Obsessed (Book #12 in the Vampire Journals) (8 page)

Vivian twirled
the broken shard of wood in her hands. Jojo’s blood stained the jagged tip. On
the floor before her lay a pile of dust; all that was left of her former
friend.

She was furious.
How dare Jojo think she could kick Vivian out of the gang? Vivian had been the
undisputed queen of the cheerleaders when she was alive and she sure as hell
intended to be queen of them now she was a vampire! She’d kill every last one
of them before she got demoted from the cool gang.

Vivian shoved
the makeshift weapon into her back pocket. If there were as many vampires out
there as her friends seemed to think there were, she’d need a way to give
herself the upper hand. That was something vampire Vivian shared in common with
her former human self—the constant need to win.

There was one
thing she hadn’t won in her previous life and now, as a vampire, the thought of
it was driving her crazy. Blake.

She had to find
him. She had to turn him and make him hers forever.

As Vivian bolted
down the high school’s corridors she couldn’t help but note how much enjoyment
she’d gotten out of killing her former friend. All those sleepovers and pizza
parties meant nothing to her now that she was a vampire. It was as though the
human life she’d once lived had vanished, along with all the old human emotions
she’d once felt. She was transformed, and felt all the better for it. There was
no need for friendship in her new form. But there was a need for love, and it
was Vivian’s desire for Blake that forced her through the school halls.

Smears of blood
stained the floor and bloody handprints ran the length of the walls. If it
weren’t for the delicious metallic scent in the air, it would be easy to assume
a kindergarten class had rampaged through the corridor with red paint. And
though Vivian couldn’t be sure what had happened inside the school whilst she’d
been transforming into a vampire beside her pool, she was certain that whatever
had gone down had been absolutely spectacular. She thought of all those
miserable goths and stoner types who would have met their doom at the hands of
Kyle and smiled to herself.

She was just
passing the locker room when something made her stop. Noises were coming from
the other end, echoing along the corridor toward her. Voices. Male voices.

Vivian cocked
her head to the side.

Though a fire
burned inside of her, telling her to find Blake no matter what, something else
was compelling her to walk toward the voices. She realized as she went that it
was that same primal drive that told her when to feed and when to mate. And
right now, it was telling her that several potential mates were nearby. It was
almost as if she could smell the pheromones in the air.

Without
hesitation, Vivian entered the boys’ locker room. She was confronted by a crowd
of jocks in full gear, sweaty and mud-stained from a game. The second she
waltzed in, every head snapped up to attention and every single pair of eyes
locked on her. Vivian felt like a doe breaking a twig underfoot and alerting a
whole field of stags to its presence. 

Immediately,
Vivian realized that the boys’ uniforms weren’t just stained with mud and
sweat. There was blood on each of their shirts, turning one of their shoulders
red. The blood, congealed now, had come from two neat puncture wounds in each
of their necks.

So the football
team had been turned into vampires, too.

That meant one
things. That those same burning basic instincts she felt—to feast, to kill, to
mate—were burning in them too. They had needs, and they were expecting her to
satisfy them.

Vivian looked
from one pair of hungry eyes to the next, counting five in total. She could
tell just from their expressions that they wanted to devour her. The drive that
had led her to this place existed in every single one of them, and whatever
instinct inside of her was telling her to run, their own instincts were strong
enough to match, telling them to do everything in their power to stop her
leaving.

But instead of
feeling fear, Vivian was swept up in a cool-headed rage. She stood, poised, her
chin tipped upward confidently, her hands on her hips. The football jocks were
idiots when they were alive, they were sure to have lost a couple more brain
cells in the transition. She could outmaneuver them.

“Vivian,” one of
the boys snarled.

Vivian tipped
her head to the side coquettishly.

“How can I help
you, Malcolm?” she said in a syrupy sweet voice.

Malcolm stood.
He was well over six feet tall and muscular. Vivian knew his vampire body would
be even stronger than his human one had been.

Malcolm
advanced.

“You’ve been
turned,” he said.

Vivian noted the
way his lip curled as he spoke, and the way his nostrils flared as though he
were taking in her scent. The way he moved was animalistic, wolf-like.

She squared up
him, keeping her composure, not letting him rattle her.

“So have you,”
Vivian replied, keeping the playful lilt to her voice, using it a weapon to
subdue him.

Malcolm prowled
closer.

“It suits you,”
Malcolm said, the dangerous tone in his voice as sharp as the edge of a blade.
“I always did prefer the pale and interesting type.”

Vivian barked
out her laughter and tapped one of her manicured fingernails against her crossed
forearm.

The mood
instantly darkened. Behind Malcolm, the other four jocks stood, as though her
laughter had affronted them all. They were a pack, she realized, even more so
now that they were vampires than they had been as humans. And they were getting
bored of this game.

“What do you
think happens now?” Malcolm said, tipping his head down so that dark shadows shook
across his face. “Now that we’re all vampires?” He smiled devilishly and
twirled some of her hair in his pale fingers. “Do we have to obey the same laws
like we used to? Or will it be anarchy?”

Vivian let him
bring his face right next to hers. He sniffed her skin, taking in the scent of
her. Slowly, his deathly cold fingers began to wrap around her neck.

Vivian locked
her eyes on his as she slid her hand into her back pocket and grasped the
jagged edges of the stake she’d used to kill Jojo.

“I hope not,”
she said. “Because I just killed one of my best friends.”

She wrenched her
hand from her pocket and before Malcolm had even a second to react, she jammed
the sharp wooden stake into his heart. The look of astonishment that flickered
across his face caused a thrill to run through Vivian. He let out a horrendous
growl before his body went slack, crumbled to pieces, and vanished in a cloud
of dust.

The four other
jocks began to cry and howl. They snarled and paced, snapping their jaws at her
like feral beasts.

Vivian held the
stake up.

“Who’s next?”
she demanded.

All four of them
flew at her once. Vivian leapt, using her super strength to leap over their
heads. She landed on the bench the other side with such a force it snapped in
half. Vivian grabbed the broken bench, wrenched it above her head, and charged
at the four jocks. Each one was speared through the heart by one of the
protruding jagged bits of wood.

Vivian grinned,
showing her fangs, as she reduced the four of them to nothing more harmless
than piles of dust.

“You never were
that bright,” she said, chucking the bench against the wall with enough force
to make it splinter into a thousand pieces.

Then she grabbed
her makeshift weapon and stashed it into her pocket again.

The killings had
made her feel invincible. She set to the sky to resume her search for Blake.

Kyle stood in
the entrance hall of Columbia University. How useful, he thought, for them to
display all the faculty members neatly on the wall like that. Kyle scanned the
row of photographs, some depicting smiling faces, other studious faces, all in black
and white. He read the names, each as innocuous as the last. Lyndsay Jones—Professor
of Mathematics. Sarah Gee—Professor of Psychology.

What boring
little lives these women must live, Kyle thought. How much more exciting it
would be for them to join the vampire race. A couple of professors would make
interesting contributions to his army. And if they didn’t, he was certain the
football team he’d recently turned would find ways to enjoy their company.

Kyle shook his
head. He was getting distracted. He was here to get information on the girl.
The priest had said to find the mother first, and that meant finding Aidan.

Just then,
Kyle’s eyes rested on the prize, the name he’d been looking for all this time.

Kyle scoffed.
The man looked every inch the geek he was expecting, with round little glasses
and an effeminate face. Kyle cracked his knuckles. He was going to have a great
time.

Luckily for
Kyle, the university had not only provided a lovely wall of faculty names and
photos, but they’d gone as far as to display a detailed map of the campus. Kyle
used his super-sensitive sight to scan and memorize the map in a matter of
seconds, then set off, quick as a flash, in search of Aidan.

The campus was
in darkness. Several lamps cast pools of yellow light onto the walkways, which
crisscrossed through a series of square lawns. A slight drizzle of rain gave
the campus a hazy quality. But Kyle’s sensitive eyesight wasn’t hampered in any
way. He could see the huge white stone building with columns and a domed
ceiling before him as clear as day. The library, the place that Kyle was heading.

He zoomed across
the lawns, his feet floating several inches above the ground, and made it to
the bottom of the library steps in mere seconds. He enjoyed using his flying
abilities so much he hovered up to the double doors instead of taking the stairs.
Stairs were for humans, he thought. Stairs were for convicts, like the men he’d
been locked up with in prison. He was superior to them now, superior in
strength, power, and agility.

The library
doors were locked but that wasn’t going to stop Kyle. He grabbed the handles in
each of his hands and heaved with such might the doors splintered. He laughed
and dropped them to the floor. They landed with a loud thud.

Once inside the
library, Kyle sensed that the building wasn’t fully empty. The handy map at the
entrance had informed him that students had twenty-four-hour access with a
swipe card. Kyle thought it was likely that he would come across a few hunched
figures, furiously scribbling dissertations as if their lives depended on it,
and that he would end their lives if the urge took him. But before that, he
needed to get to the top floor where some of the faculty offices were located,
including Aidan’s. Some instinct told him that the professor would be hard at
work, oblivious to the time of night it was.

He found the
stairwell and sprung up the banisters, jumping from one to the next like a
monkey, until he was on the landing of the top floor. Another handy sign
pointed him in the direction of Aidan’s office. Or, from the sign, one of his
offices; but if he wasn’t in this one, Kyle could go to the other buildings and
check elsewhere.

Kyle’s
anticipation mounted when he saw, as predicted, light spilling out from beneath
the old professor’s office door. Kyle opened it quickly and swirled inside.

Aidan was sat at
his desk. He swiveled in his chair and gasped when he saw Kyle standing there.

“Can I help
you?” he said, adjusting his glasses.

Kyle pulled up a
spare chair and sat himself down, his face uncomfortably close to Aidan’s.

“As a matter of
fact, you can,” he said.

He smirked as Aidan
leaned back, trying to get some space between them. It was then that Kyle
noticed the book that lay open on Aidan’s desk. He hadn’t been able to read all
that well in his human days, but he could still recognize the word
vampire
.

“Doing a bit of
light reading?” Kyle said with a smirk.

Aidan snapped
the book shut.

“What do you
want?” he demanded.

Kyle didn’t
answer him.

“Vampires, eh?”
he said, his eyes still transfixed on the closed book on Aidan’s desk. “You
believe in all that stuff, do you?”

Aidan looked
flummoxed.

“For some reason
I don’t think you’ve come here for a philosophical debate,” he said.

Kyle threw his
head back and let out a short, sharp laugh.

“You’d be right
about that, prof,” he said. “I’m no philosopher, I can tell you that much for
free.” He put his feet up on Aidan’s desk, making bits of dried mud fly onto
the surface. “But vampires? I don’t need to read a history book to educate me.”

Kyle watched the
minute changes in Aidan’s facial expression, the ones that revealed that he’d caught
on to the situation. Though Aidan tried to remain impassive, a small crease
formed between his eyebrows, one that was perceptible to Kyle’s super-sensitive
vision. He knew he was sitting face to face with a vampire. He knew he was in
danger. And Kyle just loved watching him squirm.

“What do you want
from me?” Aidan said, his voice clipped.

Kyle dropped his
boots back down to the ground and leaned forward on his knees.

“I’ll make this
easy for you. Scarlet Paine. Tell me where I can find the girl, and I’ll leave
your windpipe intact. Do we have a deal?”

Aidan blanched,
the color draining entirely from his face.

“What do you
want with her?”  He trembled.

“Well,” Kyle
began. “See, the thing is, the girl is my sire.”

Aidan’s frown intensified.
“You’re the one she fed on?”

“Yup.” Kyle
thumped a fist into his chest. “She made me. And I, in turn, have made others.
A whole army, in fact.”

Aidan began
shaking his head, a look of grief etching across his face.

“And,” Kyle
continued, “I intend to unleash my army on the world pretty soon. You see, I’m
not well known for my patience. And if I don’t find Scarlet Paine soon, I’m
going to tell my army to start feasting. We’ll kill every human we come across
until we find the girl. So, why don’t you save some souls, prof? Why don’t you
just tell me where she is?”

Aidan stood,
wobbled, then held onto the desk edge to steady himself.

“I don’t know
where the girl is,” he said. “Her mother is trying to find her.” Then he
glanced over his shoulder. “But I do know where they live.”

Kyle clapped his
hands together and smiled.

“I knew you’d do
the right thing!” he bellowed.

Aidan shuffled
past his desk chair.

“I’ll fetch my
address book,” he mumbled.

Kyle chuckled to
himself as he watched the old man walk to the other side of the room and open a
drawer. That had been too easy! The old fool hadn’t even put up a fight.

But when Aidan
turned back round, Kyle realized it wasn’t an address book he was holding in
his hands. The old man had retrieved some kind of weapon. It looked like a
cross bow.

Kyle leapt to
his feet and put his hands in truce position.

“Now, now. Let’s
not do anything hasty,” he said.

Aidan was
trembling, the strange weapon quivering in his hands.

“You said you
didn’t need a history book to educate you on vampires,” Aidan said, trying to
keep his voice strong. “Well, maybe if you had, you’d know how dangerous holy water
arrows can be to vampires.”

With that Aidan
pressed his finger on the trigger and a small arrow burst out of the weapon. It
lodged itself in Kyle’s shin. He roared in pain.

“Did I say
dangerous?” Aidan said. “I meant to say lethal.”

He fired again
and a second arrow burst forth. This one hit Kyle square in the shoulder. He
screamed in agony and ripped it out of his flesh.

Kyle shrieked. He
crossed the small room before Aidan had a chance to blink and wrenched the
weapon from his hands, snapping it clean in two across his knee. He grabbed the
professor around the neck and slammed his back against the wall. With one hand
around the old man’s throat, he leaned down and plucked the arrow from his
shin.

He held it up to
the light, right between his face and the terrified face of Aidan. The metal
tip glinted in the lamp light. Kyle began to laugh.

“I think you
would have been better off with a wooden stake,” he said.

Aidan’s face
crumpled at the realization of his failure. Kyle held the sharpened arrowhead
up to the professor’s eye.

“Now,” he said
between gritted teeth, “tell me where Scarlet Paine lives before I blind you.”

Aidan whimpered.

“Please,” he
whispered. “Her mother is going to turn her back. You can all turn back.”

“You think she
wants
to be human again?” Kyle yelled, slamming Aidan’s back against the wall. “Why
on earth would anyone want that? Go back to walking instead of flying? Go back
to being weak and defenseless? The girl has powers beyond her imagination. Mark
my words, being turned will have been the best thing that ever happened to her
and she will kill anyone who tries to take it away.”

Aidan whimpered
and shook his head.

“You’re wrong,”
he stammered. “Scarlet’s not like you. She wants to be good.”

“And yet she
still feasted, didn’t she?” Kyle barked. “She still killed!”

He raised the arrowhead
to eye level again and Aidan yelped. A bead of sweat rolled down the old man’s
forehead.

“Now, I’m losing
my patience with you,” Kyle said. “Tell me where the girl lives or I’ll make
sure you never get to read one of your precious books again.”

Tears began to
streak down Aidan’s cheeks. Kyle held the dart a mere millimeter from his eye.
One slip, and the old man would be blinded.

“All right!” Aidan
cried at last, his voice etched with agony. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you.”

Kyle let him
down. The old man was trembling all over. He wobbled over to his desk and
pulled out a leather-bound book. He flung it across the room at Kyle.

“It’s in there,”
Aidan said, his voice drenched with regret. “That address will lead you to
Scarlet Paine.”

Kyle clutched
the address book in his hands. Just to make sure the old man hadn’t tricked
him, he flicked to the correct section and scanned the page. At the top, in
neat, flowery, academic handwriting was the word
Paine
. Several names
and an address were scrawled beneath.

Kyle snapped the
book shut.

“Good man,
professor,” he said. “Don’t worry: one day I might just turn you, too.”

He turned and
swirled out of the office, leaving Aidan a hunched, weeping heap in his office
chair.