Blood Forever (16 page)

I feel a weird tug of disappointment in my gut. It’s funny—back when I was first informed of my slayer destiny, I thought it was a nightmare come true. But now, being left out—being turned down for a job I was supposedly born to do—I feel like breaking out in tears rather than jumping for joy. I guess I hadn’t realized how much my role as a slayer had become part of my personal identity.

Do they really think Spider will become as good a slayer as me? Better even? And what if war between vampires and slayers does break out? Will she end up getting slaughtered by brain-hungry zombies?

No. She is innocent. Naive. She has no idea what she’s up against, and it’s my job to save her from herself. “Spider, look,” I try to reason. “I know right now this probably seems kind of cool and all. But trust me, you don’t want to do this. It’s not all glamorous and fun. In fact, it’s really dangerous.”

“What, you think I can’t handle myself?”

I groan. “You can’t even stay alive when we play World of Warcraft. And that’s only virtual slaying.”

My friend scowls. “Oh, that’s nice. Real nice, Rayne.”

Sigh. I didn’t mean to offend her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m just worried about you. That’s all. Now is Teifert in there? I need to speak to him. It’s very important.”

Spider frowns, standing in front of the door. “I’m not supposed to let anyone in…”

“I’m not anyone. I’m your best friend,” I remind her. I make a move toward the entrance. To my surprise, my so-called best friend leaps into my path, whipping out a stake from her Feed bag. I sigh.

“Really? This is how you want to play it, Spider?” I ask. “Really?”

“I’m sorry, Rayne,” she says in a tight voice. “But my orders are very clear. Anyone tries to get into Slayer Manor?” She shrugs. “I’m supposed to stake them through the heart.”

I
stare at Spider in disbelief. Is she freaking kidding me?

“Um, dude. I’m not even a vampire. Why the heck would you go and stake me?” See, this is reason number one why she’s completely wrong for the job. She doesn’t even get who’s stakeable and who should be killed with alternative weapons.

“And how do I know you’re not a vampire?” she demands.

“Um, let’s see. For one thing, I’m standing out in bright sunlight. I don’t have any fangs. I had a garlic tofu scramble for breakfast and I’m wearing a cross necklace,” I say, pulling out the necklace in question from under my blouse. A really cool Gothic cross I got on Etsy. “And if you step aside, I can show you how I can walk into Slayer Manor without any sort of invite whatsoever.”

“Yeah, but what about that sparkle on your left cheek? Explain that, vampire!”

I roll my eyes. “Hard Candy glitter eye shadow. Which I borrowed from you, if I’m not mistaken.” I pause, then add, “And just FYI, if you’re really planning to go through with this whole slayer gig? You should know that real vampires don’t sparkle.”

Her face twists in exasperation. “Fine. So you’re not a vampire. But I still have to kill you if you try to come in. Teifert said so and I don’t want to get written up my first day on the job.” She looks at me pleadingly. “So could you please just walk away or something? Make me look good for my boss?”

“Believe me, I’d like nothing more. But I can’t. I have to warn Teifert about a really big threat. It’s a matter of life or death.”

She shakes her head stubbornly. “No can do, Rayne. I have my orders.”

“Fine.” I sigh. “Go on, then. Have at me.” This ought to be good.

She looks at me, her face twisted in confusion. I look back at her, eyebrows raised.

“Any time now,” I encourage her.

She takes a hesitant step forward.

“Hey, isn’t that Steve Jobs over there in the woods?” I ask, suddenly turning my head and pointing my finger off into the distance.

Predictably, Spider turns to look. (Because, you know, it’s
completely reasonable to expect her dead computer icon to be strolling through the New Hampshire countryside.) I take my advantage, diving past her, up the porch steps, and toward the front door.

My friend shrieks, realizing she’s been tricked, and whirls around, reaching out and grabbing me by the back of my shirt, yanking me backward. For a total slayer noob, she’s surprisingly fast on her feet. With her other hand, she fumbles for her stake.

I groan. “Really, Spider? I told you, you can’t kill me with a stake.” Seriously, this is getting so old.

“What makes you think it’s a stake?” she demands. Then, to my surprise, she waves the chunk of wood in my direction and flames shoot from its tip.

Holy crap! I leap to the side, narrowly missing getting flambéed by my best friend. “What the hell is that?” I cry. How did she manage to score some magical flamethrower when all I got on day one as a slayer was some stupid stick that I had to carve myself? So unfair.

“Um, Teifert gave it to me. He said I might need it.” Spider says proudly. Then she glances over my shoulder, her pride fading into distress. “Um, I didn’t know it’d do that, though.”

I follow her gaze and realize she’s succeeded in setting the porch on fire. Whoops.

Spider pushes past me, trying to fan out the flames. But she only manages to make them rise higher with her waving hands. She shoots me a desperate look. “Um, help?”

I stare at her. “You just tried to fry me like a crème brûlée. And now you want my assistance?”

“Please, Rayne! I don’t want Teifert to dock my pay for damages!”

I so want to tell her that working for Slayer Inc. is more of a destiny thing than a paid gig, but I figure there’s time to disappoint her later, when there’s not a five-alarm fire in the immediate vicinity.

“Fine. I’ll help. But you’ve got to let me in, okay? No more of this trying-to-kill-me thing.”

“Okay, okay, whatever,” she agrees. “Just get this fire out!” She runs down the porch stairs, then up again, helplessly watching the flames rise higher.

I roll my eyes and walk calmly into the manor. I grab the fire extinguisher I know they store in the closet under the stairs and head back outside.

The fire has gotten bigger at this point, lapping at the roof of the porch. Spider’s trapped herself between the fire and the porch rail, just standing there, frozen in place, a horrified look on her face. See? This is why I’m irreplaceable for this job.

I raise the extinguisher and let her rip. A moment later the flames sputter out. Spider collapses onto the porch in tears, choking on the smoke. I walk over and put a comforting arm around her.

“I’m the worst slayer ever,” she moans.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, feeling a surprising sense of pity for my friend. After all, my first day as a slayer didn’t go all that
well, either. “The firebolt thing was pretty cool. You just need to remember not to use it around flammable materials. Or, you know, best friends.”

“Yeah?” She looks over at me with a hopeful look. “You think it was cool?”

“Definitely.”

She hangs her head. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you, Rayne. I guess I just got…overenthusiastic.”

“It’s okay. It happens to the best of us.” I give her a friendly hug. “Now come on. Let’s go talk to Teifert.”

“
U
m, Mr. Teifert? There’s someone here to see you.” Spider squeaks as she peeks her head into the vice president’s office. I stand patiently behind her, letting her do her thing. The place is still a bit of a mess, presumably from my sister and Bertha’s fight two nights ago, and I wonder how he can manage to work in such disarray.

“I thought I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed, Spider,” he admonishes, not looking up from his paperwork.

“I know, but…” Spider glances back at me helplessly, then turns to her boss once again. “She says it’s a matter of life and death.”

Mr. Teifert sighs, dropping the paperwork in question onto his messy desk with a totally uncalled-for overly dramatic flair. “Very well. Bring her in.”

“Hey, Teif!” I cry, popping into the office and plopping myself down in one of the cozy armchairs across from his desk. “How’s it hanging?”

He raises his bushy eyebrows, taking me in. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Well, I
was
here to apply for the whole slayer job—I was told Bertha’s no longer in service…”

“Yes, thanks to your little friends…”

“…and I was pretty sure I was next in line. Though Spider here tells me she’s been offered the gig.” I frown. “So what’s the dealio, dude? Am I off the list or what?”

“The…dealio…as you so eloquently put it,” Mr. Teifert says stiffly, “is that you decided to break a vampire out of jail and allow him to take out one of our top operatives. Pardon me for saying so, but I assumed your blatant disregard for Slayer Inc.’s best interests meant you were not all that interested in coming to work for us.”

“Oh, that.” I nod. “Yeah, that was my bad. But you gotta understand, I thought you were only killing Lucifent because he was a child vampire. I had no idea he planned to unleash an army of zombies on the human race.” I shrug. “If I had, I promise you, I would have slain him myself when I had the chance.”

That got his attention. “I’m sorry?” he says. “What did you just say?”

“Don’t play coy with me,” I reply. “I know you must know something about Project Z. Otherwise you wouldn’t have issued the slay order against Lucifent.”

“We knew he was planning something. But we didn’t have any concrete details…”

“Okay. Well, now you do. It’s zombies. Lots and lots of creepy, undead, slimy zombies. Lucifent only wants them to impress his boss. He’s a bit shortsighted, that one. But Pyrus is going to take the idea and run with it. Meaning good-bye, Slayer Inc. Good-bye, human race.”

Teifert scratches his head. “And how do you know all of this?”

I pause. That is the question, isn’t it? But I realize I’ve got to come clean to someone. And hey, it may as well be someone who might actually, possibly believe me. “Okay, this is going to sound really weird,” I tell him. “But I’ve come back from the future.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I see.”

From beside me, Spider squeals. “So that’s how you knew everything that was going to be in the next game patch! Oh man! I was so wondering…” Then she frowns. “And how you knew who was going to win the field hockey game. Dude, that’s cheating! I want my five bucks back!”

“Silence,” Teifert commands. He turns to me. “So in this future you speak of, we’re overrun by zombies?”

“Um, well, not exactly.” I give him the shortest version possible (which still ends up being pretty long) about our adventures thus far.

“So I admit, we kind of screwed things up by saving Lucifent,” I finish. “But now we want to help make things right. Get
him good and dead before he can present Pyrus with his little project.”

Vice President Teifert pulls a cigar out of his desk drawer and lights it. Then he takes a puff. I consider reminding him about no-smoking laws in the workplace, but then decide my lungs will have to deal. No need to piss him off when we need his help.

“I’m not saying I believe you,” he says at last. “But even if I did, the problem remains the same. Getting Lucifent alone. Thanks to your little Scooby-gang meddling, we’ve lost the element of surprise. He’ll be constantly guarded from here on out.” He flicks ash into a nearby empty whiskey glass on his desk. “Not to mention, we’re currently one trained slayer short, also thanks to your contribution to our cause.”

“No offense, but you didn’t want Bertha on the payroll anyway,” I point out. “She had a ton of blood pressure problems. Not to mention she ends up betraying you and working for Pyrus in the future. And don’t even get me started about her food issues—”

“In any case,” Teifert interrupts, “most of our local operatives are occupied with other cases. And while we’ve started training Spider, and she’s doing very well, she’s certainly not prepared to go up against any kind of major threat by herself.”

“Yeah, she still needs a bit of…fine-tuning,” I agree with a small chuckle, remembering her performance on the porch.

Spider scowls. “I knew we should have done best two out of three,” she mutters.

Teifert taps his desk with his index finger, considering. “I
suppose we could call on Riverdale, our sister slayer academy in Europe…”

“Oh no!” I cry quickly. “You don’t want to do that. They turn out to be evil.” Teifert gives me a sharp look. I shrug. “Long story. But we can deal with them later. The zombie apocalypse is a bit more pressing.”

“Agreed. But you’re not listening, Rayne. We don’t have an available slayer to stop them on such short notice. Our hands are tied.”

I smile smugly. “But that’s where you’re wrong. You do have a slayer. You have me. Trained by your very own alternate-future hands. I’ve staked evil vampires. I’ve wrestled werewolves. I’ve even taken on Tinkerbell.” I decide not to bring up the fact that technically I lost that particular battle. Way too embarrassing. “Bottom line, I’m a super-slayer extraordinaire. And with the proper weaponry, I’m sure I could take on a few zombies with one hand tied behind my back.”

“You might want to use both hands,” Teifert replies dryly. “Considering that with zombies, there are hardly ever only a few.”

“Right.” I consider this. “Well, maybe the best thing to do is to go after their queen. I mean, if we can’t get Lucifent himself, we should try to cut him off at the source. No voodoo queen to raise the zombies from the dead? No zombies for Pyrus to play with. And we all live happily ever after.” Not to mention, as an added bonus, I get to get rid of Jareth’s little annoying fake girlfriend. A win for everyone.

Teifert stubs out his cigar, only half smoked. “I suppose that
would be the best possible tactic, given the current scenario,” he muses aloud. “Very well. I will provide you with what you need to go on your quest. On one condition.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“You take Spider here with you. She may not be a fully trained slayer, but she has a lot of potential. She could be useful to you in a pinch.”

Or, you know, serve as a spy to make sure I’m doing what I say I’m doing. But whatever. I don’t mind taking her and her little fire stick along. After all, we’ve fought many virtual battles over the years. Why not a real-life one?