Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  That kind of thing was unheard of, and no other species—natural or preternatural—had demonstrated any kind of psychic power, before or since. My father’s enthusiasm at Eigelmeier’s announcement had actually led him to look me straight in the eye. To this day, it was the most he’d ever said to me in one sitting.

  Maybe that was why I could still hear him saying every word.

  Maybe that was why I knew that when a chupacabra started draining its victim, the image I’d seen on Bethany’s lower back—a snake eating its own tail—appeared somewhere on the victim’s body.

  Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop picturing Bethany’s eyes going vacant and empty as the chupacabra stole her memories. Her lifeblood.

  And then her life.

  B.

  I scrawled the letter onto the page in big, defiant script, even though I knew the answer was wrong. And then, I folded my test paper in half, walked to the front of the room, handed it to the teacher, and asked to be excused.

  “Excused?” Mr. McCormick gave me one of those looks that said something along the lines of look here, Missy, I know what you’re up to, but then he seemed to realize that he did not, in fact, have any idea what my agenda was. He appeared to find this somewhat unsettling.

  “If you leave now, I won’t be able to let you take a makeup exam,” he warned me.

  I looked him straight in the eye, even though it physically hurt me to do it.

  Blend in. Don’t make waves. Don’t look up.

  That was the mantra I lived by. But not today.

  “I understand,” I said softly. “I just really need to go, anyway.”

  “You could at least guess,” McCormick replied. “It’s multiple choice. It wouldn’t take you very long, and it would be better than a zero.”

  Chupacabras, I thought.

  Puncture holes in perfect, luminescent skin.

  Vacant, empty eyes.

  “I need to be elsewhere.”

  That statement got me another look. This one said I have concluded that you are on drugs.

  Clearly, I was getting nowhere fast. There was a part of me that wanted to just turn and stalk out of the room. I seriously doubted he would physically stop me, but that scenario would have inevitably ended with someone calling my father. I’d be labeled as a troublemaker.

  There would be conflict.

  I really didn’t do conflict.

  Think, Kali, I told myself, and then, all of a sudden, the answer was there, accompanied by an angelic chorus of hallelujahs.

  “Tampons!”

  Mr. McCormick jumped like I’d hit him with a Taser. “Excuse me?”

  “Tampons,” I said again.

  “Ms. D’Angelo, I’ve been teaching for six years. I’m well aware that there may be certain … er … female issues—”

  I cut him off. “Tampons.” It was ridiculous. I couldn’t stop saying the word, and he couldn’t stop flinching. “Somebody stole mine. All of them. I need to go.”

  Mr. McCormick said absolutely nothing, but he handed me a bathroom pass. He seemed to know that I wouldn’t be back, but accepted my absence as the price that had to be paid to keep me from saying that dreaded word one more time.

  As I stepped into the hallway, any thrill of victory I might have felt subsided, because I couldn’t deny, even for a second, what I’d known since I saw the symbol on Bethany’s back.

  Whether I was in class taking a test or out wandering the hallways, there wasn’t anything I could do to save her. I was weak. Human. There was no instinct pounding in my temples, compelling me toward a battle I’d inevitably win. I had no idea where Bethany was, and even if I found her, what was I going to do—talk to the little parasite? Ask it to let her go? Tell the school nurse?

  Who was I kidding? By the time the ouroboros symbol appeared on a person’s skin, it was too late for medical science to intervene. The only thing that could save Bethany Davis’s more-popular-than-thou, oh-so-charming personage was a trade, and even that was supposed to be pretty much impossible. But hypothetically, if the chupacabra did find someone it liked better, it might leave Bethany before it sucked all of the life out of her.

  And if that person happened to be me …

  I glanced down at my watch.

  Seventeen hours and twelve minutes.

  If I could last that long with a psychic, parasitic hellbeast sucking the blood out of my body and the thoughts out of my brain, I’d be fine, because seventeen hours and twelve minutes from now—eleven minutes from now—I’d change. My blood would change.

  And the bloodsucker would die.

  As far as plans went, it was imprecise, but at the moment, it was all I had.

  “Can you tell me what class Bethany Davis is in right now?”

  The secretary had her own version of Mr. McCormick’s I know what you’re up to look, and I wasn’t altogether surprised to find myself on the receiving end of it. If I’d had any other choice, I wouldn’t have just marched myself into the office to ask, but it was a pretty big school, and I didn’t think that popping my head into every classroom, looking for Bethany, would go over much better.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in class, Ms.… ,” the secretary trailed off, as she realized that she didn’t know my name.

  I was loathe to provide it for her, but given that there couldn’t have been more than three Indian kids in the entire school, I seriously doubted she’d have trouble tracking me down if she was so inclined.

  “D’Angelo,” I said. “Kali. I’m new. And I really need to talk to Bethany. It’s an emergency.”

  The secretary leaned over her nameplate, and even though I knew she was human down to her artificial fingernails, I got the distinct feeling she could see my soul. And that she was thinking of eating it.

  “Kali D’Angelo,” she repeated.

  If I’d had any school-yard sins to confess, they would have come pouring out of my mouth, just listening to her say my name. But I really did try, for the most part, to be a good kid. To not cause trouble. To be left alone.

  “Look, Mrs. Salinger,” I said, stumbling over her name, terrified that I’d slip up and inadvertently address her as Mrs. Soul Eater instead. “It really is an emergency.” True. “My dad works with Bethany’s dad,” I continued—also true. “And if I don’t find her right now …”

  My voice cracked. With a shake of her head, Mrs. Salinger handed me a tissue, assuming, I suppose, that I was on the verge of tears.

  “Does this have something to do with a boy?” she asked.

  Boy? I thought. Bloodsucking menace to society? Same difference, really.

  “Yes,” I said seriously. “It does. Please don’t eat my soul.”

  It took me a few seconds to realize that I’d added that last part out loud.

  “Ummm … I mean …”

  Mrs. Salinger held up a hand. “There’s not a thing that goes on in this school that I don’t know about, Kali D’Angelo. People talk. I listen. I do not, for the most part, eat souls.”

  “Of course not—I didn’t mean to—”

  My feeble apology was cut off by the sound of blood-red nails hitting a pristine keyboard. I felt like Mrs. Salinger was adding my name to the roll call in hell.

  “Bethany’s got drama this period,” she said finally. “I believe the class is in the auditorium doing a cold read of The Glass Menagerie.”

  “The Glass Menagerie,” I said, unable to keep from dumbly repeating everything the woman said.

  “Go on, now.”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I hightailed it out of her office and to the auditorium. I needed to find Bethany before I lost my nerve or found my common sense. Her life depended on my being simultaneously brave and stupid.

  Lucky her.

  As I opened the door to the auditorium, I braced myself. Every single person in the room turned and looked at me.

  This time, at least, I had a cover story. “The office needs to see Bethany Davis,” I said.

  The dra
ma teacher mumbled something that I couldn’t decipher, but I guess he must have given Bethany permission to leave, because a moment later, she was sauntering toward me: sugar and spice and eyes that said did I give you leave to speak my name, lowly serf?

  I could tell already that this was going to be buckets of fun. When Bethany reached the door, she turned around and smiled, waving at the teacher in a motion that looked more like the work of a hypnotist than a teenage girl. Exactly five seconds later, the two of us were in the hallway, headed toward the office.

  “Wait,” I said. The word came out high and squeaky, even though my voice is normally closer to the “husky” end of the spectrum. When Bethany didn’t stop, I reached out to grab her arm. She tried to shrug me off, but I tightened my grip.

  “What is your problem?” she huffed. “You delivered your little message. Now, shoo.”

  I didn’t move, and since I had a hold on her arm, neither did she.

  “Oh, I know what this is about,” she said, her green eyes widening in a way that made me think, for a split second, that maybe she did.

  “You do?” I asked.

  Her widened eyes narrowed. “You’re Skylar’s new little project, and you think that since I’m with Elliot, and he shares an unfortunate number of his chromosomes with Little Miss Loose Legs, you have an in.”

  For a few seconds, I considered letting go of her arm, turning around, and walking off. If she was retaining enough of her memories to be this much of a bitch, she clearly wasn’t in that much danger.

  But I couldn’t make myself do it. Couldn’t drop her arm. Couldn’t turn around. All I could do was drop the act.

  “Do you have a tattoo?”

  “Excuse me?” Bethany did the ice-queen motif to perfection, but at the moment, I had bigger things to worry about than painting a giant social target on my forehead.

  “It’s a simple question. Yes or no—do you have a tattoo?”

  Something in my voice, or maybe my eyes—which had a tendency to go nearly black when I was on a hunt—must have convinced her that I was serious, because she actually answered me.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I don’t have a tattoo.”

  The desire to say well, then, if you want to live, come with me was overwhelming, but I didn’t see the point in being cryptic or vague.

  “You have an ouroboros on your back.” I said the words softly. I didn’t want to be saying them at all.

  Bethany blinked several times, and I plowed on.

  “It’s a symbol,” I told her, “of a snake eating its own tail. It has a lot of different mythological meanings, but only one scientific one.”

  “You think I’ve been bitten,” Bethany said, and something about her tone of voice reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who’d grown up with a father in academia.

  “I think you’ve been bitten. I think it burrowed inside of you. I think it’s drinking your blood and absorbing your memories—”

  “I know what chupacabras do.” Bethany probably didn’t spend her nights hunting the preternatural, but I was beginning to suspect that she knew more than I’d given her credit for and that her sole exposure to the concept of chupacabra possession wasn’t some Lifetime Original Movie called Three Days to Live. “I know exactly what these things do, Kali.”

  She was scared enough that she’d dropped the pretense of not knowing my name. Good. Maybe that meant she’d be scared enough to listen to me, too.

  “I think I can get it out of you,” I said.

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked me, her voice equal parts vulnerability and venom. “My dad studies these things. It’s all he ever even talks about. If there’s an ouroboros on the subject’s skin, there’s nothing anyone can do. But at least, thanks to you, I know I’m doomed. Really appreciate that.”

  Each second I put off taking action, my resolve faltered. What if I didn’t last seventeen hours? What if Bethany told her father what I’d done, and he told my father, and the entire university faculty figured out that I wasn’t Homo sapiens 24/7? What if I couldn’t get the parasite to jump ship, anyway? I was human. My blood was human. There was no real reason to think that it might work.

  But what if it did?

  Do it. Do it now.

  “Knife,” I whispered, but of course, nothing happened. I wasn’t a weapon whisperer. I wasn’t invincible. I was just a seventeen-year-old girl who was about to do something very, very stupid.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Bethany arched one eyebrow, opening her eyes wider. Even with mortality staring her in the face, she was still one of those girls.

  “I might be able to help you,” I said. “Close your eyes. Worst-case scenario, you lose fifteen seconds. Best-case scenario, you’re not a corpse in the morning.”

  She closed her eyes.

  I bent over and reached inside my boot. Heritage High wasn’t the kind of school that invested money that could be spent on pep rallies on something as trivial as metal detectors, and I’d learned the hard way never to go anywhere unarmed.

  My fingers closed over the hilt of the knife, and I stood back up, blade in hand. The weapon felt heavier than it had the night before. The balance of the blade should have comforted me, it should have been familiar, but instead, it was a reminder that I had no idea what I was doing. I was weak. I was stupid. I was alone.

  Do it.

  I gritted my teeth together and sliced into my own arm. For a moment, all I felt was the coolness of the knife’s tip, but then the white-hot fire spread up my entire forearm, bringing tears to my eyes.

  Biting down on my lip hard enough to draw blood there, too, I sheathed the knife and ran my right hand over the wound, until my fingertips were smeared with red. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and spread my blood across Bethany’s back.

  Nine hours earlier, no preternatural creature would have been able to resist the lure, but right now, I was human.

  “Oh. My. God. What are you doing?”

  “Keep your eyes closed.” I barely recognized my own voice. I’d cut my arm deeper than I’d meant to, and the blood just kept coming and coming. I thrust my arm closer to the ouroboros symbol.

  “Here, kitty-kitty,” I said, unwilling to let the enormity of the moment sink in. “Auntie Kali has num-nums for you.”

  Nothing happened, and I lowered my voice in both volume and tone. The words came fast and then slow, and every single one of them sounded like it was being spoken through me more than by me.

  “You want memories? I’ve got memories. You want blood? I’ve got blood. You don’t want her. You want me.”

  Bethany stiffened. “Kali, what are you—”

  “Bethany. Shut. Up.” I lowered my voice to a purr. “Is this what you want? Some cheerleader? What’s her best memory—getting to stand on the very top of the pyramid? Do you have any idea what I’ve seen? What I’ve done?”

  Do you have any idea what I am? I wanted to say, but I didn’t. My plan required me playing bait, but it also required a certain amount of discretion. If my target figured out what I was before it took the bait, this wouldn’t end well for anyone.

  “I know you can hear me. I know you can smell me. I know you’re sucking these words out of Bethany’s brain as fast as I can say them. I know that you know—you don’t want her. You want me. This girl is Denny’s. I’m gourmet.”

  This was a bad plan, bad idea. I felt that with certainty as my arm went numb. As the little stars dancing at the periphery of my vision began to turn dark and spread like inkblots across a page.

  I don’t want to die.

  The thought came, quick and vicious, into my head, and then there was a sound like a gun going off and a smell like rotten eggs. Bethany stumbled forward and went down to her knees, and I sank into velvety nothingness. It caressed my skin, lapped at my temples, the nape of my neck. It circled me like smoke, its touch light, but all-consuming.

  And just as I was about to lose consciousness, I heard the
voice.

  Hello, Kali. I’m Zev.

  Consciousness came slowly, like the rising of the tide, my body and my mind falling gradually into sync with each other until I remembered that I was called Kali, that what I was feeling was known as pain, and that here—in this space, in this time, in this body—I wasn’t alone.

  Hello, Kali.

  The voice in my head was silent, but my memory of those words was ice slipping down my spine.

  Everything hurts, I thought, clinging to the pain and pushing all other sensations away. A groan escaped my throat, and my eyelids fluttered. For a second, I thought I saw a person out of the corner of my eye: broad through the shoulders, muscular and sleek and made almost entirely of shadow, but even before I’d marked its existence, it was gone.

  I blinked, and the hunter in me began automatically surveying my surroundings: bright lights, a padded surface, paper that crinkled beneath me as I moved, and on the opposite wall, I could almost make out a cartoon drawing of …

  A kraken.

  This time, when I groaned, I put some oomph in it. My entire body felt like someone had taken a Weed Whacker to it, then strung me up like a piñata. Awareness of where I was and how I’d gotten there did nothing to soothe me.

  Chupacabra. Blacking out. Nurse’s office.

  Well, crap.

  I struggled to sit up, and as I did, the feeling that I wasn’t alone in my body spread from my brain to my chest and from my chest out to each of my limbs. To the outside world, I probably looked no different than I had before, but whether it was my imagination or my body’s reaction to being bitten, I could feel an alien presence in the warmth of my skin, the blush in my cheeks, the steady, but rapid beating of my heart.

  A whisper in my ear.

  A phantom hand on the small of my back.

  I shivered and wondered if this was what it had been like for Bethany. If this was normal. And then I stopped wondering—because since when had I ever been normal?