Rancor: Vampyre Hunter (Rancor Chronicles) (6 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Alix looked at Fred apologetically. He’d never be enticed into going with them. Not even his crush on Betty was enough to tear him away from his principles.

“Alix! Hurry!” Betty said in a harsh whisper, sensing her friend’s hesitation. Then she noticed Fred and replied in disgust, “He can come, too.”

Betty never used Fred’s name when she spoke of him, not even when she spoke to him. With that insult Fred regained color in his cheeks, buried his narrow face deeply into the center of a book and replied, “Alix, I refuse to be swayed into witnessing such barbarous actions.”

Betty clicked a photo of Fred with her iPhone and said, “That’s going in the Loser Files.” Tightening her grip on Alix’s arm, she demanded, “Coming?”

Rising from her chair, Alix asked Fred, “I’ll see you later?”

Fred kept his face buried deeply in his book and pushed his fallen glasses up his nose. He nodded to let Alix know she had nothing to prove to him. No matter what, he’d always be her friend.

Then Alix followed Betty to where the fray was about to happen. The place that Rellik had deemed as his turf.

Dead Man’s Alcove.

Alix stood beside Betty as she watched Carl at center stage, where the whole school could see. Her mind was racing, wondering when Kim was going to make her move. More so, Alix wondered if she was willing to sacrifice having the star football hero for a boyfriend.

Just as she wondered where Kim was, Alix swayed and suddenly had to catch her breath.

“You okay?” Betty asked as she caught her arm.

Alix felt light-headed and the world started to darken. She closed her eyes, and when she awoke . . .

She was a woman dressed in sackcloth living inside a drafty wooden cabin. Alix poured steamy water into two bowls and placed them on the table, one before a cloaked stranger and one before herself. The stranger’s hood, catching his long, dark hair like a valley would a waterfall, lay around the back of his neck. His rigid jaw reminded her of rocks that built a slope up into a peak. Her heart beat faster, but at the same time his soft gaze relaxed her. His eyes, whenever they looked upon her, moistened.

He cupped his hot bowl, neither flinching nor backing away from the pain. Lifting it toward his lips he leaned into it, sniffing its aroma like a beast would a fresh kill. When he drank, he did so as if to extinguish a fire within his stomach, finishing it in only two gulps. The girl wondered, as he returned the bowl to the table, why she had let such a frightening person into her home.

But when he sighed and met his eyes with hers, she knew.

“You have lost someone dear to you?” she asked.

“I ’ave.”

He rose and turned his back to her. His squared shoulders slumped, and the head he held so high fell. He sighed again, this time wrapping his arms tightly around his chest as if to block any more pain from escaping. The girl bit her lip and considered for a moment what to say. He turned to her and when their eyes again met she knew in her heart they needed one another. Their meeting was not so much chance as it was fate.

“You could call my abode home if you wish.”

He smiled, his gesture meaning so much when it came so awkwardly to him. “T’would please ma much. Ya kindness would please ma.”

She rose and shot him a frown. “I ask only because my family was taken by the fever and I need help with the land. You, Sir, may sleep in the barn.”

He was still smiling, and when he saw her do the same he said, “Way th’other beasts. ’Ow appropriate.”

The girl smiled back and motioned to his bowl. “Would you fancy another?”

“Noy, but I thank ya. Whoy I fancy is sleep. I bid ya farewell till ta morrow.”

He turned and walked out the door without waiting for her to respond. The girl stared after him, wondering in what strange adventure she had found herself.

“ALIX!” Betty shouted, snapping Alix back from her dream.

Alix was no longer a woman in sackcloth, no longer in a cabin, and no longer serving a hooded stranger.

“Kick his butt!” Betty shouted to Carl, who was standing before Derrick. Then she muttered furiously to Alix, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” But Alix knew there was something.

Alix rubbed the bottom of her nose and stared at Betty, wondering if she really did want to become like her. Were popularity, attention from boys, and a party-filled-last-year-of-high-school worth sacrificing her morals?

Shaking off those thoughts, she turned her attention to the ensuing battle, feeling a sense of déjà vu. She was still unsure whether she would help Kim or not.

Kim stormed into the alcove, struggling to get near her brother. Alix stayed where she was.

Carl pushed Derrick and said, “Ready to have your other hand broken?”

“You’re dead!”

“Wagon burner!”

“Enough!” Kim’s voice cast everyone into silence. Derrick faced his sister.

“Kim, go home or stay silent, but don’t embarrass me.”

Carl laughed. “I always knew you needed a woman to do your fighting.”

Everyone started laughing. Kim refused to move. She said to her brother, “You going to hit me, too?”

Derrick glared hard at his sister. “You’re a disgrace.”

“Derrick!” Kim shouted after him, as he stormed out of the alcove. She looked at Alix, frowned, and said, “You Barbie dolls are all the same,” before she chased after him.

Carl was about to say something to the crowd when he heard, “Sir, if you might excuse me, I’d like to get to my locker.”

There was another new kid. This one was tall, thin, and had no sign of muscle. His short blond hair and brown eyes made him look peaceful. Sporting a mahogany pinstriped suit, he had an aura of timidity.

Carl held his ground and gave the new kid a shove against the lockers. The newcomer let his backpack drop to the ground, and at first Carl thought he wanted to fight.

“Perhaps I should introduce myself. How rude of me. I am Shay Jackson. Now, if you will pardon me. Please,” said the stranger, baring his bright teeth in a smile.

Carl almost laughed. Puffing out his broad chest to dwarf him with his bulk he again pushed the stranger. “Sorry, pal. This here is Dead Man’s Alcove. Nobody uses these lockers.”

“How odd. I pray you will tell me then, if they are not to be used, why have them?”

“For fighting.” Carl tensed his muscles and puffed himself out.

If nothing else in the jock’s attitude gave provocation to fight, then the look on his face should have been enough in itself. And it was. Shay lashed out, grabbed Carl by the throat and lifted him off the ground. The crowd stepped back, shocked at the ease with which the stranger had lifted their prized football star.

“Do you wish to fight me?” Shay asked with a cool serpent’s breath, yet never losing his hint of charm.

This guy’s grip was like iron and Carl wished the whole school wasn’t watching. Gasping desperately for air, he tried to say “No,” before his eyes lolled into the back of his head. But no sound came from his constricted throat. He managed to only mouth the word.

When the stranger appeared satisfied with his submission, he released him, letting the jock fall hard onto the floor. Stepping aside to allow Simon enough space to pick him up and get him to the school nurse, Shay bowed.

As if they were mice scampering lost in a maze, the students went on about their usual duties, no one staying to question, nor even welcome, this new stranger. Betty grabbed Alix and stopped her from following the crowd.

“Let’s welcome the new guy.”

Alix smirked. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, sure. Yesterday, you’re ‘Miss Welcome Wagon,’ but today you’re a prude!”

“Am not! He just spooks me.”

“And Rellik spooked
me
.”

When the stranger noticed the two of them still standing inside the alcove, he sank into another bow, this time for only them. Alix grabbed Betty firmly by the arm and dragged her away, noticing that Rellik was entering the alcove.

The tall stranger, still deep in his bow after the two girls had left, did not rise in Rellik’s presence.

“Give it a rest, Shay,” Rellik said in an ancient Gaelic tongue. Then he said with a deep throaty growl, “I wondered when you’d come.”

“How kind of you to think of me, my friend!” Shay responded in the same language, rising to stand at his full height. Rellik turned to fiddle with his lock as Shay marched up and down the alcove, studying each locker as though the one he chose would be the most important decision of his life. Then, opening the one beside Rellik’s, he studied its interior.

“It’s her second life.” The vamp’s voice echoed from inside the locker. “I would not risk losing her twice.”

Shay poked his head out to face Rellik, who had turned crimson.

“You don’t love her! When I left my clan, she was my whole world.”

“Then it was your mistake to think that no one else would compete for her love.”

“Love? Was it love that–”

The tall stranger laughed, cutting Rellik short. He remained calm, took out a red binder from his knapsack, and, placing his bag in the locker, closed the door. He then took out a lock and secured it, taking his time to turn to Rellik, who stood right up against him. Shay looked down to meet the angry glare and spoke so his voice would also sound like a deep growl. But, unlike Rellik, he never lost his hint of charm.

“When last I saw her, she was still alive.”

“You partook in evil.”

“And you have to catch me before you can convict me. Or have you not yet accepted the burden of being a werewolf? You are not without hardship, nor are you without commandments. Commandments separate your kind from mine. Obtain her love freely and you will be given mortality. I call that a curse, but what do you call it? Would you give up living forever for love?”

“You do not love her. You do not understand.”

“Was it love that made you kill her, Rancor the Wulfsign?”

Rellik grabbed the vamp, slammed him against the wall, and puffed out his impressive muscular form.

“I will win her ’eart. Just as I won it a millennium ago.”

The tall stranger rolled his head back in a fit of laughter. He brought his gaze to meet Rellik’s glare and made clear his intent to dominate the shorter man with his height.

“Watch that accent, friend. You are no longer ‘Rancor the Wulfsign, once o’ the clan Alsandair.’ Do not forget the rules pertaining to gaining the love of those in their second life. She does not remember you, nor can you help her recall her first life.”

“There will be no need. She will know my soul.”

“Soul?”

“Once she gets to know me, she will remember.”

“Get to know you? How do you expect to remember sociability when you have spent so long in solitude?”

Rellik’s eyes flashed crimson. “I have not been alone these past thousand years. I have been among your kind! Learning to defeat you.”

“You are so unnerving! Help me, someone, I am so helpless!” Shay laughed. “You were not with my kind. You have been among Whittaker’s renegade sect of weak vampyres. You learned nothing.”

“I suppose Pyre followed you,” Rellik said, and turned his attention to his locker.

Shay rolled his head back in another fit of laughter, wiping away non-existent tears to emphasize the joke he had found in Rellik’s question.

“The boy the vampyres created to hunt you? He would be here had I led him or not.”

Rellik grabbed his notebook from the locker’s shelf and slammed the door shut. Though he had turned to meet Shay’s stare, he did so this time so deeply that his voice bellowed into the vamp’s mind:
He shot up my car!

“And you say nothing of the wound you took?”

Rellik was about to answer, but then, even though his muscled back faced the alcove’s entrance, he could tell by Shay’s familiar grin that Alix had returned. That damned grin angered him to no end, often making him wish for Shay’s demise–but rules were rules.

He heard Shay say, much too pleasantly, “Alas, but my heart has stopped! Pray someone tell me who is this lovely vision?”

“Irish dog! Why don’t you go back to where ya came from?”

Ariana walked tightly beside Rancor through the crowded, narrow cobblestone streets. Many stared, a few shouted, but all showed their disgust for him in some manner. She looked up at his rigid jaw, bushy low-lined eyebrows, and playful grin. He seemed completely undaunted by the remarks, as if he had not heard them.

“They do not bother you?”

“I amn’t bothered. I don’t know dem.” And to him it was that simple. Or, could it be, she wondered, that as brawny as he was, he was that much ill-equipped to fight? Is that why he had been banished by his people?

Rancor pointed to a minstrel and his eyes widened. He hurried close, closing his eyes and listening intently as if each note were sweet to his ear. Ariana was amazed by him.