Rival (3 page)

And he's still not stopping.

Erick grunts. Obviously, he's having a
little trouble getting away from the girl attacking him.

Who are these freaks, and why did they
come after us?

Emily snakes her arm through mine and
jerks me to one side, taking me to my knees. The jolt of pain is
nothing compared to what the bruises are going to feel like
tomorrow.

I look up to see the blond-haired punk
with the knife is standing where I just was.

She saved me.

I can't help grinning. She's not
immune.

I push back to my feet. If we weren't
fighting for our lives, this might be fun.

"Wanna try something different?" I
ask.

She nods, eyes on the two guys, now
converging and coming at us together.

I bend over and lace my fingers
together, make myself into a human catapult. Her eyes widen for a
moment, then glint with a shimmer of a smile. She tucks one foot
into my hands, knee bent for her springboard.

"Don't kick me," I tell her, then
launch her airborne.

Our attackers weren't expecting it, and
she flies right over their heads. They watch her, necks bending
backwards, mouths agape. Couple of brain surgeons, these
two.

In their distraction, I rush them,
aiming for the shoulder of the one holding the knife.

And, miracle of miracles, it flies out
of his hand, clattering on the ground beneath a nearby
car.

Emily wastes no time
getting back in the fight. She kicks
crew
cut
in the back of one knee, and he
buckles.

The one I've got ahold of reaches
behind and grabs the back of my shirt, going down but taking me
with him, slamming my back into the pavement and knocking the air
out of me.

His head is close to mine, and all I
can think about are those glinting fangs. They can't be real,
right? But they sure didn’t look like those plastic things you find
in stores at Halloween.

"Brett!"

Emily's voice rings in my head at the
same time I hear a fainter, "Emily!" from her cousin.

I'm flat on my back, and I don't
totally get what happens next because it goes so fast, but I'm
pretty sure Erick throws her his knife. She grabs a silver blade
out of the air and slams it down, right into the blond guy's
face.

His grip on me goes slack.

She doesn't hesitate as she
rips the knife free, spurting blood, and stabs it into
crew cut’s
heart. His
eyes widen, and he collapses in a heap on the concrete floor, face
frozen with that shocked expression.

And then it's just the two of us,
staring at each other, breathing hard.

I’m numb. All I can feel is the heavy
weight pressing me down. Did all that really just
happen?

Sirens blare, echoing off the walls,
like a police car has turned into the parking garage.

Are our attackers dead? Are we in
trouble? It was self-defense, obviously. But are there security
cameras to prove that?

My mind spins as I shove the guy off
and sit up.

I hear Erick’s footsteps as he runs
toward us and remember—he was fighting the girl. Where…? And then I
see her body, crumpled in a pool of blood, leaning against the
concrete wall.

Erick’s words are distant, even though
he’s right in front of me. "We've got to get out of here," he
pants. He's roughed up, bloody and bruised on one side of his face,
and his shirt is torn.

"There's no time." Emily rises from her
crouch, glancing around like she's looking for a place to
hide.

I push to my feet. "Shouldn't we talk
to the cops—?"

"No!" they both cry, silencing my
question before I can finish.

Three people are dead. I think so,
anyway. We can’t just walk away from this.

But Emily and Erick only seem to want
to escape. The sirens are getting even louder, making my
already-aching head throb even worse.

“
Where’s your car?” Erick
demands.

I point to my ride. "This is
me."

My cycle is tucked between two cars,
and I wheel it out quickly. With the time and parts I've put into
the engine, I know I can outrun the cops if I need to. But I’m
still not sure this is the right thing to do.

Emily's eyes go wide. "You have a
bike?"

I can't tell if it's admiration or fear
in her voice. I straddle the cycle, still unsure about just leaving
a crime scene. Those guys attacked us, not the other way
around.

Erick trots off toward his big silver
truck and the four-wheeler in back. There's no way he's getting
that thing out of here unnoticed.

Emily stands closer to me, poised on
the balls of her feet like she’s ready to run. The whole time she
was fighting off our attackers, she was fierce. But now, her eyes
are big and luminous. She’s afraid.

Seeing her like that makes my insides
clench.

Erick tosses something at her, and she
catches it by reflex as it slams into her gut. A mud-splattered
helmet that matches her jeans.

“
Get her out of here,”
Erick orders me.

“
Why don’t we just tell the
truth about what happened?”

"We can't…" Emily’s indecision and fear
is obvious in her hesitant words. She holds the helmet in one hand.
“Please, can you take me home?”

I care about her. It’s the overriding
factor that makes me jam my helmet down onto my head.

The sirens are so loud now that I can't
hear anything, especially with the helmet on. Lights start flashing
on the walls. I kick the bike on.

Erick says something to her, but he’s
in profile to me and I can’t make out his words. Something passes
between them. A family thing?

Then she pulls on her helmet and throws
her leg over the bike behind me.

"Hold on!" I shout.

I jam it into gear and blast up the row
of the parking garage. I go up, because I know the cops will be
looking for someone going down, past them. Fortunately, this is one
of those one-way garages.

On the next level, we buzz through the
rows of cars, then descend through the empty exit ramp. The cops
haven’t blockaded it yet.

I speed through the mall traffic and
onto city streets and suddenly we're clear.

Emily clings to me the whole time. Even
with everything else going on, the three dead people back in the
garage, the police chasing me, I am still so intensely aware of
her.

There's going to be hell to pay later
tonight. Coming off an adrenaline rush like this will throw my
joints out of whack. I may not be able to walk tomorrow.

She’s got a lot of explaining to do.
Who were those guys, and why did we run?

But at this moment, with her arms
around my waist...

All of this might be worth
it.

5 - Brett

Halfway to Emily's ritzy neighborhood,
and I'm still waiting for the police helicopter to shine a light
down on us, or a group of squad cars to appear, blocking our
way.

But nothing happens.

I'm trying to reconcile everything in
my mind. We were leaving the mall, minding our own business, when
some guy attacks Emily, and his friends come after Erick and me.
Knives are drawn. I saw Erick with one, but was it his? Or did he
get it from his opponent? And somehow, our three attackers ended up
dead.

Oh, and they seemed to be...
superhuman. With fangs.

But shouldn't we have stayed and talked
to the cops? Told our side of the story? How come Erick stayed to
take the blame? Why did Emily let him?

All of it whirls through my brain,
rushing like the wind against me on the bike. I can’t make sense of
any of it

And still, no
cops
.
Nothing
happens at all.

Nothing except Emily clings to me,
leaning into every turn like she was born to be on the back of a
bike. With me.

This afternoon was supposed to be a
last hurrah. Get her out of my system.

And she did insult me, ignore me, and
basically make it known that she's not interested.

Except.

Except there was that moment in the
dressing room, and another when we fought together.

Can I take hope from two measly seconds
in an afternoon of her obvious dislike?

I don't know.

I've spent too much time mooning over
Emily. Either she's interested or she isn't. I'm ready to move
forward—or move on.

She's a hard nut to crack. She keeps
everything so close. We were friends when her dad died and I don't
remember her crying. Not once.

We hit a residential area that's a
notorious speed trap, and I shift the bike to a lower gear. After
all the effort to avoid the cops, it would suck to get pulled over
for speeding now.

The road winds a little, then we hit a
straightaway that dips through some woods. It's twilight and
beautiful. Fireflies blink in a slow, dazy dance.

We're only doing thirty, and at the
slow speed, Emily removes one of her arms from my waist.

What's she doing?

It's clear ahead of me, so I turn my
head and see her reaching out, waving her fingers in the wind like
a little kid.

Like she's having fun.

It's only a few seconds before we hit
the end of the woodsy area, but I can't help myself.

I slow down and pull a u-turn right in
the street. This time, when we drive back through the fireflies, I
drive as slowly as I can without spilling the bike onto the
asphalt.

The fireflies thicken around
us.

I look back again.

She's leaning out to the side a little,
and I'm at the perfect angle to see her eyes through the visors in
both our helmets.

Her gaze is unfocused, far-off. Maybe
she’s lost in a memory or something.

This
is why I'm still in love with her, even after all the cold
shoulders.

Emily is magic.

I hit the end of the street and turn
down a side street, putting us back on track to reach her house
after the little detour.

And my gut is tight as a
rock.

I know. I’m going to find out what
she’s hiding. Why we left Erick to take the fall for those three
dead guys.

I'm not walking away from
Emily.

Not without a fight.

6 - Emily

Brett pulls his bike through the
massive front gate of my mom's sprawling two-story mansion and
kills the engine behind her Jaguar sedan in the curving
drive.

I step off the bike and avoid his gaze
as I take off the helmet and shake out my hair. Between the morning
riding dirt bikes, afternoon fighting for our lives, and the
evening ride back home, my braid has fallen apart.

I don't know what has me more shaken.
My first two kills or sharing a moment with Brett on the back of
his motorcycle.

“
Thanks for the ride," I
mutter, swinging my helmet next to my thigh.

"Really?" His voice is muffled by his
helmet until he yanks it off. "That's all you've got?"

His annoyance startles me into looking
up at him. The first good look I've gotten since the fight. He
leans casually against the bike, long legs extended in front of
him. One knee on his jeans is ripped, and I don't think it's a
fashion statement. He's got rust-colored blood staining the
shoulder and halfway down his shirt. One side of his jaw is
scraped, like it met the pavement when the vamp took him
down.

I don't even want to think
about the moment of terror I felt when the vamp had his
teeth
this close
to slitting Brett's throat.

"You hurt?" I ask, motioning to the
scrape.

"About as much as you," he returns,
pointing.

I look down, following his extended
finger, and there's a bloody scrape across the back of my knuckles.
I don't know how it happened, maybe rolling on the ground. I don't
remember hitting it.

He touches the back of my hand with the
tip of his index finger. Just a brush, really, but I feel it all
the way to my toes.

It unnerves me.

"Emily?"

I'm half-relieved to hear my mom's
voice. A glance over my shoulder shows the massive front door
opening.

When I turn back to Brett, I realize
exactly what she's going to see when she opens that door—the two of
us, bloodied from a fight.

And she has expressly forbidden me to
Chase, so I can just imagine the punishment. Grounded from the
upcoming tournament. I’ve got to fight. I’d like to think tonight
will be enough to show Uncle Felix that I belong in the family
business—except for the mess I left Erick to clean up. Allowing
human involvement, like the police, is a big mistake.