Blood and Beasts

by L. M. Miller

  “Well, I’m actually a fourth Arabic, a fourth white, and half Mexican,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  “Ooh… look at them, Abernathy. Tellin’ secrets, laughin’ to themselves, they look just like us,” Linda said mockingly as the two girls studied the pair of them unnervingly.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Seph suddenly said with inspiration, and all three leaned in close to hear what she had to say. “Why don’t we head for class now? That way, we’re not sprinting down the hall to them, like usual?” She suggested, and they all laughed, nodding in agreement.

  “Ya, that is a good idea, ‘cept I dunno what Sir Babbage would do if I arrived to Music early. I’m always late,” Linda laughed, heading down the hallway to their left.

  “Ya, I got HU with Sir Guthrie,” moaned Abernathy, heading to the right. “It’s just so great,” she added cheerily, and it took Seph a moment to realize that she was being sarcastic in her own chipper way.

  “And I got Lit,” announced Rodney. “Right here,” he said with a little grin, and she just shook her head at him.

  “Gobbledegook is where?” She asked hopelessly, and he inclined his head to the left, in the direction Linda had walked off.

  “Blue Hallway, kind of near where I just was. Just head straight down the hall. Sir Sanzio’s room is number 031,” he said just as the warning bell rang. “Late again?” He asked, raising his eyebrows to her as she darted off, and he headed into his own classroom with the dreaded Madam Powers.

  “Already gotta reputation for bein’ late, and I’m not even halfway through the day,” Seph muttered to herself, shaking her head before glancing at the moonlit courtyard to her right. “Halfway through the night,” she amended, staring at the darkness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was very strange to see cool, silvery moonlight beaming down onto the grass instead of warm, golden sunlight. She shuddered when she thought of the sun. Last thing she remembered about it was that it was much too bright and way too hot for her. No, she preferred the softer, incandescent lighting of the moon. She was smiling to herself as she slipped through Sir Sanzio’s door and sat herself down in one of the few remaining seats. Actually, it was in the same place as her last seat, right up front and all the way to the right, closest to the door. Quick escape route, as usual.

  Sir Paolo Sanzio swept into the room just as she was sitting down, and she nearly gasped aloud. With his shock of blue hair and violet eyes, he was unmistakable. He was one of the three wizards who had attacked her and Francesca the other night! He was the one who had finally chained Francesca down and not very nicely, now that she thought about it. He seemed to almost hear her gasp in his head, although she had not made a sound, and turned back to look at his new student.

  Her shields! She had let them fall! She really needed to remember to keep those up, she thought, throwing them up again. There was a glimmer of a smile on the teacher’s face. He had heard her gasp in her mind, and her thoughts about the night before last as well. He had also heard that she already knew about shielding her mind. He looked at her calculatingly.

  “Students, I believe we have a new student among us,” he announced, and she sent him a scathing glare, clearly sending the message that she did not want to do the whole, stand-up-in-front-of-an-entire-class-of-your-peers-that-you-have-never-met-before-and-explain-yourself-and-your-life-to-them, thing. “I think we should welcome her. New student, would you please come up to the front of the class and introduce yourself to us?” He asked, smiling all the while.

  “Sure,” she said, trying to hide the malice boiling in her mind from him, as that would hardly make a good first impression.

  She rose carefully, walking slowly to the front of the class. With her back slightly to the students, she managed to send him another glare before taking a deep breath and facing them. She smiled, trying to appear warmer, although a few students leaned further back in their seats from her. Apparently, they had recognized that she was a vampire. Big surprise… Her eyes had to be dark grey by now, maybe even black… She was getting pretty hungry. So, they recognized her as a hungry, new vampire. She wondered if her fangs showed or not.

  “Hi, I’m Persephone Black. Most people call me Seph,” she said, keeping the same approachable smile on her face.

  Her eyes recognized nobody in the classroom. She was on her own, lost at sea. She hoped that she was not about to drown.

  “Well, let me say hello to you, Miss Black,” the teacher said crisply, and she glanced over at him testily, her annoyance mounting by the minute. “Students? Any questions for our new one here?” No hands rose, what a big surprise. “Perhaps, if you ask enough good questions, we will not have time for that pop quiz I was considering,” he amended, and several hands shot up.

  “Yes, Mr. Sprofkin?” He called on a particularly timid-looking boy who kept sniffling, and she recognized him from her Basics class with Madam Winslow… where that whole vase incident had happened.

  “What’s your family like?” He asked, a simple enough question but a difficult one for her.

  “Um…” she started, faltering a little as Sir Sanzio turned his big, purple eyes on her. “I’ve lived in a foster home for the past four years. My foster mom, Janette, works in a grocery store, and Bill has his own mechanic shop,” she explained, and everyone nodded, not alleviating any of the tension in the least.

  “Miss West?” He asked, and a tall girl with huge, gold eyes stared at Seph a little challengingly, freckles standing out around her silver glasses.

  “Do you have any real brothers and sisters? Foster brothers and sisters?” She asked, not wanting to take the pop quiz as she flooded Seph with questions that were only more complicated considering her different living situation.

  “Uh… ya,” she said a little nervously, not enjoying all the attention as the new kid. “I have one half-brother and one half-sister. They’re twins, and they’re both eleven. We’re five years apart. Their names are Pearl and Pearce,” she said matter-of-factly, palms sweating, and the same girl raised her hand again as Seph tried to suppress an exasperated sigh.

  When would this inquisition be over?

  “Miss West?” The teacher called again, voice light.

  “What about any foster brothers or sisters? And do your real siblings live in the same home as you?” She asked persistently.

  Seph was sorely tempted to throttle the pestering girl. That would stop the onslaught of questions indefinitely. She smiled, thinking the werewolf girl was lucky she couldn’t read minds.

  “Ya, Pearl and Pearce lived with me in the same foster home. Originally, they were gonna separate Pearl and Pearce because girls and guys don’t usually stay in the same house, but they’re twins, and they weren’t about to be separated. Then they tried to put me in an all-girls home, and that did not go over well with the twins either or me, for that matter. So we all ended up together,” she said, grinning a little at her satisfactory, full answer.

  Miss West raised her hand again.

  “Ya?” Seph asked, not waiting for Sir Sanzio to call on the annoying girl.

  Funny, Miss West was a werewolf, but she would have pegged her for a witch. Then again, Miss West, whose first name was Tanya, she easily gleaned, was acting a bit like a predator on the prowl. She had sensed Seph’s unease and was using it against her. Maybe she could learn from this… Do not underestimate anybody at this school.

  “Foster siblings?” She smiled cruelly at Seph, sharp teeth glimmering as she clearly enjoyed tormenting the new vampire.

  “Yes. I have six foster brothers. Manny is five. Bobby is seven. Terrence is eight. Dean is twelve. Lawrence is fourteen. And Nate…” she trailed off a moment as flashes of Nate’s bleeding throat flew through her mind. “Nate is fifteen,” she finished, keeping her face a careful neutral mask as she battled inwardly with her own feelings.

  Nate… His bleeding throat… the taste of his blood… the disgust on the twins’ faces… his blood… She was hungry, and these images
were just making her angrier and hungrier, for that matter. Did emotions spike the bloodlust? She hid a barely perceptible tremble.

  “You may sit down, Miss Black,” Sir Sanzio repeated, and her head snapped to him when he took a slight step towards her.

  She did not trust this teacher. He may be a wizard, which was not as much a physical threat as another werewolf or vampire, but he was strong in other ways. He had subdued Francesca in her full form. He was the first wizard to intimidate her at this school. She doubted that he would be the last. She shook her head once, clearing the eerie, sticky cobwebs from it.

  “Thanks…” she murmured and took her seat, hair hanging around her face to shield it from any curious observers.

  Sir Sanzio began the lesson and carefully did not look in Seph’s direction again. She knew her walls had fallen when she had mentioned Nate’s name, and she knew that he had seen the same images in his mind that she had seen in her own. He was obviously a slightly advanced telepath, just like her, which he also now knew. Did he also know how hungry she was? She paid attention to the class as best she could while her stomach silently rumbled inside her. She found that she actually had quite a knack for Gobbledegook, although that should not be a surprise to her. She had a surprising knack for languages. Francesca often spoke to her in Spanish, and she would reply back, each understanding the other relatively well. She had even learned some French online, another one of those Internet surfing days.

  “Miss Black, de-gobbledegook-ookook gobbledegook-gobble-gobde gob-dookble-ble ookde-gobbledegook-gobdook?” He asked suddenly, and she smiled at him, knowing the answer and how to respond already

  “Blede gob-ook degook-blede-gobblede gob-gobblegobble-gobde dede-ble-gobblegobble ookde-ble-gob-dookble-degook, Sir Sanzio,” she concluded, imitating his goblin accent perfectly, picking up on the language of the goblins and hobgoblins alike.

  “Very good, Miss Black,” he said, keeping to himself the shock he had felt at her prowess at the new language.

  He gave her a peculiar look before turning his attention back to the rest of the class and the lesson at hand. She smiled inwardly. She sure had shown him, and it had felt good. She did enjoy excelling at subjects and being acknowledged for that. A little vain, was she? Maybe… or just confident. Depended on how you looked at it.

  Midway through class, an amazing aroma filled the air. Seph took a deep breath, sitting straighter. She turned to her left and to her right, searching for the source of that amazing smell that seemed to wrap around her stomach, ensnaring it and spiking her hunger. Finally, her eyes zeroed in on the girl directly across from her, all the way up front and in the far left corner. She was biting her nails, and a bright crimson spot of blood had erupted around the cuticle of her right index finger. Seph could see it as clearly as she could see her own nail. She stared at the hand intently. She stared at the drop of blood. She licked her lips without noticing. How good would that fresh blood taste, hot and smooth down the back of her throat. She was suddenly out of her chair, eyes latched onto the oblivious girl, who continued to chew on her nails.

  “Miss Black?” Sir Sanzio’s voice sounded so far away, as though he were miles, and not mere feet, away from her.

  Slowly, she tore her eyes from the girl, who had finally noticed her. The girl’s fear merely added more enticement to the smell of blood as her eyes grew large in terror. A hungry vampire was eyeing her like she was a steak. Seph spared Sir Sanzio a glance, but his violet eyes caught hers and held them. She was not able to look away, although her brain kept niggling her to focus on the food at hand.

  “Would you like to step outside, Miss Black?” He asked, as cordial as ever, but it was not really a question.

  She nodded once, realizing how she must be terrorizing the classroom, as per usual, and quickly exited before she could terrorize anymore of her peers. Walking out into the royal blue hallway, she inhaled deeply, taking in the scents of the night. She breathed in fresh glass, crisp and sharp. There were the mingled scents of the few trees dotting the courtyard here and there, majestic oaks that had seen many years, some even centuries. They told stories, trees. There were the flickering torches and candles that swathed the air with their stark, homey scents. She tried to exhale the smell of blood from her nose, but it seemed to cling there, coppery and sweet.

  She leaned her head back against the wall beside the classroom door, which was shut, and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. She imagined breathing in the scents of the night, breathing them in, breathing them in. She then imagined breathing out the smell of blood, breathing it out, breathing it out. It was hard to do, but she managed. Her heart rate slowed, which was a good thing. In the classroom, it had been thumping like mad, up to a human’s level. Now that it had settled some, it was not nearly so high, but it wasn’t anywhere near where it should be.

  “Are you hungry, Miss Black?” She opened her eyes to see Sir Sanzio standing there, watching her carefully. “Eyes pitch black, just as I thought,” he said with a little sigh, shaking his head solemnly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said meaningfully, nodding back towards the classroom. “I didn’t mean to…” she trailed off, not quite able to finish her sentence as she thought back on how animalistic she had looked and acted.

  “You didn’t mean to what, Miss Black? Control your hunger better? You’re a new vampire. It is to be expected. How much blood did you have this morning?” He asked her promptly, arms folded over his chest as he watched her every movement cautiously.

  “Um…” she squeezed her eyes tight, trying to think past the pounding heart in front of her.

  His heartbeat was loud, like beating drums. It should be reverberating the walls of the hallway, of the whole school, it was so loud! However, she was touching the wall, and it was not vibrating. It was all in her head, all in her mind.

  “Phin got me a pint… I think,” she added, opening her eyes again just to see the vein in Sir Sanzio’s neck pulsing with each of his pounding heartbeats.

  “A whole pint, and you’re like this? You can’t even take your eyes off my throat,” he stating, brows furrowing. “You need to learn to control your hunger, Miss Black. It’s the first thing all vampires learn,” she gave him a quizzical look, not sure what he was talking about or if she cared at that very second.

  “My sister was… is a vampire,” he quickly amended, and she nodded slowly, not quite sure how he was a wizard, and she was a vampire if they were siblings. “There are certain circumstances that change things…” she had no idea what he was talking about, but then again, she was only catching every other sentence. “You must learn to control your hunger, but first, you must sate your hunger fully. You need to know how much blood you would drink normally, although it will lessen over time. As a fledgling vampire, needing to drink a lot of blood is not weakness but strength. It shows that you have a lot of strength in you that needs a lot of feeding, a lot of energy. It also shows that you’ve been using your vampire skills throughout the day,” he gently chided. “But as you are a fledgling, it is expected that your powers will get out of hand during the day… night,” he added, giving her a small smile as he tried to lighten the mood.

  He was short. He was nearly her height, and she was 5’3. Could he really be that strong? She realized that she was surmising if she could attack and subdue this teacher and then feed off of him. What was wrong with her? And why did his vein have to keep moving like that? It was impossible for her to not stare at it. It was impossible for her to hear hardly anything of what he was saying over the pounding of his blood, his heart.

  “I shouldn’t really do anything. It’s more up to Mr. Dragonfly than to me about what to do,” he moved towards the classroom door hesitantly, doubt etched on his features.

  “I can’t pay attention in there, Sir Sanzio. All I see are veins. All I hear are hearts. All I smell is blood,” she shook her head, despising what she was becoming.

  “Don’t ever hate what you are, Persephone,” Sir Sanzio looked her d
irectly in the eyes when he said that, firm. “Now, I realize that I am not supposed to…” he searched for the right words. “Skew the teachings and learnings of a student pertaining to their species studies, especially if they are different from my own species,” he started, and her eyes traveled his every movement like a hawk, waiting for him to finish. “However, if you cannot pay attention in my class and are a danger to my students,” he waved his hand in the air and was suddenly grasping an ounce glass of… blood? “Drink,” he passed the small glass over to her, and she tossed it back instantly.

  The blood trickled down her throat and into her tormented stomach, curbing the intense hunger to a manageable degree. She let out a sigh of relief and satisfaction. Opening her eyes, she looked at Sir Sanzio purposefully. Her eyes did not immediately alight on his jumping vein, although she did still notice it in her periphery. She smiled at him, satisfied, and he smiled back, sensing her gratitude and relief.

  “Now, advise your instructor, Mr. Dragonfly, that you need to be administered at least a quart of blood for the first few weeks at every meal, until you can start to diet yourself,” he finished with a reassuring smile, opening the door for her. “Now, let us finish the rest of class,” he announced pleasantly to her and the other buzzing students, striding into the classroom.

  As soon as the bell rang to signal the end of fourth period and the beginning of lunch, Seph was out of the door. She was starving… again. That little shot glass of blood had only sated her hunger momentarily. Near the end of class, the hearts had begun pounding again, and red had started to tinge the corners of her vision. She did not know what that meant, but it probably wasn’t good. She had not even waited for Linda, Rodney, or Abernathy, although they may have planned to just meet her in the Main Hall for lunch. They didn’t seem to plan ahead much, and they had an hour break for lunch. She would just find them in the Main Hall or not. Nothing mattered but blood right now.