Chapter 25

25

Naomi doesn’t know the exact address of her parents’ vacation house.

“It’s in Wilmington. North Carolina.”

“Yeah. That’s not specific enough.”

“I’ve only ever been there twice,” she says. “But I’ll know how to get to it once we’re in the area.”

“Will you?”

“I’ll have to. Can’t exactly call them up and ask, can I? Hey, Mom and Dad, it’s your not-doctor-or-lawyer daughter that you’re so disappointed in. Can you drop a pin for the place you call a real estate investment, which I called an egregious display of wealth, which led to a shouting match that resulted in me and Lee getting a hotel? ”

“You’ve made your point,” I say, plugging Wilmington into the GPS. It’s nine and a half hours away. Even if we drive all night, we won’t make it before sunrise. Meaning we’ll have to find somewhere else to stay. Another fleabag motel.

“My parents only go down in the summer, so we can stay there until then. But we’re going to have to figure something out for, like, the rest.”

She says “we,” but it’s going to fall on me to figure out what’s next. I’ve spent so much of my life grounding myself in logic, in practicality, convincing myself that if I didn’t allow want to warp my reasoning, I’d make the right decisions. I’d be in control. But these rules no longer apply—if they ever did—because I need the thing I want. There’s no denying it. There are fresh logistics that can’t be ignored. There’s Naomi’s voice, which can’t be ignored. It’s drying out. She’s thirsty.

I should have shared.

I look over at her. She stares out the window, and I can’t remember the last time I saw her sad like this. But it’s not her sadness that’s startling. It’s her weakness. I barely recognize her as she idly taps a nail to the glass. Her lights are off. She’s dim.

It doesn’t take us long to find gas. There’s a dilapidated Sunoco a few minutes down the road, with a little convenience store at the back.

I pull up to a pump.

“Should I use my credit card?” I ask.

“I don’t think it matters,” she says.

I pop the gas hatch and get out of the car. “I miss New Jersey. Full service.”

“In New Jersey you’d have to talk to someone,” she says. “Better this way.”

“Good point.” I identify as an introvert, so avoiding people is fine by me. But I worry about Naomi, about what it will do to her if she can’t be around people.

I get out my wallet. My credit card. I hesitate.

Maybe Naomi is right and no one’s looking for us. Maybe we got away with what happened at the Waterfront, at the rest stop. Maybe we got away with murder, but we won’t get away with murder s .

It’s inevitable that something else will happen. We crave blood.

I don’t want to leave behind any breadcrumbs for law enforcement. It’s bad enough that the vampires are on our tail. Or were, at least. I haven’t seen the van since we left the motel.

“I think I’m going to pay cash.”

“Whatever you say, hoss.” She barely gets the words out before breaking into a coughing fit. She holds her throat.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” she snaps. “I’m fucking thirsty.”

She’s angry with me, blames me for not sharing the tumbler. Naomi doesn’t typically hold grudges. But I do. And I hope she understands that she’s the one who got us dragged into this nightmare. We’re this way because of her. I’m this way because of her.

I leave her in the car and go into the convenience store. I wince at the fluorescent lights. Hot and yellow and relentlessly bright. There’s no clerk behind the register, so I just stand there and wait, squinting. Minutes pass. I look around at all the glorious junk that I used to deprive myself of. Combos and Twizzlers and Reese’s cups and Doritos. And in the fridges against the wall, Coca-Cola and DrPepper and AriZona iced tea. I walk over to one of the fridges and get out a bottle of Schweppes. Normally I wouldn’t open something in a store without paying first, but I’m too curious, and it seems a small crime, considering what else I’m guilty of. I unscrew the cap and take a small sip.

It’s like drinking hydrogen peroxide. It burns.

I start to gag so hard, I double over. “Ugh!”

It stings to breathe. I’d cut out my tongue if it meant I could exorcise the taste.

There’s a rustling somewhere. In the back?

“Hello?” I caw.

“Yeah, just a minute,” says a disinterested voice.

“Okay, thanks.” I shuffle toward the front of the store, toward the glass window, to check on Naomi. She’s still in the car, leaning against the window.

I’m about to turn around when I see another car pull in, pull over to the pump next to ours. I watch Naomi perk up as a woman gets out of the other car. She could be about our age. She wears a purple knit hat, a matching peacoat. No scarf. Her neck is exposed.

“Hey, uh, what’d ya need?” There’s a guy behind the register. A twentysomething who reminds me of Matthew in how he barely looks at me.

“Um…” I say, distracted by what’s happening outside. By the woman who has started to pump her gas. Who looks over her shoulder to find herself being watched by two wide, wild eyes.

She turns back toward the pump with a puzzled look on her face.

Does she know she’s in danger? Can she sense it?

“Ma’am?”

“Sorry,” I say, fumbling with my wallet. “I need, um, fifty dollars of gas on pump one.”

He grunts as I get out two twenties, as I search for a ten. I don’t have time for this.

“I guess forty,” I say, anxiously looking through the window, my view obstructed by a sign advertising two Monster Energy drinks for the price of one. “Just forty dollars.”

He grunts again as I shove the bills across the counter. I step back so I can get a better look at what’s going on outside.

Naomi’s got her window rolled down, her elbow hanging out. She’s talking to the woman, whose back is now to me, so I can’t see her expression. Naomi’s smiling, but it’s not a genuine smile. It’s too big. Too toothy.

The woman begins walking toward her.

“Do you want a receipt?”

Panic has me glued in place. Whatever code-red urgency had me springing into action two nights ago, wielding a fire iron, it’s failing me now. I need to run out there, but nothing’s working. Not my legs. Not my lungs. Not my hands.

“Ma’am?”

Take a step. Grab the door handle. Run. Do something.

The woman stops, but Naomi beckons her forward. I don’t know what she’s saying to draw this woman in, but it’s working. It’s working.

It worked.

Naomi grabs the woman by the back of the head. It happens fast. From here, Naomi’s hand looks strangely nasty—like a scorpion clenched on the woman’s skull. The woman goes limp, and since her head is in front of Naomi’s, I have no idea what’s happening.

Well. I have some idea. An awful, devastating idea.

I hear a chime and turn around to find the clerk walking into a back room, staring down at his phone, unaware of the attack happening on the other side of the glass, and I’ve never felt luckier or more grateful to be ignored.

But then the woman screams. A bloodcurdling, night-shattering scream. The clerk pivots, and he looks at me, and I look at him, and his eyes narrow. His gaze shifts out through the window, out to the pumps.

“Holy shit!” he says.

He raises his phone, and I expect him to dial 9-1-1, but he doesn’t. He opens his camera. He’s taking a video. He’s filming.

I don’t make the decision. It just happens. Next thing I know, I’m snatching the phone out of his hands, pushing him hard into the wall.

“You didn’t see anything,” I say, in a voice much more menacing than my own. “And if you say anything, we’ll come back for you. We’ll drink your insides until you’re nothing but bones and skin.”

I slam his phone onto the floor and stomp on it until it breaks apart, and then I walk calmly away, noticing the security camera in the corner.

Whatever hope I might’ve held for avoiding further violence is now gone. Any and all hope I had is gone, forever silenced by this woman’s screaming.

Naomi must have lost her grip. The woman is now thrashing around on the pavement, holding her face, blood pouring through her fingers. Naomi bit her face.

She bit her face .

Would I bite someone’s face? Will I? Will I ever be that thirsty?

Am I that thirsty now, looking at the puddle of blood forming underneath the woman’s head?

Naomi remains in the passenger seat, licking her lips in a stupor of satisfaction.

I run out of the store, past the woman, and get into the car, slamming the door, which wakes Naomi from her bliss coma. She shakes her head, then leans out the window and sees the woman on the ground.

She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t recoil in horror at what she’s done. She just says, “Drive.”

I start the car and hit the gas. There’s oncoming traffic, so I can’t pull out onto the road.

“Go!” Naomi yells.

“I can’t! Someone’s coming! What were you thinking, Nay? You can’t tell me that was self-defense. I saw you attack her.”

“I was too thirsty! You drank all the blood Ilie gave us. What are you waiting for? Just go!”

The woman is up. She stumbles to her car, gets something out of her bag. Her phone? She must be calling the cops. She must be taking a picture of my car, the license plate.

She must be—

There’s a pop .

It sounds like a bottle rocket. It doesn’t sound like a gunshot, but it is. The woman has a gun—so small it looks like a toy—and she’s shooting at us. She’s shooting at the car.

“Goddamn motherfucking shit! Drive, Sloane! Fucking go!”

I take my foot off the brake and lay my hand on the horn, and I go. I don’t look. I just go.

There are headlights, bright as twin suns, and they’re coming toward us. I swerve to narrowly avoid a sedan, but I lose control of the car. The road is covered in black ice, and we’re spinning, and spinning, and there are brakes screeching and horns honking, and Naomi screams, and she’s trying to grab the wheel, and I’m remembering what it felt like to wake up broken and hungover in a hospital bed, what it was like to learn how quickly it all can get so ugly, and I see another set of headlights approaching, and the two white orbs merge into one, and I don’t wonder what this will be like, because I’ve lived through it once before, only this time my body isn’t colliding with the pavement; it’s colliding with an enormous pickup truck. Head-on.

There’s an earsplitting crunch , like we’re between the teeth of a great beast. The pickup truck at the front and a hatchback from the rear. Crunch, crunch. My airbag goes off, punching me square in the face. I hear glass breaking, and then I feel broken glass pelting me like a hailstorm.

The air smells of smoke, and there’s a troubling heat coming from somewhere.

“Naomi?” I blink through the fog and see she’s climbing into the back seat. “Naomi, what are you doing?”

“I need it,” she says, reaching. The trunk is smashed in. There’s broken glass everywhere. She crawls on top of it, but she doesn’t cut herself. Maybe her skin is too thick. I look down at my hands, my arms. I touch my face. I’m not cut either.

Is this immortality? The body surviving horror unscathed, the mind taking all the damage? The heart? The interior to sag and spot, to bruise, to be wounded and wither, while the exterior betrays nothing?

Naomi clambers out through the broken back window.

“Nay!” What is she doing? Where is she going? Why is she leaving me?