Fang Girl (6 page)

Superluminal: JaneX

Superluminal: I see you

“Crap!” Leaping out of my chair, I flung the window open. The garden lay calm and deserted under the stars, and the tree was still devoid of anything but shadows. Sanity seeped back through my panic. I sat down at my desk again, staring at the name in the chat window.

I knew
of
Superluminal—probably everyone on Fang-Girls.net did—but my interactions with her (if she
was
a her) had been limited to downloading her vids. She was famous online for her fantastic vidding, mixing DVD clips and music seamlessly to make vampire-themed music videos that you’d swear could have come
out of major record studios. She was also notoriously reclusive. Unlike most fans, she never commented on other people’s work, never hung out in the forums.

So what was she doing messaging a dead girl?

The laptop binged.

Superluminal had sent me a URL, apparently to a blog. My eye went to the browser window in the background, still open to one of the Fang-Girls.net forums, and fell on one of the headings in the sidebar:
FANS ONLINE NOW.

“Oh,
crap
!” I’d forgotten that my settings automatically logged me into the site. There at the top of the list was my internet name:
JANEX.
Which, thanks to the outpouring of grief over my death, had now been linked to my real name.

Fang-Girls.net was
the
central fan-run site for all things fanged. The ideal hangout for vampire-obsessed fangirls … or vampire hunters.

I thought fast.

JaneX: Hello!!! A/S/L?

Superluminal: ??

JaneX: Im 18 blonde model! who lieks to party!! If u wanna watch me and my sexxy freinds, CLICK HERE NOW!!!!

[Superluminal has gone Offline]

I sat back with a sigh. Hopefully, Superluminal, whether a real fan or a hunter, was now thinking my account had been hacked by a spambot. Out of curiosity, I clicked the link she’d sent me. It was a blog, by someone who really loved the color purple. Squinting past the clashing typography, I read the title of the latest entry:

VAMPIRE IN SUSSEX???

“Oh, craaaaaap,” I said for a third time with three times as much feeling. I scrolled down, my unbeating heart sinking with each click. Yep. Lorraine had a blog, and she’d used it to tell the world—or at least, her friendlist—about the really weird thing that had happened to her last night. And she’d said how much her mysterious assailant had looked like one Xanthe Jane Greene....

“Well, great,” I muttered. “I’m sure the Elder vampires are going to love this....”

The phone buzzed, vibrating across the desk like a deranged mechanical spider. I caught it as it hurled itself off the edge, nearly putting it to my ear upside
down in my haste. “Hello?
Hello?
” As I spoke, I glanced at the clock.

5:09
A.M
.

“Xanthe darling,” purred my sire. “You shouldn’t worry about what they think.”

O
nce was coincidence, but twice … “You’ve got some kind of psychic bond to me, right?” I said.

There was a tiny pause from the other end of the line, filled with the background rumble of a car engine. “Goodness,” said my sire eventually. “And I had a nice, soothing speech prepared to break it to you gently.”

“Well, you’re my sire. I was kinda, um, expecting there to be a connection of some kind. You know, my blood is your blood and all that stuff. It always is, you know?” Was I babbling? Oh God, I was babbling. I wanted to seem cool, poised, but just listening to her voice made my stomach flutter as if I were about to take an exam.

Oh.

Uh-oh.

“This isn’t going to be a master-slave sort of thing, is it?” I asked without much hope.

She laughed—a rich, throaty sound that would have set my pulse racing, if I’d had one. “Poor darling. I certainly hope not. In any event, I do indeed have a connection to you, like all vampires have to their descendants. It’s called the Bloodline. It means I can see what you see and hear what you hear.”

“Uh.” I was
really
glad I hadn’t yet visited my favorite fan-art forum, which tended to feature a lot of drawings of hot, shirtless vampires. “Exactly how much?”

“Everything, I’m afraid. And I can feel where you are, as well. Which, by the way, is a terrible place for you to be. Honestly, Xanthe—your parents’ house? What sort of a hiding place is that?”

“A warm, dry one,” I said, wrestling down my instinctive urge to whimper and grovel. “And it’s Jane, actually.”

Another fractional pause. “Your name is Xanthe Jane Greene … and you prefer
Jane
?” my sire inquired in the tones of one suddenly suspecting the other person of being a bit Special Needs.

“If you had to go to my schools, so would you,” I muttered. “Um, sorry for being rude, but who the heck are you?”

“You may call me Lily. And, my Xanthe, you do not have to concern yourself with being plain Jane anymore.” For the first time, all traces of amusement were gone, her voice as dark and solemn as night itself. “No one is ever going to laugh at you, or belittle you, or order you around, ever again.”

“Guh” was all I could manage in response to this. Lily’s voice reached straight through my ears and shut down my brain.

“Oh dear,” Lily said, sounding apologetic. “That came on rather too thick, didn’t it. Sorry, my darling.” The light archness was back, and I found I could move again. “I’ve never sired anyone before now, so all this is as new to me as it is to you.”

“Um, speaking of which, and not meaning to sound ungrateful … why me?”

“Darling, I may have fangs, but I’m not a heartless monster. I could hardly let a young girl die, could I? But we haven’t got the leisure to talk history now, I’m afraid. We’re both in terrible danger.”

“Yeah, I got your text.” I once again scrutinized the
garden for any hint of movement. “What’s going on?”

Lily hissed between her teeth. “I don’t yet know fully myself. I didn’t intend us to get separated, but Hakon sprung a trap on me.”

“Hakon,” I repeated, my brain conjuring up an image of a huge, scowling Scandinavian. “I’m guessing he’s a vampire hunter.”

“Hunter?” Lily sounded startled. “Goodness, darling, no. Those buffoons are the least of our worries. Hakon’s a vampire. A very old, very powerful, Scandinavian vampire, who’s spent a thousand years becoming the most feared Elder in Europe.”

I wasn’t liking this. I wasn’t liking this at all. “And … he’s your enemy?”

“More like I’m his. My word, he holds a grudge. Let’s just say that I managed to escape from the horrible little feudal system he’s got set up, and he can’t let that sort of challenge to his authority go unpunished.” Lily clicked her tongue in dismissal. “Tell you the whole story over cocktails sometime, darling. We’re running out of night, and Hakon’s vampires could be right on your doorstep. You’ve got to get out of there.”

I stared out my window. Now I was seeing evil vampires lurking in every shadow, rather than zealous hunters.
It wasn’t an improvement. “He knows where I am?”

“Darling, I’m afraid he must, thanks to your naive return to your roost,” Lily said with a touch of asperity. “As well as being an utter prig, Hakon is, very inconveniently, my sire’s sire. Your great-grandsire. Which means he’s got a direct Bloodline to both of us. He can piggyback our senses, and there’s not a thing we can do to stop him.”

“What?”
One of my parents stirred in their bedroom; I cut off my shriek. “You mean more people can stare at me whenever they want?”

“Only those in your direct line, which means we just have to worry about Hakon at the moment. And not quite whenever he wants—it’s tiring to reach more-distant descendants. I can stay in contact with you near enough indefinitely, as your direct sire, but Hakon, as your great-grandsire, is a bit more limited. He can probably only manage to look through your eyes and ears for about a quarter of any given hour. The catch, unfortunately, is that we can’t tell when he’s peeping in and when he’s not.”

Oh God. I was never getting undressed
ever again
.

“As your distant ancestor, he can’t directly sense your location like I can, but he must have picked up enough clues as to your whereabouts by now,” Lily continued
over my appalled silence. “He’s probably been riding along with you intermittently all night—but being so much older than us, he has to return to rest an hour earlier than we do. So now we can arrange our rendezvous without him being any the wiser. Any suggestions?”

“Uh …” Even though my blood leaped at the thought of meeting Lily in the flesh, growing up on the internet meant I was well trained in never agreeing to private meetings with strangers. “Could you come here?”

“Darling, if I could, I’d already
be
there. Hakon’s goons are practically crawling up my tailpipe to herd me away from you. I’ve dispatched someone to help you, but he’s a bit of a dark horse—we shouldn’t rely on him being able to keep you safe at your house. So I think our best chance is for you to get on the road, present a moving target. With a bit of luck, we should be able to outrace Hakon and meet up.” Her voice warmed. “I can’t wait to see you again, darling. We’ll be so much safer once we’re reunited.”

The phone slipped in my sweating palm. Eight different schools had taught me—brutally—how to read the social battlefield. I’d found out the hard way that the girl who wanted most desperately to be your friend … was the girl you could least afford to be friends with.

And Lily was being very,
very
friendly.

On the other hand, at school the popular kids hadn’t also been thousand-year-old evil vampires. “Look, um …” I said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem to be seriously outgunned. Even if we meet up, I don’t see how you’re going to be able to protect me from some sort of vampire Godfather.”

“Oh, I’m not,” Lily said, quite cheerfully. “I’m counting on you to protect me.”

Alarm bells went off in my head so loudly, they drowned out Lily’s glamour. “Say what now?”

Her laugh echoed from the phone’s speaker. “Ah, my Xanthe. You don’t yet realize how special you are.”

“Oh no,” I said in dismay. “There isn’t a prophecy, is there?” That never ended well.

“Darling, I can tell we’re going to get on simply famously.” Amusement still threaded through Lily’s voice. “No. No prophecies, no destinies—nothing shaping the future but our own determination, I promise. But you
are
unique.”

“I don’t want to be unique!” I’d always worked so hard to fit in, and now I was going to have to spend eternity as some sort of freak? “I want to be a normal vampire!”

“But your Bloodline isn’t normal. And we can be
grateful that Hakon hasn’t been able to sense that, or you’d already be dead.”

I froze.

Not because of anything that Lily had said. Because a patch of shadows and leaves—that I’d spent the past hour convincing myself were only producing the
illusion
of an evil, lurking assassin—had just moved.

There was a tall man in black clothing stretched out along a branch outside my window … my open window. He’d overheard every word.

Lily must have been looking through my eyes. “Hellfire,” she murmured, very softly.

“Call you later,” I whispered back, barely moving my lips. Then, more loudly, “I dunno, Lily. I don’t like the sound of all of this.” I thumbed the phone off, but kept it pressed against my ear. The man outside didn’t react. “Uh, um, I mean,” I continued somewhat randomly, edging toward my bookcase as I spoke, “I’ve never even met you. I don’t know whether or not you’re telling the truth.” My stalker still didn’t move. He was so utterly still, I would never have seen him if it hadn’t been for that one slight, startled jerk of his head. He stayed motionless as my fingers walked along the line of my books, motionless as I drew one out....

And then he did move, because my hardcover copy of
Breaking Dawn
whacked him full in the face, with all my vampiric strength propelling it.

“HA!” I dived out the window myself as he plummeted. The guy blurred weirdly as he fell, stretching out in a smear of silver—but I had to concentrate on my own landing. I hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact. As I came upright again, I caught a glimpse of something disappearing under the hedge.

Teleport!
I thought frantically as I hurled myself at the wall of leaves.

Twigs slapped my face; there was a weird dissolving sensation, and my vision went gray for a second. I blinked, and found myself
mostly
on the other side of the hedge. Tearing my arm loose, I burst clear in a shower of twigs and leaves—and stopped.

The path behind our house was a narrow strip of beaten earth, bordering a farmer’s field. The short, flat grass stretched out in all directions, barren and empty under the moon. There was no place for so much as a mouse to hide. And there was no sign of anyone.

With no heartbeat or breath to distract me, I could hear every tiny sound. A car grumbling on the distant main road. The soft swish of the breeze through the
grass. And, very close, the rasp of one dry leaf against another as something slunk through the hedgerow.

I whirled, crouching—and found myself nearly nose to nose with a startled cat. It was a funny-looking beast, somewhat like a Siamese in shape, but with sandy, spotted fur. It blinked at me with innocent blue eyes.