ReVamped

by Lucienne Diver

  As if my heart could still clench, my whole chest went tight and I couldn’t seem to draw enough breath for my next words.

  “I’ve got some names for you to check out,” I said, hoping to prove myself too useful to stake. “Belladonna Rigby, Hailee Johnson, and any other girl who’s been attacked recently. Some girl is working with the vamps and seemed pretty upset she’d been victimized herself. I didn’t get a good look.” Or any at all.

  “That would have helped,” she said tightly.

  “Hey, but good work on the rest of it,” I said for her.

  “Yeah, that,” she agreed dryly. “You need to come in and look at our vamp database. See if you can ID the ones you’ve seen.”

  My brows drew together despite my best efforts, but then again, I no longer had to worry about wrinkles. “Huh? How’d you get vampire mug shots? We don’t show on film.”

  “Same way the council put your picture out on their KOC order—sketch artists.”

  Now that she’d said it, it seemed perfectly obvious, but the thought of going anywhere tonight … my body seemed to be shutting down, that coldness in my chest just the start. Suddenly it was as if my body’s kill switch had just been hit. I shuddered at the thought, but it was more of a quiver, like my body didn’t have the resources for any stronger reaction.

  “Can’t make it anywhere tonight,” I managed, my voice growing thick with the exhaustion. My tongue seemed to weigh twenty pounds all by itself and the rest of me felt like it was made of lead. I wasn’t even sure I’d make it into the bedroom to sleep. If I could spare the energy, I’d have been terrified to be so vulnerable, with the vamps and maybe the Feds gunning for me. As it was …

  “Gina, you okay?” Maya actually sounded concerned, but I couldn’t be certain because I was hearing her from a long, long way away. My neck no longer seemed able to hold my head up and my fingers wouldn’t grasp the phone, which slid to the floor. Probably I should have chugged blood when I first got through the door, but it was too late for that now. My body slipped into a heap on the floor, brain confused by the sudden slip-slide of images, and I knew there was something I should be remembering. Something … but I couldn’t think of it before it was lights out.

  10

  I woke up to Maya standing over me. I bolted straight upright in my bed, wondering how I got there, only to nearly lay myself back down with dizziness. I needed a transfusion … stat.

  “Get up,” she ordered.

  I hated to admit weakness, but I didn’t see any way around it. And anyway, she could have killed me in my sleep if she’d really wanted to. “Don’t think I can,” I admitted. The room was starting to get fuzzy around the edges.

  She handed me one of the To-Go bottles of blood from my refrigerator—still cold. No warm-up for exposed agents. No one who hasn’t drunk cold, thick, gelatinous blood straight-up can have any idea the sheer horror of it. No reality show has ever come up with a challenge so terrible, I promise you. But I was a survivor. Moving at human speed, I grabbed the bottle, struggled with the top, and closed my eyes. Maybe I could fool myself into thinking this was gazpacho or chilled strawberry soup. Mmm … gak! My brain wasn’t accepting the substitution. I choked the blood down as best I could and felt energy flowing into my limbs, breaking the ice that had settled in my core.

  Maya grabbed another bottle of blood for the road and said, “Come on. Up now.”

  Wow, her bedside manner was touching.

  “Where?” I asked. Just because she hadn’t killed me yet didn’t mean she wasn’t going to. Maybe she wanted to debrief me first. Maybe she’d use me as a bargaining chip with the vamps—turn me over in exchange for them pulling out of Wappingers or handing over the Feds’ fanged most wanted.

  “Home base. Vampire mug shots. Plus, we want to go over what you heard and saw in detail.”

  Oh joy. I chugged the last bit of my cold, horrible meal and tried to suppress my gag reflex. I needed my energy for whatever the Feds might throw at me.

  “Come on,” she repeated, reaching to help me along.

  “Can I change first? Shower?”

  She was shaking her head. “No time … but you can run a brush through that hair … and for God’s sake, brush your teeth.”

  I smiled at that, imagining them stained red and hoping she was secretly a little freaked, but she just returned an eerily evil smile and pushed me toward the bathroom.

  I locked the door behind me and took ten full minutes anyway to run a quick washcloth over myself and right my makeup. Falling asleep in mascara—so not recommended for the living. Oh sure, the bride of Frankenstein could get away with it, but she had all that crazy hair as a distraction. I also took a sec to call out to Bobby with my mind.

  Bobby! I shouted, wanting to be really sure before I opened that bathroom door that death wasn’t waiting for me on the other side.

  All was ominously silent.

  Maya pounded on the door. “Gina, your time is up!” I hoped she didn’t mean that literally. “Let’s go!”

  I grimaced at my nonexistent reflection in the mirror and went to meet my doom.

  The car ride over to the mom-and-pop house was silent, except for me gulping at the cold blood and doing my best to bypass my taste buds. Light was barely teasing at the horizon. I thought a million times about asking if I was dead meat, but it wasn’t like she’d tell me anyway. My only consolation was that if I was compromised, so, probably, was Bobby and they wouldn’t want to lose him and his special powers—no way, no how. They’d find a way to salvage things. And while I didn’t have any wicked mojo of my own, there was that resistance to other vamps’ mind control, and a psycho-psychic just months ago had told me that I was chaos. Hear me roar. I had no idea whether he meant it in the supernatural way or if he was just commenting on my personality, but unlife sure had been a roller-coaster ride so far.

  By the time we reached the house and slid the car into the garage, I was feeling much better. Maybe it was the blood, maybe it was my personal pep talk, but I had it in me to give the car door a nice, hearty slam to announce my presence, hopefully to Bobby, and strut in after Maya.

  The sight of Sid sitting just where I’d left him—at the table, surrounded by computers and printouts, a jumbo mug of coffee at his elbow—was reassuring. Bobby sat just two seats away, a pile of school books in front of him.

  “I called you this morning,” I told him. It came out all accusatory, like he’d deliberately ignored me. I half-knew it was unreasonable, but the other half of me thought that as my vampire sire, if not as my boyfriend, he should have known I needed him.

  “Sorry. I’ve been kind of focused. Getting a start on all this homework.”

  “But it’s Saturday morning!”

  “Sure. If I get it all done now I have the whole weekend ahead of me.”

  “Or you can relax a little and do it all Sunday night when you’re fresh.”

  He looked at me like I’d lost my marbles. “What if an emergency comes up and I haven’t done it. Then I’m SOL.”

  If he hadn’t used “SOL,” I’d have been absolutely convinced he was some kind of manbot masquerading as a teenaged boy. Who worried about homework in the event of an emergency?

  “Children,” Maya snapped, “can we get down to business?”

  Oh sure, for this Bobby pushed his books aside.

  I sat down across from him and proceeded to tell them everything. Midway through, Rick wandered in, carrying a cold, sweating can of Coke. Maya gave him a mom look for his tardiness, but no one interrupted my report. Next it was Sid’s turn.

  “Going on what you said, I did a check of girls from school who’d been attacked recently. I came up with three. First, Hailee Johnson, head cheerleader, solid B student. Mother is a pharmacist, father a computer consultant, currently out of work. No unusual notes in her school records, no police file. Nothing to label her a troublemaker. The only thing I turned up is that her line traces back to one of the women convicted in the Salem witch tr
ials.”

  “You did her genealogy?” Rick asked, nearly snarfing Coke.

  “I read her Facebook page,” Sid answered, so deadpan that I figured it for the truth.

  “But I thought the women killed in the witch trials were all innocents,” Bobby cut in. “And that the mass hysteria was traced back to rye gone bad, some kind of hallucinogenic mold.” It was kind of cool, in a totally geeky way, that he could pull stuff like that right out of his ass.

  Sid looked impressed and irritated all at once. “I never said her ancestor was killed. I said convicted. She escaped. The guilty ones generally did.”

  We all digested that for a second. It was a great story. I’d rent the DVD. Bobby would probably read the book.

  “Next we have Belladonna Rigby. Also a senior. C student. Her only extracurricular activities seem to be her band and partying. Many notations in her file, mostly tardies, skips, and clinic notes about passing out in class and a possible eating disorder.”

  “Bulimia,” I said. “Her friends are all worried.”

  Sid looked at me for a second.

  “Well, we—they—are,” I added defensively.

  “Anyway, her mother sells Avon out of the house and takes care of her little brother, and her father runs a food service. The same one that supplies the school.”

  That perked us up, but he held up a hand to keep us from commenting.

  “The third suspect is Marissa Muldoon, a junior who was roughed up in the locker room last week by a gang of other girls who said she looked at them funny. Artsy girl. Big into photography electives. Mother is a real estate agent. Father not in the picture. Last year when he had her for the weekend, they were in a serious car accident that left Marissa with whiplash and nerve damage to her face. The whiplash got better, but the nerve damage, not so much. No reason to suspect she’s part of this, unless she’s in league with the vamps for some supernatural healing.”

  “What about Teresa?” I asked. “The missing girl could have decided to ditch her life and throw in with the vamps.”

  “We won’t rule her out, but it doesn’t make sense that she’d meet her accomplice on school grounds. Why argue, and why now, when it’s been days since she disappeared?”

  Okay, he had me there.

  “So what next?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, from the conversation Gina overheard, I’d say our most likely bet is that someone is lacing the school food or maybe water supply with something hinky. Clearly, the aggression isn’t supposed to be part of the package, but we don’t know what it is supposed to do. Anyway, that makes Belladonna look like a top suspect, since she’d have access through the food service. Gina, you’re part of her gang. I want you to learn what you can. Maya will back you up. Bobby, on Monday I want you to be the last in your period on the cafeteria line. Charm the lunch ladies. You’ve got the power. See if they’ve seen or suspected anything or if any of them seem suspicious themselves. Their records are clean, but you never know. Rick, you’re going to the school clinic on Monday. Fake a blinding headache or something that’ll get you painkillers. Bring them back for analysis. It’s a long shot, but with Hailee’s mom having a pharmaceutical connection, we should check it out. Also, I want water samples from the school fountains.”

  “But—” I piped up, shooting a glance at Rick. I could take him down if he took what I was about to say the wrong way, but I’d probably spill Sid’s coffee all over his computer doing it. With my luck, it would probably come out of my paycheck. “Rick’s behavior changed without him ever going to the clinic—when he attacked me at the hospital.”

  Rick gave me a nasty grin from across the table. “What makes you think I need a chemical excuse for that?”

  “Settle down,” Maya ordered. “Gina’s got a point.”

  “Yeah, and it’s on the top of her head,” Rick muttered.

  “Of course,” I continued, provoked into opening my mouth again, “there could be some other drug going around school that’s accounting for your behavior. Steroids?” I’d heard about ’roid rage, but could it happen so fast? No way he’d been able to get any during spy school.

  He struck the table hard with the flat of his palm. “I’m not on steroids.”

  We all stared at him.

  After a minute, he took a visible breath to calm himself. “But I have been buying the school lunch.”

  That seemed to clinch it. The comment I’d overheard the girl make, about some people “bringing their own,” made total sense if they were talking about school lunches

  … or, yeah, maybe painkillers or bottled water, but that seemed a whole lot less likely.

  “Have you tested his blood?” I asked, looking between Sid and Maya, who exchanged a glance themselves.

  “Yeah,” Sid admitted. “Some organic compounds—wolfsbane and the like. No commercial drugs. More like spell components. We’re already trying to trace who’s bought these compounds in bulk over the past few months. Whatever’s going on around here is not natural, but we knew that already. The trace is slow going. Most of these ingredients aren’t dangerous on their own, so there’s no regulation, no one has to sign for them. And if they pay cash … ”

  The table shook as Rick’s fists both crashed down at once and he stood, bumping the table yet again, rattling his coke and Sid’s coffee. “You took my blood?” he railed. “When? When I was sleeping? Is that why you have me on this case? The token human, like the canary in the coal mine. Cage me in and read my entrails if I kick off?”

  He seethed and for a second seemed almost larger than normal, like rage had puffed him up too big for his shell to contain, like violence was going to burst out of him at any second.

  Sid stood as well, slowly, hands held loosely at his sides, which I recognized from training as being the way to keep your options open, ready for action. “Calm down, Rick. You cut yourself shaving yesterday. We tested the blood you blotted. As for the entrails, you knew this job was dangerous when you took it.”

  “And anyway,” I said as calmly as I could, “if you die, you come back as one of us, right?”

  He took a deep breath and, just that quickly, the scary went out of him. “Right,” he admitted with a wry grin that made him look all boyish, not at all the Mr. Hyde he’d been just seconds ago. “I forgot. Guess I … got carried away.”

  He sat back down and for a moment no one knew what to say. “Maybe you’d better bag your lunch for the next few days,” I said, still calm. I was hoping that as his vampire dam, should he ever turn, maybe I carried some kind of clout.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Maybe. And we should probably organize some kind of boycott at the school … just in case.”

  “Great idea,” Maya said, jumping on the chance to get things back on track. “Gina, you said you have a vegan friend?”

  “Lily,” I offered.

  “Think you could stage a protest?”

  I grinned. “Food fight, protest, boycott. I’m your girl.”

  “Good. And while you’re at it, get the goods on Bella.”

  “Done.”

  “Now, for Hailee.”

  “I’ll do it,” Bobby jumped in. I scowled at him and he added, oh-so-helpfully, “She, ah, seemed to like me when she showed us around. Shouldn’t be too tough for me to interview her.”

  “Good,” Maya said, proving she had no grasp at all on the meaning of the word. “Does anyone know Marissa?”

  “You got a picture?” Rick asked.

  I thought he was just being a horndog. Sid eyed him dubiously, but typed a few strokes onto the computer and swiveled the screen around to face us. On it was a slender brunette with big doe eyes in an otherwise unremarkable face.

  “Sure, I know her,” Rick said. “She’s always taking pictures. At practice. In the halls. I can think of an excuse to talk to her.”

  Maya didn’t say “good” this time, probably just as worried about Rick as I was.

  “Okay, we’re settled then, I guess. Gina, do you have any plan
s—”

  My cell phone interrupted us and I smirked. I knew Ulric would find the number eventually. I might even be extra nice to him, since Bobby had volunteered to cuddle up to Hailee.

  But it was Lily on the other end. “We’re going to the mall,” she said without preamble. “You in?”

  “Mall,” I mouthed to the others.

  Sid waved me to continue.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, putting on the world weariness I’d felt this morning. “I’m not even up yet.”

  “Well, the guys are—all but Gavin, anyway—and I’ve already had to talk them out of a raid on the hospital. We need to distract them with virtual reality games. Bella and I are going to need reinforcements.”

  “A raid? Why?”

  “The hospital’s got us blacklisted. Bram’s parents’ orders. We can’t get in to see him. No one will tell us anything because of the damned HIPA laws. It’s criminal. The boys are going to take out their aggression on Zombie Death Squad … and Bella needs a new pair of fishnets.”

  “What happened to her old ones?” I asked.

  “There’s a hole.”

  I wasn’t even going to think about the logic of that.

  “I can be ready by noon,” I said.

  “Good. We’ll pick you up as soon as Gavin gets his raggedy ass out of bed.”

  We hung up and I looked at the others. “Gotta go. The mall beckons.”

  “Not until noon,” Maya said. “We all heard you. First mug shots, then mall.”

  I sighed and settled back in my seat. “Okay, set ’em up. I’ll knock ’em down.”

  Sid opened up a file and turned one of the laptops toward me. Head in one hand and my other hand on the touch pad, I scrolled through screen after screen of mostly artist drawings of vamps. A few had actual photos that must have been taken before their deaths. There were notations below the photos but they had to be in code, because I sure couldn’t understand them and there was nary a vowel in the bunch. None of the vamps looked like the guy who’d attacked Hailee in the woods. I still shuddered just thinking of his eyes. And none looked like the surfer boy from the school.