Noreen was slyly peeking through the fluffy red hair that covered part of her sprite-featured face, watching Wolfie on the bed, too, but not as obviously as Polly. Certainly Mrs. Jones is gone for good, she mind-said. Far and away from here. We chased her out properly.
True enough. The Queenshill girls had grouped together after Della had endured dreams about vampires that had come upon her like living nightmares. She had no idea of their origin—perhaps her subconscious had woven together subtle clues about Mrs. Jones and the way she constantly, intensely watched them—but the dreams had led Della to the truth about the cat. And after Della had told the other Queenshill girls about those warped tales, they had ambushed their housematron, forcing themselves into Mrs. Jones’s head to see if Della’s strange visions held any validity.
They had. And, worse, the girls had seen proof that the old vampire had been murdering their classmates.
Accordingly, Mrs. Jones had suffered at the hands of the betrayed crowd. Out of control, they had clawed at her skin, chased her down the tunnels, driven her out. Afterward, they had been at loose ends, realizing their folly as well as what Wolfie was sure to do to them now. They also wondered what Mrs. Jones would visit upon them if she should ever return.
Like Noreen, Della hid behind her own hair, as well as the lilac curtain. The mousy veil of frizz had allowed her to fade into the background so many times, and she needed that security now, as Wolfie occasionally lifted his head to call to them from the bed. Calls that they were hesitating to obey.
She didn’t wish to look at the vampire girls worshipping every inch of Wolfie’s skin, but she kept doing it. They had exhausted him to sleep at dawn, cuddling with him until dusk had returned to awaken them. There were girls holding his hands, kissing his palms. Girls at his feet, stroking his legs. Girls combing their fingers through his brown rock-star hair. Girls running their tongues over his thighs, stomach, and chest.
Stacy, the eldest, who had decades over Della, even as she remained an eternal platinum blond sixteen-year-old, had taken charge of the rest of Wolfie, nestling between his legs to love him there.
Blood rushed through Della, spearing her deep in the belly. Fortunately, the love play would keep him from accessing their thoughts with a master-progeny mind-link; they couldn’t afford for him to see what they had truly done to Mrs. Jones.
But she feared that, soon, she, Noreen, and Polly would have to give in to his desires. They were the newest of the Queenshill vampires, freshly brought over from the cat’s yearly crop; those who survived her graduated to Wolfie’s main Underground, joining the girls whom the Queenshill darlings had recruited on the streets—girls who would not be missed in society and had found a genuine home down here. Della, Polly, and Noreen were the only ones from whom he had not enjoyed the gush of virgin blood.
Through a set of alarming circumstances, they had been brought to the main Underground early. A motley group had wandered onto the Queenshill campus several nights ago, a vampire having been among their number. “Frank” was seeking some of his own kind as company and had found the schoolgirls. Yet, Della had been suspicious of the group’s story, and the meeting had got out of order, ending in a melee. When a far more dangerous and mean vampire had shown up to help the intruders—and when one of the intruders had proven to possess strong mental powers that had almost captivated Della—the schoolgirls had fled back to their dorm house. As a precaution, they had been taken off campus, then transferred early to the main Underground.
Even now, Della didn’t know how their absence from their “normal lives” at school was being explained. Mrs. Jones, who had masqueraded as a school employee, had been working on explanations that were surely holding. It might be days before the administration thought something amiss and contacted their parents. Not that their mums and dads had ever cared about much when it came to girls like Della, Noreen, and Polly, who had been all but dumped at school and forgotten.
Memory tweaked at Della—the pull of life as it had been before those intruders had shown themselves on campus. School days spent walking under the sun, as their line of vampires could do in modest doses. The mentorship of Mademoiselle, the French teacher. The pull of Melinda, a classmate whom Della had admired beyond any other.
Then Della remembered how, one night, Violet, their former group leader, had coerced Della into feeding from Melinda. Della’s stomach tied into knots of guilt.
Just as she crossed her arms over her stomach to press against the tight feeling, to obliterate the remorse and the confusing stimulation, she recalled, also, what she had eventually done to Violet, the bully.
A black cloud formed over Della’s vision. Ravens, summoned and spurred on by Della’s rage.
Polly and Noreen seemed to sense Della’s disquiet, and they glanced at her, their gazes cautious, as if seeing firsthand the carnage Della had wrought on Violet.
Wolfie called to them. “So far away in that corner. You’ve saved yourselves long enough. Come here, my dears.”
Noreen’s and Polly’s gazes changed from wariness of Della to something else altogether. Though Wolfie had often stopped in Mrs. Jones’s sub-Underground to visit and play innocently with them, Mrs. Jones had made certain they had remained untouched—all the tastier for her blood rituals, Della imagined.
Wolfie had propped himself up on his elbows, the other girls continuing to lavish him with their experienced hands.
Noreen accessed Polly and Della with the classmate mind- link. He wants something new. She had been his most recent favorite before all the trouble had come upon the Underground, and she knew he would probably rip into her first.
They had all looked forward to the night when it would happen, but now that it was here . . .
Della pushed aside the sheer curtain. Every time Wolfie was near, she knew how much he wanted to have at them. There had been a power in withholding, too. She had intuitively realized this last night, when the older girls had taken the lead.
Polly inched closer to Della. What now?
Della stepped away from the fringes, smiling at Wolfie, though she wasn’t feeling the same on the inside. You two know that we are the ultimate distraction for him, she mind-said to her classmates. The longer he doesn’t know about what really happened with Mrs. Jones, the better.
But . . . Noreen started.
Hush, Noreen, Polly thought. Back in the sub-Underground, she had acted so knowledgeable, yet her pounding vital signs showed that she was just as afraid as Della and Noreen. Just as excited, as well, because as Della was learning, power was a rush.
Polly continued. Are you still such a little girl that you can’t handle this?
Noreen shook her head, raising her chin a notch, her red hair falling away from her face. She was shaking, but she stepped away from the curtain, coming just behind Della and Polly.
“There,” Wolfie said, his smile growing, his fangs lengthening. Rivulets of blood ran down his pale chest, girls licking at the red. “Come, now.”
Stacy, her platinum hair cascading over Wolfie’s skin, looked up at Della from where she was rubbing her cheek against his stomach. Della didn’t glance lower though. Aside from what she had glimpsed of the boys kept captive in the Underground, she had never seen a grown male’s parts in real life. Only in movies and magazines.
The older female vampire grinned at Della, her fangs glinting just past her lips. Their connected gazes allowed them to share thoughts since they weren’t immediate classmates.
You’re what we need to keep him going, the other girl thought. He won’t be thinking about Mrs. Jones for a while with you three to take our place in bed.
Still, Della and her classmates hadn’t come any nearer. Wolfie must have taken this for coy virtue. All of them had been chosen for the Underground due to their purity, among other reasons, though Violet and Polly had experimented the most before being turned. Yet they had all waited for the right one, and Wolfie had been it: The protector who had rescued them from boring, despairing
human life. The one who understood them completely.
This was one reason that deciding to become a vampire had been so easy.
He shifted halfway into his wolf form, snout and ears lengthening, his grin growing even more. It was the form he had always used during playtime with them—their lovable, constant Wolfie.
“Come here,” he whispered in a growl that was, for the first time, losing its carefree lightness.
Della’s body responded, starting its own shift into the wolf-feline form she had inherited from the exchange with both Wolfie and Mrs. Jones, the cat. Children vampires such as Della didn’t possess all the abilities and strengths their creators held since blood power weakened from generation to generation, but they were still dangerous with their teeth, their hunger, which had only grown and grown with each hunt.
As the emergence of hair tickled Della’s skin, she felt Noreen’s fingernails pinch into the back of her arm, and her shift came to an immediate halt.
Noreen was right, Della thought. They still had power over Wolfie. She should hold to that.
The three of them approached the bed while their master shifted back into his humanlike form, his dark hair hanging over his shoulders while he leaned forward, anticipating them. A few Queenshill girls moved aside to make room for the newcomers while Della, Polly, and Noreen arrived at the edge of the mattress.
But, as Della looked into his famished, golden gaze, she saw that this wasn’t the Wolfie she had always loved. He was . . . devilish.
That was the term. He was different, and the nakedness of his need made her believe that he indeed knew what Mrs. Jones had been doing to their missing classmates.
When he reached out a hand to her, she stepped back, her heart sore. She had been trying so diligently not to believe it.
He seemed raddled. “What is it, Della?”
She could feel Polly and Noreen stiffen beside her. They must be careful, keep him occupied. . . .
But Della had hesitated in answering too long, and now, Wolfie grasped her wrist. She had never seen him like this—so frustrated by his cravings. He had been primed by the other girls, and he was clearly expecting to be brought to greater heights with new blood.
“Wolfie . . .” Della said, uncertainty making her voice shake.
He was beyond chatter, and before she knew it, he plunged into her mind, as if he had been waiting to go there after the sexual haze from the other girls had worn off.
Out of pure impulse, Della took control, just as she had learned these last several nights: she mentally pushed false images to the front of her mind, lying to him.
She showed him how Mrs. Jones had supposedly attacked Noreen out of jealousy for Wolfie’s affections. How the rest of the Queenshill girls had protected one of their own and chased Mrs. Jones out.
When Della was done, Wolfie tilted his head, and she could tell that he had taken this sharing to be a moment of guilt tumbling out of her. In the past, she often became so anxious around him that she made embarrassing errors in judgment, just as he apparently thought she was doing now.
He interpreted what she had shown him to be the truth. She could see it.
What he didn’t know was that Della had depended upon this: that a girl who doesn’t lie much would be taken at face value when she did choose to do so, for when a girl was good, she could get away with quite a bit when she decided to be bad.
He loosened his grip on her, and Della could feel him slipping away, for seeing Mrs. Jones in her mind had reminded him of his companion.
All the other girls glared at her, encouraging her to give Wolfie everything else he wanted. Yet he had already lain back on his pillows, his hair spread, a look of great sadness consuming him.
“Claudia,” he said on a sigh.
And that was, as they say, the last straw.
She imagined Wolfie kissing Mrs. Jones so passionately that it made Della feel like nothing in comparison. Then she imagined killing Mrs. Jones, although terminating one half of Della’s creators would make her lose half her powers. A termination wouldn’t even cause Della to regain her humanity, since Wolfie and Mrs. Jones had both contributed their blood to the exchange and he would have to die, as well.
But it would be worth losing Mrs. Jones’s powers—even the ability to drink through skin—just to have Wolfie to themselves.
A sorrowful heaviness rested on Wolfie’s mouth as he continued staring at the rock ceiling. “I’m not certain what to do with you girls anymore.”
Della could feel Stacy still glaring at her.
“Wolfie,” Polly said, her voice higher than usual. She was more afraid than any of them, and that surprised Della, especially when the other girl took a deep breath and then coasted a finger over their master’s bare forearm. She was obviously game to be the first to sacrifice her blood.
He placed a hand over Polly’s fingers, and the very air in the room stilled.
He was not appeased by Polly’s willingness. It was too late.
“I realize,” he said, growling, “that you lot merely overreacted when you chased Claudia out, but it was still a sin.”
Noreen’s mind-link came to Della like a whisper. Of course he would want her back. We were foolish to think we could take her place. . . .
His eyes narrowed, almost as if he’d overheard Noreen. “I ought to send all of you above to find her.”
Although none of the girls showed a change of expression, Della could sense the waver of trepidation in the room.
“Wolfie,” Stacy said, placing a hand on his thigh. “I hardly think—”
“None of you were thinking,” he said, finally sounding like a master vampire and not the smitten rogue they’d been wrapping around their fingers. “You had no business banishing her.”
“But should she return,” Stacy said, “she would punish us, even over a misunderstanding.”
“Let me handle her.” Wolfie sat up, pressing an ireful look on each one of them. He had passed the point of toying with the idea of getting Mrs. Jones back Underground, clearly having embraced it. “You will track her, since she no doubt spilled enough blood to leave a trail. You will bring her back down here, and then we will talk about misunderstandings.”
When he looked at Della, she clutched the silken sheets, more angry than afraid of Mrs. Jones’s return. But there was no argument against him—they were in deep trouble. They would have to obey his wishes and endure the consequences.
Unless there was some way out of this.
As Wolfie carried on with looking at the other girls, Della glanced up and made eye contact with Stacy. In the older female’s eyes, Della could see a reflection of her own wild jealousy, the hatred of Mrs. Jones as well as Wolfie’s abiding affection for the murderer.
If we find the cat . . . Della thought to Stacy.
Without Della even having to finish, the other schoolgirl smiled in understanding. Despising Mrs. Jones trumped even the frustration the other girls were feeling for Della at the moment.
If we find the cat, Stacy thought back, we find the cat.
Now Della smiled, too, knowing that none of the girls would allow Mrs. Jones back down here. They would undertake this task of Wolfie’s because he had commanded it, yet they would make this task their own, too.
Polly had been watching Della and Stacy communicate, and without having to be told, she slid closer to Wolfie while nailing open a slice of skin on her neck.
The scent of her previously forbidden blood made him shiver. His eyes went hazy once again as he sank to the pillows, taking Polly with him as Della and Stacy arose from the bed to prepare the other schoolgirls to go aboveground, where they were not only going to track the cat.
They were going to kill it.
SIX
THE THERAPY CANDIDATE
DAWN was tangled in Costin’s arms, his lips working at her neck, his fangs piercing her. She was dizzy from the small amount of blood Costin had already sucked out of her, and he was taking even more. Not enough to disabl
e her though. Just enough to pump him up, to give him the power that the supplemental bags that he quietly procured from a blood bank didn’t.
Since she was his mainstay—the “key” to his quest—her blood had this effect on him. At least, that was what Kiko kept telling her, based on a vision he’d had, the one that’d caused Costin to lure her, an out-of-work stuntwoman, to L.A. in the first place so she could join the team. Kiko even thought she’d be the hunter who was going to destroy the dragon in the end.
But how was she going to do that while Costin waged his own attack on this Underground?
With a semipainful slide, he withdrew his fangs from her vein, then pressed his fingers to the small wound to heal it.
She was high, her knees almost giving out like she didn’t have any steel to keep her standing. But Costin’s strong hold helped, one of his arms supporting her, bringing her close to his body, making her heart feel like it was being dunked underwater and held there, thudding, thudding, expanding all through her. She could feel his cock, hard against the center of her legs, and she arched against him, giving in to the stirrings of a wildness that marked their feedings.
Then he said something that ruined it all.
“What is this?” The fingertips of his other hand brushed her jaw, near her ear. Her skin burned at the contact, even though his skin was cool.
She’d detected some concern in the question, even while Costin kept his tone steady and low, and it made her remember that she’d felt a sting on her skin in this same exact place earlier.
She reached up to push his hand away, but Costin ignored her, gently tilting her head so he had an even better look. His breath smoothed over her neck, and it didn’t do anything to ease the sharp cravings that were tearing her from belly to clit.
“Dawn?” he said.
She moved away from him. His tone scared her.
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