entire room was decorated in pink and green flower prints. The bedspread, the curtains, the wallpaper, even the armchair by the window. The carpet was hot pink and the ceiling was pale pink. It made me a little dizzy.

I sat beside her and looked at the black and white picture, even though I hadn’t been invited. She was holding her wedding picture. She looked very young, maybe nineteen or twenty, and very happy standing next to a handsome young man. They were both dressed up and she had flowers in her hair. Despite the photo being black and white, I could tell he’d had pale blue eyes and blond hair. Verna’s hair seemed to be very dark in contrast to the blond hair she wore now. I wondered if she’d changed it to remind her of her husband, but I didn’t have time for chitchat.

“You still see him?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” she said, still staring at the picture. “I could never tell anybody. I can’t imagine what they’d think of me. But I see him. He’s still young, like he is here. Not old, like me.”

I knew I should probably assure her she wasn’t so old, and still looked great, but I had to focus on my mission. “How often do you see him?”

“Now and again. He watches over me.”

“Does he come here to your house?”

She nodded. “I usually see him at night. In this room, watching me. But when I speak to him, he turns and leaves. And then he’s gone again, for a while.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Last night.”

I worried that maybe she only dreamed seeing her late husband, missing him so much she brought him back to life in her imagination. I also worried she’d seen Damon, creeping about her house looking for clues. I had no doubt he’d been in her house at least once.

“All this strangeness….” She shook her head and set the picture down beside her, face down. “I’m so tired of it.”

“I know.” I was tired of the strangeness, too.

She glanced at me, tearing up again. “I fear it’s all in our minds. I was scratched that day. We were all injured to some extent. Only Harry and Carol Ann were bitten, but we all came out bleeding. Do you suppose it’s all in our minds? Do you suppose we imagined it all? Do you suppose we burned down our homes and abandoned our families for nothing?”

I wasn’t sure what she was asking me, exactly. She thought she was crazy, and was imagining fighting a beast in a cave fifty years ago - because she’d been scratched by a beast in a cave?

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” I assured her. “I don’t think Chester and Bella are crazy. Gram wasn’t crazy. I’ve lived with Mama my whole life. I know crazy.”

She smiled slightly and patted my knee. “I’m sorry, but I need to lie down now. I’m tired.”

She stood, taking the picture with her to store in her nightstand drawer. I needed more information, but I couldn’t think which questions to ask.

When she noticed me still there, she frowned and turned back the covers on her bed. “Go ahead and stay here till it’s time to take Davy to the clinic. Make yourselves to home, hon.”

I nodded and turned to leave. It broke my heart to see her that way, grieving her lost love all these years. I was beginning to realize everyone had secrets.

Damon was still at the table when I returned to the kitchen.

“I’ll run home and get our things,” I told him.

He sat turned in his chair, and only glanced at me. I almost turned away, then noticed he was distracted, focused on something beyond my line of sight. He was stiff and his eyes were wide.

Slowly, I stepped into the kitchen, looking all around, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I focused on Damon. “What’s wrong?”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“What doesn’t?”

“We’re the children of powerful, supernatural creatures and his body just crumbled when they shot him.”

I stepped closer, wondering if I’d somehow missed him at Corky’s, with the room full of police. “You saw it?”

He shook his head slowly. “I heard it. In my mind. He screamed and then all went silent. I don’t understand death. What is it?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to talk about death while it was still close enough to hear us. I began gathering up dishes. I knew I’d probably never see Verna again after this day and didn’t want to leave her with a lot of work after we were gone.

Damon let out a growl. “I don’t like this. I can’t control my mind. I can’t control this strange world. My head hurts. I should be all-powerful, but I’m weak. It doesn’t seem… normal.”

I started filling the sink with soapy water. “I know. We should have superpowers, right?”

“Yes! We should. What’s the point of having this blood in us if it doesn’t make us powerful?”

“I don’t know, but that’s a good question. We should get something out of it.”

“No, we did. We got each other. Forever.”

I went to see to him. “Yeah. We did. We got each other. That’s way better than superpowers.”

He pulled me down to his lap. “Say forever.”

“Forever, Damon. Don’t worry about that.”

I went back to work, wanting to finish with the chores so I could get Damon to the clinic. “Tell me about our cabin in the woods. We’ll have a creek of our very own? I always wanted to live by a creek.”

“Definitely a creek,” he said. “A gentle, rolling stream. And the mountains behind us. Green trees, colorful birds, and whitetail deer. Wild strawberries grow in the woods behind the house. The cabin sits up on stilts overlooking the valley. There’s a long, wide porch in front where we’ll sit and watch the sunsets. Just you and me, living in paradise.”

“Wow.” That did sound nice.

He grinned at me, and then turned dreamy eyes back toward the ceiling. “We’ll be there soon, I promise. When I was in the cave, I found a secret tunnel that leads into another world. Into our home world. Like a portal or gateway.”

I kept washing dishes but glanced at him. “You did?”

“Our world is just on the other side, not on another planet. It’s in another dimension. A parallel dimension. Or, maybe an alternate reality. This world, but not. Exactly the same but different.” He let out a sigh. “Home.”

“Wow.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment, and then opened them slowly. “No,” he said, “that’s not right. What I mean is, in Granddad’s book, Damien finds the portal. Damien needs to go home because he’s going insane here on this planet. Maggie’s afraid and won’t step across the threshold with him, so he has to make the hardest decision of his life, whether to go to his home world, or stay with her.”

“There was a Maggie in the book?” I asked, a little excited by the coincidence.

“No, her name was… Sarah, or something. I don’t know why I said that.”

Strangely, I was disappointed. Though I was glad he hadn’t chosen me simply because my name was Maggie. “So did he stay or go home?”

“He went home. He had to. He couldn’t stay here. This dimension was making him sick. He had to stand there and watch her disappear in the haze.”

“God, Damon, that’s terrible.”

He grinned at me. “I’d pick you.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d be just like Damien, so obsessed you couldn’t resist.”

“I’d grab you and drag you through with me,” he said.

I couldn’t help but grin. “That sounds closer to the truth.”

“But you’d go through with me so I wouldn’t have to,” he said. “You’re not like Sarah. She was only human. You’re one of us. She was always afraid. Magic Maggie’s never afraid.”

I felt afraid most of the time but didn’t want to contradict him. “I’m an alien vampire?”

“Not alien. In our reality, vampires exist. That must be how the legend began, centuries ago. One of our kind, a vampire, came through a portal to this dimension and humans saw him. We’re vampires, you and I. Damien was an adventurer. An explorer. They sent him through the portal to explore other worlds. One of the brave few. Others before him went through the portal and never returned. But, Damien knew he could complete his mission. He was in the military. He trained his whole life for this mission.”

I checked his eyes and saw he still believed the story of the alien vampires. Even after he’d seen the destruction such a story had caused his father. Damon wasn’t lying. He believed the stories just as strongly.

I realized he might never let go of that belief. Elliot must have been an amazing storyteller, I decided. I couldn’t wait to read his book, and finally get inside Damon’s head.

“Hey,” Damon growled, “just believe me.”

I looked at him and nodded, startled by his sudden anger. Of course, we weren’t aliens, or from another dimension, but if Damon needed to believe he was in order to feel real, and happy, and separated from a world that had never accepted him, then I could believe with him. I’d never truly felt accepted in my world, either.

And I had to admit, odd things surrounded us. Like Damon’s ability to read my mind sometimes. Of course, I was probably imagining that.

All I knew was that Chester and Bella would never say such bizarre things. They would never say they’d seen a vampire beast in a cave. A beast that transformed into a human. That was crazy. Which meant I was the one making it up. While they were speaking to me, telling me normal, everyday things, I was hearing stories of vampires in caves. I was hearing things that weren’t real. While Verna handed me something normal, like a slice of toast or a jar of jam, I saw red fur in a bag and hand-drawn maps to secret villages. I was losing my mind.

That was the only logical answer.

I was losing my mind. It was happening, just as I’d always known it would, eventually.

Whether Damon was real, I couldn’t say. I wanted him to be. He seemed real. He felt real. And I needed him. So, I decided to keep him. I decided to fight to keep him. Even if doing so meant letting go of my sanity.

And what did it matter now, really? We were leaving and never coming back. We were going where we’d never be able to harm anyone. What would it hurt to try to be happy for once?

“Maggie,” he said. “Look at me. I’m real. We’re real.”

“That’s right,” I said, sending him a smile. “We’re real.”

“Definitely.” He smiled and with a sigh tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. For a little while, he sat lost in his own thoughts. “But he wasn’t supposed to fall in love,” he said. “That was Maggie’s problem. She never really believed Damien. Sarah, I mean. Not Maggie. You’re Maggie.” His eyes drifted off to stare out the window. “Sarah wasn’t real. Not anymore. But Damien was. Damon is real. And Maggie’s real.”

“We’ll be okay,” I told him.

Damon stood, and the room must have taken a spin because he stumbled back, shaking the table as he caught himself.

I rushed over and helped him sit again. “Stay still,” I ordered.

“Oh, god, we have to hurry,” he said, moaning.

“Hurry where? We have to get you to the clinic. You’re hurt.”

“No hospitals. They’ll discover Damon’s secret. They’ll lock him up.”

“It’s not a hospital, it’s a clinic,” I told him firmly. “We’re going there. Like it or not. Then, we’ll go anywhere and do anything you want.”

“It’s this human form,” he said. “I’m weak in human form. I need to resume my vampire form to have strength and powers. We have to get back to the portal before it’s too late. If the portal closes, we’ll never get home.”

We couldn’t do anything until he was healed. I made him stay at the table again while I quickly finished up the kitchen, then I needed to run home, get our things and then bring his car around. “Where did you hide your car?”

My old car was on its last leg and we needed something dependable for the climb into the mountains.

“Yeah. It’s uh….” He pointed in one direction, then another. “I left it behind the old… place. The old… it’s a gray building called a….”

“The Taylors old barn?”

He shrugged.

Across from Corky’s, through a light patch of woods, was the Taylors crumbling old barn. That had to be it. I took a better look at his glazed eyes. He’d taken something, probably diazepam, to combat the stress, and now he was zoning out.

I couldn’t bring myself to scold him. His father, a murderer, had just died.

He caught my wrist as I was about to leave.

His eyes seemed to brighten slightly. “It’s time for us to run away to the mountains. This is the time. Once we’re there, everything will be wonderful. We’ll have our cabin in the woods. We’ll have a future. Everything will be perfect.”

“Yeah, I know, but you have to be able to walk in a straight line.” I was worried about the knot and bruising on his cheek, and the blood swimming on the underside of his eye. We’d get him checked over. My ankle ached from when I’d almost fallen down the stairs, and I thought I might have it looked at while we were there. We needed to be in good health before we headed off to the mountains. Once we were there, we might never return to civilization.

I didn’t have the courage to predict the future.

CHAPTER TWENTY