Vampires Rule (9 page)

Fabulous. Jack wondered how long it would
take the English teacher to piece it together. It was another thing
he couldn’t tell Silver about. She would hit the roof if she knew
the teacher thought he looked familiar. To her, it would be one
more reason why he shouldn’t show his face in public, especially
not at Jefferson Memorial.

During the next two weeks, Jack found a
routine he could live with. He went to school, did his homework and
tried to stay out of trouble. Silver stopped pushing him to drop
out, but she still shot him warning glares now and again. He made a
couple new friends. Even Billy seemed to relax, let down his
guard...

...and isn’t that when the bad stuff always
happens?

Another school day ended on a quiet note.
Jack searched the school for Silver. He had stayed after to talk to
a teacher about making up the work he’d missed while running around
the country with his vampire friends. He’d expected to find Silver
standing outside the door when he got done, but the hallway was
empty.

Jack wandered around for ten minutes before
deciding she must be waiting for him in the parking lot.

His footsteps echoed in the long hallway.
Being in school without anyone else around was unsettling. But was
he alone? The hairs prickled the back of his neck, signaling
trouble. Curious eyes watched him. He didn’t know where they were,
but he could feel them burning a hole into his skull... or maybe it
was just his imagination. No one except for the English teacher had
shown any interest in the new kid, and Jersey had left for the
day.

Still, the nagging feeling lingered. He
thought he heard metal scraping the floor as if something was being
dragged. Another sound caught his attention. He jerked his head to
the left and saw something tan move behind the row of lockers, out
of view. Maybe someone was spying on him. Even paranoid people had
enemies.

Around the opposite corner, a door banged
against the wall. Loud voices struggled for dominion. The words
were unintelligible. It sounded like a group of geese chattering on
their way South for the winter. A piercing whistle cut through the
noise.

“All right, everyone, calm down!” The female
voice held authority. Jack knew it belonged to a teacher before he
rounded the bend. The drama teacher Ms. Tomlin said, “I’ll call for
an ambulance. Give him room to breathe.”

She sprinted down the hallway to the main
office.

Students crowded around a prone figure on the
floor. The boy kicked and writhed like he was being electrocuted.
Students whispered concerned words to each other as they watched
his face grow redder by the minute. He cried out in pain and
twisted in agony. No one knew what to do for him.

The boy’s eyes bulged, threatening to pop out
of his head. A cloud of visible steam burst off his face like a
boiling tea kettle releasing built-up pressure. Several gasps shot
into the air. One of the girls shrieked. The students
simultaneously jumped away from him, terrified. As if by mutual
consent they fell into a state of shocked silence.

Jack went to the boy, knelt beside him,
instinctively knowing what was wrong. The kid had been infected by
a werewolf, and it was too late for anyone to save him. On the next
full moon he would go crazy, probably kill somebody. The only way
to stop that from happening was to kill the kid.

A tall girl with short hair and freckles
raced to the boy’s side with a wet towel. She’d missed the weird
steam thing and didn’t know she shouldn’t go near him. She placed
the towel on his forehead before Jack could stop her. It was never
a good idea to get that close to a werewolf, even a newbie.
Confused, the boy reacted. He swiped at her. Light glinted off
metallic claws that only Jack could see.

“Hey!” The girl cradled her injured hand
against her chest. “He scratched me.”

Jack stood and took three steps
backwards.

Silver appeared on the scene, out of breath
from running. She grabbed Jack’s arm and asked, “What
happened?”

He gestured to the kid on the floor.

The boy’s face had lost some of the redness,
and he wasn’t perspiring anymore.

Jack took Silver by the arm and dragged her
away from the crowd. He quickly explained everything including how
the girl had been scratched. He ended with, “Now she’s infected
too.”

“This has never happened before.” Silver
shook her head at him. “I realize we have a bit of a werewolf
population problem around here, but they tend to stay in the
wilderness. They rarely infect anyone. Mostly they just kill their
victims.”

“What do we do about it?”

Silver bit her lower lip for a second before
saying, “There’s nothing we can do at the moment.”

“Will you suck their souls out?” He hadn’t
meant it to sound like an accusation.

She frowned at him and pulled him even
further away from the others. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“My power only works on them when they’re in
wolf form. It takes a while for a new werewolf to learn to morph.
Lovely’s diary says someday I’ll be able to suck souls out any time
I want, but I need to develop my power first. My parents told me
I’m going to have to train for a long time.”

The drama teacher returned with Principal
Hardwick in tow. They helped the young man to his feet and walked
him back to the office. Hardwick scowled at Silver and Jack as if
he suspected they had something to do with the boy’s problem. After
the sick boy was out of sight, the group of teens broke apart. They
drifted down the hall, still discussing what they’d seen.

Silver said, “I don’t know how I’ll ever be
ready to take on the head werewolf when my parents won’t even let
me practice. There’s always some excuse. It’s a school night or
they think I should spend time with kids my own age or they’ve
grounded me over something stupid.” She smiled and a mischievous
glint entered her eyes. “I sneak out though.”

Jack had suspected as much. “You sneak out to
fight werewolves?”

“That’s right.” She headed for the door,
leaving Jack to follow. He stood there for an extended period of
time, shocked at the entire situation. If he didn’t go after her,
she’d probably leave him at school, so he ran outside. Once he
caught up with her in the parking lot, she said, “That’s why I was
in the cemetery the other night. Lucky you. If I hadn’t been there
that werewolf would have shredded you.”

If she hadn’t been there, Jack wouldn’t have
been attacked, but he kept his opinions to himself. There was
something else he wanted to talk about. There were secrets in her
eyes.

What was she keeping from him?

****

They drove in silence for almost fifteen
minutes, but this time there wasn’t anything awkward about it. Jack
knew Silver wanted to tell him everything that was on her mind,
spill her secrets. He gazed out the passenger side window at the
passing scenery, giving her time to accumulate her thoughts.

Maybe he should go first, tell her he knew
about the secret she’d been keeping. Of course he only knew
fragments, and if he admitted that much, she’d want to know how
he’d found out about it.
That was his secret
.

“It wasn’t some random coincidence that
brought you here,” she finally said. Her eyes stayed focused on the
road. “You were meant to be here at this time. You were meant to
find me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Destiny.”

Jack rolled his eyes. How many times had he
heard that meaningless word tumble from Lily’s lips? He was with
Cowboy on this one. Without thinking about it first, he repeated
one of Cowboy’s favorite sayings. “There’s no such animal. We
create our own futures.”

“We do,” Silver agreed. “For the most part.
But sometimes destiny has a hand in it. You aren’t going to like
what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll listen with an open
mind.” She paused for a second before blurting it out as fast as
she could. “Lovely wrote about you in her diary. She talked about a
boy who would change from vampire to mortal. It has to be you. What
are the odds someone else will reverse from a vampire to a
human?”

A few questions floated through Jack’s mind,
but he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to let her finish. She needed
to answer the most important question of all: what exactly did this
‘destiny’ entail? What was he supposed to do?

Silver spared him a quick glance.

He waited with a patient exterior even though
he was on the verge of exploding—and not because of the
sunlight.

“We have to kill the head werewolf, the first
werewolf.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“I’m serious, Jack.” Her eyes darted to him,
probably checking to see if his hand was on the door handle yet.
She added, “If we kill the head werewolf, all other werewolves will
revert to their human selves again. We’ll be saving the world.”

“I don’t want to save the world. I just want
to finish high school with a decent grade point average. Anyway,
what’s with the ‘we’ stuff? You’re Silver. Aren’t you the one who
needs to kill the werewolves? Why drag me into it?”

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I
can’t do it myself because I’m not old enough, and my powers aren’t
fully developed yet.”

“So? I can’t suck souls out.”

“In the diary Lovely explains she added a
fail-safe in case something should happen to me before I can do my
job. There’s a stone with magical powers, and it’s been passed down
through my family line along with the diary and the necklace. You
are the only one who can use the stone.”

“Lucky me.” He shifted in his seat,
uncomfortable, and tried hard to control the snarl threatening to
erupt from his throat. If she heard it, she would know he hadn’t
completely turned human, that she was wrong about him being her
hero. He remained a monster in disguise.

“All you have to do is touch the werewolf
with the stone. Lovely has already done the rest.”

It didn’t sound hard. He could probably
manage to do it between classes and homework, if the rock actually
worked. Then he could have his life back. “Fine. Give me the magic
rock, and point me in the right direction.”

There was a long pause from her side of the
car.

“I can’t,” she finally said, tagging a
frustrated sigh onto the end. “I don’t have the stone, and I
haven’t figured out who the head werewolf is yet.”

Jack relaxed against the seat with a smile.
He hoped he got points for agreeing to help. It wasn’t his fault
she hadn’t done the legwork. He was off the hook. Good for him.

“I can find out who it is though,” she said.
“Lovely wrote about him, about the three of us in her diary.
According to her, the three of us will gravitate towards each other
without even realizing it. We can’t help it. It’s our destiny.”

There was that word again. “You think the
head werewolf lives around here?”

She nodded.

“We can go out a few times,” he said, “kill
all the werewolves we stumble across. Maybe we’ll get him by
accident.”

“You don’t understand.” She hesitated before
delivering more bad news. “The stone only works once. We have to be
sure the guy you use it on is the head werewolf before you touch
him with it. Otherwise it’s worthless, and we’ve lost the
advantage.”

“Why can’t you just have patience, grow up,
develop your power and kill him yourself?”

He hated feeling like a petty jerk, but he’d
just gotten his life back. He was mortal, at least for the moment,
and he wanted to enjoy it. No telling how much time he had. He
wanted to do the things he’d missed while being a vampire. Was a
little ‘me’ time too much to ask for?

“There’s going to be a war,” she said.
“Someday—I assume it’s soon since you’re here—the head werewolf is
going to raise an army. He’s going to start infecting people left
and right. He may have already started. Once he has his army, he’s
going to go to war with the vampires and wipe them out. Then he’ll
either turn the entire human race into werewolves or kill
them.”

“I don’t think so.” Jack patted his jacket
pockets, feeling the urge for a cigarette, before remembering he’d
quit. “If there was a war, the vampires would win. Werewolves are
notoriously stupid.”

“Not all of them. Not this one. The older
they are, the smarter they are. He’s supposed to be brilliant, a
real strategist according to Lovely.”

“You don’t have the magic rock,” he reminded
her. “We can’t do anything without it. So even if you manage to
figure out who the head werewolf is, we can’t hurt him. What is the
point of this conversation?”

“My mom keeps it in her sock drawer, but she
doesn’t know that I know. We can take it whenever we want it.”

“Why does everyone want me dead?” He stared
at her profile, searching for a hint because he didn’t think she
was going to tell him outright. “On my first night here you were
talking in your sleep. You warned me to be careful because everyone
wants me dead. What is that supposed to mean? Who is everyone, and
why would they want me dead now when I can’t hurt anyone?”

She wasn’t going to tell him, but she was
thinking about it. Jack decided to test his new power. He
concentrated on what he wanted to know and laid a hand on top of
hers.

An electric current shot through him

****

Silver waited in the hallway for Jack to
finish talking to his teacher.

Trina approached with six or seven books in
her arms, not counting notebooks. In all the years Silver had known
her, Trina had only used her locker twice. Silver suspected Trina
didn’t even remember where her locker was located anymore. With a
look of annoyance, the girl stopped and leaned backwards as she
juggled text books, notebooks, and her purse. She struggled in vain
to open her purse with one hand.