Bad Blood

by Mari Mancusi

  I feel the tears well up in my eyes. I so have to get out of here—before I lose it in front of everyone. Especially stupid Jane. The last thing I need is for that tacky vampire wannabe bitch to see me cry.

  “I’ve got to go,” I mutter, pushing past Magnus and walking as fast as possible without breaking into a run.

  “Sunny, wait!” Magnus calls after me. “Come back.”

  I almost turn around. Almost. But then Jane’s voice cuts through the crisp October night.

  “Mag-nus,” she whines. “I’ve flown all the way from England today and have killer jet leg. Can you take me to my hotel room already?”

  Sure he can. In fact, he’s already got a great one reserved.

  4

  It’s nine o’clock on a Friday night and I’m supposed to be having the best night of my life, snuggled up with my perfect boyfriend under luxurious five hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and a feather duvet at a five-star hotel. Instead I’m squashed in my own not-so-luxurious, not-so-thread-counted, flannel-sheeted bed next to my sister, Rayne. Instead of the cries of ecstasy I’d imagined I’d utter tonight while in Magnus’s arms, I’m just plain crying. My face is blotchy, my eyes are red, and I’m wearing an oversized, black T-shirt, courtesy of Rayne, that claims Zombies Make Better Boyfriends—which, while may be true in theory, isn’t exactly all that comforting at the moment.

  Nor is my dear sister.

  “Sunny, you’re probably totally overreacting,” she tells me unnecessarily for what seems the thousandth time tonight.

  “I don’t care,” I reply, for the thousandth and first. “This was supposed to be the best night of my life. Now it’s turning out to be the worst.”

  “Only if you let it.”

  “Please don’t. You sound like Mom,” I grump. “What would you be doing if Jareth suddenly told you he was hooking up with some random trashy redheaded chick?”

  Rayne thinks about it for a moment, then smiles evilly. “I’d claw out his eyes. Slowly and painfully. I mean, he’d probably grow them back, you know, being an immortal vampire and all. We’re so good at regeneration. But I bet it’d really hurt at the time.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But Magnus didn’t say he was going to hook up, Sun,” she clarifies.

  “No, he’s going to do something much, much worse. He’s going to make her his blood mate. That’s like freaking marrying her under vampire rules. They’ll be bonded together forever—just like you and Jareth.” I stare down at my hands, feeling the tears well up in my eyes again. “They’ll be side by side, staying ridiculously beautiful forever, while I wither up and prepare to die.”

  “Please. Even as a white-haired granny, you’ll still be hotter than that white trash ho. Do you know she had acrylic fingernails with little pink bats painted on them?” Rayne snorts. “How tacky. And here she’s supposed to be some Rhodes scholar or some crap like that.”

  I look up at my sister. “Really? That’s weird, right? I mean, her whole outfit was weird. Not to mention how she talked.” The more I think about it, the stranger the whole encounter with Jane seems. At the time I’d been so pissed at Magnus that I hadn’t really given it much thought. But now that I’m running tonight’s events through my head again, I’m realizing that something just isn’t adding up. Why would this supposed political mastermind, hand-selected by the Blood Coven to become their Master’s blood mate, dress only half a step up from a Miami hooker? And why had she shown up now, just days before the big vampire consortium in Vegas?

  “Hmm,” Rayne says thoughtfully, “maybe she’s an evil plant, sent by a rebel vamp coven to infiltrate the organization and destroy it from within.”

  I stare at her. “Oh my God! Do you really think so?” I imagine Jane, seducing Magnus and then staking my poor helpless boyfriend in his sleep. Blaming it on a slayer (maybe even my sister!) and then taking control of the Blood Coven and manipulating it for her own evil purposes—which may or may not include taking over and/or destroying the world as we know it. “We should warn Magnus.”

  Rayne rolls her eyes. “Please.” She snorts. “I was totally kidding. I mean, conspiracy theory much, Sun? Trust me, bad taste in fashion does not an evil vampire make. You should have seen the vamp chicks from the English coven. Then again, they were a bit evil, I suppose, throwing us out in the cold and making us sleep in a barn, just because of that whole pesky vampire slayer thing ...”

  I glare at her. So much for sisterly support.

  “Fine. But I still think there’s something fishy about her,” I mutter.

  “I’ll admit, she does smell a bit fishy,” Rayne says brightly, still evidently determined to make light of my desperate woe. I throw a pillow at her and she dodges it.

  “Don’t you have some kind of secret slayer mission or something to go on tonight?” I grump, lying down on my side and turning so my back faces her. A hint, if there ever was, to get out of my bed and leave me alone. I’m done with her brand of cheering me up.

  “Nope. I’m here for you, Sun. All night, if necessary.”

  “Awesome. Lucky me.”

  Rayne tries to put her arm around me, but I shrug away. All I want to do now is curl up in my bed—alone—and fall into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep. Trying to forget that my boyfriend, the love of my life, is currently hanging out with another girl. Another girl who might very well be evil, no matter what anyone else says.

  I roll over and look at my sister, who’s already fallen fast asleep, her breathing easy and her face completely relaxed. I sigh. If only I were a vampire like her. Or a slayer, even. I could kick Jane’s ass from here to Oxford and demand she never set foot in Oakridge again as long as we both shall live.

  But no, there will be no ass-kicking. No demanding she leave my boyfriend alone. Because at the end of the day, I’m not Rayne. I’m just helpless, little old Sunny—a completely mortal girl, without any superpowers to help me prevent a potentially evil vampire from stealing my boyfriend away.

  This bites big-time.

  5

  When I wake up in the morning, Rayne is still sacked out on my bed, instead of her own cot, which Mom installed after David took over her bedroom. I like to think it’s because she doesn’t want me to feel all alone in my suffering, but I know for a fact she just doesn’t find the cot gives her enough lumbar support. Not that she needs any—seeing as she’s an immortal vampire and all. They tend to be immune to back problems. Or any health problems whatsoever, for that matter.

  I, on the other hand, feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I spent the night tossing and turning and getting very little actual sleep. Thank goodness it’s Saturday and I don’t have to go to school.

  I notice my cell is blinking and I flip it open to check my missed call list. Magnus. Like a dozen times. And just as many messages. I smile a little. At least now I know he wasn’t out with Jane, forgetting I even exist.

  I crawl out of bed, careful not to disturb Rayne, and tiptoe out of my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. Mom and David’s doors are still closed, so I pad downstairs and curl up on the couch to call him back.

  No answer. I glance outside and realize the sun’s already risen, meaning all good vampires (except for mutated ones like Jareth and my sister) have gone to bed. Great. Now I won’t be able to talk to him until nighttime. I decide to check his messages and listen to him grovel to pass the time away. At least he better be groveling.

  Sure enough, I shuttle through thirteen pleas of forgiveness from my boyfriend before the voicemail lady informs me I have no more messages. And, I’m pleased to note, he sounds appropriately worried, freaked out, and apologetic in every single one. As well he should after what he pulled last night. He also asks me to meet him tonight, after the sun sets, at Club Fang, the Goth dance club where I first laid eyes on him last May. The night he mistook me for Rayne and tried to make me his blood mate by biting me in the neck. If only I’d learned to live with the transformation and not gone on that crazy quest
to change back into a human. Then I’d be Magnus’s blood mate still. We could have lived happily ever after, without ever meeting anyone named Jane.

  Sigh. No use crying over spilled blood, I suppose. I dial Magnus and leave him a message, saying I’ll be there tonight at seven. I hang up and consider watching some television, but none of the shows on at six A.M. are worth watching. So I head over to the family computer in the den and switch it on. I’m not as computer savvy as my sister, but I do know how to Google with the best of them. Maybe I can dig up some dirt on Jane. To expose her as the fraud I know she is before she does something to harm the coven or, more important, my boyfriend.

  Due to popular demand, Club Fang recently opened up its back room on weekends, creating a makeshift café that serves blood in chilled wineglasses to vampire patrons who have worked up a sweat on the dance floor. They keep the music low here, allowing for decent (or indecent as the case may be) conversation—something impossible to have in the main dance hall where Goths whirl and twirl to bands like VNV Nation and do what I call that foot-stuck-in-the-mud dance that they all seem to know and love.

  Rayne insists on coming with me, getting completely Gothed up, cheerleader uniform long forgotten. I wonder what her fellow squad members would think to see her decked out in a lacy, black, Gothic Lolita dress she claims she imported directly from Japan. (I, however, saw the receipt and know she bought it off eBay from some Cosplayer in Reseda.) I’m actually thankful to have backup in case things go badly with Magnus tonight, so I agree and we both get into the ancient Volkswagen Bug we share and head down to the club.

  After parking, we pay our five-dollar cover to the burly bouncer at the door and head into the club. As usual, I feel completely underdressed in my simple jeans and sweater combo as I step through the archway and enter Hot Topic territory. It’s funny; at school I’m the one who always blends and Rayne is the freak. Here our roles are completely reversed. The other patrons think of me as a tourist, ready to gawk at their Gothic beauty, then go home and tell the frat daddies what a freak show it is. I get more than a few dirty looks as I cross the room, heading for the café. Rayne’s already long abandoned me for the dance floor—unlike me she loves to dance—and I’m sure I won’t see her again for quite some time. Which is fine. I’ve got business to discuss with the boy.

  I step into the café and scan the room. My heart skips a beat as I catch Magnus sitting at a corner table, across the room, tapping his long fingers against the glass surface anxiously. He’s dressed in a simple black sweater and slim black jeans and is just so beautiful I can’t help but melt a little, even though I am still technically, for the record, totally pissed off at him. After all, he’s still my boyfriend. Still the love of my life. Not to mention one of the hottest creatures to ever walk the planet.

  He catches my eye and flashes me a sheepish smile. I cross the room and he rises to his feet to greet me, pulling me into an embrace so strong it’s as if he’s holding on to me for dear life. The thought warms me even more. He loves me. I know he does. And at the end of the day, that’s more important than vampire politics and traditions, right?

  We hug for a few moments, then sit down at the table. A tall, pale vampire waitress comes over and I order a black coffee, the only thing in this place not containing some sort of blood infusion. (At least I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.) As she leaves to retrieve my order, Magnus leans over the table and takes my hand in his.

  “Sunny, my baby,” he murmurs, pulling my hand to his lips and kissing it softly. His English accent caresses my name in a way that gives me shivers. As much as I like to play tough, I’ve got it bad for this vampire and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Still, we have a lot to talk about tonight and I refuse to get swept up in romance until we do.

  “Magnus, why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, feeling my throat clog up with the tears I swore I wouldn’t cry. So unfair that I inherited all the sensitive genes in the family and Rayne got all the kick-ass ones. “I had a right to know.”

  My boyfriend lets out a long sigh. “I know,” he says. “And I wanted to tell you, too. Believe me, the whole thing’s been weighing on my mind for weeks. But the council insisted on absolute secrecy until Jane had passed all her certification and DNA tests; they didn’t want word of her selection to get out and have her candidacy compromised by a rival coven. I kept hoping she’d fail—that she’d somehow prove unworthy of the position and subsequently be rejected. Then I would never have had to tell you. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you for no reason.” He squeezes my hand. “I had no idea that she’d just show up out of the blue like she did yesterday. It was completely against protocol.”

  “Well, she did. Protocol or not.” I sulk, knowing deep in my heart I should be trying to be more understanding about the whole situation, but not finding the energy to do so. “And I was totally blindsided since I didn’t even have any idea you were in line for a new blood mate to begin with. In fact, from what Rayne’s said, I thought a vampire only got one chance at a blood mate in a lifetime and your chance was with me.”

  “No. That’s just what they tell the noobs,” Magnus says gently. “In order to get them to take the relationship seriously. In reality, if a partnership is broken, a vampire can take on a new mate at any time. It just doesn’t normally happen.”

  “Vampires don’t normally take on new blood mates?”

  “The partnership isn’t normally broken.”

  Oh. So once again, it all comes down to this being my fault. Great. Just great. The waitress sets my black coffee down in front of me, but I no longer feel much like drinking it.

  “Sunny, you had to know that this would someday become a reality,” Magnus says, not helping matters by his logic. “I’m the Master of the Blood Coven, one of the largest vampire conglomerates in the nation. That’s a huge responsibility for one person to uphold and I could really use a partner to rule by my side. In fact, in a way it’ll be better for us. I know you hate how I’m always stuck in meetings all night. Just think, this way Jane can shoulder some of the load and I’ll have more time to spend with you.”

  Please. As if Jane will go for that. My mind flashes back to her possessive little fingers clinging tightly to my boyfriend. He may only want her as a second in command, but she obviously has other plans.

  “What about Lucifent?” I ask, remembering the coven’s previous Master. The one who Rayne’s predecessor, Bertha the Vampire Slayer, had dusted back on my second evening as a vampire. “He didn’t have a blood mate.”

  “Actually he did at one time,” Magnus corrects. “A young vampire named Tabitha. She came as a referral from the High Stakes Coven out in Vegas. A beautiful girl with long, white-blond hair and big blue eyes. Everyone was shocked when she applied to be Lucifent’s blood mate. She could have had any vampire in the world.”

  “Yeah, Lucifent wasn’t exactly Casanova incarnate.” In fact, he looked like a young Macaulay Culkin—having been turned into a vampire when still a child. “It does seem weird that she’d pick him out of all the really hot vampires out there.”

  “Well, it didn’t take long for us to figure out why she did,” Magnus says, shaking his head. “In addition to her beauty, she had ambition. Too much ambition. And once she was permanently installed as blood mate, she started working to supersede her sire’s powers and take control of the coven. She abused my master, treating him like the child he only appeared to be and overpowering him physically when he protested her actions.”

  “So what happened?”

  “A fire broke out one night in her chambers. She burned to death. Many believe that Lucifent set the fire himself. Killed his very own blood mate. Which, of course,” he adds, “is completely unacceptable under our laws.”

  Something dawns on me. “Is that why Slayer Inc. had him killed?” I had always wondered that—since Rayne swears the company only goes after the baddie vamps who don’t play by the rules.

  Magnus shrugs. “Perhaps. Thoug
h I imagine they’d been looking for an excuse for quite some time. As you know, child vampires are considered mutants—an abomination in their eyes.”

  It was true. Once upon a time Slayer Inc. killed Jareth’s little sister simply because she was living as a mini-vamp. It took hundreds of years and Rayne’s declaration of love for the guy to get over that one, let me tell you.

  “Look, Sunny, let’s try to focus here,” Magnus says. “Jane will never take your place in my heart. She will never be more than a business partner to me and you are so much more than that. I love you and need you and cherish our relationship more than you can ever know. After all, I waited a thousand years to find you; do you think I would give you up so easily?”

  He looks at me with pleading eyes and I can feel my icy heart melting as fast as Jack Frost in Miami.

  “That said, I have no choice but to go forward with this,” he continues. “It’s my job and the lives of a lot of vampires hinge on how well I do my job. Sometimes, though I don’t like it, my duty as Master must come first.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” I manage to choke out. After all, I don’t want him to think I’m some idiot selfish high school girl here. “I do. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less, okay?”

  Magnus rises from his seat and walks around the table to pull me into his arms. I bury my face in his shoulder as the sobs overtake me. I know I have to be mature here and accept what’s going on but, at the same time, I can’t shake the fact that things are going to be different from here on out. He’ll have a blood mate. A partner in crime to share things with. Things that, as a mortal, I’m not allowed to know. Sure, they might be strangers now, but soon they’ll grow to have secrets and inside jokes and stories they share with one another and I’ll just be that aging human, on the outside, looking in.