Fang U

by Mia Archer

  Not quite your average college love story, that’s for damn sure.

  31

  Ivy

  “You killed them?” Brooke asked.

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” I replied. “They had to go. It’s as simple as that.”

  “The High Coven is going to be pissed off that you dusted pledges,” Brooke said.

  Brooke didn’t know the half of it. I’d killed one of them, sure, but Lisa took care of the rest. I could still feel the aftereffects of her magic crackling through the air.

  I’d never seen magic work like that before. I’d never heard of a witch killing a vampire with such ease. They’d sent an experience vampire killer to hunt us, and I didn’t know why I was still alive.

  I put a hand to my lips as I remembered that kiss and smiled. Okay, so maybe I did have some idea as to why I was still alive.

  Or still undead, as it were. I should be a pile of dust on the ground, but an impromptu makeout session before she took care of my pledge problem was a nice alternative.

  “I know, but I’ll deal with that when we come to it,” I said.

  Better that than facing Lisa in a contest of pure strength. It was a contest I was almost certain I’d lose.

  I’d never seen the like. I’d only heard of it. In legends passed down from long before I was born and turned. I shivered thinking about what she might mean for me. For vampire society.

  I knew what I should do. Try to kill her. Even if I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to kill her should it come to a fight.

  I also knew what I was going to do. It was wrong, but I didn’t care.

  “I’m stepping out,” I said.

  “With all this going on?” Brooke asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

  “No problem,” Brooke muttered. “Just leave me to deal with sweeping up dead pledge ash.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t have a problem helping out,” I said with a grin.

  I made my way up through the party that was always happening on a weekend. People called out to me, Anne tried to get my attention, but I ignored all of them.

  I wanted to get out of there. I needed to get to the dorms. I had a stupid grin on my face the entire time, but for the first time in a good long while the place I needed to be wasn’t this sorority house.

  Mother had told me there was a wider world out there waiting for me, but something told me sneaking out of the house to go find a witch wasn’t what she’d meant.

  I didn’t care. I moved through campus like a shadow. Took the same path I had the last time I visited her dorm. I had no way of knowing if she’d even be there.

  I did have a moment of trouble rounding the front entrance. Amber came walking out, smiling and laughing and dressed in a completely different outfit like she was ready to party.

  I smiled. It would seem the compulsion had worked better on her than I’d imagined. She was on her phone and oblivious to the world around her, but considering what she’d been through tonight that might be for the best.

  Odd that I was thinking about what would be best for a human at all. Especially when my concern was because the girl was Lisa’s roommate.

  I stayed back so she wouldn’t see me, then made my way around to the other side. Scrambled up just as before, though I paused to make sure no one was standing around with one of those infernal smartphone cameras pointed at me.

  Then I was at her window. It took some doing, but I looked in and my breath caught.

  She was in there. She’d just stepped in, and she moved in a towel that clung to her body in all the right places. I almost wanted to stay back and enjoy the view, but oddly enough there was something in me that said that would be wrong.

  Not to mention there was a burning desire deep within me that said if she was going to be in a room wearing nothing but a towel then I wanted to be in there with her!

  I took a deep breath. I was well aware that this could end with her blasting me from the side of the building, for all that we’d ended our time together in the basement by making out and holding hands briefly before I led her out.

  Still, it had to be done. I tapped on the window and waited for whatever might happen.

  She didn’t do anything. I frowned. Was she ignoring me? She had to have heard that.

  I tapped again, but I was a little louder this time. This time she did finally seem to realize someone was out here. She turned and jumped. Just a little.

  She didn’t scream in horror like someone might if they didn’t know vampires existed though. She merely rolled her eyes and walked over to the window.

  “What the hell are you doing out there?” she asked.

  “I had to see you,” I said.

  “Well obviously,” she said, speaking loud enough that she could be heard through the window.

  “So can I come in?”

  It was difficult for me. I had to speak loud enough that she could hear me, but I didn’t want to yell so loudly that someone might hear me from down below.

  And I desperately wanted her to let me in. Seeing her curves outlined by that towel was driving me wild. I needed to taste her, and I wasn’t talking about feeling her lifeblood dripping into my mouth.

  No, this was a different sort of lust that had nothing to do with feeding. It was something I hadn’t felt in so very long, and I think the emotion was that much more intense because it’d been so long.

  “So you’re saying you need my permission to come in here?” she asked with the faintest hint of a smile on her face. “You really work like that?”

  I ground my teeth. Every moment I spent out here was a moment where someone might discover me. Where they might look up and see a figure hanging off the side of the dorm where that shouldn’t be possible.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes what?” she said, clearly enjoying herself.

  “Yes I need your permission to come in,” I said. “Now would you please let me in before someone sees me? I don’t need the campus police trying to shoot me off the side of your building!”

  Nothing like that had ever happened before, but there could be first times for everything. I didn’t want to get some jumpy rookie who thought the end of their primitive weapon was the solution to all of life’s problems.

  There wasn’t much chance they would kill me with something like that, not unless they got a lucky shot to the heart, but it’d still hurt like a motherfucker if I got hit. Not to mention I’d probably fall which was never pleasant from this height.

  “Fine,” she said. “You can come in.”

  She was still grinning though. As though she knew something I didn’t. Whatever. I had her permission, and that’s all I needed.

  “Well?” I asked. “What are you waiting for?”

  She leaned forward and worked the window. Pushed it open. And that’s when I realized why she was smiling like that. Because of course there was no way for me to get in there. Not since they’d changed the window design to make sure there was no way for students distraught over bad grades or whatever it was that upset college students to take a long drop with a quick stop.

  I growled again. I was tempted to tear the window out of its frame, but of course that would draw the wrong kind of attention on top of possibly getting Lisa in some kind of trouble.

  She laughed and shook her head. “Give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll come down and let you in. Then we can watch something.”

  I grinned. That sounded quite nice. She walked over to the center of her room then turned around to stare through the window. She was still grinning, but she made a little whirling motion with her fingers.

  The meaning was clear. It would seem that the fun was going to wait for just a little while longer, but I could wait for her. I would do a lot for her. I hadn’t felt like this about a woman since before I was turned.

  And back then it’d been more of a shame than anything. A shame it’d taken me decades of undeath to get over, for all that it didn’t bo
ther me nearly as much now.

  There was no shame now, though. Just a desire to get to know this girl who’d been sent to kill me.

  So I climbed down the dorm and waited at the front. Sure enough she was down in about ten minutes. She grinned as she opened the door, and it struck me just how normal this was. A girl meeting another girl to go up to her dorm room to see where the night might lead.

  I’d spent so long at the sorority, so long trying to hide what I was from the world, so long leading a life that was an imitation of normal while not being anywhere near normal, that this felt both weird and good at the same time.

  I pulled her close to me. Leaned down to give her a kiss. She smiled when I pulled away.

  “What was that for?” she asked.

  “For everything,” I said.

  Sure there was going to be trouble when word got out about what happened tonight, but for now we were just two girls enjoying a night together in the dorms, and all seemed right in the world.

  Yeah, I could get used to that. I took Lisa by the hand and let her lead me into the dorm for the first normal night I’d had in decades.

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