Vamped (16 page)

19

T
he sun set and I burst awake, flailing like I was falling and trying to catch myself. I didn’t remember dreaming, but it certainly hadn’t been the peaceful sleep of the dead. Maybe my brain was trying to tell me something, like that the bottom was about to drop out of my world.

I was craving a mochachino in the worst way … or the blood of a caffeine addict, I wasn’t picky. Just a little pick-me-up so I didn’t feel as old as, like, the chick with the frozen face who did the fashion wrap-ups on
E!

Chickzilla, Sparky, and Hawkman moved around calling everyone to attention and handing out mini-bottles of blood.
Their own?
I wondered, totally creeped out by the idea. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder that before. But on second thought, no way could they spare so much. Maybe one of them had a day job at the hospital or blood bank.

I got dressed like everyone else, though some had farther to go than others. It was a good thing I’d made that stop at the mall with Rick, because my spiky-heeled boots and short skirt just weren’t Rambo material. Closest thing I had were my new purple cross-trainers (which, of course, had no heels to speak of, and made me feel ridiculously short), and black, skin-tight jeans. It had killed me to forego color while shopping, but I’d grabbed a scoop-neck T-shirt in basic black in case I needed to sneak out again. Not that the cat-burglar look would do me much good against vampire senses. It was more of a state of mind, a dress-for-success mentality.

I was just pulling the Velcro tight on my sneakers when Mellisande and the rest of her entourage arrived to inspect the troops. The dragon lady looked like she was on her way to some kind of shi shi event where people sip champagne out of cut crystal. She had on a skirt made up of about a hundred sheer handkerchiefs, and a ruby-red sequined blouse to go with. Her shoes came to a wicked point. If only looks could kill …

Everyone kind of stopped what they were doing to straighten and watch her, as she watched us.

“Tonight is the night,” Melli announced, pitching her voice to carry. It bounced around the basement like a prize-machine rubber ball. “All of your training, all of our plans, have come down to this. We’re going up against the council and we
will
win. I will be going in first with a select few to clear your way. Your job is to come in and clean up any opposition. Once we hold the council, we hold the region and from there … anything is possible. We will make our own rules, take what we want, feed where and when we will.”

It sounded like she was running for student body president. Power hummed out of her as if she were trying to affect all her peeps at once, but it was like a fine drizzle, not gonna do more than maybe whet their appetites—not like Bobby’s tidal wave of power.

“Are you with me?” she asked.

There was a general cheer of agreement, but I didn’t think it was all she could have hoped for.

Her eyes narrowed as her gaze swept the room. “Good. The alternative is unthinkable.”

I looked around at the others. They definitely wanted to hurt something, but I wasn’t so sure it was Mellisande’s enemies.

She swept out of the room with her skirt flowing behind her, leaving two of her entourage behind—Connor and Larry, weirdly, the oldest and newest of her inner circle.

Connor studied the faces around him, his gaze meeting mine for just a second before moving on, but it seemed like he was doing that a lot. Making visual contact with his team, maybe.

“Team Alpha, to me,” he said, confirming it. He moved off to one side, leaving the other half of the room to Larry, who called out, “Team Beta.”

Trevor and Cassandra, who’d become the inseparables, actually split in order to flank me in the line-up.

“Melli’s going out the front with her entourage, to draw any watchers away with her,” Trevor whispered.

I’d filled him in last night in the wee hours before dawn along with a few select others. I wished there’d been more I could trust, but who—Chaz and Tina? Larry’s new flirtation, book-girl?

“How do you know that?” I whispered back.

“Look at how she’s dressed. She wants them to think she’s going there to party, not to provoke. She’s hoping to put them off guard. It’s what I’d do. Minus the skirt, of course.”

I bit my lip to keep from pointing out that he didn’t protest the sparkly shirt, but sobered as Connor’s gaze swept over us again. As soon as he’d moved on, I asked, “What about
him
?” I jerked my head in Connor’s direction. “Won’t the council expect him to be with her?”

Trevor gave that a moment of thought. “Probably she could say she left him behind to hold down the fort, if it comes to that.”

“Something you want to share?” Connor asked, glaring right at us.

“Sir, no sir,” Trevor said, stiffening to attention. It was totally tin soldier … and yet maybe just a little hot, like I could almost visualize him in uniform. Not that I’d admit it out loud. Besides, I had prophecy boy, and that totally trumped soldier boy any day of the week.

Connor looked to me. “No,” I spat. “Nothing to share.”

“Good, then listen up.”

We were going out the tunnel—no surprise there. Then we were going to divide and conquer. Team Alpha one way, Beta the other. Follow directions. That was all we needed to know. That, and “this is not a game. This is the real thing, boys and girls. Your weapons are locked and loaded. Holy water, real wooden stakes and arrows. Don’t shoot yourselves in the foot. Don’t shoot each other. This video game doesn’t have a restart button. Got it?”

Some of the guys looked like this was wicked cool, but most looked like they could have grasped the concept of
“not a game”
without Connor trying to meet us at our supposed level with the video game references.

“I’ll cover you,” Trevor whispered, risking Connor’s wrath. Obviously he’d noticed my serious lack of combat skills.

“Thanks,” I whispered back.

Connor motioned for Team Beta to proceed us, and I watched Pam and Vanessa, Larry’s new flirtation, the girls whose hair I’d styled, and others file past me. My chest tightened, and I felt strangely like a mama bear watching my cubs march off to war—which didn’t even make sense. Even best-case scenario, some of those kids wouldn’t be coming back. I just couldn’t imagine that the lot of us, with only a few weeks of training, were going to take down a seasoned council—who I’d imagine had lookouts and enforcers and the whole bit … even if we did have an inside man and a psychic cyclone who could be unleashed.

Connor waited for Beta to get some distance on us and approached the hatch himself. I was expecting he would lead the charge, but instead he rapped out the code to close it up.

Trevor and I exchanged a look.

“Are we going out the front?” I asked, thinking that just maybe Trevor was right and Melli’d drawn off the watchers, making it safe for us to take another route to the council house—which presumably we’d come at from different directions anyway, to kind of surround them.

He gave me a wintry glare. “No.”

A chill ran right up my spine, and out to all points until my fingers nearly tingled in shock.

“You’re leaving them hanging,” I guessed. “It’ll be a bloodbath.”

His lips pulled back from his teeth, and I could see the points, deadly and glistening like a snake about to strike. Was that what I looked like when I fed? Ew, maybe it was a good thing we didn’t show up in mirrors.

“It’ll be a bloodbath anyway,” he hissed. “I’m saving you. When it’s all over, we’ll come to our own understanding with the council. We will live.”

I looked at the others. Unlike their lack of reaction to the human-shaped archery targets, there was real horror in their eyes now. Connor might be old enough to have lost his humanity, but we were still young. We remembered. I didn’t see selling my soul, assuming I still had one, as “saving” myself.

I looked around, waiting for someone to speak up. I was surprised when it was me.

“Listen up, people!” I said, raising my voice loud enough to carry. “Do we want to be led by a loser who would sacrifice our friends and tell us it’s for our own good?”

There were a few murmurs of “no,” Trevor and Cassandra the loudest.

“Are you all ready to kick some butt? If we fight for ourselves, for our friends, we can do
anything
. Remember Marcy and Rick. Think of Bobby. Connor is willing to sacrifice us all just the way Mellisande did. I say NO MORE!”

There was a roar of agreement this time. People were getting over their shock, getting psyched for battle. Staying behind was like pulling an all-nighter only to find out the test was cancelled. We were prepped and ready. I almost had
myself
convinced I wasn’t sending everyone into sudden death.

“Grab him!” I ordered, sweeping a hand and pointing a finger right at Connor.

The group surged forward before Connor even had time to pull together a decent whammy. The first guy to reach for him froze halfway there, looking shocked as his grasping hands fell to his sides, but Connor could only mentally reach one of us at a time, and within seconds he was overwhelmed.

“Bring him,” I said. “He knows the plan. He knows where we’re headed.”

“And if he won’t tell us?” Trevor asked, holding tight to one of Connor’s arms.

“I’ll leave that to you.” I didn’t even know what I meant by that—I didn’t think ROTC trained their guys in interrogation and torture. I hoped not anyway. But Trevor nodded like it was something he could handle, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let’s move out!” I ordered.

I played my little tune on the door and it opened before us. I could totally get used to this being taken seriously and being, like, the Pied Piper of vamps, if only I weren’t so freaked that I was leading us into war. I still didn’t know exactly what had possessed me or what we’d find at the council place. I didn’t know the layout or the other troop movements or whatever. I didn’t know how many we were up against. What the hell was I doing?

Team Beta had left the weapons locker open assuming we’d be right behind them, and I ordered everyone to load up. It was kind of a heady feeling to be obeyed.

For myself, I grabbed about five water guns and loaded them from the bottle of holy water Trevor passed to me, very, very careful not to get any on myself, and more careful not to consider what the effects meant for my soul. I mean, I wasn’t using it for anything, but still …

Trevor’s weapons of choice were the guns and the pointy stakes—the real wood kind and not our little practice points. Bows and arrows would be way too bulky once the enemy got close enough to see the whites of our eye-teeth. He also found a load of the zip-tie cuffs Melli’s minions had used on Bobby and me when they kidnapped us. He promptly put them to use on Connor, who snarled and kicked and flailed and generally made a nuisance of himself until Trevor shot him in the chest with a blast of holy water. It ate right through his shirt and started in on his flesh, with a smell of burnt hair and boiled blood that I did my best to ignore, along with his outraged howl.

I thought about the news report I’d seen, where Bobby was wanted for questioning and all. Maybe if I tipped off the police, they’d put a stop to the violence. It wasn’t like they could lock Bobby up once they realized the bodies he was accused of snatching were walking around under their own steam. But I’d be sending regular humans up against vamps, totally unprepared. And, if they lived through it, we vamps would be exposed—incite a national panic, maybe, or be used as lab rats.