Out for Blood

  “Quinn Drake, I know you’re in there.” She knocked again, harder this time.

  “Hunter, go away,” I said darkly.

  “Like hell. I know what you’re doing. So just stop it.”

  Silence.

  I could feel her anger radiating through the door. She turned the knob but it only opened a couple of inches. The chain lock went taut at the top.

  She craned her neck, glared at me through the small opening, and took a step back.

  And then she kicked my door in.

  Was it any wonder I was falling for her?

  The chain ripped out of the wall, the snap of wood reverberating down the hall. She stepped through the doorway, glowering.

  I shook my head, refusing to let her see how happy I was to see her. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  “I can’t believe you’re hiding from me.”

  “Hunter, you’re not Wonder Woman, for Christ’s sake. You’re a good hunter, no doubt about it, but you’re human. You’re fragile.”

  “If you call me fragile again, I will personally break off your fangs and wear them as earrings.”

  I stalked toward her. “But you are fragile,” I insisted, my hands closing around her shoulders before she could even see me move. I knew that to her I was a blur of pale skin and long dark hair and the glow of unnatural blue eyes. I pressed her against the wall, slamming the door with my boot at the same time. We were alone.

  And I was just as pissed off as she was.

  I had to make her understand. Even if she hated me for it. “You don’t like to admit it, but I’m stronger than you are, and faster.” I was so close that her legs, her hips, and her chest touched mine. Every time she took a ragged breath, it pushed her closer to me. “And I’ve tasted you now.” I leaned in, lips moving over her throat, aching to taste her again. She might have been the canary to my smug cat. She’d hate that. “And I can never forget your blood on my tongue.”

  “I know what you’re doing.” Her voice was endearingly breathy. She swallowed.

  “I’m just making my point.” I said.

  “You’re being an ass.” But she tilted her head so I could continue nibbling. Centuries of her hunter ancestors rolled over in their graves.

  “I could kill you, Hunter.”

  “Mmm-hmmm. I could kill you right back.”

  “This isn’t a joke.”

  I seized her mouth, and for a long, hot moment there were no more words, no more warnings. Just tongues and tastes and lips seeking lips. I fisted my hand in her hair and hers hooked into my belt loops. And, as usual, it was over far too soon.

  I pulled back abruptly, violent need and control twisting inside me. “I won’t risk you.”

  Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You’re trying to protect me,” she seethed.

  “And that’s a bad thing?” I just didn’t get her sometimes.

  She drilled her finger into my chest. “When you make decisions for me, yeah, you’re damn right it is.”

  “I’m just trying to do the right thing. I’m a vampire.”

  “Duh.”

  “And you’re not.”

  “Again: duh.”

  “I could hurt you. I could lose control.” I claimed her finger, my grip cool and utterly unbreakable. She’d have better luck snapping her own wrist in half than breaking my hold.

  “If you were anyone else, I’d have kneecapped you by now.” She poked me hard. “So give me break,” she said. “You make out with girls all the time.”

  “They’re not you,” I replied quietly.

  “Kieran’s human,” she pointed out. “And Solange is even younger than you. She turned barely two weeks ago. Should I be worried about him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And Lucy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She pulled back just enough to meet my troubled gaze. “Do you like me, Quinn?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes it is. Answer the question.” She looked horrified. “Shit. Unless this isn’t about protecting me but about not wanting to see me again. Am I just another girl to you? Shit,” she said again, going red. “I have to get out of here.”

  “Yes,” I finally said, so softly it was a wonder she heard me at all. “Yes, Hunter, I like you.” She released the breath she’d been holding. “I like you a lot.”

  I heard her heart lurch back into a proper rhythm.

  And then she smacked me really hard in the shoulder.

  “Ouch, way to ruin the moment,” I muttered.

  “You …,” she sputtered.

  I tipped her chin up. “You didn’t really doubt me, did you?”

  “Hello? You locked yourself in your room to get away from me.”

  “Only to protect you,” I defended myself. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

  “It won’t be easy, you know. Despite how Solange and Kieran and Nicholas and Lucy make it look, this isn’t simple. It might even be dangerous.”

  “You know I can look after myself.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’m way more terrified of my grandfather’s reaction than your puny fangs.”

  “You’re hard on the ego,” I complained, but I was smiling again for the first time since I’d run out of her dorm room. “Your grandfather’s an old man.”

  “Who could kick your ass.”

  “I’ve got moves, Buffy.”

  “I’ve seen your moves, Lestat,” she teased, kissing me. I gathered her closer, hands roaming down her back and over her hips.

  “You’re not just a vampire, you know,” she whispered. “You’re the guy who let me cry all over you, when I never cry. Nothing makes sense right now—people at school are dying, my roommate’s on some kind of hunter steroid—but you make sense. Somehow, you make sense.”

  Yup. I was totally, completely, and irrevocably into this girl.

  A thump on the door had us both jumping.

  “Hey, get off my sister,” Kieran barked from the other side.

  “Get lost, Black,” I called out. “And she’s not your sister.”

  “May as well be.”

  “Well, you stop kissing Solange and I’ll stop kissing Hunter.”

  Silence. I smirked. Hunter pulled away, rolling her eyes.

  “Hey, where are you going?” I murmured. “We’re not done making up.”

  “We’re in crisis mode out there,” she answered, reluctantly taking another step back.

  “It’s always crisis mode in this house,” I said with disgust.

  “Still. We should go help.”

  I huffed a mock melodramatic sigh. “This is that Helios-Ra duty thing, isn’t it?”

  “Afraid so.”

  Chapter 25

  •

  Hunter

  Monday night

  In the room next door, Chloe looked exhausted. She’d pulled her hair out of its ponytail and it was a mess of tangled curls. Solange and Kieran were sitting on the edge of Connor’s bed and Connor was at his desk, tapping away at another computer. It was amazing how much he and Quinn looked alike. Quinn nudged me as if he knew what I was thinking.

  “I’m cuter,” he informed me loftily.

  Connor shot me a knowing grin over his shoulder. Chloe scrubbed her face.

  “Find anything?” I asked her.

  She leaned back in her chair. “I don’t really know. I mean, I got into my mom’s files. Her passwords have always been pathetic.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s definitely a steroid, but that’s it. There’s nothing else sinister about it.” She shook her head. “Except, why in the world would she slip me steroids? It’s just weird.”

  “She didn’t make lab notes or anything?”

  “Nothing remotely helpful. Although she referred to a ‘Trojan Horse’ a couple of times. Nearly gave Connor and me a heart attack. I so don’t need some hacker computer virus right now. But it’s not tha
t—we scanned all the machines to check. So it must be code for something else. I’ll figure it out.” She grimaced. “Maybe not tonight, but I’ll definitely figure it out.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Yeah, we should head back. Just in case Kieran got busted. I really can’t take any more demerits and detention this year. If York sneers at me one more time I might just lose it.”

  “What about the second pill we found,” Quinn asked. “Did Marcus figure out what it is?”

  “Should know by tomorrow night.” Connor shrugged. “The Academy is basically a high school, you know. It could just be an upper or caffeine pill.”

  “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. There were just too many coincidences and variables.

  And secrets. Definitely too many secrets.

  At the front door, Kieran kissed Solange good-bye. I cleared my throat at him obnoxiously until he glowered at me, but if I didn’t set a precedent right now, he’d be interrupting all of my makeout sessions.

  “I’ll call you,” he whispered to her before heading out to the van. He pulled my hair as he passed me. Chloe was already in the backseat, her knees pulled up to her chest. Quinn grabbed my arm as I was reaching for the front door handle. He twirled me backward into his arms and dipped me, like they do in those old-fashioned black-and-white movies. And then he kissed me cross-eyed.

  “See you soon.” Even his whisper felt like a kiss. I somehow managed to get into the van and buckle myself in. Quinn slapped the side of the van and Kieran pulled away, spitting gravel.

  “Wow,” Chloe murmured. “That was some kiss. I need a vampire boyfriend.”

  I grinned. “He has a lot of brothers.”

  “And every single one of them is yummy,” Chloe agreed.

  After that, we rode back mostly in silence, trying to process what we’d found out tonight. It wasn’t dawn yet but the sky looked more gray than black, like ashes covering a red ember. The memory of Quinn’s kiss kept interfering with my concentration.

  Kieran groaned. “I don’t trust that smile.”

  “Yup,” Chloe reiterated as Kieran pulled up onto campus. “I definitely need a Drake brother of my very own.”

  Chloe might be making jokes but I knew she was freaked out. I’d have been freaking out too, if I’d just confirmed my own mother was drugging me. But it was late and we were tired and we both just wanted to fall into bed.

  Hard to do that when the mattresses were half off their frames and most of our stuff was strewn about as if a mini hurricane had come in through the window.

  We both stood and stared.

  “Someone tossed our room!” Chloe shouted, incensed. She ran straight to her computers, running her hands over the wires and checking the plugs like a mother checking a small child for broken bones. “I’ll kill them,” she muttered. “I’ll kill them.”

  The closet doors were open, spilling cargo pants and school sweatshirts and all my pretty dresses. A tube of toothpaste was on the floor by my foot. My books were everywhere, my organized stakes and daggers were scattered. My jewelry box was upside down and silver chains, turquoise pendants, and bracelets spilled out in a tangle.

  “Whoever did this wasn’t robbing us,” I said flatly, untangling a necklace from the nearby lampshade. “They were looking for something.”

  Chloe finally looked up from her computers, reassured that no one had tampered with them. She scowled.

  “Who the hell would do that? And what the hell were they looking for?” She nearly choked on her own words, staring horrified at the open bottles of aspirin and cold tablets spilling out like confetti. We looked at each other grimly. “Someone was looking for my vitamins,” she stated dully, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. She held up her Xena action figure, arm bent and marked with a footprint. “Someone who is going to die horribly when I find them.”

  I shoved my mattress back into position and then dropped on top of it. I was suddenly so tired I could barely stand up. “Who else knew you were taking vitamins?”

  Chloe shrugged, wincing. “Anyone who heard us fighting or me bitching about it afterward. A few people asked me for some when they saw me finally do a good roundhouse kick at the gym. I guess they figured it was a magic pill. With the flu and Hel-Blar attacks and everything, everyone wants an edge.”

  “Steroids don’t make you finally get a roundhouse,” I told her. “Practice does that.”

  “Yeah, but the steroids made me stronger.” She rubbed her palms on her legs, as if they were sweating. “And I’m really suddenly wanting another vitamin right now.” She swallowed. “Does that make me an addict?” She stared at me frantically.

  “No,” I assured her sternly. Chloe’s flare for dramatics could create a whole problem where there was none. Sometimes you had to cut her off at the pass. “It makes you a person who got used to taking vitamins, so try taking actual vitamins.”

  “Huh. That actually makes sense.”

  “And you might want to go talk to Theo. He’d know what to do.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath, then another one. “Okay.” She picked one of her bras off the floor. “I’m still killing whoever did this. And I’m doing it before the steroid strength wears off.”

  “Deal. I’ll help you.” My trunk poked out from under the bed, bursting with romance novels. I shoved it back under.

  “Hunter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for the whole steroid thing.” She picked up the compact mirror left on her pillow and stared at her upper lip.

  “You don’t have a mustache,” I assured her.

  “I could kill my mom for that. She nearly gave me a beard and a bald spot.”

  I snorted a laugh, then tried to cover it up with a cough. She shot me a look but I could tell she was trying not to laugh too.

  “It’s not funny,” she insisted.

  “Of course not,” I squeaked, choking on a giggle.

  “I could have looked like the wolfman!” she added. “Or my grandma!”

  We laughed until we were crying. Fatigue and relief and tension made us slightly hysterical. We finally wheezed ourselves out and calmed down.

  “We should get some sleep,” I croaked. “We have class in a few hours.”

  “God,” Chloe groaned. “I have to face York. How fast am I going to get all weak and puny, do you think?”

  “You were never puny.” I yanked my blanket over me. I couldn’t be bothered to change into my pajamas or to clean up the clothes piled messily around me. One of my boots was stuck under my pillow. I tossed it aside. “You’re just better with tech than with your fists. It’s no big deal.”

  I was almost asleep when there was a timid scratching at the door.

  “Are you kidding?” Chloe mumbled. “Do we have mice? I can’t deal with mice right now.” The scratch turned into a hesitant knock. I groaned and stumbled out of bed. “What now?”

  Lia stood on the other side in pajamas with pink lollipops all over them. Her eyes were red and watery.

  “Lia, what’s the matter?” I looked over her shoulder and down the hall, half expecting a Hel-Blar to jump out of the shadows. It was just that kind of night.

  “It’s my roommate,” she sobbed. “She’s really sick. I don’t know what to do.”

  I blinked blearily. “Did you tell Courtney?”

  Lia shook her head, biting her lip.

  “Why not? That’s her job. She’ll get one of the nurses.”

  “No, you have to come. You can’t tell anyone.”

  “What? Why?”

  Chloe pushed in behind me. “Do you know what time it is?” she barked.

  I grabbed Lia’s arm because she looked like she was going to run away. “Lia, what’s really going on?”

  “Savannah’s sick.”

  “And?”

  She swallowed. I waited, refusing to let go. “Lia, if you want my help you have to be honest with me.”

  Her lower lip quivered and I felt like a monster, but I stood my ground. When Lia
finally spoke, it all came out in a rush of words that took a moment to sift through. “I don’t want to get in trouble and I promised her I wouldn’t tell but her lips are going blue and she’s breathing funny and I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Okay, calm down,” I said softly, as if she were a wild bird and I had a handful of bread crumbs. “What’s the big secret?”

  Lia reached into her pocket and took out three little white pills. “She’s been taking these.”

  It was the same white pill Quinn and I had found in the common room.

  I plucked one from her hand, growing cold all over. It was like an arctic wind was pushing through me, filling my lungs and freezing the blood in my veins.

  “Chloe,” I croaked. “Look.”

  Two letters were stamped in the center of the pill.

  “TH.”

  Trojan Horse.

  •

  Chloe and I bolted up the stairs, Lia hurrying after us. I called Theo from my cell and by the time we got up to Lia’s room, three of Savannah’s friends were hovering outside the door, worrying. Too many students had gotten sick already and too many of those had died for anyone to dismiss this as a simple flu, like the teachers were trying to tell us. The last thing we needed right now, though, was more attention and panic. Especially if Chloe and I had just discovered some sort of conspiracy, like I thought we had. We’d need witnesses eventually if we blew this thing wide open, but not right now.

  “Is she going to die?” one of Niners asked bluntly.

  “No,” I answered and pushed inside the room, shutting the door firmly.

  Savannah lay in her bed, moaning. Her skin was clammy and damp with perspiration. She was hot to the touch and her eyes, when she pried them open, were bloodshot. Chloe hissed out a breath. We exchanged a bleak glance.

  “Savannah.” I lowered my voice when she jerked at the sound. “It’s okay, we’re here to help. Savannah, this is very important. Can you tell me where you got those pills?”

  “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Savannah mumbled through dry, cracked lips.

  “You won’t,” I assured her. “We just need to know where you got them.”

  “I bought them,” she coughed. “I was only supposed to take one a day but I took three. They were supposed to make me stronger.”