Tainted Blood (50 page)

We got along back then. He still had a history with girls, nothing like he had now, but I knew he’d been around. He was charming and he knew what to say and when to say it. Especially to someone who didn’t know any better. Like me, back then.

He kissed me that night, while we were out by the pool. It wasn’t my first kiss, thankfully. That would suck if Ashton had been the first guy I’d kissed. I’m not sure I’d fess up to it if he had been. Anyway, I didn’t say much of anything after he kissed me. His sister was one of my closest friends, and he was one of my good friends, too. I didn’t want to ruin the dynamics of that. Plus, it just didn’t feel…
right
. So, after he kissed me, and after some awkward silence, I told him that I was tired and that I was going to go to bed.

Unfortunately, my bag which contained my jammies and my toothbrush was in Avery’s very pink bedroom and the door was closed. And locked. She’d taken Tate into her bed that night. She didn’t have sex with him, but she’d gone pretty far. Back then, Avery’s innocence was still intact. But it wouldn’t be long before she’d give it up to Tate; she just wanted to be sure she had her claws in him first so she could make him her boyfriend. And make sure he knew (thought) I was unavailable.

Later, when Tate had confessed to me that he’d had feelings for me long before Homecoming, he told me that Avery had told him that Ashton and I were together, that I’d slept with him that night.
So, when Tate dumped Avery and then promptly asked me to prom, I didn’t feel all that guilty. Plus, Tate wasn’t the only person Avery told this story to.

But, back to that night. I didn’t have sex with Ashton, obviously. But I had confessed to being a virgin. After waiting a very long time to get my crap out of Avery’s room, and it not happening, I ended up on the couch. Ashton found me there not long after I’d flung myself on it and was considering going home. We talked a little more and he didn’t try to kiss me again. He offered me a pair of sweats and his bed. Said he’d take the couch. Again, he was so sweet to me back then, and I fell for it.

I accepted both the sweats and the bed, and after I ended up in his room and was under his covers, far from falling asleep, he came in. Said he needed to grab something (yeah right) and that he wanted to see if I was okay. He sat on the edge of the bed and we talked some more. He was kind of upset about Tate and his sister but he was trying to be okay with it. Eventually he ended up lying down beside me and we laughed and talked for a long while until he made another move.

I hate to admit it, but I made out with Ashton that night and he’d gotten further than anyone else had at that point in my life. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him—I did a little. But, like I said before, I didn’t want to ruin our friendship or my friendship with Avery. And it didn’t feel totally right. No sparks or tingles or anything.

Plus, I kind of had a thing for Tate back then so it wasn’t helping that I thought he was doing it with my friend at that moment. No one knew I liked Tate. Hell, I wasn’t even really sure of it myself. I just knew that if I had to choose between Ashton and Tate, I wouldn’t have pick Ashton.

So, that night, when Ashton tried to remove my clothes and take away my innocence, I said no. He was surprisingly understandable, and we talked more, which is when I uncomfortably revealed that I was still a virgin and not ready to give that up. Eventually we fell asleep there in his bed, and I woke in Ashton’s arms and to Avery in his doorway, smiling at me.

No matter how many times I told her I didn’t sleep with her brother, I don’t think she ever believed me. She figured that if we’d slept together, then we must’ve actually “slept” together. Some friend, huh? It got around school that I’d had sex with Ashton and eventually I just ignored it and looked forward to getting the hell out of there. Avery was actually happy about it, our fake hookup. I’ve always hated her a little for that. Needless to say, this was when our friendship started to slip.

That night, after I told him that I’d never been with anyone, he told me that my secret was safe with him. Surprisingly, he stuck to that. He never confirmed nor denied the rumors of us being together when asked. He didn’t assume that we were dating or try to make any more moves on me. Not until we went out on that date and I’d kneed him in the balls to get him to keep his hands to himself. He’d changed, a lot, in his first year of college. All bets were off after that date and our friendship was over. I’d bruised his ego (among other things) when I still wouldn’t sleep with him. I was done with the Weslins by then and I pushed it all out of my mind. Until now.

“Laney, you okay?” The sound of Kiera’s voice brought me back to the here and now.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Fine,” I told her.

Kiera, Carter, and Zoey had never believed the rumors, and I appreciated that. It’s why they were still my friends. They’d tried to help me squash the rumors
but, like me,
they eventually gave up. It wasn’t worth the effort. I didn’t care what anyone thought. If people were so petty and only cared about the rumors of my personal life then I wanted nothing to do with them.

Something caught my eye. On a shelf, kind of pushed behind a small trophy and at an angle, was a picture of me. It was from my prom, but Ashton didn’t go to prom with the rest of us and I most certainly hadn’t given him the picture. Then I had one of those “duh” moments. Avery was there, she’d had a camera, just like the rest of us, and he’d probably gotten the picture from her. Although that made me feel like he was less of a stalker, he still had a snapshot of me from an event he did not attend in his room. A room he hadn’t lived in for well over two years. I shuddered. Creep.

Then something else caught my eye. Behind the picture and the trophy was a wooden box about the size of a recipe box that had obviously been opened recently. Even though the Weslins’ house appeared to be spotless, Ashton’s room was surprisingly dusty. Except for where the box had been slipped in and out of the shelf.

Kiera was still busy searching other areas of Ashton’s room as I lifted the lid of box. I felt my whole body go ice cold.

“Kiera,” I whispered, not looking away from the box.

“What is it?” she asked, crossing the room to look at what I’d found. “Laney, what is that?” she whispered when she looked into the box.

“I think it’s my blood,” I said as I picked up a vial that was half full of blood. It looked very much like one of the vials Felix had used when he’d taken my blood.

I didn’t understand.

I’d seen Felix put everything into his bag that day and then lock it in a cabinet in his office. How could Ashton have it?
Why
would Ashton have it?

“Laney, let’s get out of here.”

I nodded, but hesitated before putting the box back in its place. I stuffed the vial into my pocket then flipped through the stack of photos that were at the bottom of the box. There were so many pictures…it was like Ashton had a box of
me
… I felt like I was going to vomit.

“Why are you taking that?” Kiera asked quietly when she saw me stash the vial into my pocket.

“Because it’s mine,” I replied in a low voice. I wanted to take the entire box, or at least most of its contents. I didn’t want Ashton to have pictures of me, especially pictures of us together. He could keep all the other memorabilia crap, but the photos and the blood were coming with me.

“Laney!” Kiera scolded quietly. “You can’t take those! He’ll know. His mom will tell him we were here.”

She had a point.
Dammit!
I shoved the pictures back into the box but I was taking the blood. I put the box back in its place then pushed Kiera out into the hallway.

The blood disappearing from his creepy little box could’ve been anyone, but Kiera was right, taking all of the pictures would’ve been too obvious. Especially since his mom could tell him we’d been there.

It made me feel dirty that Ashton had all of those pictures of me, that he could look at them and help encourage his diluted fantasies. I didn’t even want to think about, nor did I want to know, what he was doing with my blood, but I did want to know how he got his hands on it and why Felix never said anything about one of the vials going missing.

We tiptoed out into the entry, and as we were passing Mr. Weslin’s study we overheard words that caused us to stop dead in our tracks and share a terrified stare.

“I have the book,” we heard him say. At first we both thought he was talking to us, but when he spoke again, we realized he was on the phone. “No, they were unable to detain Alexander.” I felt my throat go dry. We inched closer to his study door. I leaned over Kiera as we peeked through the narrow space between the hinges of the slightly open door. Mr. Weslin was reclining back in his chair, the book Mr. Morgan had given Avery was sitting on his desk. There was no way we could get to it.

We backed away from his office and quietly tried to devise a plan. As far as we knew Mr. Weslin did not know we were in the house. If one of us were to sneak out the front door and ring the bell while the other stayed inside and snatched the book when he went to answer the door…

“But he would notice it was gone before we could get away,” I said to finish the ramblings of our failed plan.

Plus, Felix had told me to be leery of Mr. Weslin. “He’s not as ordinary as he seems.” Could you be more cryptic?

My phone chimed with a message and I about smacked myself in the forehead for being such an idiot and not setting it to vibrate. A moment later he was on us.

“What are you girls doing in my house?” Mr. Weslin snapped, looming over us from his office doorway.

I was so thankful for Kiera’s quick thinking a moment later. “Came to get my history book from Avery,” she told him.

“Avery isn’t taking a history class this semester,” he said sternly and glared down at us. He was a tall man and his eyes were an unsettling grayish-blue color.

“Yeah, I know! That’s why I’m just as confused as you!” Kiera said like she was exasperated. “Why do you think she borrowed my book then? And why did she send me here to get it if she clearly didn’t leave it here? You might want to have that girl checked out.” Kiera grabbed my arm and tugged me to the door as Mr. Weslin stared after us, bemused.

“Sorry to bother you,” Kiera called behind her as we stepped out the front door. “When you see Avery, tell her I want my book back or she’s going to pay me for it!”

We hurried down the walkway, jumped into my car, and sped away. Unlike Carter, I was a fabulous getaway driver. No dangers of flipping the car and no skidding out of control. Granted, a horde of murderous vampires weren’t after us and we weren’t having gallons of water dumped on us from above. But still.

“Wow, Kiera! I am seriously impressed!” I told her as we sped away.

“Been telling my parents what they’ve wanted to hear for years. I’m a pro,” she said with a triumphant smile and we had a good laugh. If Kiera’s parents only knew what their daughter had been up to lately, they’d probably die from shock.

The text that I had received while at the Weslin’s was from Felix. He wanted to know what was taking us so long. Funny, really. The one person who could truly protect us was the one who, due to my stupidity in not silencing my phone, caused us to get caught and possibly put us in danger.

I dropped Kiera off at school, because you know it was killing her not being there, and I’d agreed to meet Felix for lunch. He’d gotten us burgers and milkshakes again, and after driving over and meeting him at that same park he’d taken me to before, I climbed into his SUV, and we had a private chat while eating lunch.

“So, no book?” his voice boomed as I unwrapped my burger.

“Mr. Weslin has it,” I said. Then I told him what we’d overheard. Then I took a massive bite of my burger. I was starving.

Felix said something in Vampiric that I didn’t understand but I didn’t need to. It was cleary a curse word. “Things just got more complicated,” he murmured and I watched him as I chewed. “We are going to have to end this before it gets any bigger.”

“How?” I thought, and it was like he didn’t even notice that the question hadn’t come from my mouth.

“Well, we can start by putting a kink in their forces,” he said with a wicked little grin as he pulled the greasy wrapper away from his burger and took a bite.

I sipped from my chocolate milkshake and then asked, “Didn’t you already do that?”

He gave me a look and in my mind his deep voice said, “It would seem that they have recruited many and they have bodies to spare.”

Ahh… “What happened to all of those vampires from last night?” I asked, a little nervously with his warrior image ingrained in my mind forever.

“They were not all vampires, and are you sure you want to know of their fates?” He gave me a sidelong glance as he checked the bag for fries.

No, I really didn’t want to know. That image of Felix standing over Kiera and me, draining Marcus of life, flashed through my mind. I certainly did not need details. “If not all vampires, what were they?”

He popped a couple of fries into his mouth and once they were gone he said, “Weres and demons, so far.” He shrugged. “At least that’s who Morgan is willing to spare at this time.”

“Do you really think Professor Morgan is in charge of all of this?”

He set his shake back into the cup holder and sighed slightly. “To tell you the truth, I think he has help. Although, all signs do lead straight to him being in charge of this particular game.”