Bane stared into his nephew’s familiar blue eyes, so like his own, and like his sister’s, long dead now. How Eli could have sympathy for the creatures that killed his mother, Bane would never know. His own blond hair was scattered with white in his older age. He knew he looked older than he was, after the life he’d lived, practically raising Eli from the age of fourteen, but by then the kid already had so many ideals in his head.
“If the only evidence we have for now points more toward them as heartless killers than not, you know what we have to do,” Bane said to Eli directly.
He nodded to Gamble in thanks, then looked to the others. Each of them was a good enough hunter on their own; together they were a force. In time, Bane knew he would be able to sway all of them to the true cause, as he had swayed Gamble. It was time the pact crumbled and all vampires were eradicated. Until he believed the others were ready to hear that, he’d play the game, manipulate the situation, until there was no more doubt that all of these creatures were better off in the ground.
“I don’t like the thought of going after the cops,” Eli said. “They don’t deserve to get caught up in this.”
“That’s why you’re the one playing bait, and Gamble’s taking point while the rest of us hold the perimeter and close in,” Bane said. “If you’re so worried about civilians then you be responsible for keeping them safe. The police are only doing their jobs, I agree. And so are we.”
Each of the hunters with him slowly began to nod, starting with Gamble, until only Eli was left. Eventually, he nodded too.
Bane kept his grin in check a second time. “Good. We go over the plan until it’s solid. Come Saturday night, this ends.”
Chapter 30
Everyone in school knew Connor was into me. Everyone. How had I been so blind for so long?
Okay, maybe not everyone—Liz seemed fairly surprised, though happy for us, especially if her talk with me in any way influenced us to get together, which I told her it had. I couldn’t call what Connor and I had discovered a fairytale, that might still be a ways off, but he did make my heart race. And as initially awkward as our attempts at flirting had been, or the first few hours trying to navigate around what was and wasn’t okay now that we were dating, by the end of the day Monday, everything had gone back to normal.
It felt easy, almost too easy, just being us, being friends, laughing about the same things we always would. Only now, when we wanted to, one of us could lean over to the other and kiss them. I think I was more likely to fail tests that week than any I had after first becoming a vampire.
We didn’t get to relax Monday night though. We had visitors. The play was over, and the hunters hadn’t made any moves, no sign of them at all. Alec and Wendy had been watching us and the town even more hawk-like than the police, and Tim still had all of them on high alert. No suspects. No leads. Two murders and a school shooting later, they had nothing. Tim looked stiff and straight-lipped every time I saw him, usually only in passing.
“Neither of you have seen any sign of the hunters?” Connor pressed, up in my room that night with Alec and Wendy—snuck in, not by invitation as Mr. Leonard’s brother and his lovely wife. That way we had longer to talk, and Alec could zip Wendy out of the house fairly easy without anyone seeing.
“I picked up a minor trail leading out of town,” Wendy said, “but it isn’t enough to know which direction they went. It’s my belief they’re holed up in a neighboring town, biding their time and planning, before they make a larger, last ditch effort against us.”
“Agreed,” Alec said. He smiled widely. “And I’m afraid I haven’t caught sight of anyone.”
Connor crossed his arms and scowled. “You know, you’re pretty useless for some ancient vampire. You’re actually only like a couple hundred years old, aren’t you, and the crazy act is just to make yourself feel special?”
Alec laughed. The banter between them had a rhythm now. It probably helped that I no longer feared that Alec was some terrible, dark force that might kill Connor if he overstepped his bounds. Alec always smiled more genuinely when Connor called him out or teased him.
“Never ask a gentleman his age, dear boy.”
“I thought that was ladies.”
“Some gentlemen are ladies.”
“Are you two quite finished?” Wendy said, hiding a smile that softened her usually tough exterior. “I realize this is a special time for you boys. Graduation coming, your play over and done with, Prom looming. I remember how important those things were at your age. But do not take the hunters’ silence to mean surrender. They made a spectacle to take you out, Emery, and failed. That they are biding their time this long means they are putting a detailed plan in place. We must be ready.”
“Goodness, my dear, must you spoil their good mood?” Alec said, tossing his hands into the air dramatically. “Such daunting theatrics.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You realize it isn’t necessary to call me ‘my dear’ when we aren’t playing the part of husband and wife.”
“But you are such a dear, Wendy, darling, even if I would never be so bold as to call you mine.”
“Yet you just did.”
“Oh god, are you two flirting?” Connor groaned. “Please don’t be flirting. I don’t think I could stomach that.”
Wendy’s smile was dismissive, flustered by all of us, but not by Alec directly, not the way Connor meant. It was more like the way Connor and Aurora interacted. And I could tell what Alec was doing, despite Wendy’s best efforts to be serious. Getting us to laugh, and forget ourselves, and not feel quite as much like the world could end at any moment.
“Not to worry, dear boy, we’ll leave the flirting to you two,” Alec winked.
Connor spun and gaped at me. “You told him?”
“He had not,” Alec said in seeming victory, “but that confirms it. Did you need The Talk? Have your parents and lacking sex education in today’s system failed you? It’s not usually my jurisdiction as a mentor, but if I must…”
“Please don’t,” Connor held up his hands.
Wendy crossed her arms and turned her head to keep from grinning too obviously, but Alec continued on undeterred.
“The birds and the bees can get quite complicated, you know. You see, sometimes bees like other bees. Sometimes birds like birds. Sometimes bees like birds and bees.”
“You are the weirdest vampire ever!” Connor burst out laughing.
We laughed so hard, all of us, that I was lucky I caught the faint sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Mom probably thought we were up here alone, joking around—she looked more relaxed each day she caught us joking rather than wallowing or having just survived some awful hardship. The last thing I needed was for her to find Alec and Wendy up here and start asking real questions. I hadn’t even told my parents about dating Connor yet, though they knew we were going to Prom together.
We quieted as I shushed everyone and motioned toward the door, listening. Mom’s footsteps passed by and continued down the hallway to her room.
“In all seriousness, there are more pleasant things I wish we could discuss,” Alec said, his animated and extravagant figure mellowing as he spoke more softly. “So many over the centuries have called what we are a curse, Emery. That doesn’t have to be true. With good friends, and support, a careful handle on your abilities and your needs, the world is open before you with a myriad of possibilities. You don’t have to be stunted because of what you are. Clearly, you have not allowed your fate to interfere with claiming a few new horizons,” he gestured at Connor.
Connor’s pale skin flushed around his jawline. “You did not just call me a horizon.”
“But,” Alec’s smile slowly dropped as he raised his voice and looked at me, “Wendy is not wrong. The hunters will act, and it will be soon. Be vigilant. We will be as well. Kee
p your police escort ever in sight. It’s possible the hunters are waiting for another false sense of security to take hold, and for the police to remove your escort before they attack with less resistance. But if they have another plan in place, we must be ready. If you trust your friends, inform them to be more watchful as well.”
Connor and I looked to each other and nodded. Aurora and Jules hadn’t brought up my vampirism much, barely at all, especially not at school with others around, but I trusted them to help if we needed them.
Wendy said they should go, get back to patrolling the streets in case the hunters surprised us. I’d thanked her so many times for sticking around, when really, she didn’t owe us anything. She always had the same response, that it was her duty, her pleasure and privilege to help. This time I just offered her a grateful nod as she headed for the window.
Alec paused to admire the Cloak and Dagger painting he’d given me. “A light in the darkness is important, but that doesn’t mean there is anything inherently bad about the dark. If one existed without the other, well,” he looked at me, smiled that more rarely seen, genuine expression, “life would get rather boring, wouldn’t it?”
“You are such a sap,” Connor said.
“I’m sorry,” Alec touched a hand to his chest with an instant shift in countenance, “have I given my blessing on this relationship? If I have, I may have to rescind it.”
Connor pushed him, shoving him toward Wendy waiting at the window, and Alec chuckled at him, Wendy all the while shaking her head.
Somehow, these people and the situation in which I’d come to know them, no longer carried only ill-omen. I didn’t know quite when it had happened, but I had new friends in Wendy and Alec, not to replace the presence that Mr. and Mrs. Leonard had been in my life, but to build from it, remind me of it, and feel like some of this tragedy came with a blessing too.
~
Connor
Connor tapped the screwdriver on his desk, staring at the somewhat mangled amalgamation before him. He’d finished his base models for an arm and leg early so he could focus on Prom as an extra project. He’d taken parts from both the Rocket-Punch arm and his gun arm prototype, swearing to his mom up and down that, when he brought them to school, he wasn’t going to wear either of them, just work on a new design in class. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned his plans to turn those arms into a Frankenstein’s monster of a prosthetic. That would’ve definitely garnered more disapproving looks from her.
He still had to figure out how to adequately switch the projecting hand from the Rocket-Punch mechanics to a hinged release. He had to have everything done and ready to receive a new coat of paint by Friday or it would never dry in time for Saturday night.
“Looking good, Connor,” Mrs. Swanson said in passing. “Need a hand with anything? You look stumped.”
Connor couldn’t resist plucking his arm from the desk and waving it at her. “Plenty of hands over here at the moment, Swanny. But A+ on the puns today.” The hinged hand flopped backward.
Mrs. Swanson smiled, crossing her arms and inspecting the arm after he set it back on the desk. “What’s the hinge for?”
“It’s supposed to pop open on command.”
“For what? Water gun effect?”
“Something like that. I have everything figured out for the internal workings to get it to fire, but I need a trigger. I don’t want to have to use my other hand. Should be able to get it to release in a single motion from the prosthetic itself. But without accidentally triggering it when I don’t want to.”
“And you of all people haven’t taken Spider-Man for inspiration yet?” She grinned at Connor, waiting for her implications to sink in.
Connor’s eyes widened when they did. “Swanny, you are an evil genius.”
She laughed. “Just don’t get me in trouble with whatever it is you’re going to have this thing do. If you wear it to school, no super villainy in the hallways.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
In the gym during Prom, or maybe outside the school at some point, was an entirely different story.
“I can’t wait for you to see it,” Connor told Emery that night over their walkie talkies. He was getting ready for bed, and set the walkie down on his dresser so he could change his shirt and remove his prosthetic. Falling asleep with it on risked damaging it during the night, or caused weird sleep lines on his body.
“I’m glad going to Prom as Captain Cold inspired you,” Emery crackled back at him. “You sure you can get it completed for this weekend?”
Connor finished tugging his T-shirt over his head and set his prosthetic on the dresser before snatching up the walkie again. “Totally. Wish I could have brought it home to work on tonight, but I had too much other homework. The rest of the week I should be able to though. All of this coming together is totally fate, Em.” He meant the arm, but he blushed a little as he realized it also applied to them going to Prom, and actually, finally dating.
“It doesn’t really shoot, right?”
“Not bullets, obviously, it’s supposed to be my cold gun. Plus, Swanny never would have gone for that, or the school board for that matter. I just wanted a gun arm at some point, I don’t care what kind.”
“So what’s it shoot? Ice cubes.”
“Real funny. Halon 1301.”
“Uh, what?”
“It’ll basically be a fire extinguisher. I should be able to get it to fire off once, whenever we’re ready to try and get it on video, assuming we’re outside so I don’t get in serious trouble. Nick’s going to help me with the chemistry part since, well, you know me and chemistry.” He chuckled as he recalled the botched exploding teddy bear, the moment he could pinpoint when all of this started, the morning before Emery became a vampire.
He lay down on top of his covers, holding the walkie close to his mouth.
“Well, you couldn’t inherit only your dad’s good qualities,” Emery said.
“As long as I keep my hair. And these dashing good looks, of course.”
“You joke, but your looks are pretty dashing. And you got your dad’s body.”
“Oh my god, you are not implying you think my dad has a hot body.”
Emery’s laughter cut off halfway, indicating he had released the talk button during his chuckles. “I think you have a hot body,” he said eventually. “The fact that it came from your dad is beside the point.”
Connor grinned, but couldn’t help the way the expression started to drop. “Is it weird?”
“Your body?”
“Liking me?”
“What do you mean?”
Connor shifted nervously on the bed. “You’ve never liked any other guys before.”
“Actually…I have. I just never told you about it.”
“Seriously?” Connor propped himself up on his elbow. “Why not? And who?”
“No one at school or anything. Just…people. Actors, mostly. Hot guys at the mall. It wasn’t very often though, usually I like girls. It’s different with you. You’re not some sexy stranger I can only look at from a distance,” he said with a smile in his voice.
Connor couldn’t mirror the expression that he imagined on his friend. “Right.”
A brief silence responded before Emery asked, “Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“That I’m not gay.”
“No. Of course not. I mean…” Connor let himself flop back onto his pillow, thankful Emery wasn’t in the room with him. He doubted he could look him in the eye right now. “Bother isn’t the word, it’s just…”
“Tell me.”
“You said it yourself, Em. Usually you like girls. And it helps knowing there have been other guys, even if just passing crushes, but I can’t help feeling sometimes like…” He sighed audibly, taking his hand off
the talk button so it wouldn’t come across as loud static. Then he said, “Like I have twice as much competition to keep you.”
Silence responded. Fifteen seconds felt like a full minute when no one said anything.
“Em?” Connor asked quietly.
A knock at his window made him jump. Emery crouched outside, balanced on the overhang of roof. Connor nearly tumbled off the bed in his haste to respond. He set the walkie on his nightstand as he moved to open the window, though it was a little awkward with only one arm.
“Dude, what if Officer Nustad saw you?”
“He can’t see this spot from where he parks,” Emery said, climbing in with one smooth, graceful motion, like a cat with his perfect balance and control ever since becoming a vampire. He closed the window behind him.
Connor shuffled back a step. He tried to cross his arms then remembered he couldn’t, his good arm eventually flopping back to his side. “I didn’t mean anything by that, okay? I’m being stupid.”
“Yeah, you are,” Emery said, smiling as he crossed to Connor. “You don’t have twice as much competition. You don’t have any competition.”
Heat crept up the back of Connor’s neck. Emery was dressed for bed too. T-shirt. Soft, flannel sleep pants. Socks. He’d used his vampire speed to flash across their lawns in socks. There wasn’t even any chill coming off of him from being out in the cooler night air, not with how fast he’d gotten there.
Connor was barefoot, in a shirt and boxers. They’d jumped straight to intimate when they confessed their feelings, but that time, he’d kept his arm on. He felt far more naked now without it, even fully dressed.
Life as a Teenage Vampire Page 25