Vamped by Lucienne Diver Page B

around to find out.
    Rend, tear, taste, shred, kill . The thoughts burst in my head like a blood vessel. The boogeyman had murder in his heart, and I had been marked for death.
    I ran . The death of the flames meant momentary blindness while my eyes readjusted, and I tripped and stumbled over things that rolled beneath my feet. Something nipped at my heels, feeling like the hounds of hell, though it was probably only the mice, spurring me on.
    I burst out into the night, suddenly able to see, and raced for Rick and the car. Marcy was nowhere in sight.
    “Marcy!” I yelled as I ran, but there was no answer. It was like the night had swallowed her whole.
    She hadn’t waited around, and I couldn’t afford to either. That thing wouldn’t be too far behind. At least she was alive. That was enough for now.

14

    I slammed myself into the car and shut the door behind me yelling, “Go, go, go!”
    Rick looked at me, startled, but was already shifting into reverse before the words were fully out of my mouth.
    “Your friend?” he asked.
    “Got away,” I said, sucking in a quick breath to speak.
    “The prophecy?”
    “Got it,” was my answer. No need to give him the time stamp on my information, which of course dated back to me hiding behind the curtains in Melli’s office.
    “Good.”
    I let my head fall back on the headrest, unable to hold it up any longer. Adrenaline had gotten me this far, but I needed blood. Stat. And not from Rick, who looked like a mosquito bite would push him over the edge.
    “Rick, we’ve got a stop to make before you take me back.”
    “No way. Someone’s going to notice you missing any time now.”
    “I doubt it,” I muttered. “Either we stop for a drink or you’re it,” I said more loudly, reaching a hand over to squeeze his leg … hard. “Got it?”
    He swallowed and turned, if possible, even paler, almost like a year-old vamp, all faded without the sun. “Where?” he asked.
    “The mall. Where else?”
    Back to my element. The mall was safe and sane, with all kinds of bright lights and sparklies and retail therapy. Lucky me, it would be on summer hours, open late, since we were past Memorial Day. It could even be that Marcy was headed there. It was instinctive, like salmon swimming upstream or knowing what skirt to pair with what blouse.
    I watched out the window as Rick drove, thinking again about my old life. Would it really be so hard to return to it? Pull a big-screen entrance back at school in bitchin’ heels and a skirt slit so high no one would be able to talk about anything else, including the fact that I was supposed to be dead? Why on earth should I go back to the compound?
    Marcy was gone, and she wouldn’t dare return to Melli’s. No one else there would even speak to me. Well, okay, I’d felt the first chink in everyone’s good-little-soldier armor tonight when they helped me escape to save Marcy. Chaz had even tossed me my boots. And then, of course, there was Bobby. I flashed on those baby blues of his, which could focus on me with that ego-boosting total attention, like I was the only thing in the world. Plus, the boy could kiss. I didn’t even want to think about what kind of practice he’d had before me or the fact that Melli-noma was part of that.
    On this side, there were mochachinos and malt balls—not that I could eat them anymore—Becca, Mom, and Dad …
    “Turn here,” I instructed.
    “But this isn’t the way to the mall. You said one stop,” he protested.
    “This isn’t a stop. It’s a drive-by.” I didn’t expect Mom and Dad to be home, and I wouldn’t know what to say to them if they were, but I couldn’t be this close and not check. Besides, Marcy’s house was right down the road, on the corner of Jacoby and Pine, so I had a perfectly good excuse for passing by. She might have come this way, following the same homing instinct I hadn’t known I had.
    We never got as far as Pine. The lights at my house were blazing. My heart sank