Emerson ran back to the rest of the team, avoiding the questioning and suspicious glares of the away team. I spotted Robbie and he waved, enthusiastically, shouting something along the lines of him being surprised that I came.
I hadn’t noticed, but Suze had already run back to her friend and had found seats on the home side. The girl was squealing excitedly about how Emerson and I were definitely a thing. I rolled my eyes.
Like I knew I would be, I was bored out of my mind by the first inning. Not even the end of the first inning. I mentally chided Emerson, again, for not playing football – something with actual action. The game didn’t even get that much more interesting when he was playing since he hit so well, and ran so quickly, him being on the field was over so soon. They always seemed to play him first, too, so they wouldn’t have to waste his homeruns on some fumbled move to not run out the other guys stuck on the bases.
I ended up studying the spectators in the bleachers for the second inning. They were a lot more interesting to watch than what was happening on the field. It was either that, or get my Kindle back out. I wasn’t committing to that idea until I got to the fifth inning. I at least needed to last half the time before I gave up entirely. The things I did for Emerson.
It turned out that Charlotte and Grayson were over on the home side of the stands. Since I’d begun dreaming of her and Emerson, I’d been more aware of her presence, so I wasn’t shocked to find myself drawn to her in the crowd. I really didn’t like the feeling of jealousy clawing at my chest. I’d have thought that Grayson would be at football practice, but apparently – according to the gossiping teens behind me – they didn’t have a game tonight so had come to support Emerson. It was strange to think that even in other high schools the Sons were a big feature for gossip.
Grayson and Charlotte didn’t look half as bored as me, but, honestly, most of the people in the stands didn’t. I found out from the guys behind me that Emerson playing was a big deal. He’d really improved the overall performance of the team. Compared to what I couldn’t say; it all seemed so dull to me. I could only dread to think what a worse game would be like.
‘He’s got to go pro, hasn’t he?’
‘He’d be crazy not to. I heard some scouts might be coming over early to check him out. His stats are insane. Did you hear about his try outs? He can pitch a 90mph pitch consistently. And he’s equally good at batting. They didn’t know where to place him. I don’t think any of our guys would have had a shot if he was pitching. Like… he’s insane. He’s not even human, I swear.’
I tried not to laugh at how right they were.
Emerson didn’t throw for this game – I didn’t even know he was a pitcher. I couldn’t exactly bring myself to feel any guilt that guys from a different school knew something about Emerson that I didn’t. Maybe if it wasn’t to do with baseball, I would have cared. I hadn’t seen him pitch before, so I assumed that they were saving him for some big game, or he’d decided to reel back the preternatural speed and strength and not draw too much attention to himself. The game would have been more interesting if he was pitching… or maybe more boring; he would probably get every single player out if he wanted to.
I realised I could use the bond between Emerson and I to tell when he was batting, so after the fifth inning, I decided I would read from my Kindle until Emerson stepped up to the plate.
The end of the game did get intense, enough so that I didn’t look at my book and instead spent most of the time watching Emerson or Robbie. We won. Of course we did. How could we not with a vampire on the team?
As the crowd petered out, my side of the stands grumbling like hell, I realised my Kindle had gone missing. I’d kept it on the armrest beside me, but it had disappeared. Was there some sort of kleptomania problem at this school, or what?
‘Yo,’ a guy said, calling my attention to him. He held in his hand my Kindle. He was halfway up the stairs and, once he was certain he’d gotten my attention, made his way to the top where he met his other friend.
I groaned, got up from my seat and fought the crowd to reach them both. I didn’t recognise them, but that didn’t mean much as I tended not to pay attention to anyone in high school. Their colours were from the away team, though.
‘What’s your problem, assholes?’ I asked when I reached them.
‘Chill, lady,’ one of them told me – the one who wasn’t holding my stolen Kindle. ‘My friend and I just have a bet. We get an answer, you get your iPad back.’
‘It’s a Kindle, douchebag. You know, for reading.’
They stared at me blankly. ‘What’s your bet?’ I asked, crossing my arms.
I figured the easiest thing to do would be to go along with them and not cause trouble; get my Kindle back and then grab a burger with Emerson before heading home. Simple. God, it was never simple.
‘Are you screwing that Asian lesbian or the Son?’
I ground my teeth. ‘What?’
‘I mean, you look like a dyke, but maybe pretty boy is into that. Maybe he’s into you both,’ the guy who held my Kindle chuckled.
Like when I’d attacked Brett, my body moved exceptionally fast on instinct. I grabbed my Kindle, kneeing the guy in the balls and hitting the other prick in the solar plexus. If they thought how quick I’d moved was a shock… I didn’t know how to describe how I felt. I hadn’t even decided I was going to attack them. It was like my body simply reacted from past experience of knowing how I usually reacted to assholes in this situation and then went into hyperdrive to make it happen.
This time, unlike before, I could tell how fast I’d moved. The thought that I’d managed to put off for a while now returned: what was I? How was I able to move like that?
As if the extra speed brought it on, my senses began to go haywire again: volume turned up to the max. The bright lights of the baseball pitch burned into my retinas and the sounds of the high school students celebrating or commiserating flooded my ears. I was so overwhelmed by my senses that I didn’t see the guys pick themselves up after I’d attacked them. It wasn’t until I felt one of the guys push me back that I remembered they were there at all.
My mind was still working quickly, but being distracted by my senses, I couldn’t act on my thoughts. I’d never fallen down a set of stairs and not broken something was the first thing that popped into my head. That I’d nearly been killed on this field before – when Emerson had sent a ball straight to my head – made me believe that Death had a particular liking for the sports-setting to be my final destination.
From the angle I fell, I knew this wasn’t going to be a quick stumble, or a short trip down a couple steps before the push lost its momentum. I was going to fall down the whole length of the stands, and, Death whispered to me, I was going to break my neck before I reached the bottom.
To die this way was pathetic. Everything I’d gone through and “pushed down some stairs” was how I was ending things. This. Sucked. Ass.
I didn’t make it all the way down. My arms, back and side hit the first few steps, but just as I was about to fall down the next one, my head an inch from the ground and the end, hands gripped me close and pulled me up.
‘Liv. Liv? Are you alright?’
Emerson pulled me close to his body. His arms were wrapped around me tightly, like if he let go for a second, I might start to fall again. My head was still spinning, both recovering from the fall and coming back to my usual senses rather than their heightened state.
I nodded, small barely-there movements to not shake my head too much. Emerson placed me down in the empty seat next to where we stood. He knelt on the step next to me, holding my hands in his. I pulled them from him immediately, knowing my rings would burn him.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked again.
Emerson’s eyes roamed my face. My right arm was sore where it had hit the step, as was the right side of my ribs and part of my back.
‘Peachy,’ I said, rubbing my arm. I wasn’t dead, so I was calling it a win. ‘My senses just w
ent a bit…’ I stopped myself from explaining. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah. Grand.’ He was still looking at me intensely. ‘Seriously, I’m fine.’
Emerson’s hand went to my arm, like he could feel the pain radiating there. He clenched his jaw. ‘Give me a minute.’
I caught the look of fury in his eyes before he turned away from me. He strode up the stairs, taking two at a time and was in front of the guys who had pushed me in seconds. Wrathfully, he grabbed the fronts of the guys’ shirts and slammed them both into the back wall of the stands. He was using his preternatural strength. They tried to move, but Emerson’s hands on their chests kept them immobile.
‘She could have been seriously hurt,’ Emerson growled in a low voice.
‘It was an accident-’ one of the guys started. Emerson slammed him back so he hit his head, hard, on the wall. That shut him up.
‘She’s okay, isn’t she?’ the other one asked. He moved his eyes away from Emerson, towards me. Emerson didn’t like that. He grabbed the boy by his chin, turning his face back towards him. Emerson’s other hand kept his friend in place.
‘Don’t look at her. Don’t touch her. She’s off limits. Do you understand?’
The boys nodded, looking half like they were going to piss themselves.
I remembered the feeling I’d had when Brett confronted Emerson in the hallway after having his nose broken. I’d been worried things were going to go too far, Death dancing forever on my periphery. That was before I’d known Emerson. Now, I wouldn’t have believed Brett would be in any danger. I would have thought the same for these guys, but there was something in the tight grip Emerson had on them, and the cold fury of his tone, that told me now, now I had a right to be worried over what might happen.
I had to step in before Emerson did something he’d regret. Or I’d regret letting it happen. I started to stand, but Grayson got to Emerson before I did. I hadn’t seen him walk up the stairs past me; he’d used his vamp speed to get to him.
Grayson spoke in a low tone. He didn’t touch Emerson, as though that invasion of personal space might set him off. Eventually, after the longest twenty seconds I’d experienced, Emerson let the two boys go. They fled quickly down the steps, not looking at me as they passed.
Grayson stayed on the steps, next to Emerson until it seemed like he calmed down. Whatever switch usually dissociated Emerson from his anger in the moment wouldn’t be working now – not with my presence. This must have been strange for the both of them. For Emerson to be experiencing this sort of thing in real-time. For Grayson to know that Emerson’s anger couldn’t disappear as soon as the moment did.
‘I’m driving Charlotte back. We good here?’ Grayson finally asked.
Emerson nodded. Grayson paused, assessing if that was true or not, then nodded back. They fist-bumped as a goodbye. Like this was nothing. Like Emerson hadn’t just saved my life and been on the verge of taking two others, or seriously harming them at least.
Grayson jogged down the stairs, giving me a quick smile, before meeting Charlotte at the bottom of the stand. I hadn’t even noticed she’d been there I’d been so focused on Emerson.
Emerson grabbed my Kindle, which had fallen from my hands during the fall, and passed it to me as he grabbed my hand and pulled me up. He walked down the bleachers, towards the car lot, ignoring the way I resisted holding his hand.
‘My things are still in my locker.’
‘I’ll drop them off later tonight,’ Emerson said, his tone was blunt. He was still holding my hand tightly in his. Clearly, he just wanted to get out of here.
‘Jesus, Emerson. Are you trying to burn right through to your muscle, or what?’ I asked him, finally managing to get my hand free from his grip.
Emerson flashed me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You didn’t seem to mind burning me for teasing you at the start of the game.’
‘Not the same. That was for a second.’ I shook my head.
The Grimm experiments flashed in my mind: pictures of vampire’s she’d experimented on to see the effects silver would have over prolonged periods of time.
Silver, one of nature’s best anti-bacterial agent, works against vampires much like it would against a bacteria, fungi, or even certain viruses. The silver ions cause consistent damage to a vampire by punching holes through the protective membrane of a vampire’s skin and wreaking havoc once inside.
Upon contact, silver ions are forcibly absorbed released from the metal into the skin of a vampire; an unwilling result of an unusual magnetism. Once within, the cells which they encountered are bound, preventing them from completing the most basic of functions such as replication or respiration to heal and live. They remain in a stasis state, the cell taking on the properties of the silver ions which will then act by infecting other non-ion infused cells. The longer the contact the silver has on a vampires’ skin, the worse the effects.
A vampire will eventually heal from this damage, but at a much slower rate than if they were wounded by any other metal.
‘I shouldn’t have done that. It was a petty way to get back at you.’
‘Have you got concussion?’
‘I didn’t hit my head, prick,’ I rolled my eyes at him. ‘And I can apologise without being concussed.’
Emerson sighed. ‘Wait here for a minute, okay?’
‘What-?’ I didn’t have time to get any more of my question out. He’d already disappeared. He returned a little over a minute later. He had his keys and bag in his hand. He unlocked the car and climbed in, throwing his bag in the backseat. Emerson started the engine. I got in, too, and I buckled my seatbelt up.
‘What was going on with those guys?’ Emerson asked, turning to me in his seat. I stared at him. He assumed I didn’t understand the question. ‘Why’d they push you?’
‘They were pricks.’ Emerson stared at me. ‘I admit that I did hit first, but they asked for it.’
‘Please, Liv, kick me in the bollocks?’ Emerson sarcastically asked, pretending to be the asshole from back at the stands.
‘If you want to step back out of the car, I’ll happily oblige,’ I joked, pretending I didn’t get his playacting.
Emerson started the engine instead. He fiddled with the radio, trying to find a station that wasn’t re-hashing the news.
‘Don’t you usually change out of your kit before you go home?’ I asked him.
It wasn’t like he smelled bad – not like a normal human would after playing for hours. Vampires didn’t sweat. He didn’t even look dishevelled. But he’d headed back to the locker rooms with everyone else, so I’d assumed he’d gone to change back into his usual clothes.
He must have run back to the changing room after he realised he didn’t have his keys to drive home. At least he had his preternatural speed to aid his quick getaway and return. Would have been shitty drama for him to storm off, dragging me from the field, only to have to drag me all the way back to get his stuff.
‘I was about to change when I heard Grayson swear.’
‘You heard him swear? My lord! How outrageous. Does the boy have no manners at all?’
Emerson reversed out of the parking lot, but not before giving me a condescending look.
‘Vampires can pick out the voice of another vampire in a crowd of a thousand humans. It’s just one of those things – like how we sense other lamia. Grayson had been keeping an eye on you whilst I went into the locker rooms to change. When I heard him, I knew something bad had happened. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop it.’
‘Grayson was keeping an eye on me?’
‘Yeah,’ Emerson shrugged. ‘I told him to.’
‘Why?’
‘You have a habit of getting into trouble; you’re antisocial and mildly psychopathic, and you were surrounded by people. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I wasn’t exactly wrong, was I?’
I didn’t bother to answer him. We drove in silence for a while. He was heading to one of
the burger chains that I mentioned I liked. I’d already text Maybelle to say I was eating out before coming home. Her replies were a load of questions about who I was with, and what time I thought I’d be getting back. I saved myself the boy-talk by saying it was a We Will Rock You rehearsal and I was having a bite with the AA Team afterwards. As Maybelle had told me yesterday, over dinner, she wouldn’t mind if I grabbed something after rehearsals with my friends, I figured she wouldn’t have a problem with that excuse.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Emerson asked.
‘Emerson, give it a rest, will you? I fell off my motorbike doing seventy plus miles per hour, I can survive a little push down the stairs.’
There were a lot of worse things that I’d survived than that, but they were a little too depressing to bring up and I was trying to stop Emerson from worrying about me.
‘Baseball’s just bad luck for me.’
‘You certainly have a thing against the sport,’ Emerson said.
I noticed the grip of his left hand was loose on the steering wheel. No doubt the burns were seriously affecting him. The short contact he’d had with me at the beginning of the game hadn’t affected his play at all, but he’d had prolonged, repeated exposure to the silver when he’d held my hand.
‘The sport has a thing against me. Baseball might take a long time to kill me with boredom – but damn was it trying.’ I grinned, trying to make light of the situation. ‘Plus, you totally nearly killed me the first time I saw you.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘When you hit that homerun. The ball went straight for my face.’
‘Are you sure you haven’t got concussion?’
‘Why?’
‘That never happened.’
‘I’m pretty freaking sure that it was you who hit that ball – and it very much did happen. It went straight for my head like you’d aimed there. The only reason it didn’t make contact was because I caught it.’
‘You were on the right side of the field. I hit to the left,’ Emerson said.
‘I’m a Death magnet,’ I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter which way you usually hit. You hit hard; I was there. The ball went for me. Simple.’
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