“I don’t get it. Why would you care about me?”
Ethan settled into the chair next to Pete, popped the can, and took a long drink of the ice cold beer. “I educated myself on everyone out here before I set out. I like to know who I’m dealing with. You’re good ol’ Pete, the guy who had a bad crush on my missing girl.”
“Who told you that?” Pete asked a bit defensively.
“Everyone in town.” Ethan flashed his teeth as he flung out his arms. “And I do mean everyone. The general consensus is that you were lovesick.”
“It’s true that I loved her,” Pete conceded, his brief moment of anger fading. He pried the beer open and took a swig. “I loved her most of my life.”
“Did she return it?”
An image from his dream flitted through his mind. It was of Amaliya leaning over him, her eyes hooded with desire.
Ethan’s brow slightly furrowed as he waited for an answer.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re an interesting guy, Pete. The same weekend your lady love went missing, you ended up in the hospital with a stroke. The hospital paperwork said you suffered from a sudden loss of blood pressure. Digging a little deeper it said you had also lost a lot of blood.”
Pete looked at the man sharply. “You went to the hospital?”
“Like I said, I did my research. So, Pete, the weekend the love of your life supposedly was murdered and buried out in the forest outside of her college, you end up in the hospital from a severe loss of blood. They cover it by calling it a stroke. Meanwhile, her body goes missing, but her dorm room is filled with signs that she may have crawled out of her grave and went home for a nice shower.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Police reports.”
Pete gulped down the rest of his beer. His hands were shaking. He suddenly felt the need to be shit-faced. As the blackness of the night settled into the trees around the campsite, the fireflies flickered among the branches.
Ethan reached over to snag Pete another beer from the cooler.
“The police said she’s dead, Mr. Logan.”
“The police cover things up that they can’t explain. Especially when higher ups tell them to.” Ethan handed him another cold beer.
“They said that the professor dug her back up for Satanic rituals or something. That he was all obsessed with her and wanted to use her for black magic.”
“Yet, Professor Sumner kills himself outside of Shreveport. Kind of convenient don’t you think?”
“He felt guilty?”
Ethan guffawed. “Sure. Guilt. He kills fourteen people and feels guilt. I seriously doubt a man capable of so much death could feel guilt.”
“You think he didn’t kill them?”
“Nope.” Ethan nodded. “He didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
“Amaliya.”
Pete stood up so fast, his chair skidded back and toppled over. “Bullshit!”
Ethan wasn’t affected by Pete’s explosion and slightly shrugged. “Think about it. She dies. Is buried in the forest. But she climbs out, goes and takes a shower, a room full of college kids ends up dead, she disappears. The truck she was using shows up at her dad’s house, and you end up in the hospital. Mr. Rusk from the Dixie Motel tells me that you arrived at the motel with a dark-haired woman in the car. He never saw her face, but we both know who that was, don’t we?”
“I don’t recall,” Pete mumbled. He finished the beer in three hard swallows. His head began to buzz, but he liked the feeling.
“But you’re starting too, aren’t you? You’re starting to see her face. You’re starting to remember that she was the one in the room with you.”
Pete ran his hand over his numbed features. To his embarrassment, he was getting an erection as random images from his dreams drifted over his mindscape. “Uh. Maybe.”
“In your dreams, maybe?” Ethan stood up to check on his dinner. The taller, bigger man didn’t seem at all fazed by the things he was saying. It made the whole evening feel even more surreal.
“I dream about her,” Pete admitted in a weak voice. The wall that had kept that evening from his waking mind was beginning to crumble. He could clearly see Amaliya’s smiling face as he pulled her close for a kiss.
“In that hotel room with you, right?” Ethan continued to flip the meat and placed the onion slices on top of the burgers.
“What are you saying?” Pete demanded. He felt dizzy, a little sick, and terribly afraid.
Ethan set the tongs he was using on the plate on the folding table, then turned around slowly. “Amaliya did die. But she came back. She came back as something different. Maybe she was afraid, not understanding what she was, and she came home. I’m guessing from my encounter with her father and family today that they drove her off. But you, Pete, you loved her. If you saw her wandering around out here alone, what would you do?”
A strong memory unfurled inside of his mind. He saw Amaliya walking along the roadside in the darkness, her bag over her shoulder. Her beautiful face had been illuminated by the headlights of his Mustang has he stopped his car beside her.
“I picked her up,” he whispered. It was a statement. Not a question.
“And took her to the motel,” Ethan continued for him.
“Yeah.”
Pete staggered backwards. Ethan swiftly moved to shove the still-standing chair under him. Pete fell into it heavily. A cascade of memories overwhelmed him. He remembered confessing his love to Amaliya and his hopes she would one day settle down with him. He recalled sneaking her into the motel room and then what had followed. He had been joyously happy as they had made love for hours and then...
The beer in his hand fell to the concrete, its contents splashing over his boots, but he didn’t even notice. He cradled his face in his hands, overcome.
“What happened, Pete?” Ethan asked in a low voice.
“She had no reflection,” Pete whispered.
As clear as day, he recalled looking into the mirror over the vanity and seeing only himself, yet he had held her in his arms, had still been inside of her after their latest sexual romp across the room. “And I was afraid.”
Ethan righted the other chair and sank into it. The sun was so low the stars were now flooding the East Texas sky. In silence, Ethan handed Pete another beer.
“She...started to cry. She was upset. Her tears were bloody. There was blood in them. I tried to get away from her, but she kept begging me to not be scared. I...saw her teeth.”
“Sharp, huh?”
“Yeah, then she just threw me like a toy across the room. The rest is still hazy.”
“She tried to remove the memory from your mind.”
The second that door shuts forget about me. Understand? Amaliya’s voice whispered in his mind.
“Yeah. She did. With hypnosis or something.”
“She was new to it all. Didn’t know what she was doing. You’re lucky to be alive, Pete. Others were not so lucky,” Ethan said.
Combing his hands slowly through his dark hair, Pete shook his head. The images filling his mind combined with what Ethan was insinuating was too much to fathom. The tranquility of his surroundings was at odds with the maelstrom inside his head.
“What you’re saying, it can’t be real,” Pete said at last. He popped the beer and drank it swiftly. He wanted to be numb. He didn’t want to feel. He wanted to be fuzzy. Ethan’s words were weaving Pete’s memories together into a tapestry he did not want to look at, let alone accept.
“Why not?” Ethan returned to the grill. The fat sizzling onto the hot coals filled the air with smoke and the stench of burning flesh.
“Because...if she died, she couldn’t come back. Dead is dead.”
Ethan chuckled, shaking his head. “Oh, if only that were true.”
“You think she’s some kind of...vampire, don’t you?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Ethan gave Pete an incredulous look. “Think? I know she is.” Ethan shoveled his food onto the platter and opened up the Tupperware bins he had on the folding table. Inside were bread, condiments and chopped up lettuce and tomato. Building his hamburger, Ethan continued, “I have no doubt that she was killed and buried in that forest. She rose a few days later probably hungry and very disoriented. Coming back does that to them sometimes.”
“Them?”
“Vampires.” Ethan finished making up his sandwich, covered up the remaining grilled meat, and settled back in his chair.
“It can’t be. It just can’t!”
“Think about it. It all fits together. The massacre at the college, her coming here and seducing you, feeding off you, then trying to wipe your memories so you won’t remember. She then heads on down the road and kills a trucker in a motel, and some crazy bitch on her way to kill her husband. I have figured that much out.”
“Amaliya would never kill anyone!”
“She did, and she will. She will do it for blood. She needs it to survive. Right now she’s out there, hiding, probably afraid.” Ethan bit hungrily into his burger, chewing swiftly.