VLAD CLOSED HIS LOCKER at the end of the school day. He was about to throw his backpack over his shoulder and head for Snow’s locker, when he spied a familiar, weasel-like face passing by. “Eddie, come here a sec, would ya?”
Eddie Poe paused midstep, then approached Vlad, an eager glint in his eye. He knew that he had Vlad where he wanted him. He knew there was nothing Vlad could do but accept his fate and turn him into a vampire. Because he’d threatened Snow, and Vlad wasn’t exactly certain he could protect her from Eddie. Because Vlad wasn’t really capable of killing him. Because Vlad had been given no choice in this matter.
But Vlad didn’t care about Eddie’s threats anymore.
“I’m not making you a vampire, Eddie.”
Eddie’s eyes clouded with anger. “Yes, you are.”
“No, Eddie. I’m not.” Vlad kept his words clipped, his tone matter-of-fact.
The fact of the matter was that Eddie Poe was a terrible, evil, vindictive human being. Vlad could only imagine what Eddie would turn into once he was a vampire. He’d be powerful, violent, and hateful to the core. He take revenge on humans who’d wronged him, and would show no mercy or understanding to the victims he’d feed on. And Vlad would be to blame.
No. No, he wouldn’t make Eddie into a vampire. Eddie was already a monster. Besides, he’d decided that once he was dead, Eddie would be viewed as a terrible person for spreading such insane rumors about a dead boy—a boy who died in a terrible accident. So why should he give in to Eddie’s ridiculous demands? If Eddie Poe wanted fame and fortune, Vlad wasn’t about to hand it to him. He was going to have to find another way to get it.
Vlad supposed he could have just let it go. After all, his deadline wasn’t going to come along until after Vlad would be dead and gone. But it was the principle of the matter, and very much something that Vlad needed to make clear.
He stared Eddie down, determined.
The muscles in Eddie’s jaw began to twitch. “I’ll expose you. You have no idea the hell that I can bring down on you.”
Vlad’s words were a low growl. “Save it, Eddie. I’ve made up my mind and nothing you can do will change it. Expose me. Do your worst. I don’t really give a damn anymore.”
Then an image filled Vlad’s mind. The same image that Vlad had glimpsed at The Crypt. Kristoff, running across the high school football field, utterly terrified, with a vampiric, hungry Eddie Poe on his tail. The picture in his mind was so clear that Vlad wasn’t certain if it were a vision or the memory of his vision. But it was clear.
His stomach flipped, and Vlad ran a tense hand through his hair.
What did it all mean?
Henry snatched Eddie’s folder from his grasp and tossed it down the hallway Frisbee-style. He got better distance this time. With a glare at Eddie, Henry said, “Fetch, loser.”
Eddie’s face turned purple and he wandered down the hall, in search of his lost folder.
Henry leaned up against Vlad’s closed locker door. He played it casual, but Vlad could tell he was deep in mourning for his best friend. Vlad said, “Do you wanna catch a movie or something tonight?”
“Not really.”
“Come on. I was thinking we’d see Zombie Pirates from Outer Space.” The corner of Vlad’s mouth tugged up in a smirk.
Henry shook his head. “It doesn’t come out till Friday.”
Vlad shrugged. “Nelly snagged some tickets to an advanced screening. We can invite Joss too and just hang out. Give up the Great Journal Search for a night and just chill.”
“Invite me to what?” Joss had moved down the hall and joined them. The circles under his eyes were looking a little less dark since they told Henry what was going on come December thirty-first. But only a little.
Vlad smiled at him. “To see Zombie Pirates from Outer Space.”
“It’s out?”
“Not till Friday, but I have advanced tickets. You in?”
Joss visibly deflated. “I’m supposed to go see Cotton Candy Kisses with Meredith tonight.”
Vlad and Henry exchanged horrified glances. Not only was Meredith dragging Joss to a romantic comedy. But she was dragging him to a romantic comedy ... with bunnies.
Henry squeezed his cousin’s shoulder. “So ... this gives you a great excuse not to?”
Joss beamed, as if he could see the zombie light at the end of the outer space tunnel. “Exactly. See you at eight.”
Remembering Nelly’s nagging instructions, Vlad said, “Oh hey, I’m supposed to invite you guys to Thanksgiving dinner at Nelly’s next week.”
Joss brightened some. “Is it okay if Meredith comes along?”
Something heavy settled at the pit of Vlad’s stomach. “Sure.”
But Vlad wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure at all.
Because that meant that Meredith and Snow were going to both be there. And he would have nowhere to hide from the uncomfortable combination of his ex and his girlfriend.
Except maybe in the mashed potatoes.
“Crap,” Henry muttered. “I forgot my binder in Ms. Lippman’s class.”
Joss said, “I’m outta here. See you guys later.”
Henry and Vlad nodded to Joss and Henry closed his locker. “Be right back, man. Don’t leave without me.”
Vlad grabbed his backpack and shut his locker. Of course he’d wait for Henry. That’s what friends do. As he waited, the hall population thinned drastically. Nobody hung around school any longer than they had to. Nobody normal, anyway.
“Hey, loser.”
Vlad tensed, but he didn’t turn around.
A meaty hand gave his shoulder a shove. “I said hey, loser.”
Vlad turned his head toward the voice, but already knew what he’d see. Bill and Tom. Still thick-headed, still stupid, and still very much anxious to smack Vlad around. “Not today, guys. I’m not in the mood.”
Bill snorted. “We’re not trying to make out with you, queer. We just want to show you something.”
Vlad sighed and scanned the hall for any sign of Henry. Unsuccessful in his search, he sighed again. “Show me what?”
Tom stepped closer, a cruel grin spreading across his face. His breath smelled oddly like kitty litter. “What it feels like to get your butt kicked.”
Vlad’s eyes went wide and locked on Tom’s fist as he swung toward Vlad’s right eye. Then Vlad ducked and started to run, but Bill blocked his escape.
Tom swung again, and this time, he connected. Vlad’s cheek exploded with pain and he fell to the floor on all fours. Behind him, Bill and Tom were laughing.
But Vlad found none of this funny.
Not the way they’d intimidated him since kindergarten. Not the way they called him names and knocked his books from his hands. Not the way they’d shoved his head inside his locker or wrote vile insults on his notebook when he wasn’t looking. Not the way they teased him about the house fire. None of it.
And he was awfully sick of listening to them laugh.
Vlad pushed back, using all of his vampire might, not giving a damn if the bullies realized what he was, sick and tired and ticked off at being treated less like a human being and more like a piñata for most of his life, and did a windmill kick, catching Bill in the knee. Bill went down hard on his left arm, and Vlad heard a snap. But before the crack of bone even registered in his mind, Vlad had flipped himself up to standing with vampiric speed and grabbed Tom by the shirt. He pulled back his fist and Tom’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God, your eyes! What ... what the hell are you?!”
Vlad set his jaw and threw his arm forward in a punch. Tom’s blood splattered onto his fist and he threw the bully back, into the lockers. As Tom slid down, landing in a heap with Bill, Vlad turned and walked away.
As he did so, he replied, “I’m the Pravus. And don’t you forget it.”
28
THANKSGIVING
THE SMELL OF PUMPKIN PIE was killing Vlad. There weren’t many smells that really got his drool going outside of human blood, but pumpkin pie?
??that was a killer. And Nelly had warned him to stay away from the succulent dessert until after Thanksgiving dinner was over.
He liked pumpkin pie so much, in fact, that about a week ago Nelly had baked him one in place of a birthday cake. Turning eighteen had never tasted so sweet.
But he wanted more. Now.
He contented himself with sitting in the kitchen, sniffing the sweet, spice-laden scent of freshly baked pumpkin pie, and contemplated what it might taste like with a side of steaming A positive.
He was betting it would be delectable.
Licking his lips, he warmed up a mug of blood in the microwave and tried to keep his eyes off the pie.
Dinner was about to begin. He could hold out another hour or two.
But so help Henry if he hogged it all.
The doorbell rang and the relative peace of Nelly’s house—which Vlad greatly missed calling home, as he and his dad had been living in their house once more for almost a week now—was devoured by the sounds of friends and family. Everyone was there: Matilda, Big Mike, Henry, Greg, Joss’s parents, Joss, Vlad’s dad, Otis, Nelly, Meredith, and Snow.
Vlad greeted everyone, offering an awkward smile to Meredith—remembering the awkward kiss she’d given him just a few short months ago—and helped Snow with her coat. This, of course, inspired Nelly that Vlad should take care of all of the coats. So Vlad wandered blindly up the stairs, a pile of coats in his arms, unable to see where he was stepping. He finally, miraculously, made it upstairs to the library unharmed and set the coats in a neat pile on Amenti’s favorite chair. Amenti mewed up at him from the floor, as if to ask him just what he thought he was doing. Vlad bent at the knees and scratched her chin, inciting a purr. “Sorry, girl. But you’ll have to find somewhere else for your millionth nap of the day.”
As if in response, Amenti walked straight into Vlad’s old room and jumped on the bed, curling up in a ball.
Vlad sighed.
“Hey.”
The whispered voice made him jump, but he turned to see that Joss had snuck away from the chaos downstairs. After settling his heart rate, Vlad said, “Hey, Joss.”
Joss flicked his eyes about nervously and then, stepping closer, said, “I just wanted to let you know that I spotted a Slayer earlier today, lurking around town, scoping things out. So I don’t think the Society is going to hold out much longer. I searched the south end of town for the journal, but some of those houses were really hard to get into.”
Vlad nodded. “I got chased out by old man Stevens last night. Good thing he has that prosthetic leg or I’d be in jail right now.”
Joss frowned. “We’ve almost searched the entire town, Vlad. What if it’s not in Bathory?”
Vlad patted Joss on the arm. “It has to be. It just has to be. Because if it’s not . . .”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence. They both knew what would happen if they didn’t find the journal.
Joss nodded, but he still looked tense. Vlad raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s going on, Joss? Everything okay?”
Joss sighed, looked down at his feet, shuffled them. “It’s just that . . .”
“Just what?”
When Joss met his eyes, Vlad could see just what. Joss was having doubts. “I don’t know if I can do it. Stake you, I mean. You’re ... you’re my friend. Truth be told, you’re my best friend. I don’t know if I can kill you, Vlad. I mean, first there’s the question of whether your Pravus powers will prevent me from doing so at all ... but there’s also the fact that you’re my friend. What if I can’t even try?”
Vlad bit his bottom lip, shaking his head. After all this, after all the planning and heartache and doubt he’d experienced, he was finally ready ... and Joss wasn’t. “There’s no other way to protect everyone, Joss. Unless we can locate that ritual and stop all of this, you have to try. I know it’s hard, but you have to. Neither one of us has a choice in this. So just do it, okay?”
Tomas’s voice echoed up the stairs. “Vlad? Joss? Dinner-time.”
After a reassuring glance at Joss, Vlad moved down the stairs. A moment later, Joss followed.
Earlier in the day, Nelly had Vlad and Henry move the spare table from the basement to the kitchen and place it at the end of the long plank table. She’d covered them both with burgundy damask tablecloths and decorated them in autumn finery. There would be, Nelly insisted, no kids’ table at her house. Nelly viewed teenagers as people, not babies.
Nelly rocked.
When Vlad entered the dining room, he found Nelly going over tiny details, like how the napkins were folded. “Nelly,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulder, “it looks perfect.”
Nelly smiled, her tension easing some. “You always know just what to say, Vladimir.”
He gave her a hug and thought about every holiday he’d spent with Nelly. She’d always made everything so perfect for him, for everyone but herself. It was part of what made Nelly so great.
The table was set with tons of candles, beautiful dishes, earth and jewel-tone decorations, and, of course, the finest food that Vlad had ever laid eyes on.
Which meant that Matilda had done the majority of the cooking.
Joss took a seat by Meredith, which just happened to be directly across from Vlad. Snow sat to Vlad’s right. The air felt awkward, strange. But he wasn’t sure if it felt that way for anyone else but him.
Under the table, Snow laced her fingers through his and squeezed. Her hand was cold. Vlad guessed that she was nervous too.
After all, sitting across from him was the girl he’d been crushing on since the third grade, the girl he’d compared all girls to until recently. And she was pretty. Meredith was beautiful and funny and sweet. She looked nothing at all like Snow, and Vlad was sure that scared Snow. After all, Snow didn’t think she was all that beautiful-even though she was. She didn’t think she was sweet or nice or worthy of dating any boy, let alone Vlad—even though she was that too. Vlad didn’t have to read her mind to know these things. He just knew them. Snow had been hurt growing up, and it was going to take her a long time to realize what a wonderful, pretty, insanely cool person she was. She was different than Meredith. But different didn’t mean she wasn’t just as amazing.
Or even more so.
He squeezed her hand back and offered her a smile.
Tomas took his seat next to Meredith, whose eyes brightened at the sight of his pocket watch. “What a pretty watch, Mr. Tod.”
“Thank you, Meredith. The most beautiful part is on the inside.” Tomas smiled and flipped the watch open, revealing a picture of Vlad’s mom. Joss glanced over at the picture and asked, “Who is she?”
“My wife, Mellina.” Tomas looked somewhat on edge and snapped the pocket watch closed.
The strangest sensation spread through Vlad’s insides. Tingling and pulling and very, very odd. Vlad felt himself slide through time and space, back to a moment that he thought he knew. All at once, he wasn’t sitting at Thanksgiving dinner with his friends and family. He was standing on the corner somewhere in downtown Stokerton.
Snow was falling and the streetlights were lit. Vlad crossed the street, not knowing how he’d gotten here, but somehow instinctively knowing where he was supposed to go.
When he reached the corner, he stopped. Just a few yards down the sidewalk, he spotted something that told him what was really going on.
His mother—or rather, the woman who would one day become his mother—was talking to a handsome stranger, a man that Vlad knew as Tomas, a man who was a vampire. But Mellina didn’t know yet. After all, this was their initial meeting—Vlad had read about it in his father’s journal a hundred times.
She smiled brightly at him and said, “Walk me home?”
Part of Vlad feared for her safety. Part of him wanted to warn her that she shouldn’t walk home with strange men. Strange men were dangerous. Especially strange men with fangs.
But this was the past, and Vlad was merely reliving it through Tomas’s memories.
>
He wondered briefly if this was how Dorian seemed to know so much about everything, if he’d spent much of his time being sucked into the past, into people’s memories, people’s thoughts.
Vlad tailed them down the street, not always keeping his distance, and then, at a particularly shadow-filled corner, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Tomas looked up and down the street. Seeing that they were alone, he grabbed Mellina by the arm, his fangs exposed, and bit into her wrist.
She cried out, yanking her hand back. Tomas released her. “You are my drudge now. Come with me.”
Mellina followed, sniffling, unable to resist her vampire master’s direct command. “What do you want?”
Tomas nodded matter-of-factly. “I want a child.”
Just as quickly as Vlad had been ripped from the dinner table, he was returned, his fork halfway to his mouth with a bite of marshmallow-covered sweet potatoes. He sat the fork down, no longer hungry, and looked at his father.
Tomas laughed and smiled warmly at something Otis had just said. His eyes were bright with joy—joy at being returned to his family.
Vlad sat in stony silence, playing the scene over and over again in his mind.
He snapped his eyes to Otis, but Otis was busy chatting with Big Mike. He glanced at his dad again, but Tomas was scooping mashed potatoes onto his plate.
Drudge. Mellina had been Tomas’s drudge.
Which meant he’d been feeding from her, not from blood bags. Which meant he’d lied to Vlad, about so many things.
His drudge.
Anger burned within his chest. Anger that required answers. And soon.
Snow squeezed his hand again, this time to get his attention. Vlad squeezed back, but said nothing.
Vlad’s mom had been his dad’s drudge. And for some reason, Tomas had kept it a secret.
Vlad just had to figure out why.
What’s more, Vlad wasn’t conceived in some dizzying sense of romance. He was conceived for a purpose by a driven man and a woman who was under someone else’s control.
But why?
29
A QUESTION OF HONESTY