Vamplayers (19 page)

I climb into the room. Both feet on the hardwood floor, both hands on the bottom of the window. “Now what?” I ask, trying not to sound helpless as my mind reels.

“Don’t wait up,” Bianca says and floats to the ground, Cara and Alice scampering down the walls to join her.

Chapter 26

I
slam the window shut and lock it tight.

Grover gets the hint and slams the window nearest him. Zander picks up the chain and locks his window as well.

I know it won’t do much good if they decide to attack for real this time, but I’ve been trained to do what I can do, and right now this is all I can do.

But wait. There’s one thing left. One thing the girls haven’t counted on in their plan to corner us in my own dorm suite.

While the boys try to catch their breath, I run to my bedroom. It’s deathly quiet and dark, but I don’t need a light to see it’s been ransacked since I was last here.

At some point after I left the suite this morning to brush my teeth and get dressed in the communal bathroom, someone—or several someones—trashed my room.

Completely.

My dead heart sinks as I race to my toppled dresser. The drawers have been tossed aside, socks everywhere.

I get on all fours near my nightstand, feeling underneath for the pager, the red button that goes straight to Dr. Haskins’ line and brings the Saviors running.

I retrash the room, looking everywhere. It’s not where I left it, not even
near
where I left it. I look in the closet, rip up a few floorboards, toss open whatever drawers they didn’t, and still I know. Even as I’m looking, I know.

The pager is gone.

One of them, one of my Sisters, has it.

They’re the only ones aware of it.

The ultimate betrayal.

I literally limp into the living room, sad beyond words, tired beyond definition.

The boys pepper me with questions.

“Lily?” Grover asks, arms crossed against his ample chest as if he’s caught a chill. “Why do your friends have fangs? And why can Bianca fly? And how did you push me up four flights of stone wall with your skinny old self?”

I shake my head, beg forgiveness from Dr. Haskins, and say, “My friends, or should I say ex-friends, have fangs because they’re vampires. Bianca can fly because she’s been turned by a Royal, obviously, and has even more powers than the rest of us. And I can push you up four stories because, well, I’m a vampire too.”

“Shut up!” He says it as if Zander’s just told him he scored a personal luncheon with George Lucas next weekend.

What else can I do? We’re in it now. The assignment is ruined. Our cover, my cover, is blown.

If Bianca hasn’t started turning the innocent, warm-blooded students of Nightshade into vampires yet, she soon will. Now that Cara and Alice have mutinied on my butt and gone all traitor on the mission, these two boys and I are the only thing preventing an all-out infestation.

And trembling arm in arm,
boys
are exactly what they look like at the moment.

“Zander,” I say firmly, shaking my head and drawing out my own fangs as proof. “I’m sorry, but that love nick last night? That came from these.”

”What? You said nothing happened last night.” Grover pushes him away, totally missing the point. “You lied to me, bro?”

“Uh, Grover,” Zander says. “I think Lily being a vampire trumps your hurt feelings, ‘kay?”

“I think you underestimate the pain of my hurt feelings, brother!”

“Silence.” I hiss, fangs out and quivering, claws suddenly sharp and long. “Listen, and listen good. I am what’s known as a Sister, of the Sisterhood of Dangerous Girlfriends. My job is to come to schools like Nightshade, rout out the Vamplayer, and stop you all from getting turned.”

“Sisterhood of Damaged What?” Grover trembles.

“Dangerous Girlfriends.” I sigh, the adrenaline fading, the claws succumbing, the fangs subsiding. “Cara and Alice are Sisters too. Or at least they were until Bianca got to them.”

“You mean, those girls who tried to attack us out there are your Sisters?”

I nod. “Well, they used to be. We came here together to find the Vamplayer, but something happened. Either he turned them or he turned Bianca first and she did, but whatever it was, they’ve switched teams and—”

”What’s a Vamplayer?” Zander asks, still looking skeptical. And who could blame them? I’ve had decades to absorb this stuff. These two? They’re getting the condensed version in two minutes or less.

“Just what it sounds like, I’m afraid. He’s part vampire, part player. His job is to seduce impressionable high school girls, turn them into vampires, and unleash them on a school, like rats on a ship, till it becomes totally infested.”

Grover scratches his head, slumping on the couch, the night’s physical activity too much for his normally sedentary life. “Why does he need impressionable young girls to do all that? Why doesn’t he cut out the middleman and turn them all himself?”

“He can’t. When a vampire turns someone, he loses some of his power. With every additional person he turns, he loses more power. But the first person he turns has the most power. Every time that person turns someone,
he
loses more.”

“So, what?” Grover scratches his belly button. “If you were to turn me, or Zander here, you’d be a little weaker because of it?”

I nod. “Right. Not much but a little. But if I were to turn this whole school or even this whole floor of kids, I’d be pretty much useless. Why do you think vampires aren’t always turning people left and right? They don’t want to lose all their power. And it’s even worse for a Royal because they have more power to lose.”

“But if they have more power to lose,” Zander reasons, “then isn’t there more to go around?”

“You’d think so but no. The more power a vampire has, the more power he gives away each time he turns someone.”

“That’s why Bianca is like a vampire on steroids?” Zander paces between the couch and coffee table. “Because a Royal turned her?”

“Not normally, no. There aren’t many Royals left anymore, but what I’ve seen Bianca do, only a Royal or someone who’s been turned by a Royal can do.”

“What’s a Royal?” Grover says.

“A Royal is a vampire born, not bred. In other words, a Royal is not turned into a vampire like I was but is born a vampire from an Original vampire line, and they are the strongest vampires of all.”

“Whoever turned Bianca had to be a Royal. Is that what you’re saying?” Grover looks skeptical.

“Has to be,” I hem.

“You don’t sound very certain,” Zander says.

“I’m not, okay? I’m not trained to fight a Royal

or even a girl turned by a Royal.”

“What?” Grover squeaks. “Don’t you think that’s a pretty big part of your training, missy? That’s like calling yourself a black belt and then, when twenty ninja assassins drop from the roof, saying you don’t know kung fu!”

I frown. “Grover, the Royals are a myth. They’re pure fiction, like your Jedi knights. In all my years, I’ve never met a vampire who’s met a Royal. My headmistress has never met a vampire who’s met a Royal, and she’s, like, ancient. That’s like me dissing you because you haven’t been trained to shake hands with a Wookie.”

“Who says?” he sasses, but I’m not in the mood and neither is he, really. I guess old habits just die hard. “I don’t get it. If these badass Sister chicks are as good as you say, why didn’t they tear us limb from limb when we were climbing up the wall?”

“And if Bianca hates you so much, why did
she
hold back?” asks Zander, still pacing. “If they wanted to get rid of us, now would be the time, don’t you think? Before we tell anybody what’s going on? Or call in the National Guard? Here we are, all in the same place together … What gives?”

I shake my head, picturing Bianca hovering there, red hair flowing in the air like one of those underwater mermaids’ wigs at some tatty Florida theme park. “I dunno. Maybe she was testing us, you know? Maybe she’s trying out her powers.”

The room is deathly still until Zander says, “Or maybe she’s testing yours, Lily.”

Chapter 27

T
ristan literally falls into the room when I yank open the front door. I’m in such a rush to get Grover and Zander to safety that I step on him on my way out.

“Ouch!”

“What are you doing here?” My voice borders on hysteria, my fangs snapping in and out like rubber rodents in some Whac-A-Mole game at the carnival.

A sleek digital camera hangs on a thin black strap around his white linen collar, and a bag full of pricey lingerie has scattered across the floor.

Lingerie?

Grover sneaks a peek. “Dude, cross-dress much?”

Tristan stands, face red, nostrils flaring. “Nothing. I was doing nothing. What are you two doing here?”

Now that the shock of finding Tristan at my front door is wearing off, I’m instantly on high alert. I herd Zander and Grover deeper into the room.

Suddenly it all makes sense. This must be why Bianca and the girls retreated, why they let us go in the first place. It’s a great plan, and even as I backpedal I can’t help but admire it. They chased us up through the back windows while Tristan, the Royal, waited for us to come out the front door.

It’s a brilliant strategy, really. Too bad I’ll never live to duplicate it on another mission someday.

I’m still dragging Zander and Grover along like a mother cat drags her kittens across a stream.

But we can only go so far, and soon my back is brushing curtains.

“Windows! Stay away from the windows,” Grover says.

I laugh, picturing three pairs of vampire hands reaching in and snatching us out. “Good call.”

We crouch in the middle of the room, me without a stake, pager, tool, or weapon of any kind. Without even my Sisters.

And with a Vamplayer standing in the doorway.

Scratch that. A Royal Vamplayer!

Hmmm, where’s the Simulation for
that,
Dr. Haskins, huh?

Beside me is a small coffee table. I regard its four legs eagerly and without hesitating stomp on it, mid-table, like a frat boy squashes a beer can against his forehead to impress some skeezy coed.

It collapses on itself, sending one leg flying toward Tristan and leaving three behind. He ignores the table leg as it scoots by him and clatters out in the hallway. Ah, if only it had flown straight into his heart, this could all be over.

Instead, I’m going to have to do things the old-fashioned way.

I grab the three remaining stakes and focus on Tristan, who is busy gathering his lingerie from the hallway floor.

I hand one splintered table leg each to Grover and Zander.

“Gee, thanks.” Zander twirls his like a baton.

“Yeah, awesome.” Grover grins, waving his like a Groucho Marx cigar in front of his red face.

“They’re not toys.” I use my vampire voice: the one that growls like a sailor, roars like a bear, and cuts like a knife. “They’re stakes. If something happens to me, if he gets by or finishes me, the only way to stop him is to shove this through his heart.

Get it?”

“He whom?” Tristan says from the door, still blushing. A pair of lacy pink thong panties dangles from one long finger that’s pointing at me accusingly.

“You, Vamplayer,” I shout, advancing on him with the shattered tip of the fourth table-leg-slash-stake held shoulder high.

He makes a garbled
eek
sound in the back of his throat and stumbles farther back into the hall.

Man, is this guy staying in character until the final curtain call or
what?

I think of potential witnesses who might walk by despite the late hour. I know I’m already dragging around too many, so I pull him back in the room, slamming the door behind us.

“Grover, get the shades. Zander, check the windows.”

“You mean again?” Zander says. “For, like, the sixth ti—”

One flash from my orange-yellow eyes sets him scurrying midsentence.

They scamper around, still clutching their coffee table legs, not sure if I’m joking but not wanting to argue with a girl with a makeshift stake in her hand and a voice like Batman’s.

While they’re out of the room, I plant my foot on Tristan’s chest and push him onto the couch. He lands with a bounce but stays perfectly still.

I spot his pinky and the finger next to it wrapped in a do-it-yourself gauze bandage from some type of home first-aid kit. “What happened to your fingers, Vamplayer? One of those girls you turned try to return the favor?”

He snorts, looks at his fingers, and says, “If you must know, Lily,
you
did the honor. Last night, remember?”

“Man, you are really good. You mean to tell me a big, bad Vamplayer like you—a Royal no less— hasn’t healed from a little wound like a sprained pinky yet? That’s good, Tristan. That’s rich.”