Beautiful Monster (Beautiful Monster #1)(10)
Author: Bella Forrest

Except for that nagging feeling of the greatest moment of my life – which I left on the stage today.

Forget it, I told myself, and turned on some Broadway show tunes as I worked. Eventually, singing along to Cats, I did.

CHAPTER 4: LIAM

It always amazes me, the lack of talent that comes out for auditions; any auditions, not just this one. When I was in Hollywood, anyone who had a smidgen of actual talent was light-years ahead of the pretty faces that just showed up with a dream. And when we hold open audition here, dear God, it’s a nightmare. Even girls who are supposed to have tons of experience can barely convey emotion. It truly makes me wonder how they got to where they are now.

Beside me, turning on the lights as we got back to my apartment, Porsche immediately laid out the choices we had narrowed down. Fifteen girls who had made me raise an eyebrow when they read.

“Did you sense anything in there?” I asked, pouring myself a drink and watching the sun begin to set. She rolled her eyes.

“It doesn’t work like that. I can only tell you if a spell is being cast or something, not if there’s just a magical being hanging about.” She accepted the drink I handed her, and sat down on the couch, her long limbs taking up little space. Still, her position was awkward, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Porsche was always folding herself into strange positions, the mark of a true dancer.

She wasn’t just a dancer, of course. Although her personality was entertaining, and she knew how to tear up a room, it was more than her talent that had first strung us together.

Three years ago, when I was newly turned, and trying to forget, I stumbled upon a high school party, craving blood and death. Just as I felt the cravings were too much, and the entire school was likely to be wiped out, there was Porsche, grabbing my arm, wanting nothing more than to ask the Hollywood star to dance. And suddenly, the cravings were gone.

Porsche was a Shield, a form of supernatural being that was almost legend. There were only three bloodlines left in the world that produced Shields – the Camerons, the McIntoshes, and the most powerful one, her bloodline, the De Ritters. By her touch, she rendered supernatural beings powerless. Witches couldn’t light candles, Vampires couldn’t intimidate, Werewolves couldn’t transform and Ghosts couldn’t appear. When she touched me, it was like I never craved anything but pizza and booze.

Not that she had a particular inclination to stop my cravings. She didn’t care one way or the other, and encouraged me to be what you are, and cut out the crap, her other favorite saying. In return for her services, she made me promise one thing, and one thing only. That, when her natural death came, I would transform her into a vampire, and she would get to be immortal.

She wanted to live; to walk in the sun and dance in the rain. And while I saw the value in that argument, it was incredibly stupid, and she knew it. At fourteen, at the wrong kind of party, Porsche had used a dirty needle and contracted HIV. And while she may be managing it fine now, with a good prognosis, all it took was one wrong turn when she was on tour with the Ballet, and she’d be gone, without me to fix it. I had threatened her a hundred times, but with a flicker of those green eyes, she always laughed and walked away. And somehow, I couldn’t go against her wishes, not when she had helped me so much. Her blood smelled terrible when I could smell it, and although I fought cravings often, I never wanted her blood. It was infected, broken, and unappetizing.

Our friendship wasn’t romantic, although I’m sure there had been a drunken night once or twice. Instead, it was full of platonic love and support that I had never found elsewhere.

“So, what are we going to do?” She asked, spreading out the headshots. I glanced at them, downing my drink. Soon, the sun would disappear, and I would be, as she put it, what I was. I wanted to make this choice while I was still human.

“Throw darts and pick one?” I replied, sitting beside her. She thought for a moment, and then pulled one out, handing it to me.

“This one was in Hollywood awhile with you, Candice,” she flipped to the back, looking at the resume. “If you wanted good publicity for the school, this one is a good way to go. Shows that the school only takes the best of the best, and even Hollywood is not the best.”

“Yeah, no,” I immediately discarded her. “She’s got money. If she wants to, she can pay her own way. She’s just on a power trip, and I won’t tolerate it.” Setting her headshot aside, I picked up the next one.

“She was good,” Porsche said, looking at the headshot of Terry Monroe. “But…”

“She has a lisp,” I said, flipping it over to see a lack of resume. “It would take about 4 years of speech training before she could even start acting properly, and that wasn’t the point.” I smiled as I reached for another one, a six year old girl who would start in our youngest class, and therefore would be mine to shape and mold from the beginning.

“No,” Porsche shook her head, folding her long legs up under her. “She’s adorable, and anyone will take adorable, her chances are endless.”

“Right, but she’s six,” I pointed out. “I can mold her into whatever I want. She could be a success story from the very beginning, she’d credit everything she ever learned to us. It’ll be good for the school.”

“And when you stand beside an 18 year old at a press conference, looking barely older than you are now, how’s that going to work?” Porsche asked, and I shrugged.

“I age.”

“You’re aging because you’re treating your human body like crap,” She replied. “That’s not aging, that’s just looking hung-over every morning.”

I grinned at her, even as I got up to fill another drink. And then, I felt my jaw twitch, a sign that my fangs were starting to grow in for the night. Glancing out the window, I saw that it was almost dark.

“Porsche.”

“So come sit here and stop being dumb,” she replied, holding out her hand. Reluctantly, I went.

The second I touched her, the cravings began to recede. Picking up another picture, I was suddenly transported back to the audition, when this bright eyed young girl had read with me. I remembered her at once, the way she watched me without awe or fear, the way the words had tumbled out of her mouth naturally.

“That’s Amy,” Porsche said, her eyes softening. “She’s eighteen, which means she’ll only have a year, maybe two if she agrees to go back a grade. She doesn’t have any experience.” Everything she said was negative, yet I heard the softness in her voice. I turned, to meet her eyes.