I changed tactics, keeping as low to the ditch as possible and creeping forward, doing the crocodile crawl I’d learned in basic training. If I was lucky, I’d continue on unseen, not attract any baddies or even a good Samaritan who might call attention by trying to help me out. I hoped that if anyone did see my movement they’d think I was a stray dog or cat or something.
I knew I’d reached the warehouse when the grass all around me got so tall I no longer had to worry about being seen. “Abandoned” meant no one to care for the property, which suited me just fine.
If ever there was a time for those lessons on stealth mode from super spy training to take, it was now. I peered through the tall grass and weeds as best I could and saw a white cement-block building with the words Freight Liquidators stenciled on the side in peeling blue paint.
If Raspy had set guards, they were on the inside—which made sense if you didn’t want anyone to notice sudden activity at an abandoned site. I took a deep breath, just because it seemed the thing to do, and started through the high grass, aiming for the front door because, well, it was closest. If it didn’t open, I’d try around the side.
Apparently, fate had decided it’d had enough fun at my expense, and no one stopped my mad dash to the door, which was, miraculously, unlocked. And then fate blew me a big fat raspberry. The door creaked as it opened, alerting the two goons inside. They flew at me from the left and right. One male, one female. Nice to know ole Raspy was an equal opportunity destroyer. I had a split second to recognize Tyler and Teresa, the resurrected teens, before they were on me.
I ducked them as they came—sometimes petite actually had its advantages—but they didn’t oblige with any cartoon head-bashing. Instead, they each locked onto one of my arms. In probably my best move from training, I kicked one leg back as far as it would go for the momentum, then swung it fast-forward, flipping myself up and over between the two like they were nothing but an uneven parallel bar. Oh sure, it wrenched my shoulders out of their sockets, but the goons—or anyway, our missing students-turned-vamps—lost their handle on me. Before they could regain it, I bolted down the hallway, past pasteboard partitions that mimicked offices and into a vast echoey room directly ahead—the main part of the warehouse. There were doors that shut it off from the “office” area, and I slammed them shut with my shoulders, popping each one back into place as I did. It was only then, as the terrible teens slammed up against the door behind me, that I realized the lock that secured the doors had been busted and there was nothing but me and my size-four self between them and total access.
I spun, lightning fast, to put my back against the door so I could brace myself with my legs … and came face-to-face with vampdom’s best and blightest: Raspy, Grunge Vamp—Dimitri, Alistaire had called him—and the psycho-psychic himself. Bobby was in the midst of them, bound in rope. It looked like each side might grab an end and use him as the center knot in a twisted tug of war.
“Gina!” he shouted.
“Bobby!”
“I thought we were going for stealth,” Alistaire hissed.
“The door squeaked.” I shrugged. “Anyway, you know how I like to make an entrance.”
“Gina?” Bobby said again, his brows lowering in confusion over those killer blue eyes.
“Later.”
I didn’t want to be short with him, but something about all this felt very, very wrong. Alistaire had been expecting a trap, which only made sense, but why hadn’t Raspy already sprung it?
Unless—
My gaze flew straight to his, those shark eyes, empty of emotion but filled instead with an unholy light. They flickered off to the right, and I whirled in time to dodge a dart coming at me. I deflected another one headed for the psycho-psychic with the blade of my hand, like I was some kind of ninja warrior princess. It was all instinct, like knowing which fashions would be hot and which not.
But, of course, it left the doors I’d been body-blocking undefended, and Raspy’s minions burst in behind me. As much as it creeped me out to do, I went back to bony back with Alistaire in the middle of the warehouse floor while Raspy and his flunkies converged.
The someone-in-the-shadows to the right tried the darts again, and this time Alistaire, prepared, saw his coming. He caught it in midair and, lightning fast, sent it toward Raspy, who deflected it with a snarl and launched himself at Alistaire in revenge. It had to be what the psycho wanted, because he met Raspy with a savage glee in his eyes. At least with the two in a clinch the shadowy shooter probably wouldn’t risk a shot with the dart gun.
But I didn’t have time to worry about them. I rushed for Bobby. Before I could get to him, the teen vamps I’d blown past on my way in grabbed me from behind, one going for a handful of hair as well as my arm so I couldn’t try the flip trick again. I shrieked and tried to yank myself loose, willing to risk a bad hair day or two, but I couldn’t pull far enough away with them holding my arms.
Bobby yelled for me, and Grunge Vamp yelled for Rasputin, some kind of warning. I whipped my head around to see what was going on in time to witness Raspy crumpling to the warehouse floor, a dart lodged in his shoulder. The shooter had missed Alistaire.
Dimitri rushed to him, and Alistaire turned as if to fight, but Dimitri was more interested in catching his fallen prophet than taking his place in the battle.
“What have you done?” he yelled into the shadows.
Rick stepped forward. Rick. It took a second for me to process it. Whose side was he on? Had he missed Alistaire with that dart intentionally or accidentally? According to Rick, who was trying to fast-talk his way out of trouble, it was accidental.
Not that Dimitri was listening. He was too busy speaking Russian at Rasputin, whose shark eyes struggled to remain open, to focus their hatred on Alistaire.
“Kill him,” he ordered Dimitri, forcing the breath out.
Grunge nodded, one brisk bob of the head. He lowered Raspy softly to the ground and leapt over his prone form to go for Alistaire. But the psycho-psychic had better reach, and clasped a claw to Dimitri’s throat before Dimitri could lay a hand on him. Alistaire used the momentum of Dimitri’s charge to swing him toward me and my two captors. Dimitri’s body hit mine dead-on, knocking me back, ass over anklets. Raspy’s welcoming committee lost their grip on me. I rolled with the blow, and popped up ready to run.
I looked at Alistaire, afraid I was getting away only over his dead body and wondering how I’d succeed where so many had failed. But Alistaire had grabbed hold of Raspy and unfurled those oddly jointed legs to the point where he managed to look like a giant jumping spider.
“Later for you, morsel. I promise we’ll have our time together. I have your scent.” The thought sent fiery-footed millipedes up and down my back.
Then he was off, carrying Raspy over his shoulder much as he’d taken me the night before.
My ninja princess reflexes kicked in again as Rick and the terrible teens all tried to tackle me. I dodged them, zigzagging toward Bobby to grab him on my way out, again wondering if Rick had missed on purpose or if our side was just that good. Target obtained, Bobby and I darted for the warehouse’s back doors.
“Can you open them?” I asked Bobby as he struggled to keep his feet under him, his arms too bound up for balance.
“I think so. Something gave when … Rasputin went down. Rasputin. I still can’t believe it!”
“Escape now, marvel later,” I ordered.
Bobby slowed as he concentrated, and the other vamps were almost on us when I heard the sound of something metal sheering off. Then Bobby kicked the loading dock doors open and we were off into the night, the baddies breathing down our necks.
It was another second before Bobby’s ropes unraveled and fell to the ground, the better to trip up those on our tails. We put on an added burst of speed and hit the road in advance of them.
“Can you call Sid and Maya?” I asked. The psycho-psychic still had my phone, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to find and fight him for it.<
br />
We dashed into the street, putting cars between us and our pursuers as I felt Bobby send out a burst of power, like an all-points bulletin. Super spy training had really ramped up his abilities, and I was sure wherever our handlers were, they’d hear his telepathic call. We just had to keep ourselves free for pick-up or back-up. If we could keep the goons busy until the Feds arrived, maybe we could round up all the rotters. All but the biggest baddies anyway, who, if we were lucky, were off taking care of each other.
The hench-hord gave up on us as we dodged the traffic, freezing at the edge of the road as if cutting their losses on us to concentrate on going after their kidnapped kingpin. Or maybe what scared them off was the ten-ton truck bearing down on them … or my ninja warrior moves. Anyway, when I looked over my shoulder again, they were turning back toward the warehouse. I eased up on my full-out run to look for some street sign or mile-marker we could call in.
16
Bobby and I were in the back seat of Sid and Maya’s spy mobile, chugging blood like it was the best stuff on earth. The warehouse was deserted by the time back-up had arrived, so there was nothing left to do but debrief and regroup. Between gulps of body-temperature blood, I filled the Feds in on everything that had happened. Bobby interrupted when I got to the part about Rick.
“I’m not so sure he’s gone over to the dark side. Not really. When Rasputin got the jump on us at the morgue, my powers failed. Rasputin was able to control us,” he added with a blush. “Not like I can; not both of us at once. Just one at a time. I heard the vamps talking, and that’s what the experiment at the school is all about—lowering the will and raising the suggestibility of the kids so that it doesn’t take any power at all for mass mesmerism. If it works, the vamps will find a way to slip their formula to entire human populations. We’ll—they’ll—become meals on wheels. The council contingent that’s coming in, the one Rasputin planned to turn Gina and me over to, they aren’t coming here just for us. Rasputin’s perfected the formula. The trick was to make it in gaseous rather than liquid form. They’re going to unleash it tomorrow night.”
“Where?” Maya asked.
“I don’t know. That’s why I didn’t suggest we grab Rick on the way out. He’s on the inside now. They still need human student minions, at least until their plans all come together. I figure if he can get word to us, he will. He may have helped us already. I’m not so sure he hit Rasputin with that dart by accident.”
I’d wondered the same thing, but somehow when Bobby said it, I wasn’t so sure. Wouldn’t it have made sense for Rick to let us in on things somehow? Or had it all happened too fast?
“But there’s nothing going on at the school tomorrow night,” Sid protested.
Wait a minute—it couldn’t be that easy, could it? The reason Raspy needed human minions … the way to put together a spontaneous gathering of guinea pigs … “Word’s going out!” I cried.
They all looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Come again?” Bobby asked, giving me the benefit of the doubt.
“The parties. That’s how they happen—word goes out: meet up here at such and such a time, BYOB.”
“It makes sense,” Maya admitted. “But how will we know where and when?”
“For one, if the formula’s now in gaseous form, they won’t want to release it into the open air. It’d be too spread out. Too uncontrolled. So, if we’re right, and it’s a party they’re planning to arrange, it won’t be anywhere like Red Rock. It’ll be somewhere enclosed, indoors … like a warehouse,” I said.
But Sid was already shaking his head. “They won’t use that place again, now that we know it’s there.”
“Well then, it’s your job to search out all the likely abandoned or vamp-owned places in the area that are big enough for a rave.”
“And if it’s a private home?” Maya asked.
“I’m sure you’ve got the home addresses of all the major players so far.”
“But will they still try out the new formula tomorrow?” Maya asked. “Since Rasputin’s missing in action?”
“The better question is whether Raspy’s recruits can afford to fail with the eyes of the council on them. I think they’ll have to rally.”
“If this is all going down tomorrow night, we don’t have a whole lot of time,” Sid said. “It’s going to be a late night and an early morning. You two are going to school tomorrow. See if you can get yourselves invited to a party.”
“Meanwhile,” Maya said, “I’ll get a strike team out to that haunted house in case Alistaire took Rasputin there. I’ll put them on stand-by for tomorrow night.”
Cool! I’d like to be able to just order out a strike team
… or a personal shopper, for that matter. I wondered how long it would take to work my way up to management.
When we got back to base, we all had jobs to do. Bobby’s was to try to mind-speak to Rick. Mine was to find out what Bella had told the other goths about my sudden disappearance and her hand in it, so that I was sure I could show my face around town. Maya and Sid had the oh-so-exciting job of researching possible party places. Maybe I didn’t want to be management after all. The field had so much more to offer.
I borrowed a disposable cell phone, one of many that Maya happened to have on hand, and dialed Lily. She had that, too—Lily’s digits—which was a good thing because I’d never had a head for numbers.
It rang until I was sure it was going to voicemail before a voice came on and said, “Y’ello.”
It might be Lily, if she’d first gargled razor blades, then washed them down with whisky.
“Lily?”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Geneva.”
I heard scrambling and fabric sliding over limbs. “Geneva! Are you okay? Bella said you fell off the balcony. Ulric said you’d been pushed, but he wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. Then we couldn’t find you.” She fell silent, waiting, I guess, for me to fill in the blanks. “I have to ask,” she said, hushed. “Are you a creature of the night? I mean, I’ve seen you during the day and you didn’t burn up or glitter like diamonds in the sun, but there are those marks on Ulric’s neck and—”
I laughed. It was the only thing I could do. “Right, don’t I wish. Anyway, they’re both wrong. I jumped. I saw my Dad’s stupid PI poking around down in the bushes and went to chase him off.”
“Gen, you could have been hurt!”
“Yeah, well, too late for second thoughts on that now. Sorry I woke you. Did the party go late?”
“Yeah, the cops closed us down just after you left. I guess one of your neighbors called them.”
Wow, it must have gotten really rowdy for my neighbors to notice.
“Damn, I missed all the fun. Anything on for tomorrow night?”
“Why, have you heard anything?” she asked.
“Just hoping.”
“I’ll let you know,” she answered, finishing on a yawn.
“You get some sleep,” I ordered.
“’K.”
I closed the phone and turned to Maya. “Nothing yet on the party plans, but my secret’s still safe. More or less.” And speaking of secrets … “Did you get anything out of the Prickly Princess that might tell us where all this is going down?”
Maya and Sid exchanged a look. “She bit her own tongue off to keep from talking,” Maya said. “She’s more afraid of Rasputin than of us. We’re still waiting for it to grow back.”
“Gross!”
For the rest of the night, I was put to work helping with the site research.
• • •
The day kicked off with grief from Richardson in homeroom for dragging my bodacious, black-clad butt in a few minutes late. I explained why I didn’t have a note—the whole emancipated minor thing—but as far as he was concerned, if I was old enough to be on my own, I should be responsible enough to get to school on time. Only, what it took me a sentence to say, he turned into a lecture. I couldn’t exactly counter that he should cut me some slack
because facing down a Mad Monk took a lot out of a girl, so I had to put up with the whole thing.
In fact, I suffered through the entire day, straight up until eighth period, wondering if I’d been wrong. Maybe word wasn’t going out. Maybe the Prickly Princess had caught me at the movie theater because she’d been there scoping it out for the release of their new gaseous formula. Or maybe … but as I was sitting in my final class contemplating calling in my new theory, the cell phone I’d gotten to replace the one Alistaire stole vibrated. I surreptitiously slid the cell out of my pocket to peek at the message that had come in. Bingo! As good as her word, Lily had texted me the party plans. I’d just hit forward and sent the text on to Maya and Sid when the shadow of Mrs. Parker loomed over me, her hand out, demanding that I turn the phone over to her.
I did, as meek and mild as if I was totally not myself. The truth was, I was too busy thinking. I knew that address Lily had sent. In the hundreds that had come up last night, that had been one of them. It wasn’t a numbered road, like Rt. 9, 52, 82—hike!—which meant it was probably residential rather than business, the home of one of the students. Not Gavin’s, I knew, but beyond that—ack. I almost wished I could rifle through my own brain like the psycho-psychic to pull out the info. I wondered what he was up to. How long would it take him to finish with Raspy and come for us? A long, long time, I hoped.
Suddenly, I had it. It popped into my head with the clarity of a web page, which was exactly where I’d seen it. In my searches last night of online yellow and white pages, I’d found the home addresses of Raspy’s new lackeys, our newly made vamps Tyler and Teresa. I didn’t know if Teresa’s parents had gone out of town, like mine had, to party down the pain of her death, or if they were intended to be victims as well, but we were partying at her place tonight.
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