The desire for power I had felt in the bookstore barreled to life inside me again. My body pulsed with yearning. Deep inside, I felt a part of me tug away from what was offered. There was something in me, frail and quiet, but firm in its belief that what I saw, what I felt, was evil, but it was so weak, it didn’t stand a chance to win.
Just when I had decided the picture before me was real, a stinging slice to my palm jolted me away from fantasy land and back to my reality.
“Jesus!” I screamed. “What the hell was that?” I said before I remembered I was standing with a teacher and probably, no matter how cool that teacher was, I should watch my mouth around him.
“It’s okay, AJ,” Mr. Charles said, wrapping my now bloody hand in a paper towel. His face was pale and his hands were shaking. His words were laced with nervous excitement. “I had to force your hand off the seal. It…it was like it wouldn’t let go of you. I finally wrenched it away, unfortunately, at the cost of some of your skin. I’m sorry. I obviously let it go on longer than I should have.”
Still a little dazed, I looked at the blood soaking through the paper towel. It was almost like I had just run five miles on empty. I was light-headed, my legs were wobbly, and I saw stars when I closed my eyes.
Mr. Charles supported me, and I leaned in to him to steady my footing. When I opened my eyes, I noticed there were drops of blood on the document. “Oh no! Jill is gonna kill me! I can’t believe I bled all over an ancient scroll.”
“I’ll handle Jill. She’ll be fine with it. Oh my God, AJ. Look!” He pointed at the droplets of blood and we watched as more writing appeared.
“It’s like it feeds on your blood,” Mr. Charles said.
“Can you decipher that?” I asked.
“This is amazing! Truly fascinating!” He ran out of the room and I followed him. In his classroom, he marched over to his junked-up desk and began to shuffle through the papers and books. He opened drawers, moved the chair out of the way, and searched beneath the desk. “I was just using it. Where has it gone? Think, Charles, think. Where were you last?” Mr. Charles stood there among the wreckage tapping his chin and talking to himself like a cartoon professor.
“That’s right!” he muttered after a few seconds. He took off back to the room we had just come from. “In all my excitement, I forgot that I had prepared for this possibility by bringing the text into the room with me. I would lose my head if it weren’t attached.”
He picked up the old book and flipped through the pages. He had already bookmarked some of the pages in advance with Post-it notes. After skimming several pre-marked pages, he finally seemed to find what he was looking for.
His brow furrowed as he glanced from scroll to book, trying to translate the ancient script.
“This is very perplexing,” he said.
“What is?” Malia asked, finally returning from her phone call. “Did I miss anything?”
“The translation reads: ‘One has been found. There is another.’”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I have no idea.” Mr. Charles peered at me. “AJ, is it possible that you’re somehow a descendant of the Serpentines? With your grandmother telling the story, it stands to reason—”
“Me? A descendant of an evil clan of vampires?” My heart jumped into overdrive. I trusted Mr. Charles, except…even I wasn’t that stupid. And I certainly couldn’t let him guess. Dammit! Why did I make my interest in the Serpentines family based?
“Mr. Charles, I know you’re really into occult myth and all, but seriously, vampires aren’t real. I think you’ve been walking that line between fantasy and reality a little too long.”
“My dear, every myth has a foundation in truth.” His smile was warm and friendly. “I know it’s a scary thought, but think about your family history. It would be an amazing discovery, don’t you think?”
“If I had a vampire in my family? No. That would so not be cool. Besides, it’s not possible. I thought vampires couldn’t see themselves in mirrors or burn in daylight. Wouldn’t I know if I had been bitten?”
There you go, AJ. Play it off.
“There’s more to vampires than what you hear from tall tales. Vampires can be born. They aren’t just bitten and turned. And they’ve evolved way beyond the mirror and daylight thing. In order to survive, they’ve had to adapt. That’s why stories about them keep changing.”
“You believe in vampires?” And, more to the point, how the hell does he know all that? Was Mr. Charles a vampire? No. There was no way.
“I believe in a great number of things, AJ. Now, tell me about your family history.”
I squeezed my injured hand shut and took a deep breath. “Mr. Charles, I lied. It wasn’t my grandmother who told me that story. I’ve never even met my grandmother. I actually picked up the story from a conversation I overheard at Starbucks when I was in Memphis. I thought it would sound more authentic if I said it came from my family.”
Wow. Lying seemed to be the only thing I could do right these days.
“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Charles the truth?” Malia asked as she drove me home.
“I did.”
“AJ, there is no way you heard that story at Starbucks. C’mon. You can tell me.”
Actually, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell anyone. Mom had always warned us about confiding in people about “our truth.” I didn’t want to take the chance that I would lose the only people I really could trust right now.
“It’s true. I overheard it the day before school started, when Mom and I went shopping. I thought the story was cool and I decided I would research the Serpentines for my thesis. I figured if I couldn’t find anything on them, no harm.”
“And then you hit the mother lode with Mr. Charles?” she asked.
“Yeah. I knew if anyone could help me, he could. I swear he knows everything about the occult.”
“Maybe there’s a reason he believes in vampires,” Malia offered.
I let that thought ricochet through my mind as Malia pulled into the alley behind my house. My mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway, which actually surprised me. But I couldn’t take any chances walking through the kitchen door, just in case she’d let someone borrow her car, or she was trying to trick me by making me think she wasn’t home.
I had Malia drop me off behind the house. “Thanks for everything, Malia,” I said as I opened the car door. “I don’t know what I’d do without you and Bridget.”
“I hate that Bridget didn’t come tonight,” Malia said. “But honestly, I think this stuff would freak her out. She probably wouldn’t be very open to the possibility of vampires. Hey, I meant to ask, what happened to your hand?”
I looked down at my closed fist but didn’t remove the paper towel or look at the damage. I tend to heal at an extraordinarily fast rate and really didn’t have a clue if I had a mark on me or if my palm was back to normal. No matter how “open” people claim to be about the paranormal, seeing it happen in real life tends to be a little overwhelming.
“Oh, nothing. I just cut it. It’ll be fine.”
“Well, I’ll see you after school tomorrow.”
“Take it easy. And thanks again.”
She drove away, and I tiptoed through our backyard to the living room window. There was another window box planted with the same herbs that were in my own room. I plucked a bit of sage as I snuck a peek inside to see the twins and Oz playing Xbox and Rayden sitting on the couch reading. Aunt Doreen was bent over the coffee table, fussing over a tray of cookies. She straightened and turned to look directly at me. With a smile, she waved me to the kitchen.
How on earth did the woman do that? I swear the woman has eyes on every side of her head.
I turned back toward the driveway, and had to stifle a scream when I nearly walked smack into Noah.
Chapter 17
I jumped back, but I guess I didn’t need to because he stepped away from me, as if he was repelled.
“Wha-what do you want with me?�
� I sputtered. I took another step toward him, and again he took another step back.
He looked the same, only paler. His eyes were no longer those beautiful warm, blue pools. They were icy and hard and red-rimmed.
“Do you like what you’ve done to me?” he hissed.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t you?” He reached out and grabbed my wrist but jerked his hand away with a yelp, then disappeared. So I hadn’t dreamed up the disappearing act the first time.
Great.
Not only was he dichampyr, and stalking me, but he also could evaporate into thin air.
I hurried around the house, but Noah appeared again before I could reach the carport. He sneered at me and bared his fangs. “I can’t wait to bury my fangs into that hot little neck of yours. We have unfinished business.”
“Why aren’t you doing it now, if you’re so eager?”
“It’s not time,” he said. “Soon, though.”
“If I did this to you, then you have to obey me. Sit!” I commanded.
He hissed.
“Too complicated a command? Let’s try this one—play dead.” I laughed. “Good boy.”
His lips peeled back in a snarl. “Go ahead, laugh now.”
“So if I’m not your master, who is?” I asked, trying to keep my composure. My hands were shaking and my heart was racing, like I’d just had a double shot of espresso for the first time. “It must be hard having no control over your own actions.”
He just sneered. “I can’t wait to taste you.” I stepped forward and he shrieked and disappeared. Again.
“Hide-and-seek is for kids, Noah,” I called.
His growling laughter echoed around me. My skin tingled, and the air pressure seemed to drop. I couldn’t move. It was like a magnet pulled at my feet, preventing me from making my escape.
Aunt Doreen stepped outside. “Ariel, dearie. Is that you?” The moment she spoke, the magnet seemed to disengage.
I ran through the carport, past Aunt Doreen.
“There ye are,” she said with a warm smile. “Yer mum was called into emergency surgery tonight, so she isn’t here yet. Which is to yer benefit, aye?” She winked.
“How—?”
“When ye’ve lived this long and ye’ve raised as many wee ones as me, then ye learn a thing or two about their mischievous behaviors. Now come in, eat, and get to yer room before Mum punishes us both.”
Aunt Doreen fixed me a heaping plate of fried chicken, roasted potatoes, and spinach salad while I went to the bathroom to wash my hands, check out the damage to my palm, and calm the fear racing through my veins.
What had stopped Noah from attacking me? He had reached for me, but it was like something invisible was keeping him at a distance. But what?
My wound had mostly healed. But there was a fresh pink scar, which was unusual because I never scarred. Ever. I healed and the wounds just went away. That’s how it has always been. But this time, I had a mark.
Not just any mark, either—it was in the shape of a backward S, like my birthmark. Except this one had a thin forked tongue at the tip of the S.
It was like the scrolls had branded me. What did this mean? Could they track me? Watch me? Hear me?
Dread seized my belly. Whatever it meant, I didn’t like it.
I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out the emergency kit. I placed a small square of cotton in my palm and wrapped the white medical bandage around my hand. I couldn’t risk having someone notice I had a snake on my palm.
Seriously. If I were planning to get a tattoo, it would not have been a snake and it definitely wouldn’t have been on my palm.
After I inhaled my dinner, I headed up to my room to shower and then hide from my mother.
No matter how good at this lying thing I was becoming, I still had a hard time keeping the truth from Momma. But I couldn’t tell her. If I did, Mom would probably chain me to my bed and never let me leave again. Which might keep me safe, but it would definitely put the rest of the family at risk. And I know Noah wasn’t bluffing. He’d left me the ribbon to prove it.
This was totally not cool.
I entered my room and smiled when I heard my stereo blaring the verse “I don’t like your girlfriend.” I hoped Ryan heard it. Sure, it was passive aggressive, but whatever. Who was I to care? He chased Lindsey after he kissed me. And not just any kiss, either. He made me knock-kneed.
And to make a girl loopy with your tongue and then run after another one was just not okay.
Spike was curled up on my pillow, and he purred extra loudly for me when I scratched his head. My cell phone rang, so I picked up the remote for my stereo and muted the volume, then answered.
“Hey. We missed you tonight,” I said.
Bridget laughed. “Did y’all have fun getting your geek on with Mr. Green Eyes?”
“It was—interesting,” I said.
“Oh? That sounds like it has juice potential. Spill.”
Okay, so here I was at another one of those life-altering forks in the road. Bridget had been my best friend since forever, basically. She knew everything there was about me to know, except for the whole “vampire” thing. I wanted so bad to tell her everything. I knew I couldn’t tell her about Noah, but maybe this stuff with the scrolls would be okay. She loved me enough to believe in me, right? I mean, Mr. Charles believed me, and he didn’t even know me.
“Mr. Charles had the scrolls that Jill had shown us the other day.”
“Boy, so far this isn’t a yawner at all,” she commented.
“Shut up and let me finish, cow!”
“Moo.”
“He had the scrolls laid out and the one I had touched before still had the writing on it that had appeared after I touched it.”
“Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about the magical AJ ink.”
“Anyway, he asked me to tell him about what happened to me when I touched the scroll before, so I did.”
“And he believed all that woo-woo about voices and reappearing ink?” she asked. My heart sank a little. Woo-woo was not the reaction I had been hoping for.
“He didn’t act like it was crazy. But he wanted to test it out again.”
“Mr. Charles wanted you to touch it and see for himself that you were making all that crap up in your head.”
“Do you wanna hear this or not?” I asked, getting a little frustrated.
“Yeah, sorry. You know I want to hear it.”
“Like I was saying, he wanted to test it out so he asked me to touch the seal of the second scroll like I did the first one. So I did. And it got really weird again. There were voices, and the seal burned me and, um, drew blood.”
“And Mr. Charles heard the voices?”
“No. But when he pulled my palm off the seal, that’s when it cut me.”
“Hm,” Bridget said.
“Hm. What?”
“It just seems odd that you’re the only one hearing the voices, that’s all.”
“Mr. Charles wonders if there might be some family connection somewhere in my past.” There. I opened the door to the conversation. If Bridget was ready for this discussion, she’d step through the door. If not, she’d slam it shut.
“Family connection? As in, someone in your family might’ve been a vampire? You’re a descendant of the undead? Your great-great-grandmother could’ve been the Queen of the Damned? Seriously?”
“Something like that, yeah. What? You don’t think it’s a possibility? Even a remote possibility?”
Bridget laughed. Giggled, actually. She was near howling and gasping for breath after a couple of seconds. She finally calmed herself and replied, “I’d believe in shape-shifting worms before I’d believe that vampires were real.”
“Technically speaking, caterpillars are shape-shifting worms,” I said with a hollow laugh. Boy, had I read her wrong.
“Um. Yeah. Thanks for splitting those hairs for me, Mistress of the Dark.”
I sighed. “Whatever. I guess Malia was rig
ht. You’re not willing to be open about this. Thank God I have one friend who is.”
“AJ! That’s not fair—I…”
“Good night, Bridget,” I said, cutting her off. Tears knotted in my throat as I powered down my phone. I didn’t want to be tempted to answer if she called me back. This had been the worst week ever and Bridget’s rejection was the cherry on top of a shitty sundae.
I walked into my bathroom and turned my shower on as hot as it would go. I pulled the shade down, but I could still hear Noah’s laughter in the wind as I stripped off my clothes and stepped under the water to cry until the shower ran cold.
Chapter 18
I wrapped myself inside my warm terry cloth robe and brushed the tangles out of my wet hair. The shower hadn’t washed away the hurt, nor had it disguised the tear stains on my face. But I still felt a little better.
As better as any vampire could feel after having her BFF drive a stake through her heart.
Yeah, yeah, it was a proverbial stake and Bridget didn’t do it on purpose, but still. It hurt like a bitch. I guess I’d always fooled myself into believing that I could share all my secrets with her. I guess I was wrong.
“AJ?” Momma said with a knock to the door. “May I come in for a minute?”
“It’s your house,” I answered.
“Nice attitude,” she said, closing the door behind her. She was carrying a package wrapped in brown paper. “This was delivered to you today.”
I took the package, but there was no return address. “Thanks,” I said, ripping through the paper. “I don’t remember ordering anything.”
It was a book. By all appearances it was a very old book. I opened it and a note card fell out. “Oh, it’s from Jill, the bookstore lady over in Yellow Pine. Cool.”
“What kind of book is it?” Mom asked.
“Well, I’m trying to find out more about our family history, so I’m researching. I’m assuming the book has something to do with that mysterious prophecy you told me about.”
Bite Me! Page 12