Vampires Rule (20 page)

No introductions. No polite conversation. The
girl went straight for the information she wanted. A reckless part
of Silver wanted to lie and say they were still an item, but the
intelligent part of her brain wouldn’t let her do it.

“He dumped me,” Silver admitted.

A satisfied smile stretched the other girl’s
lips. “Good. Lucky you.”

“I’m not the one who needs to be lucky right
now.” Silver lifted the stake. “I’m a hunter, and you’re a vampire.
What do you think I’m gonna do about it?”

Summer laughed. “You couldn’t take me on my
worst day. I know tricks you haven’t dreamed of. Anyway, you stay
away from Jack and we’ll be cool.”

Summer turned to go.

Silver took a step after her. “Maybe I don’t
want to stay away from him.”

The vampire girl slowly revolved, the smile
stretched thin. “You haven’t a chance with him. Jack and I are
soul-mates.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t think it. I know it.” She tapped the
place where her heart would have been if she’d had one. “I know it
in here. The first time I saw him, I knew he was destined to be
mine.”

No. His destiny was entwined with Silver’s.
Silver thought about cluing the girl in, telling her about Lovely
and the diary and what it had to say about Jack. Silver and Jack
were major players in the diary. This girl wasn’t even mentioned.
She was nothing, just another vampire to be staked.

“He isn’t a vampire anymore,” Silver said.
“He isn’t anything like you.”

“He will be after I change him back. I almost
did it tonight.” A smug gleam entered her eyes. “That’s right. We
were at a party together, and I asked him to rejoin us. He was
about to go with me when some ignorant fool werewolf interrupted
us, but that’s okay. I saw how much Jack wants to be one of us
again. He’ll be coming to me, asking me to bite him soon
enough.”

The vampire girl laughed and added, “When you
are old and shriveled, Jack and I will still be beautiful, and
we’ll be together. We’ll be together forever.”

“I don’t believe you.” Silver said the words
with great confidence even though her heart was breaking. “Jack
hated being a vampire. He’ll never go back to it willingly.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Summer took on a
menacing expression. “You weren’t with us. Jack was happy. He loved
car surfing, rock climbing, scuba diving, and jumping out of high
buildings. He was wild and crazy and reckless. That’s the Jack I
know. The Jack you’ll never get to see.”

Summer leaned forward, baring her teeth.

Silver clutched the stake tighter and set the
point against Summer’s chest.

“Stay away from him or die,” Summer said.

Before Silver could drive the stake forward,
Summer was gone. Faster than the wind, she ran in the direction of
Keppler’s farm. Silver remained where she was, frozen in anger and
grief. She replayed every word the vampire had said to her. She had
been at the party with Jack. Was it true he had almost gone with
her? Did he want to become a vampire again?

****

“I was tempted,” Jack admitted as he returned
to the present. “When Summer asked me to rejoin them, I was very
tempted.”

“How can you even think about returning to
your old life? You were unhappy.”

“Maybe I wasn’t.” He lay back down with a
frustrated sigh and stared at the ceiling. “Maybe I’m just the kind
of person who is never satisfied with where they are. Maybe I can’t
be happy.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Silver lay her head against his chest. Her
arm went around his waist, and Jack forgot to breathe. He was happy
at this moment, happy being close to Silver. In this intimate
position with her ear pressed to his heart, it was easy to forget
his problems. He didn’t know what to do with his arm. He carefully
placed it around her, his hand stroking her hair.

“Can you keep your family away from the
Miller place for a couple weeks?”

“Why?”

“My old clan is using it for a temporary
hideout. We always stay there when we travel through here.”

“Why are you still trying to protect them
after the way they’ve been acting? They threatened me and your
brother.”

“They were my family for ten years. I’m sure
they won’t really try to hurt anyone I care about. If they do, I’ll
kill them myself.”

Heavy sigh. “I’ll do what I can, but my
parents don’t always consult me before they go hunting.”

“Speaking of hunting, my brother took me with
him the other night. Your mom told him to train me.”

“How did it go?”

Jack told her the whole awful story. He
reminded her of the kid at school, the one they’d seen infected. He
explained he had wanted to save the kid but wound up killing him by
accident. She gasped when he told her about the claws.

“It’s happening,” she said. “You’re getting
powers of both vampire and werewolf.”

“I guess so.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Funny, it hadn’t occurred to him to feel
anything about it. He was used to accepting things as they came his
way, good and bad. He thought about it a moment before answering.
“Well, considering I live in a place overrun with vampires and
werewolves, not to mention hunters, I think having powers might be
a good thing.”

“What else happened when we weren’t
speaking?”

He told her about his interesting
conversation with her mother and was surprised to find out she
already knew about it. He told her about Billy sharpening his
stakes when he thought Jack was reverting back to being a vampire.
She laughed even though he didn’t see anything funny about his
brother wanting to kill him.

Jack was silent for a long time, knowing
there was one more thing left to tell her about, one more secret to
share. He didn’t want to do it, but it had to be done.

“The English teacher is a werewolf.”

Silver bolted upright in bed. “Are you
talking about Jersey Clifford? Are you sure?”

“I saw it with my own eyes.” Jack explained
how he’d touched the man and got a flashback from his life. “You
killed one of his buddies the night we met. He didn’t take the news
well. Fortunately he doesn’t seem to want to kill you. He told his
employee you don’t scare him.”

“I don’t believe this.” She got out of bed
and began to pace the floor. He could see in the dark, but she
couldn’t. She continuously bumped into things. He offered to turn
on the light, but she shook her head and said, “Let me think.
Usually my necklace burns a little when I’m close to a werewolf. It
doesn’t do that around Jersey.”

“What about the janitor?” He reminded her,
“You didn’t suspect him either.”

“I’ve only seen him from a distance. He
doesn’t allow me to get that close.”

“I wonder why.”

Silver returned to the bed, stood next to it
and looked down at Jack. “I think Jersey is the head werewolf.”

“He’s not.” Jack knew he should have kept the
information to himself. “The janitor is the leader. I know he
is.”

“You want him to be the big heavy because he
killed your parents. That doesn’t make it true.”

Jack jumped out of bed on the other side.
They faced each other over the mattress, both fighting for what
they believed. “It’s him!” Jack said in a loud voice.

Her hands went to her hips. “Then how did
Jersey manage to fool me and my necklace this whole time? I’ve been
within spitting distance of him.”

“Maybe the dumb thing won’t burn around the
janitor either. Maybe it’s broken. Why do you want it to be Jersey
so badly?”

“I think the question is why are you
insisting it isn’t him? What is Jersey Clifford to you?”

Jack didn’t get the chance to answer because
the bedroom door swung open and hit the interior wall with a loud
bang. Andrew Reign stood in the doorway with his shotgun, loaded
and aimed at Jack’s chest.

“No!” Silver screamed and rushed forward. She
tried to grab the shotgun from her father’s hands, but he held it
tight. Yelling for her mom, she placed herself between Jack and her
father. “Don’t you even think about it! I swear I’ll never speak to
you again.”

Andrew shouted at Jack, “You’d better jump
out that window and run for your life, boy, before I blow your
stupid head off!”

Vanessa appeared behind her husband. “What in
the world is going on in here?”

“I caught your daughter in bed with this
piece of trash!”

“You did not!” Silver grabbed her mom’s arm.
“Listen to me, nothing happened. Jack and I were just talking.
There was a wraith attack tonight at that party I didn’t want to go
to, and he saved Trina’s life. I was telling him about wraiths and
how to kill them.”

Hearing it was about business calmed Andrew
enough to get him to lower the shotgun a couple inches. “You can’t
kill a wraith.”

“Unless you get them when they’re inside
their bodies,” Vanessa said. “Tell us what happened, Jack. Was
anyone hurt?”

Jack knew what Vanessa was doing, trying to
forge a sense of unity between him and her husband. Smart thinking.
If they all had a common enemy, perhaps Andrew would forget about
killing Jack.

“The kids from Jefferson Memorial were
throwing a party in the field next to the cemetery and they
appeared out of nowhere. There wasn’t anything I could do. I’d
never even heard of wraiths before.”

Vanessa laid a hand on her husband’s arm and
drew his attention to her. “We should go to the field, see if we
can find a clue where the wraiths are hiding. They’ll need to be
dealt with.”

Jack forgotten, Andrew set his rifle aside
before facing his wife. “Honey, we don’t know hardly anything about
wraiths either. I think it would be a big mistake to go after them
right now.”

“What choice do we have? If they’re attacking
children, we have to stop them.”

“Do you know what they do with the people
they take?” Jack asked.

Everyone went silent.

“No one does,” Andrew finally said. He looked
directly at Jack, no animosity in his gaze this time. “Considering
what they are, I’m sure it isn’t pretty.”

“Let’s all go downstairs,” Vanessa said.
“I’ll brew some coffee, and we can strategize. We’ll need a plan
before we go after them.”

****

A few minutes later they were sitting at the
dining room table. Jack learned Silver drank coffee—three teaspoons
of sugar and a dollop of cream. Andrew and Vanessa told a few
stories about their hunting misadventures, went over the variety of
traps they’d used to catch their prey. Then they shared ideas of
how to find the wraiths.

Vanessa’s idea: find the lead werewolf. Once
they had him, they could find the wraiths and kill them. That would
put a stop to any future aerial kidnappings. It was the best plan
they could come up with.

Silver said, “I think I already know who it
is.”

“No, you don’t,” Jack said.

Vanessa and Andrew exchanged a look before
Silver’s mom asked, “What is going on with you two?”

“Yeah,” Andrew joined in. “This isn’t the big
love-fest I expected.”

“I think the lead werewolf is a teacher at
the high school,” Silver said. “And Jack thinks it’s the
janitor.”

Vanessa stared at them, mouth open.

Andrew leaned forward in his seat. “Explain.
I want to hear your evidence against each one now.”

Silver looked to Jack, but he motioned for
her to go first. She could talk until she was blue in the face. He
knew he was right, and he would prove it. He held the warm coffee
cup between his hands but didn’t drink it. The dark liquid was
bitter. He’d added some sugar, but it hadn’t helped.

While Silver delivered her case against the
teacher, Jack tried more sugar and a bit of cream. He sipped it,
trying hard not to make a face. He had the feeling a ton of sugar
and a gallon of cream wouldn’t convince him to drink the
sludge.

“Allow me to present my case,” Silver said.
“I have irrefutable proof that Jersey Clifford is the lead
werewolf.” To demonstrate her point, she pulled the silver dagger
from her blouse. “My necklace doesn’t burn when I’m around
him.”

That was it? That was her whole argument for
killing Jersey? Silver didn’t know it, but she’d already lost.
Finished, she sat down across from Jack before motioning for him to
speak.

“The janitor killed my mother and father,”
Jack said in a cold, dead voice he didn’t recognize as his own. “I
remember how easily he did it. He took out two strong hunters, no
problem, and he’s avoiding Silver at school. Why would he avoid her
if he wasn’t the lead werewolf?”

Andrew nodded slowly. “I hate to agree with
this kid, but he has a valid point.”

“No.” Silver exploded out of her seat. “He
wants the janitor to be guilty because he hates him. My gut is
telling me it’s Jersey Clifford.”

“I have an idea,” Vanessa said. “Get close to
the janitor on Monday and see if your necklace burns. If it does,
then our man is the teacher. If it doesn’t, then it could be either
one of them.”

They all agreed to the experiment, although
Andrew didn’t like his daughter getting close to a psychotic
werewolf. Jack told them he would be close at hand just in case. He
stood, told the parents goodnight, and asked Silver to walk him to
his brother’s car.

Once they were outside, Silver got shy and
quiet. They stood on the porch for a short time while he tried to
memorize how her face looked in the moonlight. Her eyes were on
everything but him. Her attitude reminded him of that first night.
He took her hand and pulled her off the porch with him. They
strolled down the sidewalk, taking slow steps to make the trip last
for as long as possible.

“Are we a couple now?” she asked. “I mean, I
just want to know how to act when I see you in school on Monday. We
don’t have to be a couple if you don’t want to be. That’s fine.
Whatever. We don’t have to label it. I mean, we can just hang out
if you want.”