Tainted Blood (32 page)

Next, I sent Felix a message and told him that I needed to talk to him. That it was important and he responded telling me that he would come by that evening. I told him I was going to an extra
myth
class, and he said he’d meet him afterward. I left it at that, figuring he could find me whenever he needed.

I ate a chocolate
Pop-Tart
for dinner before getting ready to head back to the school for my extra session of the paranormal class. Just as I was digging my purse out of my backpack, there was a heavy knock at the door. I assumed, like the idiot I had become, that it was Felix, and again, like an idiot, I opened the door without knowing who was on the other side.

Ashton, with all of his typical bravado, was standing on my welcome mat as if he belonged there, and I wondered what happened to my damn round-the-clock security.

I put my foot behind the door and closed it part way in the hopes that if he tried to push his way in I would have a fighting chance to fend him off.

“You left this,” he said, handing over a notebook that he claimed I’d left on the table in class. I didn’t even recall taking it out of my bag. I hesitantly took back my notebook and mentally cursed myself for leaving my backpack unattended and then mentally cursed Carter for not keeping an eye on it in my absence.

“Thanks,” I told him as I tried to close the door.

“Wait,” he said, taking a step closer, and like the regular ol’ idiot that I was, I waited. “I want to say that I’m sorry about everything and if you ever need anything, anything at all, just let me know.” He flashed me what he thought was a sincere smile but all I could think, other than I should probably have someone holding my hands at all times to keep me away from this moron and safe from my new found idiocy, was that he must have bathed in a vat of cologne before he came over. He smelled so strong that it made my eyes water and actually gagged me.

Then I did probably the smartest thing I’d done all day: I said, “Yeah, okay.” Then I quickly closed the door and locked it.

Had he seriously been trying to have a heart-to-heart with me? I shook my head and texted Felix again. He called me, and I told him about Ashton stopping by, and I needed to talk to him about Oliver. He told me that Ashton wasn’t a threat. “I’ve got someone on him twenty-four-seven. If he tries anything they’ll be there in a heartbeat. About that other thing, it’s going to have to wait until later tonight, okay? I’ve got someone on that, too. I’ll explain later.” He ended the call and I found myself feeling rather perplexed and distraught. If Felix had someone on the “thing” with Oliver that only confirmed that there was in fact something wrong.

I could’ve sat there and dwelled on it all night until Felix finally had time for me, but instead I forced myself out the door and headed to the school.

Amber met me in the English class and she walked me back to the little gray classroom where Mr. Morgan sat behind the desk and then she left. It was just Mr. Morgan and me and it was quiet. For a while I thought maybe he didn’t even know I was there, but then, while I was engrossed in a section on how vampires are able to track their mates and family members, he spoke to me.

“Everything okay between you and Mr. Knight, Miss Alexander?” I set the book down on my desk and focused my attention on him. His eyes lifted from whatever he’d been working on at his desk.

“Things are fine,” I lied.

“They didn’t look fine,” he challenged and I could see how this could go on all night.

Thankfully Carter arrived as Mr. Morgan and I were staring each other down. Amber seemed to sense the tension and suggested Professor Morgan have himself a break. She took a seat behind the desk and he left the room.

“Is everything alright, Delaney?” Professor Amber asked and I nodded, fixing a fake smile on my lips. I was pretty sure she didn’t buy it, but she didn’t pry and I was thankful.

Carter gathered his books and notebook and took his place beside me. He had come straight from work. He’d gotten a ride from one of the other busboys and he smelled like soap and grease.

We both became overly absorbed in the information on vampires, sharing interesting facts and information with each other as we came across them. Professor Morgan returned a while later but Amber stayed. She busied herself with files, papers, and stray books. I was pretty sure she was staying for my benefit and I wondered if it was at Felix’s request. Then I wondered if they even communicated. I’d never seen them together…

Sometime later, our allotted time was up and we had to put our things away and head home. Amber escorted us back out to the main classroom and wished us a good night. She excused herself and headed down the opposite corridor.

“I think she lives down that hallway,” Carter told me quietly as we made our way up the stadium steps of Professor McBaldy’s classroom.

“Are you serious?” I questioned.

He nodded. “I overheard Felix and Oliver saying something about it. I don’t think she leaves the campus very often.”

This was some interesting information and I planned to find out if it were true. I wanted to ask Carter what he knew about Amber, and I wondered if he knew anything about her and Felix. If so, what? But I knew I shouldn’t talk about them with anyone except Oliver, and I figured he’d be pretty upset with me if I spoke to Carter about what he’d recently told me.

Every last thought of Amber and Felix left my mind when we reached my car and discovered one of my tires was flat.

“It looks like someone slashed it, Lane,” Carter said as he crouched down and examined the tire.

Complete terror ripped through me as I spotted the same car from the night out at the lake, the gold one with the mismatched front fender. It was across the parking lot.

Carter bounced to his feet. “What is it, Laney?” He followed my stare and I told him that it was the car that Oliver and I had seen leaving the lake. He grasped my arm and my attention returned to him. “Laney, we need to get out of here. Let’s head back to the classroom and see if Amber or Morgan are still there.” I nodded but it was too late. They snuck up on us.

“You’re not the right vamp,” I heard a rough male voice say. We spun around to find two burly men coming at us. “But you’ll do,” he said with a partially toothless grin. He lumbered toward us, swinging a crowbar I’d seen them with the other night.

Carter shoved me out of the way and took a swing at the man. He caught the guy in the side of the head but he wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way of the next swing of the crowbar. Carter ducked and raised his arm to protect himself and I heard the sound of bone and iron colliding. Carter cried out in pain and dropped to a knee. I dove into my car searching for something to use as a weapon when the other guy grabbed me around the waist and tossed me out onto the asphalt.

“What the fuck are you doing you stupid vamp!” He might’ve called me a tramp, but I wasn’t sure.

I heard Carter cry out in pain again and saw the other guy swing the crowbar. I screamed for help just as I saw two figures drop out of a tree in the distance. The figures rushed toward us and really hoped they were vampires, friendly ones, and thankfully they were.

The vampires were on the hillbillies in a moment, and they had them pinned, face down on the asphalt. That’s when it hit me that I’d seen those two men before. That drunken night with Carter. They were the same two men who had attacked us. The two that Felix and Oliver had saved us from that night after we’d left the bar.
Carter.
I rushed around the car to him. He was in the fetal position cradling his arm.

“Carter, are you ok?” I asked anxiously.

“I think my arm is broken,” he groaned.

I fumbled for my phone and called Felix, frantically rattling off what had just happened. He told me to have the vampires bring us to the hospital and he would meet us there.

“Miss Alexander,” I heard one of the vampires say. I looked up to find that Marvexo, the joker-faced guy who had stayed outside to keep watch the night Carter and I had gone out to Lilly’s, was standing over me. “We need to get your friend to the hospital right quick. If that boy has a vampire line his arm will try to heal and it might heal incorrectly.” I nodded, trying to process his words.

“Felix said he would meet us at the hospital,” I muttered, and Marvexo helped Carter up off of the ground.

Carter was worse off than he’d led on. That dirtbag had hit him several times with the crowbar and there was blood, lots of it, but I didn’t know where it was coming from yet.

A coven issued SUV pulled into the parking lot and two more vampires joined us. A guy and a girl. I didn’t pay them much attention; I was too busy climbing into the backseat of their SUV with Carter and holding my sweatshirt to the side of his head where there was a pretty deep gash. His hair was saturated with blood and was undoubtedly going to need stitches.

The two vampires hopped back into the car and drove us to the old theater. Carter finally opened his eyes when I began to question the two vamps on why they’d taken us to a run-down theater building. The girl who sat in the passenger seat turned toward us. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and had jagged, red and black dyed, shoulder-length hair which framed her pale face. She explained that that the theater was a vampire hospital.

“Felix told us to pick you both up and bring you here,” she told us with a reassuring smile on her dark painted lips.

My car door swung open and I jumped, stifling a yelp, as Felix ducked his head and looked inside the vehicle at us. “Please, hurry,” he told us, so we scooched out of the car and Felix ushered us through the boarded front doors of the old theater building.

Another pair of vampires closed the doors as we stepped inside. They chained the handles together and then took their places as guards as we followed Felix down ratty, red and black patterned carpeted floors,
past
the ticket stand, the concessions, and a restroom on either side of the hallway. He took a sharp turn and led us into one of the theaters. The door swung closed behind us and I heard it lock into place. We followed Felix down the aisle and behind the screen where we found the waiting area of the vampire hospital.

It was bright and white and set up like any other hospital. I suddenly realized that the vampires had turned the old strip mall, the one that the old theater sat in the center of, into their own hospital.

Felix led us down another hall and to an examining room. I took a seat against the wall while Carter climbed up onto the hospital table, the paper crinkling under him as he sat.

Carter winced as Felix examined his arm and prodded at his bleeding scalp. “I don’t think anything is actually broken but I’d like to take an x-ray.” He turned to me from the little roller stool that he sat upon. “Wait here while I take Carter for an x-ray.” There was an implied, “Don’t go snooping around.” I nodded in response and stayed glued to my seat while they were gone.

In the end, Carter needed several stitches on his head, and it turned out that his arm was not broken but it did have a hairline fracture in the radius of his left arm. I was impressed that I knew what Felix was talking about. Okay, I kind of knew.

After giving Carter something for the pain, stitching his head, wrapping his arm, and fixing him up with a dark blue sling, Felix handed me a bottle of pain killers and took us home. We left the theater/hospital from a different door that led us down a freshly paved walkway to an underground parking structure. It was dark and Felix’s heavily tinted windows made it even darker but I was pretty sure there was some sort of gate that had to be opened for us to exit once we came out of the parking structure, but I really couldn’t tell.

“Delaney,” Felix said in a tone he may have considered quiet but it really wasn’t, not with a voice like that. I turned my attention to him from the front seat as we rode home. “About Oliver,” he continued and my heart rate quickened. “I am working on it,” he told me; the dash lights caused an eerie glow on his round, pale face as he turned to me while we sat at a stop light. “There is something going on with him, but I am not certain if it is something we need to concern ourselves with.”

“Why wouldn’t we be concerned?”

The light turned green and Felix continued to drive his large, black SUV toward the apartments. “This is a difficult time of year for Oliver.” I saw his sky blue eyes shift my way for a moment. The anniversary of his sister’s death was quickly approaching and it was also the anniversary of his and Oscar’s turning. I knew this, and it was constantly in the back of my mind, but it didn’t justify the Avery thing, or his recent behavior. But I wasn’t about to argue about it with Felix. Not right then. It had been a long day and I really just wanted to go to bed.

Carter had fallen asleep about two minutes into our ride and he was seriously loopy when we woke him to take him upstairs. Felix ended up throwing him over his should like a potato sack and followed me up the steps and to our apartment. Carter muttered something like, “Get along little doggy,” as we climbed the steps, we laughed. And when Felix set him down on the couch I swear he murmured, “Yee-haw.” I couldn’t help laughing.

Felix grinned at my laughter and I loved how it softened him, making him look less intimidating when he smiled. To my surprise he pulled me into his giant arms and engulfed me in a hug.

“I have met few who are as strong as you, dear Delaney. Do not let your pain consume you, fight for your losses, do not let them fight you.” He held me at an arm’s length, dipped his head so his sparkling, sky blue eyes met mine. “I am very proud of you and you should be proud of yourself.” Then he kissed the top of my head and left without another word or explanation as to what he was talking about. He just left me there with a bottle of pain killers for my loopy friend and, well, riddles it would seem.