"You planned this all along?" Trevor asked Jagger. "Raven was right, trying to warn me about you for days. Why? Just because I was different?"
Trevor had picked on me all my life because I was the outsider. Now he faced the same ridicule.
"Go back to your soccer field," Jagger said. "This game is way out of your league."
I stared at my mortal nemesis, whose face was growing red with rage. For the first time in sixteen years, Trevor Mitchell had finally met a bigger bully than himself.
Trevor looked at Jagger as if he were a soccer ball that needed to be kicked into the opponent's goal.
"Get off," I said to Jagger. "You're hurting me!"
Alexander's eyes turned red. "Jagger. You have one second to let her go!
Otherwise, it's all over!"
Jagger's grip was so hard around my wrist I couldn't move.
"It'll feel like a pin prick," he said to me in a seductive voice. He gently stroked my hair away from my shoulders. He leaned toward me and flashed his fangs.
"No!" I cried.
And the world went black.
18 Cryptic Kryptonite
I awoke, lying flat on my back on the grass, the stars twinkling above me.
"Raven?" Becky asked, her hand outstretched. "Are you okay?
My world was dizzy. I grabbed my neck. "Am I a…?" I asked.
Becky helped me up. "I thought you were kidding when you said they were vampires. I think that Jagger guy really believed he was. He tried to bite you."
I felt my neck for wounds.
Suddenly the memory started to come back. I never thought it would happen. My nemesis and the love of my life, enraged for different reasons, both staring straight at me.
I had spent the last few days trying to save Trevor from the clutches of a vampire and now he, alongside Alexander, unknowingly saved me.
The impact of their tackling Jagger had sent me flying to the ground.
Becky and I now raced the few yards to the tombs, where a huge crowd had gathered. Alexander was standing over Jagger, who was coughing and wheezing. Luna was leaning against the covenant coffin.
Trevor had no idea that the garlic tablet was making them vulnerable. He thought it was his bravado.
The soccer snobs encircled Jagger and Luna.
Matt and Becky stayed by my side. "Alexander's deathly allergic to garlic," I said.
"It looks like Jagger and Luna are, too," Becky remarked. "That and being pummeled by Alexander and Trevor."
"I told Trevor the gelcap was an aphrodisiac," I proudly whispered when I reached Alexander.
"Apparently he told his friends, too," he said softly with a smile. "The entire soccer team must have taken them."
Alexander turned to Jagger and Luna. "It's time you return to Romania. For good."
"Yeah, go back to Romania, you freaks!" Trevor said, balling up his fists.
I put my arm around Alexander's waist and held him close.
Then I turned to Trevor.
"I guess you are the school bully again," I complimented.
Just then a dog started barking, distracting everyone. We all turned around.
"What's going on here?" Old Jim, the caretaker, called, holding a flashlight toward us.
Ghosts and goblins started to jump the fence. Werewolves and witches hid behind tombstones. The soccer snobs took off around the shed. Becky and Matt raced up the cemetery aisle.
"What's with all these cans?" Old Jim scolded. "I'm going to call the police!"
Alexander, Trevor, and I turned back to the coffin.
All that remained was the flickering candelabra.
Jagger and Luna were gone.
19 Vampireville
Back at Alexander's attic room, after weeks of adventures with the twin vampires behind us, Alexander and I finally had a chance to be alone and chill.
I had a lot of time to make up for in the lip-action department. We cuddled and kissed in his comfy chair until I thought my heart would explode out of my chest. He nibbled playfully on my neck, and I wondered if it was hard to resist my mortal self.
"Anytime you are ready," I offered. "The cemetery is only a few miles away."
"I like you just the way you are," he said, and brushed a few strands of hair from my face. "You know that."
"But you may like me better," I teased.
He began tickling me, and I cried out in laughter. I leaned back and accidentally kicked something hard against the wall.
It was the door handle to his hidden attic room.
I was immediately brought back into the reality of the situation.