Beautiful Monster 2 (4 page)

“It does look different though.”

“Well, that door has been repainted,” I pointed out, and then, on a whim, twisted the knob. It opened and we both stuck our heads inside the Red Theater.

“This is where we did Beauty and the Beast. This is where it all went down.”

Of course, I had told Sarah everything. There were three late night calls in a row, the first two with her sitting there bewildered, asking if I was on drugs. But by the third call, when I was in tears, after Porsche’s death, she finally believed me. Vampires, witches, Shields and werewolves all existed, even if we didn’t want them to. I thought Sarah was brave for still applying, despite it all. But looking at her, with her piercings and jet black hair, maybe she thought she would fit right in to this evil world that was brewing in Leopard Academy.

We were almost
at the dorms when I stopped, patting my pockets in disbelief.

“A
h, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I think you might get your wish to meet Liam sooner rather than later.”

“Why?” Her eyes lit up.

“Because I seem to have lost your room key. We could go to the Don, but they would just call Liam anyway since he has the spares. Come on.”

“Can I leave this here?”
she pleaded with me, indicating her heavy bag.

I shrugged.
“Sure. It’s pretty safe around here.”

Sarah left her bag leaning up against the wall and then followed me back down the winding hallway to Liam’s office.

“I can’t believe it. I’m an idiot,” I apologized to her. “You’re exhausted and probably just want to sleep after a transatlantic flight.”

“What do you think I did for the 5 hours the cute boy ignored me?”
she asked.

“Right…
Here we are.” I walked into Liam’s outer office, Sarah in tow. I nodded to the secretary, who had long stopped trying to get me to wait, and knocked on Liam’s door twice and then walked in.

He was on the phone, his elbows on the desk as he listened with a bored expression to
whoever was on the other end. Seeing me, he gave me a smile and held up two fingers. I nodded, leaning up against the wall, and turned my head to Sarah.

“Uh
… huh… huh… Yes, alright, I’ll do that. Thank you for the call.” Liam finally hung up and turned his attention to us. “Amy?”

“Hey. I lost Sarah’s key because I’m dumb. You have a spare, right? And uh…
This is Sarah, by the way.”

“It’s nice to meet you
.” Liam extended his hand across the desk, standing up. Sarah reached to shake it. Their hands met and I saw an odd expression cross Liam’s face, just for a fraction of a second. And then the smile returned.

“Sarah, how nice to finally meet you. Your application was stunning.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” she replied. “You’re stunning!”

I choked.

“Sarah!”

But Liam only grinned as he came out from behind the desk and opened a cabinet on the wall, which had several keys hanging inside of it.

“It’s ok, Amy, that’s the least harmful thing I’ve heard this term. It’s like the admission office purposely found people who were my fans. It’s worse this year than ever before.”

“Well, we did make a huge splash with Beauty and the Beast,” I pointed out. “If anyone had forgotten about you, it kind of brought you back to fame. You think I should watch my back in the hall?”

“No more than usual.” He winked at me, handing me a master key for the dorms on our floor. “You can use that for now until we can get a proper one cut for you. Maybe Sarah should hold it.”

“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I’m responsible.”

“Indeed you are.” He grinned at me. “I’ll see you at dinner. Around 5’ish?”

“Sure
.” I reached up to give him a kiss on the cheek. He turned, a mischievous grin on his face, and kissed me on the lips.

I blushed, lower
ing back down from my tip toes. “See you later.”

“Bye girls,” he said, returning to his desk.

Grabbing Sarah’s wrist and applying a little force, I dragged her from the room. She could barely contain herself.

“That was awesome!” she exclaimed, as soon as we were in the hallway.

“He’s not that cool,” I replied. “He leaves towels on the floor after the shower and plates of food lying around. He also forgets to pick up lettuce every time he grocery shops.”

“Can I join you two on your dinner date? I don’t mind being a third wheel!”

“No!” I giggled, shaking my head. “But if you unpack fast enough, I’ll take you out shopping. There’s a bunch of stuff you need to see that they only sell around here. Or we can go to a movie tonight. After dark. After Liam… ya know.”

She nodded, grabbing her suitcase again as I fit the key in the lock, and swung open her door. Identical to mine, with the makeup mirror and small dance floor,
Sarah gasped.

“This is going to be amazing!”

I watched my best friend explore her room. I felt ecstatic. The final piece of the puzzle was in place. I was finally home.

I had thought that I felt something odd when I shook Sarah’s hand, but I couldn’t
be one hundred percent sure. Whatever it was, it was weak, untrained and unfocused. Judging by the way she dressed and what seemed like a strategic placing of piercings, I wondered if she was a witch, untrained and unknown. Witches were a lot more frequent than people realized, their bloodlines and powers easily transferred to other bodies. There had been fifteen original Witch families when they came into power nearly 2000 years ago, and God knows how many descendants since then.

I didn’t think this girl was out to do me any harm, however. Amy had known her half her life, and although she knew all about me and my kind, thanks to Amy, she had never been curious. Amy had told me she was mostly disbelieving, and it had taken a lot of convincing, so unless the girl was an actress all the time, even to her best friend, th
en she wasn’t aware she was a witch. We had a few of them at the school, diluted bloodlines of pupils who weren’t even aware of it. There was one in second grade, training to be a dancer, who didn’t know it was her powers that were making her jump higher than any of the other kids in her class. I didn’t feel the need to tell her. If the little girl could go through life blissfully unaware of a mythical existence, it would probably be for the better.

And so I forgot all about it, until the first week of classes. One of my dance teachers called me at 6
am, just as I was coming out of transformation, and begged me for a sick day. Without a substitute at the last minute, I moved some meetings around to be available to teach. It was an open dance class, meant for senior non-dancers who were taking it as part of a performance major. Amy and Sarah were both a part of the class, and when I texted my girlfriend in the morning, she texted back a smiley face and exclamation marks. Minutes later, a picture text arrived.

Opening it, my eyes nearly fell out of my head. It was Amy, clearly taken just a few seconds ago. She was wearing a dance leotard that I knew was not her own, fashionably shredded in the back, her hand on her hip and her body arched. She had clearly
run next door to Sarah’s room, not that I was complaining. She looked stunning, every curve emphasized. Managing to pick my jaw off the ground, I sent her a quick message.

What would you wear if I wasn’t teaching?

A few minutes passed and then my phone beeped again. Amy in an oversized tee-shirt that came down to her knees.

I laughed, sending her back
Love you.
Despite barely returning to my human form, she always knew how to make me feel wonderful.

The dance class was the last class of the day, and with winter coming, darkness fell early. I had already planned to end the class fifteen minutes early, just in case I needed extra time to get out safely. But, as the day went on, the sun became obscured by rain clouds and the day grew grey and depressing. While it wasn’t true darkness my transformation would
still be on time, as predicted. I always found dark days harder to deal with. I could often feel the twitch of the fangs in my mouth or the faint lust for blood. Nothing was terribly distracting, but it was there all day and it started to wear on me by day’s end.

When the time came, I made my way to the dance studio, already cursing the offending teacher for being late. I could dance, but it was more Broadway style than proper ballet. She had sent me a lesson plan that would be a group dance scene for Phantom of the Opera that everyone should know, whether they were cast as a lead or a chorus member. So
I decided to show a video on the projector for the class.

Amy and Sarah were at the front, Amy in Sarah’s leotard. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from her, and I knew I had to. Not that it was a secret anymore that we were together, but I still wanted to remain professional. I could smell her infected blood and it made me feel calm, the small
cravings almost disappearing.

“Right.
So Miss Nailer isn’t here today. She’s got a touch of a stomach bug, so I’m taking over. We’ll keep this relatively short and sweet.” I looked out over the students as they gathered around the projector. “This is going to be the Act 1 finale for Phantom of the Opera, which, for those of you living under a rock, is the year end show. It’s Masquerade, and you’re at a grand ball. You’re all going to be in it, presumably, even if you are cast as a lead, so there’s no reason not to learn it. I’m going to play it for you twice and then we’ll start going over it.”

I pressed play and let them watch, while I floated to the back of the class, trying to stop my fangs
from twitching. One of the advantages of being immortal was that I didn’t have to take time to warm up and stretch. My muscles were always taut and ready to go.

I quite liked the
choreography actually. I was a big fan of theater, but also a fan of modernity, and Miss Nailer had incorporated hip-hop and dance moves into it. It might make a few old people uncomfortable in their seats, but theater wasn’t for rich old fogies anymore.

Watching myself in the mirror, I moved through the steps that I remembered, my muscles snapping in perfect rhythm. Doing West End shows were some of the greatest memories I had of my career. When Amy had left to tour with Gatsby, I was almost jealous. It was a part of my life I would likely never have again, at least not for one hundred years, when everyone forgot my name and face.
But she, she was just beginning, just starting to find out the real thrills of theater.

Dancing too, reminded me of Porsche, and I stopped before the memories got too intense. My beautiful ballerina, who would have probably stepped in to sub this dance class herself, was
gone, and I had to stop thinking about her. A Shield would be so useful on a grey overcast day like this.

The class finished the video and clustered behind me, expecting me to lead them through the steps now. I could see Amy on my right side, her hair pulled up. She truly was the most stunning person in the room, her cheek bones angular and her eyes wide and full of emotions. I saw beautiful people on a regular basis, but the more I got to know Amy, the more I was attracted
to her.

“Are we ready? One
, two, three, four…” I counted them off and then we began.

For a group of non-dancers, they picked it up pretty fast. Mind you, it wasn’t complicated
. It was meant to be taught to almost everybody. They ran into problems, however, during an eight step process when they had to partner up with each other and spin. After 3 failed attempts, I stopped them. Not wanting to play favorites, I called upon Sarah to join me at the front.

“Pay attention, because this is all we have time for. It’s like this. One
, two, three…” The second my hand connected with Sarah’s waist, I felt it again, the jolt that I had noticed in my office. A rush of calm washed over me, and I took a step back, shocked. What the hell was going on with this girl?

“Liam?” Amy asked, taking a step forward.

I shook myself. “Sorry, stumbled. Let’s try it again.”

There was certainly something happening with Sarah, although I couldn’t figure out what it is. Perhaps the thoughts of that distracted me, because by the end of the class, despite the fact that darkness was drawing close, I felt better.

I ended the class, congratulating them on their effort, and released them. I glanced at my watch. If I was right, I had about 20 minutes to get to the cellar. I could stay out another hour, technically, before anything got bad, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

“You alright?” Amy asked me, as she walked me to the door.

I nodded. “Sure. Just days like this are always bad. Will you be alright tonight?”

She grabbed my hand as we walked the short distance down the hallway.

“Yeah. Sarah hasn’t fully unpacked yet, because she’s lazy, so I’m probably just going to hang out with her. I’ll text you later.”

“Do you want to have breakfast in the morning?” I asked, not so eager to be parted from her. “We haven’t had much time together
and there are things we need to… discuss.”

“Right
.” She nodded, sharing my thoughts of Selene. “8am?”

“I’ll see you then
.” I kissed her full on the mouth, unable to hold back.

She relaxe
d into my grasp, moaning a bit. “I can’t wait,” she whispered in my ear, and then turned, heading back to the studio to change.

I watched her until she disappeared from sight
. Forcing myself to turn around and head down to the basement, I glanced at my watch and counted the hours until I would see her again.

**************

I was pacing the basement, fighting bloodlust and the chains when I heard the door creak open above me. After four years of being a vampire, I had learned how to control my nightly cravings to the point where I could think rationally. I could even do a little bit of work. The pain was still terrible, especially at the start and the end, and some nights I cried so much I felt like I would melt. Some nights, I couldn’t deal with this tragedy that had befallen me. But since being with Amy, the world seemed like a brighter place. I still locked myself up, mostly on my own now, not trusting myself to be out and about with humans at night. But Peter, my grandfather and the former headmaster of the school, often came to visit at night, and he was safe to do so.

“Peter?” I called up the stairs, thinking it was him. My vampire ears picked up not one but two sets of footsteps. I tensed.

“It’s me. Or... us,” Amy said, appearing at the top of the stairs, her hand in Sarah’s. She stopped, waiting for me to tell them to approach. Amy’s blood didn’t tempt me, and she knew she was safe, but I guessed she was worried for Sarah’s sake.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. Even if Sarah knew of my existence as this monster, it didn’t mean that she needed to see it.

“I’m sorry. It was my idea,” Sarah spoke up. “It’s just… we were unpacking my luggage and I found something weird in it. Something I didn’t put in it myself. And I thought, with all the strange stuff that happens in this school, you should know about it.”

“What?” I nodded for them to approach.

Sarah clearly had no regard for her own safety and moved ahead of Amy, holding out a scrap of paper to my chained hands. I drew back, instantly, and looked to Amy.

“Sarah, stay back,” Amy said, reaching for her friend.

Sarah apparently had the ears of a brick wall and shoved the paper into my hand. I jolted and my fangs moved back in my mouth half a centimeter, causing me to wince in pain. Sarah jumped back, looking from me to Amy in alarm.

“Did I hurt him?”

She didn’t look afraid of me, but I suppose when you modified yourself to look like a creature of the night, as Sarah did, a real one didn’t bother her.

Amy shook her head.
“I don’t think so… Liam?”

I turned the paper over in my hand. On it was a round three dimensional circle, drawn in red marker, with two lines vertically down it and a hand etched in between them.
My eyebrows shot up as things began to make sense, even with my muddled brain.

“Sarah, did you leave your luggage alone at any
time?”

“Uh, yeah. When Amy and I left it outside my room to come get the key from you.”

“Oh my God,” I shook my head, regarding the paper in my hand. “This is bizarre. Or impossible.”