I’ll Never Let Them Hurt You, I Promise #1
Best friends for life...and then some
“We need a plan,” I mumble, pushing my glasses high up on my nose to stop them from slipping off my face. The sweat coating my skin makes it pretty pointless. Plus, I manage to smear some blood on one of the lenses.
“I have a plan,” Kara says, her voice unaffected by the effort of dragging the body between us.
My eyes shoot up to her dangerously. “It can’t involve murder.”
Kara’s face falls, her eyes dropping even further down to the problem between us.
“Too late for that,” she says, her eyes still glinting with the bloodlust that makes my stomach curl uncomfortably. “So, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know!” I bark at her. She flinches away from the sound and I instantly feel guilty. How have I managed to make a murderer feel guilty?
I sigh internally because I know that ‘murderer’ isn’t really a fair description of what Kara has become. She tells me that she can’t help it but even after four months of my best friend being a vampire, it’s hard for me to believe. A few weeks after it happened, I tried not eating anything for two days and then spending an hour in a room with a spag bowl. It didn’t even come close to mimicking the devouring hunger that Kara is consumed by. At least, that’s what she told me when I confessed my little experiment to her. Still, I managed to leave that room after an hour with every single piece of spaghetti intact. Would it have really been so hard for her to resist feeding from our old maths teacher?
“I didn’t become a police officer to help you hide bodies,” I mutter when we finally make it to my car.
“No, but it does come in really handy,” Kara says brightly but sobers again when she looks at my face. “I’m sorry.”
We drop the body onto the ground of the school car park. I walk around it and pull her into a tight hug, ignoring the blood dried around her mouth and in her red hair. Ignoring how cold and unresponsive she feels even as her arms return the hug. Ignoring everything apart from the fact that she is my best friend and I would do absolutely anything for her. I just never imagined how far that vow would be tested.
“I know you are,” I say gently, lightly patting her hair before stepping back from her. “But, did you really have to kill Mr Pace?”
Kara shrugs. “He always picked on me.”
I can’t decide if it says more about her for making the joke or more about me for needing to hide a small laugh with a cough when she says it.
“Come on. We need to get him out of here before the school opens in a couple of hours.”
I pop open the back of my car and we haul Mr Pace into it. I start going about the usual preparations to hide him until I get to the dumping location. The odds of anyone stopping a police car to check the boot are next to none, but going through the effort of covering the body allows me to compartmentalise the guilt of abusing my position of power.
“What are you going to do about the cameras then?” Kara asks me after I close the boot.
“Break in and erase the footage.”
“How is that any more legal than my idea?”
I give her an exasperated look but just shake my head. “All the cleaning stuff’s in the backseat. Sort yourself out and I’ll handle the rest. Afterwards, we can go and get breakfast somewhere.”
Kara nods and walks around the side of the car. “Good ‘cause I’m starving.”
I don’t bother to respond as I begin jogging towards the school’s main entrance, pulling the lock-picking kit from my pocket. I allow myself to be grateful that we went to a pretty shitty school that hasn’t gotten any better in the fifteen years since we left. Picking the old-school locks won’t set off any alarms and, if I’m lucky, there won’t actually be any footage to erase because the cameras will only be for live monitoring.
The lock gives and I push my way through the doors, silently praying that this will be the last time I ever have to do anything like this. It’s the same thing I think every time.