Vampires Rule (8 page)

Silver knelt beside Jack. “Are you okay? I am
so sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

“Guess you don’t know your own strength.”

He groaned as he struggled to his feet with
her help. Students snickered as they passed them by. A couple made
random comments to Jack, warning him to watch out for Silver.

Ignoring them all, Jack said, “I’m sorry
about Tucker. I didn’t mean to do what I did either.”

They stood toe to toe, their eyes locked. Her
lips quivered before forming a reluctant smile. “Maybe we both need
to take anger management classes.”

“Yeah.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged.
“I’d better go see the principal.”

“I’ll go with you. Maybe he won’t be too hard
on you if I’m there. I’ve gotten pretty good at arguing with him
over the years.”

“You would do that for me?”

“Sure.”

They headed for the principal’s office
together. Their arms swung at their sides and fingers sometimes
bumped each other. The idea of taking her hand in his occurred to
him, but it was too soon. He certainly didn’t want to wind up on
the floor again.

****

“What’s taking so long?” Jack leaned forward
in the metal chair and looked passed Silver at the principal’s
half-open door. Hardwick paced back and forth as he put his tie on.
Jack asked, “What is he doing?”

Silver explained, “You can tell the time of
day by what Hardwick is wearing. He starts each day in professional
mode, a full three-piece suit, usually black or navy blue.
Sometimes he wears chocolate-brown. By mid-morning he loses the
tie. The jacket follows just before lunchtime. Early afternoon
you’ll find him with his sleeves rolled up, and by the end of the
day he’s walking around in socks.”

Apparently he thought punishing Jack meant he
had to be fully dressed. That was not a good sign. Hardwick shoved
his arms into his jacket while stuffing his oversized feet into
polished black shoes. He jerked the door open the rest of the way
and violently gestured with two fingers for Jack to enter.

Silver followed him to the doorway and
hovered there. Jack hoped she wouldn’t say or do anything to get
herself in trouble too. He appreciated the support but didn’t want
her to get on Hardwick’s bad side because of him.

“Here for a day and already in trouble,” the
principal said. His statement was followed by an angry snort. He
pulled a bottle of pink antacid from his desk drawer and chugged
it. He recapped the bottle and wiped pink goo from his moustache.
His hands shook. “Unbelievable. You may as well tell me now…you
were in trouble a lot at your old school, weren’t you? That’s
probably why you moved to Nebraska.”

“No,” Jack said, but it didn’t sound
convincing.

The principal glared over Jack’s shoulder at
Silver. “Don’t tell me he’s your client now. I’m getting a little
tired of this, Miss Reign. I’ll be glad when you graduate and move
on to law school.” His bushy eyebrows wagged as he turned to Jack.
“I don’t want troublemakers here. Consider yourself gone.”

“You can’t do that,” Silver said. “There were
extenuating circumstances.”

“There always are with you.”

“Every kid in this country has a right to a
free public education.” Her hands went to her hips. “You didn’t
give him a chance. I could give you a huge list of students who
have been in several fights around here, and you haven’t kicked
them out.”

Hardwick rolled his eyes. “Life is too short
to put up with this. You have detention, but one more fight and
you’re suspended.”

The two of them left the office. Silver
looked pleased with herself. Jack walked fast down the hallway even
though he didn’t know where he was going. He needed to burn off
some steam before he put his fist through a wall. He hadn’t
appreciated the way the principal had scowled at Silver. And the
way the man had talked to her…where did he get off?

Silver dropped a book.

Jack stopped.

He bent over and grabbed it at the same
moment she did. Their fingers collided. A flash of white-hot
electricity shot through him from hand to feet. Sizzling pain
accompanied it.

One second he was looking at Silver and the
next, he was looking through her eyes. It took a while to realize
he was inside of Silver’s head. He was reliving one of her
memories. It was more vivid than a dream...

...and more revealing.

****

Silver entered Trina’s room after rapping
once on the door. Her best friend since the second grade, Trina was
painting her fingernails, listening to music, and reading her email
at the same time. When she noticed Silver, she capped the
fingernail polish. She set the bottle on the nightstand and smiled
up at her guest.

She had a girly room to the tenth degree. The
walls were white with pink flowers, covered with an assortment of
decorative things like a necklace holder, foam letters that spelled
her name, and plastic blossoms with pictures in the middle. It
looked like a clothing store had exploded. Trina had a flair for
the dramatic, no more evident than in the things she wore.

At the moment she was in pink tights, a lime
green mini-skirt, and long striped blouse with a tiny denim vest.
Her long blond hair was a tangled mess, thrown to one side, mostly
straight, but she had curled a few strands. Holding the hair in
place was a butterfly clip, a black barrette and a silver fashion
comb.

“I have been dying here waiting for you,”
Trina said. “It took you long enough to get here. You promised me
details. Tell.”

Silver sat on the edge of the bed. She
couldn’t contain the huge smile for another second. “I just drove
him home. I had to make sure Billy wasn’t going to kill him before
I left.”

“Did I hear you right on the phone? Did you
really spend the night with him?”

“Say it a little louder why don’t you.”
Silver sent an anxious look to the door. It remained closed, and
she didn’t hear any footsteps. “It wasn’t as dirty as you make it
sound. I slept next to him. That is it. There wasn’t any touching
involved.”

“Why not?”

“He was wounded for one thing. Jack almost
died. He tried to save me from a werewolf. Can you believe it? He
tried to save me, the great werewolf killer.”

Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

Trina blew on wet fingernails. “Hmm. Tell me,
is he as hot in person as he was in your dreams?”

Silver blushed, picturing his rock hard abs.
“Oh yeah.”

They both squealed in delight and clasped
hands for a moment. One of Trina’s fingernails got smudged. She
rolled her eyes before grabbing the polish again.

“Describe him to me,” Trina said.

“He has dark hair, kind of long. The bangs
fall into his eyes a lot. It makes him look ultra-mysterious, and
his eyes are like the prettiest green I’ve ever seen. I don’t need
a jury for this one. He’s guilty of being totally hot.”

Trina squealed again.

Silver got up and went to the window. She
looked down on the backyard, watched Trina’s brother playing with
an invisible sword. Things were so simple when you were a kid.

“I wanted to kiss him,” she admitted.

“In-tense!” Trina jumped off her bed. “Why
didn’t you do it?”

“Because it wouldn’t be fair.” She turned to
look at her friend. “I’m keeping a huge secret from him. You know
that. He has no idea who I am or what we’re supposed to do. If I
kissed him, it would make things even more complicated.”

“I know I’m not a hunter and I don’t get it,
but why don’t you just tell him everything? Purge your soul. Then
kiss him like there’s no tomorrow.”

Silver was afraid to tell Jack what she knew
because his reaction couldn’t be predicted. He could refuse to talk
to her again. He could refuse to co-operate. Or he could suck it up
and deal with it like she had. She wished there was some way of
knowing before she opened her mouth.

“You have to tell him,” Trina said. “I mean,
there’s no way around it, right? It’s destiny.”

“You’re right. I have to tell him.”

But first she was going to figure out how to
tell him in the best way possible. If she could put a positive spin
on it, he might accept the information better. Maybe she should
enlist his brother’s help.

Silver nodded, determined. “I’ll do it. The
second I get the chance, I will tell him he’s in terrible danger.
I’ll tell him now that his powers are gone he’s going to have every
crazy werewolf and vampire in the area after him. Not to mention
hunters, of course.”

“Totally intense.”

****

It was his first time in detention. Although
he had pulled a few pranks in the past, he hadn’t gotten caught. He
didn’t think detention was as bad as the name implied. Four other
students joined him in a classroom with about thirty desks. He
chose to sit near the back. Jersey Clifford had them spread out so
they wouldn’t be tempted to talk, which wasn’t a problem for Jack
since he didn’t know anyone except for the teacher. Besides, he
needed time alone with his thoughts. Jersey told them to study or
start on their homework. Jack dropped his gaze to the book in front
of him and pretended to do exactly that.

For the entire hour Jersey’s penetrating eyes
were on one student: Jack. The teacher’s fascination with him
boggled the mind.

Jack kept his head down, refusing to
acknowledge the teacher. He stared at words on a stark-white page
until they blurred together. He moved his lips, pretending to read,
but he was thinking about Silver and what had happened in the
hallway. Touching her hand had somehow given him a ticket to spy on
her memories. Only it was more complicated than that. He’d been
inside of her head, living the scene as Silver.

He had no idea how long he’d stood there
staring at her like a brain-dead moron. By the time he snapped back
to reality, she was waving a hand in front of his face and calling
his name, clearly exasperated.

Jack kept his new power a secret. She already
wanted him to drop out of school. If she knew the vampire-reverse
might be temporary, she’d tell Billy. Then the two of them would
confine him to his bedroom. Maybe Billy would even get the stake
out.

The thought of turning back into a vampire
made him sick to his stomach. He had a second chance to live. He
wasn’t going to waste it. No one was going to stop him from
attending school for as long as he reasonably could.

Being a vampire hadn’t been a hundred percent
awful. He missed the heightened sense of smell the most. Cowboy
would die laughing if he ever found that out, because Jack had
complained about the smells before. The nastiest smells clung to
the inside of his nostrils, refusing to depart until Cowboy
introduced him to cigarettes. Chain-smoking helped them cope.

And now he missed it (the sense of smell, not
the cigarettes). Actually, if he was going to be honest, he missed
being able to smell Silver the way he had at the cemetery. He also
missed being able to hear her heart beat from several yards away.
In a strange way he even missed being able to hear the blood
rushing through her veins.

On the other hand, he didn’t miss wanting to
feed on her.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Jersey hovered over
Jack. He gestured to the empty classroom. “Everyone’s gone home.
You don’t strike me as one prone to daydreaming, Jack. Do you want
to talk about what’s bothering you?”

Jersey sat on the edge of the adjacent desk.
His tall and lanky body moved with graceful, fluid motions. The man
could have been a ballet dancer in a former life.

“It’s nothing.”

“You can trust me.” Jersey eyes narrowed. “I
can see the grief in your eyes. It darkens the soul. You know I
recently lost someone very close to me. He was like a brother. He
died suddenly. It was a shock.”

“I’m…sorry.” Jack shifted in the desk,
uncomfortable under the scrutiny of Jersey’s probing gaze. The man
was a starving dog with a meaty bone. He wasn’t going to turn
loose. Jack admitted, “I lost my friends too. They aren’t dead, but
they might as well be. I’ll never see them again.”

Jersey quoted, “I loved—but those I loved are
gone, had friends—my early friends are fled. How cheerless feels
the heart alone when all its former hopes are dead.”

“Lord Byron.” Jack smiled at Jersey’s stunned
expression.

Cowboy had insisted he spend his vampire
years defying gravity, the speed of light and every other mortal
law, but Lily had pushed him to read and learn to appreciate beauty
whether it was the written word, classical music, or an abstract
painting. He owed her big time.

“Do you want to talk about your friends? It
might help.”

“I don’t think so. I’m not really much of a
talker.”

“More of an action man, huh?” Jersey grinned.
“I have a feeling you and I have a lot in common, a lot more than
meets the eye.”

Jersey patted him on the shoulder. For a
moment the hand froze to him as if stuck. Jersey stared at him with
a look of total disbelief.

“Is something wrong?” Jack asked.

Jersey removed his hand promptly. He
swallowed several times and took a few steps away from Jack.
Something was wrong. Something had changed between them, but Jack
didn’t understand what or why.

Jack stood. He picked up his textbooks and
headed for the door. He didn’t want to talk to the English teacher
about his vampire friends anymore. The only person he wanted to
talk to was Silver. She was forefront in his mind. He didn’t know
what he would say to her, but he knew he had to see her.

Jersey followed him to the door. Jack looked
back at him once and saw that odd expression still on his face. He
couldn’t label it. It seemed to be a mixture of confusion and
awe.

“I’m still trying to figure out where I know
you from,” Jersey said. “No luck yet, but I’ll continue to work on
it.”