Clann 03 - Consume (19 page)

The photos of the junior prom and their group date dinner before it at a popular Asian grill in Tyler were the hardest to look at, though.

“You guys looked great,” I murmured, tracing a finger over a picture of them laughing around the grill as flames apparently shot up from their food. They looked really happy.

Tristan and I should have been in the picture with them. Would I never get to go to prom with Tristan?

Michelle launched into a long story detailing their grand shopping expedition for dresses for two weeks before prom, with occasional jokes and laughter added by Carrie and Anne. I tried to laugh with them around the tightness in my throat, but it took some effort and I was pretty sure my lack of a poker face threatened to give away my true feelings.

Finally Anne bumped her shoulder against mine. “You’re awful quiet. Spill.”

I swallowed and shook my head, holding on to my smile for all it was worth. “Oh, you know. I’m just jealous. I wish Tristan and I could have been there with you guys.”

I was missing so much, first during the five months spent away in Arkansas, and now another two months on the run from the Clann. It seemed that, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t have a normal life. I wanted to be one of them, a regular human with normal worries like what dress to wear to prom and whether I’d make the varsity volleyball team. I missed our monthly slumber parties at Anne’s house, the way her mother always made us take off our shoes before entering their house and her homemade veggie pizzas, even though the smell of the human food turned my stomach. I missed getting to listen to Michelle’s rambling gossip at lunch every day, and Carrie teasing Anne about fumbling some dive for the volleyball at practice or a game. I missed listening to Ron’s and Anne’s thoughts about each other that they worked so hard to hide from themselves and everyone else because they were crazy in love and trying to keep it under control.

I missed it all. And even though I tried to tell myself that I’d never really been one of them due to my hybrid genes, it didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, knowing I might live forever and my human friends wouldn’t made every moment I missed experiencing with them even worse. I’d never realized before just how limited my time with them would be. I’d thought at least we would have our junior and senior years together before we graduated and went off to separate colleges. Now I didn’t even have that much time with them.

“Oh!” Anne said. “I nearly forgot. To honor this lovely reunion, I got us all a little something.” She dug into her jeans pocket, then pulled out a wad of what looked like black cord. After a minute of untangling, she proudly held up four cords with odd little metal charms dangling from each. “They’re friendship necklaces, or you can wear them as bracelets if you want.”

She passed them out so we each had one, then explained, “I’ve actually had them for a while but wanted to wait till we could all put them on at the same time.”

I held up mine and studied the charm. It looked like a metal puzzle piece.

“I looked everywhere for a four-piece friendship bracelet charm, but they’re impossible to find,” Anne said. “Then I found this guy in Mexico who cuts apart Mexican change to create four pieces. I asked him if he could do it with a U.S. quarter, which he could. So I found a quarter from our birth year, sent it to him, and tada! See? They all fit together.”

We held our charms together, twisting and turning them until sure enough, they fit together again into a U.S. quarter. Then I noticed the four hearts that formed the cuts so each of our charms had one heart-shaped edge and one heart-shaped hole along the other cut edge.

“Wow, Anne, this is really awesome!” Michelle said.

I had to admit I was completely impressed. I’d never realized how thoughtful Anne could be. I’d always thought of her more as a spur-of-the-moment, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants girl. But this had obviously taken some true planning.

“Thank you,” we took turns saying, making her all but glow.

Carrie and Michelle chose to wear theirs as necklaces, while Anne and I wore ours in multiple loops around our right wrists.

I stared at my friendship charm, at the heart-shaped edge and the missing heart from its other edge. A glance at my watch showed my time with my friends was already almost over. I had thought the two hours would pass by slowly, filled with dread and worry about Tristan. But the reassurance of my silent phone in my pocket had allowed me to completely forget the time. Soon I would have to say goodbye to Anne, Michelle and Carrie. They would go back to living their human lives. And while I would be with Tristan, I would once again return to my new life of running from the Clann. And all I would have would be the occasional text or phone call and my new friendship bracelet to keep me connected to them.

My eyes stung, and I discovered I couldn’t breathe well.

While my friends continued talking about the friendship charms, I focused on regaining control over my wayward emotions, telling myself that I was being ridiculous, that Tristan and I wouldn’t have to be on the run forever, that someday we would return to Jacksonville and the life we’d hoped to have together there. That I would see my friends again, and I wasn’t really missing out on that much.

But it all felt like lies. Because I really had no idea when the war between the Clann and the vamps might end, if ever. Soon my friends would be going their separate ways to college, and then it would be even harder for us all to stay in touch. They would start careers somewhere, get married, have families. And our brief time together as a circle of friends would be gone, just nice memories from the past that could never be repeated or recaptured.

Every day that the Clann forced Tristan and me to stay on the run was another day I missed spending with my friends, creating those precious memories.

Mom opened the trailer door and poked her head in. “Sav? I’m sorry, hon, but we need to go.”

It was time.

I felt physically ill as I walked my friends to Michelle’s car. Mom followed us so she could carefully lay the still drugged Lucy in the backseat. Mom also transferred all of Lucy’s tiny dresses and collars and leashes, Lucy’s doggy bed, her food and water bowls, and a huge bag of her favorite dog food into the trunk of Michelle’s car.

“I think the bumper just dropped a good six inches,” Carrie muttered, making me laugh despite my tight throat.

Michelle looked a little wide-eyed and slightly overwhelmed as Mom gave her a written list of instructions on how much to feed Lucy and when and how often to walk her. But she only smiled and promised to take the best care of Mom’s dog, and even thanked my mother for trusting her with her baby. Clearly Michelle was a dog owner and understood the whole dog ownership thing, which seemed to slightly reassure Mom.

Once Mom had given Lucy the last of many kisses and returned to the truck sobbing, my friends and I all took turns hugging goodbye. The entire time, Carrie’s and Michelle’s minds nearly blasted me with a thousand questions they somehow forced themselves not to ask out loud. I wished so badly that I could tell them everything, that I could explain why I had to be gone for who knew how long. But they would never believe me, and even if they did, just knowing about vamps and the truth behind the Clann would endanger them. It was better for them not to know, even if that meant putting a little emotional distance between us.

Then I hugged Anne, and the reminder that she did know everything and still chose to be such a loyal friend was nearly my undoing.

“Stay in touch so I don’t worry too much, okay?” she muttered near my ear.

I nodded, the huge knot in my throat too tight for me to speak. A rebellious tear slid down my cheek as I stepped back from the car and watched them all pile inside. And then, with the music cranked up and their windows rolled down, they all waved madly and drove away.

Taking a few shaky breaths, I forced myself to focus on Tristan and Dad. Better to worry about the guys than to have a pity party and bawl over what I couldn’t control.

Which reminded me...

I checked my phone again and frowned. Still no updates. What was going on at the blood supply pickup?

I hopped into the front passenger side of the truck.

“Any word from our guys?” Mom asked as she started the engine.

Silently I shook my head as a growing sense of unease crept over me.

Something must be wrong. They should have completed the pickup by now.

Maybe the supplier was running late?

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Mom muttered. But I didn’t need to read her mind to know she was getting worried, too. It was all there in her tone and the pinched lines between her eyes.

“Let’s go back to the rental place and wait for them,” I said, working hard to keep my voice even. Maybe if I tried to stay calm, Mom would, too.

“Right. Good idea.”
Mom forced a smile for my sake as she steered the truck and trailer into traffic. “Don’t worry, hon. Your dad didn’t survive this long by being stupid. He’s got amazing instincts. In fact I used to tease him about being part Clann because he always seemed to smell a trap a mile away.”

I forced a smile of my own. “Right. Plus he’s got Tristan with him. So between the two of them...”

“Exactly.”

I looked out the window and, for the first time ever, silently begged my notorious speed demon of a mother to drive faster.

TRISTAN

We drove east on Interstate 20 for an hour, passing by Kilgore and several billboards advertising the world-famous Kilgore College Rangerettes dance/drill team, which made me smile. If Savannah were with us, she probably would have begged us to stop by the Rangerettes Museum on the way back. Along with nearly every other Charmer, she was a huge Rangerettes fan. Savannah had even convinced me to agree to take her to the Rangerettes’ annual Revels show last spring. But before we could go, the vamp council had dragged us to Paris for her “test” and then everything blew up with the Clann’s abduction of her Nanna, followed by our breakup for months.

Maybe we could stop by the museum on our way back. That ought to earn at least a smile from her.

Once we passed Kilgore, Mr. Colbert took an exit off the highway, made a quick, sharp turn back on a side road, then a hundred yards later the asphalt abruptly ended and turned into a single-lane dirt road. We stayed on the dirt road for another ten minutes as it wound through acres of thick pines occasionally broken by open pastures where cattle grazed.

Finally we crossed a single-lane cement bridge over the local creek and entered a huge square field that appeared to have been recently clear-cut, judging by the number of dead pines now lying on the ground.

“Interesting choice of location,” I muttered as Mr. Colbert parked in the road at the edge of the clearing.

He hummed an agreement, dark eyebrows pinched and shadowing his eyes, which stayed on the move as he visually scanned the area. Finally he nodded, and we opened our doors to get out.

Mr. Colbert froze, sniffed the air. “Something’s wrong.”

Then I felt it...an explosion of pinpricks all over my neck and arms.

Acting on pure instinct, I dived over the hood of the car, grabbing Mr. Colbert on my way down in a tackle. Immediately we rolled, and not a second too soon, as a reddish-orange orb flew toward us from the south and our car exploded into a huge fireball.

We jumped to our feet and took off running in the direction we’d originally come in from.

“This way!” Mr. Colbert shouted, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me more west when I tried to go north.

Then I smelled it and understood. The northern breeze carried a strange, musky scent that was half human and half something exotic.

Keepers.

The Clann had called in help for this ambush.

I reached out with my mind and found a small group of Clann coming our way from the southwest, downwind where we couldn’t smell their approach. They were trying to box us in. We’d have to circle around them.

“More Clann ahead, eleven o’clock,” I called out over the roar of the air rushing between us as we ran through pines and pastures, weaving around cattle and over barbed-wire fences.

Mr. Colbert nodded. We turned more north.

But not soon enough.

Fifty yards to our left, a group of Clann spotted us from the road where they were waiting in the back of a camouflage-painted pickup truck. At the same time, more pinpricks of pain stabbed at my skin in warning just before a blue orb hurtled toward us at chest height. It was going to hit Mr. Colbert.

I reached back, grabbed his nearest arm with both my hands, and threw him ahead of me while I ducked to avoid taking the hit myself. But I missed seeing the second orb trailing a split second behind the first.

I stood up too soon, and it slammed right into me.

Air whooshed out of my lungs from the impact. It felt like a car had just nailed me. The orb hit me hard enough to knock me off my feet. Air whistled in my ears as the world rotated clockwise ninety degrees then soared past me.

“Tristan!” Mr. Colbert yelled.

The world went black and silent.

CHAPTER 20

SAVANNAH

Ten minutes later as we reached the Tyler city limits, pain suddenly exploded in the back of my neck.

“Ow!” I cried, reaching up to rub it. What the heck? I glanced at Emily in the backseat. “Did you just hit me?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “What are you talking about?”

And then the strangest sensation of emptiness formed inside me, robbing me of breath.

Something was wrong.

Mom hissed out a curse, distracting me.

“What is it?” I asked.

Then I noticed the red-and-blue lights flashing behind us. Oh, no. We were being pulled over by a state highway patrol.

Emily twisted around to look behind us and muttered her own curse.

My heartbeat revved into overdrive as I remembered the time when one of the Jacksonville cops had pulled me over for a ticket. That police officer had been a descendant, and I’d spent the entire fifteen-minute ordeal hearing his every thought as he’d debated whether to follow the law or handcuff me and take me out to the woods somewhere to get rid of the town’s half-breed menace. Thankfully he’d opted to only give me a ticket, but it had been a close call I never wanted to repeat.

If this state trooper was Clann, too, I doubted any of us would be seeing the inside of a jail cell unless it was one specially built by the Clann.

But wait. He couldn’t be Clann. If he had been, he wouldn’t have seen us in the first place, right?

The air hissed out of my lungs as I remembered.

“What?” Emily said.

“The invisibility spell. I forgot to maintain it. It was only supposed to last a short while. If we needed it to last longer, I was supposed to give it another boost of energy.”

Which meant this cop could be Clann after all.

“What should we do?” I said.

“Pull over,” Emily told Mom.

“Are you crazy? He could be a descendant!” Mom said, her knuckles turning white on the steering wheel.

“She’s right. We’ll never outrun him,” I said, thinking fast. “And if he is Clann, we can’t risk leading him to the guys. We have to pull over.”

Mom hesitated then slowed the truck and eased it over to the side of the road. She parked then looked at me, her eyes wild, her thoughts panicked.
I won’t let them take my daughter!

“Easy, Mom,” I said. “He might not be a descendant. Maybe we were just going too fast or something.”

But then the cop’s door opened and I felt that low-level prickle of needles racing over the back of my neck and down my arms.

Since Emily and Joan couldn’t use their abilities, they both looked at me, eyebrows raised in question.

I shook my head in silent answer. It wasn’t me using power.

“He’s Clann!” Mom hissed, her hand darting out as if to grab the gearshift.

“No!” I put my hand over hers to stop her. “We’re too heavy and slow in this thing. We’ll have to try something else.”

But what? I was the only one who could use power right now. And the only spells I knew were defensive ones.

I could throw energy orbs at the guy, maybe enough to knock him out. But I had no idea how long the effect would keep him unconscious while we tried to get away. And once he woke up and alerted the Clann, we wouldn’t get far.

Unless he’d already called someone in the Clann as soon as he pulled us over...

Outside, the patrolman’s door thumped shut before he slowly walked toward us, his khaki uniform pressed and starched to within an inch of the fabric’s life.

“Roll down your window, Mom,” I muttered. “I can’t hear his thoughts.”

She did, slowly, as the officer approached the truck. The closer he got, the better I could pick up his thoughts.

The plates are wrong,
he thought while studying Mom’s license plate.
I’d better not call this in yet till I’m sure, though.

“He hasn’t called the Clann yet,” I whispered. “There’s still time.”

The cop stopped at Mom’s door, only inches away from my mother.

“License and registration, please,” he said to Mom, his tone almost bored as he looked at her then me. No blip of recognition on his face or in his thoughts.

Then he looked at Emily in the backseat. He froze, and I knew we were busted. He must have recognized her from a Clann meeting or something.

“Ah, one moment, please,” he muttered. “I forgot to grab a pen.”

He headed back to his car, trying to act as if nothing was wrong and he had all the time in the world.

“He recognized you, Em,” I said without looking away from the cop as he opened his car door, sat in the driver’s seat, and reached for something.

His cell phone gleamed silver and black as he dialed a number then held the phone to his ear and stared at us.

Emily cursed loudly. “He’s calling the Clann!”

My mind went absolutely blank with panic. The next thing I knew, I was twisting over the front seat back, pushing Emily to the side out of the way, and raising both my hands.

A burst of energy exploded out of me, passed through the back glass of Mom’s truck, and slammed into the officer, knocking his head backward. His head rebounded forward, then his whole upper body slumped over toward the passenger seat.

Mom shrieked.

“Oh, my God,” Emily whispered. “Savannah, what did you do?”

Breathing hard, I stared at the man in shock, waiting for him to sit up and retaliate with an energy orb of his own. But he didn’t move.

I opened my door and slid out, never looking away from the cop. As I walked toward his car, I heard two of the truck doors open as Mom and Emily got out to follow me. I could hear their steps crunching out of sync with mine on the shoulder of the highway beneath the low roar of the cars whipping by us.

What had I done?

I risked a glance at the traffic. Had anyone noticed the unconscious trooper in his car? No one seemed to be slowing down.

At the open door of the trooper’s car, I edged closer to the man, visually searching his body for some signs of life.

Then I saw the rise and fall of his breathing and my knees turned wobbly with relief. Good. He was still alive.

“He’s still breathing,” I said. “But I don’t know how long he’ll stay out. When he wakes up...”

As if on cue, the man groaned and twitched.

“Do a memory confusion spell on him,” Emily hissed.

“What?” I asked.

“You know, tell him to forget he ever saw us and push your willpower out with the thought at the same time. Hurry up! He’s going to wake up any second.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. They’re easy.”

Gritting my teeth, I raised both my hands palms-out toward the cop. “You will forget you ever saw us.”

Emily snorted. “Puh-lease. That didn’t even raise a single hair for me. You forgot the willpower part. It’s everything. Without it, you’re just saying words.”

Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I held it and tried again. “You will forget you ever saw us.” This time, I imagined the cop doing just that...waking up in his car on the side of the road with no memory of how he got there or why he’d fallen asleep.

I thought about how much we needed this to happen, and what would happen if it didn’t work.

“Now, Savannah!” she shouted as the man slowly eased himself upright in the seat. “Do it before it’s too late!”

The man turned to look at us, reached for his phone with one hand, and threw his other palm out toward us.

Time was up.

Taking a deep breath, I bent down, grabbed the man’s chin and forced him to look at me. Then I stared into his eyes. They were brown with a thick fringe of eyelashes. He was younger than he’d first appeared, maybe his middle or late twenties.

Fear flashed within those eyes for a second.

Freeze!
I thought, panicking.

Energy burst down my arms and hands, flowing like invisible hot water along my skin and off my fingertips.

And incredibly he did just that, his entire upper body freezing yet still pliant.

“Thatta girl.” Mom sighed and rubbed her forearms. “You’ve got the willpower flowing. Now just tell him not to remember anything.”

“No, just this one stop,” Emily said. “You don’t want him to have total amnesia, do you?”

They started to argue. But their voices were fading away now, just background noise.

Another sound rose up to drown them out, a low throbbing like a drumbeat that filled my ears at first and then my mind, calling to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my free hand reach down to touch the man’s shoulder. Then it glided up to caress the side of his neck above his starched collar.

There. The drumbeat was in his throat, pulsing beneath my fingertips, his skin so soft and fragile that it was like holding tissue paper.

I felt a strange sensation in my mouth, one I hadn’t felt in many months, a sort of aching in my upper gums. And then two pricks against my lower lip as my fangs descended.

My mouth and throat were so dry that it actually hurt to try to swallow. I leaned closer to the state trooper, or maybe I pulled him to me. At that moment, I wasn’t sure and didn’t care. All I knew was that only inches separated us now.

A curse from behind me, then hands grabbed at my shoulders and tried to pull me back. But the hands were like the weight of a jacket draped over my shoulders, so slight I could easily ignore them.

Just a taste. That was all I wanted. Just a little taste of this descendant before me. Dad had said to only go after evildoers, right? And this descendant definitely qualified as an evildoer. He was going to use his power as a police officer for bad, to turn us over to the Clann. He was abusing his power as an officer of the law. And for that, he deserved to die.

Just a little taste...

“Savannah, no!” a familiar voice shouted in my ear.

I wanted to ignore that voice. Every vampire instinct within me said to, or better yet, to simply swat its owner away from me.

But a tiny part of me deep inside said not to, that I knew that person and would never want to hurt her. Because...

I frowned and tried to remember, though the drumbeat inside my head made it so hard.

I didn’t want to hurt her because...she was my mother. Not my vampire mother, Lillith, the mother of all the race of vampires who slept beneath the desert. But my birth mother, my human mother.

My Clann mother.

I turned to her, and now it was a faster heartbeat that pounded in my ears. It was still Clann blood that called to me. But as I slowly drew closer to her, the scent of her perfume was like a smack to my face, forcing me to back up and wrinkle my nose.

That perfume was not at all what I was craving.

And yet something about that perfume was also familiar, reminding me of warm hugs and soft hair tickling my face, of gentle hands rocking me to sleep or handing me a mug of hot soup when I was sick.

That perfume reminded me of being loved and protected.

Slowly the drumbeat in my ears faded into the background. I blinked once, twice and again then looked around me and frowned. I felt like I was slowly waking up from a vivid dream, one that kept trying to claw me back under.

Or maybe it had been a nightmare.

“Savannah, snap out of it!” a different female voice shouted.

Then a hand slapped my cheek. It didn’t move me, but the faint sting was enough to push that sleepy feeling away a little more.

I blinked again. “What... Where am—”

“She’s coming back to us,” Mom said.

“Oh, no she doesn’t,” the other one said. Emily, I remembered now. “She’s not finished making him forget. Savannah, look him in the eyes. But this time, ignore the blood.” She said the last words slowly, as if I were a child, making me frown.

“No, it’s too dangerous!” Mom said. “Can’t you see what being so close to him is doing to—”

Emily ignored her. “The cop, Savannah. You’ve got to make him forget he ever saw us.”

And now I remembered. The state trooper. He was a descendant. And he was going to tell the Clann where we were.

“Hurry up, he’s coming out of it!” Emily said.

I leaned back into the car, this time touching only the man’s chin with a single fingertip to direct his focus back to me again. He looked up, and again I could feel his heartbeat trying to reach out to me.

I swallowed. “I can hear it. His blood...it’s calling to me.”

“You have to fight it,” Emily insisted. “Don’t listen to it. Only think about the magic and using it to make him forget.”

But that drumbeat, slow and steady, was pulsating in my ears, its hypnotic music trying to rob me of all thought. So much power. He could be an endless supply of Clann blood for Tristan and me to feed on....

The thought of Tristan was like another slap, this one deep within my mind. I blinked hard a few times, then refocused.

I looked into the man’s eyes one last time. “You’ve never seen me or anyone with me. Is that clear?”

Slowly he nodded.

“You will forget us,” I ordered, the command rolling up from somewhere deep within me, and more of that liquid rush of energy poured along my skin and out my fingertips. “Go to sleep now. And when you wake up, you will have forgotten all about this stop.”

His eyes drifted closed and he sat back against the seat, his head slowly rolling forward until his chin rested against his chest.

“Whoa,” Emily whispered. “He’s like her puppet. Are you sure Clann can’t be gaze dazed?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom snapped. “Of course they can’t. It’s like the mental shields the two species developed over time. It’s a protective mechanism. Besides, you felt her use of the power, too. She just threw in a ton of compulsion spell along with the memory confusion part.”

Once more, I could hear the man’s heartbeat, even slower now as he slept deeply. It begged me to lean in closer.
Just a taste...
it whispered.

I stumbled back and slammed the door shut, muffling the sound. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

“Let’s go,” I said, forcing my feet to turn and take me back to the truck. Then I sat there, waiting, staring out the window at the sunlight glinting off row after row of trucks and cars and SUVs at a nearby dealership. Seeing again the sunlight glaring on the hood of that state patrol car...