Эллен Шрайбер - Dance With A Vampire

My eyes began to well. "Alexander—"

As Alexander looked at me, Valentine, who was standing on the shallower end, reached for Alexander's neck. I could see his pale fingers clench tightly around my boyfriend's throat.

"Alexander!" I screamed, running toward him.

Valentine closed his eyes as if channeling Alexander's soul into his pale palm.

Alexander's midnight eyes turned red. He spun around and knocked Valentine's hand away. The force sent Valentine stumbling back until he wiped out on the pool floor.

"What are you guys doing to Valentine?" Billy Boy asked from behind me, his voice distressed.

Alexander and I turned to see Billy Boy and Henry standing several feet above us at the pool's edge, shocked.

"Valentine was trying to hurt us," I said.

We turned back to Valentine, who was climbing up the pool ladder. He hopped on his coffin-shaped skateboard and disappeared into the darkness.

13 Grim Grounding

Alexander and I didn't even have time to discuss the event at the pool. We immediately whisked the nerdmates into the car and chaperoned them safely home. Once again Valentine had threatened my brother's safety and fled into the night. I wasn't sure when he'd reappear with another plan of revenge.

When Billy Boy and I returned home, I was forced to spill my guts to my parents about my brother's injurious actions. Valentine, like his older brother, Jagger, had a charm that was magnetic, if not hypnotic. The nerd-mates had fallen under the tween vampire's bewitching spell. The only way I could impede their adoration was by involving Sarah and Paul Madison.

"You did what?" my mother hollered at Billy Boy when I told her about the blood brothers ceremony. "Do you know how dangerous it is to stick a needle in your finger?"

"We used alcohol," Billy Boy protested.

"But you deliberately tried to mix your blood with your friends' blood," my mother argued. "I thought you were smarter than that."

"I remember back in my day, it was common for boys to become blood brothers," my dad confessed. "Like a rite of passage. However, times have changed, Billy. Now, what seemed like a harmless ritual can be very unhealthy, if not fatal."

"We didn't even touch each other," Billy Boy whined. "Raven jumped in between us."

My mother appeared surprised, then relieved.

"Raven has pierced every inch of her earlobe and she never gets in trouble," my brother argued.

"I take offense to that. I'm in trouble all the time!" I defended myself proudly.

"I don't understand why I'm getting all the heat," Billy Boy said. "Alexander pushed Valentine."

"He did what?" my dad asked.

"Valentine tried to choke Alexander," I explained. "Alexander pushed his hand away, that's all."

"Maybe it's best you and Valentine take a break from each other for a few days," my dad warned.

"You can't do that! He's my best friend!" Billy Boy was enraged. He mumbled something unintelligible and stormed upstairs.

I felt this tense situation was going to get worse before it would ever get better.

Billy Boy's grounding meant that for the next week he would be safe from Valentine.

However, the next day I stewed in class. Valentine was pursuing more than my brother's thoughts in Dullsville's rec center pool. In addition, Valentine confronted Alexander head-on, not only declaring I was inadequate for my vampire boyfriend, but also trying to read his soul. With every sunset, Valentine was becoming more confrontational, as if he were a grizzly bear hunting for food in a family's backyard.

I couldn't shake the image of Valentine's hand on my boyfriend's neck. I wondered what Alexander's thoughts were. Was he imagining breaking up with me, now that he thought I was a coward? I wondered if he'd regretted his decision not to be with Luna.

Instead of longing for the sunset, I was dreading it. I wasn't sure how I'd ever be able to face my vampire-mate.

At lunch, once again I was desperate to tell Becky everything.

"Why are you so long in the face?" she asked. "Prom is only a few days away."

I wanted to tell her my dilemma. Explain how Alexander had left Luna at their covenant ceremony because he didn't want to take her into the Underworld unloved. Reveal then that Jagger, who followed Alexander to America to seek revenge, met me in Hipsterville and followed me back to my hometown. And now Alexander and I were faced with Jagger and Luna's younger brother, Valentine, who was seeking revenge on behalf of the Maxwell clan. All the while, I was struggling with a big decision: whether to someday face my own mortality—or immortality—by bonding with my vampire-mate for eternity.

I was dying to spell out for my best friend how easy she had it, dating a mortal. Nothing more to decide at the end of the day than what music to download or what television show to watch.

"If I told you something," I began, "and I made you promise not to tell anyone…not even your family or Matt, could you do it?"

Instead of Becky eagerly nodding her head, she bit her red chipped fingernail and thought. And thought. And thought.

"This isn't multiple choice. It's a simple yes or no!" I snapped.

"Well, it's more complicated than that."

"How complicated can it be? You can either keep a secret or you can't."

"I'm just not sure."

"I'm your best friend. You should keep a secret just because I asked you."

"I know…you're right, but—"

"I've told you a million things before and it was never an issue."

"That was before," she admitted.

"Before what?"

"Before Matt came into my life. I don't think it's healthy to keep secrets from him."

"This secret has nothing to do with him."

"What if it slips out?"

"It can't slip out. It's the most secretest of all secrets. Aren't you even curious?"

"I'd feel funny if I hid something from him."

I was slightly jealous of her sudden allegiance to Matt when it meant leaving me, her best friend, in the dark.

"You think he tells you everything?" I snipped. "From the time he rises to the time he sleeps? Every thought he has? Every song he listens to?"

"That is his choice. Besides, I believe he tells me everything," she said confidently, just as Matt joined us.

"I'm not supposed to tell you this," Matt began, "but a few of the guys on the soccer team have booked a limo for prom."

Becky smiled and gave me a knowing glance.

She was right. I'd have to carry my secret to the grave.

That evening, when I arrived at the Mansion's gate, my usually awaiting vampire was a no-show. I hiked up the long driveway in my Morbid Threads black-and-white-striped tank, black flowered embroidered skirt, black knee-high fishnets, and Black Kitty Mary Janes.

I rapped on the door with the serpent knocker. The Mansion door stood still, as if it were peering down at me, barring me from returning to see my vampire-mate.

I knew it—Alexander was having second thoughts about me.

I walked around the side entrance. The Mercedes was parked at the detached garage. I knocked again, but no one answered.

I returned to the front door and pounded my fists on the wooden entrance.

I could hear the bolts unlock, and slowly the Mansion door creaked open. Jameson popped his head out.

"Miss Raven, I'm surprised to see you."

"Alexander and I were supposed to meet by the gate."

"I thought you knew, Miss Raven. Alexander's gone."

Gone? My heart felt like it fell out of my chest and dropped between the weed-filled cracks in the Mansion's uneven front steps.

"He moved back to Romania?" I asked, my voice cracking.

"No, he went out for the evening. I thought he was meeting you."

"So did I."

Jameson seemed worried. "Alexander was behaving oddly this evening."