Free Revenant by Jaden Kilmer Page B

across the room with pale, ghostly eyes. Her right arm hangs limp beside her, broken so badly at the elbow it now points in the wrong direction.
    She’s dead. I know she’s dead, but it doesn’t register. I don’t feel anything. Just numb. I feel calm as I approach her body and examine it. Her shirt is drenched in blood. There’s a gaping hole in her neck where I can see the stringy neck muscles. Her left hand is clenched, but it’s not holding anything.
    I head upstairs, but I know what I’m going to find next. My father’s dead too. He died on my bed. His neck was snapped more severely than my mother’s and his body was covered in smaller lacerations and bruises. His pistol lies on the ground near the wall, which has been splattered in blood. His blood soaks my bedsheets now. I realize that’s what I smelled when I walked in. My dad’s blood, my mom’s blood, and I hope there’s a bit of her blood in there too. I hope my dad at least plucked one of her eyes out before he fell.
    Right on cue, Meg struts into the room.
    “Sorry ‘bout the parents. But if only somebody had been a good little girl and told the truth... I guess they’d still be around.”
    She’s behind me. I have neither the will nor the courage to turn around and face her. My question is deadpan. “How did you get in?”
    “Played the scared lost woman card. They invited me right in. Really though, that’s what you lead with? I was really hoping for some tears out of you.”
    “No. No tears. I am going to kill you first. And then I will have time to cry.”
    My hand grips the bow.
                     I let out an inhuman scream. All my pain and loss finds itself escaping my body through my lungs and the scream becomes as intense as a banshee’s. I whirl around, swinging the bow at Meg. She simply jumps out of the way. I stab at her. She catches it and wrests the weapon from my control, snapping it in half over her knee.
                  “You’re supposed to join me, Scout! Elizabeth’s debt is yet to be repaid.”
                  “No!” I slam into her, surprising myself with my own strength. Meg falls to the ground and I pin her down with my left arm pressing into her throat. I smash her face over and over. I break her nose and start for her eyes but she bites me. I jump back in pain.
                  Meg rushes at me. Training with my dad comes back and I dodge her easily, her momentum sending her crashing into my bed. Below me are the pieces of my bow, now conveniently broken into two wooden stakes. I grab one in each hand and face her.
    Meg snarls. Her eyes now a brilliant scarlet. I rush at her and she leaps at me. My first stake finds her shoulder as she bites down into my neck. She tears away like an animal on its prey, but I keep thrusting the stake into her shoulder until she breaks off.
    I quickly reach up to feel the wound. It’s bleeding fast, but she missed the jugular. And I know why. She still wants to turn me. Dodger said for a human to turn vampire, she needed a vampire’s blood inside her own body. I have none. Meg can only kill me.
    Another rush from Meg. I sidestep her and thrust the next stake through her leg, just above her knee, She crumples over, yanking the stake from her leg but unable to stand up.
    Got you.
    I raise my stake in the air, ready to end it.
    “Do it!” she says. “Slay me, Scout! And damn your friend to an eternity of pain!”
    I stop in my tracks. I forgot, in the blur of slayer super-adrenaline, that I needed Dodger to deliver the killing blow.
    “Ah... and there we are. Is this selflessness or cowardice? Do it, Scout! Kill me!”
    I reach for my phone. I intend to call Dodger over so this sad story can finish itself. Meg has other ideas. She stumbles to her feet just long enough to snatch the phone out of my hands. I notice a wound on her stomach. She’s been shot. Good, my father put up a fight after all.
    “What happened, Scout? You