Chapter 1: The Night Draws Near
Connor Yami woke with a start at the sound of his alarm beeping at him, groaning he turned over and pressed the button in order to deactivate the sound, but he found that it wasn’t the source of his aggravation, as he looked about his plain room trying to locate its source his eyes fell on the open curtains allowing the early morning sunlight into his room. The moment he crossed his small, mess of a room and closed the curtains he immediately felt infinitely better,
“Damn puberty” He whispered under his breath, at least he assumed it was puberty; his aversion to the sun began a little while after he turned thirteen.
Jacob Varg woke with a feeling similar to having a hangover, at least he expected it was. When he attempted to get out of bed, fireworks of agony exploded in his skull, causing him to gasp in pain, at that moment he realised his throat felt extremely dry as though it had turned into sandpaper. Ignoring the immense pain walking caused him, he crossed his large room and stepped into the shower and began washing himself. It wasn’t until he climbed into his taxi that he realised the shower water had been blood red…
Connor insisted on wearing his most concealing clothes, even though the day was warm and relatively sunless. When he was asked by his grandmother “why” he only replied with, “I feel like wearing them today.” This only served to make his Grandmother (his parents were dead before his third birthday) worried about dehydration, and he assured her that he would drink plenty of water. He walked out the door as his grandmother watched with a look of concern.
Along the way to school he kept wincing every time a small ray of sunlight pierced the clouds that concealed the sky, by the time he arrived at the institute, known as school, he felt weary as though he had slept very little in the night. As he took in the sights and sounds of the imbeciles he called classmates, he noticed his best friend standing in the middle of two of the biggest fools had to offer, their names; Jaycee Ahondara and Jordon Yamazaru. Connor knew Jacob could take care of himself, but he still felt the need to place his hand on Jaycee’s shoulder and say in his most menacing voice, “Do we have a problem here, Jaycee?” If there was one rule that hadn’t been broken was the unspoken one that everyone knew, ‘never fight Connor or Jacob’. Jaycee froze where he stood and turned to glare at him but didn’t say anything, and walked away with Jordon in tow. Connor watched as they disappeared behind the school building. He turned to Jacob and tried to smile, but the expression his friend wore was dark and his eyes had dark circles around them, as though, he too, had slept very little. He nodded once and they walked away from the sounds of chaos that was the student body. Wishless Cross secondary school was over one hundred and fifty years old, but had been added to in order to make it seem less 19th century and more 21st century: for starters the addition of the recreational room had made a huge difference for the students, due to the fact that it was filled with several games consoles, fifty to seventy inch plasma screen TVs, and an entire floor filled with music and recording equipment. The only problem was that all the adolescents who attend this school are always rich, snobbish, spoiled, and/or violent, that is why there are only fifty or so students, because no other parents want their children to attend. The teachers weren’t much help either; they believe that children should teach themselves, so all they ever did was layout the work and let the students decide for themselves whether or not they would do it… needless to say the test scores of Wishless Cross are abysmal to say the least. The only one who ever got any decent grades was Connor and even then only when he felt like it, which was not often. Basically a day at Wishless Cross was like summer camp. The two rounded a corner and Connor stopped dead in his tracks.
“Well what ‘ave we ‘ere then?”
Jacob’s mind was in chaos on his ride to the school, even as he exited his taxi his mind was only semi-conscious of the real world, that is until the two most annoying adolescents, Jordon Yamazaru and Jaycee Ahondara. The two stood on either of him and were acting tough, good they’re so annoying.
“Do we have a problem here, Jaycee?” Jacob heard his friend’s voice, but it didn’t really register. He had committed countless unspeakable deeds since his thirteenth birthday, but the bloody shower water was a bit too much for him, and now he was shaken by the fact that he had no memory of anything that might’ve turned the clear water into a shower of blood. Jacob nodded once which signalled to begin walking to the only place where they could talk in private, or if they couldn’t be bothered to go to classes, they used it often. As he prepared to tell Connor what had happened to him that morning, they rounded the corner.
Connor was first to turn the corner and what he saw made him freeze. Jordan Ahondara and Jaycee Yamazaru were slowly beating the hell out of half a dozen year sevens, he looked to the right and saw that they had already knocked out five of the young students. All around him he could see blood. He was initially shocked, however at the sight of the blood he felt a strange ache begin in his canines that slowly spread to the rest of his body, when he took a step forward he snapped a twig under his foot, the two sadistic teenagers looked up at the sound and when they saw who it was they began their usual string of insults, the pair took these in silence until they used a new one about their mothers, fathers and grandmothers, the ache turned into an intense, unending pain causing Connor to fall to the ground gasping wildly, as though he couldn’t breath properly, behind him a wolf’s howl sounded…