Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
While Gwen ran her errand, I fiddled with the radio, but, this close to Christmas, trying to find some old-school rock and roll proved challenging.
I settled on a channel playing Tainted Love, a song I remembered shaking my ass to back in my clubbing days.
As I listened to the catchy tune, I peered out the window, then on a whim blew hotly on it and drew a happy face in the fog left behind.
It led to me crawling to the drive side to mist the other window but this time I traced a dick.
As I slid back into my seat with a snicker, through the windshield, I saw someone enter the far end of the alley.
Two someones, actually, one of them reluctant, judging by how the woman in the puffy coat leaned away as if trying to escape the man who dragged her by the arm.
Since I couldn’t hear anything in the soundproof car, I pressed a button to lower the window.
“…let me go.”
“Not until you admit you were cheating on me,” was the male’s reply.
“I wasn’t cheating on you. We broke up six months ago,” the woman exclaimed.
“And already you’re whoring yourself,” he spat.
“I’m going to have you arrested for ignoring the restraining order.”
“No, you won’t, because, by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging me to take you back.”
He proceeded to force her to walk in my direction and, not wanting to be seen, I slouched low in the seat.
“Leave me alone.” She used her free hand to pummel at his grip. “Help! Hel—”
The man smacked her in the face and I gasped. Before I’d even realized it, I stood outside the car. “Unhand her!”
The man turned an ugly glare my way. “Mind your business, bitch.”
“I don’t think so. You heard the lady. She wants nothing to do with you.” I took a step closer.
“Fuck off.” As he went to drag again, my hand shot out and caught him by the wrist.
“I said to let her go.” My demand emerged firm and low.
He obeyed but only so he could take a swing at me.
Which missed, because I caught his fist.
His eyes widened.
I smiled. “Didn’t your mother teach you to never hit a woman?”
Apparently not because he head-butted me—and it hurt. His skull smashed into my face and I heard a crack that came with a jolt of pain.
“Ow!” I let him go to grab my throbbing nose.
“How’d you like that, bitch?” he huffed, using his freed hands to swing at me.
Thud. Thud. The blows landed and while they did cause some discomfort, they mostly triggered my rage—and hunger.
I rushed him, slamming my body into his, ramming him backwards until he hit the wall. The racing of his heart acted as an invitation that I couldn’t turn down.
My teeth found his neck, pierced the flesh, and I groaned as sweet and salty blood filled my mouth.
Yummy. Yummy. In my tummy.
I ate until I could swallow no more. Only then did I drop the limp—and very dead—body.
Oops. First thing I did? Checked the alley for witnesses. The woman had wisely fled the moment she’d been released and I saw no one else. Good, but I still had a body to deal with.
“I leave you alone for five minutes and you just had to get into trouble,” exclaimed Gwen, who, of course, chose that moment to return.
I wiped my mouth before turning with a shrug. “Sorry. This douchebag was harassing his ex-girlfriend so I asked him to stop.”
“He certainly won’t be bothering her again,” Gwen grumbled.
“I didn’t mean to kill him. He broke my nose and I kind of lost control.”
“You don’t say,” she sighed. “Anyone see you?”
“His ex-girlfriend saw me but she ran off soon as he started smacking me so she doesn’t know I killed him.”
“We’d better get the body into the trunk and get out of here before someone spots it and calls the cops.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I fucked up.”
“Not really. I’d have done the same thing,” Gwen stated as I helped her heave the body into the trunk and slammed it shut.
“You would have bit him?”
“No,” Gwen chuckled for the first time. “But I would have probably taken his ass out. I can’t stand abusers. Reminds me of my dad.”
“He beat you?”
“Me, my siblings, my mom.”
The stark admission had me exhaling, “Damn. That sucks.”
“It did, but the day I finally said enough was the one that changed my life for the better.” She got into the car and I joined her.
“What happened?”
“I was seventeen and my father came home drunk out of his mind. Me and my brother and sister knew to stay in our rooms and not make a sound, but mom couldn’t escape him when he went to bed.
He started punching, and mom started screaming.
Something in me snapped in that moment. I ran into their room and started hitting him. ”
“That was brave.”
“More like stupid. He outweighed me by like a hundred pounds. Add in the booze rage and I didn’t stand a chance when he started pummeling.
He probably would have killed me if my mom hadn’t jumped on his back.
Next thing I knew, he’d tossed her into the mirror over the dresser which shattered and cut her really bad. ”
“Oh fuck.”
“Fucked is right. While he was slamming her body into the broken glass, I grabbed the gun he kept under the bed and shot him eight times.” Gwen’s admission emerged low and fierce as she made a left turn.
“How did you not end up in jail?”
“Oh, I spent time in the clinker. Cops arrested me even though they knew it was self-defense,” she spat. “I was sitting in a cell, waiting for trial, when Cillian busted me out.”
I frowned. “If Cillian knew you well enough to rescue, then why didn’t he do something about your dad?”
Gwen shook her head as she gunned the car when the light turned green.
“We’d never met until the day he rescued me from my cell.
He’d read about my story in the newspaper and for some reason decided I was worth saving.
He freed me and gave me a choice. Leave the country to avoid prosecution with enough money to start over, or come work for him. ”
“Seems like you made a good choice, seeing how you’ve been with him what, at least ten years?” I surmised given she looked to be late twenties.
“Actually, it’s been forty-three.”
I blinked. “But you don’t look older than thirty.”
“There’s advantages to working for a vampire.”
And apparently a more compassionate side than I would have expected. It explained a bit better why he’d come to my rescue. Cillian had a hero complex. As for why he made me into a vampire and not Gwen or the others? Given the extent of my injuries, I’d have died without his intervention.
“How handy are you with a shovel?” Gwen asked suddenly.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re going to kill, then you get to bury the body.”
Luckily, I didn’t have to dig. One, we didn’t have a shovel, and two, the frozen ground would have made it difficult and noticeable if I’d dug a grave. Instead, I got to learn how to properly douse a corpse in fuel and set it on fire.
By the time we’d finished getting rid of the body, we were only an hour out from dawn. Once we got home, I had barely enough time for a shower to rinse the smell of smoke—and burned human flesh—from my skin and hair before the sun rose and I fell face-first into bed.