Blood Hunter (The Grandor Descendant Series) (13 page)

“So… what’s your name gorgeous?” the boy asked, trying valiantly to concentrate on the cigarette he now was rolling, which was made difficult by the fact that he kept glancing with puppy dog eyes at Sandra. “I’m Greg.”

“Sandra,” she replied, “oh, and this is Ari,” Sandra added as an afterthought.

Up until then, Ari hadn’t even been sure that Sandra realised she was there with them. Taking this as a good sign, Ari leaned in closer so as to be more active in the conversation.  

“You want one?” the boy asked Ari, mistaking her eagerness.

“Um sure,” Ari replied, looking a little distastefully at the cigarette that he had just lit, but not wanting to be excluded.  

It happened in a flash; one second Greg was taking a drag of his cigarette and blowing large circular smoke-rings into the air, and the next Sandra had leaned over and was kissing him. The pair continued to hold their smokes in their outstretched hands as their tongues lashed at each other’s mouths.  

What the hell was Sandra doing; why was she kissing this guy. Was she drunk?

Ari was so shocked that she stood immediately; when she turned to leave however, she heard a strange gurgling noise. Looking back she gasped; Sandra was no longer kissing Greg but biting him. Though Sandra had positioned herself so that her mane of strawberry coloured hair was covering most of Greg’s face, there was no mistaking the determined look in Sandra’s eyes as she sucked hard on her victim’s neck. When Sandra pulled away from her prey, she wiped her mouth crudely then turned back to stare at Ari, continuing to puff on her cigarette while Greg slumped in his chair.

“What the hell?” said Ari, quickly siting back down and forcing her mouth closed as she glanced around nervously.

“What?” asked Sandra, looking up at Ari in genuine confusion, “you asked me if I wanted a drink?”

“I meant like a beer!”

“Whops… communication breakdown,” said Sandra, shrugging.

“But… but what about Thomas?”   

“What about Thomas?” Sandra said. “There are plenty of people for him to choose from.”

Instantly Ari felt sick. Her stomach was churning and she reached for her mouth as a thick stream of bile made its way up.  

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, quickly jumping to her feet and racing back inside.

As soon as Ari reached the bathroom door she turned around. The bile had retreated and she knew that this rebellion from Sandra was her way of coping with Larissa’s death. She needed to be there for Sandra, not run away at the first sign of trouble. The Sandra she knew wouldn’t cheat on Thomas. Ari needed to go back to that table and talk to Sandra and make her listen to her, whether she liked it or not. Moving back outside, her head fell in despair; Sandra was gone.

“Greg, do you know where Sandra went?” Ari asked, touching the boy’s shoulder lightly from behind.

Greg did not respond.

“Greg,” she said again, reaching over to him and trying to get him to sit upright.

Greg did not respond and Ari bent down low to try to get his attention; how much had he drunk tonight? It was then that she noticed his eyes were wide open and that his face was white as a sheet. Oh God, how much had Sandra drunk?

“Shit,” she said dumbly, shoving her hand crudely down Greg’s shirt to feel if there was a heartbeat.

For about a minute she remained like this, her hand trembling over Greg’s chest as she pressed hard… but there was nothing, no heartbeat… Greg was dead.

“Hey- Ari!”

Ari jumped when she heard someone calling out to her, turning around mechanically to see Chris walking towards her.

From where Chris stood at the entrance to the outside area, Ari knew that he would only be able to see her leaning over someone seated at the table; the dark ominous shadows of the surrounding greenery masked Greg’s body from sight almost entirely. What the hell was she supposed to do? If Chris came over her right now he would see her with Greg. Without hesitating she ran straight back to the girl’s bathroom, moving at break neck pace in order to avoid Chris.

She didn’t look back as she ran, but pushed the girl’s bathroom door open, raced into an empty cubicle and threw-up. For a few moments she continued to heave, just as her legs shook and she lost her balance. Feeling herself sway on the spot, she knelt down on her knees, hugging the toilet indecently as beads of sweat formed on her brow.

“Oh God,” she said quietly, just as large tears swelled in her eyes and streamed down her face.

She had manoeuvred herself so that she was now sitting on the bathroom floor. She didn’t care that there were stray pieces of toilet paper around her, or that she could smell a horrible combination of urine and vomit. Her whole world had temporarily turned upside down. It was as if everything she thought she knew about Sandra and Ragon… and all vampires, was a lie; it was as if she didn’t know the people she had spent the last six months with at all.

“Excuse me? Ari are you in here?”

Ari watched as two unfamiliar stiletto heels paced backwards and forwards outside her cubicle; who the hell was this?

“What?” Ari asked, unable to think of anything else to say as she choked back tears.

“Ragon sent me in here to get you,” said the unfamiliar voice, and Ari watched as the stranger bent down low and poked her head underneath the cubicle. “I’m Natalie.”

Ari stared back at the girl called Natalie in disbelief. She was just about to ask who the hell she was and how she knew Ragon, when Ari saw something that made her sick all over again. Instantly she was back on her knees and vomiting into the toilet again. There had been two large bite marks on the girl’s wrist. Had Ragon just attacked this girl then commanded her to come into the girl’s bathroom to get her?

When she was sure that she could not vomit any more, Ari stood, opening the lock of her cubicle slowly and, entirely ignoring the girl called Natalie, moved over to the sink and rinsed her mouth out. Next Ari moved to the bathroom entrance and pushed the swinging door open. She didn’t know or care who this girl was; she just wanted to get away from the campus bar and sort her feelings out.

Her thoughts of solitude were put on hold however. Ragon and Thomas were waiting for her outside the girl’s bathroom. Ari stared at them bemused, until the door to the bathroom flew open behind her and smacked her hard in the back of the head.

“Oh geez Ari, I am so sorry,” said Natalie, reaching down and trying to comfort Ari, as though they were old friends.

“Who are you?” said Ari, feeling the floor begin to swim beneath her as she fell down to sit on the ground.

“Go to the first-aid area at the rear of the club and forget meeting me or Ari tonight”,
said Ragon, commanding Natalie.

Natalie’s eyes widened and she immediately stopped fussing over Ari, stood up, and moved down the hallway.

“I sent Natalie in to check on you; are you alright?” Ragon explained, joining Ari on the floor as he scanned the back of her head. “We can’t find Sandra and when I saw you racing to the bathroom… I thought something was wrong?”

Ari didn’t answer at first. Her face had turned an ashen colour and she twisted to stare at Ragon in horror. The moment he had mentioned Sandra’s name, she had remembered Greg.

“Something
is
wrong,” she said. “Sandra killed someone; Greg he’s… he’s outside. I went to speak with her because she has been so cold to me since, since Larissa and…”

Thomas didn’t wait to hear the rest of Ari’s story, rather turned on the spot and moved quickly to the outside area of the club.

“Ari,” said Ragon, recalling her attention. “Just breath. You’re in shock.”

Ari forced back tears, feeling her body begin tremble.

“Honey,” Ragon said, still trying to get her attention, “I’m sorry. Are you ok? I think we should call it a night. Let’s get you back to my room and put some antiseptic on that,” said Ragon, holding onto her elbow so as to help her up. 

The moment she was on her feet, Ari glared at him.

“Don’t you want to send me to the first-aid area like Natalie?” she spat.

“I… that was…”

“Just leave me alone for a second and give me a chance to get my head straight,” said Ari, moving away from Ragon and back into the only safe haven she could think of- the girl’s bathroom.

The moment the swinging door closed shut behind her, Ari knew she needed to get out of the club. She felt trapped and claustrophobic, as if the sterile bathroom walls were pressing in on her. She knew that Ragon would still be waiting outside and so she paced around the tiled room, until her eyes fell hopefully on the bathroom window. In a second she had dragged the sanitary bin out of one of the cubicles and pushed it up against the wall, so that it was directly below the window.

Using the towel rack to hoist herself up, she swung a leg onto the top of the bin. Glancing out through the window, she saw a shadowy grassed area surrounded by pine trees. She knew that she was being childish but she didn’t care; right now she just had to get away from everything vampire-related. Without hesitating, Ari pulled her body through the open window and fell heavily on the grassy ground beneath.

“Crap,” she said, blinking furiously so as to pull the darkness into focus.     

For a while Ari remained seated on the grass outside, letting the night sky calm her as she waited for her head to stop spinning. She was just about to leave when she heard someone approach the clearing she was in; how had Ragon found her so quickly?

“You alright?”

Ari frowned; that wasn’t Ragon’s voice. Two light blue eyes blinked at her from behind the largest of the pine trees.

“Oh… hey Chris,” she said, and to her surprise a small smile spread across her face.   

There was something kind and sincere about Chris that instantly made Ari feel at ease. She thought this odd, seeing as she barely knew him, and given everything that had happened tonight. With that thought the image of Greg’s lifeless body came rushing back to Ari and suddenly she gasped, remembering that it had been Chris who had called to her from across the room when she had been hovering over him, checking for a pulse. Had Chris seen her with Greg? Did he know that Greg was dead?

“Um… what are you doing out here?” he asked, navigating between the bushes so as to move over to her.

“Just taking a minute; I think I drank a little too much.”

“Yea,” said Chris, “first time at a new uni can do that to you. Trust me; I know how it feels to be an outcast. So what are you studying?”

The casual tone which Chris used made her hopeful that perhaps he had not seen her with Greg.

“Vet,” she said, trying hard to get her heart to settle down so that it stopped hammering in her ears. 

“Seriously… me too, but I’m in fourth year; you must just be starting out then?” he asked.

“Actually I am in fourth year too; I transferred from, err… Australia.”

She had been going to say that she transferred from the University of Brisbane but thought better of it, remembering how Ragon had purposefully concealed where she had studied in her application for the Vice Chancellor.

“So, what have I missed?” asked Ari, hoping to keep their conversation casual.

“Nothing special, a couple of prac classes and a heap of boring lectures, but don’t worry, they have all been recorded. We’re only three weeks into the semester; you’ll be able to catch up. Actually if you want, I can go through some of the things that we have covered in class? We are doing principles of disease, parasitology and virology.”

“Are you guys doing much clinical stuff yet?” Ari asked curiously, purposefully avoiding the study offer because she knew how angry it would make Ragon.

“Yea, we have started doing stuff like top five differentials, and which drugs should be used. It’s actually pretty exciting. I think we get to do a spay on a cat later in the year, or that might not be until next year; I can’t remember now. I think it’s when we start rotating though the clinic.”

Talking to Chris made Ari realise how underprepared she was for recommencing her studies; suddenly she was standing and said, “I probably should make a move back to the dorm. I have a heap of stuff to organise for tomorrow.”