Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  No one had cared.

  “I’m fine,” I said, pulling my knees instinctively to my chest, like shielding my body from Elliot’s view might keep him from recognizing my words as a lie.

  “You’re not fine.” His response was immediate. “You’ve been bitten by a chupacabra. You’re anemic, your blood pressure fell through the floor, and the only reason you’re not in a hospital right now is that Vaughn said you were sleeping, not unconscious. We figured you could use the rest.”

  I didn’t know which part of what he said was the most surprising: the fact that Skylar and Bethany had told him about the chupacabra, or his proclamation that I could “use some rest.”

  In the past twenty-four hours, I’d taken out a pack of hellhounds, offered myself up to a bloodsucker to save the life of a girl I barely knew, came this close to having my head torn off by a genetic impossibility of a dragon—and they thought I needed some rest?

  “What time is it?” I asked, disturbed by the fact that I didn’t know. “And where’s everyone else?”

  Bethany didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who willingly left her boyfriend alone with a member of the opposite sex. I didn’t know whether to be flattered that she trusted me or offended that she clearly didn’t think I was a threat.

  “Skylar and Vaughn went to get some painkillers. Beth’s father called, and she had to go. She said to tell you that if you die while she’s gone, she’ll take it personally.”

  It was funny—all I’d wanted since I’d woken up in the nurse’s office was to get Bethany out of the picture, but the fact that she’d just left me there didn’t feel like a relief.

  “Anything else she said to tell me?” I asked, trying not to sound betrayed or offended or, God forbid, hurt.

  Elliot smiled—it was a lopsided expression on his otherwise symmetrical face: wry and rueful and just a tiny bit sardonic. “She said to tell you that she was going to pump her father for information about chupacabras. She’s not holding her breath that he’ll have any answers, but given that he’s one of the foremost experts in the world, she’ll probably do you more good there than here. And she also said to tell you …” Elliot trailed off, and I couldn’t push down the impulse to look him straight in those gentle, turquoise eyes.

  “What?”

  “She said her best memory isn’t standing on top of some cheerleading pyramid.” Elliot leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “She said it was hide-and-seek, when she was nine.”

  For some reason, my throat tightened when Elliot said those words, and I swallowed, hard. That was playing dirty, and Bethany had to have known it. I’d saved her because I couldn’t just stand by and let her die. Not because I wanted to know her, not because I wanted anything in return.

  All I wanted was to go home, go to bed, and wake up cured in the morning.

  As a matter of reflex, my eyes were drawn to a clock on the wall. It was a quarter past eight.

  Ten hours and forty-five minutes.

  “How’s my patient?” A new voice—deep and baritone, so gentle that I instinctively wanted to trust its owner—snapped me from my reverie.

  “She’s awake,” Elliot said needlessly. “I should go. Come on, Skye.”

  The second I heard Skylar’s name, my eyes sought her out. She was standing next to a man easily three times her size, but within seconds, it was clear who was calling the shots around here, and it wasn’t Elliot or the man with the soothing voice.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, El. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

  Elliot narrowed his eyes at his sister, but she just stared back and grinned. “I’m not telling you what to do,” she volunteered helpfully, “I’m just telling you what you’re going to do. There’s a difference.”

  “Skylar,” Elliot said with the thinning patience of an older sibling much abused. “You are not psychic.”

  Skylar sighed. “Elliot,” she informed me, “is a skeptic.” From her tone of voice, you would have thought it was a dirty word.

  “Elliot,” the boy in question repeated, his tone mimicking hers exactly, “has common sense. If you run around sticking your nose into things that are none of your business, you’re going to get yourself hurt. You’re not psychic, you’re not super-woman, and if Mom and Dad had any idea you skipped school and almost got yourself eaten—”

  Skylar finished his sentence for him. “They’d tell me, very sternly, not to do it again.”

  “You want to help me out here?” Elliot asked, exasperated. At first, I thought he was talking to me, but then the man standing beside Skylar answered.

  “We both know Skylar’s spoiled rotten and doesn’t follow directions worth a damn,” he said, his tone mild, though he did raise one eyebrow at Skylar in a way that actually made her fidget. “Right now, I’m more concerned about her friend.”

  “Kali,” Skylar supplied.

  The man—who I could only assume was another one of Skylar’s many brothers—smiled, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hello, Kali,” he said, his voice gentle as he came to sit on the side of the bed. “I’m Vaughn, unfortunate older brother to Tweedledee and Tweedledum here. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” I replied, but Vaughn gave me the same raised-eyebrow look he’d given Skylar, and I found myself looking down and away.

  Vaughn lifted a hand to the side of my face, and I flinched, but his hold was gentle as he angled my eyes back toward his. “You’re not fine, Kali. There’s an ouroboros on your stomach, and your body’s working overtime, trying to replace the blood you’ve already lost.”

  I knew without Vaughn having to tell me so that trying was the operative word. I felt better than I had since I’d been bitten, but that didn’t change anything. The creature inside me was still sucking me dry. At this rate, I might not make it to sunrise.

  Some plan, I thought.

  I waited for the voice in my head to gloat.

  Nothing.

  “I can’t feel it,” I said out loud, thankful that I’d managed not to refer to my would-be killer as a him. “Before, there was a … presence.”

  I couldn’t describe it any better than that, not without making all three Haydens think I’d really gone off my metaphorical rocker.

  “Based on your height and weight, it should take approximately four days for your condition to run its course.” Vaughn’s tone never changed, but there was no gentling news like that. “Are you sure you were bitten this afternoon?”

  “I’m sure.” It wasn’t like smearing my blood on Bethany’s back and luring her death sentence to jump ship was the kind of thing I’d forget.

  Bethany. Chupacabra.

  An expletive exited my mouth.

  “Got something you’d like to share with the class?” Skylar asked, unperturbed.

  I opened my mouth and then shut it again, unsure how much Skylar had told Elliot, let alone Vaughn.

  “Everything,” Skylar said, and for the first time, I realized that she had a habit of doing that—responding to things I hadn’t said out loud.

  “Skye?” Vaughn’s voice was even and calm, and it occurred to me that her whole family was probably used to this—or as used to Skylar as any person could get.

  “Kali?” Skylar deftly passed Vaughn’s question on to me, and this time, I answered, despite the instinct screaming at me, from somewhere in my memory, that people like me kept secrets for a reason.

  “I can’t believe you three let Bethany walk out of here,” I said. “Skylar told you about the woman at the school, didn’t she? And her suit-wearing henchmen?”

  Elliot rolled his eyes heavenward. “Skylar,” he said crisply, “exaggerates.”

  “Does Bethany exaggerate, too?” I shot back.

  “Bethany can take care of herself,” Elliot said. “And her dad isn’t exactly the kind of guy you say no to.”

  The expression on my face must have betrayed what I thought about that, because Elliot’s voice took on a defensive tone.<
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  “If there were some shady characters at the high school, and if they were looking for a cheerleader who’d been bitten—trust me, they won’t get within a mile of Beth’s house. Her dad does some of his work at home, and the place is under surveillance, twenty-four seven.”

  “Shady characters?” Skylar repeated incredulously. “What are you, eighty?”

  “Skylar,” Vaughn said softly, and to my surprise, Skylar shut her mouth. A moment later, I could understand why she’d done it, because Vaughn turned his gaze back to me, and I realized that he was the type of person who never had to raise his voice, never had to so much as narrow his eyes.

  “You need to call your parents,” he said, and I got the feeling that it wasn’t a suggestion. “For whatever reason, you seem to be having an unusual reaction to your condition. We don’t know how fast it’s going to progress, and I’m out of my league when it comes to treatment.”

  I met Vaughn’s eyes. We both knew that the problem wasn’t that he was out of his league. The problem was that there was no treatment. No cure. There was nothing that Vaughn—or any medical professional—could do. If I’d been fully human, I would have been a dead girl walking, and as far as Skylar’s brother knew, that’s exactly what I was.

  You think I’m dying. I didn’t say the words out loud, but I didn’t have to. I could tell just by looking at Vaughn that he knew—and that he wasn’t going to back off until I called home.

  “I’ll call my dad,” I said, “but I’m not going to tell him, not yet. Not over the phone.”

  I hoped Vaughn wouldn’t press the issue, and he didn’t. Instead, he just handed me the phone. After a pregnant pause, I dialed our home number, banking on the fact that my father rarely left work before nine. I got the answering machine and hung up.

  “He’s still at work,” I said, handing the phone to Vaughn, who turned around and pressed it right back into my palm.

  “Try his cell.”

  I narrowed my eyes, and Skylar snorted. “Try having five of them,” she told me. “I can’t tie my shoes without someone telling me I’m doing it wrong.”

  Sensing that I wasn’t going to win this one, I dialed my father’s cell number. I wasn’t at all surprised when it went to voice mail, too.

  “Hi,” I said, feeling nine kinds of awkward leaving a message, when the two of us spoke so rarely face-to-face. “It’s Kali. I’m calling because I got a little sick today, and my friend’s older brother thought I should call you. I guess he’s a doctor or something.”

  I paused, wondering why I was doing this. My dad probably wouldn’t even listen to his messages.

  “Anyway, I’ll be home soon.”

  Another pause, another reminder that this was the most I’d said to my father in months.

  “Bye.”

  I hung up the phone and handed it back to Vaughn. “He wasn’t there,” I explained needlessly. “I left a message.”

  I half expected Vaughn to hand the phone back and suggest I call my mother, but he didn’t. Maybe Skylar wasn’t the only person in her family with good instincts.

  “Elliot can drive you home,” he said instead. “He’ll stay with you until your dad gets there.”

  Elliot looked like he was on the verge of replying, but Vaughn silenced him with another one of those looks. Before I knew what was happening, Skylar’s brothers were helping me to Elliot’s car, even though I could have walked on my own just fine.

  Elliot opened the passenger door for me, a gesture completely at odds with the tight set of his lips and the dagger eyes he was shooting at Vaughn. I climbed in and managed to thank Vaughn for his help. As Elliot rounded to his side of the car, Skylar poked her head in my side and pressed a folded white square of paper into my hand.

  “It’s this thing,” she said, which was, quite frankly, less than illuminating. “I can’t get it out of my head. I think it might be important.”

  “Thanks, Skylar.” I realized as I said the words that it wasn’t just the paper I was thanking her for. It was introducing herself to me at the pep rally that morning and sitting with me at lunch and coming back for me after the drama with the dragon.

  I wasn’t used to being the kind of person that other people came back for.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Skylar said. “I know I will.” She tapped her forefinger against her temple and winked.

  She thinks I’ll live through the night.

  The thought was strangely comforting, and as the door closed between us, leaving me alone with Elliot, I tightened my grip on the paper in my hand. Maybe Skylar was psychic, and maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she just had really good instincts and a thousand-watt smile.

  “She’s not psychic,” Elliot told me tersely. “There’s no such thing as psychics, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t encourage her.”

  “I’m not.”

  Elliot didn’t look like he believed me, but he managed a weak smile that did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that he probably didn’t want to be stuck on Kali babysitting duty until my father got home.

  I could hardly blame him. Hanging out with a good-as-dead girl probably wasn’t anyone’s idea of a stellar time.

  Nine hours and fifty-nine minutes.

  This day was never going to end.

  My father came home. Elliot left, and there was a moment—a single moment—when I thought my dad might look at me and see: the pallor to my skin, the dark circles under my eyes, the bruises, the swollen joints. I laid my hand over the bottom of my T-shirt, playing with the edge, flicking the bottom up and down, up and down, waiting for him to look at me.

  To see.

  “Your friend seems nice,” he said absentmindedly. He might as well have backhanded me, and I couldn’t even hate him for it. He meant well. He meant to love me.

  Then again, you know what they say about the road to hell.

  “Elliot’s not my friend,” I said, my voice as neutral and pleasant as the professor’s. “He’s dating Bethany Davis.”

  Bethany’s name caught my father’s attention, the way I’d known it would.

  “Is he now? I had a feeling you two would hit it off.”

  For one horrific moment, I thought my father might reach over and pat me on the head, like a little kid. Like a dog.

  “You should invite Bethany over here one day after school,” he said. “Or perhaps I could talk to Paul about the four of us going out for a father-daughter dinner?”

  In that instant, I hated Bethany, hated her so much that I wished I’d never seen the ouroboros on her back or that I’d turned a blind eye to it once I had. I knew it wasn’t rational, knew that this conversation wasn’t any more her fault than it was mine, but I didn’t feel like being rational.

  I felt like puking all over my father’s dress-for-success designer shoes.

  “Kali?”

  I got bitten by a chupacabra, and I might not make it to morning. Just thought you should know.

  I couldn’t coerce my lips into saying the words. What was the point? Instead, I took the easy way out, the way I always did with him, the way he always did with me.

  “I’m really tired,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

  Another parent might have gotten upset that I hadn’t replied to his suggestion, but my father never yelled at me. The two of us never fought. I’d go on my merry way, and he’d go on his, and if I died in the middle of the night, he’d live.

  He’d just have to find another way to cozy up to Paul Davis.

  By some miracle, I made it upstairs without breaking down or passing out. I closed my bedroom door behind me and sank down onto the floor.

  Eight hours and fifty-one minutes.

  I was tired, I was light-headed, and all I wanted was to go to sleep and bring on the dawn, but I knew with sudden prescience that it wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking about it, any of it—not about my dad, or the thing inside of me, or the fact that somewhere out there, someone was looking for me. />
  For Bethany.

  How did I get myself into this?

  I was normally good at lying low, but this was pretty much the opposite. Assuming the best happened, and I did survive the night, that would be a giant red flag right there—to Bethany, to Skylar and her brothers, to the woman in heels.

  —Hurt—You.

  With everything going on inside my head, the return of the voice was almost a relief. I was the kind of person who needed an enemy. I needed something I could fight, something I could kill.

  Back again? I asked silently, disregarding the fact that according to modern science, chupacabras had the mental capacity of an amoeba. And here I thought Elliot and Vaughn had scared you away.

  No response. Then again, what did I expect? I was talking to a parasite. I was dying. And there was a part of me that couldn’t help wishing that Elliot hadn’t left just so I wouldn’t have to be going through this alone.

  Not like you.

  That was the clearest thing the little interloper had said since the ice rink—like I needed a reminder that I was different. Like I’d ever been able to forget, even for a second, that I wasn’t like other girls—that I wasn’t like anyone.

  This wasn’t how I’d pictured spending what could end up being my last night on earth: alone in my bedroom, talking to the voice in my head and feeling sorry for myself. I needed to do something.

  At that moment, I would have given anything for the hunt-lust, the restlessness, the purpose I’d felt the night before. Every other day, I was a demon hunter. I was powerful. I was something.

  But now?

  Now I was just lost and lonely and dying, and the closest thing I had to company was the creature that was killing me.

  Lovely.

  I could feel my throat tightening, and my eyes started to burn.