It still doesn't have a name yet, but I'm going to work on that when it's done. The main character, although she's called Alex, is named after my best friend, Alix. I just spelt it different because I wanted to. She's still named after Alix. Anyway, here's what I've written so far, from the beginning.
". . . And the local authorities are blaming this on one gang in particular . . ." They'd been causing trouble for weeks now. The vampires. Running rampant through city centres, electrocuting eachother and going on blood binges. Mum was born just after the vampires surfaced, but I was born into this kind of place. Mum hardly lets us further than the end of the road for fear we'll get drunk dry by some psychotic, bloodthirsty vampire. That's stupid though - full drains are illegal, and they're easier to spot in the 'burbs. So there I was, curled up on the sofa, watching an annoyed newswoman reporting on a big vampire bust-up in New York.
" . . . Thanks for that, Angela. Now, many of you have been sending in emails and texts, and we-"
"The news?" my 18-year-old sister Lillian walked in.
" The news. Seriously, you have a screw loose."
"Says you." I retorted.
"What's that s'posed to mean?" Lillian raised and eyebrow. I ignored her and stared at the TV screen. Lillian sighed and stalked off to the kitchen to make tea - Mum's off on a business trip, and Lillian's old enough to be left alone with me. After a few minutes of clattering and banging in the kitchen, Lillian called through,
"I'm going out." I didn't bother to ask where: she always went to the same one, because her boyfriend worked on the door.
About an hour and a hlaf later, Lillian had left with a group of friends, and I was alone. I was back in the living room, staring absently out of the window. Our house was in the corner of a cul-de-sac filled with identical brown-bricked houses and square hedges. Next to our crazy neighbor's house, was a huge, dense clump of wild bushes and brambles. It was connected to the ivy on her walls, so there was a large barricade of insecty, leafy green lurking outside her house like Godzilla. I was gazing blankly into the gigantic bush when something caught glinting my eye. Panicking, I shrank away from the window and turned on the TV; the voices made me feel safer. They had been glinting, emerald green, like huge jewels hidden away in the bush. Only certain people had eyes like that. Mum would have a fit if she knew. There was a vampire in our street.
I dreamed I was in a forest. I was running through it in panic, stumbling over fallen branches and tripping in rabbit holes. I didn't know why I was running, only that I had to get away. Away from what, or who, I didn't know. As I ran, I noticed flashes of emerald amongst the shadows. The vampire was following me. As if on cue, the eyes appeared in front of me, on a faceless man. I tripped and fell at his feet, panting frantically. The vampire lifted me up by my elbow. Looking for a means of defence, I accidentally caught his eye. I couldn't look away. I was a rabbit in headlights. His menacing gaze, along with his sharp teeth . . .
"AAAAAAA!!OUCH!!" I yelled as a sharp pain bit into the soft flesh of my underarm. Cursing badly, I sat bolt upright in bed. My sister was leaning over me, grinning mischievously and looking a little worse for wear. Yawning, I shot my hand out and pinched her bare upper arm.
"Hey! What did you do that for?" Lillian hissed. I raised an eyebrow.
"Oh." she muttered, standing up. As she clambered off my knees, I noticed two scratches on her cheek. "Where'd you get those?" I asked, pointing at the thin red lines. She put her hand to them and shook her head, murmuring,
"Fell over. Must have scrawped myself." Lillian turned on her heel and clumsily made her way to her room. Shrugging, I ducked back under my duvet and fell asleep again.
I woke later that day, at a reasonable time for school (more reasonable than when Lillian attacked me, by far) and sleepily threw on my black and red school uniform, before trudging wearily downstairs to get breakfast. As I munched on my toast, I thought about the eyes. They'd definitely seen me. But had they only just spotted me? Or had they been fixed on me the whole time? I shuddered and nearly spilt my orange juice.
Nothing much happened at school; we did the same work as last week, Liam, the class rebel, got given six detentions and the dinner food was crap. Like every other person at Manchester Science College, I drifted aimlessly through the day on autopilot. But as I weaved through the babbling crowds rushing home at the end of the day, something caught my eye. Because of the Equal Rights things the government brought in on vampires, they're still entitled to all the normal stuff, like education. There was a vampire girl in Year 11, my year. She didn't stand out as a vampire - unless you counted her glowing yellow eyes. Two large boys were pestering her, and a small crowd was gathering, encircling the three of them. The girl tried to ignore the boys and make off throught the crowd, but they kept pulling her back, shoving her about.
"Why're you here, vampy girl?"
"Shouldn't you be out murdering people?"
"I-"
"Shut it toothy. We don't talk to vampires." What are you doing now then, stupid? I thought scathingly. The girl kept determinedly struggling from their grasp, even though they grabbed hold of her again every time. Suddenly, the wider of the two twisted her arms behind her back, locking her in place. I winced at her pained expression. I'd have stepped in, but these boys would have beaten me to a pulp, and I didn't think that would help things.
"I think we should knock those nasty fangs of yours out, before you hurt someone, don't you?" the talelr one sneered. The girl was frozen in terror, her yellow eyes glistening with tears. A small part of me realised that the teachers didn't seem to have noticed yet. The boy swung his fist. BAM!!! The girl broke free of the other boy, swung her arms forward and let loose a crackling orb of yellow electricity. It slammed into the boy and knocked him back about 20 feet into the crowd. She turned on the other boy, her eyes flashing. He tried to scramble away. A gust of wind knocked him into a wall. Everyone turned back to the girl. She was gone. I blinked dazedly, and with nothign left to do, began to walk home. I knew about the vampire weather control ability - that and animal communication and moderate mind control. I'd never seen it in real life before. I marvelled at it all, thinking of what I could do with that power, to blast things away like that girl had done . . . but I was beginning to sound like a supervillain. I sook my head and quickened my pace.
"Mum's back tomorrow." Lillian shuffled into my room while I was doing my homework and flopped down on my bed. Obviously, she still had a hangover. I looked up from my tedious maths work. Lillian looked awful. Her face was pale, there were deep purple bags under her bloodshot eyes and when she had spoken, her voice was hoarse and croaky.
"How much did you have last night?" I asked. She blinked wearily and shrugged,
"Not . . . not that much, really." I shook my head and was about to return to my work, when I noticed something. The cuts on her cheek were gone.
"The cuts . . ." I muttered.
"Wha - oh, I put make-up on." she answered quickly, not looking at me. Lillian jumped off the bed, tucked her dark brown hair behind her ears and shuffled back out again.
That evening, I trudged down to the living room to find Lillian. I checked the kitchen. I checked her room, the spare room and the bathroom. She wasn't there. Feeling slightly unnerved, I went back to the kitchen. On top of the polkadot table cloth was a post-it note. Gone out.
"Gone out." I murmured. " How smashed can she want to get?"
I sat, ramrod straight, staring at the TV. I could hear the words, but I couldn't understand them; it was like listening to white noise. I couldn't see my reflection, but I reckoned it was as pale as a ghost. My eyes were wide. I hadn't blinked for two minutes. Quickly, I glanced sideways, my dark grey eyes reaching into the darkness. Barely visible, but I saw them. Glittering green eyes.
At school the next day, the vampire girl didn't turn up. Everyone was whispering about yesterday's incident, and rumours were flying around like a virus. I heard some Year 7 kids saying that the girl had turned into a bat and flown away. Everyone knows vampires can't fly. Strangely enough, none of the teachers had seen or heard about what happened - not even nosey old Mrs Krat, the german teacher, and nothing got past her. Everyone pretty much sided against the two bullies, since everyone knew their parents were fierce anti-vampire campaigners. Most people just gave them dirty looks and a wide berth. Basically, it was just an average day. But there was still an eerie sense of wrongness.
I stood, panting, in the hallway. My bag was lying on the floor with my blazer. She never double locked the door. She never had the house silent. She never had the windows shut. Lillian hadn't come back. The house was exactly the same as this morning. It all clicked into place.
When Mum came home, I was sitting with my head on the kitchen table. I listened silently to her taking her shoes off and lugging her suitcase up the stairs. Lillian had had two scratches on her cheek. They were gone the next day. She looked drunk, but she hadn't drunk alot. Lillian didn't wear make-up, and she couldn't have been that drunk. We learnt in Biology that loss of blood produced the same effects as drinking alot. We also learnt that vampire bites heal quickly. There's a halfway point between human and vampire. First, you become a Shade, a half-mad, half-dead being. Unless you get bitten again within 3 months, you die. I knew exactly what Lillian had done. At that moment, Mum came into the room. She always had a way with knowing things. She just . . . knew stuff. So I wasn't surprised when her voice broke the silence, shaking slightly.
"She's gone, isn't she?"
A week later, only me and Mum knew about Lillian. It would be pointless to send out a search - you can't catch someone who can run like a greyhound and force you not to notice them. Anyway, if we did find her, she'd probably eat us. I didn't mention her at school - as unusual as it seemed, people going missing was becoming increasingly more common. It just never seemed like it could happen to us. I didn't talk much anymore, either.
"Alex, are you listening? Alex!" I nearly jumped out of my seat. I had completely zoned out - not a good thing for me to do, considering I was in the headmistress' office. Mrs Withers was standing in front of me with her claw-like hands on her hips and her watery eyes peering down at me. I was in her office for swearing loudly at a boy who insulted Lillian. I was more surprised the guy had actually whimpered when I was shouting at him, than remorseful at my wickidness. Still, I had to pretend to look sorry, or I'd get stuck in detention for a century. Re-arranging my face, I looked down and mumbled a 'yes'.
"Alex, you really do need to give yourself a good talking to. Shouting at people like that, not responding to teachers, hiding at break . . . why?" suddenly feeling irritated, I stood up.
"No disrespect or anything, miss," I looked her in the eye. "But I don't think it's any of your business."
I knew it'd happen. I just knew she'd do it. Mum wasn't too happy, and needless to say, I was all but locked in my room after tea, and Mum had marched off with my laptop. Mrs Withers had got sulky and suspended me. So there I was, lying in bed at 10pm, staring at the wall.
Tap tap.
"Aaaaaaiieeeee!!" I screeched, throwing myself against the wall. At the window was a figure. Not quite solid, not quite gas, it was like shadow; even darker than the street outside. Only their eyes gleamed, bright white with slitted pupils.
"Lillian!" I gasped, trying unsuccessfully to relax my tensed muscles; I could sense an air of danger around her now, probably like how a worm feels when it realises there's a massive bird right behind it. Lillian grinned through the glass, and my eyes were drawn to the razor sharp fangs she had now instead of teeth.
"Let me in, stupid." she whispered, her voice carrying throuch solid glass. Warily, I answered,
"Why should I? You could kill me."
"Really?" Lillian hissed sarcastically, "I thought the venom, razor sharp teeth and bloodlust made me gentler. Now let me in! I'm not going to kill you." I decided she was telling the truth and opened my window. Lillian climbed through and sat down on the floor. Before I could say anything, she began to talk.
"I never asked for this. I never wanted it, but it's happened. I was out with my mates, and we were just heading back home All of a sudden, we got pulled into this dark alley, The other three got taken first. Completely dried out. I hid behind a dustbin and waited for them to leave. They almost did. One of them remembered me though, and they sniffed me out. I was going to get killed too, but they started asking which of them could 'fit me in' - they were all full of the others, you see, I think one of them knocked me out, because next thing I knew, I was in some old house." Lillian shuddered. "There was another guy with them now. Dressed like a business man . He's a gang boss or something. Dunno which, though. He told me I was a Shade. He said I could run away, but if I didn't come back in two days, he wouldn't let any vampires near me. I came back here, but I felt awful. I went back the next day and made him change me completely." she stopped.
"Well, you're pretty much fine now, aren't you?" I asked, hunched up on my bed. She looked grim and shook her head, her dark brown bob swishing.
"Definitely not. I can't get away from them."
"What? Why?" I asked, confused. Lillian sighed.
"They got me at my weakest. I was in agony, and the boss guy, he . . .he made me make him a Promise." I winced. Vampires can't break promises. Not unless one of the people involved dies. Not a nice prospect.
"What do you have to do?"
"Whatever this guy wants. Steal, assault, lie, kill . . . anything this guy asks for. Tonight I got away. I found out something." I stiffened even more.
"Those men who killed my mates didn't know who I was. Their boss did. Him and his boss knew all about me."
"Why?" green eyes flashed across my mind's eye and I flinched. Lillian looked like she was about to cry.
"They're after you." I froze. My heart skipped a beat as I repeated the words in my head. As if to make up for the skipped beat, my pulse started going so fast I was almost vibrating.
"I have to go." Lillian was back outside the window again, and looked ready to run.
"You need to get away, Alex. Far away. But don't tell Mum anything except to get away too."
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