Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels by D.J. Goodman

thought. Don’t
let her get her hooks in you again. You don’t have to listen to
this. You don’t deserve it.
    But she did. After so many years of hearing
it on a constantly repeating basis, she knew that she did.
    “You can sit there and ask any question you
like about what happened to her. Go ahead. Let it make you feel
better. But I don’t care anymore. They’ll never catch who did it.
He won’t get what’s coming to him. But you? You were supposed to
protect her. Instead you tried to teach her to be that same kind of
partying little slut that you were and she’s gone because of it. No
matter what you do, no matter what you say, you will know. You will
always know. Whatever happened to her, you did it. You killed her.
Do you understand me? Do you fucking get it? You’re the one and
only you. No one else. You.”
    Anita stopped. For many seconds Peg could
hear nothing from the other end of the phone other than heavy
breathing. She waited for one last barb or attack. Instead the
phone went dead as Anita hung up.
    Peg took the headset from her ear and dropped
it on the table. She finally realized that her cheeks were
completely wet and her entire body shook. No, that wasn’t right.
Her entire body shook except for her right hand.
    Slowly, carefully, Peg put the blade against
her right upper arm, just below the shoulder and to the right of
the Virgo symbol tattooed there in black and red ink. No matter
where she did this on her body, she never touched that tattoo. It
wasn’t even her zodiac symbol. It was Zoey’s.
    She’d learned the perfect ways through trial
and error. Trying to cut herself on her stomach was no good. She
wasn’t that much overweight, only a few extra pounds, but that thin
extra padding of fat made the skin too springy. She could push the
blade into it and leave little more than scratches, and scratches
were never enough. They were annoyances, itches. What she needed
was pain. She had to have it. It was the only relief for the
pressure, the only way to make the pain inside make any sense.
    She put the blade to her skin. Pressed.
Waited for an initial sting. Pressed harder. Waited to get used to
it again. Then when the blade was pressed firmly in its place she
slid it down.
    She gasped. Or at least she thought she
gasped. She couldn’t be sure. All her concentration was on that
single sliver of skin high on her body as the pain hit her. Yes. Oh
yes. It hurt. She knew it was bad. She knew it was dangerous. She
didn’t care.
    It was pain, but it was relief. Sweet relief,
the pressure slowly diminishing.
    She finally opened her eyes and looked at her
arm. At first it only looked like a scratch, small and nothing to
pay any attention. Then the blood started to well up, filling the
tiny crevasse of skin she had created. It wasn’t right, though. It
hurt, but enough. There needed to be much more pain before she
could be okay again. She again put the razor at the top of the cut,
this time with her eyes open, pressed it in as deep as it would go,
and pulled down again. Her breathing quickened as the pain hit her
again. Better. That was better. The blood covered the edge of the
razor, a strangely beautiful dark red against the flame-darkened
metal. She repeated the action one more time, and the waves of pain
made her heart beat faster. Finally. Finally. Yes. This did it.
This made it all better.
    One cut was never enough. Her body would tell
her when it had had enough. When she’d last done it years earlier
she had been able to continue cutting herself for half an hour
before her hand was shaking too bad to continue, but she already
felt spent this time after ten minutes and five separate cuts
moving downward over her arm like a small but particularly vicious
animal. None of the cuts went below the point where the sleeve of
an average t-shirt couldn’t cover it. Despite how long it had been
she still remembered that much. She’d gone into a job once—working
at a pizza place—having forgotten to