Rival (13 page)

Strange
bad
, because someone else’s pain got
me here, and my mission for the last eighty years or so has been to
improve the lives of the kids passing through E.W. House. I can’t
help feeling a niggle of guilt that I’m benefiting from one of the
teens’ situations.

“
Wells! Yo, Maggie!” A
voice calls out my nom de plume above the pounding bass and
chattering couples surrounding me. Even after five years as Maggie,
and ten as Peg before that—I always choose variations of my given
name—I still listen for the name I was born with.
Margaret.

In the patterned light from the disco
ball—one of the dorm moms’ additions to the gym-turned-dance-club
décor—I spot Candy Brown rushing toward me. The fourteen-year-old
is one of my protégés, one of my favorites out of this crop of
girls. She’s cute and sweet and despite her past she has a real
chance at giving herself a normal life if she can keep on path she
doesn’t know I’ve mapped out for her. So far, she has.

“
What’s up?” I ask. In the
back of my mind I can’t forget
he
is coming back to claim the next slow
dance.

“
There’s something wrong
with Janet,” the younger girl gasps, clearly having run straight to
me with this problem. “She’s in the bathroom throwing up and
crying.”

“
I’ll handle it,” says a
familiar voice from behind us. My best friend and the resident
witch at E.W. House, Hannah Morgan, joins Candy and me and gives
the kid a reassuring smile, and it’s impossible to doubt the peace
in her soft brown eyes. She
will
handle things.

“
It’s my turn
anyway.”
And You-know-who is looking for
you, Mags. Can’t keep his eyes off you tonight, hmm?
Her light touch on my forearm fades and so does
her voice in my head. Telepathy is just one of Hannah’s
talents.

I mouth a “thank you” to her as she
follows Candy away. And then I can’t help myself—I turn to look for
him.

The heat and pulsing blood of this many
bodies should be making me crazy. Bloodlust can be a tricky enemy,
after all. But I’ve never been a normal vampire. Through all the
rapid heartbeats on the dance floor I zero in on the one I can’t
seem to ignore, no matter how hard I try.

Shane Campton.

My eyes track to the
guy-who’s-not-my-date-but-I-really-wish-he-was, and I glimpse his
stylishly-mussed chestnut hair across the dance floor. Our eyes
connect, his sparkling blue to my green.

Every time. Every time he looks at me I
feel something. Like alive. How does he do that?

I raise my glass to him. But he doesn’t
smile or wave, like I expect. He freezes and a look of horror
crosses his face, but before I can tell what’s happening, someone
dances between us and I lose sight of him.

At that same instant, a strong hand
grips my throat from behind and something pierces my side just
beneath my ribcage. Warm, sticky blood seeps down the side of my
new, flirty dress.

“
Hiya,” growls a deep
voice.

I don’t recognize it, but I know the
scent, and it means trouble.

Vampires. Here?

I struggle against the massive arms
pinning me in place, but I can’t move. My only thought is getting
my E.W. kids out of here before they get hurt.

Across the room, gunshots erupt and
another voice yells above the pulsing music for everyone to exit
the building. Relief speeds my heart while everything around me
slows. They aren’t here for my kids.

Only able to move my eyes, I scan the
room and count six other vamps with weapons around the dance floor.
Knives, guns, baseball bats.

All of this for me? Why?

Amazingly, the kids clear out. Someone
shuts off the music and the silence is eerie in contrast to the
noise from just moments ago.

My eyes fly to a familiar form standing
in front of the outer doors, as if to keep the vamps away from the
kids who have just left. My heart stutters.

Shane. What is he
doing
? As I watch, he
pulls a wicked-looking silver blade from his boot.

What?

Now is not the time to play
hero! Not for a
human
facing
vampires
. He doesn’t stand a chance.

I glare at him, trying to tell him with
my eyes to get the heck out of here, but he stays.

Sizing up the vamps in Shane’s
vicinity, I try to gauge how much time there is before I absolutely
have to be over there. The vamps are large and muscled, but don’t
look particularly intelligent. That’s an advantage, but
seven-to-one isn’t going to be easy.

I don’t even want to think about what
Shane will think when he sees the real me. But the other choice is
letting him die and I can’t do that.

The knife in my side twists. Apparently
the goon behind me wants a show. I play along, yelping, pretending
to be in pain. It hurts, but it’s a flesh wound, and I’m still
trying to figure a way out of this without getting Shane
killed.

To my horror, it seems Shane intends to
play along too. He steps in our direction, but he’s immediately
intercepted by two of the meatheads, although they don’t touch him.
Interesting.

“
Did you really think you
could gallivant around with someone like
him
, and the rest of us wouldn’t
notice?” the voice behind me screams.

“
What’re you talking
about?”

The hand tightens around my throat,
cutting off my oxygen. “Don’t play dumb with me, cutie. You’re
already making me late for dinner.”

I don’t have to fake the confusion I
feel. I stay out of the way of other vampires, and in exchange they
let me live my peaceful life. That’s how it’s worked for
two-and-a-half years, so why am I being attacked
tonight?

“
Don’t. Know. What. You.
Mean.” I gasp the words, unable to get enough air into my burning
lungs.

“
You’ve been hanging around
with a
Chaser
!”
the vamp screeches. “Surely you didn’t think we would just let that
go?”

A Chaser? No way. Chasers track and
kill vampires. I am a vampire. Therefore, I don’t hang out with
Chasers. Not since the mid-nineteenth century, anyway.

Movement across the dance floor pulls
my attention up, although it’s getting hard to concentrate with my
body begging me to change.

Shane’s in a scuffle with one of the
vamps. He punches the monster in the face, breaking his nose, and
disarms him. A human shouldn’t be able to fight with a
vampire—humans don’t have the skills for something like that.
Unless—

Unless…

He’s a Chaser.

The moment I think it, I can’t deny
it.

Shane Campton, the
guy-who’s-not-my-date-but-I-really-wish-he-was, is a
Chaser.

And I’m a vampire.

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Unholy Alliance
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With thanks to first-readers Haley,
Sara, and Jessica, and extreme gratefulness to my editor, Robin.
Ladies, this book wouldn’t be what it is today without your time
and comments. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LACY YAGER is a pseudonym for Lacy
Williams, who also writes Inspirational romance under that name. As
the oldest of three siblings, Lacy exhibits most of the typical
first-child characteristics and has always loved to boss around her
younger siblings. Now that she's married with two kids and three
dogs, she has plenty of people to play house with!

During high school, Lacy completed the
course WRITING FOR CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS from the Institute of
Children's Literature. After she graduated college, Lacy got
serious about her writing career and joined the American Christian
Fiction Writers. When presented with the opportunity to write
mainstream YA with her younger sister, Lacy couldn't say
no.

Lacy's books have finaled in the RT
Book Reviews Reviewers' Choice Awards (2012, 2013, & 2014), the
Golden Quill and the Booksellers Best Award.