ReVamped (8 page)

I stuck my tongue out at him in lieu of launching myself across the table, which in my current state of undress might not be the best idea ever.

“How do you feel now?” Sid asked.

Rick shrugged his tense shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t exactly want to kill her, but I don’t exactly
not
want to kill her.”

“She has that effect on people,” Sid muttered, getting me back for my earlier comment.

“Okay, onto the missing kids,” Maya jumped in.

“I still want to talk about your
experimental
potion.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. You need more, you take more. End of story.”

“Side effects?” I asked. “Potential for overdose? Will we build up a tolerance?”

“I guess we’ll find out together,” she answered with supreme unconcern. “Now, the missing kids.” She tossed us each a stapled packet. “We’ve identified them as Tyler Dyson and Teresa Mendoza. Agent Epps and I are already watching the hospitals and morgues. We need you out among the kids. Find out if anyone’s seen them and what rumors are circulating. They may even turn up. Gina, Teresa is apparently in your seventh-period art class, so you’ve probably met.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t even made it to seventh period yet. Yesterday was the party, today the hospital.”

“Geez Louise,” Sid groaned, running a hand down his face. If he’d been a cartoon, his features would have stretched and snapped comically back into place. Of course, if he were a cartoon, he’d probably still be in black and white. I mean,
Geez Louise
? What decade were we in anyway? “Why the hell did we go through all the trouble of arranging your classes to expose you to the most cliques if you’re not even going to go?”

“Hey, I go where the investigation leads.”

“Wild parties? Run-ins with the police?” he ranted.

“What’re you—my father? The kids went missing from the party, didn’t they? So I was in the right place, just—”

All the righteous indignation left me right about then, but I wasn’t going to back down.

“Just looking the other way,” Sid said, relentless. “Getting into trouble.”

That hurt. Responsibility sucked rocks. Up until a few months ago, I hadn’t been responsible for anything more than color-coordinating my wardrobe. But foil one vampire vixen bent on world domination and suddenly people expect all kinds of things. Some days it just didn’t pay to wake up dead.

“
Fine
,” I said through gritted teeth. “Bad secret agent. No cookie. So, what’s the plan?”

“First, we get you dressed. I’m sure Maya will have something that fits.”

“Damn,” Bobby said under his breath. Maya shot him a disapproving look and I smiled.

“Then,” Sid continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “we hit the streets. Someone has to have seen something. We cover the hangouts, listen for the rumors. Maybe we’ll catch a break and the kids will show up safe and sound. We ought to be about due for a break.”

8

Rick and Maya got the mall. I’d think I was being punished, but as consolation prizes go, Bobby was a pretty good one. He and I partnered up to hit the town’s main hangouts—the DQ, the Dunkin’ Donuts, and the Denny’s. I kid you not. Until Sid listed them off, I had no idea we had such a thing for the Ds. ’Course, it went along with the other fave five D words I was starting to pick up hanging with the goths—ditch, delinquent, dark, death, dreamy. No, no,
dreary
, not dreamy. Lord, was I losing it?

We got to our first stop, the Dairy Queen, and I parked the tail end of my car with its
Dracula Is My Co-Pilot
bumper sticker up against a tree, just in case any of my crowd went cruising by—I’d told them I was done in. On the other hand, who hadn’t had a sudden craving for a chocolate shake or goopy sundae at odd hours of the day or night? No one I knew. Of course, my mom, being totally figure-conscious, always took me for the low-fat, slow-churned kind with sugar-free fudge, hold the whipped cream, when we went at all. Good times. I tried not to think of her and Dad back in Ohio, still mourning my death. Or not mourning and turning my room into a home spa. It could go either way.

It wasn’t hard to redirect my thoughts with Bobby sliding across the bench seat toward me.

“You know …” he said, trailing a couple of fingers over my thigh, which was clad in one of Maya’s black skirts that, sadly, fell below the knee on me. It was still better than her pants, which would have flopped around my feet like clown shoes. “It’s probable we’ll be seen together. We need some kind of cover story.”

“Oh, like you tutoring me in math?” I teased.

His fingers rose from my thigh to trace over my stomach, up the valley between my breasts. “Sure, like that,” he answered. “Or anatomy or chemistry.”

He leaned in for a kiss, and I met him halfway, nearly moaning at the contact. It had been way, way too long. Days.

I felt zippy like I had at Red Rock, only this time it was all-natural. I slid my hands into his Zac-Efron-shaggy hair to hold him in place as I kissed him back. He stroked my hair, my neck, down again over my borrowed shirt. I started to shiver, trailing my hand down his chest, determined to get the same reaction out of him.

Something rocked the car, jolting us suddenly so that our teeth clicked together. We jumped, ready for action, and found that a pack of teens had decided to use my car instead of the nearby picnic tables for their snack. Two girls and a guy were planted on the hood, and three others stood peeking in our windows like we were the entertainment.

I glared back at the one staring in the driver’s side window, hand up like a visor over his eyes to help him see inside. I debated slamming the horn, but I didn’t think it would scatter them. Putting the car in drive … now
that
might do the trick.

“Rain check?” Bobby asked. “The sight of you in that towel was driving me nuts.”

“Total rain check.”

We shared a smoldering look and probably would have forgotten our audience and moved in for another lip-lock if the kissy sounds of the peeping Toms hadn’t stopped us. The guy on my side had gone so far as to press his lips to my window and blow his cheeks out so that he looked like something out of
Wallace and Gromit
.

I turned the key, and hit the gas as the car rumbled to life so that it roared a
watch-out!
warning. The kids jumped back with a “Hey! What the—” like
I
was the one being unreasonable.

I put the car into drive and let it jump an inch to scare those who were slow to vacate the vicinity, but slammed on the breaks at what I saw just beyond them. It was Hailee, dressed in her signature red, but this time it was a hoodie with some kind of bedazzled design over the left side, and jeans tight enough that I could tell you the cut of her panties—if she were wearing any. She was walking with a guy who had a good six or seven inches on her.

But that wasn’t what got me. He wasn’t exactly a giant, not even to me at five foot nothing. And it wasn’t even the fact that he was at an ice cream place without a smidge of frozen goodness, like the plain vanilla cone that Hailee was licking as she looked up seductively at him from beneath her lashes, a trick I could do with … okay, not with my eyes shut, but practically in my sleep. No, it was something else, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

Then my conscious caught up with my subconscious, which had always been the speed demon of the two.

“He’s not breathing,” I said aloud.

“Who isn’t?” Bobby asked, eyeing the voyeurs we’d just chased off.

“Him,” I said, pointing.

The guy had his arm around Hailee now and was steering her toward the wooded area behind the shop.

“The guy with Hailee?” he asked.

“Oh, so you’re on a first-name basis with her?”

“You’re jealous!” he said, one of those guy-grins spreading across his face. Smug so wasn’t a good look for him.

“Do we have time for this?” I asked.

The smile vanished. “No.”

We were out of the car, relinquishing it to the flock we’d just scattered, and halfway across the parking lot in the blink of an eye, but already the woods had swallowed Hailee and her undead date. There was a sharp contrast between the overgrown grass and the tree line, which was completely imposing. Tall trees, thickly grown. So much of Wappingers Falls, apart from Route 9, was like that—patches of civilization interspersed with woodlands that were probably unchanged since pre-pioneer days. Twigs snapped beneath our feet, and Bobby, leading the way, had to hold branches aside for me. We were far from stealthy, but the couple ahead of us didn’t seem to notice. We came upon them not more than ten steps in, when Bobby stopped me with an upraised arm that I stood on my tiptoes to peer over.

They were locked in a clinch, only not the romancy kind. Instead of her lips, Hailee’s escort was working on her neck. A trickle of blood escaped. While she looked like putty in his hands, I knew there was something to our bite that had that effect on our victims. It didn’t necessarily signal consent.

“What should we do?” Bobby whispered.

Twigs snapped behind us—crack, crack, crack—and I turned to see the source. The kids I’d scared off the car had followed us.

“Hey!” one yelled, seeing they’d been spotted. “You nearly ran us down back there!”

As if
. I looked back at Bobby. “You handle the mob. I’ve got Hailee.” Because no way was I going to let him play her hero. Plus, he had particular powers that worked wicked well on mobs—mind control, telekinesis …

Bobby and I spun at vamp-speed, trading places so that I faced my baddy and he faced his, assuming it was one of
those
mobs—the kind with the run-you-over-to-get-the-last-dress-on-the-rack mentality.

My baddy seemed oblivious to it all, still sucking away on Hailee’s neck. I didn’t bother with a public service announcement of my presence, but sped into action, ready to peel the bloodsucker off the blond. Just as I was about to connect, he lashed out with an arm—lightning fast, even by vamp standards—and flung me clear.

I landed on my butt bone, shocked as hell. Behind me, Bobby cried out as well, but I had to trust him to look out for himself. I had problems of my own. My guy, the Fanged and the Furious, turned on me, letting Hailee fold like an end-of-season sales item. His eyes were so dark that even with my super senses, I couldn’t tell the pupil from the rest. He had shark eyes. Charles Manson eyes. Deep and chaotic. He turned them on me with terrifying intensity, as if trying to will me away. Sure enough, I heard
Begone
in my head, with a mental push for good measure—which was a good thing, because it was so heavily accented I wouldn’t have gotten the meaning otherwise. I snorted. It was all so B-movie sounding, like he was going for Transylvanian.

“
Whatever
,” I said out loud. “That’s not the way I roll. You want me gone, you’re going to have to do it yourself.”

His eyes widened, then he hissed and came at me, his hands curved into claws and his teeth gleaming wetly in the little moonlight that streamed through the tree canopy. I struggled to stand up, but I wasn’t going to make it in time. I settled for launching myself ungracefully aside. I did a quick mental check of my arsenal, but I hadn’t come prepared for vampire slayage—I didn’t normally carry around the means of my own death.

The car keys were still in my hand from the mad dash across the field, but they wouldn’t do much good unless I could pierce a major artery or something … Damn, if only Bobby and I’d had more time for anatomy lessons.

I shot to my feet as Fanged and Furious blew past me, and was ready when he whirled again. We eyed each other. He snarled like a pissed-off pit bull, and we clashed—hands clenching hands, him snapping at me with his bloodstained teeth. We looked to be locked in some twisted tango. I instinctively raised a knee to give him a what-for, but it didn’t even phase him, so I head-butted his mouth as he came for me again. The advantage of being small was that he had to bend to go for my soft spots, and I’d always been hard-headed.

He reared back, and I took the opportunity to jab my keys into his neck. Blood spurted, and a newer, ickier instinct had me catching it on my tongue. My eyelids flickered shut for a second in ecstasy, and when I opened them again, he was gone—the crash of the branches and the snapping twigs the only evidence of his path.

I turned to check on Bobby, to decide whether I should go after F&F or help him out, and saw Bobby laying low his last opponent—physically. I’d expected him to use his Jedi mind-tricks and convince them we weren’t the droids they were looking for or whatever … yes, he’d made me watch the
Star Wars
saga with him, twice … if it weren’t for the hotness of Han Solo … But instead, Bobby’d chosen the physical approach.

Anyway, he didn’t need me. I took off after Fanged and Furious, but I couldn’t hear his crashing over my own, and it didn’t take me long to realize that as a tracker, I was a bust. Boy Scout Bobby would probably have done a lot better, but when I headed back toward him, I saw he was too busy with a handful of Hailee. One arm supported her while the other hand gently brushed the hair back from her face and neck to check out the bite marks. She was fully aware, eying him like something she’d enjoy a helluva lot more than her namby-pamby vanilla cone.

Bobby saw me in the trees, and I signaled that I was going back to the car. There was no need for Hailee to see us together, as much as I wanted to stake my claim to Bobby right then and there.

I realized, as I approached the car, that I’d have to clean off my keys before I could use them in the lock. I hated to waste good blood, but I was out of the treeline now and had no choice but to wipe them on Maya’s skirt. The blood stains would come out, or they wouldn’t. I tried not to worry about things beyond my control.

As I wiped the keys down and let myself into the car, Bobby’s mind-speak came through loud and clear.
You okay?

I collapsed onto my seat and closed the door, as if that were necessary for a private conversation.
What the hell happened back there? Did you have to take people down like that?

I hadn’t meant to start with accusations, but the aggression I’d seen was so out of character for Bobby. And after Rick …

Something was messing with my mental mojo
, he answered.
I couldn’t reach them. It was like when Internet access is down and you can’t even connect with the server.

Well, that was new and disturbing. Even if Bobby couldn’t control me—I had some kind of mental block when it came to doing what others wanted—he could connect with me. So either these kids, all of them, had blocking powers that were a step beyond me, which I refused to even consider, or there was something else going on here. Maybe it had to do with the weirdness of the ley lines or whatever was causing the spontaneous freakouts … But whatever it was, without Bobby’s mega magic …

But you reached me
, I said back.

This time
, he answered.
But I tried to talk to you in the woods when I was seeing to Hailee
.

Oh, right. Hailee was hurt. I was supposed to be caring.

How is she
?