Sam I Am

  It skidded some more across the tiles, cracking a bit beneath his weight. The chairs overturned underneath it and the carving knife whizzed past them, slicing a small gash in Logan’s sweater before it slammed into the opposite wall, sinking several inches into the drywall.

  “Stupid bitch, get off me!” Taylor yelled. His expression was bewildered. He wasn’t used to anyone fighting back – not like this. Logan straightened and whirled around to stare at the other knives. She backpedaled and gained her feet while she waited, expectantly, for the other knives to come to life as well.

  But they remained still. Unmoving.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” Taylor shoved himself off of the table and came to his full height.

  Logan turned back to face him, glanced once more at the knife sticking out of the wall, and then whirled around and raced to the table beside the front door. Without giving it a second thought, she grabbed his set of keys and then jerked the front door open and shot out into the front yard.

  She heard Taylor call after her, but the door slammed behind her, cutting off the sound of his voice.

  As she rounded her way into the driveway, she heard him banging on the door. It wouldn’t open. It was strange; the door wouldn’t even close properly last night. But it gave her the time she needed to escape. She shoved the key into Taylor’s driver’s side door, managing to slide it home on the second try, her fingers shaking badly.

  She climbed in, closed the door, and started the engine. The diesel roared to life and Logan spared a glance at the gas tank. Full. There was one good thing about being obsessive compulsive.

  Logan backed the truck out and was roaring down the street when a glance in the rear view mirror revealed her brother racing down the street after her. She caught a glimmer in the passenger seat as her own keys seemed to wink at her.

  It was several tense minutes before Logan had put enough distance between herself and her brother and her house to breathe normally again.

  It was several minutes more before the truth of that morning’s events really hit her. An unseen force had tried to kill Taylor. She’d stolen her brother’s truck and taken her own keys with her. And worst of all, she’d left a very angry Taylor at home with an already bruised and bloodied James.

  Chapter Six

  Logan swore loudly and pulled the truck over onto the shoulder of the road. She shoved the gear shift into park and closed her eyes tight. “Think, think, think….”

  It was hard; her heart was beating painfully fast. Her head ached and her stomach felt knotted and cramping. She was dizzy and tired and feared that, at any moment, she might faint. She probably shouldn’t be on the road.

  But lives were at stake. Hers, James’, Taylor’s, maybe her friends’.

  Her eyes flew open as a solid, real idea made itself clear to her, and she pulled the cell phone out of her front pocket. There was still hope.

  “Please let him be there, please let him be there, please, please, please….” She speed dialed her parents’ number and waited as it rang. It was possible that James was with her parents. After all, it was one p.m. on a Sunday and she hadn’t seen James in the hall or kitchen at home. So, maybe….

  “Hi honey,” her mother’s voice came over the line.

  “Mom, is James with you?”

  “Yes, he is. And Logan, thank you for taking care of him last night. James told me what happened with Taylor.” Her mother sighed wearily, an age-old exhaustion sounding loud and clear through the distance between them.

  Logan didn’t say anything. She was too grateful for words. The rush of relief that washed over her sent her sinking into the seat behind her. She would have given her left pinky toe not to have to go back to the house and deal with Taylor at that very moment. Hell, she’d give it if she never had to go back and deal with him, now that she’d actually gone and stolen his truck.

  There would be hell to pay.

  “Mom, I won’t be home until late tonight,” she told her mother.

  “That’s right, you have the Halloween dance tonight.” Her mother sounded oddly excited, even though she attempted to keep her tone subdued.

  Logan blinked.

  “I’m glad you’ve decided to go after all,” her mother continued. “You need to get out and socialize more.”

  The dance? Logan frowned. She’d forgotten all about that – kind of. It was why Katelyn would be at the school right now; she was on the decoration committee. So, Logan had possessed the knowledge, somewhere in the back of her head. She just hadn’t been planning on going. Still, it provided a good excuse, so she grabbed onto it.

  A few minutes later, she hung up and put her phone back in her pocket. Then she stared straight ahead at the road.

  The phone rang. It was one of those non-musical rings she used for family members.

  Logan’s gut clenched. She pulled it out and looked at the LCD screen. Taylor.

  She muted it and threw it on the passenger side of the truck. The light stopped blinking. Logan stared at it, daring it to ring again. Instead, it began beeping and the screen told her she had a text.

  Don’t look at it, Logan.

  She picked it up and looked at it. Bring back my truck, bitch. Taylor was never one to use abbreviations or beat around the bush.

  Logan flipped the phone open, turned it off, and tossed it back onto the passenger seat. She pulled back out onto the road and drove the remainder of the distance to the school in a shroud of ominous silence that was edged with the muffled roar of the diesel engine.

  Peripherally, she wondered how much longer she was going to live. Because if Sam Hain didn’t kill her and take her into his realm with him, Taylor would sure as shit send her there himself.

  The school parking lot was already crowded. Students were there to prepare for the dance, and teachers and faculty were there to make sure the students behaved themselves.

  Logan managed to find a space at the back. She parked the truck and jumped out, making her way quickly toward the back staircase that led into the gymnasium and the halls and classrooms beyond.

  As she walked, she passed several cliques of students and caught stray bits of what they were saying.

  “It’s early in October to have a Halloween dance. Why not wait until the Saturday before?”

  “They want to get it over with before Fall Break and that starts next Thursday….”

  “What’s her hurry? She’s so weird….”

  “Miss drama queen, I swear. Always scowling or frowning or running off somewhere.”

  “The new guy is helping Tiffany and Melinda –”

  “Oh, of course! She probably had her claws in him before anyone else had set eyes on the guy.”

  “Can’t blame her, though. He’s mega-hot….”

  Logan shoved their verbal diarrhea out of her head and took the stairs two at a time. She just needed to make sure that Katelyn was okay and then she could head to the hospital and get this figured out.

  A wave of intense dizziness washed over her as she reached the top staircase. She bent at the waist and let the stars swim before her closed eyes. Sam had drained a lot of her blood and she’d yet to eat anything. She was being stupid.

  You need food, Logan! She couldn’t handle the task before her without fuel.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Logan slowly straightened and found herself craning her neck, just a bit. Dominic Maldovan was holding his guitar case in one hand, and his other grasped the top of the railing, effectively forming a sort of blockade before her with his body. His long black hair shimmered in the waning sunlight; his green eyes filled with mystery and promise.

  She would never cease to be startled by him, his presence, his nearness. He’d always been taller than everyone else around him. And now he had the young man’s body to fill out his height. If she’d had a kid’s crush on him in the fourth grade, that crush had only grown along with him.

  Dominic’s expression was patently concerned. He frowned and tried agai
n, “Logan, are you okay?” He released the railing and took a step toward her, closing the distance between them just enough to make her breath catch.

  “I’m fine,” she told him, her voice quieter than she’d intended. “Just a little out of shape and… hung over,” she fished for an excuse he might understand. But instead of the empathetic nod she’d been expecting, Dominic Maldovan cocked his head to one side and eyed her disbelievingly.

  “You? Hung over?” He laughed a little, flashing straight, white teeth. “Not likely.” He shook his head, his eyes twinkling. And then, as if realizing that he was treading dangerously close to the grounds of flirting, he straightened and stepped back, clearing his throat. “Okay, then,” he nodded once, switching his guitar to his other hand. “If you’re all right. I’ve got to practice before the dance.”

  That’s right. Dominic and his band were playing for the dance that night. If ever there was a reason to go to a stupid school function, this was it. Dominic Maldovan knew music. She loved listening to him play. There were days when she had to stay late after school for some reason, and she would walk down the empty halls toward her locker and catch the distant sound of sweet, tender guitar music.

  It was classical and unpretentious and perfect. She would turn the corner to find Dominic seated on the floor under his locker, his guitar in his lap, the fingers of his left hand pressing expertly over the frets, his right hand plucking the purest notes from worn, steel strings.

  After a few moments, he would notice her there and glance up. And then he would give her a nod – respectful and deferent, the way so many great rock heroes would have done. She would smile and nod back and move steadily down the hall to disappear around another corner.

  But she always wanted to stay. To sit beside him. She just wasn’t that kind of person. She didn’t possess those kinds of guts. That was for someone like Katelyn. Or Tiffany Preston and her ilk.

  Not Logan.

  “See you tonight?” he asked as he took another step back.

  Logan’s world slowed down in that instant. He was asking her if he would see her. Dominic Maldovan wanted to know if he would see her at the dance! And there she was, half drained by a crazed undead creature from another dimension, her family members’ lives at stake, one of her best friends in the hospital, her brother’s stolen truck parked outside the school and she wasn’t even sure she’d remembered to brush her teeth.

  Yeah, I did, she thought, distractedly. Very distractedly.

  What should she say?

  “Um, yeah probably. I don’t know. Maybe. Um….”

  Well played, Logan.

  Dominic regarded her for a moment; that twinkle in his green eyes was back. He nodded once, the corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly. And then he turned around and walked into the school.

  Logan watched him go, a part of her mentally kicking herself for her oral train wreck of an answer – another part of her admiring the broad back under his black leather jacket, the strong muscles of his long legs under his faded blue jeans, his sure and graceful step in those thick steel-toed motorcycle boots.

  Logan blinked. He dresses like Sam, she thought. He always had, though.

  And Sam got his appearance from her. From her words.

  She wondered then, in that moment, if she had always modeled her men – at least in part – after Dominic Maldovan. Had she really been crushing on him that hard?

  Logan ran a shaking hand over her face and tried to focus on the task at hand.

  “Way to prove just how unworthy you are, Wright.”

  Logan turned to find three girls climbing the stairs behind her. They were Tiffany’s “clique.” They were annoying, and Logan always felt frustrated that she hadn’t spent as much time as they had memorizing put-downs, but they were basically harmless.

  “Hi,” Janice Stowing said as she reached the top step. She stuck out her hand as if to shake Logan’s. Logan knew better. Janice was un-fazed. “I’m a human being,” she smiled in faux greeting. “What are you?”

  Logan sighed heavily, turned around, and made her way to the same door that Dominic had disappeared through.

  “Hey!” Janice called out to her and strode the distance to the door, slamming one hand against it to still its opening. Logan turned to gaze into glaring hazel eyes. “You don’t have a hope in Hell of hooking up with someone like Dominic Maldovan,” Janice hissed, all pretense instantly gone now that she realized she didn’t have the luxury of the time it would take to insult Logan properly.

  “So you say,” Logan replied, her tone tired. “Now move.”

  “Of course, sweetie. Just as soon as you promise me one thing.”

  Again, Logan didn’t answer. She just waited.

  “When you do manage to wrap some unsuspecting creep around your un-manicured little finger, do us all a favor and learn from your parents’ mistake. Use a condom.”

  “Gladly,” Logan replied, with something like a nod. That took Janice by just enough surprise that the girl’s grip on the door relaxed and Logan was able to open it and slip through.

  Now to find Katelyn.

  Logan hurried down the undecorated hall behind the gymnasium, following the beckoning noises of students shouting orders at one another. When she rounded the corner, she was met with a school gym that, in the course of a few Saturday hours, had been utterly and completely transformed.

  The walls painted with the school colors had been concealed by black and purple draperies, spiders’ webs, and strings of orange and purple lights. The ceiling as well had been covered with black velvet in which tiny star-holes had been cut.

  Countless fog machines along the walls spilled streams of misty air over the hard wood polished floor, and a cemetery had taken root on one end of the gym, surrounding the performers’ stage like a moat of the dead. Someone was wiring all kinds of bizarre lighting up above them as people down below milled about, hanging skeletons from hangman’s nooses and carving pumpkins over layers of newspaper.

  Logan allowed her eyes to adjust to the rather dim interior and scanned the gym’s inhabitants. In a few moments, she recognized a group of Katelyn’s co-decorators and made her way toward them. Two of them rose to meet another girl who was coming out of a hallway behind them, and Logan focused on the remaining student.

  “Hey Tawny, is Katelyn around?” she asked as she approached.

  Tanya Anderson glanced up from where she had been gluing glow-in-the-dark stars to a black felt background. “Hey Logan. She was here earlier but stepped out to visit Meagan in the hospital.” She sat back on her heels and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. Her thick brown hair had been pulled back into a long braid that made her look five years younger than she was. “Sorry about what happened. Any word on what caused the coma?”

  Logan swallowed hard. She shrugged and shook her head as the other girls returned, toting something that they held up between them as if it were a prize. “Logan! Check it out! Jessie got this bag from his grandmother’s attic! It has, like, a real crystal ball and table cloth and gypsy stuff in it!” They lowered the bag to the ground and started fishing through it, pulling things out and passing them around. “We’re going to set up a tarot reading table in that corner over there!”

  They pointed to a corner of the gym that had been relatively untouched and they were so excited about it, Logan truly did want to congratulate them and join in. But this was a matter of life – and Sam.

  “It’s great guys, seriously. You’ve done an amazing job.” She gestured to everything around them. “I totally love the cemetery.”

  They agreed heartily, beaming under the praise.

  “I gotta go,” she said, then. “I need to catch up with Katelyn and Meagan.” She was about to turn to leave when another voice brought her to a sudden halt.

  “Are you certain you have to leave so soon, Logan?”

  Logan’s heart thip-thumped painfully and her breath whooshed out of her lungs as if someone had sucked it out. She froze
on the spot.

  “You know her?”

  “We’ve met,” came the calm reply. Logan could feel him staring at her.

  There was a dramatic pause and then an even more dramatic sigh. “Sam, let’s go. We’ve got a schedule to keep and –”

  “Tiffany, why don’t you introduce me to these other lovely ladies?”

  Logan slowly – oh so slowly – turned in place to find the girls from Katelyn’s decorating committee rising to their feet once more in order to meet the new guy. He was standing a few feet away from them, Tiffany Preston hanging casually on his well-muscled arm, and several glass bottles of some kind of drink held easily in his free hand.

  Sam’s frozen blue gaze skirted across the faces of the girls before him, who were all offering up their names like skittish, giggling nine year olds, and then that frozen gaze rested on Logan.

  It took a boat load of willpower for her not to turn around and run full-tilt in the opposite direction.

  Tiffany’s look of disgust made it clear that she was confused as to what Sam Hain could possibly see in any of the sub-par human beings in front of him. “Why do you want-”

  But Sam turned toward her and, pulling his gaze away from Logan, he peered down at Tiffany in a way that gave Logan a chill. Tiffany’s pallor paled a tad.

  She straightened and nodded. “Fine,” she breathed, with the slightest eye-roll. “They already told you, but this is Tanya, that’s Lisa, Julie, and Kendra. And, apparently, you’ve met Logan.” Her tone had dropped into something decidedly nasty with those last words.

  Logan felt what little blood she had rise to her cheeks when all of the girls turned their attention to her. Sam’s gaze was like a weight on her body, holding her in place without the use of physical force.

  “How did you meet?” Kendra asked, a little tentatively.

  “We met last night,” Sam told them, his eyes still on Logan. “And I won’t say any more, because a gentleman never tells.”

  The girls gasped at that and Logan’s eyes widened. Tiffany’s look of disgust became one of shocked horror and she pulled back a little, releasing Sam’s arm. Sam smiled, his blue eyes lightening ever so slightly, until they took on that familiar inhuman cast that she’d seen just before he’d bitten her in her dream.