Love Is The Beginning (Valerie Dearborn) Read online

  Some time passed. It really couldn't have been that long because all she did was call an ambulance, but it seemed like a very long time that he held his hands pressed against the warm, wet wound. His hands felt cold and numb, but the blood that soaked his palms was dense and hot. He didn't speak to the man or even look at him, instead looking at the ugly wood paneling on the wall, studying the knots and grooves until they twisted into faces.

  The girl pushed him forcefully out of the way. She was carrying a bag of blood which she held carefully in shaking hands. She put the bag on the ground, and Jack found himself watching her movements dispassionately. It wouldn't help his parents, he thought. Nothing could be done to help his parents. He looked back to the girl as she took the man's arm and pushed up his sleeve, talking in a low voice as she inserted a needle into his arm with deliberate movements.

  She watched the blood go down the tube, saw it enter her father's body. She seemed to deflate suddenly, knowing she couldn't do anything else for her father right now but wait for help. Her eyes were vacant, and she trembled. Her dark eyes reminded him of the knots in the wood paneling.

  They waited in silence.

  The paramedics came and took the man to the hospital. The girl trailed behind them like a shadow. The police arrived and opened the doors to all the rooms, but all the guests were gone, escaped somehow. There were five dead bodies, Ella included, her arms crossed in repose. Jack remembered that only five meals had been ordered. Were they really vampires?

  He heard the policemen whispering and looking at him pityingly. He felt a burst of rage and shame. Rage at being so useless and weak. That woman had carried him around like he was no heavier than a baby. His whole family had been slaughtered because of him. The man, Nate, had told him to wait downstairs, and he'd screwed it up.

  When his father had walked out the door, Jack could have stopped him. If only he’d been able to think just a little bit faster, he could have kept his dad there, and they both would still be alive. Why had he been so stupid and reckless?

  He punched the floor, overcome with rage, surprised when he felt the hard wood impact his knuckles. A wave of pain exploded in his hand, and he did it again, punching the ground, the pain in his body a distraction from the pain of his grief. He’d been useless. Even that girl had been better prepared than him. And she was a girl!

  Marion had destroyed his life with careless ease, and he thought that even now, only a few hours later, if he tracked her down and showed her pictures of his family that she'd just killed; she wouldn't even recognize them.

  Where did Ella fit into things? Food. She’d been a meal, and when she’d caused trouble, Marion had discarded her, ready to move on. To him.

  His whole body began to shake, as the reality of living in a world of vampires sunk in. Bile rose in his throat just thinking about how disgusting they were, something like that touching him. Saliva filled his mouth, and he thought he might throw up. Jack looked around for somewhere to be sick and took a few deep breaths, hoping to keep the nausea at bay.

  His thoughts were interrupted as someone came and led Jack out of the room where his father and Ella had died, taking him to the apartment at the back of the hotel that he'd grown up in. Someone put him on a couch, and it could have been someone else who brought him food—he didn't care enough to see who these people were. Why were they trying to feed him? He'd just watched people be butchered—the last thing he wanted was food.

  Jack looked to the door repeatedly, fantasizing that his parents would walk in. Grief smothering him, he got up and went to their bedroom. The bed was covered with pillows and the quilt his grandmother had made. He lay down and thought of them, waiting for sleep to claim him.

  When he awoke, it was the middle of the night. He went to the living room where one of his mother's friends was asleep on the couch. Out of morbid curiosity, he left the apartment and went upstairs. All the lights were on, and he could hear someone in one of the rooms opening drawers. He walked towards the sound, uncaring about the danger. What did it matter if one of them was back? He deserved to be dead after what he’d done to his parents.

  Nate’s daughter, the girl with the gun and sad eyes, was back, staring into a wardrobe laden with clothes.

  “It's you,” he said. Surprisingly, more words came to him, so he kept talking, his grief making his tongue feel thick in his mouth. “How is your father?”

  The girl turned and looked at him over her shoulder. Her gaze wandering over him in a rather distant way, like he was a statue instead of a person. “He's all right. He's going to live.” She looked down, the words quiet, as though she felt so sad that her father was alive when his were gone that she couldn't meet his gaze. She looked back at him earnestly.

  “I’m Val. I want to tell you...I'm really sorry about your parents. My mom was killed by a vampire too. When I was five.”

  Maybe it was because he didn't know her, so it didn't matter what he said, but he found himself confessing, “It's my fault. Your father told me to stay away, and I sent them upstairs.”

  She'd been holding a red sequined cocktail dress in her hands, but she threw it aside and strode over to him, her face angry. “No, it's not your fault. You can't do that to yourself. It was Marion who killed them.”

  She was an idiot.

  “You don't understand,” he said. “I made a stupid decision. If I had done nothing, they'd still be alive.”

  “How old are you?” Her dark brown eyes were looking him over, trying to guess.

  “Thirteen.”

  She sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping in resignation. “Well, if I had been smarter maybe my mother would be alive too. I froze like a moron, just waiting to be next. Like the worst freebie line ever.” She lifted her chin and turned away, walking back to the closet. She started rummaging through pockets.

  “You were five! You couldn't do anything to protect her at five!” His voice was loud and indignant.

  Val turned back and looked at him, her eyes slitted like a cat. Scheming eyes, he thought. “Why couldn't I have protected her?”

  “You were not strong enough or old enough, experienced enough—”

  “Oh puh-lease.” She gestured at him, as though at a loss for words. “You're Italian for crying out loud! What the heck were you gonna do?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  She spoke slowly, carefully, so that he would understand. “You had a happy family. Muy bueno, you know? Bad things didn't happen to you. What were you going to do, wander around with a stake just in case monsters were real?”

  He was done with this conversation. “Why are you here?”

  She turned away from him, her head disappearing into the closet to get a better look. Her hair was a rich dark brown, heavy and fairly straight. She wore it in a ponytail, and she looked like she'd been crying—her face a bit red and splotchy. But even though she was upset, there was a positivity to her that was almost tangible. As if things couldn't get her down for long. He wasn't sure this small interaction was enough to justify his opinion of her, but there was something about her that made him feel...better. Like the grief was still on him and in him, but not crushing him.

  “How old are you?”

  She looked at him with a wincing smile. “Ten.”

  “Ten! You seem older.”

  “Death will do that to you. You look a hundred.”

  That made him angry. He thought about going back downstairs, but the only thing worse than being insulted right now, would be going back to his empty apartment.

  “How did your father survive?”

  The girl left the closet and went into the little bathroom that was attached, her voice raised to carry the distance. “I don't know. It's a stupid thing to do, trying to hunt vampires. If we didn’t have the blood, he'd be dead I think.” Her voice wobbled a little.

  “You can carry blood around?”

  “Not for long! But long enough to come here and investigate. If you store it right.
My dad didn't think anything would happen, but you either pack for bear or you’re dead. More hunters were supposed to be coming into town today, and they were going to go after them tomorrow. It's not safe to go after vampires without help.”

  Anger made him breathless. “He knew vampires were staying in the hotel? Why didn't he warn us?”

  She raised her hands in mock surrender, “Hey, I just work here—unhappily, I might add— and I don't know why he did or didn't do what he did....Was that a sentence? Okay, I'm done here. Moving on.” She pushed past him, leaving him in angry silence.

  Jack trailed after her. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you with your father?”

  She snorted like he’d made a joke. “He sent me here to search through stuff, see if I could find anything useful for a change. All the heavy hitters were here. Anyway, vampires aren’t powerful enough to transport anything else besides themselves and what is on them, like, you know, clothes. Maybe a few papers too. If they are really powerful, maybe a purse or something.” She threw him a smile as if that were a joke. Maybe it was, Americans were always trying to make jokes.

  Jack thought about how Marion had seemed willing to take him with her. “Could they carry a person?” he asked as they searched the next room.

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of, but there is a lot we don't know.”

  He was confused. “But there are movies and books and stuff.”

  “That's Hollywood and make-believe. They'd only know one if it bit them on the ass. Or maybe not, it's hard to see your own ass.” She smirked at her own joke, then was instantly serious again. “It'd be good to know where they’ll go next.”

  “So you can hunt them?” Jack stooped down to look under the bed.

  “I already looked there. You can check under the mattress though and behind the pictures maybe. My dad hunts them.”

  “And you too?” Even after what he'd seen, he found this surprising.

  She sighed. “No, I do not, and I don't want to. I'm just here because school is out, and camp doesn't start for two weeks. This is like, you know, bonding time,” she said it in a surly tone.

  “Where do you go to school?” he asked.

  She whistled in disbelief. “After all the crap I just told you, your question is 'Where do I go to school?' Hello, shell-shock! In America. California. Maybe you've heard of it. Big place. Hot. Lots of roads.” She sighed again. “Okay, there’s nothing here.”

  “You're leaving?” His voice held a thread of panic. Even if she was a pain in the ass, he didn't want to be alone.

  “No, I still have a few more rooms.” She walked past him and down the hall into Ella's room—the room that his papa had died in. He heard the buzzing again in his ears, and she put a hand on his arm, looking at him worriedly. “Oh yeah. You know what? You shouldn't come with me. You should stay here. Maybe even go back downstairs. I always save the ones with blood and stuff for last. It just lingers too long. I want to be out as soon as possible after going into the rooms with… I'm really sorry about your mom and dad,” she said again.

  Ella was gone, his dad was gone. He knew that, but he still felt a terrible fear that he might see them again if he went in there. The sheets on the bed were a mess, rumpled from taking Ella away. There was no blood, which was a shock. And then he saw a tiny drop on the pillow. His gaze fixated there. The girl opened the drawers, taking out all the clothes and throwing them on the bed. Lots of dresses, tights, and pretty sweaters. “This is a great wardrobe. Marion always buys them cute clothes. She's like Mother Dearest but evil with a capital ‘E’. I think the real Mother Dearest was more of a lowercase kind of lady.”

  How could she be so flip? “This was a girl's life. That... woman killed her. Fed from her for who knows how long. What about her family?”

  “Oddly, Marion always takes orphans. Maybe because they’re not as traceable, I don't know. I bet those kids think they’ve hit the jackpot. At least at first. She gives them a better life, buys them pretty things, and pays attention to them. She feeds them, and they travel the world with her. But they also have a time limit. She likes them young. This one was what, twelve or something? Once they’re teenagers, it's over, if you know what I mean. They just turn up dead. I guess teenagers really are a pain in the ass.”

  “Stop!” Jack planted himself in front of her, desperately wanting her to admit that things were awful, not the routine exercise she seemed to think this was. “Her name was Ella. This isn’t a joke.”

  She moved away from him, her eyes spitting fire. “No shit, Sherlock. Don’t you watch TV? You have to make jokes. You Italians.” She rolled her eyes. “You probably don't even have police shows. Not enough nudity.” The whole time she'd been speaking she'd gone through the room, touching everything in an impersonal manner. She took nothing with her when she walked out the door and down the hall. He followed her.

  “Crap, I forgot this one,” she said and ducked into the room across the hall.

  Jack remembered taking food to this room, it was the one with the tall, handsome man with blond hair. She opened drawers and pulled out more clothing.

  “Another female. Wow, look at the size of these diamonds!” She'd pulled out a jewelry box from the top drawer then walked to the mirror, moving her hair back from her ears so she could hold them up to herself. “These are some nice things. Must have been Lucas or Dmitri who was here.”

  “What? Who’s that?”

  “Well, Lucas is like the head-honcho, and Dmitri is a total womanizer. All these designer clothes and shoes—this is like, a fortune in clothes. Sometimes I'd kill to take all this stuff to a consignment store. The clothes I mean, obviously we take the expensive jewelry.”

  Jack stared at her dumbly. He didn't know. Was it obvious to take stuff from a dead person's room?

  She kept talking. “Lucas keeps them for a while, and then that's it. Usually, he lets them go, but they never know anything. Their minds are always wiped clean. He's a real catch,” she said sarcastically.

  “Dmitri's just this Greek guy. He's a vampire and is rich and has his women, but at least he's killable. It’s just a matter of time,” she said it wearily. This girl was ten? She acted more like she was thirty.

  “How long have you been doing this?” Jack asked.

  She stood up from looking under the bed. Her shoulders went back, and she picked up the jewelry box again. “Not long. Usually I'm in school, but my dad talks about his work, or other hunters come over to the house, and I hear it. Sometimes we get stuff in the mail. Pictures, descriptions, that kind of thing.” She stopped, and he knew she was getting ready to leave.

  “Okay, well that's it. I'm going to the hospital now. I'm sure my dad will come back before we go. He'll want to talk to you, ask you questions, write your story down probably.” She came closer to him. “I'm really, really sorry about your parents.” She put her arms around him and hugged him like he was porcelain.

  Jack didn't pull away from her or encourage her, just let her hug him. What did it matter, anyway?

  The next week passed in a blur. He didn't have much family, so his uncle, a confirmed bachelor, came to stay with him at the closed hotel. Uncle Vito slept on the couch. Neither of them went into his parent’s room. Jack didn't want to leave the hotel, but staying was awful too. His childhood home had changed. It was no longer a place of safety and familiarity, but a prison that reminded him of the crime he'd committed against his parents.

  How could he stay here? Be in this little town and walk by the hotel every day? He wanted to leave. He wanted revenge. And he didn't want to be afraid. He often thought of that girl and how unafraid she'd been. What had made her like that? How could he become like her? Was it something her father taught her?

  And then, on the eleventh day, he heard the door close in the lobby. He peeked out, frightened of who it might be. Vampires would kill him. Or people he knew would try to console him. Both were bad.

  Nate was looking around the lobby. He seemed fine
. “Jack. I hear you met my daughter, Valerie.”

  Jack studied Nate, inspected him like he might still see blood pouring out of his body if he looked hard enough. He'd wondered if the man would come back. If it would be painful to see him again. But somehow it was better. This man had tried. He'd almost lost his life trying to help Jack's parents.

  “I wanted to tell you that I am sorry. Sorry that I failed you, Jack.” Nate’s voice was gruff, his flat American accent easy to understand. “The plan was to wait. I had some back up, and they were supposed to arrive and help, but things got out of hand, and the confrontation was sooner than it should have been. No one stood a chance. You're lucky you survived. That's what your parents would have wanted. You know that, right Jack? That all a parent wants for their child is for them to go on and live a useful and happy life? It seems impossible now, but when you start enjoying things again, living again, embrace that. Because that's what they would want for you. You can't feel guilty about living.”

  Jack made no response. The man waited, looked around the lobby for a while, his posture indicating he was in no particular hurry. Jack examined the man. He was about six feet tall and had graying hair that had originally been a light brown. He was pale, and life had weathered his skin and features. He didn't have laugh lines like Jack's father had, or a sense of calmness like Jack’s mother. This man seemed tired, but determined. Like a soldier.

  Finally, Jack found something to say. “She said you hunt them.”

  The man nodded. “Yes, I do. It takes a lot of planning because they are powerful, smart, and much stronger than we are. It's hard work and it’s dangerous.” Nate’s keen gaze was watching Jack.

  “You take your daughter with you. Isn't that dangerous?” Jack saw a flash of some strong emotion cross the man's face.

  “Yeah, I do take her sometimes. But it's because she needs to be prepared. I hunt them—that's not a secret. She needs to learn to be vigilant and how to defend herself for when I'm not around.”

  Jack wondered what his life would have been like if he'd been prepared.