Creature Discomforts (Descendants) (6 page)

“God, I am
so
over vampires,” Rachel moaned. “Seriously, could it be any more annoying?”

Sid clicked his laptop shut and tossed it aside on Kendra’s bed. “Better than zombies. Those really suck.”

“Okay,” Kendra said. “What do we know about vampires? I mean, what are they
actually
like?” She had both hands resting against her collarbone, her fingers protectively close to her neck and gills in case any vampires popped up from under the bed.

Rachel read from her Corpus, the tip of her index finger tracking along the entry. “Um, they gather in groups called nests and have an elected leader. Apparently they don’t eat all that often, and kidnapping is definitely
not
part of their M.O. Neither is sticking to girls only.”

“Which is why I didn’t think it could be vampires,” Sid interjected. “They’re a lot like feral cat colonies. They keep a fairly steady number in the nest and only replace a member when someone dies, but these kidnappings make it seem like they’re creating a whole new nest.”

“Aren’t they immortal?” Rachel asked, her eyes still on the Corpus.

“Nope,” Sid answered. He stood to face them both, arms behind his back. It was all very professorial. “Barely any demon is actually immortal. Most have at least a trace of human ancestry, and vampires are no different. What we label demons and half-demons are the result of true demons mixing with early humans millennia ago. True demons
are
immortal, but it’s been a thousand years since the last was free on Earth.”

Rachel looked back to her Corpus and noticed a tiny asterisk after the word “predator,” the term designated to mean a demon was to be killed on sight. The ink had faded with time, but the little mark had obviously been added after the book was created. She pointed it out to Sid.

He tapped the asterisk then nodded toward his closed laptop. “That’s why I just emailed your mom. Different nests have alliances and treaties with Descendants. Your mom should be able to tell us how close the nearest nest is and the leader’s name. Maybe they know something. Every vampire I’ve ever met is pretty strict about policing their own.”

Kendra frowned. “Hold on. You don’t kill vampires on sight?” She wrenched the Corpus away from Rachel and jammed a finger at the open page. “They’re a predator. It says it right here. And you’re saying they’re free to kill people because of some treaty?”

Sid held his hands up. “I didn’t make the treaties, and I’m not exactly calling up a vampire to get a beer. But, well, first: Most don’t kill. They feed and then alter the memory.”

Kendra snorted in disbelief.

“It’s complicated, Kendra,” Rachel said, pulling the Corpus back to her lap. “And I’d think you’d get that. Treaties and everything. Until a few hundred years ago, Descendants hunted merpeople too. Some still think we should.”

Kendra pulled a face. “That’s completely different.”

Sid didn’t answer, but his thoughts were clear in the way he frowned and looked away from Kendra. And Rachel kind of agreed. Was it so very different? Merpeople were hardly a known species, and reading more on vampires Rachel realized they had a whole society and hierarchy as well. Kendra opened her mouth to argue, but Rachel talked over her.

“The point is, we have a vampire—or a nest of them—acting weird, and we need to figure out why before more women go missing.”

*

The first thing Rachel noticed
were the cops stationed at the entrance to Caster Hall. Students grouped in front of the arched wooden doors, bent close together to gossip, their eyes on the police. Rachel hitched her bag higher onto her shoulder and threaded through the students, careful to keep her movements casual and her expression calm.

“What happened?” She flashed a curious smile and peered behind the two young officers into her residence hall.

“A missing woman,” the man on the right grunted.

The news spread through the gathered students like a giant wave coming to shore. As it did, the whispers got louder, more shrill.
More fearful.

Everything inside Rachel deflated. It was getting more frequent, these kidnappings. And she still had no real leads. Her mom had tracked down the closest nest, which was a long-standing group in New Orleans, but their leader hadn’t heard any rumblings of a rogue vamp with a taste for college girls.

Before she could ask anymore, one of the dorm’s RAs bustled through the doors with a sheaf of bright orange flyers. “Caster Hall, right?” The woman’s voice was strained and high. Rachel nodded and had a flyer thrust into her hands before the RA moved on, shoving papers at anyone who came close enough. Rachel stared at it, safety tips on one side and simple self-defense on the other.

Over the next few days, those orange flyers appeared everywhere: taped to lampposts, stacked outside the entrance to the
caf, handed out in classes. Cops patrolled the shaded walkways and forested paths between buildings and dorms, and a local martial arts club held free defense seminars. Rachel even found herself escorted from the library back to her dorm one evening when she’d stayed past sunset. And weaving through it all was the gossip and anxiety, like a current tugging at her limbs and trying to drag her under. There was no other word for it: Saint Etienne was scared.

And yet, the final week of the semester rolled on. Rachel packed up from her last regular class of the semester mid-morning on a
Friday, her mind jumbled with color-coded study timetables and the nighttime patrol schedules she and Sid had been sharing. The sun was an oozy red memory smeared across the sky by the time Rachel looked up from her statistics reviewnotes. She stretched her aching neck with a low groan and flexed her fingers. Her skin felt grimy after hours bent over her desk with nothing but crap food and diet soda to keep her going.

She peeled off her clothes for her bathrobe and had just grabbed a towel and her toiletries when Kendra trudged through the door, her face drawn and dull. “If I look at one more dichotomous key for marine invertebrates, I’m going to lose my mind,” she announced.

“I’m starting on Pre-Christian Myth review after I shower. Want to study with me?”

Kendra collapsed face-first onto her bed, but Rachel could still plainly hear the expletive she shouted into her pillow.

Rachel shrugged and pulled the door open just as Kendra rolled over. “Oh, and Sid is right—”

“Here,” Sid finished.

Rachel jumped and clutched her bathrobe closed.

Sid eyed her. “That’s not what you’re wearing, is it?”

“What are you talking about? I’m going to shower.”

Sid held up a six-pack. “No, we’re going to
kegger.”

“Number one: no, we’re not; and number two: you don’t ‘
kegger,’ you go to
a
kegger.”

From the bed, Kendra snorted. “Well,
you
don’t, Rach.”

Rachel threw Kendra a dirty look, but her friend just grinned. “C’mon, it could be fun. We’ve been doing nothing but studying and trying to track down
Suckula forever. We deserve a night off.”

Sid grabbed the toiletries from Rachel’s hand and put them back on the vanity with an evil grin to match Kendra’s. “This is compulsory.”

Rachel gave him the compulsory finger. But an hour later, she was picking her way down a nearly black trail past the clock tower and through the narrow gap in the mountains outside Saint Etienne’s campus. The police presence over the last week made it substantially more difficult to hold an underage party, so the end-of-semester bash had relocated to a hollow at the end of a trail.

They followed the river for almost a mile as it snaked through the trees. The
moon was blotted out by the surrounding peaks, but through the screen of branches and leaves overhead, Rachel spied a wash of spangled stars. It was quiet in the woods, but a comfortable sort, nothing like the strained, fearful silence she remembered when tracking the wendigo.

And then, it suddenly wasn’t silent. There were shouts and laughter and bad music being forced through worse speakers. They rounded a bend and were quite suddenly in the middle of the party. A massive bonfire licked at the sky, and Rachel tried not to be horrified to spy people
skinny dipping in the river.

The music and orange firelight and crush of bodies swirled around her and pulled her in—and this was one current she let herself get lost in. Maybe Kendra had been right: They deserved a break. The vampire problem could be put on hold for one night. It helped that the university’s intramural rugby team had apparently volunteered to act as security.

Rachel accepted a frothy-topped, too-warm beer from Sid and tried to relax. She bobbed her head to the music—it wasn’t too obnoxious if she concentrated on the beat—stared at the dancing flames, and sipped the beer. But then a shriek burst in her eardrums, and she spilled half the drink down her shirt.

Unfortunately, the shriek wasn’t the sound of her least-favorite person being eaten by a vampire.

“Siddy! You made it!”

Beth Ann wiggled through the crowd and leapt at Sid. At least he had the decency to heave a resigned sigh as his girlfriend threw herself at him.

“Hey, Beth Ann,” Sid managed. Rachel bit back a grin at the annoyance lacing his words.

Beth Ann kept one arm latched around Sid’s hip and turned to Rachel. “And you came too, Rachel.” She blinked in wide-eyed innocence—though how she managed with the glorified tarantula legs glued to her lashes, Rachel had no idea—and flashed a smile that showed every gleaming tooth. Apparently winning the Great Boyfriend Debacle of 2013 had made Beth Ann less angry
at Rachel. “And you even dressed up! Did Kendra lend you that cute skirt?”

Rachel looked down at the borrowed seersucker skirt and navy tank. She’d left her favorite necklace—a locket stuffed with protective herbs given to her by her mother last year—in favor of a dangly pendant of raw wood, but had insisted on wearing her scuffed brown boots so she’d at least have her dagger on hand. She wiped a hand down the wet spot thanks to Beth Ann’s exuberant hello and tugged at the skirt waist a bit self-consciously.

“Er, yeah,” she said. “Thanks?”

Beth Ann nodded. “Kendra’s a bit smaller than you,” she said with an eye on Rachel’s waist, “but don’t you look darling!”

And to prove how much
more
darling she looked, Beth Ann twirled away from Sid and placed a hand at her tiny waist and cocked a hip. “I’ve missed you, Siddy,” she pouted. Then she shimmied and grabbed his hand. “Come dance with me.”

Sid pushed his forgotten drink into Rachel’s hand and let Beth Ann pull him into the pulsing bodies. It was seriously annoying how Sid fell for Beth Ann’s lame tricks. Rachel looked away from the duo before catching a glimpse of where Sid’s hands were going. Her stomach twisted and heat crawled up her neck that had nothing to do with the roaring fire. It was seriously annoying how much she
cared
that Sid fell for Beth Ann’s lame tricks.

Rachel turned away so she wouldn’t be tempted to search for Sid and instead looked for Kendra, but
she’d been pulled away by her medical illustration friends. Rachel backed up until she bumped into a tree and clutched both beers, suddenly not quite so relaxed. She slammed both drinks and scowled to herself.

“Hey.”

Rachel cranked her head around to come face to face with Jake. His blond hair was cropped shorter than the last time she’d seen her ex, and his face was already tan from working his uncle’s tourist boat. It made his straight, white teeth seem to shine when he grinned at her in hello.

“What are you doing here?” The accusation in her tone rippled across Jake’s easy features, but he recovered with another quick smile and handed her a drink. It was something red and fruity this time, yet with a sharp aftertaste that burned down her throat.

“Met up with some of my old soccer buddies. I have to say, I didn’t think I’d see you at a party. Isn’t it the weekend before finals?”

Rachel answered with a glare and a big gulp from the plastic cup. Jake had no business teasing her about being a good student. He wouldn’t have even graduated high school without her writing up study guides. More than that, Jake had no business even being at
her
college party. She took another big gulp to stop herself from saying as much.

“Right, well. It was good to see you,” she said. She pushed away from the tree in search of another drink.

*

Her legs tingled just the tiniest bit as she finished the next drink, and her cheeks were a little numb after the next one. But then she found herself dancing with some girls who she
thought were in the education department, and they were fun. The dancing was fun. It was all just so much … fun. Fun was a funny word. Rachel yelled it out and heard her new friends repeat it back to her as they jumped up and down with the music. Why had she never gone to parties before? She did a shot of something amber with the education girls—they were the best, weren’t they?—and twirled around. Then she was giggling, though she didn’t quite know why, and the ground was getting kind of soggy so her steps wobbled. Rachel pretended to be a model and cat-walked through the crowd.