Vamplayers (17 page)

Only now do I see the leather jacket pooled at Tristan’s ginormous feet.

Zander is gasping next to me, red-faced, looking ticked off, but he’ll live.

That’s all that really matters at this point: who lives; who dies.

I shove him behind me into a row of bleachers, where he sits unceremoniously on his rump.

A few classmates rush to console him.

“I’m asking you, Tristan.” I march forward until only a few feet separate us. I have to look up to threaten him.

He doesn’t back down. His chest is puffed out in a stiff white shirt, buttoned only halfway up, the wide collar popped, a light blue T-shirt like a second skin against his firm pecs and flat stomach. He looks radiant, like he’s just stepped out of the ocean, his long hair slicked back, his dark eyes fiery. He crosses his arms across that great expanse of chest. “It’s refreshing to see a young woman defending her man, rather than the other way around. That’s what I love about this country. The men aren’t afraid to be humiliated.”

“Cut the crap, Tristan, and tell me what happened.”

I hear a wheeze and a grunt and see Bianca giving Grover the world’s longest, most excruciating-looking titty twister. His face is bright red, his forehead riddled with dewy drops of perspiration, his chin quivering as if at any moment he might let forth the waterworks.

I glare at Alice and Cara to try to guilt them into helping him out, but they ignore me, carefully eying Tristan instead.

“Nothing happened. Nothing that should matter to you anyway. It’s between gentlemen, of course. And gentlemen never fight and tell.”

“Zander was trying to give his stupid jacket back,” Grover says over his pain.

Bianca tires of toying with him and shoves him forward, straight past me and into the bleachers, where Zander is licking his wounds.

“This is all over your stupid jacket?” I kick it across the floor, hearing its zipper clatter under bleachers, where it lands in a crumpled, twisted mess. (Good.)

“Of course not,” Tristan sneers.

Bianca rushes to massage his shoulder. In her heels, she’s nearly his height. Their heads bow together, the happy couple.

Grover and Zander remain on the sidelines. Alice and Cara stay out of the fray altogether.

Watching Tristan and Bianca coo, I remember his hand under my blouse. “That’s fine, Tristan, since we’re both being so honest all of a sudden. But why should you have all the fun? Why don’t I tell Bianca what happened after you gave me the—”

The slap hits me from out of the blue, so fast, so hard it could only have come from a vampire’s hand.

I hear a response ripple through the gym, though with my ears ringing it’s hard to tell who’s gasping and who’s jeering. I look, my eyes stinging, to find Bianca standing in front of Tristan, holding him back from hitting me again, one of her hands pressed firmly on his chest.

He stands behind her, glowering, and I shake my head.

I can feel my claws growing, a natural pain response as my immortal body fights years of fight-or-flight adaptation. I shove my fists in my pockets, fighting my vampire urges to get control of my mortal, teenage self. It’s not working. And it’s not just the claws. I feel the swell of fangs beneath my gums and keep my mouth closed.

Cara and Alice walk toward me, their heels clicking on the gym floor. For only a fraction of a second, I think they’ll finally come to my aid and offer at least a word of comfort, even if it’s on the down low while Bianca is tending to Tristan.

Instead, they stand next to Bianca and link arms.

Tristan still lurks in the background out of frame. The “Sisters” won’t even let him between them.

I frown, glad I can no longer cry.

Paper crinkles somewhere in the distance, and a quiet voice says, “Class? Yes, please, class? Over here, thank you. My name is Mr. Sanford, and I’ll be your sub for this period.”

A diminutive man stands in the middle of the gym floor, a folded newspaper under one armpit, a briefcase dangling from one hand. He drones on, something about Coach Wannamaker this and appendicitis that.

We cluster in the bleachers for free time, and the sub takes a seat with his back to us, puts the briefcase on his lap, and begins noodling over a crossword puzzle.

My Sisters plus Bianca huddle around Tristan like a harem to their sheik, scowling at me.

I join Zander and Grover way up in the nosebleed section. Hanging our heads, we can hear them laughing, joking down near the gym floor where they sit, a tight cluster of Vamplayer, Sisters, and Bianca nuzzling each other like a pack of monkeys picking nits off each other’s hides.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to Zander, touching his raw, bruised neck. “I never meant for this to happen.”

“You didn’t have to defend me.”

“Yeah,” Grover says, smiling, one bench lower, still rubbing the sting out of one massive moob. “Any minute there, Zander was going to pull one of his Jedi mind tricks and fool Tristan into letting him go.”

I laugh and tousle Grover’s hair. “

Anyway,” Zander says, craning the kinks out of his neck, “I’m just sorry the chick jack-slapped you like that. She’s lucky she’s a girl, or I would’ve been all up in her grill.”

“I think the air must not be back in your brain yet. It was Tristan who slapped me, but don’t worry. I wouldn’t expect you to go up against a guy like him. That dude’s bad to the bone.”

Grover and Zander share a look.

“She must have really clocked you harder than I thought,” Grover says.

“Yeah.” Zander touches my shoulder before letting his hand drop. “It wasn’t Tristan who slapped you. It was Bianca.”

Chapter 23

I
catch the girls in the locker room, spin Bianca around, and slap her face. It barely moves.

“You witch!” She grabs for my arms, but of course I’m too quick for her (if only barely).

I leap over her and land on the other side, shoving her forward. Her pretty little face slams into the nearest row of lockers. She spins quickly, not bleeding (damn), and advances on me.

Other girls, mortal girls, from class have started to filter in. I can’t go full Sister on her, but it doesn’t stop me from grabbing her by the neck and jamming her into the lockers again.

She yelps and resists, a fire in her eyes like she’d kill me if she could. No, like she’d tear me to pieces
then
kill me.

I feel strong hands, familiar hands, on my back. I knock them off, like a Third Sister should. My hand clutches Bianca’s neck, not pressing so much as holding.

Alice barks, “Lily, enough. Too many eyes, too many eyes.”

I ignore her. They started all this.

Cara says, “Now is not the time or the place.”

I ignore her too. She’s wrong. For once, the levelheaded one, the Second Sister, is wrong. Dead wrong.

Bianca laughs, somehow managing to toss her hair even though I have most of her central nervous system in the palm of my quaking, ready-to-snap-an-epiglottis hand.

“Listen to your Sisters,” she says, using the word again like she knows what we are, why we’re here, why we’re together, why I’m so mad. Like she knew the minute we got here. Like she knew the first day when I was watching her from Headmistress Holly’s window.

There is a rumbling at our backs and then the voice of the timid sub. He sticks his hand in the doorway but not his head. “Girls, everything all right? I wouldn’t want to have to mention this to Headmistress Holly.”

Mortal girls scatter. Alice and Cara rush to assuage him. The last thing they need is to involve the headmistress. Or any adult, for that matter.

It’s just Bianca and I left to our own devices at last.

I loosen my grip on her jugular.

Seizing her opportunity, Bianca grabs my thumb and turns me around. I’m on my knees in three seconds flat, my arm pinned behind me. Back and forth, up and down, she plays my thumb like a joystick. I can nearly hear the bones of my wrist scrape together, the tendons stretch, the muscles sprain.

I grunt. I want to scream but won’t give a mere mortal the satisfaction.

She bends me forward and down, down, down, the tension in my arm so tight she could snap it in an instant.

Not that I wouldn’t mend, but it would take a while. I’d be on the sidelines for a few days, and I don’t have a few days. Not this time, not with this assignment and the way it’s gone so screwy so fast.

“Careful.” Her mouth is at my ear.

By now my face is dangerously close to the putrid locker room floor. (Hey, even a Vampress has her limits.)

”Your Sisters aren’t around to save you. And if I have my way, they won’t be your Sisters much longer.”

The pain in my arm is excruciating, the pressure on my thumb inhuman, and my nose is practically touching the tiles.

Scrambling feet and sliding sneakers signal my rescue.

She drops me, and only my immortal strength can save me from crumpling on the floor. I stand to face her, but already Cara and Alice are whisking her away.

I rub my shoulder. The rest of the girls flit past, none bothering to stop and see how I am or what happened. What did happen? Because something did. Something wrong, unnatural, almost impossible.

Because while Bianca was trying to make me kiss the tiles, I wasn’t just resisting. I was fighting. Hard. With every moment of training, every ounce of energy, every drop of vampire blood, I was struggling to face her, to grab, kick, fight, or bite her— whatever it took.

She never budged, wasn’t even winded.

No mere mortal could have held me that way.

Not a bodyguard, soldier, bodybuilder, weight lifter, assassin, marine, or green beret. And definitely not a petite high school junior in emerald heels.

I limp out of the locker room.

Has Tristan already turned her?

And if so, why wouldn’t Alice and Cara know by now?

And if they know, why wouldn’t they tell me?

Chapter 24

Z
ander tries to cheer me up after my very long, very horrible, very bad day

Zander does this by asking me to shoot hoops with him after his dinner shift.

Zander doesn’t understand I have a history with basketball.

I don’t like it. It doesn’t like me back.

Still he’s sweet to offer, and even Grover is game when he sees how bummed I am after the whole headlock, titty twister, witch slap incident.

We don’t play in the gym, of course. Not only is it strictly off limits after dusk, but there are too many bad memories in there. For all of us. Especially these two.

Instead Zander shows me to a dimly lit but perfectly functional half court behind the cafeteria, where the cooks spend time between the lunch and dinner shifts shooting hoops, smoking butts, and generally gossiping about the students at Nightshade. Or, I suppose, their teachers. Or, in a pinch, pretty little Headmistress Holly.

Grover, who insists he’s going to join our game as soon as he finishes stretching, sits on the bench on the outdoor lighted court lazily lifting one arm over his head. “You know, I never thought of Nightshade as a particularly dangerous place before you showed up, Lily.”

I mock gasp, holding my hand against my T-shirted chest.

Careful, Lily. He could be onto something here.

“This is all my fault, you guys?” I say.

Meanwhile, Zander sinks another shot, making it ten to zero. Or is it zero to ten? Either way, in case you haven’t guessed, not only do I
not
know how to score basketball, but I’m the one with zero.

“Well”—Zander laughs, dribbling the ball in circles around me as he goes up for an easy layup— “strange things
did
start happening when you got here.”

Zander passes me the ball. I catch it. With my stomach. “Like what?” I blurt.

Yes, in case you’re keeping score, I could be the most uncoordinated vampire on the planet, maybe in the entire universe.

“Hmm, let’s see.” From the sidelines, Grover takes yet another sip of his extra large Gatorade, although he’s yet to move a muscle (other than to pick up said sport drink, that is). “First you force us into dousing you with water when we meet. Then you alienate us by making us hang out with you. Then—”

“Hold up.” I can’t help but chuckle. “Alienate you? Unless my memory fails, you guys weren’t exactly going to be voted most popular before I showed up.”

“Maybe not,” Grover concedes, “but you didn’t help matters much. Then your girlfriends give us the evil eye all day. Then I almost get my left breast yanked free of my body during gym class. Then poor Zander almost gets his head torn off by that Tristan guy. Then the new girl slaps you. I mean—”

“I thought I was the new girl.” I pout and miss another shot.

Zander runs off to retrieve the ball from behind the Dumpster.

Grover shakes his head. “Yeah, well, you’re new too, but before you three Witches of Nightshade showed up, Bianca was the Head Witch in Charge around here.”