Vampire U (9 page)

I laughed.  "What, by luring them to drive-in movie theaters and throwing them into the sunlight?  We're lucky they didn't kill us both!"

"We only need to kill one," Mander said.  "The Elder."

"The what?"

"He's the overlord who created the vampires of Beta House.  He drank of our blood, and we drank of his.  If he dies, our curse will be lifted."

"And you'll be... normal again?" I asked, feeling a sliver of hope work its way into my heart.

He stared at me a long time before answering.  "All will be undone," he said.  "Your friend Morgan will be free of the illness and desire that sap her strength.  You will be free of that same illness."

I remembered Kara Thompson, a crazy woman decaying in a stinking rental home.  Dread seized my heart as I realized that my own fate was the same.  For better or worse, I was tied to Mander and his ill-fated quest now.  "So who is this Elder?"

Mander shook his head, scowling.  "He hides himself from us.  I wouldn't even know his face if we passed in a corridor."

Disbelief made my nerves sing with frustration.  "I thought you drank his blood!"

"I did, but it was over a hundred years ago.  Faces pass out of memory, and the Elder withdrew when the coven of Beta House grew strong.  He must be hundreds of years old, and the pleasures of life are old and tiresome for him now.  But he will survive at any cost.  When his coven feeds, he draws strength from them.  He is stronger than the rest of us, and others are jealous of his power.  Many would kill him if they could."

"Like you," I said.

Mander laughed.  "Yes, indeed.  My reasons aren't theirs; they seek power, where I seek only an end to their cruelty.  But no matter the reasons, the Elder conceals himself from all of us, taking no chances with his own safety.  We only know he is near, lurking in the shadows, siphoning our strength."

Fear skittered down my spine like a spider as I tried to comprehend the existence of such an ancient and terrible creature.  "Then how do you intend to find him?"

"Alex Golov," Mander said.

Alex's hard green eyes were burned into my memory.  "He sent these three to kill you," I said.

Mander nodded.  "Alex leads Beta House.  The others follow him, but they would follow a mad dog if it led them to blood.  Still, the Elder cannot tolerate such an attack.  It would weaken him, and he would be forced to confront me."

"If he does, can you beat him?"

Mander looked away, and his jaw tightened.  "I don't know."

"But you want to kill the leader of your vampire fraternity so that a secret hidden vampire who's been alive longer than anyone on earth will try to kill you?"

Mander nodded, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward.  "Sounds difficult, yes?"

This was all too much.  I was trapped in the madness now, first by my guilt over Morgan, and now by my foolish choice to let Mander drink my blood.  I wanted to be angry with him for pulling me into this, but I'd felt connected to him from the moment our eyes met, a bond far deeper and more genuine than the psychic influences I'd felt from Alex and the one in the van.  "I don't see what choice we have," I said with a resigned sigh.  "So what happens now?"

The vampire looked past me to the gaping hole in the steel structure.  The sun had sunk near the horizon, casting an orange light that nearly touched the far wall.

"I cannot leave until nightfall, but I'll be safe here until then.  When the sun falls, you must be back in your dorm room," Mander said.  "I know you have questions, and we've much to discuss, but that must wait.  Alex will know soon that his attack failed.  He'll come for you if he can, and I need you to be safe.  Most of what you've seen in horror movies is utter drivel, but this much is true: Vampires cannot enter a home uninvited."

"What about you?" I asked.

"I'll be fine.  Alex thought he could dispose of me quietly, but he'll never attack me in the open.  The Elder would destroy him."

It was all too much.  Ancient vampires whose treacherous politics made the US Senate seem like a kid's show.  And at least one of them wanted me dead.  Or worse than dead.  "I'm scared, Mander," I admitted.  I didn't want to leave him.  I'd seen his strength.  Surely he could protect me.

"You should be.  But go now.  And sleep, if you can.  We'll talk again soon."

I felt his will in the back of my mind again, guiding my thoughts.  I gave a mental push.  "Stop that," I said.  "No need to convince me.  I want what you want."

"Then you'll want to hurry home," Mander said.  "Night is coming."  His old eyes held mine, and he pushed harder.  This time, I let him sway me.  As though in a dream, I turned and hurried out of the building and into the approaching evening.  Thick pines and lush magnolias bordered the Terrebonne's abandoned lot, their leaves a million vivid shades of green.  Mander's psychic touch faded quickly as I stumbled across the broken asphalt, and my mind was my own again.  With the warm sun on my face, it was easy to forget the horrors I'd just witnessed.  I wanted to run to my car and drive back to Chicago.  I could spend a year waiting tables, then go to college elsewhere.  I could be free of Baton Rouge and Beta House and all this insanity.

But I couldn't leave Morgan again.  My guilt would follow me forever if I abandoned her, not to mention all the other young women who would end up like Kara Thompson.  But the thought of staying terrified me enough to live with that guilt for the rest of my life.  I remembered how Judith Miller, the reporter I'd always called a hero, had faced jail because of her principles.  Did I have her strength?

With a rueful laugh, I shook my head.  This wasn't jail time.  I faced a fate worse than death.  Even Judith Miller might run screaming.

Something else held me in Baton Rouge.  Mander had fed on me, had marked me for his own.  The uncontrollable lust I'd felt after he bit me still echoed through my body, a dissonance like a tuning fork slightly off-key.  It would never fade.  Mander was a part of me.  I was his now.  Above all, I wanted to feel that touch again.  Wherever I went, I knew that he would eventually draw me back, the irresistible bait in a lethal trap.

I drove home like a bat out of hell - faster, I hoped, since the bats out of hell would come after me as soon as it grew dark.  Every set of taillights in front of me only added to my frustration as the sun began to slip beneath the horizon.  My Civic weaved through evening rush hour traffic, its engine whining as I wondered how much I could tell Morgan.  It wasn't that I didn't trust her, but if Vic could get inside her head the way Mander and Alex could get in mine, Beta House might discover Mander's intentions.  I decided to play dumb and see what I could learn from her, assuming she'd even awakened from her coma-like state.

I parked the Civic in my dorm's parking lot just minutes before sunset and hurried through the growing darkness, darting nervous glances at every shadow and watching the twilight sky as purple bled into orange.  Men weren't allowed in the women's dormitories, but I didn't really feel safe until I reached my room.

Lara Bauer had left a pink notice tacked to the front of our ruined door.  I traced a finger over the claw marks as I glanced over it.  It was a notification that our room would be inspected tomorrow; any drugs or other forbidden materials would result in punishment ranging from a formal warning to possible expulsion.

Whatever,
 I thought.  
I don't think they'll expel me for garlic and holy water.
  I wondered if those things really worked.  Sunlight was certainly effective.  I wished I'd spent more time trying to learn from Mander instead of pouncing on him in a fit of mindless lust.

I went inside and closed the door behind me as a relieved sigh escaped my lungs.  The room was almost dark, so I flipped on the lights.  Morgan's bed was a rumpled mess, but my roommate wasn't in it.  I didn't like the idea of her being out after dark, where Vic and the other vampires could do whatever they wanted to her.  Maybe she hadn't been drawn to Beta House.  Perhaps she'd developed a case of cabin fever and gone out for pizza.

I called her anyway, hoping she wasn't with Vic.  Her phone rang once, but then something buzzed beside my knee.  I let out a frightened yelp before I realized what it was.  Morgan had left her phone here in our room.  It lay on the nightstand, vibrating as my name flashed on the screen.

Frustrated, I hung up and looked around.  Morgan's keys and purse were here too.  But her slippers and robe were missing.  Had she simply gone down the hall for a shower?  I should have felt relieved, but now I wondered what I would say to her when she returned.  Mander had told me we were safe here, but how could I keep her from leaving if Vic summoned her?

Morgan's phone chimed, and I picked it up.  A text shone on the screen: 
be outside your dorm in ten minutes.
  I didn't recognize the number, but before I could scroll down to see the history, the door opened behind me.  I jumped in surprise, almost dropping the phone.

"Find anything interesting?" Morgan asked as she tossed her robe over the back of a chair.  Her voice sounded hollow and cold, as if something had drained the sweet, lively essence of her and left only a shell.  When I saw her, I gasped.  She'd lost about ten pounds, but the tight black blouse she wore accentuated her heavy round breasts.

Thick black makeup made her sunken eyes look large and round, and she wore lipstick the color of dried blood.  With her honey blonde hair slicked back against her scalp, Morgan's wholesome, sexy girl-next-door look was completely gone, replaced by something dark and aggressive.  She looked like a vampire's whore.

I glance down at the phone in my hand and felt a surge of guilt.  "No, I...  you have a text."  I held out the phone, and she snatched it away without looking at me.

"I gotta go.  See ya, Dani."  She grabbed her keys and purse, then turned for the door.

"Wait!"  This was the moment - my only chance to keep her safe.  "Where are you going?"

"Beta House," she said, then curled her lip up in a sarcastic smile.  "Don't worry, I have a ride.  I don't have to worry about you bailing on me this time."

My face flushed with shame.  "I'm sorry I left you," I said softly.  "I was so scared." 

Morgan walked back to me, her hips swaying like a clock's pendulum.  In a pair of black stilettos, she towered over me.  "Oh, you poor thing."  She traced a line along the edge of my jaw with a long, ruby fingernail.  "Are college men too much for you?  Were you expecting a high school dance last night?"

"No," I said, shaking my head.  "It's not that at all.  The Betas are dangerous.  Don't you remember..."

"I remember my roommate leaving me at a party after we promised to look out for each another," she snapped.  Then she smirked.  "After that, I had the best sex of my life.  Maybe I should thank you."

"Morgan, Vic is..."  I didn't know how to say it.  Did she remember nothing?"

"Vic is amazing," she said, closing her eyes as though imagining him there.  "You can't imagine how he made me feel."  Her eyes suddenly widened, and her smile turned mischievous.  "But maybe you want to!"  She laughed, a low seductive sound.  "Is that what this is about, Dani?  Do you want me to share him with you?"  She stepped close and bent down to whisper in my ear.  "I will if you want."

I pulled away.  "No, Morgan.  I don't want..."  My words failed me.  She really didn't understand what was happening.  All she could remember was a night of great sex.  And me abandoning her, of course.  Nothing I could do would change her mind.  For a wild moment, I considered trying to restrain her, but the dangerous gleam in Morgan's eye told me I didn't havea  chance.  "Just be careful, okay?" I said, resigned.

Morgan rolled her eyes and glided toward the door.  How could she move like that in those heels?  "If you change your mind, you know where I'll be!" she called, waggling her fingers at me over one shoulder.  Then the door thumped shut behind her, and I was alone.

After spending the previous night thrashing in my sheets, I needed sleep in the worst way, but I felt wired.  And I was 
starving
.  After just a week in the dorms, we'd already accumulated enough delivery menus to keep us fed for years.  I ordered a pizza, then opened my laptop and poked around online, learning everything I could about Beta House.  There wasn't much, just some outdated web pages full of dry old history.  The fraternity had existed since the founding of Romanus University just after the Civil War, but I couldn't find any rosters, academic statistics, or alumni record.  The wall of secrecy surrounding the fraternity seemed as solid and enduring as the huge rock wall around the Beta House mansion itself.  But Mander was right - that had to end.  In the age of iPhones and Facebook, a secret cult of vampires couldn't hope to harvest blood and sex from college girls year after year.  But Mander couldn't be the only one who understood what was happening.  Others would see the need to change.  Like cornered animals, they would be desperate and dangerous.

A knock on the door announced my pizza.  Through the peephole, the delivery guy looked harmless enough, but I still made him set the box down in the hallway and back up.  He gave me a funny look as I snatched it up and left thirty bucks on the floor in its place.  I thought I heard him mutter something that sounded like "too many shrooms" as I slammed the door shut, but I didn't care.

I didn't know whether it was the lunch I'd skipped or the blood Mander had drained from me, but I felt ravenous.  I tore the box open and fell on the large pepperoni with the savagery of a starving wolf.  For ten minutes, I shoveled pizza into my mouth, heedless of the way the hot cheese scalded the roof of my mouth.  Only when the last slice was gone and I'd scraped the toppings off the inside of the lid did I relent.

Letting out a muted belch, I got back on the computer.  With a full stomach, I found it harder to focus, and instead of researching Beta, I found myself wandering aimlessly from one vampire website to the next.  Most were references to games or movies.  I found more than a few written by people who sounded stark raving mad.  Other sites sounded almost credible, with the detached clinical tone of a medical journal.  Unfortunately, I'd learned enough to spot several errors in these.  Nowhere did I find anything that resembled what was going on in Beta House.  The internet kept no secrets anymore, but I found only an empty void where I desperately needed information.  That void filled my gut with a sense of absolute dread.  I doubted I was the first to learn that vampires existed, but no one had exposed them.  Whatever their flaws, the vampires of Beta House were very, very good at staying hidden, and that meant I didn't have much hope.

A shiver passed through me, and I glanced at the window.  In the glass, my face's reflection floated against the darkness beyond, ghostly pale in the light of my laptop's screen.  How long before I started to act like Morgan?  Until I became a wasted shell like Kara Thompson?

I tried to be angry with Mander for what he'd done to me, but I couldn't.  I'd given myself to him willingly and would do so again.  I knew he was a monster, that he'd lured me into this hell.  I knew that Morgan's fate and my own danger were his fault.  Yet my attraction to Mander was deeper than the mental tricks that he and his brethren had performed, deeper than the animalistic lust I'd felt when he bit me.  I just wondered if it would get me killed, or worse.

I stared blankly at the jumbled assortment of papers and textbooks on my desk.  I'd come to Romanus to study journalism, not to get involved with creatures that shouldn't even exist.  But classes would resume on Monday morning whether I was abducted by vampires or not.

I almost picked up a reading assignment, but sudden weariness washed over me.  After my troubled sleep the night before and the wild events of the day, my bed looked as welcoming as Mander's embrace.  I slammed my laptop shut and fell atop my comforter, still clothed.  A heavy curtain of sleep fell over my consciousness, enveloping my worries and fears as I tumbled into oblivion.

***

The wailing siren jolted me out of a deep, dreamless slumber.  In those first confused seconds after waking, it seemed that I lay in a coffin buried deep beneath the earth, a corpse awoken by screaming demons come to take me to hell.  I felt the soil closing in around me, pressing against the pine planks that made up the sides of my tiny prison.

I let out a panicked whine and lashed out, determined to claw my way through the wooden lid, to dig through the ground and fight my way to the surface.  Whatever mistakes I'd made, I wasn't ready to give up yet.

My fingers found only air above me, and I felt the soft mattress beneath my back.  The screams I heard weren't demons, but the fire alarm in the hallway.  Beneath it, I heard doors opening and the voices of confused young women.

I staggered to the door, still blinking away sleep.  Girls in bathrobes and sweatpants shuffled down the hall in a slow, groggy stampede.  Others popped their heads out of their rooms to look around.  "What's happening?" I asked a bleary-eyed redhead as she pulled a Romanus sweatshirt over her head.

"Some asshole pulled the fire alarm, I guess," she mumbled as she walked past.

Lara Bauer, the RA from hell, bellowed from down the hall.  "Alright, ladies, everybody out!  Absolutely no one back in their rooms until the fire department clears the building."  She blew the whistle she wore on a string around her neck, adding its shrill sound to the wail of the alarm.

"Who does she think she is, a volleyball coach?" someone said.  Others laughed, then quickly fell silent as Lara stomped past, glaring at them.

"Archer!  Jesus, you look awful, but at least you're wearing clothes.  Get out of there right now.  Is your roommate dressed yet?"  She barged past me and into my room without waiting for an answer.

"She's not here," I said belatedly.

Lara grimaced.  "Well, then don't wait around.  Get downstairs with everyone else."  She ushered me out into the hall and pulled the door to my room shut behind her.

"Let me grab my phone first..."

"Leave it," Lara snapped.  "This is a fire alarm!"  Then she was gone, sweeping down the hall, yelling and pounding on doors as she went.

I stood watching her go.  Cold dread lay in my belly like a stone, a feeling that something wasn't right.  I slowed my pace and let the flood of young women pass me by, my mind still knitting itself together.  I couldn't remember feeling so tired in all my life.  I glanced down at my arms and saw that the pigment had drained from my flesh.  In the narrow window of the fire escape door, I winced at my reflection as we filed into the stairwell.

I hoped Mander was truly safe.  Somewhere out in the steamy bayou night, vampires were trying to kill each other for power or survival.  That thought stopped me cold halfway down the first flight of stairs as Mander's warning echoed in my head:
Vampires cannot enter a home uninvited.
  Pulling a fire alarm was a common enough prank, but it was also the only reliable way to pull me from my room in the middle of the night.

I pivoted and climbed back up to the third floor, my heart racing in my chest as I hurried down the empty hallway toward my room.  If I smelled smoke, I'd leave, but my gut told me that there was no fire tonight.

"Hello, Danielle," a male voice said from behind me, so close it sounded like a whisper in my ear.  That familiar southern drawl stopped me in my tracks.  I felt a strong pull in my mind, and my body turned like a puppet on strings before I could stop it.  I grabbed at the wall to keep from falling back on my heels as I looked up at Alex Golov.

The vampire stood in the middle of the hall, just feet away, his psychotic eyes blazing like molten emeralds.  I hadn't heard him rush up behind me; he was just 
there.
  My room was less than thirty feet away, but my mental calculus told me I'd never make it.

"What do you want?" I whimpered, hating the weakness in my voice.

"Everything you can give me, darlin'."  Alex's lips spread in a deceptively relaxed smile as he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.  "You already let that bastard have a taste, didn't you?  I can smell him on you."  He shook his head in disappointment, then cocked it like a hound catching scent of something interesting.  "But you're still a virgin?"  He licked his lips, and for a moment, he reminded me of a much older man preparing to savor one of the few pleasures remaining as his years dwindled.  "Come with me, Danielle Archer," he said, and the hall seemed to shrink and darken around us, forming a tunnel that focused all my attention on the vampire.  "Don't call out for help.  Just go downstairs, nice and calm.  I've got a car waiting."