The boys didn't even notice that Alexander and I were standing only a few yards behind where the diving board used to be. As if in a trance, the nerd-mates seemed fixated on Valentine.
It was then I noticed each boy had pricked his finger with a pin, a bottle of alcohol perched on the pool's edge.
"I really don't think we should do this," my brother said nervously.
"C’mon, it'll be okay," Valentine persuaded.
"Billy's right," Henry added.
"Fine," Valentine said. "But think of this. Neither one of you has brothers, and mine has deserted me. This way we'll all be brothers—blood brothers."
Billy Boy and Henry looked at each other. They seemed to be mesmerized by that idea.
"Blood brothers," Billy repeated.
"For now," Henry said.
"Forever," Billy Boy said.
"For eternity."
"Over my dead body!" I climbed down the shaky silver pool ladder and dropped to the blue cement pool floor.
Alexander took off around the pool deck.
As I raced toward them, I could see the innocent mortals' bloodstained fingers within inches of touching a vampire's. I didn't know the repercussions of their actions, but I assumed they wouldn't be good. I jumped in between them.
"No!" Valentine screamed. "No!"
Valentine caught Alexander's stern glare and started to run up the ascending pool floor to the shallow end, but Alexander grabbed him by the shirtsleeve, stopping the fleeing vampire.
"What's going on?" Billy Boy asked, as if coming out of a daze.
"What are you doing here?" Henry asked me.
"I should be asking you that!" I yelled in a voice that reminded me of my mother's. "Both of you go wash your hands," I ordered. "Make sure you clean them with alcohol, too."
Valentine breathed heavily. "I was so close," he said, wiping his white bangs away from his fierce green eyes.
"What are you trying to do to my brother?" I argued. "What do you mean Jagger deserted you?"
Valentine balled his fists. "Where are Jagger and Luna?" he demanded.
"They're in Romania," I said.
"You are wrong," he said.
"What do you mean?" I asked, confused.
"They haven't returned. And I know you had something to do with it," he said directly to me.
"Raven had nothing to do with it," Alexander said in my defense. "Any grudge your family has is with me."
"Do you know who you're protecting?" Valentine argued. "I knew from the moment I laid my hand on her in the cave—Raven is not ready to turn her mortal life over to you."
Alexander turned to me. His dreamy chocolate eyes turned sad and lonely.
"I never said that," I disputed.
"But you thought it," Valentine said with a cunning grin.
I knew Valentine's piercing comments were like a stake through my boyfriend's heart. Alexander stepped away from me as if registering a moment of utter isolation.
My eyes began to well. "Alexander—"
As Alexander looked at me, Valentine, who was standing on the shallower end, reached for Alexander's neck. I could see his pale fingers clench tightly around my boyfriend's throat.
"Alexander!" I screamed, running toward him.
Valentine closed his eyes as if channeling Alexander's soul into his pale palm.
Alexander's midnight eyes turned red. He spun around and knocked Valentine's hand away. The force sent Valentine stumbling back until he wiped out on the pool floor.
"What are you guys doing to Valentine?" Billy Boy asked from behind me, his voice distressed.
Alexander and I turned to see Billy Boy and Henry standing several feet above us at the pool's edge, shocked.
"Valentine was trying to hurt us," I said.
We turned back to Valentine, who was climbing up the pool ladder. He hopped on his coffin-shaped skateboard and disappeared into the darkness.
13 Grim Grounding
Alexander and I didn't even have time to discuss the event at the pool. We immediately whisked the nerdmates into the car and chaperoned them safely home. Once again Valentine had threatened my brother's safety and fled into the night. I wasn't sure when he'd reappear with another plan of revenge.
When Billy Boy and I returned home, I was forced to spill my guts to my parents about my brother's injurious actions. Valentine, like his older brother, Jagger, had a charm that was magnetic, if not hypnotic. The nerd-mates had fallen under the tween vampire's bewitching spell. The only way I could impede their adoration was by involving Sarah and Paul Madison.
"You did what?" my mother hollered at Billy Boy when I told her about the blood brothers ceremony. "Do you know how dangerous it is to stick a needle in your finger?"
"We used alcohol," Billy Boy protested.
"But you deliberately tried to mix your blood with your friends' blood," my mother argued. "I thought you were smarter than that."
"I remember back in my day, it was common for boys to become blood brothers," my dad confessed. "Like a rite of passage. However, times have changed, Billy. Now, what seemed like a harmless ritual can be very unhealthy, if not fatal."
"We didn't even touch each other," Billy Boy whined. "Raven jumped in between us."
My mother appeared surprised, then relieved.
"Raven has pierced every inch of her earlobe and she never gets in trouble," my brother argued.
"I take offense to that. I'm in trouble all the time!" I defended myself proudly.
"I don't understand why I'm getting all the heat," Billy Boy said. "Alexander pushed Valentine."
"He did what?" my dad asked.
"Valentine tried to choke Alexander," I explained. "Alexander pushed his hand away, that's all."
"Maybe it's best you and Valentine take a break from each other for a few days," my dad warned.
"You can't do that! He's my best friend!" Billy Boy was enraged. He mumbled something unintelligible and stormed upstairs.
I felt this tense situation was going to get worse before it would ever get better.
Billy Boy's grounding meant that for the next week he would be safe from Valentine.
However, the next day I stewed in class. Valentine was pursuing more than my brother's thoughts in Dullsville's rec center pool. In addition, Valentine confronted Alexander head-on, not only declaring I was inadequate for my vampire boyfriend, but also trying to read his soul. With every sunset, Valentine was becoming more confrontational, as if he were a grizzly bear hunting for food in a family's backyard.
I couldn't shake the image of Valentine's hand on my boyfriend's neck. I wondered what Alexander's thoughts were. Was he imagining breaking up with me, now that he thought I was a coward? I wondered if he'd regretted his decision not to be with Luna.
Instead of longing for the sunset, I was dreading it. I wasn't sure how I'd ever be able to face my vampire-mate.
At lunch, once again I was desperate to tell Becky everything.
"Why are you so long in the face?" she asked. "Prom is only a few days away."
I wanted to tell her my dilemma. Explain how Alexander had left Luna at their covenant ceremony because he didn't want to take her into the Underworld unloved. Reveal then that Jagger, who followed Alexander to America to seek revenge, met me in Hipsterville and followed me back to my hometown. And now Alexander and I were faced with Jagger and Luna's younger brother, Valentine, who was seeking revenge on behalf of the Maxwell clan. All the while, I was struggling with a big decision: whether to someday face my own mortality—or immortality—by bonding with my vampire-mate for eternity.
I was dying to spell out for my best friend how easy she had it, dating a mortal. Nothing more to decide at the end of the day than what music to download or what television show to watch.