Cassian Legacy: The Vampire Prince

When I arrived at school the next day two things happened that had never occurred before. The group of friends I had made from the previous day waited for me at the entrance, and the boy, whose journal I had returned, stared at me from the side of his yellow racing car as I walked up the sidewalk from the bus stop. The two situations made me uneasy at first, but as I mulled them over in my head I realized that I had made an impression of some sort on them both, I just didn’t know what. Their stares were not hostile in any way, but I felt like I should be cautious in however I dealt with this unnerving situation.

I made my way over to the entrance, willing to handle the four teenagers first before I tackled the other issue. I had no clue what the kid wanted to say to me. He just stared, following me with his blue eyes. He looked curious, like I didn’t belong at the school and he needed to figure out what made me so different. Odd thing was that he was right, even though he guessed it with his outward facial expressions. But he would be road blocked. I wasn’t about to let him know that secret quite yet.

I pointedly moved my eyes back onto the opposite side of the parking lot and walked up to the four friends I barely knew. The girls looked like bubbles about to pop, while the boys looked eager upon asking me a question of some sort. Once I reached their position though, none of them spoke a word, even if their giddiness was slathered on their facial expressions and body language openly.

“You aren’t waiting for me, right?” I greeted them.

Krista wasn’t looking at me, but she nodded several times. Eventually Mallory nudged her and she grabbed my arm, pulling me into the school’s main entrance. We traveled down the main hall and into another adjoining hall before she burst out her question.

“How do you know Finn?” she exclaimed.

I glanced at each of their faces. They all seemed eager to know how I knew the kid, but I didn’t know who Finn was so how could I answer them? “What?”

“Finn…” Seth suggested, though I didn’t understand what he implied. “Finn Tierney.”

“Who?” I questioned them again. Who was this kid and what had them all thinking that I knew him, supposedly?

Mallory rolled her eyes. “The boy you talked to yesterday.”

“The one who stared at you in the parking lot earlier,” Nate butted in.

Oh – so that was the kid’s name. I hadn’t known it, and didn’t really wish to know it. But what piqued my interest was how they knew him when he was a new student here.

“I don’t know Finn. But I take it you do?” I finally answered.

Krista whipped out a photo album of the previous year’s student body. Even this school apparently partook in the custom of photographing each kid and plastering them into a book. Her finger pointed at the kid, Finn, where he was centerfold on the bottom row of the bleachers in the gym’s picture. He wore the same attire and he looked exactly the same in the colored photograph. His round face and dark locks of black hair were sheer perfection, the same yesterday as well as earlier when I saw him. So here was the proof that he had studied here before.

I shook my head. “I didn’t know him before yesterday. What’s the big deal here?” What was I missing?

Krista’s eyes popped wide open. “I don’t really believe that for one second. Finn only looks at people if he knows them. And you, he knows. Why else would he stare at you like that?”

Mallory nodded eagerly, backing up her ridiculous theory. Technically people looked at you to address, confirm, communicate, or even admire your face and body in some sort of fashion. They didn’t stare at you if they didn’t know you. It was odd behavior to some degree, even odder that these four knew his particular behavioral patterns.

“Do you know Finn?” I asked them all. Maybe something had happened in their relationship which would explain why he was isolated now.

Krista sighed. “I wish.” She nearly sulked then recovered herself. “He doesn’t talk to many girls, and the ones he took to prom and the homecoming dances didn’t gush about his character too much. They mostly were disappointed that he didn’t do anything with his dates other than escort them there.”

So the kid was a heart breaker. “So what’s the big deal with him? He looks pretty average to me.”

Krista looked taken aback.

I floundered for the right word. “What makes him so enticing?” I asked again before she could chastise me.

Mallory sighed. “He’s supposedly royalty. And he’s gorgeous, a great athlete…”

“He also smells really good too,” Krista said. “Some sort of cologne I’ve never heard of.”

“He’s charming,” Nate snickered. “I don’t understand why the girls get so wrapped up in this nonsense. He’s been here at the school for over three years now.”

I whipped my head over to him, alarmed by this news. “Three years? How come I haven’t seen him before now?”

“See, I knew you were interested,” Krista laughed. “What girl isn’t?”

Mallory turned away with her, as they headed for class. “It’s hard not to be interested. He has his own allure,” she stated to herself mostly, but from the distance between us I overheard every word.

I focused back on Nate, but he was walking away again. Seth stayed put, but that was only because he figured out we both had Chemistry together this morning. As we strode down the hall to classroom 8A, I took the opportunity to question him about this Finn.

“So, do you know where he’s been before yesterday?”

Seth shrugged. “Who knows? He took off a semester. But this is the first time he’s brought back friends with him.”

We walked into the room and chose a lab table in the middle. We didn’t have assigned seats, so it was easy for us to sit together.

He unpacked his supplies and shook his head. “I still can’t believe you two don’t know each other. He stares at you like he does, and that’s saying something.”

I purposefully ignored looking at his face and acknowledging that I heard the statement. I figured he wanted me to admit to our supposed relationship, but all I would do is deny him once more. I didn’t know this Finn, and I didn’t know if I wanted to. He was just a boy, an average teenage boy after all. If anyone in this school was special it was me, and not him.

The bell rang, signaling the start of class. Ms. Ingram walked in and started dividing up the supplies for the lab, but as usual she took about the first ten minutes of class assorting our group work. I usually spent this time catching up on homework, if I had any, but now that I sat next to Seth he pelted me with questions about my life, which I really hoped to avoid.

“So where do you hail from?” He rested his chin upon his hand and leaned across the table so that I would notice him better.

I sighed and tried curling in on myself. It didn’t work as I sat on a stool in front of a black table with a Bunsen burner - I abhorred fire, of any kind. So my legs found a bar closest to my bottom and my knees scraped up against the wooden edifice. I couldn’t do anything about my torso or arms so I hunched my shoulders and leaned on my elbows, solidifying an awkward fetal position.

Knowing he waited for an answer, I gave one. “All over.”

He didn’t buy my broad statement. His smile went flat and his eyebrows narrowed. “You had to start somewhere.”

I racked my brain. It had been so long since I had a home, or returned home, or even thought of home. I imagined that he caught me staring up at the encrusted ceiling because he cleared his throat hesitantly and scooted his stool across the floor. The noise was loud, much louder than I thought it would be. I closed my eyes, dropped my chin, and shuddered from the squeal.

“Are you alright?” His voice, laden with compassion, awoke me from my state.

I met his eyes without turning my head too much.

“It was only a question, I didn’t want to pry,” he apologized.

I shook my head to clear it from the dizzying ache that formed once the questions started. I was about to answer, but Ms. Ingram started the lecture. I left the questions alone for now, but I understood that this subject wasn’t closed. He wouldn’t be satisfied until I gave an answer of some sort, and that gave me time to think about where I might call home, if home existed, or fabricate a lie good enough to fool them all.

In the mean time I focused upon the mindless tasks set before me. We had to mix the samples in the boxes and then heat them for about twenty minutes, measuring the reactions of each mixture. While Seth grabbed the boxes, I pulled out a sheet of paper and pen. We were only to observe the effects of the samples, but I already knew ours was going to turn into putty. I had done this experiment before. Regardless, I wrote down the intervals of time and prepared to detail changes that I cared nothing about.

Seth returned promptly, and started mixing the samples. I watched him, making sure he performed the lab correctly. So far he had it right. He lit the burner and set the mixed sample on top of it. We watched and waited patiently for the mixture to turn.

“I never meant to make a big deal about your home. I can understand the confusion being a military brat myself,” he finally stated after ten minutes passed in silence.

I didn’t understand what he meant by that statement. I knew what the military was, but not a brat. He continued with whatever he was going to say and didn’t give me much of a chance to interject – which I didn’t mind.

“We moved a lot until my father was promoted to Colonel. After that my mom got tired of his military lifestyle and put her foot down. We moved back here so that she could take care of her parents. They’re separated now, but can’t decide on a divorce or not.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me much. Dad’s never been around for me since I was five.”

I learned so much about him in such a short time. Meanwhile the mixture was turning brown. I jotted down the information and tried focusing my mind back on him, but all I heard was a number of students sigh with fascination when their mixtures all started turning different colors. It seemed that Ms. Ingram gave us different types of food coloring, because our neighbors had a reddish mixture while the kids in front of us had a blue-purple chunky mess in their beaker. Ours was brown, not an exciting color, but unique nonetheless.

“Abel?” Seth questioned.

I hadn’t realized I wasn’t paying attention. I snapped awake and glanced down at our brown goo.

“Are you alright?”

I nodded hurriedly and wrote down some rushed answers for the times I was missing. I grabbed the beaker and set it down on the tabletop. Seth reached over and turned off the burner.

“Um…” he stuttered. “How did you…wasn’t that hot?”

I froze. I had completely forgotten to be normal around him. I pressed my hand against the coolness of the black surface and glanced at him worried that he might make something out of my accidental exposure.

“I had an accident when I was younger and I have no superficial feeling in my right hand,” I rushed out.

He reached for my hand. “You probably got a second degree burn. You need to let a nurse see to that before it gets infected.”

I removed my hand from the table, snatching it away from his reach. I made sure he couldn’t see my palm, otherwise his questions would evolve. “It’s fine.”

“No it’s not,” he pushed.

I hated having to do this, but he was getting worked up over nothing. I didn’t want him suspecting anything. His heart rate had increased slightly, alarmed by my actions, and already a bead of sweat formed at his right temple. I turned my whole body towards him and gazed into his clear green eyes. “It doesn’t hurt,” I commanded him.

His whole body froze in place, while his heart rate dropped a few beats per minute. He sat back onto the stool, having made a move to get a hold of my hand in any way possible. He crossed his hands in his lap and nodded absentmindedly. “You’re fine,” he reiterated.

I smiled and nodded once. “I’m fine,” I repeated back sealing the spell.

I glanced away quickly, not wishing to keep it up for too long. The compulsion effect didn’t last that long for me anyway, at least not on people like him, but I was able to use it for small things like this. For the future though, I needed to be more careful in how I presented myself. Today was turning out to be disastrous. Using that ability took a lot of my strength away, and I would need the rest of it if I wanted to stay sane and survive in this school for the rest of the week.

If the worst happened, and I sapped the rest of my strength, I could always check out early. I kept a list of excuses ready for those days I wouldn’t be able to attend at all. I hated missing class because it always gave me extra work, making it harder for me to catch up to the material. Plus, I was busy already outside of school with other activities.

Seth took a long time to move from his relaxed position. I was afraid that I had overdone it. I hated using compulsion on people, especially kids, because their brains were still growing. Most of the time my compulsion didn’t work on their minds like it did when I used it on others. But his answers were normal for the use of compulsion, so I didn’t worry too much over it.

When he finally did move, his hand touched my shoulder. “Was it good?”

I blinked. Was what good exactly? “Excuse me?” By my calculations his mind should’ve returned to the moment when we talked about the experiment before I picked up the hot beaker and not ask questions about whatever it was he thought about now.

The silly smile he wore on his face wiped off suddenly like he had a new thought form in his mind. His eyebrows furrowed from disappointment and confusion. At once they strayed to my right hand which I had revealed from out under the table once I used my ability. His hand dropped from my shoulder and he switched his gaze back on mine.

“You burned your hand,” he whispered like it was an afterthought.

I shook my head, wondering what brought this on. “No, it’s fine. Don’t you remember?” I tried putting his mind back on the right track, the track he should follow. He should not be remembering the past few minutes at all. My compulsion should be strong enough to erase that memory. Although there was an alternative as to how his mind would resist compulsion in any form. But was it possible that he was one of them? No, that couldn’t be it. His scent was normal for a teenage kid, plus he had a heartbeat.

It took him a few minutes before he responded properly to my question. He finally nodded his head drastically in slow motion, and repeated the words I forged into his memory.

We continued with our experiment in silence, unlike the rest of the groups. After an hour and a half of class, the bell rang. For the first time, I wasn’t the first one out of the classroom. I packed up my stuff while he dreamily meandered around the room, staring at all the objects and gingerly touching them like they were bubbles about to break apart.

The teacher glanced at him briefly, studying his movements, and then turned her sight on me. “Is he alright?”

I shrugged. “He seemed fine earlier.”

“Seth,” she beckoned him.

He froze in place, in between two lab tables. He stared out of the window, focusing on nothing in particular. What was weird was that he didn’t respond to Ms. Ingram at all when he should have. Suddenly, but what seemed slowly with my quick reflexes, his body collapsed to the floor. My mouth dropped open of its own accord, as I wasn’t used to people feinting or passing out after I used compulsion on them. I raced over, more slowly than I usually ran because it was bad enough that attention was being drawn towards me at his expense. Ms. Ingram pushed a small red button on the wall, and not long after I reached his tired body did she request the nurse.

A few students for the next class tried coming into the room, but she ushered them all back outside and closed the door, waiting for the right personnel’s arrival. It didn’t take them long. During the minute of time that I had, I searched for signs of life from him, though it was then that I realized I might’ve used too much of my gift on his mediocre mind. Compulsion was a science, and I wasn’t adept at using my ability, like others of the Fae. I hated it actually and only used it as a last resort, especially on teenagers and children. This effect had never happened before, so I wasn’t prepared for it.

I felt guilty. I never wanted to hurt him, mostly because he considered me as a friend. I never quite made up my mind about him and the others, whether they were true friends or not, but that didn’t mean I wished them harm.

Principal Hawkins arrived with the nurse. I hadn’t met either of them before, but I recognized the official badges they wore, even if the print was in six point font. “We need to get him to the office and call his mother.”

The nurse felt his forehead and neck simultaneously. “He’s breathing, but he’s hot. He might be coming down with something.” She looked at me. “What were you two doing before?”

I stared at her. Why would she ask a question like that? I was only here because he had fainted over what I assumed was my compulsion. She suggested otherwise.

Though, what I would’ve answered with was cut short by my teacher. She had crossed her arms and pointedly made a face in the nurse’s direction. “What kind of suggestion was that? I run a proper class here.”

The nurse drew her attention away from me and started questioning Ms. Ingram. “So this happened in class?”

“Just after the bell rang,” I finished, bringing the focus back onto me. If anyone was going to explain things it had to be me. I was the only one who knew exactly what had happened, and therefore I was the only one capable enough to lie about it. I met Ms. Ingram’s eyes, but didn’t turn on my compulsion. I wouldn’t need to use it on her in this case. Already there was more implied here than what actually transpired and it seemed preferable if we treated it as a sudden illness rather than what it really was. “We finished our lab, but he didn’t pack up. He made a turn about the room and then when Ms. Ingram beckoned him, his gaze focused on the window and he passed out.”

I left out the part about the odd questions at the lab table, which Ms. Ingram wouldn’t have heard anyway, especially after I used the compulsion on him. The confused circumstance would raise too many questions, and I didn’t need any more attention drawn to me from my uniqueness.

The nurse sighed. Obviously she didn’t believe our statements. I don’t know why she wouldn’t though. It sounded like an honest answer in my opinion. Her light brown eyes met mine. “I just need to make sure my dear that you two weren’t kissing.”

Kissing? Now why would I even do that? With a boy like him?

Ms. Ingram huffed from where she stood. “Helen, they weren’t kissing. Is this why you’re giving us cryptic looks and suggestions? Is it because you think he has mono?”

“Classic symptoms upon observation,” she announced.

I shook my head. I knew of mono, having seen it pass through multiple people, and not just from kissing. “This isn’t mono. I think I’d be looking at a fever of some sort, quite possibly the common cold.”

The nurse pursed her lips, still not wanting to believe my suggestion, which was hilarious. As a nurse, she should know better having been medically trained that one can’t base a diagnosis on observation alone. But she finally nodded her head and gazed decidedly at the principal. “Go back to my office, I have a stretcher there.”

I sighed and handed my bag to the woman. “Take this. I’ll carry him.”

The three stared at me like I was out of my mind. I was sure they thought that, but it didn’t matter to me. Heavy things weren’t so heavy anymore, though heavy items were never really heavy for me anyway. I reached down and pulled him to his feet. In one swift movement he was in my arms, like I carried a small child, not a five and a half foot teenager.

I glanced at the nurse. “Lead the way.”

They all stared at me with complete shock and amazement plastered on their faces before the two administrators left the room. I followed them out into the hall. Class had already started, so I didn’t worry about gawkers standing in the corridor. I also knew that Ms. Ingram sent all her next students to the library from the brief instructions she had with them out in the hall when they tried entering the classroom. I wouldn’t have done this if I knew there were students watching me. There would be too many to convince they hadn’t seen what they did, and I couldn’t have that.

At the rate I was going, I would need sustenance soon. Using compulsion on the nurse, principal and teacher would massively drain my strength and already I could feel it sapping away.