"You're telling me you just found another dead body in the bush, and you think it was ... a vampire attack?"
"I know it was, Zach." Her heart ached to say the words, but the image of Kade, and the image of the hunter's savaged body he'd left behind, tore at her with icy talons. "Oh, God, Zach. I know you don't believe me, but it's true."
He frowned, staring at her for a long moment. "Why don't you come inside? It's freezing out here, and you're shaking like a leaf."
Not from the cold of the outdoors, but from the confusion and horror of discovering that Kade had betrayed her. He'd sworn he was different from the monsters of her nightmares, and she had believed him. She would have believed everything he'd told her, if she hadn't seen the blood-soaked proof of his deception for herself just a short while ago.
"Come on," Zach said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and guiding her away from the shed, toward his house. Luna got up to follow, keeping pace at Alex's heels, but before the wolf dog could make it into the house, Zach closed the door in her face. "Sit down, Alex. Let's take this slowly now, all right?
Help me make sense of what you think you saw."
Numbly complying, she sank down onto the sofa in his living room. He took a seat beside her. "I don't think I saw anything, Zach. I did see it. It's real, everything I told you. Vampires do exist."
"Listen to yourself. This isn't like you, Alex. You've been acting strangely ever since the attack on the Tomses. Ever since that guy--Kade--showed up in Harmony." Zach's eyes narrowed on her. "Has he been giving you drugs? Is that what his business is in Harmony? Because if some asshole thinks he can come into my town and start dealing--"
"No!" Alex shook her head. "God, is that what you think? That I'm telling you all of this because I'm high or something?"
"I had to ask," he said, still watching her with an intensity that unsettled her. "I'm sorry, Alex, but all of this sounds a little ... well, crazy."
She exhaled a sharp breath. "I know what it sounds like. I don't want to believe it any more than you do. But it's the truth. I've known it was the truth since I was nine years old."
"What do you mean?"
"Vampires, Zach. They're real. Years ago, they killed my mom and my little brother."
"You always said it was a drunk driver."
She slowly shook her head. "It wasn't. I saw the attack with my own eyes. It was the worst thing I've ever witnessed. And I didn't need to see the attack on Pop Toms and his family to know that the same evil killed them, too. I should have said something then. Maybe I could have stopped what happened to them, or to Lanny Ham and Big Dave."
Zach's frown deepened to a questioning scowl. "You're saying it was vampires that attacked them in that cave?"
"One vampire," she corrected. "The same one that probably killed the Toms family. It's stronger than other vampires, Zach. It's one of the fathers of the entire vampire race. And it's not ... from this world." Zach leaned back and barked out a loud guffaw of laughter. "Oh, Christ, Alex! What the fuck are you on right now? You look sober enough, but you must be completely stoned to sit there with a straight face and expect me to believe this shit. Alien vampires, that's what you're talking about?"
"I know it's hard to imagine something like that could exist, but I'm telling you, it does. Vampires exist, and they call themselves the Breed." She stopped short of naming Kade in their number, not quite ready to betray him, even though he seemed to have had no difficulty when it came to her. Zach stood up and threw out his hands at her. "Go home. Sleep it off."
"Listen to me," she cried, desperate that he not dismiss her as wasted or crazy. She could see that she was losing this battle, she was afraid that her failure to convince him now might cost other lives before long. "Zach, please! We have to warn people. You have to believe me."
"No, I don't, Alex." He whirled around to face her, something brutal in his expression. "I'm not even sure I can believe anything you've said today, including your claim of another dead body in the woods. I don't have time for this kind of bullshit right now, okay? I have my own problems I'm dealing with! Folks are already worked up over everything that's going on around here lately. I've got troopers arriving tomorrow, and the last thing I need is you adding to my headaches with a lot of crazy talk about bloodthirsty, killer aliens running loose in the bush!"
Alex looked away from him, unable to hold the sharp fury in his gaze. She'd never seen him so angry. So ... unglued. He was in a state of near panic himself, and it didn't seem due to anything she'd told him. As she turned her head, she noticed a folded wad of cash on the coffee table and a cell phone that looked vaguely familiar. She stared at both items, a peculiar inkling of suspicion worming its way up her spine.
"Isn't that Skeeter Arnold's cell phone?"
Zach seemed caught off guard by the question. "Huh? Oh. Yeah, I confiscated it off the little bastard this morning."
He picked up the roll of twenty-dollar bills without offering an explanation and stuffed it into his pocket, his eyes on her the whole time. Alex's blood slowed in her veins, oddly chilled. "I haven't seen Skeeter around all day. When did you see him?"
Zach shrugged. "I guess it wasn't long before you got here. I figure the Staties are going to want that phone for their investigation, seeing how he used it to record that video of the Toms settlement." The explanation made sense to her.
And yet ...
"How long ago was it that you saw him?"
"About an hour ago," he replied, his answer clipped. "What does it matter to you, Alex?" She knew why he sounded defensive, even without having to reach out and confirm it with her gift for pining the truth with her touch. Zach was lying to her. Skeeter was dead hours before now--dead at Kade's hands, after Skeeter had finished off Big Dave.
Why would Zach lie about seeing him?
As the question sifted through her mind, she thought about the cash Zach had tucked away, and the cell phone he couldn't have gotten when he said he had ... and the fact that although most of Harmony and the communities roughly a hundred miles out knew that Skeeter had connections in bootlegging and drugdealing, Zach had never found sufficient evidence to arrest him. Maybe Zach hadn't been looking hard enough.