After the Fall: A Vampire Chronicle (Book One) Read Free Page A

observer to the scene, watching her body watch her mother. This wasn’t real; it couldn’t be, because that would have to mean that her mother was dead, and her mother couldn’t be, because just ten minutes earlier they had been bantering with each other, and this had been a normal day and now…
                  Standing up, Caroline found she was trembling, shaking actually, and she grabbed hold of a nearby bookshelf to steady herself. For the first time, she noticed that the room had been completely trashed – lamps and mirrors had been broken, books torn and tossed, the cushions on the couch slashed. As if in a dream, Caroline stepped over her mother and walked into the kitchen, where she found her father, face down on the tiles, also lying in a pool of blood. The kitchen, too, was a mess, and here, there were bloody footsteps on the floor, and bloody handprints on the wall, and for the first time, Caroline realized that whoever had killed her parents might still be in the apartment.
                  At the thought, her blood ran cold. Part of her wanted to keep looking, had to, because maybe Lauren and Katie were still in the apartment someplace. Maybe they were hiding, and were scared. They were only little girls; they would need their big sister. But part of Caroline knew that she had to get out and call the police. She had to tell somebody that her parents were dead.
                  Her parents were dead.
                  A small whimper escaped her throat, but Caroline knew she couldn’t fall apart just yet; she had to call the police, find her sisters, and then she could fall apart and not worry that she would never be able to pull herself together. She hurried into the living room, and picked up the receiver to the telephone. She heard a sound coming from the kitchen just as she realized that there was no dial tone coming through. Putting down the receiver very slowly, she listened closely, and heard it again. A footstep. Someone was in the apartment.
                  She wanted to run and get as far away as possible, but she felt a small glimmer of hope that it was one of her sisters, that maybe they were okay. However, it wasn’t Katie or Lauren who stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, but a man. A very familiar looking man, soon joined by his equally familiar companion. The couple from the elevator. Both had unreadable expressions on their faces, but their eyes were hard and very, very cold, and suddenly Caroline was extremely frightened. That was the first thing she noticed.
                  The second thing she noticed was that both of their mouths were unnaturally red - blood red, in fact; it was smeared messily across their chins and dripping from their lips, as if they had actually put their mouths to her parents’ wounds. Caroline thought she was going to faint. She nearly jumped out of her skin when one of them spoke.
                  “We weren’t expecting you,” said the female, “or we would have waited.” She took a step into the living room, causing Caroline to take a step back, trying to maintain her distance from these obviously insane people.
                  “Your parents, and your sisters,” the female continued, in an almost apologetic voice, “they met with a little accident.”
                  At the thought of her sisters, Caroline had to close her eyes and will herself not to vomit right then and there.
                  “They were such nice people,” she said, her eyes wandering, brushing her fingers across the back of Ron’s overstuffed chair in a nonchalant manner, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
                  “They were…delicious.”
                  She smiled, a wide, bloody grin, turning Caroline’s blood to ice. Somewhere in the back of her brain, a tiny voice was screaming for her to run, to get