Dread Nemesis of Mine (14 page)

"You're so pathetic," she said. "Oh no, the
big bad spawn is turning into a demon!" She held her hands up and
opened her mouth in mock horror. "Please save me!" A nasty grin
curled her lips. "Guess what, moron? Even you can't break diamond
fiber."

"Must be hard being you," I croaked. "Your
life obviously sucks so bad you have to torture someone who can't
fight back to feel good about yourself." I forced a grin and
glanced at the bird nest she called hair. "Maybe if you owned a
hairbrush you could get a date."

Her fist lashed out. My head rocked sideways
and fireworks exploded behind my eyes. "Shut up. Shut up! I'll make
you sorry you ever opened your mouth."

"Your breath is already making me sorry," I
said.

All the air exploded from my lungs as she
pounded a fist into my stomach. I opened my eyes and would have
shouted had any breath remained in my chest. I saw her face an inch
from mine. Her breath smelled of fresh blood. Her eyes gleamed
bright with menace and anger. Pissing her off had probably been a
bad idea.

"Amanda, what the hell are you doing?" said a
familiar voice. "Maximus isn't going to be happy with you beating
on his pet spawn."

The guard whirled, hands crooked like claws.
Her yellowed fingernails lengthened by an inch. She panted and
seemed on the verge of attacking the newcomer.

"Get a hold of yourself," said the voice
again.

I
knew
that voice. It wasn't Felicia,
though. My mind was too wrapped up in the drama of the moment to
run a database search and make a match.

Amanda lowered her hands and growled. "I
should suck you dry and blame his bruises on you."

"Yeah, right. As if I was strong enough to
hurt a spawn." The owner of the voice stepped around the angry
vampire and my jaw went slack.

Katie?

The vampire turned and saw my shocked
expression. She laughed. "Guess I punched him too hard." She
glanced at the tray of food in Katie's hand. "If he tries to get
inside your head, let me know so I can clock him in the face
again."

Katie stuck her tongue out at the vampire's
back as Amanda turned and left the room, slamming the door shut
behind her. Loud music sprang up from somewhere outside the door.
Amanda shouted in fury, her voice fading down the hall as she
demanded the instigator turn it off.

"What in the hell—no, how in the hell did you
get here?" So many words, mostly curses sprang to my head, I had
trouble speaking. "Are you effin' crazy?" Somehow, I remembered to
whisper my questions, though Amanda probably couldn't hear them
over the music. I remembered I was in my underwear with adult
diapers beneath, and felt a hot blush creep from my head to my
toes.

Tears pooled in my former crush's eyes. Her
pretty green eyes. I couldn't believe how much I'd wanted this
girl, back when I'd been a hopeless nerd. And then I'd met Elyssa.
Katie had stumbled into my world—the Overworld—when she'd come to
my house just as hellhounds had attacked. This was far more than
stumbling in, however. Had Katie decided to become a vampire?

"Oh, Justin, I can't believe what they've
done to you." She kissed my forehead. "I've got to get you out of
here." Her eyes wandered across my scantily clothed body.

"Water?" I asked, too thirsty to worry about
such trivial things as clothes any longer.

Her eyes brightened, and she nodded, bringing
out a bottle of water with a flexible straw. I gulped so fast, I
choked and broke into a violent coughing fit. Katie pulled out a
phone and looked at it.

"Justin, just keep calm. In a few hours, I'm
going to break you out of here."

I gave her a crazy look. "You?" I checked her
eyes again to be sure they weren't vampire red. "Are you here to
join Maximus's vampire army?"

She shook her head. "No, absolutely not.
Something terrible happened, though."

Chewing on a chunk of cheese she put to my
mouth, I raised my eyebrows to prompt her to continue.

"I tried to call you. I texted you and left
messages, but you never replied."

"Yeah, I was in southern Colombia. No
reception."

"I can't even being to understand how or why
you ended up down here. I have so many questions." She glanced over
her shoulder. Took a deep breath. "Ever since you vanished, I tried
to find out where you went and if you were okay. I got ahold of
Shelton and your dad talked to me and told me you were fine.
Anyway, since you were gone, I started hanging out with Nyte and
Ash."

"You hung out with them? As in friends?"

She nodded. "I was lonely. You were gone, and
things at school could never be the same after running from those
hellhounds, and almost dying and—well, Annie and Jenny would never
understand, even if I
could
tell them."

The demonic hunger in me twisted my insides.
My eyes closed. When they reopened, I saw Katie's delicious aura
hovering around her.
No!
I squeezed my eyes shut and slammed
the door on the ravenous feeling. With some effort, I picked up the
trail of the conversation again. "Please tell me you didn't talk to
Ash and Nyte about the Overworld."

She shook her head. "No. In fact, Ash and I
started hanging out more. He's really smart, and cute without all
that nasty Goth makeup."

I let out a sigh of relief. "Thank god you
didn't tell them anything."

"I didn't, but someone else did. Right after
Coach Burgundy and Brad and all those others were killed—" she
shuddered. "It was so horrible. Then the huge garbage truck slammed
into the police car you were in, and everything happened so fast.
You and Elyssa vanished and Ash and Nyte were worried sick about
you."

I felt terrible. Not that I'd had much of a
chance to call anyone and let them know I was okay, but I knew
exactly what it was like to have someone you care about vanish from
your life. "Are they okay?"

A fresh tear sparkled in her eye. "These new
people showed up at school. I didn't trust them one bit after
knowing what you told me about vampire recruiters. They held
after-school club meetings, supposedly about finding your true self
and the meaning of life, or some crap like that. Ash and Nyte went
to one, thinking it would be a big joke. Somewhere along the way,
they found out these people were vampires recruiting for
Maximus."

My heart sank. Apparently, my attempt at
stamping out Maximus's recruiters from my high school hadn't paid
off. "Please tell me you stopped them from going."

"At first they laughed about it. Then one of
the vampires grew out his fangs and punched a hole through a desk.
Most of the people there were like Ash and Nyte—you know, the ones
Nathan and his goons call nerds and losers. The ones who want a
miracle to make them look cool."

"Oh, god." A sick feeling ballooned in my
stomach. "What happened?"

"The vampire told them there was a serum they
could take, but it was in limited supply. He took them all on a
tour of the Grotto and then down to Colombia."

"And you came with them."

Katie grasped one of my hands and shook her
head. Amanda's yelling echoed down the hall. The raucous music
still hadn't stopped.

"I let them go, Justin." She sobbed. "I tried
to stop them, but they wouldn't listen. And the worst part is—" she
hiccupped and wiped at the tears rolling down her cheeks. "I really
like Ash. We sort of went out on a date. He told me I shouldn't
settle for a weakling like him. He told me that when he came back,
he'd be super strong and immortal. And then he'd be worthy of
dating me."

I groaned. "I know, I know." She leaned down
and whispered. "Then the strangest thing ever happened. Mr. Turpin,
the English teacher, came to me and offered me a chance to save
them. He said he could get me to Colombia, but that I'd have to spy
on Maximus for him all while pretending to be one of his
recruits."

"Son of a bitch!" I wormed against my
restraints.

"His real name is really weird. Underborn, or
something like that." She looked over her shoulder and turned back
to me. "He has other people here working for him too."

"You can't trust him," I said. "The man is an
assassin." Underborn wouldn't stick out his own neck to rescue
anyone. He obviously intended for Katie to be one of his
sacrificial lambs should anything go wrong.

The music in the hall switched from pop to
Beethoven's Fifth. Katie's eyes widened. "I don't have much more
time."

"Is Felicia helping you?"

She quirked an eyebrow. "Who?"

"A vampire—likes to dress geek chic."

Katie shook her head. "No. Another girl is
helping me. She's a magician." Her lip curved up at the corner.
"She's the one making the music."

"How many of you are there?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Underborn said
he couldn't tell me everything."

I growled. "Don't trust him. Get out while
you can. Besides, you can't free me from these straps—not unless
you have some of Maximus's blood."

"I'm not leaving you." Her eyes went hard and
resolute. "I'll need you to talk Ash and Nyte out of this idiocy,
too."

This was spiraling out of control. Scratch
that. Events had
already
spiraled out of control. I wanted
to grab Katie by the shoulders and give her a stern look. "I'm not
giving you an option, Katie. Go now. Don't look back." My stomach
growled again. I refused to feed on Katie. I needed her strong and
healthy, and able to get the hell out of this place.

She touched my cheek and smoothed my oily,
unwashed hair back from my face. "You didn't leave me when the
hellhounds came. You could have tossed me away and left me. But you
didn't. You saved my life, and now I'm going to save yours."

The music abruptly ended. Katie jerked and
tugged on the hamster water bottle until the thin bracket holding
it onto the table bent, lowering the tube an inch—just enough for
me to suck from it. She kissed my forehead and smiled. "I'll be
back soon."

Amanda returned a few minutes after Katie
left, her face purple with rage, hair even more frizzed than usual.
She leaned down until our noses nearly touched. "Don't think I've
forgotten about what you said." She pressed long, yellowed claws
against my chest and raked them down the skin, just hard enough to
draw blood.

I clenched my teeth and groaned, not wanting
to give her the satisfaction of bursting into tears. The sound of
approaching voices jerked her upright. Her eyes widened with worry
and she dashed off, returning a moment later with a towel and wiped
the blood from my chest. My supernatural healing made short work of
the light wounds, but I didn't have much juice left for anything
else. Hunger clawed again at my incubus stomach. I wished I could
drain this spiteful bitch dry.

Surely, Maximus knew he had to feed me
essence at some point. Otherwise, I'd descend into madness and
probably die. I couldn't remember if anyone had actually told me I
could starve to death if I didn't feed the demon inside, but
considering how awful it felt to go hungry, common sense told me it
would be a painful way to go.

As the voices grew closer, I knew why Amanda
looked so worried. The voices belonged to Maximus and another
male.

"Greetings Lord Maximus," Amanda said as the
lead vampire's voice grew closer.

Maximus replied. "What was your name
again?"

"Amanda, my Lord."

I imagined her curtseying and swooning like a
lovesick puppy.
Lord Maximus?

"Guard the door at the top of the stairs and
make sure no one enters until I return."

"Yes, yes, Lord Maximus. And if I can do
anything for you—I mean
anything
at all, please let me
know."

"I believe I just did."

"I'm so sorry, sir!" Her feet scrambled
away.

Maximus and another man chuckled.

"I daresay she would pluck her own eyes out
and stew them for you, Maximus," said a man in the kind of British
accent I associated with royalty.

"As would most of my followers." Maximus, as
usual, had zero self-doubt in his voice, maintaining his perfect
one-hundred percent douche bag average.

"
That's
the spawn?" said someone else,
a third man.

Footsteps tread closer until I saw Maximus
and a tall, thin man with an oiled mustache and monocle over his
right eye look down at me. A chunky guy, young looking despite a
head of unnaturally white hair, appeared at the end of the table.
He alternatively studied me and scribbled with his stylus on the
tablet computer in his hand—an arctablet, I figured, or maybe just
an arcphone expanded to tablet size.

"Showing me off to your best buds?" I said to
Maximus.

"I'll need some samples," the white-haired
nerd said.

Maximus nodded. "Take what you need,
Dash."

"Dash?" I said with a laugh. "What kind of
name is that?"

Dash rolled his eyes and walked away. When he
returned, he held something in his fleshy hands. Before I could
make another smart remark, he jammed a ball gag in my mouth and
strapped it around my head. I bit down, thinking I'd crush it with
my preternatural strength, but it was apparently made of diamond
fiber because I nearly broke a tooth.

"Don't be too rough on the poor chap," the
man with the monocle said. "I wouldn't want to spoil him with too
much stress. Cortisone levels and all that rubbish, you know."

"Would you like a taste, Master?" Maximus
said.

The other man raised an eyebrow and looked at
me. "He looks a bit unwashed."

Master?
The word caught me off guard.
I'd never heard Maximus defer to anyone. Could this be the mystery
vampire helping him turn people?

Dash came around to my neck and squeezed hand
sanitizer from a bottle. I felt the cold gel as he rubbed it
against my neck. "There you go, sir. All clean."