“Are you sure you have enough paint on you?” Petr asked, giving me the once over.
I looked down at my formerly white T-shirt that was now a multicolored canvas of paint. There was probably more on me than on the actual canvas.
“When I go home like this, I know it's been a good day,” I said.
Petr laughed then flicked his paintbrush at me, adding another dollop of red onto my top. “You've got some in your hair, too. Bet your new look won't go down well with the old lady.” He wiggled a mischievous and perfectly-trimmed eyebrow at me. Surprisingly he'd managed to stay relatively paint-free. He always did. I often made teasing remarks that 'real' artists got messy. He often told me I was full of shit!
“Don't remind me about her.” I checked myself out in the cracked little mirror above our studio sink. Of course there were specks of different colored paint clinging to strands of my brunette hair, which I'd tied up loosely to keep out of the way. There were even smudges of paint on my cheeks and forehead. Wow, I'd really gone to town today.
“Trouble in paradise?” Petr asked, appearing behind me in the mirror, and pulling faces.
“When isn't there trouble in paradise with me and Hilarie?” I wet my fingers and scrubbed at the patches on my face. “The only time we ever get on these days is when she's at the hospital and I'm here. When we're together it's mayhem.”
“Still arguing over silly things?”
“She just splurged on this hideous, expensive beige couch. Didn't even consult me when she threw out the old one, can you believe it? The first thing I'm gonna do when I get home is jump on that monstrosity, roll around and get a rainbow of paint all over it.” I laughed wickedly.
“You don't have the balls.”
“No, you're right. I think she would actually kill me. Throw me out at least.”
Petr grabbed my shoulders in support. “You could always come stay with me. It would be fun.”
“Yeah, right. I'd rather not wake up every morning to find every gay guy in Lox Ridge, or heck, the rest of the state of Indiana, walking around naked!”
He chuckled, his face turning red because he knew it was an accurate description of what would happen. He'd insisted that he was bisexual, but in the six years I'd known him I'd never seen him with a woman. He loved men the way I loved women – with a debilitating passion that often impaired our view and made us do stupid things. Hilarie was my current stupid thing.
“That wouldn't happen every morning, Lissa. What do you think I am?” he asked, taking mock-offense.
“You're the guy with the common name and the really annoying spelling.”
He sighed as if to say “here we go again”. It was a subject I kept bringing up. I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm not very open-minded, and I'm pretty particular when it comes to popular convention. As a punishment from the gods, I'd ended up dating a woman who couldn't spell her own name properly, and my best friend's name was missing an 'e'. Petr's name pissed me off more than Hilarie's, though, because it had been his choice to remove the letter. Did it at eighteen, in a ridiculous attempt to feel more connected to his Czech ancestry. But the guy was as all-American as they came, from his varsity-style jacket and big non-prescription glasses, to his Converse sneakers. I didn't know who he was trying to fool, but I guess it worked for his lovers.
“Sometimes I think you just like arguing with me for the sake of it,” he said.
“That's because I win when we argue. There's no winning with Doctor Hilarie.” I rolled my eyes. Most people wouldn't have, but then again most people didn't have to date Hilarie – a slightly pedantic, slightly anal snob with a God-complex.
Petr spun me round to face him, now serious. “You really can leave. Rent a place of your own. That anonymous buyer that snaps up most of your stuff has set you up for a couple of years.”
I could have left any time, sure, but I didn't. The relationship had been good for six months – the first six months – and not so good the last two years. Yet I always stayed. Why? Because for someone like me who'd been alone since the age of twelve, having someone, anyone, was better than having no one at all.
I never told Petr that, but I didn't have to. He knew all about my past. About my mom splitting when I was seven, just upping and leaving one day, as though we meant nothing to her. He knew about me growing up in care after my father was murdered. And he knew about my younger sister being adopted and me being left on the shelf like a broken toy.
I moved away from him, grabbed my coat and purse. “No talking about feelings and relationships and doom in the workplace, remember?” I laughed it off, though it wasn't easy to do. From every window of our little top floor studio, I could see that darkness had descended outside. The streets were pitch black. We lost track of time in that studio – shut away in our own little world. “This is our happy place.”
“That rule's stupid, and it always gets broken.”
Right, because in the fourteen months that we'd had the space, I couldn't remember a day that I hadn't bitched about my failing relationship.
“Well I'm beat. I suppose I should head home now. Go sully her couch, maybe order take-out and eat it in bed, then leave all my clothes on the bathroom floor.” I grinned mischievously as we switched out the lights and headed out together.
“If I don't hear from you tomorrow, should I just assume you were murdered by your OCD girlfriend?”
We laughed as we said our good-byes, exiting the building. Then we walked off in opposite directions.
The air was chilly as I made my way home. Nothing stirred on the streets. Not unusual for the town of Lox Ridge, Indiana at ten in the night. The nightlife was almost non-existent – we had to go to the next town across if we wanted any real fun. I pulled my coat tighter to keep the chill out, but in vain. The chill started to numb my cheeks and hands.
Home – that is, Hilarie's apartment – was a fifteen minute walk from the studio, and pleasant both ways. That was Lox Ridge for you – a safe, family-friendly town. A great place to raise your children. Yeah, apart from the fact that, like most towns in the country, it was home to vampires. Not many, thanks to legislation that introduced a statewide limitation, stipulating the maximum number of vampires allowed to inhabit each town. Three had been deemed a suitable number. None would have been my choice. Still, it made a difference to have a limit. When too many of them assembled, things got ugly. People died. Since the limit was introduced ten years ago, there hadn't been a single vampire-related death in the state. Or so the mayor claimed. Too little, too late for me, however. Too late for my father. He was found in his car one night, following a date, his throat practically torn out, and his blood drained.
The wind whistled past my ear as I sped up. No time for strolling in this weather; I wanted to get home asap.
I heard whispered voices, muffled in the distance yet close enough that I could make out the sound. Male voices. I peered around and couldn't see anyone. There were a couple of lights on in the terraced houses along the street. Opposite them, on my side of the street, was the Lox Ridge Woods with its huge, scary-looking trees. Were the voices coming from there? I didn't like it one bit. Suddenly my safe town, which had never really been safe, had just gotten a whole lot scarier.
My steps hastened, so too did my heartbeat. I reached into my purse to feel for anything that I could use as a weapon.
That was my first mistake.
Taking my eyes off the street, I didn't see the two men jump out from behind the trees. Before I knew it I was being dragged kicking into the woods, my screams cut off by a rough hand pressed over my mouth.
“She's stronger than she looks,” one guy said, struggling with me, trying to restrain me and drag me deeper into the woods.
“Or you're just a weak piece of crap that's being overpowered by a bitch,” the other said, then slapped me across the face, hard.
A part of me wanted to be unconscious through whatever attack they had planned, but the fighter in me waited for her opportunity to strike or run, whichever possibility presented itself first.
They threw me down in a clearing, close to a brook, where a big flashlight rested on a large rock. I got a glimpse of their faces, and I knew then that they had no intention of letting me go once they were finished with me. Kidnapping 101: don't keep the victim alive once they've seen your face.
What did they want with me? All right, I'm not bad to look at; long eyelashes set around big, emerald-green eyes – my mother's eyes – giving me that innocent look. I knew I looked younger than my twenty-three years. But still, these guys were young, attractive, and by the way they spoke – with a pompous, private school air – I could tell they came from money. I guess I bought into the whole idea that assault against women was an ugly, poor man's crime, even though I should have known better. One of the guys, the sneering one, had a familiar face, though I couldn't place it.
“Let me go, you assholes!” I shouted. Then I started screaming for help, but received a blow to my face that felt like I'd been hit with a bag of rocks. I cried out in pain.
“I don't know about this, man,” the unfamiliar guy said. “Are we really going through with this?” His voice was shaky, his eyes full of panic.
The other guy – the leader – tutted, shot him a murderous look. “Yeah, we fucking are.” He started unfastening his belt. “I'll go first. You hold her down.”
That was my cue. I wasn't going to be a victim, to make it easy for them. I scrambled to my feet and tried to make a run for it as the friend came toward me, but I wasn't quick enough. Leader guy grabbed me from behind and, with a rough yank, flung me down. I don't think it was his intention, because when my head hit the rock, I heard them both say “Oh shit.”
However, that wasn't the last thing I heard or saw before I fainted. Just before my eyes fluttered shut, I saw a shadow stalk out from behind the trees. And then I heard screaming. Lots of it.
I welcomed unconsciousness.