Sarah Benadine is Dead

Chapter XII, Part I

The beginning of March was mild. A long string of bitingly cold days was finally broken, thawing the ground and bringing the kids back outside after school and on weekends. The days were getting longer, and there was a feeling of coming out of the woods that accompanied the end of every winter. It was perhaps stronger this year; the lengthening sunshine seemed to be indicating that there would soon be a chance to leave all the awful events of the previous months in the past.

No one could have known how far away the end of the tunnel really was.

Shannon Malone found herself spending a great amount of time with Ginger, Jared, Ollie, and Dexter after the afternoon at McKenzie House. She did not see much of Toni after their fight, and Robbie had not wanted to get in the middle of it. An unspoken, unmentioned allegiance had been formed between herself and the other six people at McKenzie House that day in January, one that none of them even truly wanted to think about because of what it could mean. It hung around them with every word and every look and every gesture, constantly lurking in the back of each of their minds. It was strong enough, though, that Shannon was compelled to go to them following the split with her older friends.

The exception was Allison Groves. She had no scruples with thinking and saying what the others would not. The discussion she and her six classmates had had the day of the fight with Quintus Zima's gang was never far from her mind. By the beginning of March, Allison was already planning to do what no one else had.

The seven of them—Shannon, Allison, Caleb, Ginger, Jared, Ollie, and Dexter—met in Ollie's backyard one Friday afternoon after classes had finished. Allison had arranged the meeting, but Ollie's backyard was used because it was the biggest and her parents were once again not around. The last of the snow still clung to the ground in patches, but they were few and far between. The majority of it had melted, leaving the ground a wet, muddy mess to walk upon. McKenzie House had an expansive back patio, preventing any of them from worrying about that. They sat in a circle, some in the stiff patio chairs and some flat on the ground. Ollie's ginger cat trotted around the patio among them, pouncing at thin air. Ollie had produced Ockham's Guide to Vampires and Creatures of the Night from a large bag filled with a multitude of other books and had set it on the patio table in the middle of the group, barely looking at it. She'd also drawn out a small pouch of pretzels from the bag and was currently munching away at them. Allison had swooped in on Ockham's Guide, throwing it open to a random page and reading aloud the first thing she came upon.

"'A newly turned vampire had an insatiable appetite; it could take years for a new vampire to learn to control the bloodlust,'" she read, putting one finger into the air as if to add effect. "'As such, newly turned vampires were often much more savage than the older vampires, but far less dangerous.'"

No one was looking at her, but it was obvious they were all listening carefully to what she said. Ollie twirled a pretzel nervously between her fingers. Caleb rubbed the back of his neck.

"Is this why you wanted to meet up?" he asked.

"Past tense," Allison said, ignoring Caleb's question completely. "Past tense because vampires have been extinct for seventy years."

"That again?" Dexter asked. He looked uncomfortable. "I thought we agreed that the most likely option was vampires."

"But they're extinct," Allison said, an assertion she'd already made countless times. "It has to be something else."

"Of course vampires are extinct," Ollie said, speaking more to the pretzel in her hand than to anyone in the group. "All monsters are."