Blue Bloods (17 page)

“I’m sorry, you’re not on the list,” the clipboard girl replied, savoring the rejection.

Schuyler was about to step back into the elevator and go home, when Bliss appeared from behind a hidden doorway.

“Bliss!”Schuyler cried. “They won’t let me in.”

Bliss marched over. She had showered and changed into a slim-fitting Missoni dress with zigzagging stripes and high-heeled gladiator sandals. She took Schuyler by the arm and pulled her through the PR barricade, over the protests of the clipboard hellions. She led Schuyler into the main room, which was crowded with Duchesne kids angling for drinks at the bar, sprawling on couches, or dirty-dancing by the windows.

“Thanks,” Schuyler said.

“Sorry about that. It’s Mimi. I told her my parents were away and I was thinking of hosting a little get-together, and she puts together like, the MTV Movie Awards After Party.”

Schuyler laughed. She looked around—there were go-go boys and go-go girls writhing in cages hung from the ceiling, and she recognized several famous faces in the mix. “Isn’t that—?”

Schuyler asked, noticing a peppy teen actress funneling beers in front of a cheering crowd.

“Yeah,” Bliss sighed. “C’mon, let me show you the rest of the place. It doesn’t usually look like this.”

“I’d love to—but I have to do something first.”

Bliss raised her eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I have to find Jack Force.”

She had to find Jack. She had to tell him what had happened to her. They had barely spoken to each other since the night of the Informals , but she perceived he was the only one who would understand. She was fighting to hold on to the memory—already it was slipping—already she couldn’t remember the exact details of where, why, or how it had happened—except for the eyes, eyes glimmering red in the dark, with silver pupils. Red eyes and sharp teeth.

But the Llewellyns ‘ penthouse was like a house that mag ically expanded—everywhere you turned, there were rooms and rooms off innumerable hallways, with hidden treasures. Schuyler found an indoor lap pool, a fully equipped gym, and what looked to be a staffed day spa on the premises, complete with massage tables and essential oils, as well as a game room filled with old-fashioned carnival arcade toys, with mechanical fortune tellers and penny games, all of them in perfect working condition. She pushed a penny into a slot and removed her fortune.

YOU ARE A TRAVELER AT HEART.

MANY JOURNEYS AWAIT YOU.

She wished Oliver were there to see it.

“Have you seen Jack? Jack Force?” she asked everyone she bumped into.

She was told that he had just left, or was on another floor, or had just arrived. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere.

At last, she found him in an empty guest bedroom on the uppermost floor. He was strumming a guitar and singing softly to himself. Downstairs was the house party of the cen tury, but Jack preferred the silence upstairs.

“Schuyler?” he said, without looking up.

“Something happened,” she said, closing the door behind her softly. Now that she’d finally found him, all the feelings she’d bottled up came out. She was trembling, so scared that she hadn’t even noticed that he’d divined her presence from sense alone. Her eyes were wide and fright ened.

Without thinking twice, she ran to his side and sat next to him on the bed.

He put an arm around her protectively. “What’s wrong?”

“I was at a photo shoot today, and afterward, I was walking alone … and I was … I can’t remember….” She struggled for the words. For the images. At the time, they were burned into her brain, yet it felt like she was grasping—reaching for them. She held on to the tendrils of the memory—something terrible had almost happened to her—but what? What words could convey what had happened, and why was her memory betraying her? “I was attacked,” she forced herself to say.

“What?” He cursed. He shook her shoulders, then held her close. “By whom? Tell me.”

“I don’t remember. It’s gone, but it was … powerful, I couldn’t stop it. Red … red eyes … teeth …

going to suck … here,” she said, pointing to her neck. “I felt it, deep into my veins … but look, I don’t have any puncture wounds? I don’t understand.”

Jack frowned. He kept his arms around her. “I’m going to tell you something. Something important.”

Schuyler nodded.

“Something is hunting us. There is something out there hunting Blue Bloods,” he said softly. “I wasn’t sure before, but I am now.”

“What do you mean, hunting us? Don’t you have it back ward? We’re the ones everyone else needs to be afraid of!”

Jack shook his head. “I know it doesn’t make sense.”

“Because The Committee said we can’t be kil —”

“Exactly,” Jack interrupted. “They’ve always told us we live forever, that we’re immortal and invulnerable, that noth ing can kill us, right?” he asked.

Schuyler nodded. “That’s what I was telling you.”

“And they’re right. I’ve tried.”

“Tried what?”

“I’ve jumped in front of trains. I’ve cut myself. I was the one who fell out the library window last year.”

Schuyler remembered that rumor—how some kid had jumped off the third-floor balcony and landed in the cortile. But she hadn’t believed it. No one could survive a fifty-foot jump and live, much less land on their feet.

“Why?”

“To see if what they were telling us was true.”

“But you could have died!”

“No. I couldn’t. The Committee was right about that, at least.”

“That night—that night in front of Block 122—you were hit by the taxi.”

He nodded. “But it didn’t hurt me.”

“No.” Schuyler nodded. So she had seen him fall under neath the taxicab’s wheels. He should have died. But he had appeared on the sidewalk, whole. She’d thought she was just tired from the night, that her eyes were strained. But it had actually happened. She’d seen it.

“Schuyler, listen to me. Nothing can harm us … except—”

“Except … ?”

“I don’t know!” He folded his hands into fists in frustra tion. “But there is something out there.

The Committee isn’t telling us everything.”

Jack explained that before the first meeting, the senior members of The Committee decided that they wouldn’t tell the premature about the danger. That instead of warning everyone, it was best to leave them in the dark for now. It was enough that they would find out about their true heritage first; no reason to raise alarm bells where there might be none. Except that he hadn’t believed them. He knew they were keeping something from them.

“They’re holding something back. I think it’s something that might have happened before, in our history. Something to do with Plymouth , when we first came here. I’ve tried to dig it up, but it’s as if it’s blocked from my sight. When I try to think about it, all I remember is a word. A message nailed to a tree in an empty field. It contained one word: Croatan .”

“What’s that?” Croatan . Schuyler shuddered, repulsed by the mere sound of it.

“I have no idea.” Jack shook his head. “I don’t even know what it is. It could be anything. It might be a place, I’m not sure. But I think it has to do with what they haven’t told us about.

Something with the power to kill Blue Bloods.”

“But how do you know? How can you be so sure?” she asked him, alarmed.

“Because, like I told you, Aggie Carondolet was mur dered,” he said, looking intently into her deep blue eyes. Schuyler was silent. “And?”

“Aggie was a vampire.”

Schuyler gasped. Of course! That’s why she’d felt so empathic at the funeral. She’d known, somehow, that Aggie was one of them.

“She’s never coming back. She’s gone. Her blood—all of it—was drained from her body. Her memories, her lives, her soul—gone. Sucked out, just like we suck the Red Bloods,” he said sadly. “Extinguished. Taken.”

Schuyler looked at him in horror. It couldn’t be true.

“And she wasn’t the first. This has happened before.”

Catherine Carver’s Diary

25th of December, 1620

Plymouth , Massachusetts

Panic everywhere. Half of us are determined to flee, to find safer ground. Perhaps head south, farther away. The Conclave is meeting today to discuss the alternatives. John is convinced that one of them is hidden among us , that one of us has succumbed to their power. He is determined to convince the Elders. William White will stand with him, he said. But Myles Standish is adamant about staying. He has argued that there is no proof, even if the Roanoke colony is gone, that they were overtaken by Croatan . A hysterical lie, he says, perhaps even a willful misleading. He will not believe messages left on trees. The Conclave is ever in accordance, it has never happened that they have failed to reach an agreement. It is not our way to doubt. Myles Standish has led us well for as long as I can remember. But John is certain there is danger. Stay or flee? But where would we go?

— C.C.

TWENTY-SEVEN

What was up with the dry ice? It was like a bad magic show in there. Bliss shooed away some fresh men helping themselves to more than one goodie bag on the exit table, and circled the room. She felt a rising panic. She couldn’t find Dylan anywhere. The one guy she wanted to see, and he was missing.

She flopped down on the leather couch and looked at the hallway leading to the massage rooms.

Two people were making out behind the ice sculpture. The taller figure looked familiar—that worn, beaten leather sleeve, the fringes of that white silk scarf—it had to be…

“Dylan?” Bliss asked.

Mimi turned around. Shit. She should have taken him into the bathroom or somewhere more private. She retracted her fangs quickly and put on her most dazzling smile.

“Bliss, sweetie.There you are,” she said.

Dylan turned around, his eyes glassy and unfocused. “What are you doing?” Bliss asked Mimi.

“Nothing.”Mimi shrugged. “We were just talking.”

Bliss pulled Dylan out of the shadowy corner. She checked his neck for marks, but there were none. Good. She glared at Mimi and led him away.

“What were you doing with her?” Bliss demanded.

Dylan shrugged. He hadn’t even realized he was with Mimi Force. He’d been lost in a daze, as if he were under a spell. He blinked his eyes and looked at Bliss. “Where have you been?” he asked, his voice suddenly normal.

“Looking for you,” she said.

He smiled.

“C’mon, I want to show you my room,” Bliss said.

Dylan looked strange in the confines of her bedroom. It was as if he were too male, too dirty …

too real. He smirked at her white princess bed with the fluffy floral comforter, at the pale green rug, the pink wallpaper, the white wicker armoire, the four-story dollhouse, the theater lights on her vanity table.

“Okay, I know. It’s a little girlie ,” she conceded.

“A little?” he teased.

“It’s not me. It’s my stepmother. She thinks I’m still like, twelve or something.”

Dylan grinned. He shut the door softly and dimmed the lights.

Bliss suddenly felt nervous. “Excuse me for a sec,” she said, slipping into the bathroom to catch her breath.

It was going to be her first time, and she was a little scared about it. She was going to do it—

IT—the Caerimonia Osculor —that would bind him to her in blood she was going to give him the Sacred Kiss—but he didn’t know it yet.

Apparently, you just started doing it—and they—the humans—they would begin to writhe in ecstasy and it would all be hot and sweaty and—and afterward she would feel better than she’d ever felt before.

When she walked out, Dylan was already lying on the bed, his back against the fluffy down pillows. He looked skinny and sexy in his ripped Ben Folds T-shirt. He kicked off his Nike Dunks and patted the empty space next to him.

Bliss found his scarf and leather jacket hanging on the bedpost, and it gave her an idea. She slipped a duplicate of her keys in the pocket.

“What are you doing?” Dylan asked.

“Nothing—just giving you something that will maybe make it easier for us to get together next time,” Bliss said coyly.

“Well, get over here now.”

“I’m cold,” she said, slipping under the covers.

After a second, Dylan pulled aside the covers and slid in beside her.

They lay there for a while, listening to the sound of gangsta rap thumping from the second floor.

“You are really cold,” he marveled.

“But your skin’s warm,” she said.

He wrapped his arms around her. They started kissing and Bliss was thankful she didn’t black out this time, as she felt his hand explore underneath her dress, reaching for her bra. She smiled, thinking boys were all alike. He would get what he wanted, but not before she got what she wanted.

She closed her eyes, feeling his warm hands unclasp the hook of her bra. He pulled her dress off, over her head. She raised herself a little off the bed to help him, and then she was lying there, in only her Cosabella thong, before him.

She opened her eyes to see him hovering over her. She pulled him closer.

He made a cross of his arms and pulled his T- shirt overhis chest. He was so skinny she could feel the ribs underneath his skin. They were both breathing quickly, and in a moment, he was lying on top of her, pushing his body against hers.

She caressed his neck and felt the hard bump underneath his jeans pressing against her thigh. She rolled over him, so that she was on top of his chest. He held her close, his hands caressing her back, slipping off her underwear. She began kissing his mouth, the line of his jaw, licking her way down.

She felt her back teeth extend; she was going to do it— Now ! She could almost smell his thick, rich blood—she raised her jaw, and suddenly, the room was ablaze with light.

“What the hell?” Dylan poked his head out of the com forter.

Two giggly sophomores were standing in the hallway, watching them.

“Oops!”

Bliss looked up at them, her fangs still sticking out. The two girls at the door screamed.

Bliss quickly disarmed. Shit. The Committee had warned them about this—they couldn’t allow the Red Bloods to see them as they were, to know their real nature. They were just some kids.