Rival (2 page)

I just have to kick this sick
fascination with Emily first.

"It's for my cotillion," she mutters
from inside the dressing room.

I lean on the wall outside, cross my
arms over my chest. Surely a few more of her insults, and I’ll
develop an immunity to her.

Except I saw the way her
eyes darkened when I dipped her, a cheesy move, like we were in
some kind of teen dance movie. She's
not
immune to me
.

My heart still pounds, but I fake
casual.

"What's a cotillion?" I ask.

"Big fancy dance," Erick chimes in,
though he doesn't look up from some game on his phone. "Girl's
eighteenth birthday thing."

"Stupid party." Emily bursts out of the
dressing room, curtains flying behind her. She's dressed in a pair
of mud-spattered skinny jeans and a fitted t-shirt.

She's just as hot in her street clothes
as she was in that fancy, frilly purple dress.

She doesn't even glance at
me.

"So I'm invited, right?" I trail her as
she goes to the counter to pay the sales lady. Erick slowly follows
us.

"It's family-only," she
snaps.

"Well..." Erick stuffs his phone in his
back pocket, eyes scanning the store around us. Chick-scoping?
"There's always the last dance, reserved for someone special. Like
a boyfriend."

"Which I don't have," she
mutters.

"You could," I offer. I turn on a
winning smile. Usually, it makes girls sigh, but apparently it
doesn't affect Emily. She barely flicks her dark-brown eyes at me,
lips pinching as she takes a platinum credit card back from the
sales lady and slides it into her pocket. No purse for Emily.
Probably too girly.

"I wouldn't date a quitter," she
mutters. Her voice is barely above a whisper, but I still hear
it.

I know exactly what she's talking
about.

And it's all because of secret number
two.

I face a daily battle. I have juvenile
arthritis.

I hate it. Saying the word arthritis
makes me sound like a sissy, like I'm some kind of farty old
man.

Two years ago, I had a flare up right
in the middle of the annual tournament, the biggest deal in six
counties, and I couldn't finish the fight. I was in such pain that
I ended up in the hospital for a day and a half.

But I didn't tell anyone.

And Emily thinks I threw the match on
purpose. Like I would really insult her like that!

None of my friends know about my
disease. I don't want them to.

I want to stay the hot senior, not
become an object of pity.

Emily turns away from the counter. Done
with her transaction, apparently.

"We gonna eat?" Erick asks. "I'm
starving."

"I'll go with." I include myself, not
missing the scathing look she sends her cousin over her
shoulder.

Erick shrugs, his ears turning pink,
which is a little hard for someone with such a dark complexion. He
and I struck up a friendship earlier this semester, in Spanish
class, where he's a natural and I struggle.

"Been riding this morning?" I ask. It's
pretty obvious by the mud on both their clothes, but I'm making
conversation.

"Yep. You should've seen Emily flying
over the hills."

I can imagine it. Watching her in
action during a sparring match is intense. Not just because she's
hot, but because of her fire. It's something inside her, the
intensity, passion that she exudes... It's amazing to watch her
fight.

I just wish she'd turn some of that
passion my direction.

She ignores the both of us.
Walking a little behind her near-jog, Erick shrugs back at me. Yes,
I've confided in him. We're not best buds, but he noticed me moping
over her one too many times and tricked me into spilling. He's on
board with my
purge her from system
plan.

They both hit up the food court
hamburger joint, but part of my treatment plan is not eating too
much junk food, so I grab a smoothie and join them at the mishmash
of tables and chairs.

I can't help but notice that Emily sits
on the side of the table with no chairs nearby—probably trying to
force me to sit opposite her, where Erick is.

I drag over a chair. The action sounds
like nails on a chalkboard, only louder. She winces as I plop down
next to her.

"So this party, will there be dancing?"
I take a slurp from my straw, offer it to her, but she pushes my
wrist away with a wrinkle of her nose.

"Yep," Erick affirms. "Ballroom
style."

She shakes her head, eyes closing as if
in pain.

"All night?" I ask.

She moans, leaning one elbow on the
table and pushing her fist into her forehead. Still munching a fry
though. My kind of girl.

"No." Erick grins.

"Thank goodness," Emily mutters under
her breath.

"Mostly, it's just at the start.
There's a traditional dance where the debutante's
father—"

"Uncle," Emily corrects, and there's a
tightness to her voice.

Erick and I both freeze, but Emily
keeps eating, eyes on the table in front of her.

The blunder is a cold reminder that
Emily's dad passed away two years ago. Just before the tournament
she thinks I threw.

Erick recovers quickly. "Right. My dad
will dance with Emily, then all the male cousins—"

"Every stinking one of them," she
mutters.

"...then it's tradition that the
debutante dances with the 'male her heart treasures
most.'"

She stuffs her face with the burger.
"That won’t be happening," she says with a mouthful.

"If you don't want anything to do with
it, why are you bothering to throw the party?" I ask, because it's
pretty obvious she's not into it.

There's a long silence between Emily
and her cousin.

"It's for my mom," Emily says
finally.

But she doesn't seem happy about
it.

3 - Emily

After the disastrous late lunch with my
cousin and our tag-along, Brett, I'm ready to kick it out of the
mall. I lead the way out of the main building and into the nearby
parking garage, but the boys lag behind, talking about a Spanish
class.

Their voices lower, and my nose starts
to itch. Are they talking about me?

I try not to care as I clatter down the
stairs to the level where Erick parked his truck. It's daylight
outside, at least for a little longer, but in this enclosed space,
it's dank and shadowed.

It puts me on edge a little, which I
why I notice the movement at the far end of the garage. Could be
someone going to their car, but after a moment I still don't see
any taillights flash or hear an engine crank.

"Erick?" I call out over my
shoulder.

There is more muted conversation
between the boys, and they edge marginally closer, but I'm still
ahead.

A faint shuffling sound turns my head
the other direction. What was that movement a couple of rows
over?

Again I strain my ears, listening for
the sound of a car door closing. Silence.

I'm on the tips of my toes, spine
tingling. A warning sign my dad always told me not to
ignore.

I wish I had a weapon on me. But since
I'm not an official Chaser yet—thanks to my mom's stubborn
insistence that I stay out of the family business—I've got
nothing.

But Erick probably does.
Maybe not a gun, but a knife or
something
.

I whistle a heads-up back to my cousin.
At the same moment, a tall, thickly-built guy with unwashed,
scraggly blond hair stalks out between two cars, only a few yards
ahead. Coming right at me.

The sharp planes of his face tell what
he is even before I register the pitch-black eyes and bared
fangs.

Vampire.

Before he died, my dad trained me in
all kinds of defensive and combat fighting. But that's all it was.
Training. I've never gone against a vamp in real life.

Until now.

There's no hesitating as he lunges at
me. I duck to one side and hear the hiss of air as his strike
misses very close to my head and shoulder.

"Emily!" Erick shouts behind
me.

Footsteps pound on the pavement, but I
only get a glimpse of the boys approaching. I've got to keep my
focus on the monster coming at me again.

I glimpse two more vamps, a girl and a
guy with a crew cut, come out from among the multitude of cars,
rushing the boys. I don’t have time to see what happens to them,
because the vamp that attacked me tries a grab this time. I slide
past his reaching claws and use a nearby car's bumper to climb and
vault into a backflip, arcing over the vamp and landing behind him.
I shove between his shoulder blades, and he tumbles between the two
cars.

I can’t let down my guard. I know he’s
getting right up.

Vamps heal quickly, so they're hard to
kill. With a weapon, you can inflict a death-wound by targeting the
heart or head.

Without a weapon...? I'm on defense,
and I don't like it.

Heart pounding, half-panicking, I jog
backward, scanning the ground for anything I might be able to use.
Piece of broken glass from a previous fender bender? Gun someone
left behind?

Didn’t think so.

Yards away, Erick grapples with the
female vamp, silver glinting in the low light. He must have a
knife. Closer, Brett kicks the last of the three, the crew cut
male, and the move sends it to its hands and knees. But it gets
right up.

"You know these guys?" he asks over his
shoulder, out of breath.

Probably asking because they attacked
me first.

"No!"

With three of them coming
after us, they must’ve targeted Erick or me as Chasers. Probably a
case of
wrong place at the wrong
time
.

Brett turns a nice roundhouse and
clocks the vamp in the head with the heel of his cowboy
boot.

Watching him street fight in his cowboy
garb is a little unsettling.

A normal human would've blacked out
from the hits Brett is getting in. But the vamp just shakes it off
and keeps coming, this time baring his fangs at Brett.

"What the—"

I've lost focus, and the blond vamp
comes at me from the side. I see him before he gets his hands on
me, but can't get completely out of his way. He tackles me, sending
me forward.

I cry out and stumble right into Brett,
almost taking us both down, but he steadies me with a hand at my
waist.

For a moment, everything
seems to stop around us. His blue eyes lock on mine, and I see a
steady determination in their depths. For a moment, I
feel
it. A connection.
We're going to get out of this. Together.

When I turn back to face the vamp, I'm
back-to-back with Brett. And much steadier.

I sweep out a low kick, knocking the
vamp's feet out from beneath him.

"Don't let them get too close," I warn
Brett. I don't want to imagine what their fangs would do to either
one of us. Slice right through an artery, probably.

"Yeah, no kidding." He grunts, maybe
getting in a blow of his own.

But the vamps just keep coming at us,
and neither of us has a weapon to dispatch them.

Until the blond vamp in front of me
reaches into an inside pocket on his bulky jacket and comes out
with a wicked-looking blade.

I curse.

"Emily?" Brett asks over his
shoulder.

Very faintly, I can hear the sound of
sirens. Just what we need for our little party, human cops to mess
things up.

"Mine's got a knife," I tell
him.

4 - Brett

My stomach drops at Emily's words. That
punk pulled a knife on her?

These guys must be on something. It's
the only explanation I have, because they've taken hits that
would've made a linebacker cry like a baby, but these dudes just
keep coming at us.

Emily moves. She's behind
me, so I can't see her as I face off with
crew cut
in front of me. Almost like
she jumped back.

It revs my anger that someone is trying
to gut her.

Crew cut
growls. Literally growls. He swipes at me, and
I'm pretty sure his claws glitter in the dim lighting.

But that's impossible,
right? People don’t have
claws
.

"Erick?" Emily calls out. She ducks to
the side as I throw a punch at my opponent. His cheek crunches in,
making him look ghastly. Blood spills from a gash on the side of
his face.