Somebody rattled the doorknob. I summoned up whatever was left of my strengths and screamed, "Help! Get help! Eve!"
Ian said, and grinned at me with bloody teeth, "Just somebody looking for a place to screw. Don't worry, baby. We won't hurt you. Not that you'll remember, anyway"
I pretended to be worse off than I really was and, mumbling, let my eyes drift half closed.
"That's it" The coffee bar jerk said. "She's out. Get her on the bed"
I'd never really done this before, but I was imagining really hard how Eve would have handled it. I let the bat kind of a wobble and fall to rest in my lap, aligned with my leg, as if it had gotten too heavy to hold up.
And when Ian walked up to grab me, I bought the bat straight up with as much force as I could manage. It smacked him right where it would hurt the most, and Ian crumpled with a high-pitched, breathless scream, huddled in on himself.
I forced my legs to hold me, and slid back up to a standing position. I was leaning for support, and lucky to be in a corner, where two angled walls let me look like I wasn't about to topple over. My arms were shaking, and the guys would have seen that if I did try to raise the bat, so I tapped it casually against my leg. "Who wants some?" I asked. "I won't hurt you. Much"
It was all a show, and they only had to wait. Coffee bar jerk knew that, all too well, and I could feel the drug stealing away my concentration, my strength, making me slow and stupid and all too easy prey.
Justin, I thought, and forced myself to stand up right just a little longer. Justin needs me. I'm not going to let this happen.
"You're bluffing" coffee bar jerk said, I came around the bed. I took a swing at him, missed, and smack the bat into the wood so hard it rattled my teeth.
He grabbed the bat on the backswing and easily twisted it out of my grip. He tossed it to one of the other two guys, who caught it one-handed. "That" he said, " Was really stupid. This could have been real nice and easy, you know that, right?"
"I have Amelie's protection" I said.
He grabbed me by the throat of my sheer black printed shirt, and drag me forward. My legs folded when I tried to pull away.
"I don't care" he said. "i'm not from this stupid town. None of us are. Monica said that was the way to go, to get around the dumb arse rules, whatever they are. Whoever Amelie is, she can kiss my arse. After you're done doing it"
The door to the hall gave a dry, metallic pop, and swung slowly open. I blinked and tried to focus my eyes, because there was someone standing there. No, to someone's. One had red hair. Wasn't there something about red hair? Oh yeah. Sam had red hair. Sam the vampire. Michael's grandpa.
The door no longer had a knob on the outside. The one on the inside fell out with a dull thud to the carpet and rolled under the bed.
"Ana!" Oh, that was Eve. "Oh my god!"
"Excuse me" Sam said, but what did you say about Amelie?"
Coffee bar jerk let go of my top, and I slid back down the wall. I fumbled around for something to use for a weapon, but all I came up with with another set of filthy socks that missed the laundry. For some reason, that seemed funny. I giggled and rested my head against the wall to let my neck relax. My neck was working too hard.
"I said that Amelie can kiss my arse, red. And what are you going to do about it? Stare me to death?"
Sam just stood there. I couldn't see anything about him change, but it was like the room just went cold. "You really don't want to do this" said Sam. "Eve, go get your friend"
"Yeah, E, come on in, I've got a nice big bed" Ian giggled. "I hear you know how to have a real good time" he tossed the bloody sock he'd been pressing to his nose down on the floor and got ready to grab Eve if she came inside. Sam looked at the discarded sock for a second, then picked it up and squeezed it, drizzling blood into the palm of his hand.
And then he looked it up. Slowly. Meeting the eyes of every guy facing him.
"I said" he whispered. "you really don't want to do this"
I heard a great big buzzing in my head, like a full hive of bees. I'm going to pass out, because that was gross.
"Shit" Ian whispered, and backed up fast. "You're sick, man!"
"Sometimes" Sam agreed. "Eve, go get her. Nobody's going to touch you"
Eve cautiously edged past him, hurried to me, and gave me a fast embrace before she hauled me up right again. "Can you walk?"
"Not very well" I said. Gulping down nausea. The world kept coming in hot and cold flushes, and I felt like I was going to throw up, and somehow it was all smeared and funny, even the terror in Eve's eyes.
Not so funny when coffee bar jerk decided to grab Eve, though.
he lunged over the bed, reaching for Eve's wrist, I was too fussy to know what he was doing it. Maybe he was hoping to use her as some kind of shield against Sam. Whatever he meant, it was a bad decision.
Sam moved in a flicker, and when I blinked, the jerk was up against the wall, eyes wide, staring at Sam's face from a distance of about three inches.
"I said" Sam whispered. "Nobody was going to touch her. Are you deaf?"
I didn't see it, but I imagined he probably flashed some fang right about then, because coffee bar jerk whimpered like a sick dog.
The other boys moved out of Eve's way without even trying to stop her.
"Monica" I said. "I think it was Monica. She got Ian to ask me"
"What?"
"Monica got him to ask me. Told them to do this"
"Bitch! Okay, I take it all back. She needs a good blow torching" Eve says.
"No" I said faintly. "Nobody deserves that. Nobody"
"Great. Saint Ana, the patron of saint of the kick me sign. Look, keep it together, okay? We need to get out of here. Sam! Come on! Leave them!"
Sam didn't seem inclined to listen. "Manners, boys" he said. "Looks to me like nobody ever taught you any. It's time you had a lesson before somebody else gets hurt"
"Hey, man-" Ian was holding out his hands in surrender. "Seriously. Just having fun. We weren't going to hurt her. No need to go to Charles Bronson. We didn't even really touch her. Look. Clothes still on"
"Don't even try" Sam continued to stare at the coffee bar jerk, who was looking less like a predator, and more and more like a scared kid faced with the big, bad wolf. "I like these girls. I don't like you. Do the maths. Consider yourself subtracted"
"Sam!" Eve's voice was loud and flat. "Enough with the macho hero stuff. We came to find you. Let's get out of here and talk"
"I'm not leaving" Sam said, his eyes fixed on the boy he was holding. "Not until Disney Princess here apologises, or his head comes off, one of the two"
"Sam! What we need to talk about is important, and the Disney princess is not!"
For a second I thought nothing Eve could say would get through, but then I saw Sam smile and he let the jerk slide back to the floor. "Fine" he said. "Consider yourself horribly tortured. Make sure you think about all the ways I could have hurt you, because if I hear anything like this happening again, I want you to know what's coming"
Coffee bar jerk nodded shakily, and kept his back to the wall as he slid over to join his posse.
Sam turned towards us, and came forward to touch me lightly on the shoulder. "Are you all right?"
I nodded, a loose flop of my head. That was a mistake; I nearly pitched over, and it took all of Eve's strength to keep me on my feet.
When I was able to open my eyes and focus again, Sam had moved away, to the door.
"What?" Eve asked. "And by the way, you're blocking the escape hatch"
"Hush" Sam said softly, barely loud enough to be heard over the pounding, relentless beat of music.
And then I heard the screaming.
In a blink, Sam is gone from the hallway. Eve moved out into the hallway, craning her head to look over the rail, and I looked too.
It was chaos down there, and not the happy chaos of dance. Knots of screaming, pushing people, desperately jamming up the exit from the big open room, all in black clothes, white faces, some splashes of red here in there.
Blood. There was blood.
Sam grabbed both me and Eve by the shoulders, swung us around, and pushed us back inside the room. He looked to Ian, who was still covering against the wall. "You. O positive. How many exits?"
"What?...oh shit, did you just call me by my blood type?"
"How many exits?"
"The stairs! You have to take the stairs!"
Sam cursed under his breath, went to the closet, swung it open. It was a walk in, pretty large, filled with junk. He shoved me and Eve inside and held the door open. "You" he said to the four boys. "If you want to live, get in. Touch these girls and I'll kill you myself. You know I'm serious, yeah?"
"Yeah" Ian said faintly. "Not a finger on em. What's happening? Is it, like, one of those shooting things?"
"Yes" Sam said. "It's like that. Get in"
The boys piled into the closet. Eve dragged me to the farthest corner, shoving piles of rank smelling athletic shoes out of the way, and sat me down. She crouched next to me, ready for action, and glared at the guys. They kept their distance.
Sam slammed the door. Darkness.
"What the hell is going on?" The jerk asked. His voice shaking.
"People are getting hurt" Eve said tightly. "Could be you if you don't shut up"
"But-"
"Shut the hell up!"
silence. Music is still pounding downstairs, but over it I could hear the screaming. I started to go to that funny grey place, but jerked myself back with an effort and squeezed Eve's tense hand.
"It's okay" Eve whispered to me. "You're okay. I'm so sorry"
"I was doing okay" I said. Surprised, actually, that it was true. "Thanks for saving me"
"I didn't do anything but find Sam. He found you" Eve said. "All right, who's touching me?"
A high pitched male voice out of the darkness. "Oh shit! Sorry!"
"Better be" Eve warned.
There was a tense silence in the dark. And then I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway.
"Quiet" Eve whispered. She didn't need to say it. I felt it, I knew everybody else did, too.
There was something bad out there, something worse than four horny, stupid, cruel boys.
I felt something brush against me, a hand. One of the boys, I didn't know which one - was it Ian who'd slumped against the wall nearest to me?
I took it and squeezed. He squeezed back, silently.
And I waited to see if we were going to die.