Page 16 of Fanged Secrets
Amara’s light touch on my arm snapped me out of my reverie. I cringed away from her, before remembering why I’d brought her there in the first place. The pity party would have to wait. Slapping on a smile, I tilted my head in the direction of the prize counter. “First order of business: slushies and tokens.”
The prize counter encompassed a rickety slushie machine, a glass case filled with cheap toys and trinkets that could have been there for decades, and a bored-looking teenager with braces who seemed less than happy to see new customers.
As we approached the girl leaned against the counter, fanning freshly painted fingernails to dry. "We’re closing soon.”
I forced a pleasant smile. "We won’t be long. Can I get two slushies?"
The girl sighed in the overdramatic fashion that only teenagers can pull off and blew on her nails before grabbing two large cups. Amara and I stood awkwardly side-by-side as the kid moved at a glacial pace, filling the cups with exaggerated slowness.
The shelves behind her were lined with plush toys, action figures, and other prizes. A stuffed bat caught my eye, felt fangs sticking out from its smiling mouth.
I could feel Amara’s eyes on me, stealing quick glances when she thought I wasn’t looking. She still looked afraid, and a little green, but her eyes lit up when the teen handed her a massive slushie and a candy cane straw. It was only when I was given my own cherry slushie that I realized I would have to face the dilemma of actually drinking it.
Vampires thrive on blood – human blood, animal blood, even flavored blood if your taste aligns with one swanky redhead. While we can dabble in coffee and a few soft drinks now and then, most highborn vampires do so at their own peril and in the face of a very bad stomach ache. Damian and I would gorge ourselves on blueberry slushies every chance we could get, and then spray the sidewalk blue when it inevitably came back up afew hours later. I wasn’t sure Amara would be as thrilled by the event as we had been.
And so, I sloshed the red liquid around in the cup and forked out some cash for a few tokens, leading Amara over to the game cabinet I was most fond of.
“I’m surprised this thing is still running.” I set down my slushie beside the zombie shooter game, cartoonish pictures of the undead peeling off the sides. “You know, I’m pretty sure I could beat my brother’s highest score. Damian would be quite jealous of my marksmanship these days.”
The plastic gun was slightly sticky to the touch, and I pointed the tip at Amara who stiffened with her straw caught between her teeth. “All right, spymaster. Now you know one of my secrets, it’s only fair that you tell me one of yours.”
Amara’s face flushed a bright red that matched her slushie, and her gaze dropped to the floor. While she fumbled with her phone, typing out a response, I dropped two tokens into the machine. The screen came to life, exaggerated blood and guts in pixelated bursts, and a title card that transported me back to my childhood. I aimed the gun.
The automated voice spoke from Amara’s cell. “Dylan, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to impose.”
“That’s not a secret, come on. I’ll even share another one.” I curled my finger around the plastic trigger, blasting the head off the first zombie that popped up on the screen. I felt a brief flicker of smug satisfaction when it exploded in a shower of red pixels. “My brother and I used to live around here, just the two of us. Our mother died in childbirth and our father kicked us out when we were fourteen.”
Our father would only enter the picture again after Damian died, and word got back to the Leyore coven about a strange girl allegedly bleeding people dry in the dead of night. But I couldn’t exactly mention that part to Amara.
“Anyway.” Another spot-on shot, another zombie dead. “We were twins, technically the same age, but Damian took on the role of big brother. He made sure we didn’t starve out there. It was hard, but we were happy. We used to come here a lot.”
Bang. The big zombie went down and I was reminded to reload, racking the plastic contraption and taking aim again. “And then, there was a gas leak in this apartment we were crashing in and after that, there was an explosion –”
I took down the final boss with a volley of shots in quick succession. “And then Damian died.”
My score popped up on the screen, a new record, one slot above Damian’s old high score from all those years ago. I offered the gun to Amara, shrugging off the sudden burden of finally surpassing my brother.
“Your turn.”
Amara looked part horrified, part gob smacked, clutching her slushie like her life depended on it. But when I waved the gun in her face, her expression quickly shifted to indignation and she swatted my hand away. I rested the gun on my shoulder instead, watching while she typed into her cellphone and the app relayed her words.
“I already know I’ll suck at this game, I want to play that one.” She pointed to a rip-off version of whack-a-mole, this one involving little dragon heads that popped up one by one and roared something abouteating the princess!
“Alllllrighty then.” I reserved my judgments for the time being.
After I had slotted in the tokens, Amara handed me her slushie and lifted the little rubber mallet with a ridiculously fierce expression.
“All right, let’s see what you’ve got,” I said, taking a tiny sip of her slushie and watching with mild amusement.
Amara positioned herself in front of the game, her eyes narrowed in concentration. The first dragon popped up, and sheswung the mallet down, missing it by a mile. She huffed, her face turning slightly red.
“Um, you missed.” I leaned against the machine, sloshing her drink around like fine wine.
She caught my teasing and shot me a withering glare, then promptly turned her focus back to the game. Another dragon popped up, and she swung again, this time barely grazing it before it disappeared. I smothered a smirk.
“Getting warmer,” I leaned my head down on the edge of the cabinet to catch her eye. “Keep this up and we’ll be taking home the big prizes.”
Amara typed furiously on her phone and held it up to my face. “Shut. Up.”
