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Tyrren
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What isn’t depicted in books and movies, is that when a person becomes a vampire, their mind is still their own.
Although my thoughts were blurry at first, my conscience is fully intact. In other words, I still know that biting people and sucking their blood is bad. Bottom line. However, it’s almost impossible to control those urges. Fortunately, my jiu-jitsu self-discipline training is coming in handy.
I’d managed to resist the pull and hunger as I roamed around Brooklyn, looking for Ivan and Lea. For hours, I searched, desperate to find them, to feed, to wake up and realize this was a nightmare.
Down by the dockyard, I heard a scuffle, someone whimpering. A guy had been stabbed and was barely hanging onto life. It was wrong, wholly and entirely. But I did it. I drank. I had to. I could no longer resist. Regret, shame, and the deepest sense of loathing I’ve ever known will exist within me for all eternity.
Then I went home. That’s when the trouble really began.
The last five hours feel like more like a decade. I was at home, staring at a box of cereal, willing it to satisfy me when my brother barged in, using up the rest of the milk. I hadn’t seen him in a week.
He laid into me about how if I’d just be normal—work at a pizza shop or get a tattoo or something, instead of being a blacksmith’s apprentice—the girls would be chasing me.
He didn’t notice the blood staining my shirt or what was sure to be the deranged look on my face.
At this point, the girls should run away from me, but even before, I had no interest in girls chasing me. None, except the one I can’t have. The one that sits in a chair across the room at Riker’s Reform School. Her eyes are wide.
If I were human, my stomach would knot with fear. Instead, my jaw twitches and my muscles coil. I’m a monster who operates with physical instinct and a leftover conscience that’s weak in the face of the beast within. Yet the desire to protect Lea overwhelms me.
Her mouth opens and closes like she’s going to say something, but nothing comes out.
I’m instructed to place my hand on a stone etched with a symbol. It’s cold, unyielding.
The headmistress arches one severe eyebrow as though she sees my thoughts. “Welcome, Tyrren Santos. Vampire. Nefral Weapons Trade criminal.”
Nothing about why I’m here makes sense. I was arrested for being involved in the Nefral Weapons Trade, whatever that is. My brother is happy to call me a dork, but I just happen to be really good at forging swords. Apparently, too good because the most recent one I made was confiscated by the police when I was arrested. The one that Lea used to slay the demons. The one that no one ever came to claim from the garage. Huxley had been out of state at a trade show and I figured I’d ask him when he got back. The police didn’t mention the guy down by the docks. If anything, sucking his blood is why I belong here.
Even though vampires don’t have powers other than super strength and the ability to mesmerize our prey, Magical Management has jurisdiction over us. Mercifully, the officers saw to it that I was fed.
My record says that I’m underage. For that reason, I was spared from RIP and sent here—a place for supernatural juvenile delinquents. Until recently, I ticked none of those boxes. I was held back a year when I moved to the US from Brazil and started school late—the secret Lea and I shared, the one we bonded over—meaning I’m eighteen like her.
I sigh as the guys and girls are divided into lines. I try to catch Lea’s eye, but she’s marched out of the room and disappears down a long corridor. Through the barred windows, clouds gather. If my mother were alive, she’d freak out right now.
Cruel irony that I am now the same kind of monster that killed her and Dad.
As for my brothers, Lyle is an actual felon. The middle one, Kylen, is a player—hence the teasing about girls. Mom could always rely on me, the baby, to be the good son. The three of us are nearly identical—tall, well-built and athletic, and with thick, dark hair that I’ve heard girls love (at least according to Kylen). He’d say my good looks are wasted on dorkdom. Whatever.
A CA, a correctional assistant, guides me to my new room. In short order, I get a bed, desk, and dresser. The uniforms consists of blue pants and an orange, black, and white striped dress shirt. It’s a cross between prep school garb and prison clothes. At least I don’t have to wear a jumpsuit.
My roommate is a small, gangly kid named Aaron (it’s printed on the door) and by way of greeting, he tosses a shoe in the air that nearly hits me in the head as he searches for something in the mess by his bed.
My reflexes are lightning-fast and I catch it. “Hello to you too,” I mutter.
He whirls around and stares at me with lavender eyes. “Hi. Looking for a textbook.” He returns to his task, tearing the room apart. He picks up the other sneaker, hucking it at me.
I catch it easily. “Not cool. I have two brothers and won’t tolerate inconsolable rages or jerks, got it?”
Aaron looks up, wearing an impish grin. It occurs to me that something, likely a crime of some sort, landed him here.
I chuck the shoe back at him.
He doesn’t give me an apology but understanding passes between us. I stay out of his way, he stays out of mine, and neither one of us will kill the other while he sleeps.
With that, I drop into the chair and let out a loud grumble. Why am I here? Not the big existential question, but why am I literally in this jail, er, reform school. My thoughts race through the morning: I went to the forge, Huxley wasn’t there yet. I stoked the fire, threw some logs on, and ran the bellows, preparing for the day. Tried to be normal. Tried to distract myself from the thirst.
Someone came by to commission a piece for a door. The smell of blood was heavy in the air. I fought against attacking the guy.
Then the police barged in, arrested me, and now I’m here.
Aaron exits but leaves the door open. Other students, as we’re called, pass by. Some alone. Others in groups. I hear Lea’s name and my gaze flashes up.
A girl with a button nose and sapphire eyes leans against the doorjamb. A few other girls stand at her flanks. “New here?” she asks. They’re definitely vampires. Probably studied under the females that intercepted me in the city.
I nod.
“Aren’t you going to ask my name?” she says.
I wasn’t. I stall, clearing my throat.
“I’m Jasmin.” She flips her hair over her shoulder and flits her long eyelashes. “It’s nice to meet you, Tyrren.”
My name is also on the door. She’s a girl in the boys’ dorm, meaning she dismisses the rules and probably rules the school. I’m quiet again, not interested. My brother isn’t wrong about me being a dork. The moment becomes awkward.
She bites her lip. “If you want to make the right kinds of friends while you’re here, come find me,” she says and slinks away.
The misty drizzle outside does nothing to wash away the tension caused by coming here. It tugs at the set of my jaw and the back of my neck.
It was no secret that Huxley, the blacksmith, dealt with some odd characters, but he wasn’t a criminal involved in a weapons ring and neither am I. The last thing I have on my mind is making friends or meeting girls.
Well, except one girl who is already my friend and happens to be here as well. Since it appears we can move about freely, I get to my feet, prepared to find Lea.
The campus is fenced-in and relatively quiet. The buildings consist of an incongruous mixture of neoclassical architecture and cellblocks. Ivy creeps up the sides of the back of a brick building. The archways and pathways look like a boarding school or college, but none of the students are permitted to leave. The new and old doesn’t make sense. Being here doesn’t make sense.
I reach what must be the girls’ dorm. Like mine, it’s also cinderblock. Yellow light from the windows glows against the cloudy sky. The door is locked and footsteps patter up the path behind me.
Jasmin and her girl posse approach. “I knew it wouldn’t take you long to come looking for me.”
How to handle this politely? I’m dealing with vampires, after all. “I came to visit my friend Lea.”
Jasmin’s face darkens and her eyes harden into a glare. “You just made your first mistake.” With that, she storms inside.
A hand lands hard on my shoulder. “Officially, guys aren’t allowed in there. But there are ways.” Another vampire winks and then extends a hand to shake. “I’m Cole. Singer for the band Reckless Hunger.”
A guy with long black hair stands on my other side.
“This is Felix. He plays bass.”
Tattoos form a full sleeve on Felix’s skinny arm.
A tall girl with bleached, messy hair struts out of the dorm. She slides her arms around Felix’s neck. They kiss. I look away, craning to see if I can spot Lea. She must be in the dorm somewhere.
“Hungry?” Felix asks the female.
She nods. “Always.”
I can hardly conceal the lift of my eyebrows.
“Don’t mind Felix and Nina,” Cole says. “But if you need to feed, the dispensary is down that way.” He gestures to a squat cement building.
Felix and Nina saunter away. In the distance, a break in the clouds reveals the setting sun, a bloody shade of red spilling over the horizon.
A couple of fae hurry past us. They both have lavender eyes like the girl who was being attacked the night Lea and I encountered the demons. My gaze trails them until they’re out of sight. Until I smelled fae, or whatever it is I do with my senses, I didn’t know they were real.
Cole directs me away from the dorm. “Let me explain something to you. Here at RIP Jr, there are two groups. Vampires and fae. Even though the faculty is trying to integrate us, make no mistake, there are clear divisions. They don’t mess with us. We let them live. Simple as that. But you know, it’s in our nature to get hungry...and sometimes for more than blood. Try to stay out of trouble, but I won’t blame you if you find yourself in it.”
With a glance back at Lea’s dorm, the door opens. Mysterious blue eyes the color of the sky just before nightfall, silky black hair, and a grin salted with uncertainty and peppered with daring meets my gaze. This surreal reality vanishes along with the rest of the delinquents at this place.
Without a word, I rush toward Lea.
Before I realize what’s happening her arms wrap around me in an unexpected hug. A megawatt jolt rushes through me at her touch. We’re the kind of friends who can be smooshed together in the subway or absently find a leg or arm leaning against the other while watching a movie without thinking a thing about it. This is next level. If I had a heart, it would be thundering. I inhale her citrus spice scent and something else. Fae blood, confirming her supernatural origin. But she doesn’t have lavender eyes like many others.
I jerk away, disgusted by what I am.
She pulls away as though realizing this at the same time. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” I echo.
“Are you actually surprised to see me here?” she asks with a wry grin.
“Did you try to get revenge on Lucas?” I blurt, meaning it as a joke.
Her lips quirk. “No. I wouldn’t waste my time on him,” she says, picking up on my exact thoughts. We always finish each other’s sentences.
“Then what was it?”
She gazes at her shoes. “Murder. Two natural mortals. I’m surprised you didn’t hear.”
“No.” I stagger back. She wouldn’t do that. She might be wild and reckless, but she’d never hurt anyone.
For instance, she decorated a statue of some stodgy guy in the school library with glitter, a boa, and ribbons—Gorilla Glue was involved, but it was funny, harmless. She also stole the master copy of a science test as a favor for a kid whose father was in a terrible car accident and couldn’t study, but the teacher wouldn’t budge on making an exception for him. Although, once she got in a fight with a group of girls, but they were seriously evil to a kid with arm braces. Who does that? It was Lea’s double life. A way for her to deal with what happened sophomore year that she refuses to talk about.
“No,” she confirms. “But the police say they have witnesses claiming I did it. I didn’t.”
I fight against reaching for her arm and giving it a squeeze. “I know.” She doesn’t need to say another word. I believe her.
“What about you?” she asks in her husky voice.
“You heard. It’s stupid. I stand accused of being involved in some weapons ring or something.”
“But you’re not supernatural.”
My tongue absently flicks to my teeth. My very sharp incisor teeth—a new feature I didn’t realize I had because I refuse to look in the mirror.
Lea’s eyes widen and she bites her lip, but it’s nothing like the way Jasmin did earlier. I see alarm. Without her needing to speak I know what she’s going to say.
I hurry away as shame spikes me in the heart.
