Gabriella was never quite qualified to get into honors, due to her lack of devotion in work and laziness towards everything – though, she knew she had the brains and intelligence.
Her perception came as a surprise to many, except the selected few like her father or best friend, Sharpay.
Everyone conjectured that she was of the group with a low IQ, but that was remotely distant from the truth.
She was adept in academics—
Just not this.
"Back the fuck up!"
"Gabriella, will you please calm down?"
"I said to back the fuck up!"
"Clearly she wants you to back the fuck up, Al."
"Troy shut up!"
"Will both of you just back the fuck up!"
Troy didn't seem at all fazed by the boiling brunette with a lamp in her hand as she dangerously swayed it from side to side. She wasn't so threatening with a large gauge wrapped around her head, or that ridiculous bandage cleanly covering her neck wound.
He ripped his eyes from the menace to take a seat on the wooden chair in the corner, and once he did, interlaced his fingers together and rested them onto his lap. A delighted grin was visible across his lips, as his eyes held something other than anger. It was authentic amusement.
"Gabriella, please, just take a seat so we can explain—"
"Explain what?" Gabriella exasperated. "Why some guy was trying to kill me in a damn library? Or how he lay on the ground, dead, with his heart out of his body!"
"We'll explain it all once you calm—"
"Don't come any closer!" She bellowed out maniacally as her grip tightened around the lamp for redundant protection from these two – lying – bastards. Maybe not particularly liars in the general assumption, but they had been keeping something from her for a mere month or two.
"Allie, just go." Troy said with an emotionless nod. "I'll take care of this."
If anything, Gabriella would rather subdue to death than have Bolton alone with her in a room, after she was the victim of an abrupt, attempted killing. Besides the fact that she still hadn't deciphered her feelings for him – pure lust and attraction, or something hidden down under – she wasn't all keen on him offering assistance.
"No." Allie retaliated firmly as she looked in the direction of her brother. "I'm staying here."
Gabriella stood helplessly with the dangerous item at hand, flicking her gaze between the seemingly annoyed girl, and the agitated boy.
"No, you're not." Troy suddenly brought himself into a standing position and strode over to his sister. His eyes were dark and albeit scary, but his clenched fists were what caught Gabriella's undivided attention. "You're going to get the hell out of this room, do something productive, and return when I tell you to."
Gabriella flinched from his harsh resonance, for once not having been administered to her; but Allie didn't even spare a terrified glance towards him. She only let out a chafed breath and stomped thoroughly out of the room, the loud slamming of the sturdy door causing Gabriella to jump and let the lamp slip from her grasp.
"Sit down." Troy ordered – ignoring the shattered pieces of the light bulb now scattered across the carpeted floor. "Now, Gabriella." He added with grim.
Something in his tone coerced her into sitting down on the bed, and even if she couldn't feel her limbs doing the job of bringing her into a sitting position, she remembered the uncanny flare in his eyes beforehand.
He sighed out and he himself took a seat on the chair. "If you speak once while I talk, I'll tape your mouth shut, got it?"
Gabriella swallowed as he threw his head back with an alienated glance. Something about his persona today, was off from the recent days they had conversed. He was more intimidating this time, and she had no other choice but to obey to his commands or else she'd be too paralyzed to save herself.
"Glad we have an understanding." Troy paused. "Are you an open believer, Gabriella?"
For the life of her, she couldn't understand what that had meant. "Um, what do you, um, mean?"
He let out a snarky laugh. "Do you believe in fantasies? Fairies, wolves, witches?"
Gabriella's eyes widened at his question. Surely he wasn't saying that those fictional creatures had anything to do with the contemporary events? "I'm 17, not 5—"
"I'll take that as a no." He interrupted. God, he needed to stop doing that. "Age has nothing to do with what you believe in, Gabriella. I know you're stubborn and everything, but I think it's time to clear your mind of all those disbelieving thoughts about creatures."
She knew he was absolutely crazy – she always had a feeling that he was mental in the head somehow, she just couldn't figure out what was wrong with him besides the obvious.
"What the hell are you talking about?" She said breathily, satisfied with the completion of her statement.
"I'm talking about the guy back at the library. He's not an ordinary human."
Wow, she had actually forgotten about what just happened to her, what had almost happened to her if Troy hadn't intervened.
But now she was straight up confused.
"He was once a human…just like you, living his life in high school and aspiring to go to college. I'm sure he had his life mapped out." Troy got up from the chair and slowly, but cautiously inched near Gabriella. "But something got in the way of that. He was kidnapped, along with about a thousand other people." Gabriella gasped slightly at the revelation. "They tested on him, tortured him, and created what I like to call the perfect superhuman."
"I don't under—"
"What did I tell you about talking while I talk?" He growled, whipping his head towards her in an instant. Her shoulders slumped as she gave him a soft nod to reassure her silence. "The Cerques are a race of genetically enhanced humans, sired by Verints." A smirk replaced the thin line of his lips as he stopped short and looked at Gabriella. "And the Verints are no other than descents of vampires."
"Before you go sparking up an argument with me about I have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll have you know that I, myself, think it sounds crazy too. But this is pure truth, Gabriella. The Cerques were supposed to be beneficial to the Verints; they were supposed to be…good. One little slip of one of them turned everything to turmoil. Now the Verints are at war with the Cerques, all fighting for the same thing."
Troy noticed the fear stricken face of Gabriella, laced with the utter perturbation of the whole story he spoke out to her. It may come off as insane, but he was trying to prepare for this moment, and it happened all too quickly.
"They're fighting for the last of the Lercerinas; one hoping it will bring an end to the other, and one wanting it eliminated completely." Troy knelt down in front of Gabriella, his eyes bringing her further into a trance as she crawled forward onto the bed until she was fastened in front of him. "You, Gabriella, are the last of your almost extinct kind. And you hold the key to saving the Verints."
Silence.
More silence –
A laugh.
"I knew you were crazy!" Gabriella said vaguely between her laughing, and her attempt to crawl away from Troy. He noticed, and that only made him reach out to her, being so rudely denied by another giggle from the brunette.
"Well, I'd rather have this reaction than a violent one." Troy mumbled to himself as he sighed. "Gabriella, enough; you denying this will not make it go away." He hissed vehemently and walked to the other side of the bed, only to have her crawl back over to the recent one. "Will you fucking stop?"
"You need some serious help!" Gabriella was on the border of going absolutely mental, and having a panic attack from the binding hysteria flowing through her veins. "Serious help!"
And then it all happened in the blink of an eye.
One minute, she was backing away from his flaying hands, hoping to evade any contact in a desperate struggle.
The next, before she could even let out a warning squeal, she was pinned against the bed with a body hovering over hers; and her wrists being held tightly to the mattress. The pain, the surprise attack, the never ending nerves – was all unbearable.
"I told you to fucking stop." Troy snarled methodically as every word was emphasized indubitably, the same royal eyes that gazed upon her cockily, now burning with a fiery acrimony. Gabriella looked up at him without much will and her breathing labored into panicked gasps.
"H-How did you move that fast?" She asked lowly as the pressure against her hands alleviated, but still mustered a painful wince from Gabriella. He was so far gone, it seemed, that he wasn't even aware of the affliction forced upon her.
Her voice had broken him out if his manic stupor and his eyes lightened back into a calm, serene swirl. "If you didn't believe what I just told you, there's no way you'd believe me now…" He whispered, studying her reaction that he had bubbled up inside of her. And much like before, back at his house when they were both trampled onto the floor, his whole being froze.
He knew it wasn't smart of him to get close to her – on both terms; physically and emotionally. There were dangers that compromised this whole task, especially his incapability to stop himself once he got a whiff of Gabriella's scent.
Control.
It wasn't working in his favor at the moment.
Gabriella whimpered helplessly underneath his grip as his hands tightened suddenly. He was ignoring her pleas, her commands for him to stop and explain what in the world was happening. Troy was only shifting his head further towards her with an empty gaze, like he wasn't himself, like all logic was thrown out the window.
She half expected him to kiss her at the path he was seizing.
But that was crazy to imagine, right? They hated each other. They fought, they bickered, and there was no sense that he had any attraction to her.
At least, she thought that – boy, had she thought that.
But much to her dismay, lips never met her own quivering ones. There was a ting of disappointment when her eyes followed his head that fastened in the crook of her neck. She found herself…wanting for him to kiss her? Just to feel it. Just to know what it was like to be kissed by the sex god of the town.
And maybe that was why she never questioned what he was doing, because her thoughts were running wildly at their intimate position, and the kiss that would never come.
In her mind, she was reminiscing on the moment that landed her under Troys bed, but it was corrupted the second she felt a prick on her skin.
To be precise, the skin of her neck.
"Troy, what the fu—" Gabriella then squirmed to get him off, to free her hands, but to no avail. "Troy!" Her voice was louder this time, filled with anger and confusion. He was solid above her and she thought, he may have been ignoring her, but was anything getting into that head of his?
The pain that she felt on her neck increased so quickly as a loud gasp glided into the air. It hurt, like a needle puncturing and forcing its way past the territory – but just as quick as it came, it disappeared to a pleasure unlike any other.
The feeling that took over her body was foreign and seemingly exciting. There were shocks of a blissful sensation running down to her core, through her veins and in her nerves. She was hardly aware that his hand now cradled the back of her head, bringing it upright and closer. Gabriellas sense of awareness in general, abandoned her.
She could only feel this immense amount of satisfaction and the small wave of dizziness that was overcoming her mind.
It caused her to release a blatant moan; and she had no idea where the hell it came from. But her back was arching, lifting her body just barely off the bed and into Troys chest, and she was aching for something sexual – which rarely ever happened.
Of course, just as she was basking in the euphoria and crying for more, his body went limp onto hers.
"Gabriella?"
Troy was rolled off of her at a speed that Gabriella couldn't quite follow. "I knew I shouldn't have left him with you…no fucking control…dumbass…" Allie was mumbling to herself as she grabbed Gabriella's hands, pulling her up and off the bed. Small pieces of glass were stuck onto her clothes, and through her hazy mind, she realized that Allie just previously hit her brother on his back with the other lamp.
Considering he was lying on his stomach on the bed, dead to the world, with shards on his back.
"He'll be fine." Allie reassured Gabriella with a fake smile as she dragged her out of the room. Gabriella was almost in some sort of shocked state, that no words could be formed to express her worries and whatever the hell else she was wanting to say.
And then everything came to a halt when Gabriella's dazed eyes landed on the mirror in the hall, which they were passing by too fast for her liking. She pulled her hand from Allies grasp and walked backwards until she was faced with the reflection of herself.
"Gabriella, no—"
But Allies voice was mute to her.
"What the…"
That's when a scream echoed throughout the house, the same time Gabriella spotted the blood trickling down her neck, and the two holes perfectly incased on the skin.
