“Bella’s band is up fourth,” Lily whispered. “Just before the break.”
But first we had to get through a really, really awful punk band that made Rage Against the Latrine seem like musical genius, a girl who didn’t quite understand the concept of “band” and accompanied herself on guitar as she sang—not too badly, actually—and a group that played Latin music. It wasn’t really my thing, but the singer’s eyes were smoldering and he had a pretty fair idea of how to shake those hips … Ulric bumped my knee at a certain point, though I knew I hadn’t been drooling. Like he had any moral high ground here anyway, after he’d brought a third wheel on our non-date.
Bella’s band appeared before she did, three guys dressed in abstract-patterned T-shirts of gray and black over jeans. One keyboardist and two guitarists—one probably a bassist (I could never tell the diff). It was only after they’d fussed with their equipment that Bella practically floated out, which made sense, because she couldn’t weigh more than a feather. The stage lights made her silver slip dress glow and sparked off her dark flowing hair. They washed out her ever-pale face until it was just an impression of big, kohl-lined eyes and red lips. Her bruise from the jerky boys at Red Rock was nowhere to be seen, probably buried under a gallon of concealer. She grabbed the microphone in one hand, half shut her eyes as if tuning us out, and retreated behind her lids. She started to sing even before her musical accompaniment began.
The sound was high, pure, and haunting, like Evanescence. She sang like some supernatural being—an angel or a siren or something unearthly. The instruments, when they joined in, were just distracting at first, but took on more of a duet role as they went on, weaving in and out of her sound rather than merging with it.
I realized I’d actually forgotten to breathe for at least a few beats. I hoped no one noticed, but looking left and right, I didn’t have to worry. No one was paying me any attention at all.
When Bella’s last note died, the audience erupted in a fit of clapping and wolf calls. Lily not only stood up, she jumped up on her chair and waved her arms, screaming her enthusiasm. I saw Bella give a small smile as she spotted Lily. Then she was gone, and I gave Lily a hand down.
“Wow,” I said. “That was incredible.”
“I know! Let’s go tell her.”
We shooed the guys out of the row, but not before the rest of the crowd had poured into the aisles for intermission. It took us a while to make our way to the hallway leading backstage, which had been blocked off with sawhorses. There was a straightlaced guy manning them who was explaining to those who’d gotten there before us that he couldn’t let anyone back there except the bands.
“What, paparazzi a problem?” I asked, a little too loudly.
He zeroed in on me over the heads of the others. “No, theft. A lot of equipment back here. It’s an insurance thing.”
“Darn, ’cause I sure could use me a snare drum.” Not that I had any clue how to tell a snare drum from any other.
Lily gave me a look, and as the other students reared back to stare at me she used the path created to sidle up to the enforcer.
“Can you just get a message to our friend?” she asked, batting her lashes up at him.
“Can’t leave my post, but if you tell me her name, I can try to get someone to call her for you and you can tell her yourself.”
“Belladonna. She was the last to play.”
Rule Guy’s lips twisted. “Like I even had to ask. Anyway, you missed her. She left. Said she’d be back soon.”
Lily shot me a despairing look over her shoulder, and I wondered if poor Bella ever got to use the facilities without people thinking the worst.
“Split up,” she said.
“You want to hunt her down?” I asked.
“Did you see her swaying on stage? I doubt she ate anything before going on tonight. Maybe we should swing by the bake sale table and pick something up for her.”
And here I’d thought all that swaying was musically inspired.
I nodded, and we took off at a speedwalk. Goths didn’t run, I figured.
“She prone to passing out?” I asked.
“Once or twice.” We still had our tail. “Byron, Ulric, make yourselves useful,” Lily snapped. “Start looking. Call me if you find her.”
They peeled off without protest. Good to know Ulric could take orders. Maybe he wasn’t a total loss.
There was no sign of Bella at the bake sale table. I grabbed a couple of cookies, threw down a dollar without waiting for anyone to collect, and took off toward the hallway that led to the rest of the school. The only other place to search was the area surrounding the auditorium and outdoors. I left that to Lily. If Bella was in bad shape, either through lack of food or gorging herself on baked goods at intermission and feeling the need to purge, she’d probably want to be as far away from witnesses as possible. I would.
For some reason, Lily’s urgency had really gotten to me. With Bella separated from the pack, there was no telling what kind of trouble she could get into. A vamp was stalking the town—attacking at least one student that we knew of—and students were prone to going on the rampage.
The door between the auditorium area and the main part of the school was locked. Or, at least, the push bar didn’t want to budge when I pressed on it. I took a few steps back and really launched myself at it, and the door popped open like maybe it had just been stuck. I looked around to see if the noise had attracted any attention, but no one was in my part of the hallway, and anyway I didn’t know why I was being so paranoid. Something had me jumpy. My very nerves seemed to quiver with some kind of anticipation.
I went through the door, easing it shut behind me, and crept through the eerily dark hallway until I heard voices. Even with my super-vamp hearing, I couldn’t separate the noise into words. It sounded like the adults from Charlie Brown “wah-wh-wahing” their way through a conversation, but I could get closer.
I traced the convo to a classroom around the next corner, in the science wing, and snuck up to the door. If only I could see through walls, I thought. But I couldn’t, so I was going to have to pop my head into full view of the window so that I could peek into the room.
Slowly, I eased into viewing range. The room was dark, lit only by some outside light source that wasn’t close enough to give it more than a glow, though it was enough for my vamp-o-vision. Inside, the place was deserted except for lab tables, chairs, and a single figure facing away from the door—tall, medium build, tousled hair, fists pressing the black leather jacket he was wearing to his hips. No, not a single figure. Make that two, because he was talking to someone he was blocking from view.
“It’s not working,” the someone said. I had to strain to hear until that last word, which carried all the frustration of something said more than once to no effect. “I got attacked, for God’s sake. And they—”
Attacked? Who? The voice was definitely feminine, but I couldn’t pick out more than that. It could be Hailee or Bella or even the missing girl, Teresa. I had to get a better look.
“I had nothing to do with that,” the man said, waving a hand to brush away her concern.
“But your people—”
“Are no business of yours. I will deal with them. You know what you have to do. Trust me, you don’t want to go back on our understanding.” His voice dripped with menace, and the smallest hint of both an accent and a lisp. I suddenly had a chilling sense of who “his people” were … the same fanged fraternity that had granted me eternal unlife and the occasional speech impediment.
So it looked like there was more than one vampire running around town. Because this guy wasn’t the one who’d attacked Hailee. The hair was all wrong, though the accent was close, if a lot less obvious.
“But I’ve just told you, you need to fix the formula,” the girl said. “People are going haywire, the ones who don’t just bring their own. Hell, half of them are dropping out.”
Huh?
There was a second of silence. “D
o not presume to tell me what to do … to tell the council what needs to be done.”
Oh crap, the council? As in the vampire council that hated Bobby’s and my guts and tried back in Ohio to kill the lot of us? Crap, crap, crap on a cracker.
“I’m sorry, I … ” The girl started to back away, almost to the point where I could see her. Just a little more to the left, and—
“What are you doing?” Ulric’s voice hissed in my ear.
I jumped right out of my skin, knocking against the door and making it rattle in its frame.
“Crap!” I cried, and not quietly, since stealth had gone right out the window.
“What was that?” the man said, and before I could curse Ulric or send him away from danger—it was a toss-up as to which way I’d jump—the door was yanked open and I was face-to-face with Kurt Cobain’s evil twin. Somehow, even though I knew it wasn’t a rule, it always surprised me when vamps weren’t tall, dark, and deadly. They really shouldn’t look like surfer boys or grunge musicians. I’m just saying.
“You!” he said, pupils huge and veins popping around them. His fangs were out in full force and behind me, Ulric gasped. It was the weirdest reaction … Grunge Vamp’s, not Ulric’s. I knew I’d never seen this guy before—I’d have remembered. So why was he “You!”ing me like we were old enemies?
“Sorry, I don’t think we’ve been intro—”
Lightning fast, he grabbed my arm and made as if to pull me into the room, but I grabbed the doorjamb and yanked with all my might. It shocked him that little ole me was able to unbalance him. It was leverage, pure and simple, since we both had supersonic reflexes and he had, like, a foot on me. But he was shocked enough that I was able to pull him straight into the hallway and apply a boot to his butt as I released his arm. That and the momentum sent him flying at the opposite wall.
“Run!” I ordered Ulric.
“Like hell,” he answered, proving that boys could never be trusted to listen when it messed with their machismo.
Grunge Vamp’s accomplice didn’t emerge from the room to check on him, so I doubled back to see who it was. But something hit me, and I went down before I could so much as think “tackle” or “unnecessary roughness.” My face was mashed against cold tile that smelled of bleach, and the grease monkey on my back seemed to weigh two hundred pounds.
“Get off her! ” Ulric yelled. The pressure on me only increased as Ulric made some kind of attack, but Grunge snarled and lashed out at him, shifting his weight enough for me to roll and buck, knocking him to the side. One of his legs still pinned me, but I shot up from the waist, leading with the heel of my hand, ready to jam his nose up into his cranial cavity. He flinched away and I struck his cheek, but not hard enough to do any real damage. I had a flash of Ulric lying like a rag doll where he’d been thrown down, but I caught him looking, like he was playing possum, waiting for another chance to attack. I shook my head subtly but had no faith he’d listen, and no time for anything else as Grunge launched himself at me again, totally telegraphing that he was going for my throat by the curl of his fingers, as if he could already feel it.
I grabbed the hair sticks out of my bun and blocked him with my other arm as I aimed them straight at his chest … as best I could with my hair falling down around me. Grunge screamed like a little girl as my stake struck. He convulsed around it, protecting his heart—which I seemed to have missed, because the ruby red eyes that met mine were filled with much more fury than surprise or despair.
“You’re dead meat,” he snarled.
He pulled something out of a pocket and threw it to the floor. Thick black smoke rose up, blinding me, stinging my eyes. And his eyes, I’d imagine, but he’d known it was coming and must have blinked, because suddenly he was gone and I couldn’t even see anything to chase.
Ulric sounded like he was hacking up a lung. I blindly felt my way over to him, pretty grateful I didn’t have to breathe this stuff in.
“Anything broken?” I asked.
“No,” he coughed, which was followed by the automatic-weapons-fire staccato of even more coughing.
“Good. Stay put.”
The smoke was clearing … or at least I thought so, because I was starting to get vague impressions of things through the red haze. I stumbled toward the open classroom, arms out in front of me, and looked inside. If the girl that Grunge had been talking to was still there, she wasn’t out in the open.
“You might as well come out,” I called, stepping inside and closing the door behind me to discourage escape, only realizing as it clicked shut that I’d just made myself a helluva target. Whoever was—had been?—in this room would have been sheltered from that smoke bomb and could probably still see. The room was deathly quiet, though. Not a creature was stirring—not even a lab mouse.
“I’ll find you,” I said, wiping away my bloody tears and starting my slow search around the room. Things were becoming clearer as my vamp healing went into overdrive, but it didn’t do me any good … the room was empty.
I cursed and went back out to Ulric, who’d propped himself up against the wall and was trying to use the base of his T-shirt to wipe away tears and—eww!—snot. Bobby, never a slouch to begin with, was looking better every second. When Ulric spotted me, his bloodshot eyes widened.
“Whoa, what are you? Some kind of Chosen? Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Those were some sick moves. You and that guy were going so fast I could hardly even see you.”
I flinched, but only on the inside.
“Tae kwon do,” I lied. “I’m a black belt.”
Ulric got to his feet, still blinking away the effects of the smoke bomb. “Yeah right. I took karate for a while when I was ten. I know what martial arts look like, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“You must have been doing it wrong,” I said. “But I’m sure you looked cute in your little uniform.” In my experience, the word “cute” was pretty much guaranteed to distract anyone with a Y chromosome into an argument, but Ulric held his ground.
“I know what I saw.”
“You just said we were moving too fast for you to see anything. Anyway, unless you want to be talking to some school shrink or worse, I’d keep your theories to yourself.”
His nose was still running, and he sniffled noisily. “Too late. The rumors started right after Red Rock. Not me!” he said defensively, as I gave him the death glare of doom. “But, babe, I knew you for fierce the first second I saw you, and damn, you don’t disappoint.”
“Then you’d better fear me, sniffles. You keep this quiet and don’t ever call me babe. That’s a name for Disneyfied pigs, not booty-kicking Bettys, got me?”
“Jeez, whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “You don’t think much of yourself, do you?”
Ulric’s cell phone suddenly blared some heavy metal tune, almost making me jump and totally sending my comeback right out of my head. He grabbed the cell out of his pocket. “Yeah?”
I could tell from the sudden easing of his body posture that it was good news.
“Cool, we’re on our way back,” he reported.
He snapped the phone shut and told me, “They found Bella … or anyway, she found them. It’s all good.”
“Where was she?”
“Don’t know,” he answered. “You can ask her yourself when you see her.”
We started walking back the way we’d come, but Ulric was moving with a limp. His mouth was screwed up, like he was in pain but trying to be manly about the whole thing.
“Aw, crap. Put your arm around me,” I ordered. “I’ll help you along.”
“I knew you wanted me,” he said, grimace mutating into a twisted grin.
I snorted. “Hardly. Use this to cop a feel and I drop you on your ass,” I promised him.
• • •
I was far too beat to make my way over to the Fed family’s faux-happy home for a face-to-face debriefing. Potion or no, being up and at ’em during daylight hours was hell on a vamp body. I felt like I’d bee
n partying at a weeklong rave, only without all the fun. Well, okay, kicking Grunge Vamp’s butt had been kind of a treat, but my cover already had more holes in it than Courtney Love’s head.
So, I insisted Ulric and I cut out early from the Battle of the Bands. I’m sure the others thought we were going to make out, or that maybe I’d be playing doctor with him and his bad leg. Byron even offered to find his own way home. But the truth was, I wanted the privacy of my place to make a call, and I wanted Ulric out of the social scene as soon as possible to limit his urge to talk about what he’d witnessed.
His leg must really have been hurting, because he didn’t even try for a good-night kiss, though he did tell me I was one wild ride and he’d see me around. Thank God it was Friday and I had a weekend to come up with better stories than I’d been throwing out so far.
Once inside, I threw the locks, checked the windows, and sat down to speed-dial Bobby. Maya answered instead.
“There was a vampire at the school tonight. He seemed to know me,” I said without even a “hello.”
There was dead silence on the other end for a minute, then, “That’s bad.”
I rolled my eyes, but she couldn’t see it. “Thanks for the news flash. Any theories?”
Again that pause, and I knew Agent Stick knew something and was debating what to tell me.
“The vampire council has issued a KOC on you and Bobby.”
“Knights of Columbus?” I asked, baffled.
She sighed heavily into the phone. “Kill or Capture. Dead or Alive. You get the picture. If that vamp recognized you … well, it can’t be long before the council knows you’re here. Anyone who brings you in would score major points … not to mention a reward.”
“Bobby and I can’t be the only ones they want. All of smelly Melli’s minions—your entire team—”
“Yes, but you and Bobby are special, remember?”
Oh crap. I went cold inside. “Special” was supposed to be a good thing, but with Bobby sporting major mojo and me resistant to their mind games—well, I guess it made us irresistible to vamps and Feds alike. And with both sides, if you weren’t for them, you were against. I knew what the vamp council did with liabilities. I didn’t suppose the Feds were any less ruthless.
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