Page 167 of The Last Vampire
Trevor freezes with the receiver to his ear and turns around slowly. William stares at him in the dimly lit hall, no other souls in sight.
“I know what you are,” says Trevor, tensing up like he is anticipating an attack.
“I am not going to fight you,” William assures him. “It would be the equivalent of you beating up a rabbit.”
“What are you going to do then?” Trevor challenges him. “Because I’m not backing down.”
The boy has the guts to stepcloser,and William cannot help respecting his bravery.
“Why did you apply to this school?” William asks him.
“Why do you care?”
“I can compel you to answer me. Just as I compelled you to forget the green book with the Legion of Fire logo.” Trevor’s eyes glaze over with awe, as if a mystery has just been solved. “And to refrain from asking Salma to the dance.”
Trevor’s eyebrows come crashing down, and he looks like his instinct is to punch William, except that it is a fight he cannot win.
“What book?” he asks instead.
“The logo was there for misdirection. Yet you kept the book to yourself because you thought it was meant for you.”
“Can I see it?”
“Why did you want to come here?” William asks again. “If the next words out of your mouth are not the answer, I will compel you to forget your own name.”
“I don’t know why!” snarls an angry Trevor. “I had everything I neededback home, but something about this place called to me even stronger thanfootball,which has never happened before. That’s why the LUB was important. It felt like confirmation that there was an actual reason I was here.”
“You believe you are here to hunt me?” asks William, matching Trevor’s glower with a cold smirk. “How did you become aware of your family’s legacy?”
Trevor hesitates like he wants to defy the vampire, but he knows better.
“When I was a kid, my great-grandfather used to take me to get ice cream every weekend. He liked to tell me stories about how we descended from a great line of vampire hunters. One day, I repeated one of his stories to my sister, and my parents heard me. That’s when the ice cream trips stopped. I didn’t know why a few tall tales bothered them so much, until a few years later, my father made my siblings and me sign a confidentiality contract that we would never share our family’s secrets or show anyone our family crest or talk about our father’s business. In mine, he even included that I could never repeat the stories my great-grandfather told me. I figured it was some pride thing, and he didn’t want outsiders knowing the family patriarch had deteriorated. But there was a part of me that wanted to believe it could be more.”
“Is the Legion still actively hunting vampires?”William compels the boy because he cannot take any chances with this question.
“I don’t know.” Trevor frowns after speaking, like he is not sure where the answer came from.
“As entertaining as it would be to watch you try to live up to your family’s legacy, right now Fabiana and I are the only beings standing between your classmates and the fifty vampires on their way here to kill you all. Still want to hunt me?”
Trevor appears to be speechless, and William appreciates the primal fear that takes over the boy’s expression. At least he is not delusional.
“I’ll… I’ll tell my father to send help.”
“He will not believe you. Besides, I just cut the phone lines.”
Trevor’s eyes narrow with a new realization, and he steps back. “Why are you telling me all this? Aren’t you just going to make me forget this whole conversation?”
William disappears and reappears in a blur of movement. Only this time, he is holding a black bag in his hands.
“I am going to charge you with protecting your friends. Stick to Lorenabecause she will be the vampires’ main target, but consider that the others could be used as bait, so keep tabs on all four of them.”
William closes most of the space between them, and to his credit, Trevor does not shrink back.
“If a vampire attacks,” says William, handing him the bag, “light them up.”
AFTER LEAVINGTrevor with the weapon, William locates Lorena. She is alone in the library stacks.
Sobbing.
