This will be deleted soon - The Wrong Hope *Complete and Free*

8. Making a Plan

Year: 1983

I was out of beer and on my last cigarette. My potential meal ticket was still out for the count and I was getting tired of waiting. I supposed all this time waiting was actually in my favour; time to strategise, to plan. For this to work I was going to need her to trust me and after I just poisoned her my thinking was that it could be a little tricky. What I needed was an angle but I didn’t know anything about the girl. Know your enemy I thought to myself. Ah bloody hell, I'd made a right pig’s ear of this and it was turning into a lot of f*****g hassle. I started with what I knew. Ricky. She mentioned him, he probably sired her, he might be important to her. I could tell her I’ll find him. I mulled it over in my head. It was an option but not sure I like it. The connection there didn’t seem strong enough, she only talked about him once, seemed more wrapped up in herself.

I pulled my battered flip pad out my back pocket, on a blank dog-eared page I wrote ‘Ricky’ at the top in my scruffy handwriting before flipping a couple of pages back. I eyed my chicken scratch notes regarding the Brice families. Two brothers John and Paul, only one town apart, both families slaughtered. I tapped the pen against my leg. The answer was here somewhere, damn I was tired; too much sun and too many hours on the road this week. I looked at her pale unmoving form and considered going to bed. She had the answers. Miss Sally-Anne had been there, seen it, and done it by the sounds. I looked at her name written in caps on the page, circled, underlined followed by one word ‘missing’. My source had been some half-pissed retired cop, small time, didn’t see a lot of crime; bit of petty theft here and there, disputes between neighbours, only dead bodies he’d seen before this were from natural causes. The Brice murders haunted him. Couple of whiskey sours and I had him blabbing about the whole case.

It was down as a robbery gone wrong. I knew better but I didn’t interrupt as he sobbed on the bar. Paul Brice and his family were found first. Paul was strung up in the barn, guts hanging out, his family scattered about the barn in bits. When the Cops went to inform next of kin they found John and Beth dead in the kitchen, their throats torn out, upstairs dead in his crib their 6 month old baby boy. Coroner had John Brice’s household down as having died a few days prior to Paul’s. Took over a week to line up all the body parts and find Sally-Anne wasn’t among them. She wasn’t a suspect; everyone in town knew Sally-Anne, slim, pretty, exceptionally well behaved, loved her family and went to church with them every Sunday. Logic would also dictate that she wouldn’t have the physical strength to commit the murders. Officially she was down as missing, no body, no note, none of her possessions – clothes and such were missing, and they didn’t think she had run away. The whole town went out looking for her thinking she had seen the brutal murders and had escaped, hiding somewhere traumatised. Time went on and she was never found, whilst it was suspected that she was probably dead, killed elsewhere, there was no evidence so she was down as missing and the Brice properties sat derelict, waiting to be claimed by the last of the Brice line.

I couldn’t see that any of that was going to help. The picture I was getting was that she killed her Mum, and Dad, Ricky killed her cousins and Aunt and Uncle. The deaths were too different, fresh turned Vamp killing their family accidentally, thinking they could control themselves or not knowing what’s happening to them was how John and Beth’s deaths looked. Paul and his family though, that was another story, calculated torture, revenge even; took a few hours to die with your guts hanging out, enough time for this Ricky fella to shred the man's wife and kids in front of him.

Instinct said she didn’t know about Ricky wiping out her family, and telling her wouldn’t earn her trust. She’d think I’m lying, he was a little thread of hope that she clung to.

Perhaps I could harness her curious nature, bet she still had a million questions, she didn’t know anything about being a Vamp, I could offer to teach her? I wrote down ‘Teach?’ with a thick question mark. It didn’t sit right and I couldn’t see her going for it.

Think; think what had she asked about? What had interested her, shocked her, saddened her? Was there anything I could use? What had she asked about most? I replayed the conversation in my mind, the mental notes I’d made. Physically she was very weak, weaker than I had expected but mentally she seemed very strong. She had managed to stay composed, not straining against the restraints trying to rip my throat out; which was refreshing. Even when I'd told her I was a Vampire Hunter she hadn’t lunged, hadn’t even seemed scared.

There it was.

She hadn’t been scared. Not when I told her I was a Hunter, I grinned to myself – it was true enough I supposed, not when she asked if I was going to kill her; not even when I told her she was poisoned. That was my hook. b***h wanted to die and I was happy to oblige – after I got what I wanted.

After all that had been the plan all along.

I took the white capped bottle of blood out the bucket, unscrewed the cap, put it just within her reach. I left the lamp on. Vamp sight meant she could see in the dark no issue but leaving the light on would appeal to the echo of her human life. I took the bucket with me, bolted the door and went to bed.