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One
Derrin
Swinging my keys I head to my car, eager to get the day over with. It’s been a long ass day, teachers who argue with students, students who start fights for fun, annoying girls who won’t take no for an answer. That’s been my life every day for the last few years. The only time I get a break is when it’s school holidays and I can hide away in my parent’s holiday house near the lake. I usually spend the holidays with my two best friends, Torren and Remmie, but they’ve been distant lately. Everything feels stagnant, like we’re just going through the motions instead of actually living.
Speaking of Torren, he pulls his far too expensive car up behind mine, blocking me from getting out. With a sigh I turn to him, blanking my face to prevent another argument. We’ve been doing that a lot lately too. Arguing over practically everything. Even the smallest things set us off. Maybe it’s hormones, maybe it’s normal, but we’re far from normal. Torren’s snapped words only serve to prove my point, “We can’t keep avoiding the council forever.”
My footsteps are light as I make my way over to his car. Torren’s my polar opposite, he’s fair where I’m dark, even his eyes are bright despite the midnight hue they appear to be. I don’t know how he always seems so bright, maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m dreary and stuck in a rut. My gaze roams the near empty school grounds, hoping no one is close enough to hear the idiot. This is not a conversation we should be having right now; all he’s doing is making me want to shout. I don’t though, I just keep my voice casually calm as I correct him, “Maybe not, but we can at least try to stay off their radar.”
“How the fuck are we going to do that with students dropping dead at and around our school?” He’s not joking, so far there’s been four students’ whose bodies have shown up on school grounds mutilated. The local news even ran a story about it, dubbing the murders the “School Yard Killings” as if having local teens murdered wasn’t bad enough, they had to go and splash most of the details across the news. No one wants to see that shit; least of all me and my friends who have been working hard to stay out of the limelight.
My breath rushes out of me on a sigh but the wind catches it, keeping my annoyance a secret. I really need to get my aggression out, but I know fighting about all this isn’t going to do either of us any good. I always get frustrated and aggressive when I’ve gone too long without feeding.
Don’t laugh, the term ‘Hangry’ was coined for a reason and believe me, no candy bar is going to satisfy my hunger.
I know I’ve taken too long to answer when Torren leans further out his window, his blue button up shirt pulling tight across his broad chest. I envy him sometimes; I’ve been working out for years and I can’t get my shoulders and chest to look that big.
“Derrin are you even listening to me?”
I sigh again, I’ve completely missed what he said. “I don’t know. Maybe the mayor will finally decide our school is worth protecting and send someone to investigate.” I say continuing on from the last thing I said in the hopes he won’t notice I’m basically ignoring him.
“Yeah, like that’ll ever happen. Those assholes in the government never do anything to help anyone but themselves.” While I agree with him, hashing it out in the very place that is mobbed by reporters and murderers is not the best idea. “We’ll talk about it later. I’ve got somewhere I need to be.” I don’t mean to be rude, brushing my best friend off like that, but I need time to think. I need to release this pent-up rage building in my gut.
Torren growls something unintelligible and takes off, squealing the tires, leaving the smell of burnt rubber in his wake. His Cadillac is going to need new tyres if he keeps that up.
It’s not unusual for me to take off on my own, both my best friends understand, but sometimes I wonder if we’d have become friends in the first place if we weren’t all the same species. I need an outlet for my anger over the council, so I head to the one place I know there will be some action.
Cars, girls, fire, beer, what more could a guy ask for?
Well truthfully, I could ask for a hell of a lot more. Like a normal life, a chance at love, a happy ending, but no, it’s the same song and dance, every damn day, school Monday through Friday. Constantly trying to blend in while standing out. Then come Friday night, drinking out by Point Lake, a race or two and the same pathetic girls who throw themselves at every guy they deem worthy.
I’m so sick of it all, but there’s nowhere else to go.
I just want to get through my senior year without anyone finding out mine and my friends’ secrets. Get through this last year and we’ll be free to make our own way in the world.
The roaring bon fire in the middle of all the heaving bodies draws my attention more than the actual party, the flames dancing with an abandon I myself have never felt.
Well the fire draws my eyes, until I see her….
Long blue-black hair glowing in the firelight making the blue throughout it stand out more, a look of utter bliss on her face as she tilts her chin towards the skies giving me a view that’s literally mouth-watering. My gums itch with the need to bite, kiss and devour her long slender throat. She’s a goddess among mortals and the only girl here tonight that’s made me feel anything short of disgust. In fact what I feel for this goddess from a single glance is beyond anything I’ve ever felt before. She makes my heart race, makes my whole body feel like it’s finally alive.
Not that I’m not alive, vampires are more alive than most humans, well full-blooded vampires anyway. Most hybrids from what I’ve seen are more humanoid than vampire. They have the heightened senses, the blood lust and the enhanced speed, but hybrids have a little extra. So far from what we’ve experienced, hybrids each have a unique ability that full blooded vampires don’t, don’t get me wrong, full blooded vamps are special, they can after all make other vamps with a simple blood ritual, but they lack anything remotely ‘magical’; Myself for example, I have a heightened sense of intuition and right now, that intuition is telling me that this girl is dangerous, an unknown, but I’m determined to find out what and who she is because there’s something about her that isn’t human.
I’m obsessing and I don’t even know her name. As I watch she jumps and glares at the fire before snatching a beer off someone. My curiosity gets the best of me, so I make my way to her side of the fire, careful to stay out of her direct line of sight. She flips a vaguely familiar coin through her fingers, drawing my attention to those long beautiful limbs.
For the first time in, well, ever, I feel nervous walking up to a girl. I don’t let it show though. I simply paste on my best ‘I’m a confident sexy guy grin’ and walk right up to her….
Two
Areyna
My eyes sting a little as I watch the sparks fly up towards the clear night sky, blending seamlessly with the stars for a single moment of time. The teens around me are too busy getting drunk and flirting with each other to notice something so breathtaking. The lyrics from the music are being drowned out by the voices of the thirty-odd teens, all of them completely oblivious to the beauty in the fire as it burns before them, but I notice. I notice how each flicker of flame reveals a hazy image, much like looking at the clouds on a hot summer day. I notice how the embers that fly free contort and dissolve until they are nothing more than twinkling stars, fading away into the night sky.
Being a loner has it’s perks. Besides fires have always fascinated me. It's one of the only real memories I have from my time before living here in Yawns Ville. Okay so the town is really called Cageton, but come on, it's a small town in the middle of Australia. With only a few hundred local residents, it really is Yawns-Ville.
My obsession with fire is the last remnant from a life I no longer live. After all, how can you truly live when you’re trapped in a never-ending cycle of blood, chaos and hiding? As I stare at the sparks coming off the bonfire, I recall the first day I came to Cageton. I’d spent the better part of five years trapped in a government facility, treated like an animal.
But the day I thought I was going to die turned out to be the same day I began to live.
