Flutter (13 page)

We made it across the room, where the blue lights
started to fade and a doorway led into the next room, glowing warm
under the dim red lights. Milo waited at the door for us, Bobby
pressed up close to him, his head resting on his shoulder.

Just before we reached them, I heard something
disturbingly familiar. Jack and Milo didn’t seem to notice it,
buried in the sounds of the club, but I froze in my tracks. The
sound was sweet yet fragile, like a tinkling bell… on helium. I
pulled away from Jack, scanning the crowd for bright purple
hair.

The last time we had gone to the vampire club, I had
been introduced to a pair of vampires, Lucian and Violet, who
became intent on capturing me. Peter took care of Lucian, but she
had gotten away. Violet seemed less interested in pursuing me, but
like her boyfriend, she had been a caricature of vampirism. Her
hair had been dyed purple, her eyeliner was thick black, and she
capped her teeth to make them more pronounced fangs.

“What?” Jack asked, watching me search the dance
floor.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. I had been positive
I had heard Violet’s distinct laugh, but I couldn’t see her
anywhere.

I was just about to give up looking when a girl at
the bar caught my attention. Her blond hair hung down her back,
shimmering like silk under the blue lights. She tilted her head
back, laughing at something a drunk guy said to her, and I
shivered. That was Violet’s laugh.

Absently, she looked back over her shoulder, her odd
purple eyes landing on mine, and they flickered with frightened
recognition. She traded in the thick black eyeliner for something
subtler, making her prettier and younger, more innocent. Turning
into a vampire made her look around nineteen or twenty, but
something in her eyes led me to believe she was younger than
that.

“Violet?” I said, but she instantly looked away,
shielding her face with her hair.

“You know her?” Jack was at my side, looking at her
quizzically. He had only met her very briefly when she looked much
different, so he didn’t recognize her.

“I think that’s Violet.” I walked towards her, but
Jack put his hand on my arm.

“Wait, wait. That’s the girl that was stalking you
before? Why are you going to talk to her? Are you gonna…” His face
darkened. “What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know. I wanna talk to her.” I shook my head,
unable to explain myself.

“What’s going on?” Milo asked. He stood in the
doorway, his arm around his boyfriend. He hadn’t seen Violet, and
that was for the best. He would take running into her much worse
than I would.

“I’ll be right back,” I said and hurried over to
Violet before she hid or escaped. Jack was right behind me, but he
didn’t try to stop me.

The drunk guy talking to her was mid-sentence, and
she stood up without explanation. I know I should’ve felt angry.
She had almost gotten me, Milo, and Jane killed, but I wasn’t out
for revenge. I just wanted to talk to her.

“Hey. Violet.” I blocked her path, and she looked at
me with wide eyes. All of her former cockiness was long gone, and
that probably had to do with the death of her boyfriend.

“I don’t know what you want but…” She trailed off,
her eyes flicking from me to Jack. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Neither do I.” I glanced back at Jack to make sure
he wasn’t glaring at her or anything. Jack had such an open face,
it was pretty hard for him to look threatening unless he was really
pissed off.

“What do you want then?” Violet tried to look strong
and angry, but without the confidence behind it, she just looked
like a whiny child.

“I don’t know.” I chewed my lip. “Before, when you
were chasing after me, what did you want?”

“I didn’t want anything with you,” Violet said. “I
mean, at first, I went after you as a joke because you were so
tasty…” She lowered her eyes. “But Lucian, he wouldn’t let it go. I
think he liked the idea of stealing you from another vampire.”

“Well, now he’s gone and she’s a vampire, so that’s
settled then,” Jack interjected with a clumsy smile.

“How old are you?” I asked, ignoring Jack.

“I don’t know why that matters,” Violet said, but she
looked flustered. “I was fourteen when I turned, and that was like
two years ago.

“Look, it wasn’t my idea.” A strand of blond hair
fell into her eyes, and she looked at me, as if daring me to defy
her. “Not going after you, not turning into a vampire. It was all
Lucian. He thought this was all some great big fantasy, and he had
somebody turn him, and then stupidly, I had him turn me.

“
But he’s dead. And I’m over it.
So…” Blinking hard, she tried to keep me from noticing the tears in
her eyes. “Are we through?”

“Yeah. Sure,” I nodded, unable to think of a reason
to keep her talking to me.

Violet brushed past me, disappearing into the dance
floor. Even after everything she had put me through, I felt this
strange sadness for her. To be so powerful and young, and yet so
confused and alone. She had been a dumb kid playing around with Hot
Topic makeup and got in way over her head.

“You okay?” Jack touched my arm.

“Yeah.” I remembered we weren’t here to check up on
my enemies. Jane was here somewhere, probably losing blood as we
spoke. “Sorry. Let’s go.”

“Who was that girl you were talking to?” Milo asked
when reached them, and Bobby craned his neck around to see.

“Nobody. Where’s Jane?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen her yet, but we’ve just been waiting
here.” Milo gave me an irritated look, so I pushed past him into
the adjoining room.

The light above glowed dull red, the kind of lighting
that was most pleasing to vampires’ eyes. This room was smaller
than the last and dressed more like a coffee shop than a club. Soft
couches filled the room, and a small bar in a dark corner served
drinks, but only ones of the type AB variety.

A lot of doors and darkened hallways led out of it,
and while I had never been in one of the rooms, I knew exactly what
they were for. Some vampires required more privacy when they were
with the bloodwhores, while others were camped out on the couch,
drinking openly from their human donors.

With one quick scan of the room, I knew Jane wasn’t
there. Her heart and her scent were almost as familiar to me as
Jack and Milo’s, and they were nowhere in this room. I turned back
to Milo, and he had come to the same conclusion.

“She was here before,” Milo said.

“She was with a guy,” Bobby added.

Jack walked around to look more closely, in case we
missed something. I had taken too long getting ready or staring at
the people outside or randomly talking to Violet. I had been
wasting time when I should’ve been tracking down Jane. I still had
her phone number, but she hadn’t answered my calls since I turned
into a vampire.

“Alice! He finally did it!” a voice purred, and a
vampire got up off the couch and walked over to me. She left a girl
discarded on the couch behind her, a thin trail of blood drying on
her neck, and she moaned softly, reaching out in the empty space
where Olivia had been.

With long black hair past her knees, Olivia had
ageless beauty, but she had been in her forties when she had
turned, which had probably been a very, very long time ago. Her
clothing was entirely tight black leather, and I had never
understood how she was able to move.

While we weren’t exactly old friends, Olivia had been
the vampire who had first rescued me from Lucian and Violet. There
seemed to be a wisdom lurking below her hazy grin, and even though
she had the slow, slurred movements of an aging junkie, she still
had the killer instincts of a vampire.

“What?” I tried to return her smile, but I was too
frustrated over not finding Jane.

“He turned you,” Olivia said, and she reached out,
caressing my cheeks. Her eyes were glazed, but her voice was low
and surprisingly seductive. “And what an exquisite creature you
are.”

“Thanks,” I replied uncertainly, and Jack appeared at
my side.

“Maybe you can help.” Milo walked over to us. Bobby
trailed after him, and Olivia looked at him with disdain. Her
interest apparently didn’t go past human girls, or probably girls
in general. “We’re looking for a girl, a friend of Alice’s.”

“She’s a bloodwhore, we think,” I said. “She’s tall
and thin, and very pretty, like a model. Her hair is short and
dark, and she’s always dressed to the nines. Her name is Jane, and
I think she’s in trouble.”

“If she’s the girl I’m thinking of,
she definitely
is
in trouble,” Olivia nodded gravely. She licked her lip and
pointed down the hall. “She’s been coming around here a lot more
than any one person should, and she went down that hall an hour ago
with a vampire.”

“Thank you,” I smiled and turned down the hall.

The hall was pitch black, but I saw the outlines of
the doors. I smelled the blood and heard the erratic heartbeats and
happy moans, and I had to concentrate on it without thinking about
it. I had to find Jane without giving into my own thirst.

Jack was a few steps ahead of me listening for her.
Bobby complained about being unable to see anything behind us, and
Milo tried to reassure him.

Before I could even smell her, I heard her overly
sultry moan. Unfortunately, in my years of friendship with her, I
had heard it far more than I had ever cared to. Without thinking, I
threw open the door, and a figure flew at me.

- 14 –

I didn’t have a chance to react, and Jack was already
in front of me, shielding me from the vampire coming at my
throat.

Jack threw him back, slamming him against the wall
and holding him there while he gnashed his teeth. Jack managed to
hold him in place, but Milo rushed past me to help him restrain the
seriously pissed off vampire.

Jane was lying on a bed stained dark with blood. She
wore some tiny piece of clothing that passed for a dress, revealing
her pale skin. While she had always been thin, her arms were bony
and her face was gaunt. Her heartbeat was almost nonexistent.

The room was filled with the scent of her fresh
blood, and it was impossible to ignore. She moaned and stirred in
the bed, and somehow that let my urge to protect her override my
urge to eat her.

“Jane!” I ran to her, leaving Milo and Jack to
contend with the thrashing vampire on the wall.

I got on the bed, ignoring how disgusting and
tantalizing the blood stained mattress was, and I slapped her
cheek. I had meant for it to be gentle, but the panic mixed with my
unmastered strength made me slap her a little hard, not that she
even noticed or woke up.

“Is everyone okay? What’s going on?” Bobby asked. He
couldn’t see anything in the darkness, and he only heard the sound
of struggling.

“Everything’s under control!” Milo shouted as the
vampire tried to bite his throat.

“What the hell is going on?” the vampire growled, and
when he saw me tending to Jane, he stopped fighting. “You’re after
the whore?” We interrupted him in the middle of feeding, the time
when vampires are most animalistic, and he seemed to be coming down
from that.

“Her name is Jane!” I snapped, trying futilely to
rouse her. She was completely out, and I knew how impossible blood
loss was to wake up from.

“I know her name!” the vampire shouted. “I want to
know what you want with her!”

“What do you care?” Jack countered, doing his best to
sound tough. It would be comical if he wasn’t trying to hold back a
vampire from slaughtering us.

“Jonathan,” Jane murmured, still mostly asleep.

“No, it’s me, Alice,” I said. She moved her head, and
I turned it towards me, trying to get her to focus on me. “Jane,
wake up. We need to get you out of here.”

“She’s talking about me, you silly twat! I’m
Jonathan!” The vampire pushed against Jack. “Will you let me go?
I’m not gonna fight you! I don’t have to. She’s not gonna go with
you.”

Jack lessened his grip, and when Jonathan didn’t
attack him, Jack took a step back from him. Milo did the same but
more hesitantly. Jonathan smoothed out his shirt and glared at
them.

“Jane, honey, wake up,” I said and shook her.

“No, Jonathan, let me sleep.” Jane swatted at me.

“She’s not going with you,” Jonathan repeated. He
stepped closer to me, and Milo growled and moved in between him and
the bed. “I’m not gonna stop you. What do I care if you take the
whore?”

“I think it might be better if you just shut the hell
up,” Jack said.

“Jane, come on.” I grabbed her shoulders and pulled
her so she was sitting up. Her head lolled back, revealing the open
wounds on her neck. Then she opened her eyes and lifted her head.
“Jane, come on. Let’s go.”

“Alice?” Jane squinted. “What are you doing
here?”

“Taking you with me.” I put my arm around her to pick
her up, but she pushed back at me. She was much weaker than me, but
I didn’t want to force her. “Jane, you’ve gotta come with me.”

“No!
No!
Why would I wanna I go with you?”
Jane pushed away from me so she could lie down on the filthy
mattress. “Get away from me. I’m staying with Jonathan.”

“I told you,” Jonathan said and crossed his arms over
his chest.

His hair was cropped short, almost shaved, and he had
that perpetual unshaven look. He was undeniably foxy, the way all
vampires seemed to be, and I was fairly certain that I had seen him
on a billboard modeling men’s underwear before.

“What are you even doing here?” Jane sounded
incredibly irritated, because I was ruining her buzz. She was awake
now but not entirely alert, and she ran her fingers through her
hair in an offhandedly sexy way. Her reflexes were even
seductive.