Right. I’m a teenager and I am breaking the fundamental laws of the universe by ruminating about the future. Chanting ‘stop caring about stuff more than a day from now’ over and over in my head, I return to my room to once again exploit my vampiric abilities for personal gain.
In this case, cramming six hours of studying into two.
Rawr. I am a fearsome creature of the night.
10
Ugh. Not Again
More rain. Awesome.
By the time I need to start figuring out if I’m flying or driving to school Wednesday night, it’s pouring outside. The storm isn’t as bad as the other day at least. However, considering the harrowing ride, I don’t want to drive in the rain again. People are idiots on the road already. Add water to the mix plus my constantly squinting at oncoming headlights? Yeah. No thanks. To be perfectly honest, my reaction to driving tonight isn’t ‘no thanks.’ It’s something my mother would gasp at me saying out loud, starting with an f and ending with ‘that.’
Upstairs, Dad’s asking Mom if she’s seen his Fallout Boy figurine. It should be on his computer desk, but it’s gone missing. The ’rents aren’t going to grill Sam about the imp taking it because neither of them know we have an imp living in the house. Some kids have nightmares about a monster living in their closet. My brother, Sam, has a monster living in his closet and thinks it’s the coolest thing.
My life. Seriously.
I pack a set of underwear, T-shirt, jeans, socks, and sneakers in a trash bag, add my backpack since it’s not waterproof, and change into my swimsuit. Actually… no. I remove the bikini and grab the wetsuit I bought a few weeks ago. Black is harder to see in the sky than neon green plus my pale hide. Oh, yeah. A towel goes into the bag as well. And my umbrella. It will be much less awkward changing in the parking garage than walking into school barefoot in a wetsuit. Maybe if I lived in Portland or a surfing town, no one would bat an eyelash at that.
Comp sci starts at six, so I’m out the door and in the air by 5:30 p.m., trash bag slung over my back like some kind of morbid reimagining of a gender-swapped Santa Claus. Other than ending up soaked, flying in the rain doesn’t suck as bad as expected. Honestly, the worst part of it would have been drenched clothes. There are no headlights—and no tractor trailers—up here. Though, the next time I do this, swimming goggles might not be a bad idea. Rain pelting me in the eyes is kind of annoying.
Before long, I swoop down out of the air, heading for the Harvard Garage across the street from school, slipping in via one of the giant openings right under the roof deck at the northwest corner, which provides the lowest chance of being seen. The worst part about this idea is going to be toweling off in a public parking garage after removing my wetsuit, but I can make people forget seeing me if need be. Compared to my first night as a vampire when I’d been stuck naked for twenty-four hours, this is nothing. I’d rather be caught streaking than cause a traffic accident.
Anyway, I find a nice secluded corner that’s probably dark to mortals, set my trash bag down and pull the towel out.
“Sarah,” says Glim. “I received your note.”
He scares the crap out of me so bad I can’t even scream… just go rigid. At least he decided to appear before I peeled off the wetsuit.
“Go ahead and change. I’m not looking and neither is anyone else.”
I peek back over my shoulder—at a curtain of blackness. Oh, nice. He’s giving me total privacy. Can’t rely on him doing that every time I fly in the rain but I’ll take it. “Thanks. One sec.”
As fast as I can make myself move, I remove the wetsuit, towel off, and scramble into my dry clothes. The wetsuit goes into the inside-out trash bag, water to water, dry side facing out. “Okay, I’m decent.”
The shadow wall drops, revealing Glim standing with his back to me. He does this melodramatic turn, then smiles. “Regarding your note… it seems you have somehow gained the interest of a group of vampires from Los Angeles. There isn’t much information rattling around in the shadows about the whys.”
“LA? Seriously?” I blink. “Why the heck would vampires from California be after me?”
“That, I have not been able to determine.”
“Darn. Thanks for trying. Can you maybe warn me if I need to be on guard?”
“Of course.” He bows like a butler.
“Stop that.” I hug him. “Hey, question?”
“Hmm?” He leans back, one eyebrow up.
I explain the man from the movie theater. “Why would a guy who seems to be human be unreadable?”
“The three most likely explanations for that would be that he is either a thrall, in possession of some mystical item that shields his mind, or perhaps he may have trained himself to a point where his mind has become difficult to penetrate.”
“Wow, people can do that?”
“It’s unlikely to see that in a man who appears to be a gangbanger. Typically, only ascetics and monks possess that degree of mastery over their thoughts.” He gazes off into space, his yellow eyes glinting with a flicker of brighter light. “My guess is the man serves one of the LA vampires as a thrall.”
I fold my arms, scowling. “That’s basically a human who drank vampire blood and got mind controlled, right?”
“Not necessarily controlled, though such things are possible. In much the same way that vampires can share temporary gifts back and forth, it passes on some aspects of vampirism to a living mortal. If they regularly have blood, they cease aging, become tougher, a little stronger. Some develop night vision even.”
“If the blood stops, do they rapidly age into a pile of dust if it’s been long enough?” I snicker.
“No, they’d resume where they left off. However, the longer a human is enthralled, the more addicted they become to it. A person kept in thralldom beyond their natural lifespan would so crave the rush of vampiric blood that to deny it of them would drive them irredeemably insane. They’d devolve mentally into a nearly feral monster. Take the worst things you’ve ever heard about heroin addicts fiending for a fix and magnify it to supernatural degrees.”
“Ouch. And whatever power the thrall has, the vampire loses?”
“Maintaining thralls does draw on the master’s overall power, yes. That is why they are relatively rare or used only for short periods of time. The master can, however, see and hear everything the thrall is aware of.”
I face-palm. “Another body thief spy then. Ugh.”
“Another?”
“Sophia and the mystics?”
“Right. Not exactly the same but perhaps functionally similar. Unless the thrall belongs to an elder, they wouldn’t pose a threat to you. Even if they did belong to an ancient one, the risk is relatively minimal. Thralls do not regenerate any faster than a normal person.”
“Great. Okay, so this guy is merely spying on me for unknown reasons.”
“That would seem to be the case.” He nods.
“I’ve never been to LA.”
“Innocents are rare. It could be that someone has become curious.” He grasps my arm. “You will be late for class.”
Before I can even say anything, the parking garage around us blurs into a swimming mass of indigo and black, shadows upon shadows crawling like serpents across a void. Three seconds later, the bizarre scenery evaporates to the ladies’ bathroom inside the building where my class is.
“Here you are. I hope you have a pleasant night.” He flashes a toothy smile. “I really ought not to be in here.”
With that, he poofs into a burst of black smoke.
So a vampire in LA might want to study me. Grr. I’m supposed to be staying under the radar! How the hell did someone that far away find out about me? Probably the same way Glim finds out about things. I smirk at myself in the mirror and spend a minute fussing at my damp hair before hurrying out of the bathroom to class, making it in the door with only two minutes to spare before the official start time. Professor Garcia is both on point and a decent speaker, so her class
is a pleasure. If the rest of the teachers in the programming curriculum are this engaging, maybe I’ll be able to handle this major.
A few students around me are discussing their nervousness about going into a career field that’s so easily offshored. If programmers can work from home, they can work from Europe or Asia. That idea would probably worry me if I planned to rely on a legit job to survive. While I may have qualms about using my powers of mental influence in ways that feel like ‘stealing,’ no such guilt bothers me in any way in regard to keeping the house. I will mind control the crap out of anyone needed to retain ownership of the place I grew up once my parents are gone.
One of the guys says he thinks companies will always be interested in local programmers because there isn’t a language barrier and it’s a lot easier to make people showing up at an office work twelve hour days on weekends when a release date is looming.
Their worry session ends when Professor Garcia starts talking.
A bit of old me comes out from under all the supernatural stuff, and I listen intently to a class I’m really into.
Wednesdays are one of my two-class days.
After comp sci, I have calculus. I’ve never really been best buddies with math, though it would be inaccurate to say I disliked it. To me, it’s sorta like green beans: on the plate and I gotta eat it. Sierra always gave the ’rents a hard time with some green vegetables, chiefly broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Mom doesn’t serve the latter so often anymore. Sierra deliberately got herself grounded to make a point. At nine, when Mom told her to eat the sprouts, she said ‘F that.’ And no, she didn’t say ‘eff.’ She dropped a big ol’ legit F-bomb straight on the table. As upset as Mom got with her for it, it’s debatable if Sierra would’ve opted for another two-week grounding, but it did make a point. Sprouts have become rare.
Sophia always ate whatever the parents put in front of her. Some things, she took a lot longer to finish than others, but she choked it down, too non-confrontational to put up any resistance. And Sam? I think his taste buds are dead. As long as I’ve known him, he’s never even flinched at anything on his plate. Of course he has favorites like cake, chicken nuggets, French fries… and oddly, fried fish sticks. But even if the parents served liver and onions, he’d probably inhale it. Fortunately, they haven’t tried that. Sierra would absolutely drop another F-bomb and go to bed hungry. Dad might, too. Besides, the liver is like the body’s filter. Whoever got the bright idea to eat the part that absorbs all the toxic crap?
So anyway, back to math. Calculus is kind of like Brussels sprouts. I wouldn’t call it terribly fun, but it’s there and I gotta do it. Programming is going to be a bunch of math. At least I’m ambivalent about it instead of loathing. Sierra likes math. Sophia not so much. Sam is pretty blasé about everything in school. He doesn’t seem particularly fond of anything nor does he complain about any subject.
I do kind of dread calculus if I’m honest, but it has nothing to do with math. It’s the teacher. Dr. Mercer is highly knowledgeable, but holy crap, the woman speaks in slow motion. Guaranteed this class goes fifteen to thirty minutes late every single time. I have a one-hour break between classes. Only like three people from my comp sci class also have calc today, and I haven’t bothered to make friends with them since they’re all adults.
So, I hang out alone in the cafeteria, basically killing time. Tonight, I decide to feed two quarters to one of the old arcade machines in the alcove at the back. Ikari Warriors. The graphics are laughably crappy, but this game is like as old as Dad. It takes me a moment to get the hang of using the rotating joysticks, but with reflexes like mine, video games, in general, are kinda easy.
“Hey,” says a guy on my left.
I give him a quick glance, then focus back on the game. He’s probably around twenty with short black hair. Fairly handsome in a slightly nerdy Zac Efron sort of way, though not quite that cute. And he’s giving off douchebag vibes.
“Hi.”
“You’re pretty good at that. Play a lot of games?”
I shrug and try out my best ‘ancient Chinese martial art master’ voice. “A lot to some, barely any to others.”
“Waiting on a class?”
“No, I just drove a half hour to stand here playing a thirty-year-old video game in an almost empty cafeteria.”
He laughs. “Nice. Yeah, I walked into that one didn’t I? I’m Brandon. How’d you feel about grabbing coffee sometime?”
“Thanks, but I’m already in a relationship.”
“It’s okay if you’re not interested. No need to make up a boyfriend. I hate that we live in a society where women are afraid to say no.”
Sigh. “I appreciate that, but my guess is you’re just trying to get me to say I don’t really have a boyfriend so you can resume trying to talk me into going out with you. Hate to break the news, but sometimes when a girl says they have a boyfriend, they actually do.”
“Okay. Chill out. No need to get all emotional.” He takes a step back.
Oh, yeah. Douche. I’m about to compel him to go dunk his head in a toilet bowl and jiggle the handle a few times, but a better idea hits me. This jackass is now a self-delivering meal. A quick mental poke stalls him in place while I keep playing. Alas—or fortunately as the case may be—these old school games are kinda hard. Even with accelerated reflexes, not being familiar with what’s going to scroll down on the map gets me trapped and killed. Oh well. I would’ve had to stop at some point for class anyway.
I lure Brandon to the rear of the arcade section and tuck in between two machines in the corner to feed. No idea what about him made my brain translate the flavor of his blood to cheese steak, but it’s far from the worst thing that could’ve happened. He does save me the trouble of going hunting after class. That’s always annoying in the rain anyway. Besides, now I can go straight home to my room and get tonight’s assignments done early.
When I finish feeding, I delete myself from his memory and… crap. He’s in my calculus class. All right, rewind. I replace his attempt to ask me out with the idea that I am already in a relationship and not interested. If I were Sierra, I’d compel the guy to still flush his head in the toilet a few times, but I’m not that vicious.
I leave him standing there amid a mental fog and head to the ladies’ room for a quick mirror check to make sure there’s no blood on my face before going to the classroom. Brandon shows up about six minutes after I take my seat and doesn’t even look at me. Good. And wow. Two guys in under a week hit on me and think I’m lying about having a boyfriend already. Wait. No, that’s not unusual.
That’s being a woman going anywhere alone.
Grr.
Dr. Mercer gets up from her desk at 8:00 p.m. on the dot and begins the lecture. Is it wrong for me to be irritated at her for being so precise at the start of class but ignoring its official end time? Given how slow she talks, it would basically be shortchanging myself if I ducked out at nine. My weird mood and desire to go home get the better of me. As soon as Dr. Mercer looks in my general direction, I stab her in the brain with a minor compulsion to speak at the pace of a normal person.
The whole class emits a collective murmur of surprise when she accelerates. It’s kind of like playing a song at 130 percent speed, only her voice doesn’t go up in pitch. Unfortunately, by the time this class rolls around again, the minor compulsion will have worn off. But, at least tonight I can enjoy not being stuck here late.
Class does, in fact, get out on time.
Eerily precise as a matter of fact. At 8:59, she reaches the end of her lesson plan for the day. Everyone exchanges glances of awe and wonder at the miracle we just witnessed, but no one says a word about it. I pretend to be astonished as well, and waste no time ducking out the door. Alas, Glim isn’t here to shadow-slip me back to the parking garage—or home. Second alas: it’s still raining.
Huddled under my umbrella, I scurry south down the street to the parking garage, planning to change back into the wetsuit for the flight home. M
y ears tell me someone’s walking behind me, which isn’t necessarily an unusual thing after class. Those who drove in need their cars. I reach the parking deck and the same set of footsteps continues to tail me. When the guy follows me to the stairs and out onto the second story, it becomes pretty obvious he’s not merely going in the same direction.
My initial thought is Brandon’s come back to slap me around for saying no to him, but I rearranged his memory. No, it’s gotta be that strange guy from the movie theater. Okay. Enough of this.
I stop and spin.
The guy tailing me isn’t the same one from the movie theater, though he does share a few similarities. Hispanic, young twenties, short hair, and tattoos. Almost the same black leather jacket and jeans. Wow, do they 3D print these guys?
“What the heck do you want?” I ask, not quite yelling but still a bit louder than normal.
He keeps walking straight at me with this look like he’s already made up his mind we’re getting into a fight. And… shit. This one’s a vampire. Grr. At least the expensive wetsuit is still in the trash bag and won’t get shredded. I toss the bag and my backpack off to the side a second before he’s in my face. He doesn’t do anything worse than loom at me—yet.
“Where is he?”
“Gee, guy. Can you vague that up a little more?”
His right hand flies up toward my throat blurry fast, too quick for me to fully dodge. My attempt to jump away redirects his grab from my neck to a handful of my shirt collar. He shoves me against the nearest concrete column. I snarl and push at him, but he’s significantly stronger than me. We’re not quite as mismatched as normal me trying to fend off a guy this size, but I still can’t budge him.
Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire (Vampire Innocent Book 7) Page 13