Braced to Bite (22 page)

Authors: Serena Robar

Tags: #Vampires, #Fiction, #Horror, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Schools, #Juvenile Fiction, #School & Education, #High schools, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: Braced to Bite

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I took a Zen moment and subdued my hunger. It was so not getting the upper hand here. The first rule of thumb was no feeding on friends and I wasn’t about to break it because I was feeling a bit peckish.

“I said, why didn’t you finish me off? You stood there like some clueless victim waiting for me to find a weapon to take you down.”

“Uh, I knew it was you?” It was an obvious answer, but Cyrus was always all business.

For the last eight months, Cyrus had spent two hours a day teaching me how to fight and protect myself. I met him on a routine visit to see my great-aunt Chloe at her condo in Providence Point. Her neighbor, Bits Walker, was bragging about her grandson, a self-defense instructor and former Special Operative in the military. Like anything Bits said, I took it with a grain of salt. After all, she’d been married four times and on last count, she mentioned seven husbands. I wondered if perhaps, she wasn’t all there.

But one day, there was Cyrus, holding Bits’s yarn as she knitted and listening attentively to her stories. He was smaller than I imagined, with craggy skin and a wicked-looking scar that went across his chin to his left ear, which appeared to be partially missing. He was wiry and muscular. I doubted he had an ounce of fat on his frame.

My thoughts were interrupted by Cyrus digging around the refuse. “What are you looking for?” I asked skeptically. Cyrus was, well, let’s just say he and his grandmother were very alike in the sanity department.

“Aha!” he shouted triumphantly, brandishing what appeared to be a sharpened piece of wood.

“You had a stake?!” I gasped incredulously.

“It’s like I’m having a conversation with Jell-O,” he muttered to himself. “Of course. Did you think I was going to continue attacking you with just my bare hands? You are too far advanced for those tactics. At least I thought you were. I thought you had achieved the black zone.”

Oh crap, not the zones again.

When he first started training me, I was in the white zone, which meant I was completely oblivious to my surroundings. Then came the blue zone or was it the green? I could never keep them straight. Anyway, I quickly raced up the zones to the black zone, which meant I was in Ninja-like awareness all the time. Personally, I liked being in the white zone but when you’re the most unpopular half-blood Undead in the neighborhood, you can’t afford to be in the white zone anymore.

Ever since I was attacked and turned into a vampire—oh excuse me, that would be
half-blood
vampire—I’d become persona non grata in the Undead community. I think I might have been able to live out my days in relative peace and solitude if I hadn’t petitioned for half-blood rights and emancipated an entire species. That move made me a little less than popular with the full-blood population. Well,
excuse me
for fighting injustice.

I did such a good job freeing my people, I was elevated to being their Protector, which I am sure was the Tribunal’s way of getting rid of all of us. I imagine they were still kicking themselves that not only was I Undead and around, but I was also becoming a pretty kick-ass Protector in the process.

Today was the day I would meet the rest of my half-blood family. Yep, we are going to show those bigoted full-bloods that we’re every bit as useful and viable a species and deserve to exist. At least, I hoped so. I hadn’t met any other half-bloods yet, but I held high hopes for our success.

“Colby? Hello? Colby Blanchard? Are you even listening to me?” Cyrus asked impatiently.

“Uh, sorry. What were you saying about the zone?”

He sighed in exasperation (he did that a lot with me) and repeated, “Since you refuse to allow me to test your skills in the evening, you have to be in the zone
all the time
.”

I held up a hand to stop him. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m sorry. It’s just today is the day I meet my new sorority sisters and I’m really nervous.”

“Oh, well then, that’s fine. I’m sure no one will be out to get you today then.”

“Ha-ha,” I retorted sarcastically.

“Today of all days you need to be most aware.”

It took my aunt Chloe exactly twelve minutes to tell Cyrus what I really was and persuade him to train me. Cyrus had believed her immediately, even though I walked around during the day and didn’t have real fangs. I guess it was the incident about his grandmother that did it. I’d insisted on taking Bits to her doctor because she smelled different that day. My super sniffer detected a change in her normal lavender scent. It was a move that saved her life. Bits was on the verge of a heart attack, but thanks to me, she ended up with a bypass and a new lease on life.

He seemed to accept that I was a mutant Undead with limited vampiric powers who needed steel fangs to bite her victims because I had had my canine teeth removed for braces when I was twelve. I mean, it makes perfect sense right? HA! It was my life and even I had a hard time believing it most of the time.

“I wish you would let me teach you defense with weapons,” he complained.

We were back to that old argument. I think he knew how close I was to caving on that one.

In the evenings, Thomas, my Vampire Investigator boyfriend trained with me and we used swords. Actually, it would be fairer to say Thomas used the swords and I just did my best to avoid being beheaded and/or shish-kabobed. Thomas wouldn’t train me using a sword yet; he didn’t think I was quite ready. Well, his actual words were something along the lines of “you’ll poke your eye out” but the gist was the same.

I sighed heavily. “No, just help me avoid the stick.”

He gave me his patented you-are-one-crazy-chick look and dropped the subject.

“Are you going to visit Bits today?” I asked.

“Already did. I have to leave tonight for a mission. I won’t be back until Monday.”

“You’re leaving me?” I said in surprise.

“Yeah, I do have paying customers who need my services, you know. Don’t worry, Thomas won’t leave you alone this weekend, so you should be fine.”

“You know, I don’t need Thomas’s protection to be just fine. I can take care of myself.”

“Oh really? Check out your shirt.”

I glanced down to see a white chalk mark dead center on my chest. When I looked back at Cyrus, he held the “wooden stake” for me to examine. It was really a large stick of chalk.

“Oh,” I said in surprise, realizing that if he was really out to get me, he could have killed me right then.

“You were saying?” His constant superior ways and arrogance were always annoying, but he was particularly obnoxious today.

“Bite me,” I replied in my snarkiest tone. Yes, I am the queen of maturity when provoked.

“That’s your department,” he said dryly and turned to walk away. Looking back over his shoulder he added, “Be safe and don’t hesitate to finish the job.”

I watched him leave, his body tightly wound, ready to spring if the situation warranted it.

“He’s so weird,” commented a voice from behind, effectively scaring the daylights out of me.

“
Argh!
Don’t
do
that! You could’ve given me a heart attack!” I squealed, grabbing my chest for dramatic effect.

“The day your heart starts beating … I’ll be the one having a heart attack.”

Piper Prescott was my best friend and occasional arch nemesis. She wore her hair straight to the shoulders, jet-black with burgundy ends. Her nose was pierced, her skin a shade of alabaster rarely found on another living being and she always, always spoke her mind. We were direct opposites in so many ways, but I wouldn’t trade our friendship for all the Kate Spade bags in Macy’s. Well, usually I felt that way.

“Dude, you are so funny, I forgot to laugh.”

We moved to tidy up the recycling that Cyrus scattered and walked into Piper’s house to wash our hands.

“So, today’s the big day, huh?” Piper asked after folding up the dish towel.

“Yep, tonight I meet the rest of the house. I can’t believe it. You’re gonna be there, right?” I was nervous about meeting them but proud of my accomplishment at the same time. I’d spent the last year of my life preparing for the moment I would meet the first half-bloods allowed to exist in vampire history. All because of me.

“Oh, I’ll be there.” Piper smirked. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Do you have to be so negative?” I asked her. Piper was of the opinion that a bunch of girls with nothing in common except being Undead and forced to live together was a recipe for catastrophe.

She opened the fridge and took out a Mountain Dew. “I’m just saying this thing has disaster written all over it.”

She tried to open the can but couldn’t get her finger under the tab.

“Oh here, give it to me.” I used my manicured nail to pop open her soda.

“Are you still biting your nails?” I started to lecture, “Don’t you know that everyone looks at your hands and gains an impression about you?”

Piper put her hands over her ears and started to sing, “La la la la, I can’t hear you, la la la.”

“Oh fine.” Piper always resisted my suggestions for self-improvement. I returned her drink and brought the conversation back to my meeting. “And tonight doesn’t have disaster written all over it. These girls are lucky to be alive and I bet they are just as excited to meet me as I am to meet them. After all, I
saved
them and, because of me, they get a second chance. You’ll see.”

We plopped down on a comfy couch in her living room, enjoying the air-conditioning for a moment.

“Where’s your mom?”

“She’s still at work. We only have a couple of days left until we go to Europe. Even though she is dragging us on a work thing, I’m kind of excited. I miss England,” she added wistfully.

Piper spent a summer with her family roaming the European countryside and loved it. She was kind of a Gypsy at heart.

“You’ll still be on e-mail right? I know your cell phone won’t work over there, but you’ll still have Internet access, right?”

“Quit being so nervous. You’ll be fine,” Piper reassured me.

“Yeah, I know.” I started to nibble on the cuticle of my thumb.

“I saw that Thomas was over last night. Is he finally putting out?” Piper asked.

“Piper! What kind of question is that?” I gasped, feigning outrage.

“So that would be a no then.”

I debated playing the offended victim but frankly, I needed some advice on this one. “What’s wrong with me? We’re in constant physical contact. He wrestles with me at training and I’m all, yeah baby come and get it, but he’s been a perfect gentleman. It pisses me off.”

“I sense a little frustration coming from the Blanchard household,” Piper remarked dryly.

I scrunched up my nose, holding my thumb and forefinger up, about an inch apart. “Little bit.”

“So why not just ask him what the deal is?”

“It’s not that simple. He’s old fashioned and obsessed with training me. Like, totally obsessed. It’s on his mind constantly. The other day I was in my knit bikini. You know, the purple one? It’s totally scandalous!

“Anyway, I’m all prancin’ around trying to get his mind off of training and he goes and gives me his sweatshirt to wear, so I won’t get cold in the drafty warehouse we work out in. Ohmigod, he doesn’t even ask why the hell I am wearing a purple knit bikini to practice or anything, just covers me up and is all business. I must truly disgust him.” I finished my tirade with a wail of self-pity.

“Wow.”

I punch the sofa cushion next to me.

“Yeah, wow.”

“You must look pretty bad in that bikini.”

“Piper!!”

She laughed at me. Did I mention Piper can be my arch nemesis
while
she is being my best friend?

“Okay, okay. First of all. Let’s think a little, shall we? It’s the middle of freakin’ August and he gives you a sweatshirt to cover up with so you won’t get cold? Hello? It’s like, seventy degrees at night. He wanted you covered up because he obviously didn’t trust himself to keep it in his pants if he had access to all that naked skin.” I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before and perked up at the thought of Thomas fearing he would lose control around me.

Piper continued her assessment. “Second, Thomas cares for you a lot. He’s been training you hard so you can protect yourself. He doesn’t want to lose you. And finally, maybe he’s gay?”

I threw the pillow at Piper’s head. No guy who kisses a girl like Thomas does could be gay. End of story.

“The last one must be it,” I jokingly agreed with her, not completely convinced but feeling much better about things.

After a moment of companionable silence, Piper said, “Colby?”

“Yeah?”

“Quit chewing on your nails.”

Brat.