“Who’s this?” asked a man who looked to be somewhere in his thirties. He had hair that lay flat against his scalp as if every strand had been glued into place. While most of his tattoos were concentrated at the front of his neck, some thinner strands crept up along a large pointed chin before tapering off just before reaching his lower lip.
Tara stood a few paces away from the bar. Judging by the look on her face, she was all but frozen there. Her skin had paled and was clammy. She kept her arms wrapped around her body as though covering herself after being caught in the shower. One man approached her from the left as Wes came in from the right,
The man with the pointed chin wore an expression that could hardly be called a grin. It was more of a curl of the lip to reveal two sets of fangs sprouting from his upper jaw when he asked, “Have you been holding out on us?”
Wes placed a hand on Tara’s shoulder to hold her in place. “There’s plenty of people on this campus, Evan. You don’t need me to tell you that.”
“The least you could have done was invite us to the party.” Closing his eyes and concentrating on something that slithered past human senses, Evan hissed, “But it seems Hector has already found a party of his own.”
The man under the bar sank his teeth deeper into Amy’s neck. Paige knew if there had been any prayer of her helping Amy, it was gone now. She didn’t know what she could have done, but it made her feel just as bad as if she’d killed the other girl herself. When Hector pulled Amy in tight against his chest, his fangs tore her throat open wide enough for Paige to see the bloody fibers within her. Hector even squeezed Amy’s limp figure to force the last bit of fluid from her veins before the possibility of sharing her was broached.
“You’ve brought them into your confidence,” Evan said in words that built in intensity like a train car that had been cut loose and was rolling toward a house at the bottom of a hill. “You’ve got them coming to you, getting drunk, getting laid, getting unconscious. How the
Paige’s back was pressed against the wall. She didn’t want to be near Hector and Amy, but she also didn’t want to make herself any more visible to the others. The men’s tattoos were definitely moving now. The more Hector slurped from the dead husk in his grasp, the more the black markings fluttered beneath his skin. The sight of it hit her on the same nerve as watching a thousand newborn spiders flowing from the cracked thorax of their mother.
“Look,” Wes said. “I told you I’d stake this place out and I did.”
“All you’ve fed us is scraps. The choice cuts are here.” When a group of jocks came down the stairs, they sounded like a herd of elephants. Evan’s eyebrow rose and he watched the bottom of the staircase as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was about to see. Then he shifted his gaze ever so slightly to stare directly at Paige. “Friends of yours?”
Hector let Amy’s body hit the floor so he could wipe the blood from his chin and then lick it off the top of his sleeve.
The jocks were taking their time in getting down the last few stairs while arguing about who would carry the cooler up from their car. Within those few seconds, Tara spotted Paige and showed her an urgent, pleading stare.
She might have been too late or too slow to help Amy, but Paige couldn’t watch another friend get ripped apart. Standing up to her full height, she placed her hands flat on the top of the bar where her left palm brushed against a corkscrew. As soon as she had a firm grip on the narrow plastic handle, she started to vault over the top of the dented surface. Hector was more than quick enough to stop her by lunging out from his corner to grab her ankle.
As Paige’s chest hit the edge of the bar and her feet were forced down less than an inch from where they’d started, the jocks made it down the stairs. They only had enough time to notice Paige standing behind the bar before another woman lunged all the way from the front door, across the room, and straight at them with her hands outstretched to sink her fingernails into their upper chests.
Shirts were shredded like wet newspaper, right along with several layers of underlying flesh. The woman slammed her weight against the largest of the young men and regained her footing a fraction of a second before she would have dropped to the floor. Once standing, she bared a set of curved fangs that slid from her upper jaw and drove them into the shoulder of the smaller of the two jocks. He opened his mouth to speak but dropped before making a sound. Milky venom still dripped from his wound as she pulled the slender fangs out and pressed her mouth against the other jock’s lips.
Paige’s heart slammed against the inside of her ribs. Her breath felt like it was solidifying in her throat, but she still tried to get to Tara. The grip around her ankle was too strong to shake, so she stabbed Hector’s arm with the corkscrew to loosen it. The curved steel dug straight through the upper layers of skin, only to hit a surface that was solid enough to prevent the tip from going any deeper.
Hector’s strength was incredible. His fingers felt like steel bands that didn’t even twitch when she stabbed him repeatedly with the corkscrew. Even when she dug in as far as she could and twisted, Hector’s only response was a labored snarl. Near the stairs there was a slight rush of movement but no voices calling for help. No grunts, no punches being thrown, and no athletic young men asserting themselves against the invaders. No help for Tara.
Paige’s next blow landed on the side of Hector’s neck in the middle of one of the thick tribal tattoos. This time there was no mistaking it. The tattoo wriggled away when the corkscrew punctured the skin. He responded by tightening his grip even further and pulling her leg out from under her body. She hopped in an attempt to remain upright, but that wasn’t enough to keep her from hitting the wall on her side.
“Hide these two somewhere,” the woman said before both of the jocks’ limp bodies landed on the bar.
“What are you doing?” Tara asked in a voice that was so weak it could hardly be heard over the music filtering down through the floor. Wes threw her over the bar and then jumped it himself, barely scraping his shoes against the warped countertop before landing in a crouch between Paige and Tara.
Evan walked around, pulling the two unconscious jocks behind him.
Since Paige couldn’t free herself from Hector’s grip, she shifted her attention to Wes. He looked at her and shook his head before sternly whispering, “Don’t.”
Her scream came like an explosion from her lungs and would have easily torn through the Snoop Dogg chart- topper everyone was singing on the second floor if Wes hadn’t cut it off by pounding his fist into her face. No matter how much the punch hurt, Paige wasn’t about to submit.
She had been in her share of confrontations. Although she would never have admitted as much, most of the physical ones had been classic girl fights. Lots of flailing arms and wild slaps without a lot of damage being done. She’d been in a schoolyard scuffle with a boy, but she could tell he was holding back on account of her smoother features and pink clothes. When Wes leaned down and hit her again, he didn’t hold back. He didn’t glare at her with an abuser’s contempt or a rapist’s ferocity. He simply smashed her face because that’s what he needed to do. It was harsh. It was clinical. It was painful.
Apart from the heavy thump of knuckles against her head, Paige heard a crunch that filled her ears and sent a jolt of pain through her entire upper body. Because she didn’t have the good sense to crumple, he hit her once more. Instead of a crunch, Paige heard the snap of cartilage in her nose giving way. Blood flowed down her face and her next breath set off a firestorm of pain that filled every bit of real estate in her skull.
The bodies of the jocks hit the floor behind it like sacks that had been dropped from the roof. Paige tried to get out from under them but was unable to move quickly enough due to the grip that was still around her ankle. It tightened and jerked her closer to the shadows as something sharp raked against her hip. The jocks lay on the floor with their limbs akimbo, dead weight pinning her to the floor.
“Hey, where are those beers?” someone called from upstairs.
When Paige attempted to respond, the woman leapt on top of her to straddle her chest and slap a firm hand over the lower portion of her face. The pain from having her broken nose mashed that way nearly knocked Paige out, but the sight of the woman above her was something to hold on to.
“Right down here,” the woman said calmly. Her face was slender and attractive, despite the sets of black markings that ran up along both sides of it. Clear green eyes locked upon Paige and widened as if to specifically display the black veins extending toward her pupils.
Whoever had made the inquiry about the beer stomped halfway downstairs and was met by Evan. “What’s up there is all that’s left,” he said. “But check in the bottom of the footlocker in my room. I got a stash in there that should make up for it.”
