On The Rocks, With A Twist -CHAP.01--VA-

  Joanne Hatcher, more commonly known as Joey, was a girl who liked to live in the moment. She rarely planned ahead and she didn’t see any point in dwelling on past regrets.

  Right now, however, she was feeling very stupid.

  She generally coasted through life, acting on impulsive whims. Her latest had been dropping out of St. Vladimir’s Academy, where she’d been training to become a guardian, not long before her graduation, in an attempt to pursue a career with the alternative rock band she fronted.

  That had been... stupid, for lack of a better word. Dhampirs, half vampire and half human, like herself, generally followed one of two options – being a stay at home mom (so not happening) or being trained to become a protector of Moroi.

  Joey had been following the second option at St. Vladimir’s; a prestigious guardian training academy. She’d been there for the last several years and had been close to graduating as an official guardian, but impulsive as ever, when she’d had a call from one of her band mates suggesting that their band could make it big, she’d jumped at the chance and dropped out without another thought.

  Bumming around with her band had been insanely fun at times. It had been so different and so much better than her lifestyle at the Royal Court. They hadn’t done too badly either, considering the little time they’d actually been performing together. They managed to book themselves a couple of small venue gigs and even recorded an amateur EP together. Nothing major, but nothing to sniff at.

  After a year of trying to fit into the music business, they’d had to concede that the likelihood of them making it big was very slim. Joey’s band mates had homes in the human world that they’d been able to go back to, whereas Joey had ran out of money and had been forced to return to the Court.

  Even though it hadn’t worked out, she never would have thought that she’d regret the time she’d spent on her music break. But when she’d gotten home, things hadn’t quite gone as she’d expected.

  From childhood to when she’d left for St. Vladimir’s, she’d breezed through her life at the Court. Her mother, Mela, may have been the only Moroi around who’d actually married her dhampir guardian, but she was actually a very well-liked member of one of the twelve royal vampire families.

  The Conta family had been fairly quiet over the last few years, with Joey’s aunt Marie as the head of their line, but Mela was very popular as the middle princess. She had a lot to say in matters at the Court and her status generally allowed Joey to bend more rules than most.

  But when Joey had returned home and very naively stated that she’d like to finish her training and graduate from St. Vladimir’s, the academy had refused her point blank. For starters, at the age of twenty, Joey was now too old to return to school. And no matter how good of a guardian to-be she’d made, they didn’t want dhampirs who weren’t one hundred percent committed. Joey actually had been a good guardian in-training, but recklessly dropping out to follow a spur of the moment decision showed that she was impulsive and couldn’t be counted on to protect a Moroi in the long run.

  She’d insisted that now that her lapse was out of the way, she was still committed to putting Moroi first. But since her father was an elite guardian himself, he was not impressed at what she’d done and insisted that she’d gotten what she deserved.

  Luckily, Joey’s mother was a lot softer. She’d been telling everyone that ‘teenagers will be teenagers’ and had promised Joey that she’d try her best to pull some strings and see if there was a way she could redeem herself and prove to everyone that she could still be a good guardian.

  After a discussion with the royal council, Mela managed to find a solution. But it was not quite what Joey had bargained for. The council agreed that she could complete her field experience at the Court as a trial – where it would be carried out in the same way as it was at St. Vladimir’s.

  For the field experience, every dhampir was assigned a Moroi, who they would have to guard twenty-four hours a day, six days a week. They were allowed Sundays off for recreation. They were given practice stakes and would be ambushed at unpredictable times by other guardians pretending to be Strigoi – vampires who had been turned from their Moroi roots and lost all humanity. They would have to fight against these guardians in order to protect their Moroi. Several guardians who lived at the Court had offered to juggle their schedules so that they could help play Strigoi.

  Because the Court was so well protected, the guardians had a bit more free reign and didn’t have to be watching their Moroi every second of the day. A few of the Moroi there didn’t even have their own guardians – something which was unheard of anywhere else, with the exception of the young Moroi who were still in school.

  Because of this, the council had been happy to give Joey a probationary Moroi assignment. The Moroi wouldn’t be in danger if it turned out that Joey really didn’t make a good guardian, since they were already under such heavy guard just by living at the Court. So the field experience wouldn’t present them with any risks.

  Joey wouldn’t have minded any of this. When the idea had all been explained to her, it had sounded like a very fair offer. Not to mention she was itching to show off her skills against the fake Strigoi.

  No... Her problem with this assignment was the Moroi they’d assigned her to.

  Adrian Ivashkov.

  She’d known Adrian since they were kids and it had been a rocky relationship right from the start. The only foundation between them had been how they’d constantly attempted to pull tricks on each other. Of course, their parents had assumed they were having fun and had continued to push them together, expecting them to be friends. But the truth was that Joey had never liked Adrian and he had always gone out of his way to pick on her.

  Now she had to spend the next several months at his side, protecting him from any possible dangers. The idea seemed silly to her when she was more likely to be a threat to him than anything else. What had she done to deserve this again? Dropping out of the academy didn’t feel like a big enough sin.

  So, even though she’d only been back at Court for three days, she was already forced into seeking out the one person she’d intended to avoid for as long as possible. Mela had told her that Adrian had been made aware of – and been surprisingly happy to agree to – the arrangement. Which meant that now, annoyingly, Joey had another favour to ask him. So it was with great reluctance that she headed down towards where she remembered Adrian’s room to be.

  The last time she’d seen him, they’d only been fifteen and she’d been leaving for St. Vladimir’s Academy. Of course, he’d played another trick on her that had resulted in her nearly missing her flight. She hoped he’d gotten more mature since then, but she knew that it probably wasn’t very likely.

  She hesitated out in the corridor when she finally got to his room, then sighed and reluctantly knocked on the door. She wasn’t going to get anywhere as a guardian standing out here. She frowned when there was no response and knocked even harder.

  When there was still nothing, she tried the door handle. It swung open at her touch, so she tentatively stepped inside. The lights were off and the curtains were still drawn. Was he still asleep? She couldn’t decide whether it was more likely that the door was unlocked because he wasn’t here or because he was.

  She heard something move behind her and whirled around to see a figure step out from behind the door. There were no guesses as to who it was.

  “I’ve been trained to expect surprise attacks – did you really think that was going to work?” said Joey scornfully. “I know I dropped out of training, but I’m still not gonna scare so easily.”

  “You always used to,” came the amused reply. “But now you’re just taking the fun out of it.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry about that,” said Joey sarcastically. “And quit lurking in the dark – you’re not Dracula.”

  As soon as she said it, light suddenly filled the room. Adrian was leaning casually against the wall, his hand still on the light switch. He was wearing the typically amused expression that she remembered all too well. “Ah, I’ve missed you, Hatchet.”

  “Hatcher,” Joey corrected loudly.

  She’d been right. His personality hadn’t changed a bit. He was still the same frustrating brat who’d always done whatever he pleased. And from the scent of mingled alcohol and smoke wreathing him, he seemed to have picked up a few more bad habits too.

  Joey resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose. The alcohol didn’t bother her in the slightest – it was hardly something she could judge after the amount she’d destroyed her own liver, particularly over the last several years. But she’d never been a fan of smokers. That was just another thing about Adrian that was sure to get on her nerves.

  Yet, appearance wise, she was surprised to see that he’d taken a positive turn. He’d always been a little on the scrawny side as a kid, but at some point over her years away from the Court, he’d clearly shot up and filled out quite nicely. He’d grown his brown hair out a little longer too and it looked as if it had been styled to be deliberately messy.

  The emerald green eyes and sardonic smile were still the same as ever though. And whilst Joey was taking in his appearance, she saw that he was very obviously looking her up and down too. Some guys just didn’t know the art of subtlety.

  “Hey, quit leering at me like that,” she scolded. The last thing she wanted right now was to be treated like some blood whore by the one person she’d always openly disliked.

  “I wasn’t leering; I was admiring,” countered Adrian, not even denying it. “You make me sound like some kind of sleazy womaniser.”

  “I may not have been back here for very long, but that’s exactly what I’ve heard,” Joey pointed out. It was true. Apparently, Adrian had a reputation for being a notorious ladies’ man.

  Adrian grinned. “Guilty as charged, I admit. So since you’re already familiar with that fact, does that mean I can still bring girls back to my room?”

  “Over my dead body,” growled Joey. “Not while I’m here.”

  There was no way in hell she wanted to share a room with people having sex. It was already bad enough that she was going to have to stay in Adrian’s room for the whole ordeal.

  That was easily the worst part of field training, but guardians had to be with their charges at all times. Strigoi weren’t going to be deterred just because it was night time – that was actually when they were most likely to pose a threat. So the guardians had to practice and prepare for that.

  “Aww, are you worried you’ll feel left out?” teased Adrian. “Don’t worry; I’m sure I know at least one wild girl who’d be up for a threesome.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Joey retorted heatedly.

  “Why would I need to when most girls would be willing to do it for me?” Adrian smirked. “And I’m pretty sure you’d be one of them – I know you’ve always had the hots for me.”

  Joey clenched her fists. This wasn’t going well. They’d been in a room together for all of two minutes and she already wanted to hit him. How the hell was she going to get through this? “Never in a million years, pretty boy. You’re still the same obnoxious brat I always hated as a kid.”

  “Hate’s such a strong word,” Adrian tutted. “You know it’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. You always went out of your way just so you could mess with me,” said Joey.

  “That was simply out of love,” said Adrian teasingly. “And it never caused you any real problems, did it?”

  “The last time I saw you, you locked me in a cupboard for half an hour and I very nearly missed my flight to Montana,” Joey reminded him.

  “Maybe I didn’t want you to go.”

  “Or maybe you just wanted to screw things up for me.”

  “Well, it sounds like you didn’t need my help with that,” said Adrian pointedly. “But for the record, college drop-outs are much sexier than graduates, in my opinion.”

  “It’s not college, moron,” replied Joey. “It’s an academy that would have determined my entire future. That’s why I’m doing this; I don’t want to end up like some blood whore.”

  “You know that I’d have no problem with that,” Adrian said brightly, in what he clearly thought was a reassuring way.

  “As strange as it may sound, I actually don’t care what you think,” replied Joey hotly. “Or about anything else to do with you for that matter.”

  “Really?” Adrian placed a finger on his chin and pretended to think. “So if that’s the case, then what are you doing here in my room already? I was told your field training doesn’t officially start till twelve.”

  Great. She couldn’t really put it off any longer. Joey knew that she hadn’t been doing a very good job of buttering him up before she made her request, but it had never really been an option anyway. Being nice wasn’t something that came all that naturally to her.

  So she simply tried to play it casual instead. “I was just wondering if it was cool for me to bring some stuff up, since I’ll be staying here for a while.”

  If this was where she was going to be staying for the next several weeks, she was going to need some of her own stuff to feel at least marginally comfortable. But unfortunately, she knew that she’d have to ask Adrian first, since it was his room. He’d been a surprisingly good sport in accepting the whole fielding training, seeing as he had nothing to gain from it, but just how far was his cooperation going to stretch?

  To Joey’s surprise, it seemed he hadn’t reached the limit of his generosity just yet. “Sure, bring whatever you like,” he said with a shrug. “As long as it doesn’t include another guy, otherwise I might get jealous.”

  Joey rolled her eyes. She’d spent the last year living with two guys and she was pretty sure that in that whole time, they hadn’t made as many suggestive comments as Adrian had in the last five minutes. Yet she couldn’t sniff at how helpful he was being – he could have easily made this a lot more difficult for her.

  “Thanks,” she said reluctantly.

  Adrian held a hand to his ear. “Hang on a second, I don’t think I heard you right... Were you actually just civil to me?”

  Joey glared at him. “You know in about two hours, they’ll be giving me a practice stake, right? I’m not against turning rebel and using it on you instead.”

  Adrian just chuckled. “Oh, Hatchet, this is going to be so much fun.”

  “Fun’s not exactly the word I’d use,” said Joey through gritted teeth. “And stop calling me that!”

  “So what word would you use? Enjoyable? Stimulating? A sexual adventure?” Adrian grinned.

  “That’s more than one word, numbskull,” Joey grumbled. “And in your dreams.”

  Adrian just smiled, though more to himself. “Ah, yes, in my dreams... Though I guess you wouldn’t know about that yet. Maybe we’ll see...” he said distantly, going off on a rather distracted tangent.

  Joey raised her eyebrows. It was as if he’d forgotten she was even there. “What are you talking about, you weirdo?” She’d seen him do this a few times in the past – he’d just completely zone out. She waved a hand in front of his face. “Hey, are you listening?”

  Adrian abruptly snapped to his senses like nothing had even happened. “Sorry, Hatchet, what were you saying?”

  Joey frowned. Was he doing it on purpose just to mess with her? “Are you fucking with me?”

  Adrian grinned. “Do you want me to?”

  Joey just sighed. “Never mind.” He was so incredibly tiresome to try and talk to.

  “I do have a serious question for you though.”

  Joey’s eyebrows rose even further. “Yeah? What is it?”

  “When did you get those?” Adrian pointed very obviously to her chest. Joey glared and then hit him not too lightly on the shoulder. “Ow! Hey, guardians are supposed to protect Moroi, not attack them!”

  “We’re allowed to defend ourselves when it comes to sleazy guys,” Joey countered testily, before huffing, “And it’s not my fault I developed late.” It was true – up until the age of sixteen, she’d been as flat as a board. It was especially late for a dhampir, who were known for their curvy figures.

  “I didn’t say it like it was a bad thing,” reassured Adrian, his grin returning. Joey wanted to slap it off his face. “This is definitely going to be entertaining. I say roll on twelve o’clock.”

  Joey scowled. “Yeah, let’s fast forward to when they give me a weapon. I hope you can snooze with your eyes open, Ivashkov, or I’ll be staking you in your sleep.”