Vamps (9 page)

“My sincerest sympathies, as well as those of the combined Bathory and Ruthven faculty, are extended to Miss Graves's family and friends in this, their time of loss.

“As you all know, the Founders of our race were summoned forth over twenty thousand years ago from the infernal region, only to find themselves stranded in this dimension. Since those early days, our kind has struggled to survive in a world not our own. Yet, despite all odds, we have managed not only to endure, but to thrive. However, our success has not come without opposition—and often requires us to pay a steep price.

“If there is anything positive to be learned from this tragedy, it should be this: Van Helsings are very
real
.

“I realize this is an exciting time for you students. You are standing on the verge of adulthood and you yearn to experiment, to stretch your wings, both figuratively and literally. You hunger to embrace the night, as is your heritage. But just because you are stronger and faster than humans and possess powers that they lack, do not fool yourselves into believing you have nothing to fear from them!”

Madame Nerezza paused for a moment and looked out over the sea of young faces, then gestured with
her left hand. “Look to the persons to the left of you,” she commanded.

Cally found herself looking at a female student with black hair worn parted down the middle in braided double pigtails fixed by red ribbons.

“Now look to your right,” the headmistress instructed.

All heads dutifully turned again—save for the girl to Cally's right. Instead of looking at the back of her neighbor's head, Cally found herself looking directly into the face of the blonde she had challenged at the park. Judging by the expression of sheer, unalloyed hatred shining in her eyes like blue steel blades, the blonde recognized Cally too.

“The cold, hard truth of the matter is that within a hundred years, one of the three of you will be dead,” Madame Nerezza intoned. “Such is life for our kind. And it is the duty of our schools to prepare you for it.”

Cally swallowed hard, quickly looking away from the blonde's searing gaze. Something told her she wouldn't have to wait a hundred years to find out if the headmistress's prediction was accurate.

A
s everyone started leaving, Lilith hopped down from her perch and began searching the students filing out of the grotto, hoping to catch sight of Jules. She needed to find him before he returned to Ruthven's so she could tell him she had just spotted the New Blood from the park.

As she wound through a stand of stalagmites, she heard Jules's voice coming from up ahead. Rounding a cone-shaped rock, she spotted him standing next to one of the great columns that supported the roof of the grotto, looking up toward the ceiling.

“Praise the Founders I found you,” she said as she hurried toward him.

“Hi there, Lili,” he said, turning to greet her. “I was just talking to my cousin,” he explained, pointing upward.

Lilith raised her eyes and found herself staring up
at Xander Orlock. Jules's cousin was clinging to the side of the column like a lizard on a garden wall.

“Uh, yeah. Hi, Exo,” Lilith said, fighting back a grimace as she looked into his face.

Unlike the majority of students who attended Ruthven's and Bathory, Xander did not use any kind of artificial tanning agent on his skin. His complexion was so pale it was actually translucent, giving him a slightly bluish cast. With his large, protruding eyes, unnaturally long fingers, and pointed ear tips, Lilith found it difficult to believe that Xander was in any way related to Jules.

“Hello, Lilith,” Xander said with just the faintest lisp. Due to inbreeding on his father's side of the family, he had a hard time fully retracting his fangs, which sometimes affected his speech.

“Remember that newbie bitch that nearly got us killed the other night?” Lilith asked Jules.

“The one from the park?” Jules frowned. “What about her?”

“She's here in the grotto!”

“There's a newbie at Bathory?” Xander asked. “How is that even possible?”

“I don't know,” Lilith growled in disgust. “Maybe she's not a New Blood after all. Either that or Nerezza's hard up for tuition fees.”

“Are you sure it's her?” Jules asked.

“Yes, I'm sure! I'll
never
forget her face for as long as
I live!” Lilith snapped. “She was sitting right next to me during assembly. I would have killed her right then if the headmistress wasn't there!”

“Look, Lilith, there's no point doing something rash,” Jules said. “You know that schools are vendetta-free zones. If you try and do anything within a mile of here, you won't just be expelled, they'll haul you before the Synod and try you as a criminal.”

“I've never seen an actual New Blood before.” Xander grinned. “Maybe I'll hang around and check her out!”

“Shut up, Exo!” Lilith snapped, no longer able to hide her irritation with his presence. “No one's talking to you!”

“Okay. I know when I'm not wanted.” Xander sighed. He quickly reversed his grip on the column's surface and scurried back into the shadows.

“
Ugh!
I don't know why you let that spod hang around you,” Lilith said with a shudder.

“I admit, he's kinda spoddy, but he's an okay guy, and it's not like he gets much of a chance to meet hot chicks on his own.” Jules laughed. “Exo's been hanging around me since we were little. You didn't have to yell at him.”

“I could care less about Exo getting a date,” Lilith said peevishly. “I want to know what that newbie bitch is trying to pull. First she shows up at the park just before the Van Helsings attack, and now she's here! I don't like her, Jules. There's something not right
about her. I sensed it the moment I laid eyes on her. What if she's a stalking horse in cahoots with the Van Helsings?”

“Lilith, the Van Helsings were trying to kill her too.” Jules sighed. “I was there, remember? In fact, if she hadn't taken out that Van Helsing, you'd probably be as dead as Tanith right now.”

“Why are you sticking up for her?” Lilith snapped, her eyes flashing blue fire. “Are you saying you wish I was dead?”

“That's biting below the belt, Lilith,” Jules replied, stung by her response. “I'm just saying that maybe you should take it easy. I don't want to see you get hurt….”

“Oh, now you think I'm no match for her, is that it?” Lilith said tartly.

“All right, you two lovebirds, break it up,” Coach Knorrig said as she walked up to them. “Todd, hit the locker room and get dressed for shapeshifting. And I want
you,
Mr. Heartthrob”—she pointed a finger at Jules—“to get your ass back to Ruthven's.
Pronto
.”

“Yes, coach,” Jules said, secretly relieved to escape.

As he jogged off in the direction of the tunnel that connected the grotto with Ruthven's School for Boys, Jules tried not to think about the weird look in Lilith's eyes as she talked about the New Blood. He knew how obsessive Lilith could be. He hoped she would get over whatever was eating her and start acting like she used
to. That's all any of them wanted, really: for things to go back to how they were before the park. Certainly that wasn't too much to ask?

 

Cally stood in a large clearing in the center of the grotto, staring up at the towering columns of living rock that supported the cathedral-like roof. “I never knew there were caves like this under Manhattan,” she whispered in amazement.

“There aren't.”

She turned around to find the girl she'd seen earlier, the one with the braided pigtails, standing behind her—except now there were two of her, one wearing red ribbons in her hair, the other wearing blue. Cally blinked to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her, but the duplicate didn't disappear.

“They mean
none
of this is real,” a girl with turquoise beads in her hair said, “at least not the way
you
think it is. This isn't a natural cave—it was carved out of the rock by hand. Everything you see here was artificially created during the mid-nineteenth century.”

“People actually
built
this?” Cally said in disbelief. She looked around again, and this time she noticed there was indeed a pattern to the stalagmites and stalactites in their sizes, shapes, and positions. The same was true of the huge columns, which she could now see were exactly equidistant from one another.

“Sort of. They used undead labor. It took over thirty
years for them to dig this place out, working twenty-four/seven. It was designed so we could learn to fly down here.”

“Pretty damn impressive for a gym,” Cally said with a chuckle. “Thanks for the info. My name's Cally Monture, by the way.”

“I'm Melinda Mauvais. And the tag team over there's Bella and Bette Maledetto.”

“I'm Bella,” said the twin with the blue ribbons.

“Bette,” said the twin with the red ribbons.

“Nice to meet you all.”

“I like your bangles,” Melinda said. “Where'd you get them?”

“These?” Cally held up her left arm and rattled the bangles on her wrist. “My grandmother gave them to me before she, uh, before she left for Europe.”

“Have we met before somewhere?” Melinda asked, cocking her head to one side as she eyed the new girl's haircut. “Do you hang out at the Belfry?”

“Afraid not,” Cally replied with a shake of her head. “Is that some kind of club?”

“Over on West Twentieth.”

“Oh,” Cally said, “I normally do my clubbing farther downtown—you know, SoHo, Tribeca….”

“Maybe
that's
where I've seen you,” Melinda decided. “I'm down around SoHo and Tribeca quite a bit.”

“Melly!”

Melinda turned to see Lilith bearing down on her.
Before she could respond, Lilith grabbed her by the upper arm and steered her away from Cally.

“What do you think you're doing?”
Lilith hissed at her friend.

“Just talking to the new girl, that's all,” Melinda replied, bewildered by Lilith's anger. “What's up with you?”

“Don't you
know
who that is?”

“She said her name was Cally something….”

“She's the New Blood from the park and she's the reason Tanith's dead!” Lilith snapped.

Melinda frowned. “I
thought
she looked familiar! But what's a New Blood doing here?”

“I don't know. But what I
do
know is I don't want you talking to her. You know, Melly,” Lilith growled, “I've overlooked the fact that you're friendly with those half-blood Maledettos, even though you know
their
father is
my
father's sworn enemy. But being friendly with a New Blood—especially
this
one—is another thing altogether! I would
hate
to have something like this get in the way of our friendship. Understood?”

“Perfectly.” Melinda winced as Lilith's grip tightened on her arm.

 

“Who's the nutcase?” Cally asked, pointing to the girl with the long hair who had just dragged Melinda away.

“That's Lilith Todd,” Bella responded.

“Todd? As in
Victor
Todd?” Cally gasped, her eyes widening in surprise.

“He's her father,” Bette said.

“Okay, ladies! Enough chitchat!” Knorrig shouted, clapping her hands together. “I want those of you who are
supposed
to be down here in that locker room and dressed for class in five minutes! That means
you
, Mauvais! And you too, Maledetto! No, not you, the
other
Maledetto! Don't make me tell you a
third
time, Todd! I mean it! The rest of you, get back to whatever class you're supposed to be in! Just because we had an assembly this evening doesn't mean you're free to blow off first period!”

“Excuse me,” Cally said, looking down at her class schedule, then back up at the woman dressed in gray sweats and a pair of black Chuck Taylors, a whistle dangling around her neck and a Yankees cap pulled down low on her head. “Are you Coach, uh, Knorrig?”

“I'm not your fairy godmother, that's for goddamn sure. Yeah, I'm Knorrig. You must be the new girl.”

“Yes, ma'am. I'm Cally Monture.”

“Come with me, Monture,” Knorrig said, leading her out of the cavern and back down the tunnel to her office. “I've got some shifting wear for you.”

“Shifting wear?” Cally's belly fluttered like a curtain in a strong breeze. “Is this a shapeshifting class?”

“Of course,” Coach Knorrig replied, shooting the new student a curious look as she opened a cabinet and
pulled out a short-sleeved red terry-cloth one-piece with a zip-up front. “What the hell else do you think we'd be teaching down here? Square dancing? Yoga? Here you go, Monture. Wear it in good health.”

“Are you
serious
?” Cally gasped, holding the garment up by its sleeves.

“I'll admit it's not the sexiest thing on the face of the earth, but it
has
been charmed to change along with you so you're not running around naked out there. And that's what matters, as far as I'm concerned. Now go get changed. Oh—and make sure you take those things off your wrist,” Coach Knorrig said, nodding at the bangles Cally was wearing. “You don't want them getting broken when you change.”

As Cally left Coach Knorrig's office, the door to the locker room across the hall opened and a group of students emerged, Lilith Todd at their head. As they passed each other in the hallway, Lilith stared at Cally, her eyes shining like gun barrels, then she jostled the new girl hard enough to make her drop the gym suit. When Cally stooped to pick up her shifting wear, the redhead who had challenged her earlier stepped on her hand, pinching her fingers.

“Owww!”
Cally yelped, yanking her hand out from under the other girl's foot. “Watch it!”

“Oopsie!” the redhead said, flashing Cally a snide smile. “I'm
sooo
sorry! I didn't see you there, what with you being
beneath
me.”

The other girls burst into derisive laughter. As the group made their way down the corridor, Lilith glanced back over her shoulder with a look as black and cold as ice on a highway.

Changing into the gym suit, Cally shook her head in mock dismay: barely an hour into her first day at school and she was already on the shit list of the daughter of one of the most well-known Old Bloods in the world.

As she hurried from the locker room to join the rest of the class, she told herself that focusing on the negative wasn't going to get her anywhere she wanted to be. Sure, Lilith was down on her. Cally couldn't really blame her, after what happened at the park. But that didn't mean things had to stay ugly between them.

The way she saw it, she had two choices: either she could put up with their bitchiness and bullying like a dog taking a beating, or she could take the initiative and try to work things out between her and Lilith. Still, it was difficult to feel poised and self-confident while her gym suit was working its way up her butt crack.

 

“Gather round, girls,” Coach Knorrig said, motioning with her clipboard. “Tonight we're going for speed.” She held up a stopwatch. “Being able to shapeshift quickly while you're on the move is a must. If you're being chased by Van Helsings, for example, you can't
waste valuable time going from one form to another. Your transformation should be as easy as tossing on a coat. Having to come to a dead stop in order to shapeshift will leave you exactly that—dead. Who wants to go first?”

The students glanced around uneasily. No one raised a hand.

“Okay, if that's how it's going to be, then I guess you're it, Mauvais. The rest of you, give her some room.”

Melinda stepped forward, frowning as she fingered the beads woven through her hair. “Do I
have
to, Coach?”