Kiss Me, Kill Me Page 9

  ‘Thank Christ. I’m starving.’ Upon reaching me, he gave me a one-armed hug, a peck on the cheek and relieved me of one muesli bar. We stared at each other with large seriousness. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  I nodded.

  As we arrived at our destination, Scott unlocked the metal roller-door and slid it up just enough for us to get underneath. Once we were in, he closed and locked it from the inside. It was dark, only a faint light coming from the table lamp we’d put in the revamped section. Ha! Revamped. At 5:13, it would be revamped in more ways than one.

  We’d piled heaps of boxes and as much stuff as possible along the outside of the caged area, so if anyone did happen to walk in, they wouldn’t see straight into Melanie’s lair. The scant light coming over the tops of the boxes didn’t help my sight much, and I had to let my eyes adjust.

  We made our way down the corridor of stuff until we got right to the end, where we’d left a gap in front of the gate.

  I peered in through the bars and Greg was right there, looking out at me.

  ‘Oh!’ I pressed a hand to my chest. ‘Hello.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’

  Top o’ the mornin’ to you, too, Mr Sternypants.

  ‘There’s no way we’re waiting over there,’ I hiked my thumb over my shoulder, ‘so we don’t have a clue what’s happening in here.’

  Scott was beside me doing that thing men do when they want to show they won’t be intimidated. He kind of puffed up, stiffened up and straightened up. There was no chance we’d allow Greg to send us packing before Melanie woke up. We’d give Greg what-for.

  ‘You won’t want to see her this way,’ warned Greg.

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Scott. ‘We’re staying.’

  Greg’s jaw clenched. It seemed the likelihood of him reaching through the bars and strangling Scott was high.

  ‘Where the hell would you be if this was happening to Ana?’

  Greg glared at Scott for long moments. I expected him to come out of the cage and manhandle us back to the villas. But then, ‘Neither of you will unlock this gate, no matter what happens.’ It was an order given in his don’t-fuck-with-me voice. ‘You will not get within five feet of these bars. Step back.’

  The force in his tone and the intensity in his gaze, which had now settled upon me, had us doing exactly as we were told. Greg then spun around and stalked off.

  Yeah, we gave him what-for, all right.

  Scott and I shot each other a worried look before turning our attention back to Greg, who was now at Melanie’s side. She was just as we had left her: lying still-as-death in the bed.

  I was unable to see if she’d undergone any changes since she was many metres away on the opposite end of the storage area and mostly covered by a sheet.

  I checked my watch. It was 4:55. Scott and I stood, awkwardly peering into the room from the authorized distance.

  I shuffled my feet and checked my watch again. 4:56. My stomach grumbled before I remembered the food I’d brought that was in the plastic bag still gripped in my hand. I delved in and grabbed the shortbread biscuits. Only then did Scott seem to become aware of the muesli bar he was holding. We ate. We drank the coffee. Left the rest on top of one of the boxes. Hands were dusted off on jeans.

  5:11 and I was about to go crazy, nuts and out-of-my-mind because time obviously moved slower in here. The fucking lair.

  Shuffling. Throat clearing. A sniff. Time check—5:12.

  And then, five hours later, it was 5:13 p.m.

  We became very still, watching Melanie for any sign of movement.

  The only activity from the people who weren’t trying to become vampires was intermittent watch checking. I glanced at mine for what must be the fiftieth time to see it was 5:17. Absolutely nothing had happened with Melanie.

  ‘What if it hasn’t worked?’ whispered Scott, turning to face me.

  His stark features and the fear in his voice tripled my panic, which had cycled up to a rather high level over the past few minutes. Maybe we should have called this place the panic room.

  ‘It’ll work,’ I answered with faux confidence. ‘She’s only just turning. Her timing might not be perfect yet.’

  ‘Are they supposed to wake up exactly at sunset?’

  ‘I’m not sure about exactly, but Greg said he fell asleep at sunrise and woke at sunset when he first turned. Later, he became strong enough to sleep when he wanted.’

  Greg had become powerful very quickly. This was due to the fact that once he got over the initial feral stage where all he could think about was blood, he’d grasped what he’d been doing and then refused to take blood from any more victims. His maker, not on board with the idea of letting Greg perish, used her superior strength to force him to take her blood. Apparently, drinking the blood of an old vampire made Greg a strong boy. Formidable enough to overpower her and drive a stake into Desislava’s evil, twisted heart.

  I mean, she was distracted at the time, I suppose. Greg had pretended to finally succumb to her sexual overtures. He had climbed on top of her before he’d stuck it in her. The stake. He’d stuck the stake in her.

  ‘Should he try to wake her up, do you think?’ asked Scott. ‘How will we figure out what’s going on with her? What if she keeps sleeping like…that?’

  Like she’s dead. He didn’t say it; didn’t need to.

  ‘You know Mel. She doesn’t give two shits about rules. So, if the vampire handbook says sleep at sunrise and wake at sunset, she’ll find a way to defy it.’ I clung to the hope it was Melanie’s contrary nature at play here and not the fact that her vampire turning had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

  I was suddenly hit with a horrible thought. What if she was immortal but had been damaged? Like brain damaged, and she would never become conscious? Or worse, if she was aware but unable to move or communicate. That would be—

  ‘Are you fuckin’ kidding me?!’

  Scott and I both gasped, our attention snapping back to the interior of the cage.

  There was Melanie. Awake. Alive. Standing up.

  Stomping back and forth and shrieking at previously unreached decibels.

  In the few moments that Scott and I had taken our attention off her, Melanie had transitioned from playing dead to being full of beans, and on top of that, had managed to find something to be extremely vexed about.

  She screamed some more and let loose a stream of profanity that would have made a sailor blush. And then shit his pants. She had a big bee in her bonnet about something. Grabbing a bedside table, one of those timber three-drawer things, she lifted it up and flung it across the room. It smashed into the wall and broke apart.

  I couldn’t figure out what Melanie’s problem was, apart from the fact that her vampire version seemed to be the love child of The Hulk and Gordon Ramsay. She hadn’t inherited the ridiculous size or greenness. I doubted her cooking skills had improved. But strong, enraged and foul-mouthed? She had those traits in spades.

  She clutched her head. ‘I’m supposed to be fixed. Why in the buggery bollocks am I still like this?’

  Oh, I get it.

  It had all happened so fast that we hadn’t discussed every little detail to do with becoming a vampire. Melanie had obviously assumed she’d become some perfect version of herself, or at least the way she’d been in her prime before cancer had ravaged her. In reality, she didn’t appear sickly; her skin was more luminous and her irises bright. It was the same thing that had happened to Greg. His skin had taken on an appearance that should have had him advertising one of those face creams that contained weird shit like snail mucous, someone’s placenta and whatever else they put in that expensive stuff. His already-stunning eyes had their sparkle factor increased. The light scar on his face that he’d gotten protecting me from some rapist-type thugs had remained.

  Melanie was still thin; her prior curves hadn’t magically made a reappearance. Her cheekbones could cut glass. She was stunningly beautiful.

  And her noggin was as smoo
th as a baby’s bum.

  So, the problem wasn’t a bee in her bonnet. It was the fact that she had no hair in her bonnet that had sent her off the rails.

  ‘Why hasn’t it grown back?’ she yelled.

  Greg spoke to her in low tones so that all I could hear was the odd word and the constant deep rumble of his voice.

  ‘I have to live through the whole of eternity without one feckin’ hair on my head? No!’ That last word was screeched at ear-piercing levels.

  She continued screaming the word no as she stormed over to the other bedside table. Greg lunged from behind Melanie, grabbing her around the waist and lifting her off the floor before the second table went the way of the first.

  ‘Put me down!’ Melanie struggled and thrashed. ‘Put me the fuck down!’ More sailor-shitting-his-pants cursing, and then Melanie burst into a noisy bout of crying.

  I spared a look at Scott. He glanced at me. We were both undoubtedly wearing the same expression of consternation and helplessness.

  Greg lowered Melanie until her feet touched the floor. She promptly turned and buried her face in his shirt as she cried.

  Greg rubbed her back and murmured soothing things.

  I stuck my arm out and grasped Scott’s hand. He squeezed and held on.

  The two vampires in the cage held on to each other for some time, until Melanie abruptly pulled back and said in a voice I hadn’t quite heard before, ‘I’m hungry.’ She sounded gruff.

  And really, really hungry.

  Judging by the manner with which she scrutinised Greg’s throat, I was sure that if he wasn’t so tall or she wasn’t such a short-ass, she would’ve lunged and latched on immediately. Instead, Greg put his wrist near her mouth. Melanie grabbed Greg’s arm, reared her head back and struck. The way she sank those fangs into him, it seemed she wanted to bite his hand right off the end of his limb.

  I watched through squinted eyes as Melanie slurped greedily and Greg’s blood dripped onto the floor. While Greg grimaced and held his arm out to be mangled by my friend, who’d turned into a bloody messy eater.

  I turned away, unable to watch. Scott was observing the scene, his head turned slightly, as if he didn’t want to know but couldn’t bring himself to look away, either.

  I felt like doing many things. One was storming into the cage and prying Melanie off Greg. Two was lecturing Melanie about not making so much noise as she ate. (I may suffer from misophonia: a hatred of particular sounds. The sound of people eating or breathing loudly makes me want to do violence.) Three was throwing a blood pack at Melanie and yelling that she shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds her. Four was sitting on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest and silently feeling nauseous.

  I went with option four.

  Not long after, Scott blew out a big breath. I had a look in the cage. Melanie had disengaged from Greg. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, said, ‘Fuck me,’ tottered over to the bed, fell backwards onto it and promptly fell asleep again.

  Greg licked the wound on his wrist to assist the natural vampire healing process. He retrieved a blood pack from the fridge, ripped into it and emptied the contents in a few strong pulls. Luckily, we’d had the presence of mind to stop by my work on the way to Lorne. I’d collected some blood packs that had been discarded after testing had deemed the blood unsafe for transfusion.

  Greg had decided to feed Melanie his blood and replenish via blood packs and animal blood. He said he would let Melanie out of the cage to hunt when he believed she was ready.

  Greg’s neat-freak tendencies being almost a match to my own, he wiped up the blood from the floor, collected the parts of smashed bedside chest and placed them in a heavy-duty bin bag before unlocking the cage and exiting. Once outside, he dropped the bag and re-locked the door. He didn’t get a chance to do anything else because I threw myself at him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I grabbed his arm and checked out his wrist.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he answered. I could see he would be fine. The wound was healing rapidly.

  ‘You’re amazing. You did it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you.’ All of this came out rapid-fire before I peppered his cheeks with kisses, then hugged him to me before repeating the process.

  ‘Is it okay that she’s sleeping again already?’ asked Scott.

  I paused my attack on Greg so he could answer.

  ‘She’ll be fine. She ingested a lot of blood. In the beginning, when you’re not used to it, it can feel like being drunk.’

  Scott regarded Greg for a long while, looking as if he was attempting to contain a surplus of emotion.

  I took a step away from Greg. The moment I did, Scott stepped into the space I’d created. There was a sheen of tears in his eyes when he said, ‘Thank you, my brother. I will never be able to repay you.’

  Because I’d only ever witnessed these two men doing the back-slapping bro-hug thing, it was strange to watch Scott grab Greg’s face in both hands and plant a kiss on each side of his face. He followed it up with a full-frontal hug. It was strange, but at the same time, strangely appropriate.

  I guess after everything that had happened, the usual boundaries didn’t exist any longer. Greg had basically brought my best friend and Scott’s love back to life. We were also bound together by this secret. It was one the four of us would protect fiercely.

  Anyway, once people had sucked blood out of each other, full-frontal man-hugs were comparatively tame.

  I had the urge to join in. So I did. Stretching my arms around both men, I hugged them, hard. I felt the kiss Greg pressed to the top of my head. All was good.

  Chapter Eleven

  It had been three days since Melanie had woken after the turning (phase one of M.M.A.B.S.), and all was not good.

  Scott and I had gone to the lair at sunset to see her. Up until then, her wake-eat-sleep routine hadn’t varied from the first night. She’d even been consistent with the following: rage over her baldness (chick really put a high priority on hair); her sloppy, noisy eating; and her blood-high drunkenness.

  Today, something different had happened.

  When Melanie had woken up, she’d sniffed the air. Eschewing her usual meal, she’d walked straight over to the area where Scott and I stood. It was the first time since being turned that she’d noticed we existed. And as she’d stared out at us, I was exceedingly grateful for the thick metal bars that kept her contained in the cage.

  The look she’d worn was not one of recognition. She was likely not thinking, ‘Hey, there are my friends.’

  Instead, her demeanour told me the only thing she recognized was that we were food.

  Goose bumps had prickled up my arms. I’d searched to find some shred of my buddy Mel behind those otherworldly blue eyes. It was as if Melanie wasn’t home.

  But something else most certainly was.

  Even though it had been deeply unsettling, I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze from hers.

  Suddenly, and with shocking speed, she had launched herself at the bars, reached through and tried to grab me.

  I’d jumped back at the same time Scott had put his arm out and pushed me. I’d fallen backwards and landed on my butt on the concrete floor. Immediately, Scott had been there, trying to ascertain if I was hurt.

  Melanie was hissing and making some feral kind of noise. Greg was manhandling her away from the bars and shouting at her, doing all he could to get her attention so she would feed on him.

  I’d watched from my sprawled position on the floor as she’d eventually sunk fang into Greg. She didn’t take her eyes off me the whole time she drank.

  Something icy skittered up my spine. The moment was portentous. It was disturbing, and I’d experienced a full-body shiver.

  Melanie noticed, and despite her mouth being pressed against Greg’s wrist, I swear I’d seen her lips curve into a smile.

  * * * * *

  Early the next morning, while it was still dark, Greg returned to the villa. He’d sent Scott and me away at the ear
liest opportunity after Melanie had attempted her jack-in-the-box routine. In other words, he’d waited until Melanie had finished feeding, then come over to find out if I was okay after the fall. Fully aware of the state my body was in when I first met him, and how I could have a setback from something like this, Greg was paranoid about me reinjuring myself.

  It had taken three attempts of promising that I wasn’t broken, plus a physical inspection from Greg, before his worries were allayed. Once that was done, he’d told us to get the hell out of there and not to come back.

  Scott had ended up in my villa again. Our conversation had gone around in circles. We’d asked each other questions; however, with neither of us having any concrete answers, it was all conjecture and therefore futile. There were two things we knew for sure. One, we were both petrified the old Melanie wouldn’t make a reappearance. And two, this current version of her scared the ever-loving shit out of us.

  The first thing Greg did when he entered the villa was to place a baby monitor on the coffee table. It was on, but quiet. Our scary-as-fuck baby vampire must have been sound asleep. Greg walked over to me. When he silently held out his hand, I placed my hand in his. He pulled me to my feet.

  ‘Are you okay, baby?’ His voice was a little rough. He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.

  Something about the way he was looking at me: stark concern, softened by affection. The way he touched me so gently. His voice. His nearness. His smell. All of it made me want to climb him—just climb him and cling to him like I was a monkey and he was my tree.

  The fact that I’d been separated from him by metal bars (those most excellent, sturdy, safety-enhancing metal bars) for the best part of three days, may have played a small part in my overwhelming urge to get as close to him as humanly/primate-ly possible.

  ‘Ana?’ Greg interrupted my imaginings. The ones I was having of him and I engaging in a bout of wild sex, the likes of which would make baboons blush as red as their bum cheeks.

  ‘Uh, yes?’