Chapter 20

The next week passed in a blur. I felt like I would have been busy enough due to classes, homework, and cheerleading practice, but the guys also took a lot of my time.

Mason wanted to talk on Facetime every chance he could get, and I struggled to split my time between calls with him, and time split evenly between Beckham and Damon since they didn't seem fond of spending time together.

Beckham had started shooting his movie, and used the excuse that he only was off at night to wrestle most of my evenings away from Damon. When we weren't making out, he helped me begin to learn to adjust to my newly acquired sensitivity to sound.

Out of the three, Beckham was the only one who had gone through something similar, albeit at a much younger age, and so the guys had left it to him to teach me how to handle my new hearing abilities. After a week of training on how to filter sounds, I still had to wear my ear plugs, but my ability to manage the noise had greatly improved.

Damon's patience at not seeing me lasted until around 11:00pm most nights. He would then arrive at my dorm and either pick me up to spend the night with him at his penthouse, or he would spend the night in my dorm room. A big part of me wished that they would both spend the night, but I was confident that the guys were not ready for that by the pained expressions on their faces whenever one of them showed me affection in front of the other.

Lexi arrived at my dorm room at 7:00pm the following Friday, bustling with energy per usual. I smiled at her affectionately when I looked at the bags she was carrying with her. Of course, she had brought five billion outfits for us both to try on.

"Why do you always look so good?" she teased me, as she gave me a huge hug after dropping the bags haphazardly all over my floor.

She obviously didn't expect an answer as she immediately went over to the computer Damon had given me, and was fiddling around on it trying to find some music. I savored the feeling welling up inside of me at that moment. This is what I had always wanted, to just be a regular girl, with regular friends, doing things like getting ready together. Although calling Lexi regular was really selling her short.

So far there wasn't anything regular about her. In the short time I had known her she had proven herself to be a perfect friend. She was always there to stand up for me when Selena and her friends tried to attack me during practice, she brought me my favorite coffee from Leslie's when I had to work late during the week, she was always available to study or just hang out when I needed time away from the situations developing with the guys. In short, she was everything I had dreamed about in a best friend.

I laughed when she started to sing along to Taylor Swift. During our brief time together she had introduced me to all things Taylor Swift, and I loved it. I opened my mouth to start singing, but she quickly clamped her hand over my mouth.

"None of that now," she said laughing. "You don't want me to start liking you as more than a friend, do you? Because trust me, that first night at the club definitely had me thinking with my lady parts when you sang."

She started making kissy faces at me. I couldn't help but laugh, which embarrassingly turned into a snort.

"Did you just snort?" she asked with a shocked look on her face. "I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've seen you do anything that wasn't perfect," she squealed, and then raised her fists in the air. "I'm rubbing off on you. This is the sign of a true friendship," she yelled excitedly.

I threw a throw pillow at her from off my bed and rolled my eyes at her.

We spent the next hour fiddling with our hair, trying on outfits, and singing (or lip-synching in my case) to random songs on the "Girl's Night Out" playlist she had found. After trying on a few outfits which Lexi had promptly vetoed as "not sexy enough," I finally unearthed one top in the pile that I thought she would approve of. It was a navy blue off the shoulder bodysuit that was skintight and showed off every curve in my body. Paired with tight white skinny jeans, it looked sexy, while not being a huge departure from what I would gravitate towards normally. Lexi looked stunning in a strapless black dress, super tall black heels, and her strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a sleek pony tail. I went to grab some flats but she threw the ones I was trying to pick up in the trash before I could get to them.

"Hey!" I cried out, in mock outrage.

"There's no way that you are going to mess up an outfit like that with flats, babe!" she replied. "When are you going to get a clue how hot you are? If you've got it, you need to flaunt it," she said emphatically with her hands on her hips.

I begrudgingly slipped on the navy heels she handed me. She had curled my hair into bigger waves than my natural hair, before putting it into a half up half down style. She had also done a smoky eye on me with light pink lipstick. I was grateful for her help since I had yet to figure out most beauty things seeing as how I hadn't been able to even look at makeup for so many years. Mrs. Anderson's attempts to cut off my hair into chunks hadn't really encouraged me to try new styles with it either. Lexi roused me from the thoughts about my past that I would rather have avoided by tossing a silver clutch at me.

"Do I really need to bring a clutch?" I asked, whining a little bit now.

I actually loved to dress up, but it was fun to give Lexi a hard time.

"Shhh," she griped at me, grabbing my other hand and leading me to the door. "Let's start our night!"

Damon had offered to have Shelton drive us around for the night, but Lexi wouldn't hear of it.

"I don't want him having poor Shelton spy on us all night, and try to cock block us," she explained when I offered the ride.

Surprisingly, Lexi called her private driver to taxi us around for the night. I don't think I was ever going to get used to how well off all the people around me were.

"This is Max, Eva," she explained as a tall, buff man with almond skin, shiny black hair, and gorgeous brown eyes opened the door of an expensive looking black car for us.

He was dressed in a suit and hat and looked every bit the part of a driver that I had seen in some movies, if the driver happened to be a model. Max looked a little shell shocked as Lexi introduced me, so I simply smiled instead of shaking his hand, and quickly got in the car. Even though Max was gorgeous, I had all the admirers I wanted at the moment. Lexi smirked at me as she got in the car after me.

"I can't take you anywhere," she sang at me as Max walked around the front of the car to get in the driver's seat. I blushed. Lexi noticed everything.

"Where to tonight Lexi?" Max asked in a smooth, rich voice.

"Let's try Riot tonight," she told him. "Poor Eva almost got mobbed at Covet the other night, so we should probably stay away from there for awhile," she explained.

Max nodded and began driving away from the school. Lexi pulled a bottle of champagne out of a bin that was built into the back of the car that I hadn't noticed. There were two glasses attached to the bin, and she quickly and efficiently poured some of the champagne into both before handing me one.

"To a friendship to last the ages," she called out as she clinked her glass against mine.

I thought that was a sweet sentiment since we had only been friends for a few weeks. I felt so comfortable with her already, it was almost like we had been friends for far longer. We sipped our champagne, and gossiped back and forth about different things that had happened during cheerleading practice. I noticed that she seemed to be intentionally leaving out any talk of Damon, Mason, or Beckham. She mentioned how Lane had been calling her everyday, but she didn't go any further. I leaned back into the cool leather of the seats and listened to her chat about a hot guy she had met in her Chemistry class. She was getting to the part of the story where they had made out after class in one of the hall closets when Max pulled up to large warehouse looking building that had a line stretching around it.

"We're here!" Lexi cried excitedly, stopping in the middle of her story and downing the rest of her drink. I followed suit and waited for Max to get to our door to let us out.

"Do you want me to come inside?" Max offered to Lexi as she stepped out of the car.

"No, we'll be fine," she said, sounding amused at his question as she pulled me out of the car, and started towards the nondescript entrance of the building.

I eyed the building warily. Although there were a lot of people milling around, it didn't look anything like Covet had looked. It just looked like an abandoned warehouse with its shiny sheet metal looking roof and the colorful graffiti all over its walls. Lexi was still dragging me behind her as she marched up to the door.

A large bald man that towered over both of us was standing there dressed in all black, with a headpiece in his ear. The imposing looking man took one look up and down my body, and then moved aside to let us in. I smiled tremulously at him as I nervously followed Lexi into the dark entrance where I could hear the faint sound of music pulsing as I walked farther in. There was only a blacklight to light our way down the narrow corridor that was covered in neon graffiti, just like the outside.

We had been walking for so long in the corridor, that I was beginning to think that Lexi had brought me here to kill me, when we finally reached another door where another imposing looking man with an earpiece was standing. He too took one look at us and opened up the door next to him to let us through. A blast of humid air that smelled of fog and sweat hit me as I walked through the doorway. We turned one more corner, and found ourselves at the top of a metal balcony with stairs leading down to an enormous dance floor packed with people. The techno beats pulsed around me, and I saw that everyone looked like they had been streaked with the same neon graffiti paint covering everything else, creating an effect where everyone glowed under the black lights that were shining down on the floor. It was a completely different feel from Covet and I instantly loved it.

Lexi squealed and waved to someone she saw by a bar off to the side of the room. She immediately started to once again drag me down the stairs. I struggled to keep up in the heels that I hadn't gotten used to walking in yet.

"Isn't this great?" she yelled back at me, dancing along to the beat that was playing as we walked.

"Yes it is!" I yelled back, trying to be heard over the music.

In truth I was very much out of my element. There was a strange feeling in the air, something that gave me an almost heady feeling, like I was actually sucking in pure energy when I breathed instead of the smoke that I saw swirling around me from the fog machines that were pulsing out particles every few minutes.

Lexi led me to the bar, and yelled out something to the bartender who looked at me with interest before turning around to grab whatever Lexi had asked him to get us.

"What did you order?" I asked, starting to relax a little now that we were mixed in with the crowd rather than staring down at them from the stairs.

"Their house shot," she said excitedly. "You're going to love it."

Someone on the other side of Lexi asked her something and she turned away from me for a moment to answer. While she was distracted I took the opportunity to people watch. I moved a little with the beat from the song the DJ was currently playing. I hadn't heard it before, which wasn't surprising since I still had a lot to catch up on from my time in the attic, but it was very catchy. As I people watched, I noticed that there was something strange about the people around me. They all were just a little too attractive. More like the guys, than normal people. I also saw that the air above the dance floor seemed to be almost sparkling.

I moved my eyes quickly away from some couples who were getting a little too close for my comfort, but I couldn't stop staring at most of the people I was seeing on the dance floor. A lot of them were unearthly beautiful in a unique way. Many had distinctive hair in colors that you usually didn't see like pale pink, or ice blue. I also noticed that many of them seemed to be almost glowing. I wondered if that was just because of the black lights and the reflection of the light off the paint that was streaked across many of them.

Lexi had turned back towards me and handed me a shot. The bartender was standing by; I suppose to see what I thought of it. I eyed it dubiously.

"What's in it?" I asked Lexi, and the bartender too by extension.

"A little of this, a little of that," he answered, smiling wickedly.

Lexi threw it back and I followed suit figuring if it didn't kill her, it wouldn't kill me. It was super sour, much more so than the other drinks I had tried, and I winced.

"Did you like it?" the bartender asked eagerly, obviously not able to read my face. I gave him two thumbs up while inwardly grimacing.

"Whoooo," called out Lexi, shaking her shoulders and obviously feeling whatever we had just drank.

"Let's go dance!" she cried, grabbing my hand and once again yanking me forward. I kind of felt like a rag doll tonight with all the tugging that was happening.

We walked through the throng of people, getting felt up and pushed against as we passed by. Like usual, the majority of the people stared at me as we passed by, something that I just needed to get used to. I could feel the strange energy even stronger in the crowd. I couldn't help but suck it in, feeling pleasure course through me as I did so. Lexi was watching me almost eagerly as I did so, and I blushed from her rapt attention. She laughed at my expression and started dancing. I followed suit, letting the distinctive melody guide my movements. I glanced around me as we moved, and soon became uneasy at what I was seeing.

There was a couple nearby embracing. I hoped it was my imagination, but the guy, a dangerously handsome blonde, was nuzzling her neck. I looked a little closer and saw a flash of what looked like a fang. The girl made a faint sound of gratification before seeming to fall closer into the man's body. My eyes widened, and I grabbed Lexi as I noticed similar couples doing the same thing all around us.

"What's wrong?" she said as I gripped her tightly.

"Are you not seeing this?" I whispered in her ear, gesturing with one hand.

"See what?" she asked confused before looking around and seeing what I was talking about. "Yeah…about that," she said, looking sheepish. "I may have taken us to a vampire club," she finally answered, searching my face intently to gauge what I thought of that.

My heart started hammering rapidly, and I could swear some of the couples started to look my way as if they could hear the sound. It was one thing to hear Mason and Beckham off handedly discussing supernatural creatures. I hadn't actually seen anything too out of the ordinary with them other then Damon's wings and the fact that they were gorgeous and seemed to be good at everything. But seeing actual vampires? And the fact that Lexi obviously knew about this supernatural world, and had decided to break me into it without telling me about it? That was all a bit too much. I nervously pulled her off the dance floor, deciding that we needed to leave right that minute.

Despite Lexi's reassurances that the club was perfectly safe, and that we should go back on the dance floor and try to have a good time, I decided now was a good time to try and fulfill my next idea of what a girl's night entailed by finding some good pizza to binge on rather than having my blood possibly binged on…

Lexi proved once again how good a friend she was by only complaining a little before linking her arm with mine and leading me towards a door near the back of the club. The door ended up being a fire exit, which led out to an alley. We began walking along the outside of the warehouse so that we didn't have to go back through the club to get to where Max was hopefully waiting for us. The warehouse was even bigger than I had thought, since it seemed to be taking forever to get around it.

"I really thought it wouldn't be a big deal," she said, wringing her hands as we walked. "I mean you hang out with basically the three most notorious supes in our world all the time. I thought that this would be nothing compared to that," she explained.

I just stared at her. I guess it was stupid of me, but I hadn't stopped to think what else was out there upon finding out that Beckham, Mason, Damon…and I guess me, were more than we appeared.

"Please tell me you at least knew about the guys," she said looking scared for the first time rather than just nervous.

"Well yes…" I answered. "But it's one thing to hear about it, and another to see freaking vampires. Wait… none of them are vampires right?" I asked, afraid to hear the answer. I still didn't know what Mason and Beckham were. Lexi looked less nervous now.

"I've never heard that they are vampires," she answered unhelpfully. "But it's kind of a mystery what exactly they are."

I had a million more questions to ask but decided to ask them once we got to the car. It was dark, not just because it was night, but because there oddly were only a few floodlights along the whole side of the building. It had been warm when we left my dorm room, but there was a chill in the air now, and my thin top wasn't providing very much warmth. I was sure that Lexi was even colder in her tiny dress.

The air seemed to get frostier as we walked along, and I pushed Lexi to walk faster as fear inexplicably crept up my spine. A shriek sounded right behind me, and I stumbled in shock at the sound. I turned around and let out my own scream when a black shadow…person…thing…stood right in front of my face. Strangely Lexi ran in front of me, muttering foreign words under her breath, blocking me from the advances of the shadow creature.

Whatever Lexi was doing didn't seem to be working as the shadow stretched out a black vaporous hand that passed through Lexi's shoulder, stopping right in front of me. I took a step back, desperate to get away from the ghostly hand. Lexi let out a hum of frustration and began to chant the strange words faster, with more urgency. Despite the fact that I had started backtracking faster, the black silhouette hadn't moved any further away. Another scream choked in my throat as the hand finally touched me.

A young girl with black hair done up in two long braids was walking along a bright white corridor carrying a tray laden with two goblets, and a vase filled with dark red wine. The leather soles of her shoes scuffed along the stone floor as she hurried forward.

"You there," came a rough gravelly voice from behind her.

The girl stopped, the wine sloshing from the top of the bottle and drenching the tray. She looked scared of whoever the voice was coming from. "Yes my lord?" she answered nervously.

"Where are you going with that wine?" he asked with a suspicious voice. The girl didn't want to answer. She was one of the Queen's handmaidens, and had been sent to fetch the wine for her. The girl was trying to hurry because she knew that Master Beckham would be slipping in to visit the Queen soon, and she didn't want to disturb them. But this man could not find out about the Queen's secret. He had already done enough to destroy everything that made the Queen happy.

"I was just headed to the kitchen, my lord. One of the dignitaries just finished with their wine, and asked me to take this back for them. Is there anything I can help you with?" she asked, praying that he wouldn't look too closely at the tray since the vase was obviously full. The man said nothing, but made a shooing motion with his hand while still eyeing her suspiciously. The girl gave a sigh of relief and took a step forward, prepared to hurry away.

"Lara," the man said in the same growl, but this time with a triumphant undertone.

The girl stopped, beginning to shake with fear. He shouldn't have known her name. She turned around to face the man, sparks were starting to emit from his hands. She opened her mouth to scream…

I came back to reality laying on the cold gravel of the ground, with Lexi hovering frantically over me, patting me on the face, and yelling my name in a panic. She sat back with a sigh of relief when she saw that my eyes were opened.

"Are you all right?" she said, her voice trembling a bit.

"I think so," I replied, thinking back to what had happened. "What was that thing, and where did it go?" I asked, confused.

Lexi looked at me seriously, "That was a specter. I've never seen one behave like that."

"What exactly is a specter?" I asked.

"A specter is an echo from a supernatural who has met a violent end. I believe humans call them ghosts. Different names, same concept," she explained. "I've never seen one go after someone like that though," she said, sounding worried.

"Where did it go?" I asked.

"It disappeared when it touched you. It's like you absorbed it or something."

I shivered at the thought. I didn't want to have anything to do with that creature.

"And I just fainted when it touched me?" I asked Lexi, confused how I had ended up in the ground.

"I don't know what happened. You fell forward into me though and I was able to lay you on the ground," she explained. She stood up and brushed off her knees before reaching out a hand for me.

"We need to go," she said urgently. "I'm afraid more of them will appear."

I grabbed her hand and we hurried away, my mind whirling with questions.