Again with the zombies. Even if I hadn’t been “initiated” into the code, I would have been able to rule out that answer. A lack of tongue meant that zombies couldn’t speak. An insatiable hunger for human flesh meant that trying to talk to one was highly inadvisable.
Postmortem interrogation. And hellhounds are just overgrown puppies. Yeah, right.
My eyes flicked back up to the other two choices, and I knew in the pit of my stomach that the correct answer was the one I least wanted to look at, let alone circle.
Informants and spies were the same thing. Chupacabras and zombies were both supernatural creatures. Ergo, the correct answer, the one with two decoys, was (c) Chupacabra informants.
Chupacabras are remarkable creatures. This time, it was my father’s voice that I heard in my head. Absolutely remarkable. At first, we thought they were little more than overgrown ticks, preternatural only in their ability to literally disappear into the creatures they feed on. But when Klaus Eigelmeier discovered that in sucking a victim’s blood, chupacabras also absorb their memories … psychic phenomena, Kali! Bona fide psychic phenomena in a biological species!
I’d been four or five when Klaus had proved what the Allies’ strategists must have strongly suspected: chupacabras weren’t just bloodsuckers. They were memory eaters as well.
In a different world, the idea of psychic memory transfers probably wouldn’t have seemed any stranger than the fact that after Darwin’s fateful voyage on the Beagle, the rest of the preternatural world had fallen to discovery like dominoes, with new species crawling out of the woodwork en masse. Where had they come from? Why hadn’t we discovered them sooner? No one knew. But two hundred years after the fact, science had more or less gotten a handle on the limitations of preternatural ability. And psychic phenomena?
That kind of thing was unheard of, and no other species—natural or preternatural—had demonstrated any kind of psychic power, before or since. My father’s enthusiasm at Eigelmeier’s announcement had actually led him to look me straight in the eye. To this day, it was the most he’d ever said to me in one sitting.
Maybe that was why I could still hear him saying every word.
Maybe that was why I knew that when a chupacabra started draining its victim, the image I’d seen on Bethany’s lower back—a snake eating its own tail—appeared somewhere on the victim’s body.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop picturing Bethany’s eyes going vacant and empty as the chupacabra stole her memories. Her lifeblood.
And then her life.
B.
I scrawled the letter onto the page in big, defiant script, even though I knew the answer was wrong. And then, I folded my test paper in half, walked to the front of the room, handed it to the teacher, and asked to be excused.
“Excused?” Mr. McCormick gave me one of those looks that said something along the lines of look here, Missy, I know what you’re up to, but then he seemed to realize that he did not, in fact, have any idea what my agenda was. He appeared to find this somewhat unsettling.
“If you leave now, I won’t be able to let you take a makeup exam,” he warned me.
I looked him straight in the eye, even though it physically hurt me to do it.
Blend in. Don’t make waves. Don’t look up.
That was the mantra I lived by. But not today.
“I understand,” I said softly. “I just really need to go, anyway.”
“You could at least guess,” McCormick replied. “It’s multiple choice. It wouldn’t take you very long, and it would be better than a zero.”
Chupacabras, I thought.
Puncture holes in perfect, luminescent skin.
Vacant, empty eyes.
“I need to be elsewhere.”
That statement got me another look. This one said I have concluded that you are on drugs.
Clearly, I was getting nowhere fast. There was a part of me that wanted to just turn and stalk out of the room. I seriously doubted he would physically stop me, but that scenario would have inevitably ended with someone calling my father. I’d be labeled as a troublemaker.
There would be conflict.
I really didn’t do conflict.
Think, Kali, I told myself, and then, all of a sudden, the answer was there, accompanied by an angelic chorus of hallelujahs.
“Tampons!”
Mr. McCormick jumped like I’d hit him with a Taser. “Excuse me?”
“Tampons,” I said again.
“Ms. D’Angelo, I’ve been teaching for six years. I’m well aware that there may be certain … er … female issues—”
I cut him off. “Tampons.” It was ridiculous. I couldn’t stop saying the word, and he couldn’t stop flinching. “Somebody stole mine. All of them. I need to go.”
Mr. McCormick said absolutely nothing, but he handed me a bathroom pass. He seemed to know that I wouldn’t be back, but accepted my absence as the price that had to be paid to keep me from saying that dreaded word one more time.
As I stepped into the hallway, any thrill of victory I might have felt subsided, because I couldn’t deny, even for a second, what I’d known since I saw the symbol on Bethany’s back.
Whether I was in class taking a test or out wandering the hallways, there wasn’t anything I could do to save her. I was weak. Human. There was no instinct pounding in my temples, compelling me toward a battle I’d inevitably win. I had no idea where Bethany was, and even if I found her, what was I going to do—talk to the little parasite? Ask it to let her go? Tell the school nurse?
Who was I kidding? By the time the ouroboros symbol appeared on a person’s skin, it was too late for medical science to intervene. The only thing that could save Bethany Davis’s more-popular-than-thou, oh-so-charming personage was a trade, and even that was supposed to be pretty much impossible. But hypothetically, if the chupacabra did find someone it liked better, it might leave Bethany before it sucked all of the life out of her.
And if that person happened to be me …
I glanced down at my watch.
Seventeen hours and twelve minutes.
If I could last that long with a psychic, parasitic hellbeast sucking the blood out of my body and the thoughts out of my brain, I’d be fine, because seventeen hours and twelve minutes from now—eleven minutes from now—I’d change. My blood would change.
And the bloodsucker would die.
As far as plans went, it was imprecise, but at the moment, it was all I had.
“Can you tell me what class Bethany Davis is in right now?”