Dark Promises(54)

She went right up to the building, her heart pounding hard in her chest. Her mouth went dry. She didn’t know what to expect, but the beautiful, perfect song surrounded her and filled in the missing notes of her song. She felt compelled to move forward and knew if she tried to stop herself she wouldn’t be able to. She had to find the owner of that song.

Her fingers wrapped around the crudely carved door handle. There was no lock. The door was heavy but it swung open easily when she jerked on it, stepped inside and stopped. She let go of the door in shock, and behind her, it swung closed. The musical notes filled the room, dancing, playing all around her, but there was nothing inside those four walls but dirt. A dirt floor. An undisturbed dirt floor.

She didn’t know why she wanted to cry, but she did. She was tired. Exhausted. She’d been like a child hunting the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and she felt cheated. She dropped her pack to the floor and sank down. Her legs were trembling so much she couldn’t stand.

Trixie shook her head, refusing to let the sudden tears in her eyes fall. What had she been thinking? She was well past her prime. She’d lost her shot at any kind of . . . what? She didn’t want a man. She was set in her ways. Snarky. She spoke her mind and often was sarcastic and nasty when she was crossed. Men liked sweet, and that wasn’t her. Life had been good to her, bringing her granddaughters to her, but it had also taken a lot. She had her life the way she liked it now. She wouldn’t give one moment of it up for a man.

She straightened her shoulders because, really, she had been in some kind of mesmerizing spell and maybe, just maybe, that teenage girl who had gotten pregnant and thought her man loved her and would stand by her had come to the front out of nowhere, dreaming again. She had to find her steel spine and her sense of humor, no matter that she was alone. She couldn’t afford to dream. She’d given up on dreams for herself a good fifty years earlier. Her dreams were for her girls. And they were living the dream and that was good enough for her.

Trixie looked around her. At least she had shelter. She was tired and needed to sleep. She was fairly certain the men who would be chasing her couldn’t make their way through the dense fog. In any case, they couldn’t see to track her once they hit the fog. She’d had the musical notes to guide her and they didn’t.

She opened her pack and pulled out her sleeping bag. She’d sleep right there in the empty building with the musical notes playing all around her. And she wouldn’t dream. She wouldn’t be lonely. She would just go to sleep. Being a careful type of woman and always believing in being prepared, she pulled her vampire-hunting box out of her pack and set it beside her.

Looking at it, she felt a little better. There was a vial of holy water and a bible. There were all kinds of other things as well, but she really liked the little gun that shot the small, sharpened stakes. They weren’t as big as she would have liked. Not at all. She frowned as she examined them. If she had designed a kit, she would have gotten rid of most of the junk in it and would have concentrated on making some big-ass stakes. The kind that would make a serious hole in a vampire’s heart so he’d never rise again. It was a point-and-shoot kind of gun and she liked that about it. She put it beside her sleeping bag with the little board of extra stakes.

“Not that you’re real stakes,” she whispered aloud, because really, they looked silly. They looked like tips of stakes. She liked things big. Bold. Larger than life. Solid. Especially a stake that stood between her and a vampire.

Trixie lay back on top of the sleeping bag, looking up at the dancing notes, hearing the beautiful song, the one that made her dream when she didn’t want to. When she knew better. “I never wanted a man of my own, not after learning they were lying, cheating, lazy bums. He never even spoke one word to our daughter. Not one. Our beautiful girl.” Her hand closed convulsively around the little gun. Had her daughter’s father been standing in front of her right at that moment, she would have staked him on the spot.

She was quiet for a long time, occasionally reaching up to wipe at the wet on her face. She didn’t cry, so the tracks weren’t tears, just maybe leftover residue from the fog. Still, her eyes were a bit watery and out of focus when she first noticed the disturbance in the dirt floor. Right in the middle. The dirt spewed into the air, small at first and then like a geyser.

Trixie scrambled to her feet and jumped to the side. She stood over the hole in the ground, staring in shock. The hole was deep and long. It was long because it had to accommodate a very large man. He lay down in the open grave—and it was an open grave—looking up at her. His eyes were open.