by Mari Mancusi
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Praise for the Blood Coven Vampire Novels
“Dark, delicious, and full of surprises, the Blood Coven series is like vampire candy. Readers will devour every bite!”
—Heather Brewer, New York Times bestselling author
Bad Blood
“A vampire book so worth reading, with dark humor, distinctive voice, and a protagonist clever enough to get herself out of trouble ... A great ride.”
—Ellen Hopkins, New York Times bestselling author
Girls That Growl
“An amusing teenage vampire tale starring a fascinating high school student ... Young adults will enjoy growling alongside of this vampire slayer who has no time left for homework.”
—Midwest Book Review
“A fast-paced and entertaining read.” —LoveVampires
“A refreshing new vampire story, Girls That Growl is different from all of those other vampire stories ... a very original plot.” —Flamingnet
Stake That
“A fast-paced story line ... both humorous and hip ... A top read!” —LoveVampires
“Rayne is a fascinating protagonist ... readers will want to stake out Mari Mancusi’s fun homage to Buffy.”
—The Best Reviews
Boys That Bite
“A wonderfully original blend of vampire/love/adventure drama which teens will find refreshingly different.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Liberal doses of humor keep things interesting ... and the surprise ending will leave readers bloodthirsty for the next installment of the twins’ misadventures with the undead. A ghoulishly fun read.” —School Library Journal
“A tongue-in-cheek young teen tale starring two distinct, likable twins, the vampire between them, and a coven of terrific support characters who bring humor and suspense to the mix ... Filled with humor and action ... insightfully fun.”
—The Best Reviews
Berkley titles by Mari Mancusi
NIGHT SCHOOL
BAD BLOOD
GIRLS THAT GROWL
STAKE THAT
BOYS THAT BITE
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2011 by Marianne Mancusi Beach.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
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BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / January 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
eISBN : 978-1-101-47834-9
[1. Fairies—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Twins—Fiction. 4. Sisters—Fiction.
5. Boarding schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction. 7. War—Fiction. 8. Switzerland—
Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M312178Ni 2011
[Fic]—dc22 2010029806
http://us.penguingroup.com
To my Blood Coven Vampires in Training
Hugs, kisses, and vampire blood!
www.bloodcovenvampires.com
My Story Thus Far ...
A rgh! I can’t even say that without feeling sick to my stomach! I can’t be a fairy princess—I’m the antithesis of a fairy princess. Fairy princesses—in their pink, gossamer gowns and filmy, ethereal (and probably pink) wings—should fear me as a deadly creature of the night. A vampire. Not to mention a vampire slayer. (Long story, don’t ask.) My clothes are black, my hair is black, hell, my soul might even be black at this point.
Not pink, for God’s sake. Never pink!
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. For those of you just joining us, it’s been a long, strange trip so far. Starting with the day, last spring, when I was still just your typical high school Goth girl with a thing for vampires. Team Edward and all that, LOLz. Except I took it one step further—I met up with a real vampire coven and signed up to become one of them. (It’s really easier than you might expect, as long as you don’t mind all the homework.) The certification takes three months of classroom time and then they do a bunch of background checks—sampling your DNA and running your blood. It’s all very high-tech and sophisticated these days. After all, no one wants to give a diseased mass-murderer, who can’t spell, e-t-e-r-n-a-l l-i-f-e, right?
Needless to say, I was approved. But on the night of my selected undead birthday—the dumb-ass vamp, Magnus, who was chosen to become my immortal beloved accidentally bit my identical twin sister, Sunny, instead! (Yes, yes, we’re Sunshine and Rayne. Hippie parents—or so we’d always thought.) Of course my oh-so-innocent, field-hockey playing, drama-loving, (up until this point) normal-as-can-be twin sister had no idea vampires even existed. And let’s just say she was so not pleased about being told she’d be turning into one of them by the end of the week. So she and my intended had to go on this big adventure to England to find the Holy Grail and reverse the transformation all before prom. During the process, go figure, they fell in love. (Which was fine by me. Magnus is a bit of a tool and so not the type I want to spend eternity with. I need someone way more dark and brooding.)
; Six months later, they’re still together—though recently things have become a little dicey after Magnus, who’s now master of the Blood Coven, almost found himself a new blood mate to help him rule. Fortunately for Sunny, that didn’t work out so well for him in the end. And now he swears the two of them will be together forever and no other vampire or mortal will come between them. (I’ll believe that when I see it.)
But anyway, back to me. At this point, I’m still human, still blood-mate-less and if that weren’t enough, one day our drama teacher calls me in to tell me that I’m the next vampire slayer. (Yes, just like on that Buffy show.) Can you believe it? The girl voted most likely to go vamp—finds out she’s destined to kill them for a living? And I couldn’t even say no—seeing as they oh-so-sweetly informed me that I was injected with some kind of nano-virus when I was born that they can activate at any second if I decide to go AWOL.
Luckily, the gig involves slaying baddie vamps only. And certainly not anyone from the upstanding Blood Coven itself. Which is a total relief, considering staking your twin sister’s BF in cold blood is a good way to get you blacklisted from any and all future family reunions.
In any case, during my first mission as slayer, I hooked up with Jareth, the Blood Coven General and Magnus’s right-hand vamp. At first he was kind of a pain in the neck, if you excuse the pun, but in the end, I discovered he was simply misunderstood. Kind of like me. He saved my life, too; the evil vampire I was commissioned to slay managed to inject me with a deadly blood virus (yes, everyone and their mother is out to poison me these days) and I was fading fast. Until Jareth bit me, that is. The good news? I’m finally the vampire I always wanted to be. The bad news? Because of the blood virus, I’m powerless as a little lamb. Sigh. At least I got one benefit the other vamps don’t have—I can go out in the sun. Which totally helps me when I’m on slayer missions like saving our town from werewolf cheerleaders ...
But forget about them. We’ve got bigger problems now. Like our estranged parents telling us they’re actually not ex-hippies who escaped from a commune to live a more yuppified life, but magical fairies who escaped from a mystical Irish island, to live a more ... mortal one. And now, it seems, the other fairies back home have tracked Sunny and me down. And want us to return to them.
We never saw it coming.
1
It’s Friday night, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Sunny and I are feeling pretty darn awesome. After all, together we just saved the Blood Coven (yet again) and have been proclaimed heroes of the free vampire world. In other words, life is good.
Okay, fine, technically Sunny did most of the actual saving of the coven. I was, um, well, let’s just say I have been a bit preoccupied. (I mean, Vegas, baby! Those penny slots don’t just go and play themselves, you know!) But hey, I swung by at the pinnacle moment and saved the day, so that has to count for something, right?
In any case, evil’s been vanquished, Magnus and Sunny are back together, and hell has frozen over (aka my mother and father are in the same room together, actually speaking like civilized adults.) We’ve returned to stepmom Heather and Dad’s luxury condo after watching this Dracula revue Sunny is starring in. (She did a good job, I have to admit, though the play’s dialogue was more than a little cringe-worthy.)
So here we are, hanging out in the contemporary-styled living room, sipping mugs of steaming green tea, assuming soon we’ll go to bed and wake up in the morning and head home to Massachusetts, Vegas adventure over for good.
We couldn’t be more wrong.
“So guys,” Mom says, settling down in a small, white leather chair. It must kill her vegetarian butt to sit on a dead, skinned animal like that, but she’s too polite to call Heather out on her barbarian ways. “You’re probably surprised to see me here in Vegas.”
“Uh, yeah,” I say. I mean, understatement much? “What’s the deal? Did you miss us too much? I mean, really, Mom, we’ve only been gone a couple of days. But I know how you can be about your daughters.” I pause then add, “Unlike some relatives I know,” while shooting Dad a glare. He squirms in his seat, obviously uncomfortable, which is fine by me. Any guy who’s perfectly willing to abandon his daughters for years on end should, by right, feel a little prickly about it.
Mom shakes her head, as if she wants to defend him but knows as well as I do the guy isn’t exactly up for Dad of the Year any time soon. “I wish that were it, Rayne.”
Her pale face suddenly has me worried. Right before we left for Vegas, my Slayer Inc. guardian, aka David, Mom’s boyfriend, told me that his company had word of a new threat sweeping into town. A threat that might be against our mother.
There’s more to your mom than you know, David had told me.
I shiver.
“Mom, what are you trying to say?” Sunny asks, before I can find my voice. “What’s going on here? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
I catch Mom and Dad exchanging glances. He nods at her, urging her to continue. “Look, let’s just say things aren’t exactly ... safe ... for us in Massachusetts anymore,” she says, seeming to choose each word with care. “That’s partially why I was so willing to have you two come out here this week. I figured it’d keep you out of harm’s way until I figured out our best move.”
“Mom, you’re scaring us,” Sunny says, her face white as a ghost. “What’s not safe?”
Mom swallows hard. “You have to believe me—the last thing I ever wanted was to involve you two in any of this. In fact, that’s why your dad and I moved to Massachusetts to begin with. I didn’t want you to grow up in the world we did. I wanted us to be a happy, normal, everyday family. And they left us alone for so long, I’d really begun to think that we’d actually escaped them for good.” She bites her lower lip nervously. “But now, war has broken out between two families and they’re demanding we return to aid them in their fight. And if we don’t, they have promised to make things very difficult for us.”
I raise an eyebrow. Is she going to tell us we’re like part of the mafia, or something? Do they even have Scottish mafia?
“I don’t understand,” Sunny cries in that high-pitched Minnie Mouse voice she gets when she’s freaking out. “Some family feud? Why do they need us for that?”
“Dear, you’re speaking to them in riddles,” Dad chides our mother gently. “It’s best if you just tell them the whole story, no matter how hard it will be to believe at first.” He turns to us. “Look, guys, we’ve always told you that you come from Irish and Scottish ancestors, right? Well, there’s a little more to it than that. Our families are actually descended from a people living on a small island off the coast of Ireland, known as Tír na nÓg.” He pauses, then adds, “Some know us as the Sidhe.”
I stare at him, horrified. Sidhe? Does he mean like ... ?
“What the hell is a Sidhe?” Sunny demands.
But I know what Dad’s going to say before the words leave his mouth. “The term you might be more familiar with,” he tells Sunny gently, “is fairy.”
WTF?
“So let me get this straight,” I interject, my mind whirling to make sense of it all. “You’re trying to tell me that we’re descended from fairies? Actual fairies?”
“We’re not just descended,” Mom clarifies. “We’re full-blooded fairies. And now the royal court is demanding we return to fairyland immediately.”
“Or else,” Dad adds, “they have promised to kill us all.”
The room is silent. You could hear a pin drop. Mom wrings her hands together worriedly. Dad bites his lower lip. Sunny looks as if she’s going to pass out. Poor girl—she just went through a life-or-death supernatural situation and now we’re back there all over again.
I shake my head in disbelief. Fairies. Actual fairies. It’s hard to wrap my head around. I mean, sure, I always figured since vampires and werewolves are real there’s got to be other things out there going bump in the night, but I never thought they’d turn out to be close relatives.
“Look,” Dad says, breaking
the silence. “You don’t have to worry. It’s not going to come to that. We’ll figure out a diplomatic solution to all of this. You’ll see.”
“And it won’t involve us moving back to fairyland,” Mom adds, taking a sip of her now-cold tea. “I can promise you that. No daughters of mine are going to grow up to be fairy princesses, that’s for sure.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Princesses?”
“Oh.” She blushes. “I guess I didn’t mention that part. Before I ran away, I was technically a fairy princess. Heir to the Light Court throne. Your dad was my bodyguard. We fell in love, but my parents disapproved. They wanted me to marry Apple Blossom, general of the royal fairy army.”
“Apple Blossom?” I snort. “He sounds, um, real masculine.”
Mom shrugs. “Fairy names are all like that. I mean, your dad’s real name is—”
“ANYWAY!” Dad interjects, effectively cutting her off. “I wasn’t about to let your mother go off with that slimy Rotten Apple. So we eloped and left fairyland behind forever. We had our wings surgically removed and your mother soon became pregnant with the two of you. We thought we’d live happily ever after.”
“Except you left,” I remind him pointedly. “Before, you know, the ever after part.”
Dad hangs his head. “Yes,” he says. “As it turns out, fairytale romances aren’t always able to survive the harshness of the real world.”
I open my mouth to retort, but Mom effectively cuts me off. “You have to understand,” she continues, “we’d never been outside fairyland before. And we definitely weren’t prepared for what we found there. With no money, no skills, no education—heck, we didn’t even have social security numbers—we soon found ourselves in dire straits. Like any other illegal immigrant, we struggled to find work and put food on the table for you two. It was a tough time and our relationship suffered because of it.”