The Witch Hunter's Gauntlet (14 page)

Sam got to see just a split
second of Tiffany’s rage before the screen went black. But it was a very satisfying split second. The screen switched back to a shot of the game, so Sam and Lucas started their long walk back to their seats.

“That was so weird,” Sam said. “Do you think it was Natch?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas said after a few seconds. “I can’t think of anyone else who would have done it. Esteban, maybe. He’d know how to do all the graphics stuff, anyway. A lot of students here probably do, but how many would be willing to get on her bad side like this? Besides, it seems like Natch’s sense of humor.”

“But why would he do it?”

“No idea. Maybe it is his way of saying he’s sorry.” Lucas paused. “Assuming he is capable of being sorry, or even realizing he did something wrong.”

Sam had to laugh at that.

“Woo hoo!”

They made it back to their seats to find Zoey dancing on her seat
, pointing at the field.

Someone in a blue
uniform and gold helmet was running down the field with the football cradled in his arms. Three big guys in Neanderthal green were closing in on him. He spun out of the way of the first guy, who had actually caught up to him, and simply outran the other two.

The stadium exploded with joy
.

Zoey
jumped up and down and took Sam’s hands to make her jump up and down with her.

“That was awesome,” Zoey said sitting back down. “Want under my blanket?”

“Hey,” Sick yelled. “You didn’t let us share your blanket.”

“You smell,”
Zoey said. “Now be quiet, they’re kicking.”

Sam tuck
ed the blanket around her and set the nachos on her own lap cautiously, in case Zoey decided to jump up and dance again. But Zoey refrained from jumping this time and just screamed in excitement as the ball soared through the goal posts.

“Check that out,” Lucas said
, pointing at the cheerleaders who had now taken the field.

The cheerleaders had made a pyramid.
An actual pyramid, like in the movies, or on ESPN. The girl on top back flipped off the pile and made a perfect Olympic-style landing.

“Awesome,” Sick yelled.

“Amazing,” Wrong said and started clapping.

Lucas, Jerry, and Sick joined in.

“Stupid boys,” Zoey said under her breath.

“Hey now,” Lucas said. “
That’s pretty impressive. Could you do that? I couldn’t do that.”

Zoey
just rolled her eyes and chomped on a nacho.

“And to think they almost had to cancel the pyramid. A few of the girls suddenly disappeared.
Went home or whatever. Couldn’t hack it. But they got the alternates up to snuff in time,” Sick said.

“You are scarily
overinformed about the cheerleading squad there, Sick,” Lucas said.

“We made a documentary about them recently. Didn’t make it to TV,” he said even before anyone asked. “But those girls are really amazing.”

As if on cue, more girls started doing flips off the pyramid.

“
My sister is in the band back home, so I got dragged to a lot of football games. Those cheerleaders never did anything like that. But then, there were only six of them,” Lucas explained.

“Just six?
How small was your school?” Zoey asked.

“Decent-
sized, I think. There were over three hundred in my class. But being a cheerleader was not a smart social move at our school.”

“They were all mean?” Sam asked.

“No, they were all extremely nice actually. They had to be to put up with all the half eaten hot dogs that got thrown at them,” he said, mimicking tossing a hot dog.

“Wow, at my old school the cheerleaders were the top of the social ladder,” Zoey said. “It would have been so much fun to throw food at them.”

“If either of you girls is still looking for a Halloween costume, I highly suggest the tried-and-true cheerleader uniform. They have a few spares,” Sick said with an innocent look on his face.

“Yeah, thanks,”
Zoey said, obviously not buying Sick’s innocent act.

“I’m going to be a bumblebee,” Jerry volunteered out of nowhere.

“Have you come up with a good costume yet, Sam?” Lucas asked.

“No,” she answered shortly. She didn’t feel like telling him that she probably wasn’t going to the dance. It would just raise questions she couldn’t answer. “What are you going as?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking I would find out what other people are going as first,” he said.

Zoey
put her hands to silence them. “I am trying to watch the game. You can deal with all this dance stuff later.”

The rest of the game went by quickly for Sam. She didn’t know the rules
, so she just cheered when everyone else cheered and booed when everyone else booed.

But eventually the cheering enthusiasm died down. The Fighting Martians
were up 38 to 6 with less than ten minutes of game time left. Even Zoey was looking a little bored. Plus they had eaten all the nachos. Wrong had started drinking the Diet Pepsi right out of the bottle, and no one wanted to drink it after him.

Zoey
yawned. “You want to head out early? Beat the crowd?”

“Sure. Maybe we can run by Lucas’
s dorm and see Esteban,” Sam offered. She thought maybe he would open the door for Zoey, and that was something worth seeing.

“Hey if you’re leaving, I‘m leaving too,” Lucas said.

“And you call yourself a fan?” Sick said to Zoey.

“I’m a fan who wants to get to bed,” she said
, folding up her blanket.

“Crybabies
,” Sick said with his nose in the air.

“You could at least leave us the blanket,” Jerry said hopefully.

“The blanket is only for people who do not insult me. Have fun freezing, boys,” she said with a cocky tilt of her head.

L
ucas led the way out of the crowd and back to the stairs.

“This was a lot easier without all these people here,” Zoey said after hitting the fourth person in the head with her blanket.

“How early did you get here?” Lucas asked.

“About ten minutes after class.”

Once they made it out of the stands, they were free and clear. Everyone else was patiently waiting for the inevitable victory, or hitting the snack bar for their last-minute snacks.

But when
they made it out of the stadium onto campus, Sam suddenly felt very lonely. Campus was vaguely unnerving in the dark without any people around. Other than the streetlights, the only lights came from dorm windows several blocks away.

Suddenly a large cheer rose up from the stadium. Strangely
, it made Sam feel even lonelier.

“That was the visitor
s’ side. They must have scored,” Zoey said in disappointment. “It was probably just a kick.”

Zoey
checked over her shoulder a few times as they walked, just waiting for another cheer. They were between the Chemistry building and Architectural building when Sam saw something odd. A shadow was moving among the other shadows. She only saw it for a moment, but it looked very much like a person.

“Did anyone else see that?” Sam stopped in place instantly and pointed at the bushes where the shadow
had vanished.

“See what?” Lucas asked.

“First off I am not crazy.” It seemed important to put that out there right away. “But there is a shadow hiding over there.”

B
oth Lucas and Zoey stared at her like she was crazy, even though she had just explained that she wasn’t.

“A shadow is hiding in the dark over there?” Lucas asked.

“Yes,” she said. “The shadow of a person.”

“Well, that’s a little different,” Lucas said. He scooped up a rock from the ground and flung
it into the bushes.

The rock crashed through the bushes and skittered across the sidewalk.

“I was really hoping to hit someone,” Lucas said. “I figured it was Natch or one of Zack’s friends.”

“I don’t know about Zack, but I’d certainly like to be your friend,” a mysterious female voice from behind them said.

Sam turned to find herself staring down three senior cheerleaders in full uniform, each one blonder than the girl next to her. It was hard to imagine that Sam hadn’t noticed them coming; the gold in their uniforms sparkled under the streetlights. But their eyes were weird. They seemed to look through her instead of at her, but not in the snobby kind of way she was used to.

The snobby way would have been way less spooky.

“Who are you?” Lucas asked.

“We’re your biggest fans
, Lucas Fry, Video Game Champion of the world,” the blondest cheerleader said.

“That’s National Champion actually,” he said while blushing.

“Close enough,” the cheerleader said, taking several long-legged steps closer.

“Shouldn’t you be at the game?” Zoey asked.

“There’s more important things in life than football,” one of the other cheerleaders said. Her friends giggled.

“How’s it going
, Samantha? Or do you prefer Sam?” the girl on the left asked.

“We are k
ind of busy right now.”

“Oh, not too busy for us.
We’re going to be the best of friends.” One of the cheerleaders grabbed her by the shoulder. It felt cold, even through the sweater.

“Lay off cheer girl,” Zoey said. One of the cheerleaders had her by the wrist.

Sam looked over at Lucas. A cheerleader had him by the arm as well, but he didn’t seem very concerned about it, unless he smiled and blushed a lot when he was concerned.

But then in an instant his smile fell away and his eyes doubled in size.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he babbled to the smiling cheerleader in front of him.

“What is it
, sweetie?”

“I should be going now. Yes, definitely must be
going now.” His eyes were huge and fixated on a point behind the cheerleader.

Sam followed his gaze. All six of the
m were standing outside of the Architectural building, which had gigantic tinted windows in the entranceway. In the dark like this, they reflected everything around them perfectly.

Except the cheerleaders.

Sam stifled her urge to scream.

“We really do have somewhere to be. People are waiting for us,” Sam said, her survival instinct finally kicking in.

“Oh, but we’re on our way to a party,” the vampire cheerleader said in a sugary sweet tone.

“Well, we don’t want to go to your stupid jock party,” Zoey said
, trying to wriggle her hand free.

“That’s good.
Because you weren’t invited.” Slowly the cheerleader smiled wider and wider, baring her teeth. She laughed as her fangs grew out.

The other cheerleaders joined her, both in the laughing and the growing of fangs.

“That’s, that’s a cool trick,” Lucas squeaked out.

“Can I eat the weird girl?” Zoey’s cheerleader asked.

“Go for it. We only have to turn Sammy here.”

Sam didn’t like that. She didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity as a fourteen-year-old vampire. She needed a plan.

Just then Lucas screamed like a six-year-old girl, frantically slapped the cheerleader holding him until she let him go, and took off running at full speed across the yard. Apparently the vampires were just as surprised by his cowardly childish maneuver as Sam, because she felt the hand on her shoulder slacken just a bit.

“Run
, Zoey, run,” she yelled as she slipped out of the cheerleader’s grip and ran after Lucas.

She looked back over her shoulder to see Zoey right on her heels
; and the vampires were right on hers.

“We need to find help,” Sam yelled ahead to Lucas. She suddenly wondered where Agent Rosenberg was right now.
Probably at the game.

And that’s when an arrow flew past Sam’s head.

“Why are vampires shooting arrows at us?” Zoey yelled behind her.

“I don’t know.”

“Where were they hiding them?”

“I don’t know.”

“This way,” Lucas yelled to them. He was holding open a door to the Physics building.

Sam and
Zoey ran inside. Lucas followed them in.

“Now what?”
Zoey asked.

“Those are real vampire cheerleaders,” Lucas said
, wide-eyed.

“Yes.”

“That is so cool.”

Zoey
stamped her foot on the marble floor. The sound echoed up and down the hall. “Excuse me, but those real-life vampires are trying to eat us. They are real, right?”