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  Caleb looked up and smiled at his wife.

  “Do you know what? I think this might just work.”

  He pulled open the driver’s door. It creaked and bashed against the side, the hinges rusty and loose. He looked at his wife as he climbed inside.

  “Just promise me you won’t change your mind again,” he said, settling into the seat.

  Caitlin hauled herself up and crossed her heart.

  “I promise,” she said as she settled herself behind him. “As long you promise not to crash this thing.”

  Caleb turned the biplane on and the engine spluttered and coughed. Once the engine was turning over nicely, he began to taxi through the auto salvage yard, heading for the open fields.

  “I don’t know if I can promise that,” he said, lining the plane up for takeoff.

  He pushed the thrusters forward. The biplane picked up speed. With a stomach-churning sensation, they left the ground and took to the skies.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  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, a
s 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.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  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.�
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  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.”