Blood Forever (2 page)

But though I can accept it now, at the time I was plenty pissed off. Just imagine being told
you’re
on your way to being morphed into a vampire—a species that, up until now, you thought was simply a by-product of a dead Victorian author’s perverted imagination—one week before prom! So not part of my five-year normal, everyday plan, let me tell you!

But luckily for me it didn’t stick. The vampire Magnus was able to make good—figuring out a way to reverse the transformation—and just in time, too. And through our journey together, I ended up realizing he wasn’t so bad, under all those fangs. In fact, he was pretty special. And way better than that boring old normal, everyday Jake Wilder of drama club fame.

You gotta understand—while I’m still no fan of bloodsuckers in general, I am a fan of sweet, loyal, protective guys who happen to be former knights in shining armor and now resemble a cross between Ben Barnes and Orlando Bloom. The
harder I tried to resist his charms, the more he melted my heart. Today I can’t imagine life without him by my side.

In any case, you’d think at this point it’d all slide into some sickeningly sweet happily-ever-after, the end, right? But for us, not so much. You see, Rayne, who still wanted to become a vampire more than anything in the world, suddenly found out from our drama teacher, Mr. Teifert (who, in addition to instructing young thespians, also serves as vice president of an organization called Slayer Inc.), that she was destined to become a vampire slayer. Yes, the girl voted most likely to become a vampire was now officially commissioned to kill them for a living. And she couldn’t turn down her destiny either, thanks to a dormant nanovirus the powers-that-be had injected into her bloodstream at birth. Pick another path and
BOOM!
Bye-bye, Rayne.

But don’t worry. Slayer Inc. isn’t as evil as their name makes them out to be. If anything, they’re more like a police force for vampires, voted in more than a hundred years ago to uphold the laws and protect those who followed them, only taking out vamps who broke the rules and became a danger to others. Like Maverick, the first evil vampire Rayne was assigned to slay. He’d planned to take over the coven by creating a deadly virus. My sister, with the help of Blood Coven general Jareth, was able to take him down and save the day. And afterward? She finally got her wish. She became not only a vampire, but Jareth’s blood mate for all eternity. (And still a slayer, too! The girl wears many hats, let me tell you.)

We’ve had a ton of adventures since then. Like when Rayne
had to figure out a way to stop a pack of rampaging werewolf cheerleaders from destroying our hometown. Or when I had to save Magnus from a super sneaky redheaded spy who pretended to be in love with him while spilling coven secrets to her real vampire boyfriend back home. But our biggest adventure of all? Well, it had nothing to do with vampires whatsoever, but rather our parents, who one day broke the news that we weren’t normal, everyday humans at all, but rather fairy princesses. Crazy, huh? And let me tell you, Rayne was so not psyched about the glittery pink uniform.

Which brings us to our most current conflict. The one where Magnus and I stopped a fringe group of slayers known as the Alphas from creating an army of vampire-fairy hybrids, using my sister’s blood, and letting them loose on the world. A mission impossible that should have made us heroes in the end. But instead we were cast out of the Vampire Consortium for insubordination. Mostly because we had decided that saving vampire kind was more important than playing by power-hungry House Speaker Pyrus’s rules.

To make a long story (somewhat) short, we were accused of treason by Pyrus and forced into exile. We hid underneath the streets of New York City, in fear of our lives.

Unfortunately we weren’t as safe and sound as we thought we’d be.

Which brings us to where we are today.

Or should I say…
when
.

“
B
ertha…please…don’t!”

Rayne’s desperate cries echo through the dark, dank tunnels of the New York City underground as the slayer throws her to the ground, scrambling on top of her and digging her nails into my twin’s already bleeding flesh. My sister struggles to free herself, but Bertha’s got her pinned between muscular thighs, and this time there’s no easy escape. I watch in horror, frozen in place, as the slayer rips a wooden stake from its holster and raises it high, ready to bring it down on my sister and steal her away from me forever.

Noooo!
I don’t even realize I’ve made the move. But somehow I find myself wrestling Bertha from behind, latching on to her long brown hair and yanking her backward as hard as I can.

“No one stakes my sister, you bitch!” I cry in a voice that
doesn’t even sound like mine. I grab her arm and slam it against a nearby cement support beam over and over, until her hand opens and the stake goes clattering to the ground. All I can taste is blood and I realize I must have bitten my own tongue while taking her down.

In the background, I see Rayne struggling to get up, to regain her balance. But she’s wounded and woozy and I can tell for a fact she’s not ready to jump back into the fray just yet. It’s up to me to be the strong one this time. To save my sister as she has always saved me.

Using all my strength, I drag the slayer away, putting distance between her and my twin. If I can only give Rayne enough time to recover, I’m sure she can finish her off. But time is a luxury we don’t have. And even with my fairy powers, I don’t have the strength to stave off a vampire slayer for long.

Sure enough, with a raging scream, Bertha manages to break free from my grasp, leaving me with nothing more than a handful of nasty hair extensions.

Disgusted, I drop the hair and raise my fists to fight. Bertha grins evilly, my sister forgotten, and makes a deliberate step in my direction. I lunge with all my might, hoping to be able to knock her out somehow. But as I crash into her, she’s like solid rock, and a moment later I feel something burning at my forearm. Did she cut me? I can’t afford to look down. Instead, I dig my thumbs into her neck as hard as I can, a desperate attempt to cut off her air passageways—something I learned in a self-defense class a long time ago.

My sister joins the fight now, wrestling Bertha away from me. I try to watch, but I’m overcome by dizziness. It’s then that I see the knife in the slayer’s hand. The one I realize must be made of iron—a deadly substance to fairies. I dare glance down at my arm and see the cut I already guessed was there. A small one, barely visible to the naked eye, but I know, in my heart, it’s enough. The poison swims through my veins in dancing blue lines and I find myself falling backward onto the subway rails, just as my sister takes out the slayer once and for all, spilling her blood all over the ground.

“Rayne,” I cry, my vision growing spotty.
Oh God. I’m going to die.
I try to reach for my sister, but my arms have become useless and broken. I can vaguely feel Rayne above me, begging me to hold on as she attempts to suck the toxins from my wound. But it’s too late. My body convulses as the poison consumes me and a chill seeps through my bones.

“I’m so cold, Rayne,” I sob as my sister pulls me into her arms, rocking me close as bloody tears stream down her cheeks. “So…cold.”

“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs. But I know, from the hoarse tone of her voice, that she’s lying. It’s not going to be okay. This is it. My final moments. When my eyes close, they won’t open again. My thoughts flash to Magnus and I wonder, fleetingly, if he survived the fight back at the base with the werewolves, realizing I’ll probably never know. The thought hurts worse than the poison.

My beautiful Magnus. My soul mate without a soul. How
can I die without saying good-bye? Without feeling his arms around me one last time. His lips brushing my own, with impossible tenderness. His voice whispering how much he loves me.

But Magnus isn’t here. My sister is.

“Rayne,” I try to say through chattering teeth. My final words—I need to make them count. I need my sister to know how grateful I am to her, for all she’s done for me. For the risks she’s taken to keep me safe. I know her all too well—she’ll blame herself, decide she’s the one responsible for my death, not Bertha. That she could have somehow done more to save me.

But she’s wrong. It’s not her fault. And it’s vital I convince her of this before I take my final breath.

My tongue is thick in my mouth, my brain has gone sluggish, and every word has become the ultimate struggle for release. “You’re the best sister a girl could have,” I manage to say with great effort. “I…love you.”

I want to say more—a thousand things more—but the blackness chooses that moment to sweep in and take me away…forever.

“
S
unny! Rayne! Are you two still in bed? The bus will be here in ten minutes!”

I rub my eyes groggily, confused at what sounds like my mother’s voice, just outside my bedroom door. Something I know is impossible, since she’s off ruling Fairyland and I’m, well, stuck in the land of the dead. The same place I’ve been hanging out ever since that fateful night under the streets of New York City when Bertha the Vampire Slayer decided to go and kill me.

You know, I have to say, I’m still pretty freaking ticked off about that whole thing, by the way. I mean, hello? She’s a vampire slayer. I’m a fairy. Killing me is so not part of her job description. Unfortunately there’s really no way to lodge a
complaint against her with the powers-that-be from down here in Hades, where I’m stuck for eternity.

I pull the covers over my head and close my eyes, trying to go back to sleep. I’m exhausted after spending most of yesterday playing softball with my dad in the Elysian Fields. I know it sounds bad-daughter-ish to say, but I have to admit, I like the fact that he’s dead, too. It’s nice to have family around. I only hope when I’m finally judged, they let me stay living with him in his little white picket fence split-level in the nice neighborhood of Elysian Heights instead of sending me off to someplace like Tartarus, where the really evil people go. (Like, imagine trying to borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbors bin Laden and Gaddafi…)

“Sunny?” The voice sounds again, this time louder. I reluctantly manage to sit up in bed. It’s then that I realize I’m no longer in the cozy little guest bedroom my dad offered to me the day I showed up dead on his doorstep. Instead I somehow appear to be back in my old bedroom in Oakridge, Massachusetts, where we used to live before the fairies came after us and we fled to Vegas. My familiar posters hang on the wall and the patchwork quilt my grandmother made me sits folded at the end of my bed.

Which is completely impossible, of course, seeing as this bedroom, as it looks now, no longer exists. The fairies burned down the entire house months ago.

Which means…I sigh, flopping down on my bed…I must be having a dream.

A moment later my mother sticks her head through the doorway. She’s wearing some kind of long, colorful hemp skirt and peasant blouse, the kind of outfit she used to favor before taking on her current role of Queen of the Light Court. (Fairy wardrobes require a lot more bedazzling.) It makes me smile. What a lovely dream. My old life, nice and normal, just as it used to be long, long ago.

Mom doesn’t smile back. Instead, she crosses her arms over her chest, a frown etched on her face. “Sunshine McDonald,” she scolds. “Get up this instant. You’re going to be late for school.”

I contemplate telling her I’m going to skip—after all, dream attendance doesn’t affect one’s GPA. But then I reconsider. If I manage to stay asleep, all the way to school, I might actually get to dream up some of my old friends and field hockey teammates. That would be pretty awesome—even if they are only figments of my own imagination.

“Sure, Mom,” I agree, rolling out of bed, enjoying the feel of soft Victoria’s Secret silk pajamas sliding against my skin. Not many people know this, but when you die, you’re stuck in the clothing you died in until your judgment day. (Yet another reason it’s important to wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident.) The day I died, I’d made an unfortunate wardrobe decision of an itchy wool sweater that I’ve been regretting ever since.

Mom nods, seemingly satisfied that I’m up for good, then heads out of my room, presumably to go bug my sister. As I
search through my closet for a nonitchy outfit, I hear a sudden scream coming from the next room.

What the—? Afraid the dream might be turning nightmare, I rush out of my room and into my sister’s. Rayne’s got the covers pulled up to her chin and she’s staring at Mom as if she’s some kind of ghost of Christmas past.

“Oh my God, it worked! It really worked!” she starts babbling, over and over again.

“What worked?” I ask curiously. Her gaze sweeps over to me and she bounds out of bed, throwing her arms around me and squeezing me tight. She’s dressed in her favorite Emily the Strange nightgown and I realize she has dirty-blond hair—like she used to before she dyed it last year to differentiate herself from me.

“You’re crushing my ribs,” I point out. In fact, for a dream hug, it really kind of hurts. I attempt to pry her fingers off me, but she clings on tight, as if she hasn’t seen me for years. From the corner of my eye I can see Mom shake her head.

“The bus will be here in less than ten minutes,” she announces. “I would like to see you both be on it.” And with that, she walks out of the room.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod,” Rayne cries, thankfully releasing me from her death hold and bouncing over to her bed. “I can’t believe it. It really happened! He really did it!”

“Who did what?” I ask, starting to get a little annoyed. My dream was much more peaceful before Rayne decided to invade it.

My twin turns to me, her eyes wide. “Don’t you remember?”
she asks. “Oh, please say you remember. At the very least I need you to know what’s going on here. I can’t be the only one.”

I draw in a slow breath. “Remember what, Rayne?”

Rayne purses her lips, as if she doesn’t want to say. Then she pulls me onto the bed and places a hand to my ear. She leans in close. “Hades,” she whispers.