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

didn’t
return now. Instead she felt relief far greater than she had given
herself while cutting.
    She’s going to kill me , Peg thought. She’s going to sink those fangs into me and drain me and I’ll be
dead. After all this time I’ll finally be dead.
    Good .
    She wanted to remind herself that she had
plenty of things to live for. She’d built a wonderful life for
herself. She had Tony. Best of all she had Brendan. In these
moments where she wanted her life to finally end her therapist had
told her to focus on all the good. That only proved, however, that
her therapist, along with anyone else who tried to say such a
thing, didn’t truly understand what it felt like in these moments.
The best parts of life weren’t enough. The good didn’t matter.
There was only one thing that mattered, and it was that her mother
was right. She was a bad person. She was nothing. She was the
person who had turned her sister into this thing.
    Zoey moved her head closer to the wounds,
sniffing them, but she stopped as these thoughts went through Peg’s
head. She looked Peg in the eyes, although she appeared to be
focusing less on Peg’s face than on something beyond, like she was
seeing something just behind Peg’s head.
    “Why did you do this to yourself?” Zoey
asked. Then, after a few seconds where Peg didn’t answer, “This is
about me?”
    Are you reading my mind? Peg thought.
Zoey didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to realize she’d been asked a
question, but Peg knew there was something more going on here.
    “I’m sorry,” Peg whispered.
    “Sorry?” Zoey asked. She moved her face
closer to Peg’s arm, only inches away now, and for a time neither
of them moved. When Zoey finally went for her it was not the savage
attack Peg had expected. She put her mouth to the topmost cut and
pressed her lips on it gently but firmly. Peg’s breath caught at
the sucking sensation. These were not the actions of someone who
intended to kill her.
    “You’re like this because of me,” Peg said.
She was certain she knew what Zoey would say next. It was the same
tired statements everyone said. This wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t
done anything wrong. She had no way of knowing. And no one ever
understood that Peg didn’t want to hear it anymore. Deep inside she
knew she was at fault, and there was only one thing she had ever
wanted to hear in response. It was the one thing she had never
thought she could hear because it could only come from
Zoey’s lips.
    Zoey stopped sucking and looked at her again.
Peg’s heart beat harder as she remembered every fantasy she’d ever
had about this moment. Granted, in none of those fantasies had her
sister’s mouth been covered with Peg’s own blood, but in so many
other ways they went just like this. That was how Peg knew she
wasn’t actually going to say the words. There was no way this
moment could happen. It was a dream that she didn’t deserve.
    Except it wasn’t a dream. Zoey said the
words, slow and precise so that Peg had no chance of
misunderstanding them.
    “It’s okay, sis. I forgive you.”
    Peg was too stunned by the moment to respond.
Zoey took her finger and ran the tip over one of her teeth, ripping
a deep gash in it that immediately welled with blood. She pressed
the finger to the wound she’d just drunk from then moved her mouth
to the next. While Zoey drank Peg watched the first cut stop
bleeding and pull itself closed.
    Zoey repeated her actions, drinking then
fixing, until all the wounds Peg had given herself were healed with
almost no scars.

Chapter Ten
     
    The next morning
Peg woke long enough to tell Tony she wasn’t feeling good and then
call into work before falling back into bed. When she woke a second
time the sun was coming in bright, almost too bright, through her
bedroom window and she felt a deep satisfaction and contentment on
a level she wasn’t sure she’d ever had. She smiled at the ceiling
and even laughed to herself a little as she realized