Read Online Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels by D.J. Goodman - Free Book Online

stories and legends, it appeared, had
some amount of fact to them but were not completely true. Zoey did
indeed cast a reflection. But it was blurred beyond the point of
recognition. It was as though some force was interfering with the
light before it could reach either her or the mirror, resulting in
a reflection that was warped and hazy, like a funhouse mirror seen
through a thick fog.
    “Zoey,” Peg whispered. “What happened to
you?”
    “It planted a seed,” Zoey, her voice solemn
and quiet. “The seed grew. They were going to pick the fruit. I had
to get away.” Zoey took the mirror out of Peg’s hand and turned it
away, absently placing it in the shoebox with all of Peg’s
memories. She put the rest of the pictures on top of it, closed the
lid, set it aside, and then opened up the bag.
    Peg turned away and refused to watch, but she
could clearly hear every sound as Zoey ripped the plastic off the
hamburger. Instead of the sounds of chewing, though, it was
followed by gulps as Zoey held the raw meat over her mouth and
drank the bloody juice.

Chapter Seven
     
    Most of the signs of
Zoey’s presence were gone by the time V arrived with Brendan. The
shit was cleaned off the walls leading to the basement and Peg had
aired out the house enough that she thought she could get away with
claiming it was nothing more than a particularly noxious toilet
overflow. The smell of pot also helped, as Peg had smoked a bowl to
help calm her extremely frayed nerves. Zoey was still downstairs,
although she was now back in her hidden corner. Peg had given her
several blankets and pillows so she would at least be somewhat
comfortable, and the girl had promptly fallen asleep. There was at
least that. No matter what she was now, she was still human and
alive enough that she needed rest.
    There was a knock at the door, but Peg didn’t
go to answer it. She sat on the couch, her hands folded in front of
her, not wanting to move. The last several hours had been draining
in ways she had never been able to imagine, and that was saying
something considering how well she remembered the days following
Zoey’s disappearance.
    “Peg?” V called from outside. “Are you in
there?”
    “It’s unlocked,” Peg called back. V opened
the door, having trouble considering one arm was full of Brendan’s
bag and the other full of Brendan himself, squirming and fussy. V
set him down and he ran across the room to leap in Peg’s lap.
    “Mommy!”
    Peg hugged him tight. “Hey there. How’s my
little man, huh?”
    “Sleepy, I hope,” V said. “He was running all
over at my place and talking up a blue streak. I gave him a snack,
so hopefully he’s about ready to calm down for the day.”
    “I hope so, too,” Peg said.
    “Jesus, Peg. You look like absolute sh… er,
garbage. You even look worse than when you dropped him off, and
that’s saying something.”
    “You don’t know the half of it,” Peg
said.
    “So are you going to tell me?”
    “Give me a minute.” She looked down at
Brendan. “Mommy has a lot of things she needs to talk about with
Aunt V. You think you can play quietly in your room for a little
bit?”
    “Mommy, I need to go baffroom.”
    “That’s fine. We’ll go to the bathroom
first.”
    Peg held his hand as he went up the stairs.
She would have picked him up and taken him herself to make it
faster, but it wasn’t that long ago where he hadn’t been able to
take the stairs by himself. The fact that he could do it now filled
him with an adorable childish pride and Peg, even in her current
state, couldn’t deny him that. The strangely determined look on his
face as he gripped the railing, stepped up a stair with one foot,
then brought up the next made her forget some of the mind-numbing
revelations of the day. The time wasn’t too far in the past where
she would have been unable to hide her impatience with this kind of
task, but now it gave her a strange kind of joy she’d never known
earlier in her life. At the