How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (30 page)

Desty

Once
I could hear the water running in the bathroom, I started searching for something
to write a note on and tried to ignore the voice in my head that kept telling
me what a jerk I was. I liked Colt. Even crazy, he was like the big brother I’d
always wanted—sweet and smart and totally badass with that dry sense of humor.
It didn’t feel right leaving him out here alone, but I needed to go find Tough
and end this joke of a relationship.

I
wasn’t proud of it, but I’d spent the night before crying until I made myself
sick. Part of me didn’t want to break up with Tough, but all of me knew I couldn’t
stay. One fight and I crashed and burned? That was unacceptable. Tempie needed
me and I was not going to let some guy send me into self-destruct mode like Mom
had. This had to end now, before I was locking myself in my room, trying to
down a handful of pills and a bottle of wine.

The
plan was pretty simple—go take Kathan and Tempie up on the joint-familiar
offer. Sure, Kathan was probably evil and he had definitely destroyed Tough’s
family, but if he was hurting Tempie, I couldn’t just leave her alone. Maybe as
her joint-familiar I could help her fight back. Or if Tempie had been telling
the truth about Kathan treating her well, maybe we could get this last battle
thing over with and I could cut some sort of deal with him to release us after
he took over. I hated to make a decision based on maybes, but right now maybes
were all I had.

So
I needed some paper. Colt was having enough trouble keeping straight what was
real and what wasn’t. When he got out of the shower, I didn’t want him worrying
about where I’d gone or if I’d ever really been there.

There
were a few notebooks on the coffee table. I picked up one with a pen hooked in
its metal rings and flipped it open. Each page was divided into obsessively
neat columns. Epithets or maybe code names in the first column, then a date,
another date, the number of days between the two, and the last column looked
like cause of death. An entry near the end—
Southern Guy—
was dated a
little less than two months ago. It and the next four entries all ended with
GSW
.

GSW.
Crime procedurals and mysteries weren’t high on my list of favorite books, but
I’d read a few. GSW was the acronym coroners used for a fatal gunshot wound.

I
flipped through a few pages. If this was a Cause of Death Contest, suicide had
been winning until the GSWs started. And not nice, tame razor-to-the-wrists
suicides. Chewing through arteries, smothering in a laundromat dryer, and
drinking gasoline were a few of the ways these people had chosen to go.

These
people. The words from the castoff family support message boards came back to
me—
U gotta think creatively. NEthing can b a weapon in there hands.

I
looked through the columns again. Castoffs did make the most sense. Except why
Colt would keep a record of cast-off familiars? To measure how long they had
been enthralled before—presumably, because of the short time periods—Mikal had
cast them off? So he could estimate how long he would have?

That
was a pretty big leap to make and it relied on the assumption that Colt had
known he was going to be enthralled, which couldn’t be possible unless he had
asked to be. Willow had said Kathan gave Colt to Mikal as a punishment for
killing her familiars, a sort of poetic justice thing. Of course, if Colt had
known the fallen angels were going to react like that…

I
picked up another notebook, hoping it would shed some light on the first. More
columns—names, monetary amounts, shopping list quantities of guns, swords,
axes, and ammo.

I
know Colt had told me they’d sold some of their arsenal, but I’d been thinking
too small-scale for the Whitneys. “Growing boys need to eat,” not “growing boys
can run their own black market weapons trade.” Their own really successful
black market weapons trade, according to this notebook.

In
the bathroom, the faucet creaked and the shower shut off.

I
threw the notebook down. Then hoped Colt hadn’t heard its pages flutter and
smack on the coffee table.

“Somebody
out there?” Colt yelled from the bathroom.

I
lunged for the coffee table to flip shut the notebook’s cover.

Behind
me, the bathroom door opened. Hoping I didn’t look as guilty as I felt, I stood
up and spun around.

Colt
was pointing a gun at me.

I
slapped both hands over my mouth just in time to cut off the shriek.

“Dammit,
Grace,” Colt barked, lowering the weapon. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I
was—I was—” I took a breath. Tried to stop shaking and make myself look away
from the black metal almost glowing against Colt’s faded blue towel. Another
breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This was not as big a deal
as I was making it. In fact, I should’ve seen the gun coming. Colt sold
weapons—and he was essentially a rebel soldier living inside enemy lines—of
course he’d keep a gun close by, just in case. But I’d almost ended up another
GSW, like the familiars in Colt’s notebook.

My
hand went back to my mouth. I scrubbed my fingers across my lips and tried to
swallow the sudden urge to vomit. I’d just about gotten shot like the familiars
in Colt’s notebook. Kathan had let Mikal enthrall Colt because he’d been
killing her familiars. Carefully, clinically observing and then shooting her
familiars. I’d almost gotten shot by a man who’d already shot five people in
cold blood.

Colt
ran his non-gun-hand through his wet hair.

“I’m
sorry I yelled at you, Grace,” he said. He didn’t sound like a serial killer.
He sounded like a big brother trying not to be mad at his slow younger sister.
“But you can’t just not answer if I—”

“You
shot Mikal’s familiars,” I said.

“Tac-Ops
Tango-51, no suppressor, no cover,” he said, nodding as if it was just now
coming back to him. “Clear shot six hundred fifty yards from the fence to the
parlor Hell Window. She always enthralls them in the parlor.”

“People,
Colt. You killed five people.”

“Almost
six,” he said. “But Mikal was waiting for me when I went for the last one.”

“You
stalked them and shot them. You wrote it down.” My voice was high-pitched and
bordering on hysteric, but he was acting so calm. Like it was no big deal.
“You’re psychotic.”

Colt
was across the floor before I could move. I tried to back over the coffee
table, but he grabbed my throat with one hand and pinned me to the tabletop
like a bug. Droplets of water shook out of his hair and fell on my face.

“You
want me to be sorry?” he growled. “She takes away everything but the worst
things you’ve ever done and the sickest things you’ve ever thought. There’s
nothing good left. And she’s creative enough that the pain never stops—you get
desensitized to one kind of torture and she already has another one ready to
go. You can actually feel your mind breaking down. After a while, you start to
think you’d give anything to make her stop—anything but that. Now guess what
she wants.”

I
choked. All that would come out of my mouth was a whimpering sound.

“But
you can’t just give it to her. She won’t take it. You have to beg her to make
it go away.” Colt jammed the gun into my cheek. “Beg, Grace!”

Time
stopped. Part of my brain stepped back and logged the throbbing cheek. Stinging
eyes. Screaming lungs. It noted the weakness in the pit of my stomach and made
me squeeze my legs together before I wet my pants.
Coward,
it said.

“Beg,”
Colt yelled.

“P-please,
Colt—”

“Beg
her. She’s the only one who will save you.”

“Colt—”
My voice broke. “Mikal, please!”

He
shook his head and dug the gun harder into my cheek.

“After
the first familiar, I threw up. Another time I was shaking so bad I fucked up
the shot, got him in the throat. I was glad she stopped me before I killed the
sixth guy. She locked me in the lunatic’s cell with nothing but pitch blackness
and the guilt while she wore out that last familiar. I thought it was going to
suffocate me.” Colt laughed and the sound raked down the back of my neck. “I
was sorry. Now? If I’d known a year ago who she was going to enthrall, I
would’ve shot them in their houses, in front of their families, while they
rocked newborn babies—anything to keep them from going through that.”

Colt
pulled the gun away from the burning, throbbing spot in my cheek.

“There’s
only one way to get away from her, Grace.” It was like a switch had flipped. He
was that big brother again, pleading with me to understand. “Once she’s in,
there’s no other way to be free.”

That’s
when I started crying—when Colt put the gun to his head.

“I
have to get away,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

His
finger tightened on the trigger.

I
flinched and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself for the shot and spray of
blood, the sudden weight of a dead body falling on me.

“What
the fuck, Sunshine? What in all the holy fucking shit are you doing?”

My
eyes snapped open.

Colt
stumbled backward off the coffee table and away from me.

“Shit!”
His hands were shaking so hard that I had trouble telling what he was doing.
There was a click followed by a ratcheting sound. He threw the gun and the
magazine down in opposite directions. “Grace, I—”

Colt
started to take a step toward me, then dropped to his knees and grabbed his
head.

“Run,
Gracie,” he yelled at the floor. “I got him.”

I
stood up. Hesitated.

Colt
started to get up, but he fell forward onto his hands and knees.

“Haul
ass,” he yelled. “Get out! Go!”

That
time I did. The world slanted under my feet and I couldn’t stop crying, but I
tripped out the door and off the porch, into the dirt and scorched grass
outside the cabin. Before the scrape on my shin even started to bleed, I jumped
up and took off again.

Tough

Sometimes
during the winter, Harper would turn down the heat to save money. Way down,
like to the point it wouldn’t click on until the inside temp dropped to the low
fifties. It’s actually pretty good for a hangover, but not for staying warm
unless you’ve got someone else in bed with you. That’s what I thought was going
on when I started to wake up—Harper had turned down the heat, her and Jax were
keeping each other warm and I was freezing my balls off.

Then
I rubbed my hands across my face and cut my lip open on my shiny new fangs. All
of last night came back, including a high-def replay of the statutory feeding.

I
silent-groaned. Someone needed to shoot Jason Gudehaus in his
temperature-sensitive cock for stealing my voice when I really needed it to
yell “shit.” But if I did yell, Harper might come ask me what was wrong and I
couldn’t imagine “I got some from your little sister last night” going over too
well whether I meant blood or sex or both.

Someone
had thought to pull my window-sheet down so I didn’t catch on fire. Too bad.
That would’ve solved a whole shitload of problems.

I
pushed up onto my elbows and checked the clock. Almost eleven. Sounded like no
one else was in the house. Jax was probably across town doing stuff for the
council and Harper would be out at the lake, lifeguarding. Scout would be in
school, wouldn’t she? That was where jailbait usually hung out on a Thursday
morning.

I
got up and grabbed a towel off the floor. It smelled like Desty. I put it up to
my face and took a deep breath. Thinking there was a good chance I’d lose Desty
kind of made me sick. I had to convince her to stay somehow. I had to protect
her from Kathan, right? That would make a good excuse if I couldn’t come up
with anything else.

Maybe
when Jax got home I could ask him the rules about becoming someone’s protector.
He would help me figure out a way to keep Desty safe.

I
went down the hall to the bathroom, turned the shower on all the way hot and
got in. If I was still a human, I probably would’ve ended up with third-degree
burns the way our water heater runs. As a vamp, though, it felt like getting
microwaved. Heat soaked down through my skin and muscle, not quite to my bones.
I stayed in for a long time, but the hot water ran out before I cooked all the
way through.

When
I got out, I could hear Jax’s game music playing in the living room. I got
dressed and went back to my room for some paper and a pen. That shower heat
faded way too fast.

Jax
was on the couch when I got downstairs—shooting werewolves, it sounded like.

“Hey.”
He sounded surprised to see me, but he didn’t pause his game or anything, just
looked down at his Council cell phone on the coffee table. “I figured you’d
sleep through. Harper said most new vamps sleep all day.”

I
shrugged.

“Maybe
it has something to do with Tiffani making you,” he said, going back to his
game. “She’s a total insomniac. Thus the bakery’s hours.”

That
hadn’t occurred to me before. I sat on the couch beside Jax, trying not to
think about how I wanted to move closer to his body heat. Being undead really
screws with your masculinity.

“Want
to play?” Jax asked. “I’ll switch it to Pack Mode.”

I
shook my head.

“Cool.”
He nodded. Switched guns to an M4 and cleared out a basement full of
werewolves. “So… You’re a vamp.”

I
found an empty page in my notebook and wrote,
Someone was going to kill me
anyway, might as well be me. You got magic.

His
heart sped up and I swear I heard him start sweating harder.

“Yeah,”
he said. He swallowed, but he didn’t look at me. “Yeah. I wanted to make it so
Harper wouldn’t have to work for Logan. I mean, so I could protect her myself.
You know?”

Jax
never stuttered. We’d been best friends since kindergarten and even then he
always knew just what he was going to say before he said it. He was smart—and
not awkward-smart like Desty. Smooth. I always figured that was one of the reasons
Harper liked him so much.

Then
he missed the target on his game and a werewolf mauled his guy.

Where
did

Jax
didn’t even let me finish writing before he paused his game and started
talking. He should’ve waited. I was just going to give him a hard time, ask him
where all his badass motherfucker gaming skills went.

“You
got to understand, man,” Jax said. “When you trade somebody for their magic—not
that backwoods witchcraft shit the council uses, real fucking magic—you have to
give them what they want. And it’s never something small or easy, it’s always
hard. It always hurts somebody.”

His
heart was breaking land speed records now. He reached up and wiped sweat off of
his forehead with his wristband.

“I
know you understand,” he said. “You’re pissed, but you get it. You would’ve
done the same thing if Harper was your girlfriend. She shouldn’t have to be
bleeding for a vamp just so she’s safe. You’d do the same thing for Desty,
wouldn’t you?”

What
the fuck did you do, Jax?
started running through my head in a
loop.

He
jumped up and so did I.

Then
his phone started ringing. Jax lunged for it, but I was closer and faster. The
screen said “Fucktard Calling.” I hit the answer icon.

“I
was in the middle of a goddamn recording session, Carpenter—”

Jason.
Jason Fucking Gudehaus. The phone dropped.

Inside
of me, death metal screamed so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else. Jax had
traded Jason Gudehaus—my voice for his magic. That explained why Jason didn’t
use magic to kick my ass when I tracked him down.

Dammit,
Jax, you’re supposed to be my best fucking friend.

I
took a step toward Jax. He stumbled backwards.

“I
knew once I got everything together so Harper and I could leave, I could get
your voice back. I was going to get it back.”

He
smacked into the door and the screen popped out of its frame.

“But
then you went and killed yourself and there’s no way to change a corpse—not
even with magic— I tried, man, I asked everyone at the Council, but you can’t
change a corpse! I did it for Harper. You loved her, too, you know what it’s
like to not be able to protect the girl you love.”

Harper
was right to tell Desty you can’t be weak in this town. If you do, they’ll fuck
you over—and not just “they” the people who hate you and should want to fuck
you over, “they” the people you trust. The people you fucking love.

Jax
put both hands up and shoved them at me, but whatever the spell was, he messed
it up. It just grazed my shoulder. He ripped the door open and backpedaled.

I
think Jax was trying to get out in the sun so that I couldn’t get to him. Maybe
he thought he could talk me down if he had more time. But all those years he’d
been getting babysat by video games, I was fighting a fucking war. Then when
the war ended, Ryder and Colt were still training me to be a good little holy
soldier. Even over the last five years when the only exercise I got was sex, I
was fucking a nympho vamp six ways from Sunday two- and three-plus times a day.
You bet your ass I was faster than Jax was. With a five minute head start and
zero vamp speed, he still wouldn’t have beat me to the edge of the porch.

I
grabbed his shoulder and chin and wrenched them in opposite directions. Not the
way I’d been taught to break a neck, but the crunch and tear sounded just the
same. Jax dropped, half on the porch, half hanging off in the sunlight. My head
rang like a power chord and a screaming-crowd rush shot through my veins.

“Jax?”
Harper’s voice cut through the kill-high. She was coming down the sidewalk,
running now. Scout was behind her. “Tough, what did you do? Jax, baby?”

His
heart beat one more time, then stopped.

Harper
skidded on her knees in the brown grass next to the porch.

“Tough,
what the hell did you do?” She pulled him into her lap. “Call an ambulance! Get
his phone and call 911!”

Scout
was turning toward the house, but stress kicked in my vamp speed like crazy.
Before she could take a step I was back outside with the phone, dialing.

“Rural
Emergency Services. Which county are you in?”

I
just killed my best friend.
I stared down at his body. Sweat dried on
his face, sticking his hair to his forehead in brownish-blonde spikes. Back
when we were fighting with each other over Harper, I had thought I was dying
from being alone. I’d tried to chalk it all up to wanting her, but most of it
had been missing hanging out with Jax.

“Hello?
Can you hear me? This is Rural Emergency—”

I
shoved the phone at Scout.

“Hello—hi,”
she said. She had to back up and cover the mouthpiece to block out Harper’s
screaming. “We’re in Halo. Six-twelve Lone Jack Street. We need an ambulance—”

It
wouldn’t help. Jax was dead, cooling off. Harper kissed his eyes and mouth and
begged him not to leave her, but it was too late.

Shivers
started rolling through my body like crazy. Jax was dead. I’d killed Jax. I
hunched over and gagged until a little bit of vamp venom came up.

“The
ambulance’s on the way,” Scout told Harper.

“Wait
for it in the street,” Harper said.

“But—”

“Just
fucking do it!”

I
heard Scout go and Harper kick the old porch swing. Wood snapped. I stood up.
Turned around. She had one of the broken one-bys from the swing in her fist. My
vamp speed was still on, but I didn’t move, just watched Harper coming after me
like a slow motion vamp hunter.

I
laced my hands together on the back of my neck, thinking about the way Jax
called me a truck-fuck redneck retard when he was really wound up and how I
gave him shit for being a creep gamer with flames and kanji on his shirts and a
wristband so sweat wouldn’t mess up his grip on the controller.

Harper
tried to stake me, but the one-by was too dull. It hit the bone over my heart
and scraped off, ripped down my chest and stomach, leaving behind splinters. I
saw it, but I couldn’t feel it. When Harper dropped the stake and started
hitting me, I couldn’t feel that, either. There should’ve been pain, but there
was nothing.

Scout
stood out in the road, this sad look on her face like she knew Harper couldn’t
hurt me enough. Harper screamed and hit me and kicked me and prayed and cussed
and screamed some more. I don’t know how long it went on. I just held onto my
neck and watched her try to tear me apart because I killed him. I killed Jax.

When
the ambulance got there, Scout and the paramedics helped Harper into the back
with Jax’s body. Before they closed the doors, I saw Harper lay her head on his
chest. Then they left.

I
was shivering again.

“Come
on,” Scout said. She took my arm and led me inside the house. “Here.” She turned
her head and pulled my face down to her throat. “I know you need something
stronger, but this’ll help for now. Tonight I’ll make it stronger.”

I
drank. The liquor buzz spread out through my head. I felt Scout slip her hand
into my jeans, but I couldn’t get up. I grabbed her wrists and held them behind
her back until she went dead weight on me. My vamp mind tried to react to the
fake collapse, but I shut it off.

Scout
got her feet under her.

“I
need to get to the hospital, baby. Harper’s going to need a ride home and—”

I
pushed her back and fell onto the couch. It was still warm where Jax had been
sitting. His game was waiting for him to come back and beat level ten or
whatever.

“Okay,”
Scout said. “I’ll be back.”

Her
footsteps crossed the porch and Jax’s car started. She pulled out of the
driveway. Idled in the street for a few seconds. Girls’ voices were talking,
but I didn’t try to make any sense out of what they were saying. Then Scout
drove off.

Footsteps
on the porch. The foamy citrus beer smell beat Desty inside.

“Tough?”

There
was a can of that candy-piss Red Hot energy drink Jax was always drinking
sweating on the coffee table next to his new controller. His new wireless
controller. Jax had gotten a wireless controller and I was too stupid to
realize that meant he had a spell to make it work with all the NP-energies in
this town. But he’d been too in love with his games not to get a wireless
controller.

“Scout
told me what happened.” Desty crouched down between my knees and looked into my
eyes. “Tough? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Desty’d
been crying, she was bleeding from a dirty scrape on her shin, and Scout had
just told her that I killed my best friend, but she wanted to know if I was
okay.