“Fucking Amber,” Mitch halfway stood from his chair. I blinked, and then Amber vanished from her chair. A wind blasted past me, and then she was standing before Mitch with her hands around his neck. “You’re so boring, Mitch. I always remember that about you. You were the one who officially turned me off high school boys.”
“Amber, I’m not related to Mitch or Justin. I know who my father is and where my abilities came from. And if Mitch is so boring, and you can’t give two fucks about him, why are you trying to make him jealous?”
She turned her glare on me, but she didn’t drop her hands from around Mitch’s neck. “Excuse you?”
“First, you insult his family, which even I know makes him go all caveman. Then you bait him by telling him that you’re too good for him, and you’re with guys that are better than him. Classic ex-girlfriend move. Either you’re not over him, or you’re so self-centered that you don’t want him ever to move on.” I grabbed my backpack. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to shower and change before lunch.”
As I passed Amber, she said, “I hope Charlotte talked to you. I’ll be counting on your vote for the Senior Huntress nomination after school tomorrow, whatever your name is.”
I didn’t bother pointing out how deluded that was after I just basically told her how reprehensible I found her, but I shimmied past Amber and headed down the row. Something about what happened bothered me, and it wasn’t the fact I’d seen a girl vanish and reappear ten feet over, which I was guessing was how zipping appeared from the outside. I just couldn’t figure out what exactly it was about what Professor Sharp said or Amber did that disturbed me so much.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Questions about the Elites were heavy on my mind as I walked my dog away from Gregory Hall and toward the kennels.
Bailey snuffled the path, tugging me from one interesting smell to another. The lingering darkness was broken only by three streetlights. Nose to the ground, she practically dragged me down the length of the grassy field. I groaned as my muscles clenched with pain. Last night at my internship, Sebastian had instructed me to run as fast as I could across his personal gym and back for three straight hours. He timed and recorded every single run. We only took a break for me to drink blood, and then he started timing me again. My every footfall sent little explosions of pain through my calves and butt, and I couldn’t help whimpering a few times as we walked.
Bailey cocked her head, probably wondering what was wrong with me.
“I’m fine,” I said through a yawn that pulled at my aching back muscles. “Just do your thing, lady, so I can drop you off with your friends and go caffeinate.”
She turned back to her snuffling. Bailey found a spot to pee and poop, and I was just collecting her leavings with a plastic bag when a low growl ripped through the air.
I spun, thinking that another dog was threatening Bailey when I realized it was Bailey growling. The sound was so unfamiliar to me, a low, guttural resonance that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
A man walked down the path toward us. He stepped into the streetlamp’s illumination, and I could just see his purple Blackburn Academy Dorm Staff collared t-shirt. Bailey had only reacted this way once before when a vampire was on my roof. My immediate thought was that this man might be a vampire too, but when he stepped back into the shadows, he definitely didn’t have the stark white glow that revealed a vampire to my dhampir vision. The gray, early morning light made his thermal glow very hard to make out, but I saw a distinctly greenish tint.
He stepped into the next lamp’s light, and I saw that he looked perhaps mid-forties and clean cut. He had blond hair with a central part, a thin, angular face, and a tall, lean frame. The closer he got, the more intense Bailey’s growls grew, and when I tried to pull her back toward my dorm, she firmly planted her legs and wouldn’t budge. Bailey weighed a hundred pounds; when she decided not to move, there was nothing I could do to force her.
“I’m so sorry, she’s not usually like this,” I said as the man got closer.
He pinched his lips together. “You shouldn’t have an aggressive dog at the dorms. Are you a resident here? I’m going to need to see some ID.”
“I…” I leaned, planning to set down the poop bag when Bailey lunged.
“Bailey!” I screamed as I scrabbled for the leash. I raised my head just in time to see the yellow glare of the streetlamp glinting off a long, sharp blade. The man lunged at me with a knife the length of his forearm.
I threw the open dog shit bag just as Bailey’s jaws clamped down on the man’s arm. Brown sludge coated up his front, and he screamed as Bailey shook her head with her teeth buried in his forearm. His thrust went wide, and a searing pain scorched across my shoulder. Someone yelled my name, and then the guy was slashing out again, this time straight for my dog. I shoved him and dove onto Bailey, wrapping my body around her, and with a whimper, she finally released the man’s arm.
There was the sound of crashing, and then the thud of a fist hitting flesh. I raised my head in time to see Mitch Holter and the guy grappling. The lean blond guy sent Mitch flying, and then ran away, impossibly fast. Mitch pursued, blurring away, only to arrive thirty seconds later.
Running feet came from all directions, and voices shouted. Several guards I recognized emerged from around the side of Gregory Hall. Furiously, I patted over Bailey’s furry body, feeling wet sticky blood on her gray coat. “No,” I whispered as tears streamed down my face. I separated her fur but couldn’t find the source of the blood. She wriggled under me, licking the salt water off my face.
“Where is it? Where are you cut?”
“It’s you,” Mitch’s bored voice came from behind me. “You’re bleeding all over your dog.”
When I looked down, Dickhead was leaning over me, stone-faced and inspecting my arm where a cut was dripping blood.
“He slashed up your arm, twice,” he said.
“Oh, thank god,” I whispered as I looked at my wound. “It’s me.”
A few of the guards glanced at each other before focusing back on me. Dickhead called for a medical kit. He wiped up the blood on my arm while I crouched there. Grabbing a brown bottle, he poured a liquid onto my skin that seared up the length of my cuts, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
“You’re fine,” Dickhead snapped, like I was complaining, which I wasn’t. “Neither wound is deep or in need of stitches.” He bound gauze around my arm and then demanded, “What happened here?”
“Damn vampire scion walked onto campus in one of your fucking uniforms and almost killed both of us. Whose job was it to secure campus? Whoever he was, I hope he enjoys cleaning the toilets at headquarters …” I tuned out Mitch’s growling tirade as I continued to comb through Bailey’s fur, making sure she wasn’t injured.
Students began pouring out of the doors and poking their heads out of the windows.
“We’re on emergency protocol until we’re sure that the threat is contained,” Dickhead said as he waved to the dorm. “Get those kids back into their rooms.”
“Yes, sir,” another guard said before running off.
“You two need to head up to your rooms until we can secure the grounds.”
“My cousin is on his way,” Mitch said. “And, you’ll let him through.”
Dickhead worked his jaw back and forth, looking unhappy at Mitch’s order, but he nodded. “Fine. You two, head on up.”
A sudden burning sensation lit up my arm, feeling like flames licking along my skin right under my gauze where the knife wound was still pumping blood. I sucked in a harsh breath, covering my cut. A moment later, the pain in my arm vanished. A low, discordant thumping beat rose around me, growing in volume. I knew it immediately for heartbeats, overlapping heartbeats. Meaning, I was desperately low on blood again.
This couldn’t be happening, not twice in one week. Their heartbeats were growing to a volume I’d never heard before. The nerves around my incisors seared with pain, and I felt the prick of my fangs under my gum
s.
All four guards and Mitch were staring at me. Shit. I was supposed to be heading in, and instead, I was still just crouched over my dog. My gums ached as my fangs grew even longer, and I tasted the tang of my own blood.
Bailey sat up, watching me with concern in her canine eyes. The guard’s gaze narrowed on me. “Can you make it to the building?”
I nodded and stumbled to my feet, heading in toward the fifth-floor entrance. Everyone backed off by the elevator, except for Mitch. I kept my body between Mitch and Bailey; even though I knew he just saved both of our lives, I still didn’t trust him not to hurt her. He stunk of dog shit. It had smeared over his hands and splattered onto his shirt.
Mitch turned to me, and his heartbeat grew in volume. I saw his lips moving, but it was impossible to concentrate on what he said. My teeth felt so sore, and I covered my mouth.
The elevator doors spread open, but I knew that I couldn’t go in there with Mitch while his heartbeat thundered in my ears.
“Go ahead,” I said as I continued to cover my mouth as I knew my fangs were out. “I’ll take the next one.”
“Yeah, fuck you,” Mitch said, sounding offended, but I didn’t know what he was offended by. Intense relief washed through me as the metal doors closed him in, and the beating drum of his heartbeat quieted.
The doors crashed open behind me, and I spun to find Justin running through the guards stationed at the door.
“January.” He rushed across the distance to me. “What’s going on?” His heart was thumping in a rapid staccato. “There’s blood all down your side—”
I grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him toward me. “I have a problem,” I whispered, my voice coming out thick. The smell of his neck did nothing to stop the aching in my teeth, and my gaze fixed on the fluttering of his pulse at the juncture of his neck and chin. “A really big, right-now problem.”
The elevator doors opened, and Justin lightly tugged Bailey’s leash from my hand while his other arm went around me. “Can you make it upstairs to your room or do we need to press the emergency stop on the elevator?”
“I can make it,” I said through my hand as I followed him in. He held me tightly to his side all the way up to my room, only letting me go to use my keys to open the door. As soon as we were inside, he released Bailey and scooped me up onto him.
“Wait. I have blood bags in a hidden compartment in the fridge,” I whispered, my voice thick.
His golden eyes found mine. “But you don’t want bagged blood, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” I rubbed my hands over the back of his neck and brushed my lips over his collar bone.
Justin took in a sharp breath. “Good,” he whispered as he rushed through the living room area and into my room. He sat back on my bed and laid down, taking me with him. He rolled on top of me, and his breath hitched as I brushed my fangs over his skin.
“Bite me,” he said.
I didn’t need any more permission than that. I bit down on Justin’s neck, breaking his skin, and pulled my fangs out. Justin’s hot, salty blood filled my mouth, and I drank deeply as my arms wrapped around him. All too soon, the holes in his neck closed under my tongue, and when he whispered, “Again,” I immediately bit down and drank deeply. Only after the holes in Justin’s neck closed a second time, did the thumping of his heartbeat quiet, but I still craved more blood.
“I guess there’s no point in rushing out of here.” Justin’s eyes looked a little droopy as he leaned past me and onto my pillow, squishing me.
“Can’t breathe,” I wheezed under his weight. “You’re like a thousand pounds of muscle.”
“Hmm, I kind of like squishing you.” Justin rolled off to lie beside me on the bed. His head nuzzled into my pillow, and he closed his eyes.
“I’ll be one sec …” I rolled off my mattress and headed into the kitchen. After taking a quick glance back at the bed to make sure Justin was still there, I pulled open my refrigerator. Crouching, I slid out the crisper drawer and pushed down on the floor of the compartment. The plastic lifted to reveal two blood bags, something Sebastian provided me with last night before I left. My teeth tingled as they lengthened in my mouth, and I lifted a plastic bag and bit down. Cool coppery liquid splashed over my tongue as I drank the blood in one long pull.
Tingling warmth filled me, and my blood craving finally waned.
I crawled back over to the fridge and tossed the empty bag into the crisper before closing the false bottom. With a sigh, I rolled back to sit on the floor and squeezed my eyes closed, and it took me a moment to collect myself enough to climb off the floor. I pulled a carton from the fridge and returned to Justin with a glass of juice.
“Did you need more blood?” Justin whispered as he took the cup. He sat up and patted the bed beside him.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
In the year since I became a dhampir, my blood cravings had never once gotten so bad that they threatened to take over, but as of today, it had happened twice in three days. That terrified the fuck out of me. Clearly, there were similarities in the situations that led to the blood frenzy, but I wasn’t sure what exactly had tipped me over the edge.
Justin drained the orange juice, set it on the side table, and then held out an arm. “Instead of you going off and panicking alone, how about we figure this out together?”
“Okay.” I scooted beside him, and he wrapped me in his embrace.
“What happened?” he asked. “I was heading to meet you for class when guards surrounded me and said that you fell, but you were fine.”
“Fell?” I blinked as the scene came back to me in a flash of rapid images. “Someone tried to stab Bailey and me, and Mitch saved us back there.”
“What?” Justin’s head shot up, and the tiredness cleared in his eyes. “Stab you? What exactly happened? Some guy attacked you while you were walking Bailey? Did he get close to you?”
“Yeah, really close. He was walking by, and Bailey was growling and freaking out. She seemed like she was going to attack him. I’ve only ever seen her act that way once when the vampire was on my roof, but he wasn’t a vampire. The man was wearing one of the purple staff shirts and looked perfectly normal. I thought he was getting me in trouble for Bailey’s freak-out when he pulled out the knife. Mitch did the zipping thing, and the guy ran away just as fast. At first, I thought the man stabbed Bailey, but I checked her, and she didn’t have a scratch on her. Then Mitch pointed out my knife wounds.”
“Where?”
I pulled up my sleeve, which was now dark with blood. The blood had saturated the tape, and the gauze had completely peeled off.
Justin leaned in, staring closely. “Where?”
“Right …” I craned my neck and lifted my arm, but all that was there was unblemished skin, smeared with blood. “Holy shit—what?” I crawled off the bed. “I’m going to double check Bailey and make sure the blood didn’t come from her.”
I took Bailey in the shower with me, scrubbing out the blood and running my fingers over her skin. After toweling her off, I washed my own skin, finding that there wasn’t a scratch on me either.
“Utterly bizarre,” I said as I came out of my bedroom, hastily dressed in my uniform. “I felt this searing pain in my arm right before the blood craving. And in the car accident, I smacked my chin, but it didn’t even get a bruise. I thought in the chaos that I’d just imagined it. I think that my body heals itself.”
“Your body heals itself instantly, like a vampire.” Justin looked up from where he sat at the table. Bailey sprawled across his feet, getting his slacks wet, and I was going to tease him about it when I noticed the look on his face. Worry sat heavy on his expression.
“Not instantly. It happens after a few minutes.”
Justin shook his head. “That’s even worse.”
“Why?”
“If you cut off a vampire’s hand, they’ll regrow it in a day. If you shoot them, the bullets will push back out. The only thing yo
u can hurt them with is hawthorn wood, and the only way to kill them is by cutting off their head. Sebastian thinks of you as a science experiment. He’s testing your abilities, and he has a complete lack of conscience. What do you think he’s going to do with this information?”
“So, we’ll keep it from him.”
Justin’s head fell into his hands. His fingers pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s almost impossible to keep secrets from the Hawthorn Group. Believe me, I’ve tried.” He didn’t add that it was I who spoiled that. He didn’t need to. “I’ve been working on an exit strategy to get both of us out of the Hawthorn Group’s control in a couple of weeks—but after this morning, and after some information I just learned, we need to move things up to this weekend.”
“This weekend? What about the vampires?” I had made special arrangements to visit my mother tomorrow and see my grandmother on Sunday. “You didn’t say anything to me.”
He looked up. “And I shouldn’t be saying anything now.” He glanced around the room and lowered his voice. “Or here. But I found out that something really bad is happening, January. We need to break out before it’s too late.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Break out of Blackburn Academy?
“Are you saying that you don’t think we can leave here voluntarily?”
“Not exactly, but I can’t explain.”
“Can’t explain?” I blinked at him, trying to wrap my mind around what he was suggesting and failing. “What about my nana?”
“She’ll come with us.”
“What? Justin, how are we going to get her to come with us when we can’t tell her what’s happening? What is happening?”
He looked up, and his golden gaze met mine. I could see so much conflict in his eyes, like he was at war with himself. After a few seconds, he sighed. “I’ve been trying to figure out why a certain group of HG soldiers die on missions way more frequently than the rest. It always appears like the vampires kill them, but I’ve suspected for a while now that Sebastian is involved in making these soldiers disappear, and last night, I think I figured out why. If I’m right, it will change everything, but I really hope I’m wrong. I need to be absolutely sure before I tell anyone—even you. But, January, the intense interest Sebastian has taken in you terrifies me—enough that I’d risk going on the run with hordes of vampires chasing us.”
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