You would think that I would know better than to follow a guy like Murray to his car after the mysterious statement that he had a present for us, and in this case you'd be right. There was no way Ben or Frankie were going anywhere with Murray, so I made Stanley come with me. Sure I had to pay him fifteen bucks for the privilege, but it made me feel a little more secure that I wasn't going to be randomly murdered and dismembered in the parking lot of the store. If there was going to be any murder going on, Stanley assured me that he would at least retrieve my body.
Yes, I had to pay him another fifteen dollars, up front, just in case.
Murray paused by the blue Toyota Corolla while he dug for his keys. It was a 2003 model and still in decent shape, but it wasn't the kind of car I had pictured Murray driving. He looked more like the kind of guy who drove a truck or even better, a white panel van with no windows in the back. There were only three other cars in the parking lot and I would have picked any of those (especially the tan Oldsmobile in the back) over the Corolla. Guess you can't tell with some people.
"Still get decent mileage of this?" I asked idly and Murray looked at me and shrugged.
"Not really. I suppose so. It's my sister's car, ya know, so I don't drive it too often."
Ahh, well that explained that.
Murray found the keys and as he fumbled with the lock to get the trunk open, I had this sinking feeling in my gut that I really didn't want him to open the trunk, not at all, not now, not ever because it was going to be something horrible—
"Ta-da!" Murray sang and all I could do was stare.
It was something horrible.
"I figured that we could take turns drinking from her. She's still really fresh, but she was making too much noise and things kinda got outta hand. Besides I didn't know if you guys liked them still kicking or what. Tell me I did good. I did good, right?"
I was trying to remember the girl's name, trying to see past that look of despair on her slack face, her cloudy eyes telling me a story that I didn't want to read. I just stared at her dead face and all I felt was this deep sadness, this grief rising up and threatening to overwhelm me. And all I wanted to do was remember her name.
Her throat had been slashed and what clothes she had on were soaked through with thick dark blood that had pooled underneath her. Murray had laid out plastic sheets inside the trunk almost a little too expertly.
"How many have you killed?" I asked him almost casually. It was a real effort for me, and I almost whispered it. "I can tell she isn't your first."
Murray tried to look sly as he considered lying to me. I don't know what made him tell the truth.
"She's the third one. She was a fighter, even when I drugged her."
There was something in my gut, a hot ball of rage that scorched my mind with the sheer unfairness of it all, and there were suddenly tears, hot streaming tears rushing down my face. I may have screamed, or that might have been Murray as my arm shot out seemingly of it's own volition to grab that smarmy motherfucker by the throat, my fingers clamping down tight like some otherworldly vice.
"Meredith. Her name was Meredith. She didn't want a fake vampire name like her friends. She was just fucking Meredith." I growled.
She had laughed at my jokes and she had been nice and real and had such a great laugh, and nobody was going to hear that laugh ever again and it wasn't fair goddamit! She'd had no choice in how her life ended and she sure as shit hadn't ever thought it would end like this, slashed and stripped and shoved into the back of a fucking Toyota Corolla.
Where was the justice in that? Where was the poetry and sense of irony or whatever that made life mean something, that made the rest of us fight so goddamn hard to keep breathing so we could eat and drink and fuck and laugh and hope to die in our own beds knowing that close by, someone loved us.
All of the emotions I had been bottling up since Jaime's revelation about our abortion, the one I had never had a choice about, all of those emotions came pouring out of me, glad to have a target for the anger that I had been nursing on a slow simmer over the past few months.
I lifted Murray into the air, not bothering to wonder just when I had gotten so damn strong and realized that my fangs had slid into place, no doubt triggered by my rage. I heard Stanley yell something, but I didn't care at that moment. I slammed Murray into the nearest wall, glad to see the terror in his bulging eyes as he clawed at my arm, desperate for breath.
"You're not supposed to kill anyone you fucking idiot!" I yelled at him. "And you're especially not supposed to kill my friends!"
Stanley grabbed me and I turned to him, ready to take him on. What I wasn't ready for was to take on all three of the guys. Benjamin and Frankie piled on and I stumbled back, letting go of Murray.
"Don't let him get away! He's been killing people!" I managed to yell.
Murray wasn't going anywhere. He was on the ground heaving in huge breaths of air, giving me a nasty look.
Benjamin had spotted Meredith in the trunk and his face turned white.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Benjamin whispered and true to his word, he stumbled away to the corner of the parking lot and threw up in the shadows.
I looked at Stanley, expecting him to be reasonable.
"You gonna let me kill him now?" I said. "He deserves to die!"
"Think about what you're saying dude! You're not a killer! None of us are!"
"He's going around killing people and drinking their blood. He thinks he's one of us!"
"I am one of you! We're vampires! Creatures of the night! We kill for blood!" Murray coughed. "Where did you get your teeth done?"
"Shut the fuck up," Frankie snarled and I noticed that he had pulled the phone away from his ear. What the fuck was he doing making a call right now anyway? Come on dude: priorities!
"Stanley, he's already killed three girls," I pleaded. "You gotta let me kill him."
"Have you ever killed anyone before?"
"No, but I'm willing to change that right now."
A voice came from behind us:
"It's messy, it's sad, they shit their pants and you're left with a lifetime of guilt. You don't want that burden. Kinda fucks with your head."
We all turned around, maybe for the first time realizing just how exposed we were. Beatrice turned from looking into the trunk at Meredith and she looked mildly annoyed as she looked up at me and slammed the trunk closed.
"Who the fuck is that?" Murray whispered hoarsely.
"Beatrice..." Stanley and Frankie breathed, completely stealing my thunder. What the fuck man? How did they know Beatrice?
******** AUTHOR'S NOTE **********
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