Vamps (14 page)

“I didn't mean it like that, Exo.”

“That's okay.” Xander sighed as he returned to his work on the potion. “I'm used to it. Jules is a babe magnet and I'm a babe
anti
-magnet. I know it, you know it, and the whole world knows it.”

“You shouldn't talk that way about yourself,” Cally chided, placing her hand on his arm.

Xander paused to flash her a sad smile. “You're a very sweet girl, Cally, but there's no point in deluding myself. The Orlocks might be one of the oldest, richest, and most powerful families in the world—but if there's one thing we're
not
, it's easy on the eyes. Hell, most of us can barely pass for human. I know that I'll never be handsome, and I've come to accept that. I'm comfortable with myself, which is more than a lot of people—vampires included—can say. Now watch out; when I add the final ingredient to the potion, it's gonna fizz like Diet Coke and Mentos.”

Xander picked up an unmarked vial and tapped a small measure of powder into the bubbling beaker. The mixture began to foam wildly while changing every color of the spectrum. When it got to lavender, Exo snatched the dripping beaker from the burner, poured out the liquid into a glass, and handed it to Bette.

“Drink it quickly, before it stops bubbling.”

Bette sniffed the mixture apprehensively with her upturned bat's nose. “It smells like unwashed gym socks.”

“I didn't say it would smell good,” Xander replied testily. “I just said it would
work
.”

Summoning her courage, Bette closed her eyes and knocked back the contents of the beaker in one
gulp. “Ugh! It tastes even nastier than it smells!” she said with a grimace as she wiped the residue from her mouth.

“I didn't say anything about it tasting good, either,” Xander reminded her. “How do you feel?”

“Okay, I guess,” Bette said as the fur receded from her face and her features returned to their former appearance. “It's kind of weird, though. It's like someone's massaging my face from the inside out.”

“I can't believe it!” Cally gasped. “It really worked!”

“Of course it did,” Xander said, a hint of pride in his voice. “But you two need to get out of here. The midnight meal will be over any minute now. That means the halls are gonna be full of students and faculty headed back to their classrooms.”

“Thank you, Exo,” Bette said sincerely. “I won't forget what you did for me. C'mon, Cally—let's go!”

As Cally moved to follow her schoolmate out the door, she suddenly turned back and planted a quick kiss on the side of Xander's cheek. “Thanks for everything, Exo,” she whispered in his pointed ear. “You're a great guy, you know that?”

Xander stood there, his mouth hanging open like a fish, one hand cupped over his kissed cheek as if it had just been slapped as he watched Cally hurry out the door and down the hall.

“Orlock, you're such a spod,” he groaned.

 

Jules de Laval stood in the students' second-floor lavatory, staring down into the sink while he washed his hands. Exo was right about what he needed to do. Then again, Xander had always been the smart one in the family.

If he wanted to get Lilith back to her old self, he needed to keep her mind off the New Blood girl. But how? He remembered what Exo had said about Aunt Juliana's fashion magazines. His own mother had several subscriptions as well, which got him thinking.

Maybe he would place a call between classes and get one of the servants to look through his mother's magazines and find something romantic for him to do. He was deciding to make that his plan of action for the night when he stepped out of the restroom and instantly collided with someone running down the hall.

Jules staggered backward and was about to curse whoever it was for being a clumsy bastard when he realized he was staring not at a fellow Ruthven's student but at a girl.

He stood there in surprise, not simply because Bathory Academy students were forbidden inside Ruthven's, but because the girl standing before him was the New Blood from the park, up close and beautiful.

With her glittering green eyes, moonflower-white skin, and short, strangely cut hair, the girl standing before him was the exact opposite of Lilith and all the
other pampered Old Blood girls he had ever known. The red terry-cloth gym suit fit her in all the right places, hugging her boobs and her taut, toned ass, showing off her long, well-shaped legs.

Jules looked past the beauty standing before him and saw, farther down the corridor, Bette Maledetto, dressed in full Bathory uniform. She was leaning out of the elevator, motioning to the New Blood as she kept the doors of the car from closing.

“What in the name of the Founders—?” he managed to sputter.

The girl in the gym suit lifted a finger to her lips. “Please don't say anything!” she pleaded. “If we get in trouble, your cousin does too!”

“How did you get in here? And how do you know who my cousin is?”

“Because Exo smuggled us into the alchemy lab. We were hiding in there when you came to get your homework,” she explained.

“I
knew
Exo was up to something!” Jules said. “I just didn't think it involved, you know,
girls
.”

Jules looked around to make sure no one else was in the hall before grabbing the girl's hand. His heart began to beat faster as he felt her smooth skin beneath his fingers.

“Tell Bette to follow us,” he whispered. “Using the elevator to get back to the grotto is too dangerous now. There's an old stairway on this floor that leads
to where you need to go. Not many students know about it, and it's rarely used anymore. It should be safe.”

Cally turned and waved for Bette to hurry. Jules led them down a hallway off the main corridor to a small wooden door fitted with a brass handle. The door creaked open easily, revealing a set of tightly winding stairs that led downward into darkness.

“Thank you for helping us.” Cally smiled. “I think we can take it from here.”

Jules shook his head. “No, it's safer if I go with you,” he said. “I can run interference if someone's down there.”

As Cally and Bette stepped inside the stairway after him, the door closed behind them on its own. They followed the stairs down, pushing their way through cobwebs. After a few minutes they arrived at another narrow door.

“This opens onto a section of the grotto roughly a couple of hundred yards from the Ruthven's entrance tunnel,” Jules explained. “I'll go first to make sure the coast is clear.”

He stepped out and looked around for signs of students or faculty but saw none. He reopened the door and signaled for the girls to join him.

“Once again, thank you for your help,” the girl in the gym suit said, teasing him with a smile. “It was very gallant of you.”

“It was nothing, Miss…?” he said, responding to her flirting tone.

“Cally.”

Jules stepped forward and took Cally's hands in his, bowing slightly at the waist as his lips brushed lightly against the curve of her fingers. “
Enchanté
, Cally.” Jules smiled.

“The pleasure is mutual, monsieur,” she replied, affecting an exaggerated curtsy.

Delighted with their play, Jules and Cally started laughing, but when they heard Bette giggle, Cally blushed. “We better be going,” she said, letting go of his hands.

“Au revoir.”
Jules smiled.

Jules paused to watch the girls dash back to their side of the grotto. He told himself he was only making sure they got back safely, but in reality he just wanted to admire Cally's butt.

W
hen Bathory Academy was originally founded, there was no such thing as a school cafeteria. But as Victor Todd's blood-banking scheme grew more and more accepted by the population, that eventually changed. Now there was a large room set aside for the students and faculty to take their meals, filled with tables and chairs straight out of Ikea. At the back of the cafeteria was a large, triple-door blood bank refrigerator set into the wall.

As Lilith stepped to the head of the line, she had an unobstructed view of the racks of stainless steel drawers stocked with plastic bags full of human blood.

The undead servant in cafeteria whites smiled in greeting and asked, “What will it be tonight, dearie?”

“I think I still have some of my private stock banked on reserve,” Lilith replied.

“Indeed you do, Miss Todd.” The lunch lady opened one of the doors of the refrigerator and reached inside a drawer, withdrawing a blood bag, which she then placed on a plastic cafeteria tray. On the front of the bag was a label marked with a large
AB-
along with the HemoGlobe corporate logo: a single drop of bright red blood superimposed over a world silhouetted in white.

Lilith took her tray and sat down at the nearest available table. Within a minute or two all her friends had joined her. After all, no matter where she sat, it was the popular table.

“Have you seen Annabelle Usher tonight?” Carmen asked as she sat down opposite Lilith, the corner of her mouth pulled into a smirk. She nodded in the direction of a short, pale girl with a round face and dark hair cut in a blunt bob, with what looked like a pair of upside-down
U
s drawn in place of eyebrows. “She's such an utter spod! And look at how dingy her clothes are—doesn't she have more than one skirt and blouse to wear to school?”

Lilith shook her head in disgust. “If a legacy student's family is so hard up they can't provide a dresser for their child, she has no business attending Bathory.” She paused and looked around the room. “Speaking of which, where's the newbie?”

“You mean Cally?” Bianca Mortimer asked, missing the point as usual. “I haven't seen her since flight class.
Why? Do you want to talk to her?”

“Did I mention she had the gall to try and lay some pathetic ‘why can't we all just get along' speech on me last night? I told her to kiss my ass.”

“Lilith's right,” Carmen agreed. “We've got enough half-bloods and legacies ruining things for the rest of us here—we don't need a New Blood making things worse.”

“I think you're making a mistake,” Melinda said suddenly.

The chatter at the table fell abruptly quiet as the other girls turned to stare at Lilith, who was glaring at Melinda like an angry eagle. When she finally spoke, her voice was surprisingly calm.

“What was that?”

“I just think maybe you shouldn't be in such a hurry to make an enemy out of her, that's all,” Melinda replied cautiously. “She's not some mousy little spod. You've seen what she can do.”

“Are you saying I should be
scared
of her?” Lilith asked, her eyes narrowing into slits.

“No, of course not, Lili,” Melinda replied with a nervous laugh.

“I'm not surprised you're taking up for that slut, Melly,” Lilith said, venom dripping from every word. “Everyone knows how cozy you are with the Maledetto twins. I guess you want to add the newbie to your collection of lonely girls.”

“What are you trying to get at, Lilith?” Melinda growled.

“Oh, come off it, Melly!” Lilith sneered. “Of all the girls at this table, you're the only one who's never had a boyfriend. I wonder why, hmmm? You're too taken by the newbie to see the truth. There's something wrong about her,
seriously
wrong. I knew it from the first moment I saw her! Looking at her sets my fangs on edge.”

“You're just jealous,” Melinda shot back.

“Jealous?”
Lilith barked a humorless laugh. “What's there to be jealous of? She's a weak-blooded loser who can't even shapeshift!”

“She put down the Van Helsing who killed Tanith single-handed,” Melinda replied. “That's more than any of us have ever done—including you. I wouldn't call her a weak-blooded loser.”

The other girls seated at the table took a collective breath in anticipation of the explosion they knew was sure to follow. Instead Lilith pushed back her chair and, without saying another word, got up from the table and stalked out.

Carmen turned and glowered at Melinda. “Have you gone psycho, talking to her like that?” she snapped. “And for what? To get in the pants of some New Blood skank?”

“You really don't get it, do you?” Melinda asked, shaking her head in disbelief at her friend's utter
cluelessness. “If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and finish having lunch with one of my friends.” With that Melinda picked up her tray and moved over to join Bella Maledetto, who was sitting by herself, looking lost and confused without her sister.

 

Lilith sat on an outcropping fifty feet above the floor of the grotto, her arms wrapped about her legs, her chin resting on her knees as she stared blankly into the darkness that surrounded her. She had to get away from the others, and this was the one place she knew no one would ever think to look for her.

Up to this point in her life, her physical beauty, her father's wealth, and her family's status had provided her with plenty of friends. Indeed, until now she had never had to work at making friends, much less keeping them.

“Friends.” That was a laugh. Melinda, Carmen, and the others were like the tiny fish that swim alongside great whites, nibbling at the crumbs that fall from their jaws. Still, it was important to have the right kind of friends if she wanted to remain popular. It wouldn't do to have her pilot fish swimming after another shark.

How would she know she was beautiful, popular, and desirable if she didn't have a circle of fawning friends eager to pay attention to her and tell her how special she was? Without their adulation, admiration,
fear, and respect, how could she be sure she even existed at all?

In less than a week, she had lost two friends, all because of Cally Monture. Tanith was dead because of the New Blood's showboating, and now Melinda was openly siding with the whore, defying her in front of the others. She should have bitch-slapped the little traitor until her ears rang. But what good would it have done? The real threat was Cally, not Melinda.

The very thought of the New Blood made Lilith's guts writhe like snakes on a bonfire. It aggravated her that the others didn't sense the
wrongness
in Cally. Although Carmen and a couple of the others were quick to rag on the newbie, Lilith knew it was out of a desire to get on her good side, not because they recognized Cally for what she was: a threat. A threat to
her
, in particular.

There was the sound of voices from the grotto floor below, distracting Lilith from her thoughts. She looked down and saw three figures standing on the Ruthven side of the cavern. One was a male dressed in a Ruthven's uniform while the other two were female, one in a Bathory Academy uniform, the other in a gym suit.

As Lilith watched, the male stepped forward, bowed, and kissed the hands of the girl in the gym suit. With a surge of alarm, Lilith recognized the boy as Jules and the girls as none other than Cally Monture and Bette Maledetto.

How
dare
she speak to him! Jules was
hers
! Hers and no one else's!

Anger as hot as fresh-poured steel shot through her entire body, spreading like a flood of foul, black, bubbling tar. As she watched the New Blood slut curtsy before her beloved, it was all Lilith could do to keep from swooping down and clawing the filthy little whore's eyes out of her head. Her whole body vibrated with suppressed fury, like a bowstring pulled to its limit, as Cally and Bette ran back across the grotto like a pair of mice sprinting through an open meadow. It would be so easy to shapeshift into her winged form and drive her talons deep into the New Blood's back. As satisfying as the sound of Cally's spine snapping would be, Lilith knew it would pale in comparison to the glory of her screams as she slowly tore the flesh from her body with nothing but tooth and claw.

Lilith looked at her hands and saw they were shaking so badly they seemed in danger of falling off her wrists. Doing her best to control her trembling fingers, she reached inside the pocket of her blazer and removed her tortoiseshell compact.

All she needed was some reassurance, that was all. Just a little something to help her regain control so she could go back to her classmates and smile and pretend that everything was just fine while she plotted out how to get Cally alone so she could kill her.

She popped open the lid, expecting to be rewarded
as before by the sight of her lovely face shining back at her in all its glory. Instead what greeted her was a monster with blood-red eyes and slavering fangs.

Shocked by the sight of her hate-filled face, Lilith threw the offending mirror away. The compact tumbled end over end before finally smashing to pieces on the stones below.

The mirror was destroyed, but the fiend inside it was still very much alive.