Vamped

by Lucienne Diver

  This felt like a moment of truth. If Connor was testing me on Melli’s orders to see if I could be trusted with her secrets, I would fail the moment I opened my mouth. If, on the other hand, he truly was in this for himself and thinking of staging some kind of coupe—no, wait, a coupe was a car, right?—well, anyway, some kind of power grab, then he was going to crush me if I didn’t climb on board.

  I thought about those resentful looks he’d thrown at the dragon lady when she wasn’t looking. I was pretty sure he wasn’t playing me out of loyalty to her, but would throwing my lot in with him be any better than cozying up to Melli? I mean, trying to control me at first sight with thoughts of grody bearskin rugs didn’t exactly give him a gold star in my little black book. Maybe I could set myself up as some kind of double agent, at least until I could figure out what was what.

  I shrugged. “Okay, then. What I overheard—CliffsNotes version: the council is on to Melli. They suspect she’s been collecting kids and, for some reason, they want Bobby.”

  “Why?”

  “I was kind of hoping you’d tell me. That glowy gemstone thing—”

  “Medallion,” he corrected. “It glows in the presence of power. Our undead state may come with parlor tricks like mesmerism and the like, but you’d be surprised how little true power goes along with that. Magic is rare. Magic is power. I’m not surprised Mellisande sought Bobby out, if someone pointed her in his direction.”

  “But—”

  “Shh!” he hissed. Footsteps approached, and I wondered if I was going to have to hustle again for those curtains, but the steps kept right on going. I wasn’t about to spill about Bobby being “the key” and all that, in case Connor decided the way to one-up Melli would be to turn Bobby over to the council himself. This way, maybe he’d spend more time trying to figure out how he could use Bobby closer to home, like he was planning to use me. I just hoped he didn’t view Bobby as a rival for the power he clearly wanted for himself.

  “You should go now,” Connor said, once the footsteps had faded away. “I’ve got arrangements to make.”

  “But—”

  “Now,” he said, and I felt a vague wash of sensation sweep over me, like all the hair on my body had been ruffled at once … like he’d been trying to influence me, even though he knew it wouldn’t work.

  “Whatever,” I said back. Wasn’t like I was getting answers anyway. At least I was starting to figure out the questions.

  I crept back through the hallways, no thanks to my new co-conspirator, who went his own way instead of providing me cover. Luckily, the halls were still eerily deserted. It was like a ghost town.

  When I got to the dorm, I saw that “sanitized” meant that all the pictures had been taken off the walls and the beds stacked up like they weren’t in use. Product had been cleared from the bathrooms, which made them seem almost spacious. I’d seen spy shows where cleaners could make a whole crime scene disappear, but I’d never have believed it could be done so quickly if I hadn’t witnessed it. Melli had even gone so far as to have her people use an unscented cleanser. With my vamp senses I could smell it if I inhaled deeply, but it wasn’t the tell-tale pine or lemon I was used to at home, or even the really industrial chemical scent of the one they splashed all over school.

  I hated to hand it to the lady, but maybe she wasn’t just a pretty face. Dammit.

  12

  My classmates returned, erupting up through the trap door and pouring into the room, only to crash up against each other like the Three Stooges when they saw the complete desolation of their space. It was clear that no one had warned them, and they all looked at me—the single near-living thing in the room, sitting on the solitary bunk I’d pulled down for myself—in accusation.

  “Not me,” I said in defense, but no one could really hear me over the indignant cries of the kids who couldn’t make it out of the hole because those who had stopped cold were jamming up the works.

  Things One and Two were no help. They pushed through, ignoring questions with a simple, “We’ll be back.” Luckily, they returned before the tide could really turn on me, with two Santa-sized bags of belongings, toiletries, and sundries. The place erupted into chaos. It looked like the year-end sale at Bergdorf’s—kids fighting over this picture or that shirt, neither of which made out well in the melee.

  I watched with a kind of reality-show fascination until something moved in to block my view.

  I looked up to see that Marcy had planted herself in front of me, fists jammed into her hips, and I thought, here we go.

  “Do you believe this?” she asked, and I looked around to see which this we were talking about—because I could well believe anything at this point.

  But she wasn’t looking at the mayhem all around us, only at the globs of bright purple paint decorating her outfit like so-called modern “art.”

  “Um,” I began cautiously.

  She flopped down next to me on the bed and I hoped she’d had time to dry, but I didn’t think so. “Not that I dressed up or anything. I mean, they warned us when they called us all out for their little war games, but still. This is never coming out.”

  I blinked. “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

  She gave me a pout she’d stolen from my arsenal. “Oh, come on, like anyone else feels my pain. This tank is raw silk. Besides, I can’t stay mad at you. You’re the only one here who knows a Jimmy Choo from a Margaret Cho.”

  “Isn’t she a comic?” I asked.

  “See!” she answered triumphantly, bumping my shoulder companionably.

  I bumped her back, even if I was still a little steamed.

  “So, why aren’t you in the melee?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Please! Like this stupid game”—she flicked a hand at her purple splotches—“didn’t wreak enough havoc on my manicure. And whoever wins is just going to get their picture grabbed the second their back is turned. Not really worth the effort. Besides, have you seen the eye candy around here? Two dimensional boyfriends are kind of … lame, you know?”

  Now we were speaking my language. “So, who do you have your eye on?”

  Marcy was just about to tell me when the doors to the hall burst open … only this time it had nothing to do with me. For a whole entire second I’d forgotten about Melli and her plots and almost felt normal again. But if life was like a box of chocolates, then I was doomed to get the nasty maple filling.

  Rick fell at our feet, pushed there by two of Melli’s minions: Chickzilla and Hawkman. I glared daggers at them, but if they noticed they didn’t give a damn, and only moved farther into the room so the rest of the dragon lady’s entourage could enter—including Bobby. Not even thinking, I hurled myself at him and he caught me, his face grim and his gaze looking past me at Rick. I thought about what Melli had told Connor—about a bloodletting—and I turned as well.

  Rick lay on the ground at Mellisande’s feet, curled around his stomach like the bizarro-world demonstration of crime and punishment had already begun. He wore a sweat-stained tank top and shorts, as if he’d just come from a workout … or work-over, more like. My nose tingled at the smell. My lips twitched back in distaste, in horror, but still my eye-teeth grew. I could practically smell his fear, like a tang in the air. Within me, something elemental that I wanted no part of responded.

  I squeezed Bobby’s hands until he said, “Ow! Gina, you’re hurting me.”

  “But not as badly as they’re going to hurt him, right?”

  I didn’t like Rick, and I had hurt him myself, but this was different. It was, like, ganging up. And with some of the gangees vamps and him just a muscle-head, it didn’t really seem fair. ’Course, as my parents were really fond of telling me, life wasn’t fair. And death wasn’t exactly going to pick up the slack.

  Bobby looked remote, maybe struggling with his own inn
er nasty. I hoped so, anyway. I didn’t want to think he was unaffected. “Looks like.”

  “Are you going to do anything?” I whispered.

  “Like what?” Bobby’s gaze kinda slid down to mine for a second, less remote now but more hard, determined. “Gina, he attacked you!”

  I tossed my hair. “He tried.”

  But Melli’s enforcers were calling the lynch mob to order and there was no more time for talk.

  Melli took the floor, drawing all eyes to her in her raspberry wraparound dress, her ankles wrapped with laces that crisscrossed down to matching heels. She looked like she’d just stepped off a runway, right over the cold dead bodies of her rivals.

  “Rick disobeyed a direct order to leave a prisoner to rot,” Melli began, pitching her voice to carry and looking straight at me. As a result, thirty-odd pairs of eyes turned on me with varying levels of confusion and anger, like it had been my fault Rick got all enterprising. I was used to being the center of attention, but not quite this way. As alternatives to the dragon lady, Connor and even the council were looking better and better. “His disobedience allowed the prisoner to escape, albeit not for long … ” Albeit, who said that? “I think it’s time you all learn the cost.”

  She raised a hand and her inner cabal—Connor, Larry, the beefcakes, a slim blond woman I hadn’t seen before—fell on Rick like a ton of bricks.

  Thing Two, the professor, bit into Rick’s inner arm, spilling a drop that slid down his chin to drip on a scuffed shoe. Connor’s eyes flashed before he sank his teeth into Rick’s thigh. There was some artery there or something that I didn’t think you could live without. Melli herself took his throat. I cried out, and Bobby squeezed my hand hard enough to grind the bones together. As with a train wreck, it was impossible to look away.

  Rick convulsed when the first fangs hit. Then his lids lowered, as if too heavy, and his body relaxed slowly into what I hoped was sleep. The professor shifted and a sudden spurt of blood caught me right across the chest.

  My eye teeth were now fully extended and Bobby whimpered beside me, but neither of us moved, paralyzed by the opposing pulls of horror and need. I didn’t know which way I would have gone, but suddenly it was over. Connor raised his head and declared, “Enough. Don’t follow him into death.”

  The vamp cabal’s heads raised and they backed away, Mellisande last of all, eyes flashing at Connor’s orders. Rick was left there, a rag doll fallen bonelessly to the floor. If he was still breathing, as Connor’s words implied, I couldn’t see it, and it didn’t seem likely to continue for long. Bobby turned me toward his chest, as if to shelter me now from what was going on.

  “Take him away,” Melli ordered someone, but all I could see was Bobby’s blue sweater.

  “Everyone else, back to work,” she ordered.

  As if nothing momentous had taken place, the vamp cabal retreated, turning their backs on Rick and his fate and leaving the human minions—Chickzilla, Sparky, and Hawkman—to dispose of his remains. The rest of us stood in stunned silence.

  No one had intervened. No one. Not even me.

  I’d become one of the monsters.

  I wanted to hit something, and Bobby was my closest target. I pummeled at his sides, at his chest, but he only gripped me tighter. Then, through a haze of anger, I realized that he was pulling me somewhere out into the hallway, and the fight just went out of me. I pushed him away, blinking through the red haze at the stain I’d left on his nice sweater. I’d wept blood. Well, if that didn’t say it all.

  Bobby’d only let me push him so far—to the end of his reach. His hands still gripped my shoulders.

  “Gina,” he said gently, “there was nothing we could do. We have to pick our battles.”

  Even as softly as he’d spoken, I knew how sound bounced around in this place and nodded toward a door farther down the corridor, the one that led to my short-term prison. He slid his hands down my arms until his left hand gripped my right and led me in the direction I’d indicated. Both the outer and inner doors to my cell area were mercifully unlocked, now that no one was occupying them.

  I yanked my hand out of his, my eyes blazing. “So, picking our battles means we let people die?”

  “He’s not dead … yet,” Bobby hedged. “And I didn’t see you—”

  “Don’t! Just don’t, okay?” I suddenly wasn’t feeling so hot, as if the bloodlust had blazed through me like a wildfire, leaving nothing but its hunger behind. “First there’s your crazy dam, then the psychic, the council, Connor’s coupe … what’s next?”

  I collapsed into the single guard chair and put my head in my scaly hands. “Plus, if I don’t get some moisturizer and a nail file in the next twenty-four hours, I think I’m going to scream.”

  Bobby looked … amused … and that was just so wrong I didn’t have words.

  “Well, at least you’ve got your priorities. And you’re going too fast for me. What’s all this about a psychic and a car?”

  I groaned. “I don’t mean a coupe, do I? Like a ‘coo’ or whatever, when someone wants to take over. Far as I can tell, your sugar momma is playing a power game with some kind of vampire council. This creepy psychic guy I saw says that you’re ‘the key’ and I’m, like, ‘chaos.’ And then, Connor’s trying to blackmail me … ”

  Bobby’s head looked about ready to spin. “You lost me at ‘coo.’ Wanna start at the beginning?”

  I huffed, but I did the best I could, starting with sneaking out of the dorm.

  He blew out a breath. “You have been busy.”

  “What has the dragon lady had you doing? Not just cooling your heels, I’ll bet.”

  “I’m learning to use my powers. And, Gina, it’s totally cool. They’re not saying so, ’cause I don’t think they want me to know their limitations, but I don’t think what I do is totally normal.”

  He looked like the geek-boy who’d just been given the keys to the comic shop.

  “I think you’re right. So, what can you do?”

  His incredible blue eyes lit with excitement. “I can move stuff around, move people around—or convince them to move, anyway, like some Jedi mind trick. And not just one at a time. ” He squatted so his eyes were level with mine and reached out to touch my face. “I’m still learning, but I can do it well enough to protect us and get us out … soon … because whatever’s going on around here sounds like trouble.”

  “Not without Marcy,” I said.

  “And everybody else,” he agreed. “Which is why we can’t be all impulsive. If we want to free everyone and stop whatever Mellisande’s cooking up, it’s going to take time. And a plan.”

  That made sense, but I still didn’t like it. Patience just seemed like such a waste of time. There were more of us than there were of smelly Melli and her cabal, and maybe after what they’d seen with Rick they’d be fired up to escape … or maybe they’d be scared spitless and someone would tattle to the dragon lady, ruining our chances. No, Bobby was right, darn it. I had to learn the P word.

  “Fine,” I said, maybe not as graciously as I could have. “What have you learned so far? I get that we’re comatose with the dawn, but do we really burn up in sunlight? What about stakes and crosses and holy water and … ”

  “Whoa, slow down.” He got that totally hot glint in his eyes, like I’d done something sexy just spouting off at the mouth. “I had no idea you were into vamp lore.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please. I wouldn’t know a thing if Hollywood didn’t make the vampires so smokin’.”

  “You think vampires are smokin’?” he asked.

  “Well, one in particular.”

  His eyes were totally smoldering now and he licked his lips, but he didn’t let that divert him. “Well, crosses, holy water, stars of David and all that won’t do anything unless they’re blessed or have real faith behind them.
They don’t work if they’re just decoration. I’m trying not to think about what that means for our souls. Larry said even going past an Italian place now makes him choke, so I’m guessing garlic works. But I think the whole thing about vampires not being able to cross running water is just to lull prey—”

  “Bobby,” I cut in.

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  Somewhere during his speech I’d decided I was way more interested in him than what he was saying. He took a step closer and I slid my hands beneath his sweater, wanting to feel his skin, the tautness of his muscles. I stroked my nails down his back and he gasped and bent his head down to kiss me.

  All thoughts of mortality and escape fled my brain

  13

  I was still waiting my turn in line for one of the bathrooms, rubbing sleep out of my eyes—the sandman still came, even if the dreams didn’t—when the dormitory doors opened. Dread rose up in me. It totally reinforced the fact that something had to be done. I was not going to live my life in fear of an opening door.

  Sparky and Chickzilla stood there, scanning the crowd.

  “Marcy Soleas,” Chick said, raising her voice so that it bounced ominously around the room.

  Marcy, who was right in front of me in line doing her standing stomach exercises while she waited (even though I was pretty sure blood was a low-carb diet and that the transformation would let her keep her abs of steel), whirled around at the sound of her name, took in Melli’s minions and got a death grip on my arm.

  All eyes turned toward Marcy. Chickzilla and Sparky followed their lead.

  “Come with us,” Chick continued. She tried to make her voice neutral, maybe even upbeat, but she failed.

  Marcy’s nails were like talons digging into my arm. “I knew it. I suck at the war games. I’m, like, the worst of the worst. I’m next.”

  I didn’t want to believe it, but being singled out by this gang hadn’t exactly been good for Rick … or me. So not comforting. Around us everyone watched with wide-eyed attention. Pam Raines and Vanessa Barrett even stopped their incessant whispering. Chaz and one of his wingmen looked like they might almost consider stepping up if there was undisputed proof that Marcy was in danger … or if there was something in it for them. It seemed that the attack on Rick had scratched everyone’s rose-colored glasses.