Vamped (7 page)

It looked like something out of
Tomb Raider
or
Indiana Jones
. I’d never suspected for even a second there was a trap door in here. It was totally cool. I made a note to pay more attention to the ditty next time, just in case the walls ever started closing in on me and I needed to make a quick getaway.

One by one, “Team Alpha” disappeared down the rabbit hole (Tina and Chaz thankfully among them), and I was left behind with a roomful of kids who were treating me like I had body odor or the plague or, like, terminally bad breath—Marcy among them. That was the one that twisted my gut.

There was no one for me to ask what the whole “Team Alpha” business was about. Maybe they were getting fed. Maybe it was some kind of training, like Bobby was getting.

Whatever, Thing One’s announcement had guaranteed that I’d be an outcast. I’d found some fragment of my old life, then lost it, all in one night.

10

A
n hour past sunset the next night I was ready to climb the walls. Everyone was avoiding looking at me, except when they thought
I
wasn’t looking. I identified about ten seniors in all, including another of Chaz’s wingmen (a forward or backward or whatever for the Mozulla Lemurs), Pam Raines and Vanessa Barrett (who had to have been taken together because I’d never seen them apart), Cassandra-the-cheerleader-Stiles (recovered from the hot-tubbing incident), and Trevor Larraby (an ROTC guy from his spit-shined shoes to his military bearing). There were probably twice that many underclassmen.

No one seemed inclined to talk as I passed by in my quest for a
Cosmo
or a
People
magazine that wasn’t six months out of date. Not only had I totally skimmed all those issues already, but even if I wanted to go back and actually
read
, all the pictures of hotties, male and female, had been ripped out so that people could decorate the spaces around their cots. There wasn’t a single story left intact.

I hadn’t been assigned to either one of their stupid teams, so I couldn’t get out for some exercise or just some fresh air—which would have been nice, because all those guys in one place trying to impress all those girls … well, you could practically smell the testosterone in the air. Only about half the time were the bathrooms used for their intended purpose. And they didn’t
lock.
I’d already been scarred for life when I walked in on a couple of underclassmen playing topless tonsil hockey. There just wasn’t enough mental floss to wipe out that image.

Whatever Melli was up to had to be big, for her to feed and house so many kids—a vamp army, as Rick had put it. If I didn’t want to get left in the dust, I needed to gather some intel. I was pretty pleased with the super-spy sound of that, I must say. I could totally get into the glam international-woman-of-mystery wardrobe. I wondered if spy work came with a clothing allowance.

The first step in gathering intel had to be to get someone to talk to me. Marcy’d been avoiding me like I had the fashion flu, but I noticed a girl tucked away on a cot in the corner reading a book, completely oblivious to everything going on around her. She’d never see me coming. I stalked across the room like a lioness after prey. The girl didn’t look up, even when my shadow fell across her book.

I reached down and plucked it away from her, at which she squeaked.

“Hi!” I said disarmingly.

Her eyes widened at the sight of me.

“Hi,” she answered back, so tentatively it made me laugh.

“Hey, I don’t bite … well, I
do
. But then, so do you.”

Her lips twisted in what might have been a smile. She had baby-fine blond hair held back by two kid barrettes with duckies on them, one pink and one purple. I tried not to stare.

“Can I have my book back?” she asked.

“In a sec,” I agreed. “But I have a few questions first.”

“Uh, okay.”

I plunked myself down on the edge of her bed. “Why is everyone afraid of me?”

She looked at me in confusion. “Are they?” She glanced around, and half a dozen kids suddenly took extreme interest in the ceiling tiles. “Well, you did cause kind of a stir,” she admitted.

“So?”

“So?” She looked longingly at her book, as if she might find the words she wanted within it. “Well, for some of us, getting vamped was the best thing that could have happened. I mean, sure, the biting bit was kind of a shock, and then the waking up dead … but aside from that.”

I gave her the same look of horror I might give ruffles and spandex. “Ooh-kay. Let me get this straight—Melli sends her minions out to maul and murder and you’re all grateful to her?”

The blond bookworm gave me a pitying look. “You make it sound so … ug. It’s not like we’re dead-dead. Anyway, you’re not one of hers, so you can’t possibly understand. She
chose
us.”

“Each of you—personally?”

“We’re all direct descendants. Her children, in a way. Some of us she saved from sucky situations at home or from lack of prospects after graduation.”

“What about you?” I asked.

She looked away, and for a minute I thought she wouldn’t answer. “You have no idea”—I was beginning to get a little steamed with her slights to my imagination—“what it’s like to struggle for breath every day of your life and suddenly wake up to find it’s no longer an issue.”

“So you’re … ?”

“Asthmatic. Severely. In and out of hospitals since I was a baby, two kinds of inhalers on me at all times. Nebulizer for emergencies. EpiPen. The whole nine yards. Now I’m cured.”

“Now you’re in prison,” I said, looking around. “This place … it’s like a barracks.”

“I prefer to think of it as a dorm room,” she answered. From the chill in her voice, I don’t think I was making a new friend. “Anyway, it’s temporary. She doesn’t have any place else for us at the moment and she can’t just have us all running around loose, causing mass hysteria, right?”

It made a sort of twisted sense, I supposed. And maybe the reason Melli kept Rick human and in school was to scout out the vulnerable kids, those easily cut out of the herd or with some reason to be thankful for their transformation.

“Can I have my book back now?” the girl asked. Then she added “
please
,” like she’d only just remembered the magic word.

I couldn’t think of any more questions at that moment. My mind was still reeling from her responses.

“Sure,” I answered, glancing at the book before handing it back to her.
You Suck
by Christopher Moore. A vampire novel. Too funny.

Her smile was genuine this time, as she took the book and settled against the wall to read. I’d already ceased to exist for her.

So, smelly Melli commanded loyalty. There were probably as many reasons for that loyalty as there were kids, but I just couldn’t see her as some kind of Lady Liberty, asking for our tired and poor, our huddled masses yearning to breathe free—although that’s exactly what this girl was now doing.

I needed to learn more, and not just from someone with a fairy-tale vision of the whole thing. I didn’t trust Melli as far as I could throw her, especially with my new vamp strength.

And so I waited for the moment when I could slip my cage. I thought about doing it during the change of teams—when one returned and the other was called out—but it seemed there’d be too many people milling around then. Someone would be bound to notice. I could set up some kind of distraction for getting out, like jamming a hairpin or something into a socket and short-circuiting things, but with everyone’s nifty new vamp-o-vision, I wasn’t sure that would really do me any good. And I didn’t see how it would help me slip back in unnoticed when my snooping was done … unless it somehow kicked up a real frenzy. But if that happened, chances were Melli’s thugs would come running and do a little investigation, and I’d be snagged. I needed something low key, where everyone would be distracted …

Like Chaz and Tina putting on a really embarrassing show of PDA right there in the dorm, not even bothering with bathrooms and closed doors.

“Get a room!” someone called.

Someone else wolf-whistled.

Tina and Chaz didn’t seem to notice. And no one seemed to notice
me
sliding off my boots so that I could slip silently into the hallway. There were no guards in the basement hallway, and the only sound was from the room I’d just left behind, where I could now hear some guy taking bets on which base they’d hit.

I crept toward the stairs up to the main floor, the cinderblock cool on my stockinged feet, and listened again. Nothing. Either the coast was clear, or smelly Melli’s guards were really quiet. I mean, she totally
had
guards, right? She couldn’t just keep her thugs for kidnapping people and ripping off sporting goods stores, could she?

I poked my head out of the staircase and looked around. Still nothing. Well, I was no stranger to risk. It was the hallmark of high fashion. That and originality. Well, that and originality
and
the attitude to carry it off. I was all about attitude. I marched into that upstairs hallway like I had reason to be there, figuring it gave me more improvisational options if I was caught than if I was obviously sneaking. Perhaps I was just out looking for more fashionable footwear.

No one was there to care.

I walked toward Melli’s office, waiting for someone to come by, but the Alpha and Beta teams had just switched places and evidently everyone was already where he or she was supposed to be. Except me. I pressed my ear up against Melli’s office door.

“—the hell are you doing here?” I heard Mellisande hiss.

Okay, maybe not
just
me.

“You’re not happy to see me? It is not a
special treat?”
There was something noxious about that voice. It wasn’t all Crypt Keeper dark and spooky, but high and thin … yet masculine, and completely lacking in anything resembling innocence. It was the kind of voice that led children away with candy, never to be seen again.

“Always,” she was quick to insist. “But you … here … ”

I see you
, a voice said in my head, making me jump nearly out of my skin. The words seemed to beat against my brain like a thousand moths dashing themselves against a bright light.

At the same time the voice inside the room said, “But the
action
is here. All the pretty, pretty morsels under one roof. And the council … ah, the council … ”

“What about them?” Melli asked, sounding impatient but afraid to quite show it. Interesting. “If you’ve told them anything—”

“You’ll what? Kill me?” He laughed and it was madness, threatening to spread if it went on for too long. I was totally sure I’d be hearing it in my nightmares. “As I recall, you have already tried that.”

“You came for a reason,” Melli reminded him.

“Yes.”
He paused, and I imagined it was simply to make Melli crazy. I could almost like the guy for that. “But all you need to know is that the council is nearly at your door.”

She was speechless for a moment. “Then I need to prepare.” I heard curtains rustle, a window being lifted and thought that the first thing I’d do if I took over would be to soundproof my inner sanctum. “You’ll see yourself out?” she asked.

“So … you’ll be in my debt?” he asked slyly. It was no answer, but she didn’t seem to realize it.

“I’ll send your usual payment. Expect delivery tomorrow.”

There was a smacking of lips that totally skeeved me out.

“Yes,” he said, “I will.”

I couldn’t tell what happened next. There was a sound—maybe the guy jumping over the window sill—and then the click-click of Melli’s spiked heels coming my way.

My heart nearly restarted in panic. I was sure the door to the office swung inward, which would give me no cover. Quickly I spun away and tried the next door, but it was locked and I was out of time.

Melli appeared in the hallway, and I waited for her to look my way and the ax to fall, but she never did. She walked so quickly toward the front of the house that I thought (okay, hoped) she’d break a heel.