Читать книгу American Vampire - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 8

Jessa stood, hands still braced on the heavy wooden bench, and wondered if it would be enough to hold a grown man inside. She wasn’t worried about him running away. Actually, she would prefer it. Contrary to the rumors around town that she was a man-hungry spinster, she did have some established criteria when it came to weeding out the bad ones.

This guy was one of the bad ones. That was why she was so worried about him getting out. He wasn’t bad in the hot-guy-who-was-nothing-but-trouble kind of way, though she had plenty of experience with that type. He was bad in the he-was-always-so-quiet-serial-killer kind of way. It was something about his eyes. There was a void there, an absence that had chilled her the moment she’d seen him. She’d almost been willing to take her chances with It, rather than hide in the gas station with him. But she had stayed, and gotten into his car on a desolate stretch of road in the middle of the night, and even let him sleep in her house. History had proven she wasn’t a very good judge of character before, but this example was like a neon sign that flashed YOU DUMMY.

Keeping him close wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. It wasn’t by chance that he was the first person to be able to stop in Penance. Nothing happened by chance anymore. Maybe she was a hard, cynical bitch—no, she was sure she was—but she wasn’t going to trust that he was just a stranded traveler. Having him on her side could be an advantage, or it could be a huge mistake.

She kept one eye on the basement door as she filled the kettle and set it on the stove. The sun would be up soon, and it would be too late to go to bed. Not that she could sleep, anyway, with a stranger in her basement who might or might not be trustworthy.

Then why did you let him stay? She scrubbed her hands over her face, blocking out the kitchen, blocking out the world. Blocking out the knife drawer, the scene of so many failed attempts to escape life, escape Penance, escape everything. Was it that same self-destructive urge that had convinced her to let him in?

It didn’t matter why she had offered up her basement, and it didn’t matter why he was here. What mattered was she had chickens to feed and chores to do.

She had to survive, because, so far, not surviving hadn’t been an option she’d been able to follow through on.

She left the kettle to boil, vaguely aware that it could be used as a weapon if he did sneak out of the basement. That line of thinking was counterproductive. All thinking was counterproductive. Once she thought about one aspect of her situation, she would have to think about all of it. The guy in the basement. The reason he was here. The thing that might have sent him. The town, the past, the future, all of it. The only way she got through the days and nights was by blocking all of it firmly out and pretending something else was happening.

She drifted up the stairs, imagining it was a Friday night, and she tiptoed to avoid waking her parents, who, once upon a time, would have been sleeping behind the closed door to their room. If they found out she’d been running around at all hours, they would tan her hide. There was no way she was going to get grounded this close to the homecoming dance. She went into the bathroom and closed the door, holding her breath when the light clicked on. It was the little sounds that would wake her parents, like the light switch flicking or the creak of the floorboards in front of the sink. She shed her dirty clothes and dropped them into the hamper. Mom did wash on Fridays, so that was why it was nearly empty. Not because Jessa was the only one left.

Downstairs, the teakettle whistled, and she closed her eyes, squeezed them shut tight against the intrusion of reality. She turned off the light and went to her bedroom, not bothering to sneak or avoid the squeaky spot in the hall. Her parents were gone. Jonathan was gone. The only things lying behind those closed doors were empty rooms, shrines to the dead she could hardly bear to look at. Everything she knew and loved had vanished, replaced by a nightmare world that mocked her with its familiarity.

She padded across the white area rug in her room, over the stain where she and Becky had spilled the wine cooler snuck from the fridge in seventh grade. The sky outside the window, what she could see of it through the branches of the tree—the very one that Derek used to climb to get into her room at night—had lightened to the white that preceded the arrival of the sun in the sky. Another fifteen minutes, maybe, and the rooster would start crowing.

She dressed in clean clothes, a tank top and denim shorts, and went downstairs. In the kitchen, she checked the basement door again, then put some dried raspberry leaves in a cup, pouring the steaming water from the kettle over them. Coffee, like everything else that couldn’t be grown or handmade in Penance, had gone from common item to luxury to extinction in the last five years. She had learned to substitute homemade soap for shampoo and live with the results. Coffee … she would kill a stranger with her hands to get a cup of coffee.

The thought of strangers brought her mind right back to the man in the basement. If he hadn’t been such a jerk, he might have actually been attractive. If she went for that slick, well-groomed type, which she didn’t. But she’d always been a sucker for blonds, and his gorgeous blue eyes were the kind a girl could get lost in, if she didn’t know they covered up a whole batch of lies, which they probably did.

He had to go, as soon as possible. If he had been polite—if he’d just been a little less rude—she might have more sympathy toward him. But he hadn’t been, so she didn’t, and she wouldn’t feel bad about kicking him out. She took a sip of the tea, wincing as she scalded her tongue. She was always doing that, always being too impatient, and hurting herself in the process. She finished her tea and headed out to the barn, trying hard to shake the feelings of guilt and responsibility that plagued her. It wasn’t her fault that the guy had stopped at that gas station. It wasn’t as though he’d stopped to help her. He shouldn’t have been able to stop at all.

A light sheen of dew glistened on the lawn, chilling Jessa’s bare feet as she made her away across the grass. There was something satisfying about being up with the sun, or at least there would have been had she actually gone to bed the night before. Lack of sleep aside, the morning seemed as close to normal as it got in Penance. The chickens chased each other through the hard-packed dirt of the farmyard in aggressive anticipation of feeding time. They didn’t know they were locked in a never-ending nightmare, and their ignorance comforted Jessa. She pushed the barn door open, ignoring as best she could the long slashes across the wood. It had come here before, and It liked to leave reminders.

Inside the barn, she checked her feed stores. Damn. She would have to go into town soon. She’d have to go, anyway, to unload her freeloader. But she didn’t have anything to trade, and supplies were running out. She leaned her head against the door, fighting the feelings of hopelessness that washed over her. She usually traded peaches from the orchard, but this year’s crop hadn’t yielded what it had the year before, and she’d lost a batch of preserves when the cans didn’t seal. She’d already traded away the tractor to Jim Wyandot, and he’d melted down the metal to make bullets for black-powder rifles. Without gasoline the farm equipment in town had been pretty much worthless, anyhow.

Gas. She barely thought of the word anymore, after nearly five years without any. They’d tried to ration it, but with It coming so close to the harvest, the majority of it had been sucked down by combines. There hadn’t been a drop of gasoline in Penance in a long, long time…. But there was, now.

Between the time she grabbed the garden hose and a red plastic gas can from the wall, and the time she made it down to the car, she didn’t think about anything but the amount someone, anyone, would pay for a gallon of gas. Once she stood beside the car, though, she thought about the guy in the basement. He’d gotten here. He might be able to leave. He couldn’t do that with an empty gas tank.

Did it matter, though?

She doubted he would send help back, if he could get out. Even if he did, help might not be able to make it back to their town. No one else had been able to so far. They’d figured at first that people just didn’t need to stop, then later feared what would happen if someone did. They’d feared the town would quickly become overrun with lost tourists, and resources would be obliterated. After a few months, they’d stopped worrying about unexpected arrivals and concentrated on getting out themselves. As the buildings started looking pretty rough and the store and gas station were reclaimed by nature, surely someone outside had to have noticed that Penance had become a ghost town—a missing town!—but still, no one had stopped or sent any help. And everyone left behind had stopped wondering long ago what it was that kept people out or in. They were too busy just trying to survive.

She frowned at the car. The night before, she’d thought it was a Corvette. In the light of day, she realized how wrong that first impression was. Maybe it was a Mustang, but it would have to be a custom job. More likely, it was a fancy foreign import, and she wrinkled her nose in distaste. That just proved what kind of a guy he was, driving around in a ridiculously expensive car.

She tossed the gas can and hose on the grass, figuring she probably wouldn’t even know where the gas tank was, anyway. The windows were open, and she leaned inside. The dew had settled over his leather interior. That wasn’t great. His phone wouldn’t be worth much, but he had to have CDs in there somewhere, and maybe even some convenience-store food. She opened the door as quietly as possible and climbed in. A leather jacket lay crumpled on the floor of the passenger side. Who wore leather in the middle of the summer? There was a pack of cigarettes in the pocket; those would fetch a good price. She rummaged beneath the seats and in the glove box, and found the car depressingly devoid of food. No chips, no popcorn, no beef jerky. Not even an empty soda can. The guy was probably a health nut. “Vanity,” she said to no one, clucking her tongue. Sure enough, he was some slick city guy who thought hard work happened in the gym. She climbed out of the car and closed the door, again as quietly as she could, to avoid alerting him to her snoop search.

Jessa finished her chores quickly, though her muscles still ached from her late-night flight from It. When the chickens had been tended and the garden watered, all the tomato plants inspected, when she checked up on the beehives, when she tacked the siding back up from where It had brushed its huge, scaly back against it and knocked it down, she put on her boots and approached the fallow field that surrounded the yard and headed to the woods beyond.

Though It rarely struck the same place twice in a row, a chill left over from the night before crawled up her spine. The woods didn’t seem frightening now, just a bunch of trees and May apples swaying on the shaded ground between them. “Elf Umbrellas,” Mom used to call them. Jessa squeezed her eyes shut tight as she stepped over the tall-grass border and into the trees. There was nothing in the woods. Nothing but her gun, and she needed that. It was the whole point of coming out here, where it wasn’t safe, where she shouldn’t be. What had brought her out here the night before, though.

She opened her eyes and saw the shotgun, gleaming black and simulated wood grain at the base of a tree. The tree itself was wounded, from where her first shot had missed. She never missed twice. She’d struck the creature, but that had only infuriated it.

She ran to the gun and snatched it up, her hands shaking, heart hammering, and looked for the blood trail. Closing her eyes, she remembered the scene the night before. It had been charging her, and she’d fired the first barrel, hitting the tree and exploding wooden shrapnel into the air, leaving behind an angry wheal of white tree flesh. It had kept coming, and she’d fired again, the second shot hitting its center mass, filling the air with a fine, red mist and the stink of burned flesh amid a disgusting sulfur-and-mold smell. It had roared and swatted at its chest, where the scatter shot had peppered its skin with bloody holes. It hadn’t stopped coming for her, but the wound had given her time to run.

No one had ever stopped It. They knew that evasion was the best they could settle for.

When she opened her eyes, she faced the direction she’d fled the night before. A path of ruined trees and uprooted plants showed where It had chased her, and she followed the trail. Blood stained the forest debris on the ground, volumes of it, but It had barely slowed. Its impossible strength hadn’t faded in the least, leaving it capable of destroying an entire building with its bare hands. No, not hands. Claws.

“Jessa? Jessa, where the hell are you?”

She startled at the voice, and nearly dropped the gun. She sprinted toward the field, resisting the ridiculous urge to look behind her as she charged toward the house. The monster wasn’t behind her, wasn’t chasing her to the safety of her own yard. The impetus to run had just called her name. Derek, the one dependable part of her life for the past five years—if she could really call him dependable—wouldn’t have missed the strange sight of a car sitting in her driveway. If he went inside and found the basement door barricaded, he would go down there. And if he found the guy.

No, on second thought, it might not be so bad for the smug prick in the basement to get beat up by her smug, hillbilly prick ex-boyfriend.

Once past the tree line, she slowed, tried to appear unhurried as she caught her breath. The last thing she needed was for Derek to think she would literally run every time he called for her.

“Stop making so much racket. You’ll upset the chickens, and they won’t lay.” She raised her hand to shade her eyes from the sun and dropped the gun onto the grass as she stepped onto the lawn.

“Jesus, Jessa. You scared the hell out of me.” Derek nodded toward the woods. “What were you doing out there?”

Before she could answer, Derek turned, pushing his Ohio State baseball cap up on his forehead. He hadn’t gone to Ohio State, but still he wore the Buckeye leaf proudly. “Where did that car come from?”

“That all kind of ties into the story of me being in the woods with a gun.” She laughed nervously, hating that she cared if he would be mad at her or not. She rubbed her face and took a deep breath.

Derek turned, his confusion increasing by degrees, as evidenced by the frown that drew his eyebrows down. “You don’t look so good, Jessa.”

“Thanks. I’ve been up all night.” She swallowed. Saying it out loud made her more tired, just like the part that followed made her more scared. “Running from It.”

His expression frozen in shock, Derek looked to the house, then back at her. “Again?”

She nodded, and felt her face crumpling before she realized she was about to cry. It didn’t even matter that she was crying in front of Derek, the one thing in the entire world she hated the most.

“No, no, no, come here,” Derek said, pulling her into his arms before she had a chance to object. Not that she was entirely sure that she wanted to resist him. The instant she was there, in the comforting familiarity of his embrace, she knew it was a mistake. It was too easy to pretend again, to fall back into the fantasy that always hurt her more than it salved her wounds. More than once she’d given in to temptation with him, and it always felt wonderful until reality crashed down on her once more. She pulled away. “How’s Becky?”

Derek couldn’t stand feeling guilty. It was his biggest weakness, and Jessa wasn’t afraid to exploit it. He knew that, and he looked away, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Damn it, Jessa.” His voice trailed away, and he glanced again at the car parked in the driveway. “Are you going to tell me where the hell that car came from?”

She followed him as he stalked across the lawn, relieved for the change of subject. She’d brought up his wife as a stalling tactic. She hadn’t really cared to hear about her, or his kids, at all. Before he could change his mind and start telling her all about them, she started explaining. “You’re not going to believe this, but someone actually stopped at Dale Elkhart’s service station last night.”

“Really?” Derek stood beside the car, hands on his hips. He tore his fascinated gaze away from the sleek black machine to look at her. “Why were you all the way out by Dale’s?”

That, she didn’t want to get into. “It chased me, and that was the way I ran. I got a shot off, though. Hit it right in the chest. It just kept coming.”

“Hell of a car,” he said, as though it didn’t matter that she’d been chased down by a monster and barely escaped with her life. That was Derek, in a nutshell. Easily distracted by shiny objects.

She was grateful for the change of subject, though, and gestured to the open driver’s side window. “Take a look. The guy was on his way to some party or something and got lost, I guess. I don’t know why he would have stopped at the service station, though. It doesn’t exactly look like it’s in business.”

“I’m wondering how the hell he managed to stop at all.” Derek leaned in the window and gave a whistle of appreciation. “All-leather interior. This is a hell of a car, whatever it is.”

“Well, it’s a good thing he did stop. Otherwise, I would have been It’s dinner.” She wondered if those terrifying words would come back to haunt her in the night. And she tried not to dwell on the fact that she’d brought It up again. A hot flush flamed in her cheeks, embarrassment at herself for wanting him to acknowledge the danger she’d been in. She didn’t want to be scolded, but a sick, jealous part of her wanted him to care.

“Hell of a car.” Derek looked around the yard, an increasingly agitated expression on his face. “So where’s this guy, now? You didn’t let him stay here?”

“I did.” She drew herself up to her full height, which was pretty impressive for a woman, or so she’d been told. She was still shorter than Derek, but he would damn well listen to her. “I’m a grown woman. I can have anybody stay the night that I want to.”

Derek gave her a sideways look that said, Over my dead body. “Nobody ever said you couldn’t, but how did you know this guy wasn’t dangerous or something? I mean, he could stop here … how do you know he wasn’t sent here?”

“Sent?” She hadn’t thought of that. Maybe she should have. The creature had never sent anyone into their midst before, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense that it would now. Such a complicated strategy for a basically ragtag monster, but then, It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, period. Nothing in Penance did anymore. “You think so?”

“Could be. Don’t know until we talk to this guy.” Derek started for the house, and Jessa followed.

“We can’t. Not now. He’s sleeping.”

“Well, I guess we’re gonna just have to go and wake him up,” Derek said, his worn-out boots striking a determined rhythm on the porch.

Jessa hesitated. It wasn’t that she wanted to protect the guy in the basement from Derek, but she didn’t want the two to meet, either. Something about the guy reminded her of the reality of her—and the whole town’s—situation. If she stood in the same room with the both of them, the safety and familiarity of another aspect of her pretend world would be fractured. If she kept losing pieces of her fantasy refuge, where would she go to escape the here and now?

She didn’t have much of a choice. Derek was already headed toward the stairs to the upper level of the house.

“Wait,” she called out to him, not sure if she meant to stop him entirely or just stop him from going up. “He’s in the basement.”

“Why would you keep him in the basement?” Derek moved with equal determination toward the kitchen.

First he didn’t want the guy in her house at all, then he wanted her to be putting him in plush accommodations? She rolled her eyes, glad Derek could see her. She didn’t have the energy for a fight about her “tone.” “It was the only place I felt safe keeping him.”

“Don’t you worry about safe,” Derek reassured her. “I’m about to make sure this creep doesn’t lay a finger on you.”

Yeah, from one creep to another, she thought, but she still had to squash a spark of triumphant feminine pride as she followed him down the basement steps.