Better Off Red (11 page)

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new kid and Cleo had left us without a teacher. We were silent for a few moments before Samantha, our spy from the school paper, decided she’d held her tongue long enough.

“Anyone want to tell me what the fuck we just signed up for?”

Her tone was light enough that we burst out laughing. Part of it was nerves and part of it was from the fact that, just like Samantha, we all couldn’t believe how the past twenty-four hours had turned out.

We’d accepted invitations to join a sorority. None of us had dreamed we’d be greeted by a coven of female vampires. We were bound to them for the next four years, and I think, to the race as a whole, for the rest of lives. Not the Friday night any of us planned for.

When the laughter died out, I was surprised at who spoke up first. “They don’t want to hunt us.” Benny took a bite of bacon. She chewed a few bites before she continued. “It varies from country to country. Culture to culture. Here, it’s easiest to get to us this way. A sorority is an easy cover.”

“So what happens now?” Ruth asked. She was bound to the sister-queen, Faeth.

“Same thing they told us last night,” Mel, a Puerto Rican girl who belonged to Tokyo, said, looking to Benny. “We’re in a sorority now. Everything’s normal but the feedings, right?”

“Right. We feed them and we get our degrees,” Benny said before she bit into a muffin the size of a softball.

Anna-Jade’s tiny voice squeaked from the end of the table,

“They meant what they said last night…they won’t hurt us?”

“No. They won’t. These vampires have taken an oath stronger then the pledge we made. If they take advantage of us in any way, they are terminated immediately. There are homicidal demons out there, but they won’t bother us. The sister-queens’ scents are all over us now. Plus, our necklaces. They know better than to cross Camila.”

“How’d you get so smart?” Samantha asked. I wasn’t so amused with the tone she was taking with Benny.

“Your dad’s one of them, right?” Laura asked.

“My step-father. He oversees the vampires north of the equator, between Greenland and Alaska. The seat of power is in Asia though,”

Benny said.

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“What happened to your real dad?” Anna-Jade asked. I’d been thinking the same thing.

“He was my step-father’s main contact in the White House.

He’d planned to blackmail a group of vampires in China. After he was disposed of, my step-father took my mother and me in.”

“You don’t sound too sad about that,” Samantha said.

“I’m not. He wasn’t a good man.” Benny left it at that.

“What happens after graduation?” Amy finally spoke up.

“You go on with your life, feeding another vampire wherever you decide to live. I don’t know if you noticed, but they picked a diverse group for a reason. None of us would hang out normally. No more than two of us share a major. When we graduate, we’ll go off to different places and work with vampires in different fields. Each of the sister-queens only needs to feed from three of us, but they take on six at a time to bring more feeders into their world. This is all just to prepare us to share our lives with them. To show us how to live with the secret.”

It got quiet again, all of us letting what Benny had just said sink in.

“It’s easier this way. They will feed no matter what. It’s better if they trust us and we trust them. No one gets hurt that way and we both can exist,” Benny added as a final note.

It had been hard to believe Camila, but I knew Benny was telling the truth.

“So why’d you sit out last night?” Samantha looked pointedly at Benny. “Not into the lady loving like the rest of us?”

“Hey. Back off,” I snapped. Benny was giving us a lot of useful information. What did it matter if she wasn’t into the group sex scene? Samantha had no reason to be a bitch.

Benny replied calmly, ignoring my attempt to defend her.

“Because as kind as they are to us, I don’t believe in having sex with people I barely know.” She kept her voice low and even, but she didn’t back down. “It has nothing to do with my sexual preference.

I can serve Camila and the other sister-queens without fucking them or any of you. We all can. They love us for our sacrifice, and if we get to know them better, they will like us as friends.”

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She looked directly at Samantha. “Natasha has had close to one hundred and eighty lovers since this house was built. Her husband is the King of Omega Beta Alpha. His name is Rodrick, if you were wondering. The feeding is a necessity. The orgasm is a bonus. The sex is for you to brag about. We all feel affection for our sister-queens, but it’s part of the blood bond we all agreed to last night.

Nothing more. Thinking it can be something more is a waste of everyone’s time.”

That shut all of us up. Benny was completely right. The agreement we’d struck made sense. We work with the vampires; they don’t kill us for sport. But the sex was a whole other issue. I’d enjoyed my night with Camila, but I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t know how many lovers she’d had. I didn’t know if she was married.

Natasha was just as involved in the sexual escapades as the rest of us, and we didn’t know a thing about her personal life.

I’d been seduced thoroughly, but like Benny, I wanted something more than to be Camila’s one hundred and eighty-first plaything, and when the time came, I’d never intended on sharing my first girlfriend with thirty-six other people. I’d thought I wanted to experiment, get some clarity, but that wasn’t true. I wanted something special with one special girl. And I wouldn’t get that from Camila or anyone else in Alpha Beta Omega. No matter how much I wanted her.

Benny broke the silence once more. “Sex complicates things for humans. Not for them. Why do you think we’re free to date?

They don’t want us to get attached to them that way. I’d hate to fall in love with one of the sister-queens seeing as how they’ve already prepared to let us go in four years. I’ll stick to the sidelines, thanks.”

And with that kick in the gut, Cleo entered the room.

“Benny. Come here a sec,” she called from the doorway. Benny stood and walked out of the dining room on Cleo’s heels. The rest of us finished our breakfast in silence.

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Between Benny’s information bomb and where and how I’d woken up this morning, I had to rethink my approach to my role in the sorority and my relationship with Camila. I knew my vampire blood had been the main reason Camila had pulled me aside, but the other girls had no clue why I’d been the only one to get the queen to myself. I wasn’t going to bring it up. Amy had already razzed me for spending the night alone with Camila. Would the rest of the girls think I was trying to weasel my way into her favor, her bed, and her heart?

Aside from Samantha, I liked my sisters in Greekness. We were obviously in this together, for good. I knew a thing or two about cattiness and jealousy. Cozying up with Camila seemed like the perfect way to set myself up as an ass-kissing target for both. As I finished my meal, I decided that last night was the last time I would put myself in that sort of situation with Camila. From now on, I would focus on getting to know the other girls better, on making new friends. And on putting up with Samantha.

Thirty minutes or so later, we were loaded into a black limo bus, probably the same bus that had brought us to the house. It had been a relief to see the top floors of the ABO house again. It was fantastic to be outside in the mid-September sun, breathing some fresh Baltimore air.

I took my seat next to Amy, and we chatted about how much longer we’d be forced to wear all white. I looked up when the bus grew strangely quiet.

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Benny walked down the aisle and took her seat next to me.

When she’d left the dining room, her hair looked liked the aftermath of a bomb going off in a very long brunette rat’s nest. Now her coffee brown locks were amazingly straight. The acne that had riddled her face was magically gone. I imagined it was the same below the neck. We all stared at her for a minute. She ignored us and started playing a game on her cell phone.

Cleo and Danni hopped on the bus and the driver pulled away from the house. Amy and I picked up our conversation, moving on to what Amy was going to tell her mom now that she officially wasn’t going to be a Xi O. I listened for a few moments, but then I had to take a crack at Benny.

I glanced across the aisle. Laura and Anna-Jade were in their own world. Mel was staring out the window, and Ruth and Ebony were talking animatedly about the one professor they shared, a college algebra teacher who wore his pants up around his nipples.

Samantha was staring right at Benny, but I had a feeling Sam’s hostile attitude wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

“You’re looking a little different,” I said. I felt Amy inch a bit closer to me, straining to hear Benny’s response.

“Their blood has healing properties. Camila offered to let me take from her, so I said okay.”

“Your step-dad wouldn’t feed you before?” Amy asked.

“Would you ask your step-dad if you could take from his wrist?”

“Good point,” Amy and I both muttered. We were quiet for a moment before I patted Benny on the knee. “Well. You look good.”

“Thanks, Ginger.”

❖

As we got closer to the spa, Cleo and Danni made us all memorize the address and the phone number of the Alpha Beta Omega house for emergencies. Then they explained how the rest of our weekend would go. Our mandatory morning of pampering would be followed by a few hours we’d have to ourselves. We could

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head back to the ABO house, go to our dorms, whatever. We had to be back by seven to get ready for a formal mixer with the boys from Omega Beta Alpha. I’d expected some of the other girls to be excited about meeting them, but they took the news with casual amusement.

For the rest of the sororities and fraternities on campus, initiation lasted eight to twelve weeks. Our initiation ended sometime around dawn that morning, a blood bond making all the other Greek traditions seem a little lame. We still had activities and chapter meetings to attend. Sunday would be ours, but our Friday nights and Saturdays belonged to Alpha Beta Omega. We had to make it look like we were going through the process just like the other Greek organizations.

When we arrived at the spa, we were put back in our line and shuffled off two by two to see the estheticians. Even if they weren’t all that invested in us emotionally, the sister-queens preferred our lady parts bare. We all snickered at the shrieks of pain coming from inside the room and offered our condolences for the pubes that had fought the good fight.

A chubby woman with light brown hair and too much eye makeup helped me onto the table then showed me my options for designs. I seriously wanted to kick myself. When she asked me which I liked the best, Camila immediately popped into my mind.

I wondered, just for a second, which was a second way too long, what she would like to see the next time we were together. But there wasn’t going to be a next time. That was the perfect reason for me to push any thought of what Camila might like out of my head.

I liked the idea of maintaining a little proof I was a natural redhead, so I decided against the full Brazilian. I went back and forth between the straight landing strip and a plain triangle. They actually offered a heart-shaped design that could be dyed pink on request.

I held up my necklace. “Can you do a landing strip shaped like this?”“Like a teardrop?” she asked. I nodded. “Of course.”

She stirred the hot wax, and I did a pretty good job of not making any weird animal-like noises when she poured it all over my

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crotch—and along my ass. It hurt like hell, every single tear-jerking yank, but it suddenly felt surprisingly light and breezy between my legs. The woman gave me a mirror so I could examine her handiwork upright. The leftover patch of hair looked so ridiculous I knew I’d have to shave it off at some point. My pussy looked kinda nice. It was a little swollen and blushed a bright red, but it was nice to see what I was working with from that angle. It didn’t look half bad.

Blinding pain aside, I knew I’d be waxing from then on.

After a facial, a massage, and watching Danni and Amy make out in the sauna for a good fifteen minutes, Amy and I decided to head back to the dorm for a little while. She managed to keep it together on her way up to our room. She’d been waiting all day for me to spill about my night with Camila. We were finally alone and I didn’t have the excuse of security cameras or eavesdropping sorority girls to keep her questions at bay.

When we hit our hallway, Amy’s nosy questions took a backseat. Our door was covered in red, black, and white decorations.

Our names were cut out in big red block letters around an even bigger ABO cut out in black construction paper. The letters were surrounded by white stars and hearts, glitter, confetti, and streamers all over the slab of faux wood. It looked like a piñata threw up.

Amy laughed at my bug-eyed look. “This part is actually normal. They decorate our room.”

“Oh. How long do we have to keep this up?”

“All semester,” she said as she unlocked the door. We stepped inside and then we both stopped in our tracksuits.

Our beds were piled high with gift boxes and shopping bags.

“What the? Okay. I knew about the decorations, but I don’t know what all this stuff is,” Amy said.

We glanced at each other for a moment before we tore into the packages. Inside each bag and box, we found item after item of Alpha Beta Omega swag. Under the tissue paper, I dug out four different ABO T-shirts, in different arrangements of the sorority’s colors. There was a vintage letterman’s sweater in black with an enormous red “A” stitched to the rib with white thread. Custom ABO

sweats from Victoria’s Secret. Custom underwear and camisoles