What was his name? She called him something, didn’t she?
“Brian was just as bad as his father.”
“Brian it is then,” I mutter and look him over. He’s a sorry sight. Head and face a mess, unrecognizable from the damage she dealt him with that candle. I pick up the candle. There’s a few cracks and a chunk of glass missing from the bottom of it but other than that, the fucking thing is intact. Built solid all right. I drop it on top of Brian and consider things.
I can dispose of this body in the ocean where the animals can take him but I risk the tides bringing him to shore if I do that. As neat as an ocean burial can be, I’m not willing to risk it. Fortunately, I’m right where I need to be to dispose of a body without much fuss.
The graveyard.
It’s a simple solution, and when you’re improvising, simple is the best way to go. Less margin if I fuck this up.
I stand and start roaming through the gravesites. There has to be a fresh burial somewhere. If not, it’ll make it harder for Brian’s new resting place to stay a secret. Vesper Point is too damn small for someone not to notice a freshly dug grave when no one was buried recently. From the looks of the candles andfresh flowers I pass on several graves there’s more than enough foot traffic here to show it’s visited regularly. A fresh grave is the only way to go with daily visitors. I walk towards the front where the newer graves are and it's only a minute of searching before I see the telltale mound of freshly tilled dirt to find just the grave I’m looking for.
Here lies Miranda. Beloved Town Clown.
“What the fuck does that even mean? Were you an actual clown?” I ask Miranda as I start digging. “You’re going to have to share. Hope you don’t mind.” I dig down until my hands scrape the top of Miranda’s casket. Only then do I stop, hop out of the grave and grab Brian and his death candle. I chuck both of them into the grave and bury him deep with Miranda the clown.
The whole thing takes maybe five minutes. The perks of being a vampire.
When I’m done, I go back to the murder site and look over the blood. There’s…a lot. Too much for it to go unnoticed. For a second, I think I’m going to have to clean this up the old-fashioned way with nothing but elbow grease and hydrogen peroxide but like a gift from the heavens a deer comes bounding out of the trees at the back of the cemetery. It looks confused at its unexpected path, stumbling over a headstone and then nearly tripping. I sympathize with it for the second it takes for me to take it down. It bleats while I carry it back to the murder scene I intend to cover up. The deer kicks, lets out another frightened bleat and then I rip its throat out. Warm blood gushes out, it spills over Brian’s and stains the grass and stone perfectly. When I’m done, I drop the deer where I found Brian’s body.
I wipe my hands and stand back to survey my handiwork. Not bad. Anyone that finds the deer tomorrow will think the blood is from whatever mauled the deer. I circle the scene for a better look. I should be going, I’ve already been here far too long. If I stay any longer I’m going to be seen. The confirmation of thiscomes a minute later when a car drives by and I have to crouch down behind a statue to stay out of sight. I roll my eyes as I watch the headlights sweep slowly over the graveyard. The car is going too damn slow to just be passing by, it’s coming here. The headlights vanish and a second later it’s just one beam moving slowly over the headstones and statues. Who the fuck is this? I look around the side of the statue and see the telltale shape of the cruise lights.
It’s not just a random nosey bitch out for a drive. It’s the fucking cops.
“Bullshit.”
I sigh and lean back against the statue while the cop continues their sweep of the graveyard. I just have to sit tight. They’ll be gone in a few minutes, so I settle in. But it’s when I make myself comfortable on the backside of a chubby-cheeked angel with a harp that I see a glint of metal in the grass to the left of me. The police spotlight shines on the metal again before it’s gone and I lean over to pick it up.
It’s a knife.
I turn the weapon over in my hand and make a face at the stench rolling off of it. There’s more than one scent. Dozens from what I can tell. All of them have the same thing in common, one scent that’s louder than the rest.
Fear.
It’s the dead dick that I just threw in a grave with a clown.
His scent is as bad as his blood. It’s sour and wrong. I lift the knife and smell it again. Anger. That’s all I get from him. It’s stale and old, baked into the metal of the knife. He’s been like this for years, with this same knife. This metal has tasted fear and anger. This piece of metal has drunk its fill in the hand of the man she killed and I buried. I’m about to pocket the knife when I get another scent.
Lemon. Roses. Sandalwood.
She touched this knife. Briefly but still. My hand squeezes it tight because I can’t touch her. He tried to use it on her. This is the knife she told me about. I know now why she killed him. I understand it. Of course she wanted to when it was him that tried to use this knife on her. He probably thought she would be easy like the rest of them. All those other scents that are baked into the knife. All the other women he’s preyed on.
“I decided on it, and when I decided on it there was no stopping me. Not even when he fought back.”
He picked the wrong woman tonight.
I pocket the knife and lift my head to see the graveyard is still and quiet. The police spotlight is gone. I stand and look everything over again. I’m lucky the police didn’t spot the deer. It’s right where it should be and so is Brian. If he wasn’t already dead, I would have killed him for her. If she asked me to kill this entire town, I’d do it.
Her scent lingers in the air, it fills my nose and I inhale deeply. Roses and sandalwood with that light bright burst of lemon on top makes my mouth water. I would do whatever she asked of me. I know it’s crazy, not logical at all. I don’t really give a fuck that it doesn’t make sense either. I haven’t felt like this in centuries. Obsession, that’s the word for it. I let that word sink into me just like her scent does. The musk of her skin taunts me and when the wind blows hard, it surrounds me before it’s gone, swept away towards the sea.
Yes, I’m obsessed with the murderess.
The confessional sealed the deal on my already growing interest in my neighbor. She’s mine. I speed out of the graveyard and back towards home. I take the way back that she took, her smell still hanging in the air. I let myself inhale, relish it as I run home and it's almost like she’s there with me. For tonight, the ghost of her scent in the air is enough to tide me over but it’s not going to be enough when the sun rises.
That woman has a hold on me that no one has ever had. I can feel a hunger for her settling into my bones, it’s digging right into me like a fishhook and I’m the idiot open-mouthed fish that took the bait. I should be angry about it. I’m a vampire, I don’t fixate or obsess over humans, that’s shit the newly made do in a fit of romanticism or madness. The only woman that’s ever made me want like this was Rosanna, but even then the allure was gone within the first fifty years or so. My maker lost me when I realized there was nothing she wouldn’t do for more—she was addicted to more.
More money, more food, more clothes. More, more, more.
