Fang U

by Mia Archer

  No, we could talk with the humans. We could form relationships with the humans. We could fall in love with the humans. I wasn’t aware of any human who was particularly into getting intimate with a cow.

  Well, at least not anyone halfway sane.

  No, I didn’t feel sorrow when a human was sacrificed for a meal, but as I looked down at this one staring up in terror I felt a pang of something. It wasn’t quite guilt, but it was something that came close to what used to be guilt.

  That wasn’t an emotion I had time for. It was time to give this human the same mercy I’d given that poor witch Diana had all but killed. The death that had given Lisa entirely the wrong idea.

  I leaned down on my knees and locked eyes with the human. It wasn’t difficult considering her eyes were the only thing that could move. she stared up at me, gasping for breath.

  Perhaps whatever damage Jessica had done had also affected her breathing. It didn’t seem she would be long for this world. I shook my head.

  The pledges couldn’t even fuck up correctly.

  “I am very sorry for this,” I said. “I could let you live out your natural life, but I don’t think that’s going to be very long.”

  Her eyes went wide as what I was insinuating hit home. She might look like an airheaded cheerleader type, but she also clearly had some brains between those ears. Enough to know when the end was nigh.

  “Trust me, this is going to hurt me as much as it hurts you,” I said, and I was surprised to realize it was true. “But better to put you out of your misery now than let nature take it’s course, and I have been feeling a bit annoyed this evening so…”

  The girl’s mouth worked but she couldn’t get any words out. She probably couldn’t work her lungs well enough to get anything out. I didn’t know.

  The bloodlust took me. My eyes glowed and my fangs extended and all I cared about was feeding. The human whimpered and twitched a couple of times, but it really was a mercy.

  No life she’d live would be worth it at this point, and she’d already seen enough that I couldn’t gamble on letting her loose. Not when she might survive to tell the world about this.

  Besides, I wasn’t going to let these incompetents enjoy a meal. Not when they’d screwed up so monumentally. Someone had to take care of the mess they’d created, just as with the witch, and I was reminded of the old standby of if you wanted something done right…

  Five minutes later I stood and wiped blood from the corner of my mouth. I turned and looked at each of the wayward pledges, the glow still in my eyes. They knew I could end any one of them, and they all flinched away from that red glow.

  “I know I already said this, but I want to stress just how irritated I will be if I hear of anything like this happening again. Am I understood?”

  They all looked away and muttered. They weren’t happy about this, but they were telling me what I wanted to hear.

  “Clean this up if you want to continue unliving,” I growled as pulled on a wall sconce that opened the secret door to the regular basement.

  I heard them getting to work behind me, but I put them out of my mind as the door to the secret stair leading down here shut.

  This had already been a long night, and I had a sinking feeling it was only going to get longer.

  23

  Lisa

  It was amazing how easily you could lose track of time when you were having fun. I leaned against a counter in the kitchen as music blasted from the living room.

  Amber had gotten with one of Kendra’s friends, male thank you very much, and disappeared. I wished her the best of luck and hoped she’d find whatever she was looking for.

  After all, it’s not like she was going to get into the same kind of trouble at this party that she did at the last one. The people here killed vampires.

  Any pale bloodsucker that came to this house would have to have a serious death wish. Or was it an undeath wish? I wasn’t sure, and I was such a dork for even wondering what the right term should be.

  People came in and out and grabbed alcohol from a big tub filled with ice. I figured there would’ve been a keg in here or something, but it seemed that movies about college life had lied to me about every party having a keg at its center.

  “So at the risk of sounding cliche, what’s your major?” Kendra asked, leaning in close.

  She’d stayed close to me all night, and I didn’t mind that one bit. After everything that happened at the library I could use a little more protection. Especially without the magic to protect me.

  It didn’t hurt that the more I drank the cuter she got. It’s not like I was having a lot, and even a couple of drinks from that ice tub wasn’t enough to make me feel the way I did drinking whatever it was at the vampire house, but still.

  Yeah, Kendra could get as close as she wanted with those piercing eyes and that lean body that was outlined perfectly by her tight shirt. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed just how muscular she was before, or how much she liked showing it off by leaning just the right way.

  I’m sure she did that on purpose.

  I blushed. I seemed to be doing that a lot with Kendra tonight. I felt tingly and lightheaded, though oddly that’d started before I had anything to drink. I’m sure the couple of beers I’d had since meeting her weren’t helping.

  And the thought of having a couple of vampires out there on campus hunting for me didn’t help either.

  “Lisa? You still here with us?”

  I blinked a couple of times. What was she… Oh. Right. She asked what my major was. The oldest line in the book. Not that I was going to complain.

  Like I said, the later it got the happier I was with the idea of her using a line on me. The longer the night wore on the less I thought about Ivy. The less I worried about Diana and the library and what she might be up to right now.

  “I’m majoring in English Studies,” I said.

  Kendra cocked an eyebrow. She was so cute when she did that. Then again, she was the sort of girl who’d look cute no matter what she did. Honestly I didn’t need alcoholic assistance to be attracted to her.

  I wanted to lean in and kiss her and that impulse surprised me. I’d felt something like that with girls before, but it had never been reciprocated and it’d certainly never been this intense.

  Well, maybe it had been that intense with you-know-who, but she had that weird vampire mojo thing going for her which Kendra definitely didn’t.

  It had to be the alcohol. I was so lightheaded. It was difficult to focus on anything.

  “English Studies? Why would you want to do that? Journalism’s dead and the only profs they’re hiring at universities these days are adjuncts who get paid peanuts,” she said.

  I sighed. “Yeah, well to be honest I’ve always wanted to be a writer.”

  And she was wrong on at least one score. Print might be dead in the modern world, but it was still very much alive with the magic crowd. Not that I expected her to know anything about that world.

  She was a slayer. They might be adjacent to the hidden paranormal world, but they were adjacent in the sense that they tried their best to kill things in the paranormal world.

  Yeah, she probably wouldn’t know much about writing for witches. Or that it was one of the most prestigious positions someone could have. Something that was almost up there with being a Coven Mother.

  “A writer? Really? Why would you want to do something like that?”

  “I’ve always been in love with books.”

  I’d fallen in love with the written word at a young age. I suppose it was only natural growing up in my mom’s shop. I fell into my love of writing early and honestly.

  Besides, I might have the beginnings of a crush on this girl, but I wasn’t about to tell her I was majoring in Spellcasting or Magical History or Magical Paths to Fortune and Power. None of those majors were on the official list, though you could get them at this school just the same as any of the more official majors.

  If you had the right conne
ctions. It was a little known fact that there were a lot of English and History departments around the world that were fronts for people going into the magical arts. People wouldn’t make as many jokes about starving English majors if they knew how many of those English majors could turn them into a newt if they were so inclined.

  I was tempted to tell her, but again. Slayer. I didn’t know how much she knew about our world and I wasn’t about to give anything away voluntarily.

  “Huh. I mean that’s great that you like books and all, but it seems if you want to write you could just sort of do that on the side without getting the degree in English, right? I mean you’re getting a degree in a language everyone speaks!”

  She had a point, but over the years magic users had discovered that English Major was the quickest way to get someone off your back when they asked about your major.

  It was nice and bland. Like communications, which was another favorite for keeping people from digging too deeply into a magical major. Though not as popular as English Studies since communications was also typically a dumping ground for sports types.

  “Oh yeah? Well what are you majoring in?”

  “Criminal Justice,” she said without missing a beat.

  I couldn’t help but giggle at the irony. I had a feeling whatever she was studying here it didn’t have anything to do with Criminal Justice. At least it didn’t have anything to do with bringing justice to mortal criminals. No, she was doing the same thing I was. Neither one of us was going to give anything away we didn’t have to.

  That was so. Fucking. Cute. And I also think I’d maybe had just a little too much to drink.

  “What?”

  I leaned in closer. Put a hand on her shoulder. I shivered as my hand made contact. She felt nice. Hard. Muscular. I resisted the urge to lean forward and lick her even as I wondered why that sort of thought would even occur to me in the first place.

  I looked down at the red plastic cup in my hand. It was empty. Again. How had that happened? I looked to the row of empty bottles I’d poured into the red plastic cup because it felt like more of an authentic college experience to drink out of the cups rather than the bottles.

  She stared back at me, and I lost myself in her eyes. she was hypnotizing. Sure I knew it was just drinking beer for the first time coupled with talking with a cute college girl, even if she was a slayer, that was creating the perfect storm putting me under her control, but it was nice.

  “Yeah, like you’re really majoring in Criminal Justice Ms. Vampire Slayer!”

  Her eyes narrowed and she looked around to make sure no one was listening in. I put a hand over my mouth. Oops.

  Secrecy was one of those things that’d been drilled into me from a very young age. I must’ve really had too much to drink if I was dropping that secrecy in the middle of a house party.

  “You need to be careful. You never know who might be listening,” she said. “But to tell you the truth I never really worried about what I’d do after college considering what I’m doing here at the school. All I care about is something that’s easy while I’m here so I can do my real work. The fact that it’s sort of related to my real work helps.”

  “Hunting…”

  I stopped. Her eyes narrowed again. I was about to give something away. Again. Stupid!

  “That doesn’t seem like a very good attitude to have. How are you going to get a job when you graduate?”

  If she wanted to keep up the pretense that we were a couple of real college students then I could do that. I wouldn’t want to give anyone around us the wrong idea, after all.

  Besides, if she was going to give me shit about English Studies then I was going to take the opportunity to give her shit about her fake major of choice, thank you very much.

  I giggled at the thought. It wasn’t that funny, but I giggled regardless. I really had gone through too much alcohol tonight.

  I wondered if this was how Amber felt all the time. That would explain why she kept going out even after crawling back to the dorms with what seemed like one hell of a headache on several nights after I’d decided to take a rest.

  Kendra leaned in closer with a grin on her face. I found myself mesmerized. I thought this might be the moment that I got a kiss. My body shivered under her smoldering look.

  The screaming started right around then, everything went quite literally to hell, and kissing was suddenly the last thing I needed to worry about.

  Son of a bitch!

  24

  Ivy

  I walked over to the fridge and took out a drink. The special fridge where we kept our special drinks. Not the one we presented to the world on the first level.

  There were a lot of things like that in this house. Things in the dark corners a human might not like if they looked too closely.

  Which is why we tried not to give humans an opportunity to look too closely. That was why the real basement below the main basement was so well hidden. Why the upper levels were strictly invite only.

  I sighed. I’d spent so much time trying to make this into the perfect enclave on campus. So many years working to make it better after I’d created it, and now those asshole pledges had very nearly ruined everything.

  There was a sword of Damocles hanging over our head for sure. I couldn’t know when the attack was coming. It was all very disconcerting. I didn’t like being disconcerted.

  I also didn’t like the thought that the attack might come with Lisa at the head, bringing her lightnings and other magics down on us and killing vampires left and right.

  The thought was terrifying. She should terrify me. Only she didn’t. I couldn’t get her out of my head.

  I took a sip and let out a long sigh. It’d been a long day. I still couldn’t believe what those assholes had pulled earlier. I still couldn’t believe what had happened at the library before that.

  If I didn’t know it would get me in trouble with Mother I would’ve killed all the pledges.

  Diana just didn’t understand how dangerous the games she played were. Something would have to be done about her eventually, even if my hands were tied right now.

  No, she couldn’t be allowed to continue existing. Not when she would be with the sorority and in our rotation causing this kind of trouble for as long as she lived.

  Something told me she wouldn’t live long even if I’d allowed it. Not with her talent for bringing down heat on our house. The High Coven wouldn’t stand for it in the long term even if Mother was willing to tolerate it to teach me a lesson in the short term.

  Heat was the last thing I needed with everything else going on. Witches out there on the prowl. I shivered, wondering at every turn whether or not the house would be annihilated in a pillar of magical fire.

  It was possible. The histories spoke of that sort of thing happening. From the dark days in the time before human history was reliably recorded. And now there was a witch on campus who’d been sent specifically to find us.

  I snorted. We still remembered those days. Days when magic users and vampires and creatures straight out of mythology and nightmare had roamed the world.

  The sort of creatures that hid now. We might’ve ruled the night once upon a time, but it was difficult to rule the night when the things you were trying to rule had invented night vision goggles and high powered weaponry that made stakes and silver look like children’s toys.

  The witch Diana killed had only been the start of the trouble. Killing a new student was the sort of thing that was certain to draw out the slayers, and they were the last thing I needed on top of witches hunting us. Especially when Kendra had special reason to want to end my undeath.

  “Ivy!” Brooke said, coming up behind me.

  I turned and grinned as she pulled me in for a hug.

  “How’s it going Brooke?” I asked.

  “Can’t complain,” she said. “Planning on having some drinks and seeing what fun comes through the door! I love the beginning of the year!”

  “Yeah. I wish I co
uld enjoy everything like the old days. Not going to happen tonight though. Not with everything that’s going on.”

  It was all happening so fast. Entirely too fast. There were days when it felt like society was finally moving faster than we could keep up with.

  This had been so much easier when I founded the sorority. Before everyone had the ability to take a photo. Before everyone had their own recording device. Before pictures and videos stayed on the Internet for decades making it easier to identify someone who showed up in the same places several decades apart without aging a day.

  I’d seen a few things on the new computers where people laughed about supposed immortals caught in different times, never realizing that’s exactly what they were seeing.

  Things were accelerating so fast with the humans that there were times I thought even my strategy of blending in and picking them off around the edges of society with some well placed bribes to keep things quiet wouldn’t be enough to sustain us for much longer.

  Perhaps it was the romantic in me, but there were times when I thought of a dark day in the future when humanity left the husk of this world behind, and remaining behind on that husk would be us. Their natural predators left behind as the prey shot for the stars. We’d discover on that dark day in the not-so-distant future that we only thought we were apex predators, only to find out we were nothing more than parasites living off of a host that had finally left us behind.

  Would I still be around on that day?

  I chuckled and shook my head. I got to thinking like this when I was in a morose mood, and nothing put me in those bad contemplative moods more than dealing with Diana.

  “Come on, it can’t be all bad. The High Coven isn’t pissed off about what the pledges did, right? If they were pissed off you wouldn’t be here talking to me right now, right?”

  I frowned. “Something like that.”

  I’d decided to keep the truth from the house. I was the one in charge and so I was the only one to deal directly with the High Coven. It didn’t seem productive to worry the others when there was nothing they could do about it.