Chapter 1
“Hello,” I greeted as the bell over the glass door chimed, signaling a customer had just entered the small building. The thin, familiar man made his way past the customer service desk and registers without so much as a twitch or glance my way. He pushed him black-rimmed glasses up his crooked nose as he loped down an empty aisle.
It was late, well past midnight. I was used to customers having less and less to say as the day went on, but I knew him. He never spoke. He was a regular. And his face had been crudely drawn in a police sketch displayed on the evening news which I had watched just hours before I clocked in for my nightshift. The details of his crime had been left out, but now my gut was shooting warning signs down my spine. Outside of ringing him up for the bloody steaks that Eric, the store butcher, freshly chopped for him each night, he looked so familiar. His slow gait. His pale skin and cold eyes. I had seen it before in others.
I rounded the counter where I usually spent the entirety of my shift and started down the aisles the customer had disappeared between. The butcher shop covered the entirety of the rear of the store. I could hear Eric’s cleaver repeatedly coming down hard against his plastic cutting board. He glanced up from his counter and sent me a small nod toward his left shoulder. I made a left turn and sure enough, the only customer in the store was eyeing a burgundy bottle of wine. I stopped a few feet shy of him and pretended to toy with a few items on the shelf. He didn’t utter a word, but he was aware of my presence, suddenly standing rigidly straight and letting out a deep breath as soon as I had come into view.
“Hey Chris,” I quietly greeted him.
He did not take his eyes off the bottle in his grasp. “Good evening, Lily.”
I walked past him and rounded the end of the aisle. I just needed to get back to my counter and grab my satchel. I had been a touch too curious and absentmindedly left it behind. It had been too long.
The faint sound of boots squeaking behind me made my ears prick. I let out a slow, deep breath in an attempt to keep my composure. I could feel him undressing me with every step I took. Despite the layers I wore to combat the harsh Fall wind, some men somehow always knew how to make a woman feel uncomfortable. It made the bottom of my stomach quiver with uneasiness. There was something else there too, something that made my fingers curl into fists within the pockets of my cardigan. I was angry. I felt disrespected. I could see the wedding ring on his finger. This was not my first rodeo. He knew he was wrong in so many ways, but he did not care. I did.
Without warning, I stopped in my tracks in the middle of the aisle. His boots loudly squeaked against the linoleum as he tried to halt his own gait. He was excited to follow me, and he had just told on himself. I pretended not to notice as I approached a shelf and picked up a small glass jar. I squinted down at the label, pretending to read. I peeked in his direction using the corner of my eye. He typed away on his cell phone, but the cadence of his thumbs did not make enough sense. He was pretending, just like I was. Did he know? I swallowed down a quiet groan that was accompanying the knot in my stomach before turning to face him head-on.
The small jar in my grasp felt ice cold against my fingertips as I grew hyperaware of what I was about to do. I must have had a death wish.
“Excuse me?” I called out as I started to close the distance between us with hesitant steps. “I forgot my glasses, and this print is so tiny.”
He quickly tucked his phone into the back pocket of his paint-stained jeans and his eyes rose to finally look at me. His green gaze shone under the white buzzing lights of the grocery store. An inviting grin crept over his face as he scratched at his salt and pepper hair. I had him right where I wanted him now.
“Is this organic?” I asked before I untwisted the top on the jar and shoved it right into his mouth. His teeth cracked against the container and the broken glass cut into his thin lips. He hissed and squealed then fell onto his hands and knees before scurrying backward away from me. The jar of minced garlic fell away from the new hole burning into his jaw and clattered against the tan linoleum floor before rolling away beneath a cardboard display of potato chips. His once green eyes were now a pale yellow, carrying years of no sleep, warfare and now a bit of surprise.
“Before you even ask, don’t!” I interjected; fists tight by my sides. “I’ve been watching you a while now. I know what you are.”
He growled in response. The wound in his face had stopped bleeding and I could see his body fighting to regenerate new skin in seconds. He was healthier than most I had encountered. I whirled around on the heel of my worn sneakers and bolted for my counter.
“Eric!” I hollered, voice heavy with panic and urgency.
“Heads up!” he bellowed from a few aisles over. I looked to the ceiling just as the lights shut off. The store was engulfed in darkness. I could hear those footsteps gaining behind me. Chris was faster than both of us, but Eric and I had taken the necessary precautions to slow him down. A chiming alarm sounded off through the building as the doors locked and the sprinkler system was triggered. A pained cry erupted out of Chris’s snarled mouth as holy water poured from the sprinklers in the ceiling. Eric’s burly frame came barreling down an aisle and he tackled Chris to the floor just as he began to double over beneath the downpour. The two slid over the slick film coating the floor. Eric straddled him and leaned over to shield Chris from the liquid burning bright red burn marks into his skin.
I made it to the counter, snatched up my black satchel and doubled back to the two. Eric was hovering over Chris, his knuckles bleach white as he pressed his butcher knife to the being’s neck beneath him.
“You alright, kid?” Eric called over his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I panted as I approached. My adrenaline was spent, and a bit of fear was trying to rear its ugly head. I unbuckled my satchel and pulled out a wooden stake. Chris hissed from beneath the blade at his bruising neck.
“You want this the easy way or the hard way?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the alarms and showers of holy water.
“You come following me around while I’m grocery shopping then threaten to kill me? What have I ever done to you?” he snarled.
“Nothing, but it’s not what you’ve done to me. It’s what your kind has done to this town. The senseless killings, the assaults, the destruction? It’s gotta stop,” I explained.
“I’ve done nothing-”
“Cut the crap!” Eric roared. His impatience was growing. “I know your routine. I know the sick games you play. I’ve been hunting your kind for too long. I know what you are. We both do. This ain’t our first rodeo.”
Chris smiled, finally exposing the long fangs protruding from his pink gums.
“Who turned you?” I asked.
“Does it matter? My master’s turned many. It won’t be long before the two of you get sucked in or put down yourselves.”
“Tell me where he is and I’ll put you outta your misery,” I claimed, brandishing the wooden stake in my hand. Eric shot a quick glance at me. A hint of doubt danced in his brown eyes.
“If you don’t, I’ll keep you on this floor til the holy water’s turned you to a pile of bones. I got all night,” the butcher explained. Chris rolled his eyes and weakly squirmed. Eric held fast, not letting either of them move.
“You’ve been all over the news for those killings. What did those girls do to you, huh?”
“I prefer my meals with a little more meat on their bones,” Chris’s eyes scanned up and down Eric’s frame. “But they were easier targets and your steaks just weren’t cutting it anymore.”
“I’ve heard enough,” I crouched beside the two and positioned the sharpened tip of the stake directly over the vampire’s heart. Panic flooded his yellow eyes for a moment.
“Where is your master?”
“You will kill me whether I tell you or not.”
“You’re gotdamn right we will,” Eric warned. Chris smiled up at me and winked.
“Do it.”
My eyes marveled at the white opalescent fangs.
“You heard him, Lily.”
I grit my teeth together and remembered all the loss and grief that had followed once what was in the darkness began to wreak havoc on the town months ago. I remembered all the loss and grief I had felt when the police station called off the search for my sister. I remembered Eric missing work for a week after his brother disappeared not too long afterward. They were out there, somewhere – either a leftover meal or a monster that walked during the nights and slept the days away. I imagined my sister’s brown eyes being replaced with the same dingy yellow eyes the creature beneath us bared. It made me quiver with sadness and rage.
“Lily…” came Eric’s voice again. I drew back my arm and drove the stake into his chest with all my might. A wicked howl filled the store as Chris’s mouth hung open in anguish. Eric reared back the cleaver then swung it down in one swift motion. The sound of flesh giving way beneath his blade my skin crawl. Those yellow eyes unfocused and his body went limp against the floor. I took a step back and turned away as Eric starting to saw through the muscle, tissue, and vertebrae, making sure the job was finished. The butcher knife clattered to the floor and he let out a deep sigh once he was finished. He sat beside the slowly disintegrated corpse and let the holy water pelt onto his head full of graying hair and wide shoulders as he stared.
I extended a hand his way to help him to his feet.
“What happened?” he asked once he stood beside me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I claimed as I slowly started back toward the counter to disable the sprinkler system. Eric huffed.
“You know what I’m talking about. You hesitated. You can’t do that. I trained you better than that,” he explained.
“I just…” I shook my head and sighed. He was right. “I got caught up-”
“In the feel of it all? Right? Like last time?”
My eyes narrowed at him. “Last time was different. Last time, it was one of my friends.”
“Like your sister was one of your friends,” he implied, head cocking to the side as he stayed right on my heels. “And my brother was one of my friends.”
“Are,” I corrected him.
“We don’t know if they’re fertilizer by now or attacking and feeding like the bastard on the floor was doing. And we won’t know if you keep hesitating when I need you to step up. He could have overpowered me when he felt it. Then what would’ve happened?” he scolded. I winced at his words as I pressed a button on my register. The sprinklers puttered to a stop and the fluorescent lights began to noisily flicker back on, one by one.
“I mean it, Lily. There aren’t many hunters in this town. They’re cutting us down, one by one, every damn day. Kid, I trust you… But you gotta shake that edge off,” his voice softened. “We can beat this. It’s getting easier. Remember when it was multiple in one night?”
I looked at the body lying on the floor a few feet away. “The night isn’t over.”
“Exactly,” an excited glimmer took to Eric’s eyes. “That’s why I need your head in the game. For Tommy. For Dana.”
My sister’s face flashed behind my eyes again. I let out a deep breath and nodded.
“I’m sorry. I won’t let you down.”
A pair of headlights shone into the small store as someone’s car pulled into the parking lot. He watched them fiddle with their phone from the driver’s seat of their car just outside the doors.
“That looks like a live one. Alright then,” he surveyed the store. “I’ll start the drainer and grab a few bags. We gotta clean this mess up and restock.”
