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  Rotten Luck

  Rachel Rawlings

  Published by Rachel Rawlings, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  ROTTEN LUCK

  First edition. March 26, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Rachel Rawlings.

  Written by Rachel Rawlings.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Rotten Luck

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  Further Reading: 'Ink It Over

  Also By Rachel Rawlings

  About the Author

  This is dedicated to the one I love!

  Chapter One

  “Good things come to those who wait, Lucky.”

  I almost laughed in her face. “Good things come to those who wait. Are you kidding, Joannie? Let me tell you about waiting. I waited every Saturday morning for a father who never came to pick me up. I waited to sleep with Tommy because that’s what good girls do. He dumped me the day before prom. I waited for acceptance letters and approval for financial aid so I could get out of here and not end up like my mother.”

  With a frustrated sigh, I shook my head. “Obviously, that didn’t happen. Two years later and I’m still waiting behind the counter of this dump for the next tourist to come in and assume that because my boobs reside above my belly button, I must be selling something besides Boston creams.” I slammed a half-eaten jelly donut into the trash and wiped the formica countertop down.

  Angler Cove sat on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Beautiful, breathtaking; a charming small-town gem. That was the tourism brochure description. In reality, we were just another one stop light town with no commercial industry waiting for the next wave of visitors to stock the coffers and hold us through another winter. The views and the fishing filled the marinas from May to October, but it was locals only the rest of the year.

  Most of the girls I knew hung their hopes on the idea that summer romances with one of the wealthier boys would lead to something else: escape. It was the same with me and Tommy— or Thomas Walker the third, as he was known in the swanky communities outside of Angler Cove. I was no different from my mother who pinned her happiness on my father. I didn’t realize I fell into the same trap until after we’d broken up and the disappointment set in.

  “At least you aren’t pregnant,” was the only consolation my mother offered when she found me crying in my room with my prom dress ripped from its hanger and crumpled on the floor. She’d hung her mistake over my head my entire life. I told myself it was out of fear history would repeat itself, but I knew it was bitterness.

  I threw myself into as many online college courses as I could afford after the Thomas Walker setback, vowing to transfer those credits to a major university and make my own way out of the backwater town I called home.

  “Well, you already have your associate’s. That’s more than most do in this town. The ones still here, anyway.” Joannie emptied an old pot of coffee into the sink, set it back on the burner, and restarted the machine.

  “What good does it do me? Mr. Al isn’t going to give me a raise because I have an associate degree in history. I’ve worked here since junior year and only need two fingers to count the raises totaling a dollar.” After rinsing the crumbs off my rag, I released some frustrations as I rang out the excess water. “God, I need to get out of this town. I’m going to suffocate.”

  “It’s probably powdered sugar coating your lungs.” Joannie gave me a little wink and pulled the glazed donuts forward in the case. “On the bright side, your shift is almost over. You need to stay positive. Things are going to change. You have to learn to find the silver lining.”

  “Don’t you see?” I threw the damp rag down on the counter. “I am the cloud. No, I am the storm cloud, and I’m telling you there is no silver lining!”

  “What’s got your panties in a twist? You’re in a mood.” Joannie eyed the old clock on the wall, probably counting down the minutes until I got off work and she got a little peace and quiet. “I mean, worse than usual.”

  She was right, of course. I grew more frustrated with each passing week and closed door. Sleep evaded me as each missed opportunity replayed in my mind with my brain projecting the images against the back of my eyelids like some tragic movie every night.

  One where I became my mother.

  “Do you think it’s possible for a person to be born under a bad sign?” I sighed, leaning back against the counter. “I mean, do you think someone could just have rotten luck?”

  “We don’t call you Lucky for nothing.” The illustrious Mr. Al stepped out of the kitchen, wiping glaze-coated hands on his apron before yanking it off.

  “Thanks. I feel so much better.” I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest, resting a hip against the counter. “Seriously, it’s like the forces of nature are conspiring against me. Maybe my ancestors pissed off a witch and my life is the result of some long-standing curse.”

  I started ticking off my most recent chain of misfortune. “My online application gets lost in cyberspace. Not once, but twice. I fill out the archaic paperwork and mail it off. It comes back to me, in pieces, in a zip-lock bag with a letter explaining a mail sorter at the post office ate it.”

  “This is only a minor setback, Lucky. You’re more determined to leave Angler Cove than anyone I’ve ever met. It’ll happen.” Joannie shoved yet another heaping serving of optimism my way.

  “Well girls, that’s it for me. Joannie, refill the glazed, would you? There are fresh ones back there.” Mr. Al walked out, muttering about the latest bad review over stale donuts, the door chiming as it closed behind him.

  “His definition of fresh is whatever’s leftover from yesterday.” Waving Joannie off, I headed toward the back. “I’ll grab them.”

  The door chimed again.

  Saved by the glazed, I thought to myself. With a sigh of relief, I pushed through the swinging door that led to the kitchen and avoided the next customer. Not in the mood to deal with people, I wished the old man hadn’t finished filling all the Boston Creams. Staying in the back with nothing but a pastry bag to keep me company until my shift ended sounded wonderful— until a scream broke the blissful silence.

  Joannie.

  Glazed donuts bounced off the metal tray as it clattered against the tile floor. Mr. Al would dock my check for dropping the donuts, but I didn’t care. My only thought was to check on Joannie. Something wasn’t right. This was Angler Cove, too boring and broke during the offseason for criminals to bother with. Most nights, there was more in the tip jar than there was in the till. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I pushed open the kitchen door.

  “Joannie?” My voice cracked as I stepped out into the area where the few regulars we had sat.

  I shoved a fist in my mouth to stifle a gasp and backtracked into the kitchen with care; my sneakers didn’t as much as squeak against the floor.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my god!” Whispering to myself, I held the door as it closed, afraid the loud whooshing sound would alert Joannie’s attacker to my presence.

  Fighting every instinct I had to bolt out the back door, I ransacked the closest shelf to find something, anything, I could use as a weapon. Joannie wasn’t just my coworker; she was my friend— my best friend since middle school. I mustered up the courage to play the hero I knew I wasn’t. I reminded myself that she wouldn’t have abandoned me if I were the one attacked. She wouldn’t have backed up into the kitchen ready to bolt out the back door. No, not Joannie. She would have jumped on that guy’s back and tried to wrestle him to the ground. There was a lot more to her than pep talks. I
f she couldn’t win you over with her optimism, her right hook would knock some sense into anyone.

  Fingers grazing against something sharp and pointy, I grabbed hold of whatever it was and headed back to the dining area. I raised my arm above my head and stepped through the doorway only to realize the weapon I was about to impale Joannie’s attacker with was a rubber-banded bundle of bamboo skewers. Skewers? Couldn’t it at least be a pair of scissors or something?

  There was no time to search for anything else. I managed to catch the attention of the guy making a meal out of my best friend. So much for a surprise attack. The crazed man abandoned his victim, crawling over Joannie to reach me. Without thinking, I grabbed the jar of rainbow sprinkles we kept on the counter and threw it at him. The best I could hope was for the shards of glass to slow him down.

  To say I was shocked when he stopped to count the tiny pieces of multicolored edible wax would have been an understatement. Ignoring every impulse to run for my life, I lunged forward and jammed the skewers into the side of his neck. Blood splattered the front of my peach dress, the crimson droplets a stark contrast to the fifties style uniform Mr. Al made us wear.

  Stunned at the level of carnage I inflicted with only a handful of bamboo skewers, I stumbled back and slipped on the blood pooling on the floor beside Joannie. I hit the floor hard, sending a zing of pain from my tailbone to my shoulder blades.

  Her head tilted to one side, Joannie stared at me with lifeless eyes. Dead. Just like the monster that attacked her.

  “Were you bitten?”

  “What?” Tears brimmed my eyes as I tried to process the question and the person who’d appeared out of nowhere to ask it. “Bitten?”

  Bitten.

  Joannie’s murderer had been munching on her neck when I stabbed him. Scrambling to my feet, I backed up in a hurry to put some distance between us. Suddenly wary of who and what he was, I wondered why he wasn’t as panicked as I was about the cannibalism that happened on the floor of the donut shop.

  “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to know if he bit you. If the bites aren’t closed, you could bleed out.” He lowered his crossbow and took a step closer.

  It was like he wasn’t speaking English. Bites? Bleed out? My brain struggled to keep up with my eyes as detail after detail came into focus. Joannie wasn’t mauled to death by some cannibalistic monster. Two trails of blood leaked from the small puncture wounds on her neck. A wooden stake protruded from the back of her killer. Dressed in jeans, a black shirt, biker boots, and a knee-length black leather jacket, the guy armed with the crossbow didn’t stop in to pick up a dozen donuts.

  “No. No, I wasn’t bitten.” Still reeling from shock, my hands rushed to my neck in search of bite wounds I knew I didn’t have.

  “Are those bamboo skewers in his neck?” Mystery man nudged the body with the toe of his boot and checked to make sure the other was dead. “What were you going to do, shish kabob him?”

  “It was the first thing I grabbed. Mr. Al tried to make donut hole kabobs. They didn’t go over very well.” What was I talking about? I shook my head to clear my thoughts and focused on more important matters. “I’m sorry. Who the hell are you and what the hell is that?”

  “The creature that made a happy meal out of your friend over there was a vampire.” The stranger took a wide stride, avoiding the rainbow sprinkles on the floor as he crossed over to me. His hand had a slight twitch as he extended it out to me in greeting. “I’m Van-”

  “Let me guess. Helsing. That’s a vampire. So, that must make you a vampire hunter?” Muttering about crazy people and the lack of good mental health care available, I stood up and crossed the dining area to the phone mounted on the wall behind the counter. More than once, I glanced down at my feet to make sure I was, in fact, walking toward the phone. Shock set in and, with it, an odd sense of calm that threw my brain into auto-pilot.

  “You weren’t going to call the police, were you?” The stranger grabbed my hand, keeping the receiver pressed firmly in the cradle, as he eyed my name tag. “Lucky? Your name is Lucky?”

  “No. It’s one of those ironic nicknames. You know, like Little John in Robin Hood.” I paused, hesitant to tell him my real name after years of torment growing up. “I’m Desmona, Desmona Jones. And yes, I was going to call the police. There are two dead bodies on the floor over there. One of which happens to be my best friend.”

  “Desmona. Well, that’s unfortunate.” Van rolled my name around on his tongue, his expression souring.

  “Yes, my mother apparently thought so when she found out she was pregnant with me. Hence the name. Now that we’ve exchanged pleasantries, would you mind letting me go?” In an attempt to placate the crazy man who still held a death grip on my hand and the phone beneath it, I kept my voice as calm as possible.

  “I can’t let you call the police.” Van took in my terrified expression and sighed. He must have realized I was one breath away from screaming at the top of my lungs. “A cleanup team is coming. They’ll have this looking like a botched robbery in an hour.” Van kept hold of my hand and steered me back toward Joannie and her killer.

  “A robbery? We’re in Podunk, Maryland. Population six-fifty-six. It’s not exactly a high crime area.” Slipping my other hand into the pocket of my apron, I pulled out my cell phone.

  The shoddy reception and overdue payment made the landline a better option, but I had a six-foot-four barricade in my way.

  “Six-fifty-five.” With a nod toward Joannie, Van reminded me the town was down one resident.

  With wide eyes and mouth hung open, I stared in disbelief at the crass and callous man who stormed into The Hole in the Wall and drove a stake four times the size of my band of skewers into the back of Joannie’s attacker. My cell phone was out of my hand and on its way to the floor before I could make a move to stop him. The force of impact shattered the screen and sent the battery cover flying, but that wasn’t enough for Van. With heavy, booted feet, he stomped on my phone cracking it in half, ensuring I wouldn’t be using it to call anyone.

  Especially the police.

  “What is wrong with you?” Determined to make it to the twenty-year-old phone with its cord knotted in a tangled mass, still mounted on the wall, I struggled to free myself of Van’s grip.

  “Listen, that thing over there is a vampire. A rogue, I’ve been tracking him since Roanoke.” With a hard jerk, Van forced me to turn and look at Joannie.

  “Well, you haven’t been doing a very good job. Were you waiting to capture him until after he killed me, too?” I rammed my elbow into his ribs and broke the so-called vampire hunter’s hold.

  I made another break for the phone, dashing across the seating area. My feet hit the puddle of blood seeping across the linoleum, breaking the traction from the rubber soles of my tennis shoes. The squeak of my shoes broke the silence. Van watched in awe as I tried to fight the gravitational pull taking me down. Arms flailing to remain upright, I slid for about twenty feet before I crashed into the wall next to the phone. The loud thump of my body making contact with the drywall was capped off by the ring of a bell. At first, I thought I imagined it, hearing bells instead of seeing stars, but when the phone landed on the floor next to me, I realized I ripped it free from the wall on my way down. To add insult to injury, I was tangled up in the massive phone cord and the receiver clunked me on the head.

  Humiliated, covered in even more blood, and unable to call for help, I stared at the ceiling trying to figure out my escape. Van was going to kill me. There was no other reasonable outcome. I witnessed two murders. One of which he committed. Cursing my never-ending streak of bad luck and the chain of unfortunate events that made up my life, ultimately leading to my demise at the hands of a crazy person who thought he was a vampire hunter, I tried to untangle myself from the phone cord. If I was going to die, I was going to do it with a little dignity.

  Not hog-tied with phone cord on a floor, covered in rainbow sprinkles and powdered sugar in The Hole
in the Wall.

  I mustered up the last shred of my self-respect and used the wall for support to stand. My hand slid across a dent in the drywall which was, not surprisingly, about the size of my head. After blinking away the stars in my vision, I turned to face Van.

  “Go ahead. I’m ready.” With a heavy sigh, I stood as straight as I could manage and looked him in the eye. “Just make it quick.”

  “What?” In a weak attempt to cover his amusement and regain his composure, Van coughed into his fist a couple of times and cleared his throat. “Make what quick?” Realization dawned in his eyes, his mouth forming an “o” before he doubled over in laughter. “You think I’m going to kill you?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, it definitely crossed my mind.” Confused and more than likely a little concussed, I failed to see the humor in the situation. “You killed that man and you expect me to believe you’re going to let me walk out of here?”

  “Vampire. I killed a vampire. He hasn’t been a man in the sense you mean for centuries and let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m not going to kill you, but you’re not walking out of here, either.” Van took a step closer.

  The fear I was about to become a victim in a B-horror movie plot kicked me into fight or flight. Mostly flight. Before I could so much as turn and run, I felt a small prick on my arm and the lights went out.

  Chapter Two

  Drums pounded. Or my temples throbbed. Either way, I wished it would stop. The harsh, overhead fluorescent lighting wasn’t helping things either. My mouth and throat were dry, and my mouth tasted like I went to bed without brushing my teeth after heavy drinking the night before. Had it simply been the headache and bad breath, I probably would have gone with that theory. There was just one problem.

  My bedroom didn’t have fluorescent lighting.

  With a groan, I rolled to my back and tried to sit up. It was then I realized I had more than one problem. Something cold and hard pressed against my wrist in time with the clank of metal against metal. I tried to raise my arm, wipe the sleep from my eyes so I could figure out where I was and what in the hell was going on, but my arm jerked short and the metal clanked again.