Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,32

wailed. “Carmella Lovelace just got here! I can see her beehive hair!”

“We should really…”

But it was too late. A jumpy brunette had joined my one-girl bleach-blond fan club.

“Is this him?” the brunette asked conspiratorially. She pointed to me, and I was startled to see that a rubber glove had transformed her hand into a large green claw.

“Shhh!” The blonde’s hiss dissolved into giggles.

“This is him!” the clawed brunette called to another girl.

The third girl came towering over with frightening force. She was clearly the only Amazon woman in suburban New York. The girl had me by about five inches. Hell, she had Yao Ming by five inches.

“The vampire!” she hissed excitedly.

It was only when the Amazon bent at the waist to hug me, and I ducked, that I could see Jenny’s reaction. Beneath her carrot-red roots and goth-black streaks, Jenny’s mouth had dropped open. She held the cover of Bloodthirsty and looked from it to me. Her mouth didn’t shut. Seriously, she could have swallowed a fly.

Meanwhile, I was in a frightening high school girl huddle, my eardrums flooded by high-frequency screams, dispossessed from my own body as it was examined like I was a Jonas Brothers impersonator at a suburban mall.

“Look at his skin!” one marveled, stroking my forearm.

Another grabbed the same arm from the first girl and flipped it over.

“You can see all of his veins,” she said. Her manicured finger traced a blue line down into my palm.

A sense of déjà vu flooded me. When had this happened to me before? A crowd of girls pressing upon me, desperate to touch me? Oh, wait. That had never happened to me before. But it had happened to Luke. Maybe we had the twin ESP thing going. And clearly, both of us were very desirable.

But my smugness was fleeting. After six or seven girls lined up near me, feeding my ego, I saw the first guy.

My first thought was that he was joining the girls in admiring my body. Which I guess would be fine, as long as he looked and didn’t touch. Then Jenny called out desperately:

“Finbar! Watch out!”

Oh, shit. Now I knew why there were guys coming after me. I had forgotten how close we were to the vampire slayers table. Apparently in this alternate universe, Buffy was not the only vampire slayer. There were also adolescent boys, and even full-grown men, who hated vampires. I knew this, because the vampire slayers table had a huge vampire doll hanging from a noose above the table. When last I passed, the guys at this table had been eagerly debating the merits of silver chains and wooden stakes as vampire-killing weapons. Now they had stopped talking theoretically. There was someone in their midst for whom they’d waited their whole fantasy lives: a real, live (well, dead, but you know) vampire.

And oh, shit—it was me!

I grabbed on to the biggest thing in sight to protect me—the Amazon girl. I actually felt pretty safe inside all those girls. Safe enough to peek around Blondie and see that the vampire slayers’ wooden stakes were made out of cardboard. One of them even had “Best Buy” visible through a wash of brown paint. So these guys weren’t going to actually kill me. I could calm down. The vampire slayers weren’t that tough.

But there were more joining the ranks. All the Jacobs had come over from the Twilight table. In Stephenie Meyer’s books, Jacob is a jocky high school dude. Now, that alone would have me waving a white flag. But Jacob happens to be a jocky high school dude… who turns into a WEREWOLF. And guess who happens to be the mortal enemy of the werewolf? Who does Jacob want to hunt down in the woods and tear apart limb by pale puny limb?

The vampire.

Of course, these Jacobs couldn’t really turn into werewolves. But they were charging at me like they thought they could turn into werewolves. And besides that, Jacobs were way cooler than vampire slayers. They were the kind of guys who came to a fantasy convention to collect weapons and hit on girls. And, you know, join a furious mob about to beat down a pale kid.

I turned and took off, frenzied, seeking the nearest exit sign. With the Jacobs involved, the mob was really gaining on me.

I slammed the door open, took a brief breath while surveying the parking lot, and then sprinted around the back of the building, panting like I’d just climbed Mount Gundabad.

“I have a compass!”