Chapter 1: New Herd

I stepped off of the yellow school bus and winced as I left the shade. It was September first, and my first day of my...17th school. I was starting sixth grade. Not that it made much difference to me. I really didn’t care.

If you are reading this book, you are probably a troubled person.

Welcome to my world.

Actually, for me, ‘troubled’ is a little bit of an understatement. Unless you can count being a twelve year-old vampire who needs to keep two vials of blood in his leather jacket just in case he has a bloodlust as a small problem.

It’s not.

I was wearing the darkest sunglasses I could find, a leather jacket, leather slacks, and a Linkin Park band shirt, topped off with a black baseball cap. The cap and jacket both had several cavities for me to hide knives in, and the slacks had an uncountable number of knife holsters inside. The jacket also concealed five vials: One of grenadine, one of water with red food coloring, one with tomato juice, and two with human blood. O Negative, to be exact. It was my preference.

I stepped into the sunlight. I didn’t shrivel up. I guess I should explain...I was not bitten by another vampire. Rather, I was born to two vampires. This makes me able to withstand a lot of what would kill a regular vampire: sunlight, crosses, stakes, garlic...those all just stung to me, but with the exception of sunlight, they all hurt terribly and I had to take a swig from one of my vials to cure myself.

It was my parents who sent me the blood. Shortly after I was born, a vampire hunter discovered him and they’re still trying to run from him. We write to each other, and they send me quantities of O Negative because they do not want me to start...err...hunting...at such an early age. They left me with a human godmother, whose name was Molly. (Wait till the second chapter for that.)

I scanned the crowd of children: many were happily chattering away with one another, some were chasing each other...they seemed like cattle to me. It was my instincts that made me do this: scan the ‘herd’ of humans for the one that would put up the best fight, or give the best food. There weren’t any plump one in this herd, but there was an alpha male and...an apprentice? The were leaning up against a tree, and all of the children seemed scared of the two. The apprentice was very skinny and regular-sized. The alpha male was very tall and very muscular; he must have been held back several years.

I stepped back into the comfort of the shade. I had set my targets for the day. I walked to the doors. They were the seventeenth pair that I had walked through in seven years. I figured that somewhere I had to have broken some sort of record.

The halls were whitewashed and light with some kind of long, bright, lightbulb. The sides were lined with blue lockers and kids. About ninety-five percent were just returning to this school. The tiny other percent was the new kids: the ones who would get picked on for most of the year. I walked by the sides with my head ducked down. It was best not to draw attention to myself.

I rounded a corner and made one of the worst mistakes of my life.

I bumped into the so-called alpha male and his lackey.

“Well, well, Rye, what do we have here?” The alpha male didn’t really mean anything by his words. They were spoken in a mocking tone.

“Looks like fresh meat, Buck!” responded the one that I now knew as Rye. Behind my sunglasses I rolled my eyes. These kids were just wasting my time, something I did perfectly well on my own. Buck rested his arm against the locker in front of me, blocking my path. Rye was on my side. Silently I cursed myself. First day of a new school, not even two minutes into homeroom, and I had already managed to get in a fight. I clenched my teeth and fists.

“What do you want?” I managed to grind out.

“Nothing much. Unless you hand over your pocket money.” threatened Buck.

I weighed my options. Hand over the twenty bucks in my pocket to this moron, or prove to him that he shouldn’t mess with me. I chose the latter.

“Alright, then. Fight me.” I challenged. Rye looked as if he were hesitating, but Buck rolled up his sleeves. He punched straight at my face. I ducked and reached for my knife.

Just my luck, that was when the teacher had to come around the corner.

“Boys, boys!” she shouted, her voice showing obvious distress. “Break it up! Break it up! We will not put up with fighting in this school!”

I could tell already from my encounter with Buck and Rye that this teacher was either the one who would always stick to it, or the teachers in general couldn’t spot a fight if it was on live television. I pulled back and leaned against a locker. Buck muttered something about ‘he started it’ , and then pulled Rye off down the hall.

That was when my jacket fell back to reveal my knife. The teacher looked bug-eyed at it for a minute, and when she finally got over the shock of seeing this weird new kid with a knife, I could practically predict what she was about to say.

“Young man, we do not allow any kind of weapon in this school,” she said, gesturing nervously to the knife.

“So?” I asked. It wasn’t an innocent question: I just liked to make people feel offended or stupid.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the principal’s office.”

Well, for me it was no record. I had been sent to the principal’s office once the minute I stepped inside. I walked down the corridor to where I had seen the door with Principal on it. I punched a locker and kept on walking emotionlessly.

There was a creaking sound and I heard the door of the locker fall off its hinges. I also heard the teacher muttering, “We’re going to need school security.”

Buck and Rye popped their heads out from behind the corner. They saw Will punch the locker after being sent to the principal’s office. Buck turned to Rye and said,

“There’s something up with the new kid.”

I walked past the secretary’s desk and into the principal’s office. It was almost spartan. The principal had a desk, a filing cabinet, and two chairs. One of those was for the principal, and the other one was for the student he was telling off. Sunlight streamed in through an open window, only causing me to push my sunglasses back further. The name tag on the desk read Leonard Skeeter, Vice Principal.

“Sit down, Will. Mrs. Dempsey, the teacher who caught you fighting in the hallway, sent you ahead to me. I would appreciate it if you gave the knife to me.” The man acted as though he were the most powerful person in the world, his speech overflowing with a kind of arrogance.

“Okay, Leonard.” I pulled out the knife and put it on the desk. The principal glared at me. I stared back at him, most likely with some form of arrogance in my eyes.

“That’s Mr. Skeeter to you.”

I smirked. “Alright, Leonard.” His eyelids closed for a minute, most likely hiding his frustration at failing to make me call him by his last name.

“I should get on with procedure. Do you have any other weapons on you?”

I smiled my most evil smile, without exposing my fangs, and opened my jacket. I watched the principal’s eyes widen and heard his pulse increase a significant amount as he took in the thirty knives in my jacket.

“A-alright. H-hand them o-over.” he managed to choke out. I handed them over. This was a routine that I was used to. “Thank y-you. You m-may le-leave n-now.”

“Thank you, Mr Skeeter.” What? It’s manners!

I left his office and slammed the door behind me. I heard the glass center shatter and the wood splinter. I nodded to the secretary.

“Gladys.”

“Will.” She nodded back.

I opened the door and walked about twenty feet before stopping. I smirked and said under my breath, “Leonard.” And then I walked towards my second period class.

Leonard Skeeter was just about to scream. His three hundred dollar door was broken. He picked up the phone and dialed the number to have somebody repair the door.

That was when his secretary yelled to him, “He’s broken a locker too, Mr. Skeeter!”

That time Leonard Skeeter did scream, and the person on the other end of the phone wondered what the heck was going on.