Blood Lines

6. Destruction

"How did I get stuck with her?" Clae moaned over dinner that evening. "She's the worst."

"She sure doesn't make life easy," Jordan said in sympathy.

"How am I going to survive this? It's half our grade!" Clae sighed and attempted to slurp some potato soup but it was too hot and she merely set her spoon back down again.

"I've heard rumors about her," Samantha said, stirring at her own soup. "She's the daughter of some famous councilman, one of the elite vampires. She's really high ranking. Most people here are pretty much afraid of her."

Clae took a moody sip of water. Well that wasn't helpful. All that rumor insinuated, and Clae did not doubt its authenticity, was that Lena was probably used to everyone else doing her work for her, and never having to take any responsibility herself. It was daunting, as their first real task of their midterm research was approaching fast.

In fact, that very Friday they were given the next part of their project, their midterm plants. Lena and Clae were given the genus Sanguinas, blood lilies, and their first task was to correctly identify each of the seven species by comparing them to the herbarium specimens. As this particular genus had over 20 possible species, it was no mean feat. It was a task that required attention to detail, a steady hand and a lot of plant identification skills.

Class was taking place in the greenhouse today. Each pair had taken their plants to a lab bench lining the walls of the greenhouse and they were beginning to work.

"Ok, let's move on to specimen B," Clae nudged Lena as they finished jotting down all the details for specimen A. "I'm going to check the striations on the petals for identity, you can stain the leaf to check if it has iron in it."

"Stain the leaf?" Lena said blankly. "How?"

Clae looked up from her counting. Unlike Jess and Samantha, Clae didn't find Lena intimidating so much as irritating for her apparent lack in the most basic botany skills. "Seriously? We just learned this three weeks ago. Don't you ever pay attention?" Clae growled this last bit in an undertone. She was already in a bad mood. This morning Jasper and Reginald had cornered her, Jess and Jordan yet again in the entrance hall, gushing their usual suggestive comments. It irked her to no end that those two idiots were allowed to stroll around campus taunting every human girl they met. Almost as infuriating was always Jess's reaction, as though she would have liked nothing better than to stay and accept the evocative flattery.

Lena heaved a huge sigh. "I forgot," she said yawning widely. "How about you stain the leaf and I'll count the, what did you call it spots or something?"

Clae bit back a spiky retort and stood, circling around to the other side of their work bench and clipped a small sample of leaf. She began the staining process while Lena stared through the loupe at the flower.

"Make sure you count the small ones at the base."

"Sure thing," Lena said, giving her a lackluster salute.

"Ok, we have a positive iron test," Clae declared as Lena squinted. "This is definitely one of the higher elevation species. How many striations did you count?"

"23," Lena said, glancing up.

Clae stared at her. "That's not possible, there can only be iterations of 5." She elbowed Lena out of the way and began the count again. "25," she said a few minutes later. "25, can't you even count?"

"Well, you're the one rushing me," Lena said in irritation.

"We kinda need to move fast, we've already used half of our time! And we have four more specimens to go," Clae said, feeling her pulse quicken.