“Lucy.” Her teacher’s voice was sharp. “We leave the slaying to the boys. It’s not our job. Not only is it highly undignified and unfeminine, but ladies lack the strength and agility to slay vampires—not to mention the courage of spirit.” She shook her head as if Lucette were a child learning the most basic lesson. “Vampires can sense emotions. They feed off your fear.”
“Boys don’t get scared?”
Miss Eleanor sighed. “Boys learn to mask their fear.”
“And girls don’t get scared when they’re acting all sexy to lure vampires into traps?” Eventually her teacher would admit to the holes in her logic.
“Lust is a powerful force, Lucy. It clouds a vampire’s judgment. They don’t have higher reasoning powers to help them overcome their animal instincts, as we humans do.”
“How do you know? Have you ever met a vampire?” Lucette sensed it might not be smart to admit that she had met one—not right now, anyway. “And why do we need to flirt to draw the vampires into traps? I mean, if vampires are so thirsty for human blood, isn’t the fact we’ve got it running through our veins enough to lure them?”
Miss Eleanor’s cheeks reddened and she smoothed her skirt with her hands. “Lucy, if you’re not here to learn, you can leave my class right now. I will not tolerate this insubordination. You girls are training to play vital roles in the slayer army, and if you want to stay, you must learn to follow orders.”
A member of the slayer army? Ha! Lucette narrowed her eyes. This school wasn’t training the girls to be slayers—it was training them to be bait.
Her mother was going to hear about this.
The next Friday night, Lucette glared at her father as she sat opposite him in his office waiting for the scolding she knew was coming. How could he have expected her to be nice to those boys?
She shifted her glare down to her dress—the lace, the frills, and the way-too-low neckline—and crossed her arms over her chest, disgusted by the hideous pink nightmare with its itchy crinoline. Girls with small breasts and no hips shouldn’t wear dresses cut like this. She felt humiliated. Tonight had been worse than her classes at the academy. And those had gotten harder to bear since she’d learned her mother wouldn’t interfere with the school’s curriculum, claiming it would threaten Lucette’s secret identity.
“Lucette,” her father said, “stop fidgeting. When you sit still, you look lovely in that dress.”
“I do not.” She slumped back. “I look freaky enough in my normal clothes, but this dress is frilly—and pink! I hate pink!” She grabbed a handful of the offending fabric and tugged.
“Well, I think it quite becomes you,” he said. “And from what I saw and heard, all the boys you met tonight agreed with me.” He set his face into what looked like a forced smile. “Every last one of them has asked me for permission to court you.”
She clenched her fists and fought the urge to shout, still barely believing her father had paraded her in front of all those boys as if she were some prize to be won. “Dad, I’m only thirteen.”
Her father leaned forward from his chair. “Don’t you like boys?”
“No. No, I don’t. They’re smelly and pimply and boring.” And the ones at her school could train to be real slayers, while she couldn’t. It wasn’t fair and she planned to take out her frustration on every single member of the male gender.
“Lucette, you’re becoming a young lady.” Her father’s strong dark eyebrows pushed together and his forehead wrinkled. “Most girls your age would be happy to have their father’s permission to date boys.”
“Well, I’m not most girls, am I?” No, most girls her age didn’t have huge curses hanging over their heads. Most girls her age actually looked like girls. Most girls her age weren’t enrolled at the Slayer Academy.
“What’s the problem, Lucette?” Her father’s concern had turned to irritation. “Why are you so upset that I introduced you to a few nice boys?”
“You can’t force me to date against my will.” Especially since these so-called dates would involve chaperones and guards, and the boys would probably be frisked for sharp objects and scrutinized for splinters before they’d be allowed near her. Her father would probably insist the boys wear gloves, too, in case one broke a nail or had a callus. It was beyond humiliating.
Her father’s expression turned serious. “Lucette, it’s vital you find true love.”
“Why? So I can give you an heir to your throne?” Really, she was only thirteen!
He rose from his chair as if he planned to discipline her, but then his face softened. “Didn’t your mother tell you that true love is the only way the vampire queen’s curse can be lifted?”
That was why her father wanted her to date boys? To fall in love? Like that would happen. She let out a disdainful laugh.
“Take this seriously, Lucette.” Her father cleared his throat.“The fairies made three alterations to the original curse. One to keep you safe until you turn sixteen, one to prevent the vampire queen from entering Xandra, and another to lift the curse when you prove you’ve found true love.”
“But I’m thirteen!” Lucette’s mind felt muddy. She wasn’t exactly a little girl anymore, and wanted her father to treat her like a grown-up most of the time, but not about this. She wasn’t ready for love.
Her father tapped his fingers on his huge marble-topped desk. “Maybe you’re not old enough to attend charm school then, either.”
“What?” Lucette’s heart rate tripled.“That’s not fair.” Even if training to be a female slayer wasn’t what she hoped for, at least there she had a chance to get close to the weapons.
He frowned. “The fairies paid a high price for altering your curse. You can’t take them for granted.”
She nodded, and a little bit of the muddiness cleared. “What price?”
He sat down and gripped the carved arms of his chair, as if he might crush them. “The vampire queen was very angry that the fairies helped you.” He paused, looked at her, then continued. “So she punished them—brutally.”
Lucette felt a lump form in her throat, and a sense of guilt overcame her as she thought of the price others had paid to help her. “Punished them how?”
He shook his head.“Don’t worry about that. It’s better if you focus on preventing the curse. Finger safety and finding true love are the keys.”
Lucette sat silent for a moment. She didn’t think her father was wrong; it was smart to prevent the curse. But she also thought her mother was right, that she should be prepared in case the curse did fall. Her father was in denial if he thought he could protect her from every danger, or if he thought she’d ever find love. She wished she were interested in boys, but she wasn’t. Not like that.
“Did you say the fairies’ magic says I have to prove I’ve found love?” she asked, and he nodded.
“How do you prove that?”
He ran his fingers over his chin, and Lucette wondered if he knew the answer, but then he cleared his throat. “If your love is true, proving it will be easy.”
“Did you and Mom have”—she took a deep breath to calm her nerves—“true love?”
Her father looked as if he’d been struck by lightning, then his eyes turned glassy. “Lucette, your mother is the most beautiful and quick-witted woman I’ve ever met. And the way she used to look at me . . .” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I love your mother. I do. Very much. But perhaps she was too young when we wed. Perhaps she wishes she’d had more time on her own first.” He looked away, and Lucette could feel waves of sadness drifting from him.
She rounded his desk and sat on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his velvet jacket. “Don’t be sad, Daddy.”
It was clear he loved her mother, or at least he had before the curse ruined everything, before she’druined everything. Lucette had to make up for that. From now on, she’d try harder to please her parents and make them happy.
The next week, Lucette leaned over the balcony rail
ing above the school gymnasium to see the action below. Her hands itched to hold one of those big sticks the boys were thrusting and swinging as they leaped around the gym. Even though this was an advanced class, some of them were complete klutzes.
Others weren’t.
A tall blond boy, about sixteen from the looks of him, was completing an obstacle course and Lucette couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He climbed nearly twenty-five feet up a rope, the muscles in his bare back and shoulders flexing and straining as he moved impossibly fast. Reaching the top, he swung the rope to gain momentum and height, and then released it as he propelled himself toward an even higher platform. As he landed, Lucette sucked in a quick breath, watching how the strong muscles in his legs flexed. He sprang again, this time executing a flip in the air, and landed on another platform. A straw-filled dummy shot skyward. He picked up a stake and leaped to stab it midair.
The stake went straight through the dummy’s chest and the boy landed on the gymnasium floor.
Lucette lifted her hands to clap, but noticed that no one else did. The other girls had all turned their heads or covered their eyes, as if real blood had been spilled instead of just a little straw. Wimps.
Miss Eleanor stepped up beside her. “You see now, don’t you?” Lucette studied a group of boys about to start a sparring exercise and lifted her arm to mimic their stance. “See what?”
“That slaying is no job for girls,” Miss Eleanor said, a smug look on her face.
Lucette dropped her arms. “No, I don’t see that at all. Look at him.” She pointed at a skinny boy struggling to push a huge block of stone across the room. “I’ll bet I’m stronger than he is.”
“They all have their specialties, Lucy. That boy is the fastest in this group at rope climbing. He can scale a three-story building in thirty-two seconds.”
“So could I, I’ll bet. If someone would just give me the chance.”
Miss Eleanor pushed back from the railing. “Bringing you girls up here was a mistake.” She shook her head. “I hoped that by showing you the brutality of the boys in action, you’d come to your senses.”
She had come to her senses. Nearly every night vampires roamed Xandra looking for necks to bite, and Lucette now felt sure that the vampire boy she met in the woods had been the exception, not the rule. Vampires were vicious, and in only three years she might find herself facing them alone. She wished her father would declare war like her mother wanted, but while he’d reinstated the slayer army for defensive purposes, he still refused to declare war on Sanguinia. He was determined to find a diplomatic solution.
She shuddered. The possibility that her father might find a solution someday didn’t make it any less horrible for the nightly vampire victims. And if the curse came true, she’d be left to defend the entire kingdom on her own.
Her hand rose to cover her neck. She was doomed unless she learned how to slay. Arguing with Miss Eleanor would be nothing compared to fighting a vampire. She would make the teachers at the school see. She’d make them believe she could do it. If only she could tell everyone she was the princess, then they’d have to do what she wanted.
She stepped back from the balcony and turned to the stairs. “I’m going down to join the boys.”
“Lucy! Stop right now!” Miss Eleanor called after her as she ran to the flight of stairs leading to the gym.
Dizziness seized Lucette at the top of the stairs. She hadn’t walked down a flight of stairs alone in her entire life, but after drawing a deep breath to steady herself, she took hold of the banister and raced down.
“Lucy!” Slowed by her high heels, Miss Eleanor reached the top of the stairs just as Lucette reached the bottom. “Girls aren’t allowed on the gymnasium floor! There are weapons! You’ll get hurt!”
Hearing the thuds and smashes of the weapons and bodies slamming into each other, fear and excitement coursed through her. Training with these boys, she might get an injury way worse than a finger prick.
Nonetheless, she stepped onto the floor. Two tall boys were sparring right in front of her, so close she could smell their sweat. She stepped to the side and saw a rack of stakes about twenty feet down the wall she was standing against. What she wouldn’t give to hold one in her hand, to feel its weight, to leap and strike one of the dummies. She headed toward the stakes.
“Watch out!” Someone yelled, and she was tackled from the side.
An arrow swooshed over her head and thunked into the wall. Lucette looked up. Just above her head was a bull’s-eye, the arrow still vibrating at its center.
“What were you thinking, walking in front of a target?” An angry voice startled her, and she realized it was the tall blond boy she’d been watching earlier. He had her pinned down, and she could see his eyes were bright blue, flashing with life, and very, very angry.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Miss Eleanor’s voice rang out, “Mr. Harris, one of my young ladies is on the floor and one of your young men has attacked her! Stop your boys right now!”
A horn sounded, and the mock battles stopped.
“Tristan, help her up!” someone yelled from the other side of the room.
The boy named Tristan shook his head in disbelief and his eyes narrowed as he rose to his feet. Lucette still sat, feeling hot and scared and excited. Her heart was beating so quickly she wondered if it might pound its way out of her chest.
Miss Eleanor’s heels clacked across the gymnasium floor. “Lucy, you are on warning! Behave or I’ll have you expelled. You’re a young lady—even if you don’t much look like one—and I’ll have you act accordingly.”
Lucette’s cheeks burned. Having her appearance derided in front of half the boys in the school—not to mention her blond lifesaver—both enraged and embarrassed her.
She would not be treated like this. She would not be held back by people like Miss Eleanor. Somehow, she would learn how to fight.
That night, Lucette stared into her bathroom mirror at a face that looked back at her with angry red cheeks, and lifted another clump of her long, wavy black hair to the side. Her father loved her hair, and she considered it her best feature, too—her only feminine feature, even though she usually kept it bound up in a braid. But what good was a lot of nice hair on top of a toothpick body, or around a bony face?
Grabbing the knife she’d smuggled out of the gymnasium, she sawed her hair, and a three-foot-long section fell onto the marble floor. She’d show her father she wasn’t some dainty doll for him to put on display for boys. She’d show Miss Eleanor what she thought of her grooming lessons. With short hair, she’d look even more like a boy than she already did. Maybe then the school would see her slayer potential. Maybe she’d reenroll in the Slayer Academy under a new secret identity—Luke.
Somehow, she’d make everyone see that she needed to train, even though no one could know why it was so important.
She cut off another chunk of her hair, close to her scalp, and furrowed her brows. Her eyebrows might be thick and ugly, but no way was she letting Miss Eleanor’s tweezers within ten feet of her face. The other girls all looked permanently startled with their overplucked arches.
“Lucette, what in the world are you doing?”
She spun away from the mirror to see her mother standing in the doorway, her face stricken with concern. But Lucette refused to cave in to her mother’s obvious hurt. She turned back to the mirror and sawed off another chunk of hair. Her father hated her for not cooperating on his matchmaking project. Miss Eleanor hated her for not playing nice at school. That tall, handsome boy Tristan hated her for being careless in the gym. Now her mother could hate her, too. She didn’t care.
“Go away, Mom! Leave me alone.” She shut the door to the bathroom and continued to hack away at her hair.
Two weeks later, things still hadn’t turned out as she planned. In spite of her new haircut, the teachers had not let her train with the boys, and Miss Eleanor forced her to wear an itchy wig at school. Worse, he
r haircut had broken her father’s heart. He could barely look at her now, yet still insisted she meet boys every Friday night.
But Lucette wasn’t one to let rules interfere with what she wanted. She peered through the posts of the balcony railing and studied Tristan. He trained here every day at three o’clock, once classes were over, and she never missed it. From up in the balcony where he couldn’t see her, she copied his actions, learning as much of his training routine as possible.
After watching his last sequence, she leaped, spun, and kicked into the air. Without a real stake or the straw dummy to strike, it was difficult to tell if she had used enough force or if her form was correct, but it felt good. She felt strong, having developed so many new muscles since beginning this shadow-training regimen.
Tristan threw a spear down the length of the gym to impale a straw dummy. With nothing to throw, Lucette wound up and launched an imaginary spear, visualizing it sailing through the night air to pierce a vampire’s heart.
“Why don’t you come down and try with a real spear?” Tristan called, and Lucette froze. He had seen her.
“Come on,” he said. “I can hear you up there and I see your shadow. Your form on your roundhouse kick is getting better. Pretty good, considering all you’re attacking is air.”
She stepped up to the railing and, after drawing a deep breath, leaned over to see if he was serious. If he were mocking her, she’d try out one of those real spears—on him.
He smiled and ran a hand through his short blond hair. “Come on down. I don’t bite.” He flashed a wide smile.
“No,” she said, “but you do tackle.”
He chuckled. “Hey, I saved your life. The least you could be is grateful.”
“Yeah, well, if they’d let me train as a slayer, then maybe one day I could pay you back and save your life.”
Sleeping Beauty: Vampire Slayer Page 4
