She stared at me, not buying it. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“Whatever it was seemed … disoriented, I guess, like something had gone really wrong.”
“This thing,” she said skeptically, “what did it feel like?”
That one was easy. “Like an army of insects invading my brain.”
That got her attention. So nice to know I wasn’t the only one ever to get the royal treatment. She obviously recognized my description.
“What did he say?” she asked sharply, and several of her lieutenants, or whatever they were, shot her a look like they also noticed the sudden change in her tone.
“The council has him, and man is he pissed.”
Her face froze. If she’d had any color beyond her war paint, it would have drained away.
“Mellisande, what is it?” Connor asked.
She turned to him, her eyes blank for a moment before she shook off her reaction. “Nothing. Just this child trying to make herself important with her lies.”
I gaped. “Don’t listen to her. If they can get any sense out of him, they’ll know!” I practically shouted.
Her gaze latched onto mine like she was a starving hawk and I was a three-legged mouse. No chance for escape. Crap, crap, crap. I’d given something away. She now knew I knew more than I was saying, but she couldn’t call me on it after branding me a liar.
“Take her away.” Man, I was getting tired of hearing that. Not the dungeon, not the dungeon, I chanted to myself.
“To the dungeon?” Chickzilla echoed.
“Fine. Anywhere, just get her out of my sight.”
The Chick helped me to my feet. It was totally pitiful that only a single human was needed to escort me, but I was still all woozy and walking wounded, like the morning after one of Marcy’s punch parties. All the vamps stayed behind … to argue, it sounded like, because before the door even shut I heard someone ask, “What aren’t you telling us?”
Gina? Someone said in my head, softly. I winced.
“You okay?” Chickzilla asked, her hand gripping my elbow, half support and half shackle.
I looked up at her—jeez, she was a giant.
“Yeah … thanks. Thanks for, ah, saving me.”
She shrugged.
Bobby? I asked the mental voice. Did it make you crazy if you talked back to the voices in your head?
Gina, he said again, with a tone of such relief that it warmed my heart. It seemed like you were under attack earlier.
I shuddered. Melli’s psychic. The council has him, and he thought I gave him up.
He got to you from here? Bobby asked, already growing fainter, like someone had turned his volume way down.
You did, I said … thought … whatever.
No answer.
Bobby?
Nothing. Not a whisper, not a word. If I was the kind of girl given to panic attacks, I’d probably be imagining all kinds of things, like the council bursting in on him, ticked off to find him communicating with the outside world, or imprisonment, torture … but I wasn’t that kind of girl. It was probably just, uh, his power needing to be recharged. It was all new to him. Probably he just had to work it, like a muscle. Build up to the heavy lifting.
“Gina?” Chick said, like it wasn’t the first time.
“What?” I focused on her, on where I was, not on the stuff going on in my head.
“We’re here and you didn’t fight me once. No smart-ass comments, even. You sure you’re okay?”
She almost sounded concerned.
I gave her a wobbly smile. “You do know that unitards have kind of jumped the shark, right?”
She blinked. “Sorry I asked. In,” she said, opening the cell.
If I’d had the strength God gave a flea I might have made a run for it, but as it was, I meekly settled onto the bunk.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” she said, shutting the door.
In this place I wasn’t entirely sure it was a joke.
Anyway, Mellisande got a crack at me before the bed bugs. She came alone, which I could understand, but she’d given me time to think, which I couldn’t. I mean, I might not have Bobby’s debate club training, but I’d had plenty of experience arguing my way from an F to a D, and my earlier fog had blown away.
“Now,” Melli said, as if I was going to be intimidated by her, after him, “you’re going to give me the full story. What did you mean by ‘if they can get any sense out of him, they’ll know?’ You already seem to know a lot more than you should.”
I prepared to give the performance of my life—eyes wide, face baffled. “About what?” I asked. “Some creepy … guy … plays with my head and suddenly I’m the bad guy … girl … whatever. I only said the ‘sense’ thing ’cause the guy was totally all, like, backward talking and everything, like the love child of Yoda and Hannibal Lecter, you know?”
I flitted my hands around vaguely for good measure. She already thought I was a total ditz; I could work with that. But now she was studying me really hard, and I felt a puff of power shoot over me like I was a windshield. It didn’t have nearly the force of Bobby’s, but I could tell it was supposed to do something. If only I knew what—make me tell the truth? Cluck like a chicken? What?
I decided on the first one and let my voice go all, like, deadly dull while I retold my story, every word the sick psychic had spoken. In excruciating detail. It didn’t take long, and then there was silence while Melli-noma thought until I could practically hear the gears grinding.
“They’re going to see us coming,” she murmured to herself.
I pretended not to hear, but I’d had the same thought. If psycho-psychic talked, out of revenge or simple hunger, Mellisande would lose the element of surprise, assuming she’d ever had it. Unless she had the council out-thought or outmanned, which I doubted, it would be a slaughter.
“I need to think about this,” she said, rising.
“What about me?” I asked, trying to sound like I was snapping out of her whammy.
She turned. “I can’t have you blabbing about this, alarming everyone.”
“I won’t!” I promised.
“No, you won’t.” I felt another zing of her power, but it didn’t do a thing for me.
Still, I snapped my mouth shut and didn’t say another word as she turned and walked away.
Now that I was “silenced,” I expected Chickzilla or one of the other guards to set me free, bring me back to the others, but it didn’t happen.
Not even Connor came to pick my brain, probably too caught up in the dragon lady’s war council or whatever. I wished I had Bobby’s powers so I could maybe tap into Melli’s mind and find out what was going on there. She couldn’t be thinking of going against the council now, could she? If I were her … okay, I wouldn’t admit defeat, but maybe I’d keep the future murky by not deciding on a plan until the last second, which would only work if the future wasn’t set in stone. But if that were the case, how could anyone “see” it? My brain hurt just thinking about it, and I lay down to let the dawn sweep me away.
It was a shame I hadn’t had any dreams since I’d vamped out. Dreams are supposed to be your mind’s way of telling you stuff. Right then, I would have taken all the clues I could get.
18
It wasn’t until the next night, hours after the sun had set and I was about to go barking mad with boredom, that Connor actually showed his face. I was so desperate for distraction I was actually glad to see him. At least he was in a button-up shirt and pressed pants. He didn’t look like he was about to go all commando, so probably the raid or scuffle or whatever with the council wasn’t planned for tonight.
“What really happened last night?” he asked, without preamble.
“Unh-uh. You first, or you won’t tell me anything. What�
��s going on?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Last night you really rocked Mellisande. Today she thinks she’s found the perfect distraction. What gives?”
He could have been speaking Swahili for all the sense it made to me. Distraction? Unless … unless she was thinking of having Bobby use his powers and free the freakshow to distract the council from whatever she had planned. It made horrible, perfect sense. That thing loose in the council quarters would be total chaos. But would he care about or even notice the difference between friend and foe when we came to call?
“But—” But what? What was I going to say? “Listen, the council’s got Melli’s freakshow psychic all locked up. I think they followed her goons when they brought Marcy as a sacrifice. I don’t know how their watchdogs missed me, but I’m sure I softened the psycho up for them. The council’s going to see you coming, whatever you’ve got planned.”
Connor chewed on that, forgetting my presence in a way that was getting far too familiar. I’d been ignored more over the past week than in probably the whole rest of my life combined.
“Look, if you hate the lady so much, why don’t you just sneak out to the council and make your own deal?” It was out of my mouth before I realized the stupidity of it. If anybody should be sneaking out to cut a deal … but not unless I knew we’d be better off than we were now, and not without the others. Somehow or other, it seemed the entire group of kids had gotten under my skin. I’d already lost one family—I wasn’t about to lose another. And based on Marcy’s scalping—
“Never mind, forget I said anything.”
“I’ve thought about it, actually,” he said, surprising me with actual conversation. “But if I tell them what Mellisande’s got planned, they’ll run her over, absorb everyone they don’t kill, and I’ll be no better off. Maybe they’ll set me up in her place, maybe not. I don’t trust them.”
So he could either help Melli succeed and continue to be her right-hand man, or he could make sure she went down in such a way that he could pick up the reins. If he went to the council with something—a territory, like, and a following—he could bargain from a position of strength. But where did that leave Bobby and Marcy, who just had to still be alive, and all the rest of us?
“When is it?” I asked. “She’s going up against them, right? All-out war.”
He studied me, not sure how much to say, but it was way too late for discretion. “Tomorrow. It has to be. That’s when she’s set to swear fealty.”
Great. No time, no plan, and no freedom. I was screwed.
“So, I’m just going to be left here to rot?” I asked.
“Someone will be along in a bit. You’re training again with Team Alpha. Say nothing,” he ordered, his eyes drilling into mine as if he’d impose it by sheer force of will, since the mesmerism thing didn’t work out.
Don’t ask, don’t tell. Sheesh, if I’d wanted to join the military I’d … well, it was too crazy even to contemplate. At least I was getting sprung.
It was Larry who came to get me, Larry who stayed in the dorm to flirt with the bookish blond girl while I trudged off down the tunnel with Team Alpha for fun and games.
I missed Bobby, and I was tired of having my life directed for me. I had one night to save the, er, day … a plan would have been good. Instead, I’d be busy trying not to get stabbed, sprayed, or shot. I blamed my sucky hand-to-hand skills on my distraction. Yup, just a day in the life of a typical teen … only instead of dodging gossip and pop quizzes, it was stakes and spritzing. Gossip, at least, had never frizzed my hair.
19
The sun set and I burst awake, flailing like I was falling and trying to catch myself. I didn’t remember dreaming, but it certainly hadn’t been the peaceful sleep of the dead. Maybe my brain was trying to tell me something, like that the bottom was about to drop out of my world.
I was craving a mochachino in the worst way … or the blood of a caffeine addict, I wasn’t picky. Just a little pick-me-up so I didn’t feel as old as, like, the chick with the frozen face who did the fashion wrap-ups on E!
Chickzilla, Sparky, and Hawkman moved around calling everyone to attention and handing out mini-bottles of blood. Their own? I wondered, totally creeped out by the idea. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder that before. But on second thought, no way could they spare so much. Maybe one of them had a day job at the hospital or blood bank.
I got dressed like everyone else, though some had farther to go than others. It was a good thing I’d made that stop at the mall with Rick, because my spiky-heeled boots and short skirt just weren’t Rambo material. Closest thing I had were my new purple cross-trainers (which, of course, had no heels to speak of, and made me feel ridiculously short), and black, skin-tight jeans. It had killed me to forego color while shopping, but I’d grabbed a scoop-neck T-shirt in basic black in case I needed to sneak out again. Not that the cat-burglar look would do me much good against vampire senses. It was more of a state of mind, a dress-for-success mentality.
I was just pulling the Velcro tight on my sneakers when Mellisande and the rest of her entourage arrived to inspect the troops. The dragon lady looked like she was on her way to some kind of shi shi event where people sip champagne out of cut crystal. She had on a skirt made up of about a hundred sheer handkerchiefs, and a ruby-red sequined blouse to go with. Her shoes came to a wicked point. If only looks could kill …
Everyone kind of stopped what they were doing to straighten and watch her, as she watched us.
“Tonight is the night,” Melli announced, pitching her voice to carry. It bounced around the basement like a prize-machine rubber ball. “All of your training, all of our plans, have come down to this. We’re going up against the council and we will win. I will be going in first with a select few to clear your way. Your job is to come in and clean up any opposition. Once we hold the council, we hold the region and from there … anything is possible. We will make our own rules, take what we want, feed where and when we will.”
It sounded like she was running for student body president. Power hummed out of her as if she were trying to affect all her peeps at once, but it was like a fine drizzle, not gonna do more than maybe whet their appetites—not like Bobby’s tidal wave of power.
“Are you with me?” she asked.
There was a general cheer of agreement, but I didn’t think it was all she could have hoped for.
Her eyes narrowed as her gaze swept the room. “Good. The alternative is unthinkable.”
I looked around at the others. They definitely wanted to hurt something, but I wasn’t so sure it was Mellisande’s enemies.
She swept out of the room with her skirt flowing behind her, leaving two of her entourage behind—Connor and Larry, weirdly, the oldest and newest of her inner circle.
Connor studied the faces around him, his gaze meeting mine for just a second before moving on, but it seemed like he was doing that a lot. Making visual contact with his team, maybe.
“Team Alpha, to me,” he said, confirming it. He moved off to one side, leaving the other half of the room to Larry, who called out, “Team Beta.”
Trevor and Cassandra, who’d become the inseparables, actually split in order to flank me in the line-up.
“Melli’s going out the front with her entourage, to draw any watchers away with her,” Trevor whispered.
I’d filled him in last night in the wee hours before dawn along with a few select others. I wished there’d been more I could trust, but who—Chaz and Tina? Larry’s new flirtation, book-girl?
“How do you know that?” I whispered back.
“Look at how she’s dressed. She wants them to think she’s going there to party, not to provoke. She’s hoping to put them off guard. It’s what I’d do. Minus the skirt, of course.”
I bit my lip to keep from pointing out that he did
n’t protest the sparkly shirt, but sobered as Connor’s gaze swept over us again. As soon as he’d moved on, I asked, “What about him?” I jerked my head in Connor’s direction. “Won’t the council expect him to be with her?”
Trevor gave that a moment of thought. “Probably she could say she left him behind to hold down the fort, if it comes to that.”
“Something you want to share?” Connor asked, glaring right at us.
“Sir, no sir,” Trevor said, stiffening to attention. It was totally tin soldier … and yet maybe just a little hot, like I could almost visualize him in uniform. Not that I’d admit it out loud. Besides, I had prophecy boy, and that totally trumped soldier boy any day of the week.
Connor looked to me. “No,” I spat. “Nothing to share.”
“Good, then listen up.”
We were going out the tunnel—no surprise there. Then we were going to divide and conquer. Team Alpha one way, Beta the other. Follow directions. That was all we needed to know. That, and “this is not a game. This is the real thing, boys and girls. Your weapons are locked and loaded. Holy water, real wooden stakes and arrows. Don’t shoot yourselves in the foot. Don’t shoot each other. This video game doesn’t have a restart button. Got it?”
Some of the guys looked like this was wicked cool, but most looked like they could have grasped the concept of “not a game” without Connor trying to meet us at our supposed level with the video game references.
“I’ll cover you,” Trevor whispered, risking Connor’s wrath. Obviously he’d noticed my serious lack of combat skills.
“Thanks,” I whispered back.
Connor motioned for Team Beta to proceed us, and I watched Pam and Vanessa, Larry’s new flirtation, the girls whose hair I’d styled, and others file past me. My chest tightened, and I felt strangely like a mama bear watching my cubs march off to war—which didn’t even make sense. Even best-case scenario, some of those kids wouldn’t be coming back. I just couldn’t imagine that the lot of us, with only a few weeks of training, were going to take down a seasoned council—who I’d imagine had lookouts and enforcers and the whole bit … even if we did have an inside man and a psychic cyclone who could be unleashed.
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