AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER ONE
As my friend Yasuo the vampire Trainee would say…Headlines. As in, here they are:
1. Girl Genius Flees Crappy Home Life; Discovers Vampires over the Rainbow
2. Army of Females Vows to Beat Mold Girl into Vampire Operative
3. Girl Finds Success and Friendship and blah blah blah
4. Girl Pledges to Escape at All Costs
5. Girl Accidentally Kills Classmates to Survive
6. Girl Wins Massive Competition; Will Participate in Mission Off-Island (repeat #4)
I sat with Emma on the sand, contemplating my situation, but my uncharacteristically optimistic outlook was squashed as I realized my butt was getting wet. I shifted, peeling the cotton shorts away from my skin. “Dammit. Are you sure he said the beach?”
Today’s gym class was to be held outside, and my friend and I had shown up early—partly because we took every chance we could to hang out, and partly because the new gym teacher totally freaked us out.
Ronan had been our instructor last term. Sigh…Ronan. Talk about hot for teacher. But file that under Never Gonna Happen. He was a Tracer—meaning one of the guys responsible for tracking and retrieving girls like us to this sorry island—and that chilling detail kept my all-out schoolgirl crush at bay. Okay, that and the fact that he has some crazy hypno-voodoo-mojo where he can affect what I think just by touching me. Not exactly the foundation for a trusting relationship.
But Ronan was currently away to God knew where—just as well for my generally overwrought teenaged faculties—and some guy named Otto was his replacement for the summer semester. He was a Tracer like Ronan, only this particular guy didn’t strike us as someone to mess around with. Definitely not crush material.
“He said beach. ” Emma gave me one of her signature flat stares, and I rolled my eyes. I knew the saying went Still waters run deep, but did she have to be so damned still all the time? Sometimes a little expression was called for.
Sadly, I often had expression enough for the both of us. Like, just the thought of which bizarre oceanfront punishments might await us that morning had me getting surlier by the minute. Not to mention I was hyperaware of the damp sand now—it stank like dead sea creatures and it was lumpy with pebbles and jagged bits of shells that were digging into my skin.
“I hate beach days,” I grumbled, not ashamed that I probably sounded like a four-year-old. But Tracer Otto had a thing for doing sit-ups while thrashing in the freezing surf, and I wasn’t the biggest fan of swimming. I’d recently learned how, and I doubted I’d ever get used to the sensation of water whooshing into my nose and ears.
I thought of our new teacher’s sharp, austere features and well-combed blond hair. “Or maybe it’s just that I hate Otto. Him and that German accent. It’s like he’s auditioning for the role of Evil Nazi Number One in a remake of The Sound of Music. ”
Emma looked nervously over her shoulder. “You should hush. ”
“Yeah, yeah, farm girl. I’m hushing. ” I straightened my legs in the sand—even with the vampire blood to speed my healing, they were looking ugly, my knees mottled yellow and pale green with fading bruises. I scraped a shell from where it’d stuck to my calf and began snapping it into tiny shards.
Other girls began to drift in, wandering along the sand while waiting for class to start. Our numbers were fewer now—fighting your peers to the death had a way of trimming the student body—and I noted some were doing their best to conceal limps and other injuries, some fresh, some still lingering from the recent Directorate Challenge. It may have been summer term, but the vampires weren’t about to let up on our physical trials to give us a chance to heal. Only the strongest and the fiercest survived.
Emma sidled closer in the sand, reading my thoughts. She pitched her voice low, knowing as well as I that none of the other girls could be trusted. “Not many of us left. ”
“And we’ll lose more this summer. ” My words were a harsh whisper, but they were true. Our numbers would dwindle each semester, until only a handful of our original group remained. I thought of the girls who’d died so far, and I tried not to consider what it might mean that I’d already forgotten so many of their names.
“I imagine more will arrive in the fall. ”
I gave Emma a sour look. “More of these people?”
“Well, now that Lilac’s gone, they’ll need to give you a new roommate. ”
I shuddered. “Is that your way of putting a bright spin on things?”
It chilled me, but Emma was right, and I studied the other Acari, which was the creepy name they had for us girls. It was clear the vampires had a penchant for good-looking teenagers—everyone here was pretty in some way, if not outright gorgeous. It was annoying and sexist and gross. The vampires weren’t exactly enlightened—they were a bunch of guys in power, some of whom had been around for hundreds of years—and I guessed it was no surprise that, in training an army of agent/assassin/guardian Watchers, they’d select girls who were easy on the eyes.
Other than that, we were a mixed bunch. Farm girl Emma, accustomed to hard work and solitude, was fairly unique on the island. Lilac had also been a rare breed—of the rich-bitches-gone-bad variety. We all had our individual talents, too. Mine was being a girl genius who knew how to take a punch (thank you, drunken, no-good dad). And Lilac had been a pyro—witness, for example, my shaggy, burnt-off hair.
But there was one distinctive characteristic each of us shared: We were all outcasts. Gang girls, runaways, you name it—we’d all fled our homes, and not one of us was missed.
Emma eyed the other Acari along with me. “I noticed some of the Tracers are gone. They must be out gathering new girls. ”
Her comment got me thinking. Was that where Ronan had gone? He was rounding up new candidates for the next incoming class?
