The Vampire Book of the Month Club (14 page)

After a few seconds of awkwardly staring at the top of her desk while I inspect her bite marks, Abby mumbles something like, “Heywuzyougonnadowhy?” It starts out sounding vaguely pitiful, like when a kid wakes up in the middle of the night, but by the end she's almost snapping, barely hissing, like she's waking up to who she is, regardless of who I am.

It's not a pretty sound. It's an even worse sight.

Bianca reaches out a hand to stop me, and I jab it with a pencil, the point going all the way into her skin and drawing blood.

Suddenly Abby is on red alert, the earlier torpor gone, her eyes bright and wide as she hisses, licking her lips.

I smack her—hard—on the cheek. “Snap out of it!”

Bianca hisses but not at the blood on her hand. She's hissing in my direction, her fangs just barely restrained enough to stay beneath her lips, her eyes a violent, raging yellow, her claws digging at the surface of her desk one more time.

She starts to stand, and I kick at the top of her desk, tipping it and her onto their sides. There's nothing Bianca hates worse than being embarrassed, let alone toppled.

Abby watches, looking at me with half-open eyes, as if trying to recognize me. Or remember me.

Bianca doesn't struggle long, and the chair is but a minor inconvenience. She snaps to attention and roars, slipping through the desk's arms and legs and desktop like a salamander emerging from a crack in the sidewalk. Once up and out of the desk, she reaches my side in a blink.

She has me by the throat and up against the wall before I know what's happening. My feet are two, maybe three, inches off the ground and kicking against the cinder-block wall as I gasp for air.

The kids clustered in the corner are standing up now, their faces pale and panicked, half of them looking tempted to rush to my side, the other half trying to climb through the wall at their backs. I don't blame them for hanging back; I wish I were that smart!

I kick out with both feet, connecting with Bianca's waist and sending her thick red belt to the floor.

Bianca only presses harder, her face a mask of venom and bliss, her smile sticky across her fangs as they begin to jut, farther and farther, out of her upper jaw.

“Two seconds,” she hisses, licking her lips and eyeing the soft, white meat of my throat. “Two seconds is all it would take me to end you, Nora Falcon!” Her hand presses even tighter against my throat. I swallow harder than I ever have, see the room go faint, then tan, then gray . . . then all is black.

Black, like Bianca's eyes.

Black, like Reece's heart.

Black, like Abby's unwritten—but quite doomed—future.

I
come to in my writing chamber, on a bed of huge satin throw pillows. Candles flicker in every available space, the jumble of black and red décor assaulting my eyes.

I gasp, reaching for my throat, still sore, and cough for probably two minutes straight. Tears run down my face, but there's no way to control them. They gather on my upper lip and get coughed away. Just breathing feels like it should take an act of Congress. What I wouldn't give for a cough drop!

I wonder for a minute if I'm paralyzed, if Bianca made good on her threat and snapped my neck. But no. I can wriggle my toes and feel my butt, which is sore and quite asleep after who knows how long of lying in this room.

The warehouse is empty . . .

No, that's not quite right.

As I lift my tired arms and rub my dry eyes, sounds start to emerge from the darkness just beyond the screens.

Unnatural sounds.

I listen closely and can just make them out: scraping and clattering and then a triumphant squeal.

I look past the open entry between the screens, blink my eyes clear, then blink again. Abby has just snatched a rat—you read that right, a rodent—from under a discarded hard hat, dented and rusty with age, and is sinking her new fangs into its rough, trembling hide.

“Abby!” I shout.

But my best friend's eyes are glazed over in ecstasy, and she's not taking any messages from mere mortals anymore—not when there are living rodents to devour instead.

At her side, Bianca kicks the hard hat away in disappointment. “No fair. Beginner's luck.”

At their feet lie several discarded rat carcasses, all fresh, all quite sucked dry, scattered like crushed beer cans at a tailgate party.

“You guys are sick.” I struggle to my feet. “I hope you both catch vampire rabies and—”

From the chair at my desk Reece urges, “Be still,” in a voice that leaves no room for argument. “You lied to me,” he says calmly, tapping a thick stack of printed pages sitting next to my closed laptop. “You said you'd only written ninety-seven pages. I count over a hundred and twenty-seven here.”

“
You
lied to
me
.” I stand on wobbly legs, glaring at him but pointing toward the opening in the screen with one trembling finger. “You said Abby was quite safe. Look at her now. Is that what
safe
looks like to
you
?”

We both turn our heads to find Abby and Bianca fighting over a fresh rat.

“Ah, but I didn't lie, sweet Nora.” He turns away from my BFF and pierces me with those dark-chocolate eyes. “I wager this is the safest Abby has ever been in her entire life.”

I hate to admit he has a point.

“But why?” I ask, edging closer, not wanting her to hear the desperation, the failure, in my panic-stricken voice. “I've done everything you asked.
Everything
. I'm not just on schedule; I'm ahead of schedule. I'm writing your book, using your word list, in all the right places. Check it. It's all right there in your hands. Look for yourself.”

“Your point?” His tongue slithers across a fang.

“My point, Reece, is that you didn't have to
turn
her.” My voice cracks, the tears fall. “She's nothing to you. She's everything to me. Everything, and now that's all gone.”

“She was becoming . . . a liability,” he explains without sympathy or concern.

“Abby? Little Abby? Vegetarian, pacifist, wimpus extraordinaire Abby? A liability? How?”

“She hated us,” he spits, finally showing some emotion. “She hated Bianca, hated me for turning Bianca. I heard her twice in class talking about vampires. Apropos of nothing, mind you. Just, ‘Blah, blah, blah; by the way, did you know vampires go to school here?' What was I supposed to do? No one believed her, thankfully, but I couldn't risk her saying the right words at the right time to the right person and finding an ally at Nightshade Academy.”

I shake my head, tears flowing freely now. I try to make my voice sound steely as I say, “You shouldn't have done that,” but I fail and whimper instead.

“Really?” he says, suddenly interested. “And why's that?”

And so I play it, the only card I have left, slapping it on the table. “It's done,” I say, shoulders drooping. “I'm out. You lied, so it's over. Forget you. Forget your stupid book. We're done.”

He stands, seeming taller than ever before.

I inch back, away from him, but the room is so small there's nowhere else to go.

He stands erect, his fists clenched, his eyes as black as night, his fangs glistening like diamonds in the flickering candlelight as they threaten to literally erupt from his upper jaw in a spasm of pure rage. “Nora, you try my patience. You really do. Bianca? Abby? My dear, let me assure you, they are just the beginning. Wyatt is next. Do you no longer care about your friend?”

“I care. I just don't believe you anymore. I think the minute I'm through with that book, the moment I type the last word on the last page, you'll kill him, and then you'll kill me, so why bother? You might as well kill us both now, because I'm not typing another single word for you. Ever!”

He smiles now, suspecting it's an empty threat, perhaps even knowing so. “Believe me or don't believe me, but know this. Unless you start writing immediately, I will relish turning Wyatt, drive straight to Nightshade Academy, and run amok. Blood will fill the halls, the classrooms, the very gym. I will turn everyone you've ever known, everyone you've sat next to, in front of, or behind.

“Every teacher you've ever had, your principal, your coach, your counselor, the janitor—they will all be vampires before you can say, ‘I shouldn't have threatened Reece.' Hundreds will lose their lives, all because of your stubbornness. Generations will be lost, futures ruined, all because you choose to grow petty and tiresome.”

He moves so close, so fast, I barely have time to flinch. From a few feet away he is suddenly face-to-face with me, so that I can admire every inch of his curving, elaborate fangs, watch them glisten in the firelight as he sneers at me maliciously.

“
Kill
you? Why, I wouldn't dream of it! It will be my undying duty to force you to watch the mayhem you've caused, and every tear you spill will be like nectar to me, dear girl. Your pain will be my ultimate reward, and trust me: your pain will be intense, historic . . .
epic
.”

He takes one step toward the opening of the small room, motioning toward Wyatt's unconscious body in chains.

“Shall I begin, Nora? Shall I get to work . . . or shall you?”

I shiver, dry my tears, and sit.

He smiles, turning ugly with each corner of upturned lip, with each visible tooth. Leaving the room, he hisses over his shoulder, “There is work to do. I suggest you get to it.”

And of course, that's exactly what I do.

I
find the code at exactly 3:19 a.m.

The vampires, all three of them, Abby included, are out in the vacant lot that borders the warehouse, snacking on field mice, gophers, rabbits, raccoons, bobcats, and who knows what else they can scrounge up with their nasty night vision and creepy claws. I can hear them, hissing triumphantly each time they snag another field creature from its burrow.

Abby's voice is particularly grating. I'd expected her to turn gradually, to at least retain some last vestiges of humanity until the bloodlust conquered her completely, but she's worse than the rest. She's like that Catholic schoolgirl who's a goody-goody until her seventeenth birthday, and the first time her folks go away for the weekend, she throws the house party to end all house parties, doing a striptease while singing karaoke, sucking body shots off burly jocks, and out-tramping the tramps.

I know Abby's moods: surly, quiet, thankful, generous, and giddy. She's in a giddy mood now, times 817! She catches a rat, breaks its neck, and starts chowing down. It's like Christmas, New Year's Eve, her birthday, and her last
Zombie Diaries
wrap party all rolled into one.

I don't know which sound disgusts me more: the yelps of the furry victims or the slurping of the inhuman victors.

Meanwhile, I am on page 148, almost there, nearing the finish line, with Scarlet Stain and Count Victus trapped in their third epic battle scene of the book.

My readers typically insist on a minimum of four fight scenes, so I have one to go, but I'm saving it for the big finale.

I'm stuck, as usual, trying to find a place for word #148:
dark
.

It shouldn't be that hard to place: line fourteen, word eight, just as Reece taught me.

Problem is, my brain is fried!

I'm scrolling back through the previous two pages, trying to see how far I'll have to go back to change this day scene into night—I should have read ahead on the list to know in advance before I committed myself to sunshine instead of moonlight—when I notice the two previous words highlighted in yellow for Reece to see:
the
and
in
.

Over the boisterous sounds of garden creature hunting, I think to myself,
Hmm, that's a little odd . . .

So I scroll back even more for the next three words:
kept, be,
and
shall
.

I hear the vampires sacrifice another field creature. I cringe and grab the word list from next to my laptop for a closer look. Using a sharpened pencil from an oversized porcelain cup shaped like a Buddha on the left-hand corner of my desk (that Reece, he thinks of everything), I circle the latest six words:
dark the in kept be shall
.

My eyes, dry and tired from another twelve-hour day of writing, blur, then clear, then blur again. But even with my constant, exhausted, overworked blur-a-vision, I can tell
something
isn't right. These six words, when strung together like this, don't just sound like random words. They sound like a phrase—an odd phrase, one that doesn't make any sense, but a phrase nonetheless.

Is it?

Is Reece trying to talk?

To someone else?

Inside my book?

But how?

And what does it mean?

I look at the words, trying to decipher any kind of recognizable phrase, anything at all, my eyes blurring, and that's when I flash back to when Abby got her wisdom teeth taken out last year.

It was an outpatient procedure at one of the best dentists in Beverly Hills, but since none of our parents were ever around, I had to take Abby there, wait, and then take her home, making sure she got painkiller and antinausea prescriptions on the way. Not that I'm complaining; we signed away our rights to having parental supervision when we entered Nightshade Academy for Exemplary Boys and Girls.

Naturally, the dentist's office she chose was typical Beverly Hills. They didn't even call it a dentist's office; they called it a Surgical Smile Spa. (No, I'm
not
making that up.)

After grinding two of her wisdom teeth to a pulp and yanking them out one by one, the dentist placed Abby in one of the recovery rooms, which was bigger—and nicer—than our dorm suite at Nightshade Academy (and much bigger and much nicer than the trailer I grew up in back in Barracuda Bay).