Fangs for the Memories (8 page)

Keep reading for a peek at the next sassy, sexy Half-Moon Hollow novella from

MOLLY HARPER

Big Vamp on Campus

Coming Summer 2016 from Pocket Star Books!

1

Vampires are solitary creatures, trained over the centuries to survive by secrecy and isolation. Expecting them to live in a dorm situation is a recipe for bloodshed and disaster.

—Big Vamp on Campus: Strategies for Successfully Integrating the Undead into Postsecondary Education

F
our hundred years spent sowing terror and discord across the globe, and now I was forced to use a communal shower.

This was what happened when you got overconfident. Ophelia Lambert, acknowledged teen queen of vampires in the western Kentucky region, humbled by hubris. Since my time as a simple pre-Colonial schoolgirl, I'd built up my personal empire of secrets kept and favors owed. I'd developed a perfectly respectable network of lackeys and informants. I'd honed skills that made experts in the none-too-gentle arts of torture twitch with envy even while they cowered in fear. I rose to power in the infancy of the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, when it was a ragtag group of vampires meeting in secret dungeons by torchlight. It was a hell of a lot more fun back then, before we had to play “domesticated” for the humans.

Despite my body's permanent adolescence and slight stature, I was death incarnate. I'd been called the Terror of Amsterdam as an
endearment.
And I'd lost it all. Because I'd filed inappropriate expense reports.

The Council's financial department was incredibly unforgiving when it came to undeserved reimbursements.

The Terror of Amsterdam had become the Al Capone of vampires—a terrifically violent logistical genius brought down by pencil pushers. Personally, I thought this was unfair on both counts as poor Al had been a bit of a softie—particularly generous with women and children—and had trusted his taxes to his accountants. I'd done my own paperwork. Let that be a lesson to me. Never leave a paper trail.

Paper trails led directly to shared shower facilities.

I shuddered as I stepped into the chamber of horrors located just a few doors down from my own (shared) bedroom. The slap of my rubber flip-flops echoed off the beige tiles, making the room seem much larger than one containing only the eight or so shower stalls provided for the thirty female vampire students living in the wing. I didn't necessarily need the flip-flops—vampires couldn't contract athlete's foot—but honestly, it was the principle of the thing.

New Dawn Hall, a recently completed residence hall added to the far side of the University of Kentucky campus, had been built with coed, commingled living in mind. The college was eager to be one of the first in the country to prove that all students, pulsed and nonpulsed alike, could coexist peacefully in an environment that nurtured such relationships . . . attracting the growing undead student population and their generously distributed federal loans.

I supposed New Dawn was a pleasant enough place to sleep between classes. The building was unique in that only three floors showed aboveground—containing a special cafeteria catering to living and undead tastes, a study room that included soundproof pods, and the administrative offices required by the people who “supervised” us on campus.

Below ground level, the floors alternated between living and undead students, male and female, like a layer cake of false security. My undead floormates tried not to take it personally that the doors leading to the human floors were made of silver-reinforced steel three times the thickness of those leading to the vampire floors. They tried to see it as much a protection for the humans as the carefully crafted HVAC system (funneling the human students' rather pungent odors out of the building) was a protection to the vampires. Living belowground was supposed to make the humans appreciate how it felt for us vampires to be without the sun. Of course, they could walk out into the sun anytime they wanted, but being without windows certainly seemed to make them edgy.

There were some perks. Every window on the aboveground floors was equipped with light-tight shutters that could be activated at the slightest hint of ultraviolet light. A barista in the lobby prepared all the donor or bottled blood a vampire could need before night classes. The third floor lounge featured board games from every decade since 1850 to encourage play between the various age groups.

I hated it. I hated it all so much. I'd lived on my own for nearly four centuries, doing as I pleased, sharing my space with no one but my little sister, Georgie. I did not enjoy being packed into an educational environment like a sardine. The only things that made life tolerable were the little luxuries I allowed myself under my new
Council-approved
budget.

I squeezed my little bottle of imported, hand-blended bodywash, personally prescribed for my scent by the
parfumerie
in Paris I'd used for more than a century. It was sinfully expensive, but the scent reminded me of the deep, misty woods that had surrounded our home in the old country—one of the few pleasant associations I had with that godforsaken patch of dirt. Also, Jamie followed the elusive traces of amber and floral notes until his nose was buried in the creases behind my neck, my knees, and any number of more interesting locations—so it was worth every penny. It was important for any woman to have a signature scent; for a vampire, maintaining that air of mystery and allure was barely scratching the surface of essentials.

Unfortunately, when I squeezed the bottle a watery, weak green substance splattered against my bath puff. The normally thick, luxuriant foam was replaced with what could only technically be considered lather in that there was a bubble or two.

I hissed an irritated, unnecessary breath through elongating fangs.

Brianna
.

My campus-assigned roommate, Brianna Carstairs, was a recently turned wannabe Goth from West Virginia who called herself Galadriel Nightshade. She actually referred to herself as a “night child,” in a totally un-ironic fashion.

Turned by her boyfriend in some sort of prom night pact gone tacky, Brianna was eighteen years old, with all of the entitlements you'd expect from someone who called growing up in a gated community outside a place called Shepherdstown her “living hell.” In addition to her deplorably messy feeding habits and her tendency to lose any object she was not currently holding and then accuse me of stealing it, Brianna also helped herself to anything on my side of the room. Whether it was my Fang-Brite Fluoride Wash or my vintage Chanel purse, if she felt like she needed it more than I did, she took it. I once laid an outfit on my bed to wear to my evening classes, only to turn around and find her wearing it.

And now, she'd used most of my hideously expensive imported bodywash and thinned it out with water, hoping I wouldn't notice. Like I was some insipid suburban parent too stupid to keep track of the levels in her vodka bottle. This time she'd gone too far.

I rinsed off the thin bubbles and slapped my fuzzy pink robe around my damp body. My superhuman grip twisted the metal door handle into a useless coil as I burst out of the tiny cubicle. As angry and righteous as any conquering queen, I strode down the hallway, terry cloth clutched at the neck. I would have my revenge. I would put Nair in her shampoo. I would grind fiberglass into dust and sprinkle it on her sheets. I would inject colloidal silver into her blood supply.

When Jane Jameson had insisted on sending me to the university for my rehabilitation, I'd begged the Council's upper echelons to let me live in off-campus housing. There were any number of lovely, vampire-friendly apartment buildings near campus. But no, I'd been informed that learning to live in harmony with humans in less than luxurious circumstances would encourage personal growth. And I'd been denied a private room, because the Council (Jane) thought that sharing a nine-by-nine cell with another person would be yet another opportunity to build my character.

I had enough damned character. What I didn't have was my bodywash.

I threw open the bathroom door, face in full snarl. Several of the girls from my floor, female vampires ranging from eighteen to one hundred and eighty, were scattered around the hall, chatting happily, discussing assignments or even the upcoming Wildcats basketball season. But when they saw the furious expression on my face, they simultaneously stopped talking and ducked into their rooms, like a herd of antelope scattering when they sensed a lion coming near. Doors clicked shut. Whispers echoed through cheap pressed board. Good. It was nice to know I hadn't completely lost my touch.

I turned the corner toward room 617 and nearly mowed down a tall, masculine body—a tall, masculine body that happened to smell very familiar: fresh-cut grass and leather.

Jamie.

I relaxed against him. Sweet, affable Jamie Lanier, with his all-American farm boy good looks and easy smile, had caught my eye when he was still human a few years ago in Half-Moon Hollow. Our courtship had been the stuff of teenage vampire movies. I'd watched him from afar, coveting his sun-drenched beauty and his open, sincere expression. He was so unlike anyone I'd ever wanted, so genuinely kind and warm. I hadn't met a good person in such a long time that it took me months to realize his kind nature wasn't a carefully constructed ruse.

Unfortunately, I hadn't realized that my little sister, Georgie, had noticed the change in my habits. I hadn't realized she'd followed me out to spy on me while I spied on Jamie. My sister was not yet ten years old when a now perfectly treatable illness forced me to choose between losing her and facing the dire consequences of turning a child into a vampire. Her small size made it much more difficult for her to see over the steering wheel when she tried to drive during her surveillance. She'd hit Jamie in the process, fatally injuring him right in front of Jane Jameson's stupid bookshop, and Jane had turned him.

Jane's presence in Jamie's life as his impromptu sire and mentor made getting to know him much more difficult. She and I had never quite seen eye to eye on, well, anything. Because of our history, and . . . reasons, so many reasons. Still, I worked around her and found that Jamie was noble and sweet and genuine enough to overcome even my cynical nature. I liked that about him. I was cold and mercenary enough for the both of us. I'd tried relationships with alpha male types, which didn't work out. They spent all of their time trying to prove they were smarter, stronger, more formidable than I was, when their time would have been better spent proving that they were worth my time in bed.

I'd taken full advantage of my appearance throughout my long life. I was tall, willowy, with long light-brown wavy hair that framed my cameo-oval face. In the New World, I'd wandered into villages pretending to be a poor lost lamb, separated from my family. In the fifties, I'd worn poodle skirts and ankle socks, keeping dirty old men in flannel suits mesmerized with the swing of my ponytail while I eyed their jugulars. With Jamie, I'd had to play to my sneakier, more underhanded skill set, approaching him as a concerned older vampire hoping to make his transition easier.

I'd tamped down my more aggressive tendencies, presenting Jamie with a younger, more vulnerable version of myself. The girl who had befriended an ancient vampire on the ship taking her family to the New World and let him change her to avoid dying of some now easily treatable disease. I wanted him to see the sweetness I'd hidden so long to keep my enemies at bay.

After spending time with Jamie, I saw the depths hidden by the sunny exterior. He had pain he never spoke to anyone about. At first, I thought he was angry over his life being cut short in its prime, but it was the reaction of his neighbors to his condition and the abandonment of his family that were his greatest hurts.

Being with Jamie helped me make contact with that goodness I thought I'd lost long ago. In some ways (detectable only to Georgie), he made me a better person. Coincidentally, he also made me a desperate person, hence my hiring a witch to put a magical hit on someone I saw as a rival, leading to my dismissal from the Council and exile to postsecondary Siberia. It was all one big circle.

Jamie's quick reflexes and recognition landed me in the protective cradle of his arms. He peered down at me with his wide, bright smile.

“Hey, babe . . . uh, you're not wearing clothes,” he said, steadying my shoulders as we untangled limbs and terry cloth.

“I'm aware of that,” I growled, though I could feel my fangs receding just from the comfort of Jamie's presence. He chuckled and gave me a kiss softer than I deserved in my bloodlust. I lifted a self-conscious hand to my mussed hair, curled slightly by the shower steam.

I supposed I should be grateful that I'd managed to sling on my robe despite my fit of pique. At least I wouldn't become a dorm oddity like Naked Jason, the sophomore who insisted on walking to his floor's shower room wearing nothing but a towel slung over his shoulder. And when the dorm staff tried to intervene, he claimed that he was a nudist and that trying to force him to wear clothes in his home environment was a violation of his civil rights. While I did my best to avoid Naked Jason, I had to admire his ability to use the administration's terror of social injustice against itself.