Connor elbowed me when I didn’t smile, so I tried to will one onto my face, but it got stuck somewhere between a grimace and a twitch of fear. Connor narrowed his eyes at me; he could always read my expressions.
“I’m not afraid of you, Em,” he said, hushed and serious.
“I know.” I did. I was afraid enough for both of us.
What else could that feeling have been, wanting to press closer to Connor and envelope him while I fed, if not something terrible?
Chapter 14
Wendy
The sun had almost set. Vampires weren’t limited by nightfall as long as they fed regularly, but Wendy had been watching this particular mark for weeks. The vampire would wait to feed until tomorrow night, but once darkness fell, she would be on the move.
Wendy had finally tracked the vampire to a neighboring town, only twenty minutes by car—or motorbike in her case—from where Emery Mavus lived. The other hunters were likely pursuing the same vampire now, but Wendy hadn’t seen any sign of them.
She parked her bike behind an Arby’s at the edge of town. Rain had recently stopped after mostly sunny skies all day, and now the temperature was dropping low enough for the damp grass to freeze. The Minnesota weather was almost as temperamental as Wendy was used to in Devon, where she had completed the Commando course at Lympstone. Hunting vampires was ever so much easier than training to be a Marine. Less people to deal with. Even less grueling physical exertion usually, though she kept in shape easily enough when half the time she was sent sprinting after creatures that could scale the span of a ballpark in moments.
She was almost certain she had seen movement behind the petrol station a few paces further down the main highway. It was a familiar setup for any town’s outskirts in the Midwest: fast food, rest stop, motel. A fruitful place for a vampire to hunt, looking for transients passing through. Maybe the vampire was planning to break protocol tonight and feed after all.
Wendy’s various tools and weapons were hidden around her person in pockets, strapped to her limbs, and tucked inside her jacket. Anyone passing would assume she was a biker taking a break from the road, deciding between food and filling up. Most people left a striking and strong looking woman alone, and the type of people looking for trouble would regret it if they tried anything.
Her eyes trained on a trail of smoke coming from the back of the petrol station. Some kid on his break. She shifted her attention to the front of the station as she walked up. A couple of young women chatted as they left from the main entrance, carrying sodas and a bag of snacks to their car before taking off. Two other cars remained parked, while a truck finished filling up and the owner headed inside to pay.
When Wendy’s eyes went back to the smoking attendant…he was gone. But she was certain she hadn’t heard the door, or any telling signs of movement.
She broke into a run for the back of the station, coming around the dumpster to find the attendant sprawled on the ground, not moving, his burnt out cigarette smudged out into the concrete. In less than thirty seconds she assessed the damage. The young teenage boy was out cold, unconscious but not bitten, not seriously injured.
“Hey, that’s my truck!” a yell preceded a screech of tires.
Wendy darted around the side of the building in time to see the newly refilled truck peeling out of the parking lot onto the main road. She’d been made. Worse: she’d been outsmarted. By the same vampire. Again.
Knowing the attendant would rouse soon enough and recover, Wendy headed back to her bike, keeping a steady pace rather than running. It wouldn’t do her any good to hurry. The vampire would keep the headlights off, not needing them to see in the dark, even with the near pitch blackness of rural Minnesota roads, and would likely ditch the truck before reaching her destination. Wendy’s infrared had helped spot the vampire more than once, but the night vision setting wasn’t useful on the road when another vehicle’s headlights could blind her at any moment.
She was being played with, that much she knew, because the vampire was headed out of town in the same direction they’d come from—back toward Emery Mavus.
~
Connor
Connor snuck a peek at his phone again, being careful to hide it in his large cargo pockets and only look when he knew the Robotics teacher, Mrs. Swanson, was looking elsewhere. She would not look as kindly on distractions in class as Mr. Krall, not when power tools were involved.
Connor respected her though. Learning how to build robots in a virtual environment, and then building the real thing with physical parts, was the best compromise. Plus, Mrs. Swanson let him bring in his own LEGO sets for added ‘efficiency’ with his robot models. Design was half the battle.
He was still a little disappointed their team hadn’t gone to Nationals for the FIRST(For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, but they’d made a decent showing at their initial competition and at Regionals. They’d had six weeks from January into February to design and build a robot to solve a specific problem, this year being to traverse a set obstacle course and climb a pyramid of blocks, which sounded easy enough—the challenges always did—until they reminded themselves that they had to program the robot to actually do all of the things necessary to accomplish that. They’d killed the competition in their first tournament, being maybe the slowest robot, but the only one to get all the way to the top of the pyramid.
The Championships would be in a few weeks, but when Connor considered that he would have had to travel out of state with so much going on, he wasn’t as heartbroken anymore as he’d been initially.
Mrs. Swanson had an ever-changing curriculum for them depending on how FIRST went each year, so with less than two months of school left, they were working on end of the year projects, and given a little more leeway since they were seniors. Everyone was given the choice between a solo project or breaking into groups. While Connor had appreciated Nick’s offer to join his group that was trying to redesign a better floor cleaning robot to actually get into corners effectively, Connor wanted to focus on prosthetic designs.
He was working on creating a standard template for mass production, something that would appeal to larger audiences. He hoped to finish both an arm and leg design before the end of the year. Ever since he first worked on a leg for Michael, Connor had wanted to start a company to offer free prosthetics to people who couldn’t afford them. Of course he also wanted to make custom designs, though he figured those he could sell, maybe even sell costume pieces and prosthetics to movie sets to help fund the free designs.
At first it had been a pet project, a fun dream, but over the years, he and Emery had both taken the idea more seriously. The plan was for Emery to go into business school so they could run the company together. It certainly took away the threat of never seeing each other after high school.
Connor hadn’t thought to ask Emery if his plans would change now that he was a vampire, but why should they? Although, if they became an overnight sensation, or ended up on the cover of TIME someday for their efforts, it might put a lot of attention on someone who should probably stay under the radar from mainstream media.
Connor sighed and fired off a quick text to Emery in Psych. Wendy’s news the previous night had been daunting, to say the least, especially when they’d already been on edge with Emery almost bursting into flames in AP Lit & Comp. The vampire who was the real threat had turned tail and headed back to town—their town—when someone new was scheduled to be eaten tonight.
They couldn’t exactly ditch play practice to help Wendy hunt the vampire down, so it had been decided that Wendy would cover one side of town while Alec watched the other, and Connor and Emery would stay at play practice, on guard in case something happened that actually required Emery to dash out into the night.
Hardly likely, Alec had texted them.
We�
��ll keep watch, love, Wendy added.
Connor was struck by how weird it was to be on a group text with Buffy the vampire slayer and an actual vampire. Well…two vampires, technically.
“That’s strike one, Mr. Daniels,” Mrs. Swanson’s voice jolted him from his attention on his phone. “Don’t make me take that for myself for the rest of the day.”
Connor quickly shoved the phone back into his cargos. “Sorry, Swanny. I’m…preoccupied. Having trouble simplifying this arm design. I always go all out for mine, you know? But so far this is way too complicated for mass production.”
“You know how to think simple, Connor: lowest common denominator,” she said, leaning over his desk to look at the mock up designs and partially created palm he’d done so far in a neutral grey color.
“Eliminate anything not necessary for function. Fun comes later,” Connor said, reciting one of her first lessons to the class. “There are too many individual pieces, right? I like intricacy, but if I’m honest, I can get the same amount of dexterity in the fingers with probably half the parts.”
“That a boy,” Mrs. Swanson smiled, then dropped the expression with a fiercely raised eyebrow. “Now don’t let me catch that phone out again or it’s mine.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She moved on through the class and Connor sighed again—deeply. Her advice was helpful in regards to his arm design, but he still couldn’t think about anything other than Emery and the horror show that was currently their lives.
“When you finish this in the next couple weeks and my group’s still scrambling to get our cleaner bot to work, you’ll help out, right?” Nick bumped his shoulder as he sidled up.
Nick had grouped with the Kenosha twins. They were wicked smart, but tended to get on each other’s nerves and argue. Only Nick with his calm demeanor and who was slow to anger could have partnered with them. They’d always set the group on edge when they were working on their FIRST project, but they had also been the ones to jointly come up with how the arms of their entry robot swiveled to lift up over each block of the pyramid.
“You bet, man,” Connor said. “And flattery will get you everywhere, but I still don’t think I’ll have this and a leg design finished in a couple weeks. Maybe three.”
Nick snorted. “Heard something went down in AP Lit yesterday. Mavus isn’t sick again, is he? Opening night’s only a few weeks away.”
Connor smothered the panic that lurched in his chest and pulled on a smile; no one had any reason to suspect the truth. “Nah, more like food poisoning. Would have spoiled our morning Lake Wobegon with projectile vomiting if I hadn’t yanked him out of there in time. He’s fine now. You saw him yesterday.”
“Sure,” Nick nodded, ever the straight face with his calculating dark eyes. He paused to brush a coil of hair from his face. “Something’s been up though. He having mood swings after breaking up with Liz? Wouldn’t think so. Never thought they were a good fit.”
Given the usual trajectory of these conversations, Connor anticipated an ambush. “I’m working up the nerve to confess before prom, okay? Can everyone just give my love life a rest?”
Nick shrugged. “I was asking about Mavus’s love life, not yours.”
“What about your love life, huh?” Connor said, scowling. “Who are you taking to prom?”
“Dude, I’ve been dating J. J. for a week now.”
Connor’s eyes nearly bugged out. “What? Jason Jeffrey and you? Since…last week?” Everything with Emery had clearly warped his perception. That kind of news would have definitely been high-end gossip and he couldn’t remember hearing a word. “Hey, that’s awesome, man. I mean, he mentioned having a thing for you once, I just didn’t realize you were interested. Who asked who?”
“I asked,” Nick shrugged again, this little half gesture with one shoulder that seemed to be his default movement for everything, no matter how mundane or exciting. “It’s this thing where you just do it. And then it’s over. Not all that hard, as it turns out.”
“Yeah, when they say yes…” Connor grumbled.
Nick just shrugged again, though an eye roll accompanied the shoulder roll this time. “Whatever, dude. You know Jules and Aurora are going stag together—”
“Is it still stag if it’s girls—”
“So if we need to force you and Mavus to go as friends, that’s fine, man, but no one’s missing prom.”
Connor huffed. “Michael put you up to this, didn’t he?”
Again, Nick shrugged. Connor kind of wanted to smack him if he did that one more time.
“Back to work, Mr. McPherson. Don’t leave your partners hanging,” Mrs. Swanson called over to them.
Nick nodded, raised an eyebrow Connor’s direction as if that summed up anything else he might have said, and headed back to the Kenoshas.
Connor looked at his half-made prosthetic and sighed a third time in defeat. Everyone was against him. For him, but against him nonetheless.
~
I felt like I was going to be sick, but I knew it was just nerves, not any real nausea. Vampires couldn’t get nauseous, could they? Vampires shouldn’t even be able to get sick. At least that meant I was finally free from chronic sinus infections. But I still felt queasy. Feeding was bad enough, and whatever this new yearning was when I looked at Connor—my retainer—which made my gut twist even tighter. Maybe it was because I was a new vampire, and the hunger would get easier. I hoped so, but I didn’t know if I trusted myself to feed from strangers any better than I fed from Connor.
We were working on Act II for the night with the entire set flipped around so that from the audience’s perspective, they were seeing what happened backstage for the play within a play. We basically all had to mime an entire Act while also going out ‘on stage’ to perform the normal roles.
We had started from the point when the actors first start doing the play they’d been rehearsing in Act I, after some drama backstage, and the drama continued while they tried to do their opening night. As Frederick, I was sort of the bubbling idiot who just wanted everyone to get along, and who got a nose bleed at the slightest sign of violence. Over the top was necessary when we didn’t technically have any normal dialogue during this portion of the play. Everything had to be obvious gestures and manic stage whispers.
Connor gave me a thumbs up from the sidelines as I dashed off stage holding my nose after having my foot stomped on—mimed, never actually stomped on; at least not on purpose—and I tried to forget that someone might be dying somewhere tonight.
I found little comfort in my would-be mentor and semi-bodyguard both being out hunting the rogue vampire, who may or may not be the true cause of all of my strife lately. If we could just get the rest of the hunters off my tail, at least I could return my focus to existing like a normal person again—a normal person who also had to drink the blood of his best friend once a week. And star in the school play. And get through the next two months of school until graduation.
I was so distracted I almost bumped into Nick during his cameo. He was a stagehand, not one of the actors, but since there had to be a few pretend stage hands ‘backstage’, we’d worked it out for him to sit on set during Act II, usually eating. At one point, he walked the whole length of the set and snagged a bag of chips from behind the fake prop table. He’d come up with the eating idea on his own. The first few weeks of practicing this Act, I’d had trouble keeping a straight face every time I saw him.
Now I skidded to a stop as I nearly bowled him over. I tried to make it look over the top, like I’d done it on purpose as some last second physical adlib. The next time I was out ‘on stage’, I risked checking my phone, which would have infuriated Mark if he caught me, and definitely caused Aurora to shoot me a glare. I shrugged apologetically, as I read the latest group messages.
Connor: Any news?
Wendy: Tracked her to the park and lost her. Rounding toward the school now.
Connor: The middle school?!
Alec: On my way.
Wendy: She doesn’t appear to be hunting. Just leading me on a wild goose chase.
Alec: Odd…
Odd?! Why was she heading toward the school? A harsh hiss from Aurora alerted me that I’d missed a line. I fumbled to remember where we were, stuttering before I picked up on where I’d left off and shoved my phone back into my pocket. I cast a furtive glance at Connor before racing back onto the real stage. There wasn’t much of the Act left, and it was already past ten o’clock. As soon as we finished, Mark would let us go home.
I sprinted up the stairs to the second floor of the set where I was meant to get tangled up in bedsheets. When Jules finally joined me as her character Brooke so we could get tangled together, she shot me a subtly raised eyebrow and a smirk, like she was impressed with my portrayal tonight. Apparently, looking flustered for this role was coming easier and easier, since all I felt were nerves calcifying in my stomach.
Through the next several minutes, I thought I saw Connor trying to get my attention from offstage, but there was no time for me to really look, not with the way my character was yanked around set. By the end of the Act, I was untangled from Jules but basically pushed back on stage with a sheet covering my face, while I blindly hoped I didn’t actually stumble over anyone else—at least in a way that wasn’t intentional comic relief—and waited for the final lines to be said. As one of the characters exclaimed she was pregnant, everything hushed, and Act II ended in a jumble as the curtains closed.
Before I could even hope to rip the sheet from my face, I felt someone’s hand on my wrist, tugging me across stage. I stumbled, shuffling my feet to keep from falling, demanding to know who had hold of me and what was going on, but the grip just squeezed tighter. I took a deep breath through my nose, trying to ignore the sheet, focusing instead on the person with me and pushing everything else away. I smelled sawdust, plastic, paint—nothing helpful—until I caught a whiff of mint. Connor!
Life as a Teenage Vampire Page 12