Fifty Percent Vampire #1

  FIFTY PERCENT VAMPIRE

  Stumbling without a flashlight through twisty little pitch-black tunnels is so not my thing. But I had no choice. If I didn’t find my cousin before her pursuer caught up with her...

  I fumbled in my pocket for the crucifix. It was still there, thank goodness, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it. “Emma,” I yelled. “Where are you?” My voice echoed through the darkness. There was no reply.

  CHAPTER 1

  (Astrid)

  Let me tell you a story...

  Somebody once painted me in oils, and people told me the portrait was an uncanny likeness, the green eyes scarily perfect. I couldn’t very well compare, as I’d never seen my eye color, on account of the mirror thing. I was pleased with the painting; it was obvious my artist friend had put heart and soul into his work. But let’s not talk about him. He’s long gone. Water under the bridge as the saying goes. I learned that phrase in high school. Yeah, I go to high school. Rosenberg High. Surprised? So was Mom when I told her I wanted to leave home and go learn stuff. “Astrid Sonnschein,” she laughed, “Are you crazy? Whoever heard of a vampire going to high school? What will you think of next?”

  Okay, okay, I admit it; I’m slightly less than a hundred percent human. But according to what I’d read recently and seen on television, vampires have been attending high school here in the USA for years. “Mom,” I said, staring at her blankly. “You were accepted for Harvard.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “But I wasn’t a vampire then.”

  My brother Angus laughed too, in the repulsive but at the same time charming way he has. Well, he’s not really my brother, because vampires don’t have kids, at least none I know of. Angus was vamped at the tender age of twenty-two, and for some bizarre reason my parents took him into our household. Hell knows the jerk needs some sort of guidance. He’s real pissed I’m catching him up in years and will overtake him soon. His problem is he’s forever doomed to look and act like a musclebound overgrown teenager, whereas naturally I grow more mature in body and mind every day.

  Anyhow, my stepdad George sent Slimeball away to join the military and now he’s on some hush-hush mission in Iraq, one place they don’t mind if you suddenly get the urge to kill people, as he likes to remind us all. I’m glad Angus is gone. It’s such a relief to have him off my back, and I don’t have to lock my room these days, not that doing so ever helped much. I suppose I should be grateful to my stepfather for that, at least.

  I knew better than to keep asking Mom about my real dad, because invariably when I did so she would weep. Angus told me Dad got staked on a visit back to Romania, but I find it hard to believe anything Angus says; vampires can be such liars.

  We’re getting somewhat off track here, so let me take you back to the real story, which isn’t about my dad or creepo Angus, it’s all about me.

  I spent the first seventeen years of my crazy life home alone with my mother. Imagine what that does to a girl. No Dad, no schoolfriends to talk to, no nobody. Just me and Mom. Well, and George and Angus of course, but I encountered those two only rarely, when they weren’t out hunting, and you couldn’t really say they were family. Define ‘family’ when you live in a cold, dark and creepy little house in a creepy little ghost town deep in a creepy monster forest, miles from anywhere, whose sole inhabitants are a coven of equally creepy vampires. Mom declared she and George were married, in a sense, but when in my youthful innocence I asked in what ‘sense’ a couple of vampires could possibly be married, as there wasn’t much point in them swearing undying love to each other, and her having any more children was out of the question, she sighed and drifted away to her room.

  On the evening of my seventeenth birthday I decided it was time. The staircase shook and creaked as I descended through the shadows, and I gripped the rail tightly with one perspiring hand. My flickering candle trembled in the other. I stopped in the hallway and stared for a long moment at the nightroom door, then took a deep breath and stepped forward. Best to get the ordeal over with.

  My heart was thumping as I fumbled with the handle and pushed open the worm-eaten door to reveal George, in his high-backed wing chair next to the empty fireplace, reading a heavy leather-bound book. He didn’t look up when the door swung open, despite the tortured groan the hinges uttered to announce my entrance. Dressed in his habitual black, his chiseled white facial features and aquiline nose defined sharply by the candlelight, he embodied everything you expected a vampire to be: ancient, exquisite, sinister.

  Mom sat opposite him below the chandelier, sewing with difficulty in the chill half-dark, as beautiful as ever, her silver crescent-moon pendant sparkling in the candlelight, contrasting sharply with her black velvet dress and raven hair. She turned her head as she heard me enter and smiled. “Honey, it’s late. You should be asleep,” she said. But I think she realized from the determined look on my face why I’d come.

  I settled myself on the sofa beside her, my only hope of support in the endeavor on which I was about to embark, and squeezed her cold hand.

  “George, I want to leave,” I said in a trembling voice. “I know you’ve done your best to bring me up here, but I’m seventeen years old and now I need more than you can offer. I need company my own age. I need friends. I need to feel how it is to be human.”

  I looked down at the floor, relieved. It was so good to have spoken out at last.

  George raised his head and slammed the book shut. “How many times do I have to tell you?” he snapped. “Humans have nothing to offer us except the blood running through their veins. There’s a reason we don’t mix with them. They’re inferior beings.”

  “You married my mother,” I retorted. “She was one of your so-called inferior beings.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You say that every time. Maybe I’m old enough to understand now. So why don’t you try me?”

  George growled menacingly, a sound I’d grown accustomed to. “How about you explain why you’re so desperate to leave us.”

  “You know why. I’m not like you, I’m half human, I grow up. Hel-lo? I’m no longer your brother’s tiny baby girl. I’m a teenager. With big dreams for the future, a long list of things I need to do.” I raised my arms and dropped them again. “Crazy, I know. But that’s what I want.”

  “So let me get this straight. What you want is to grow old, get sick, and die.” George closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. “I completely fail to understand the appeal of Homo sapiens,” he continued. “Think about it. They breed like rats. They meddle with things they know nothing about. And they’re a threat to themselves and every other species on the planet, including us. Do you really want to descend to such a sordid level?”

  Yes, actually, I did.

  George reopened his eyes and turned them my way. “No, Astrid. Venture among humans and you’re putting yourself at risk. Stay with us and you’ll be safe.”

  Safe? My jaw dropped. For the millionth time I wondered if my stepfather had fallen from the sky as a perfectly-formed vampire. Clearly he had no memories of having been a mortal once himself, maybe even a descendant of an aristocratic line. Sometimes, when he wasn’t angry, I thought I saw a hint of noble breeding in his poise and attractive dark features. But I didn’t see it very often. These days I mostly saw his long, elegant fingers clenched into fists, and the snarling lip curl he reserved especially for me. Stay in Vampville and be safe? Safe from what?

  “Maybe I’ve had enough of being ‘safe’. Mom, won’t you say something?”

  “What’s that book you’re so engrossed in, George?” Mom asked sweetly. “Did a vampire write it?”

  George threw the book aside in disgust and shot me a dark look. “In the commun
ity we’ve built up over the centuries since we colonized this place, my family is respected. When I change you, you’ll be respected too.”

  My skin crawled. To have George sink his fangs into my flesh and feel his venom creeping slowly through my veins as it transformed me into the newest member of the undead was the worst nightmare I could possibly imagine.

  “Mom,” I whimpered, clinging to her arm for protection.

  She rose slowly from the sofa and placed her hands on her hips, her face whitening.

  “Ophelia,” hissed George, “Stay out of this.”

  “No, George,” Mom replied firmly, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. “I will not stay out of this. Astrid is my daughter and while we’ve taught her about our own place in this world she has a perfect right to experience the one I left behind.” She waved her arm vaguely. “There are billions of humans out there. And they have opportunities vampires can only dream of. Face it, George, we’ve made a terrible mistake keeping our child isolated this long. It’s time we allowed her to fly.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No, George, I’m not kidding you. And how dare you tell my daughter she’s safe here? She and I live in constant fear. You know damn well as soon as you turn your back one of your so-called neighbors is going to try his luck.”

  George locked his eyes, which had already begun to glow, with Mom’s, and I knew a furious battle was raging between them. I looked from one face to the other and opened my mouth to interrupt but my stepfather silenced me with a cut of his hand. “Go to your room,” he commanded, and there was ice in his tone. “I’ve nothing more to say to you.”

  “But ...” I protested, looking to Mom for help.

  She quit glaring at her husband, and her face softened as she came to me and fondly kissed the top of my head. “Yes, darling, it’s better you leave us. Your stepfather and I will continue our little talk and we’ll give you our decision tomorrow.”

  Reluctantly, I left the nightroom and started back up the dark stairway to my cold little room in the attic, but I didn’t go far. I was worried. Mom was right: If I didn’t escape this depressing and dreary world soon, it was almost guaranteed I would end up a predator’s evening meal. Living here was like being the last human trapped on an island infested with dinosaurs, and I don’t mean the purple fluffy kind.

  Why me? Why couldn’t I have been born into a normal family?

  I sat on the first floor landing with my chin on my knees and listened to my parents arguing my future. The nightroom door had swung shut, but it wasn’t made of thick enough wood that I couldn’t catch what those two lovebirds were saying to one another. And George’s voice isn’t the quietest in the universe when he gets mad. He hates to lose a fight.

  I sat there and winced as they tugged me and my future first left and then right, George dragging me violently his way and Mom pulling me gently back toward her. To my joy it wasn’t long before I realized she was winning the debate. “I’ll speak to my sister tomorrow,” I heard her say. “Jean’s a good person. She’ll care for our daughter at least as well as we do.”

  I felt so ecstatic I almost starting whooping. Mom was so brave. Given the chance, I thought, she’d face down a pack of rabid werewolves.

  George made no reply. Knowing him as I did, I imagined he’d dematerialized in a fit of rage, and some innocent human would soon suffer the consequences. My stepfather was such a bad loser. Rejoicing at Mom’s victory, I trotted happily upstairs.

  CHAPTER 2

  (Astrid)

  On My Way

  “Astrid, get your nose out of that book for a second and take a look around you,” called Mom from the BMW’s front passenger seat. Closing the guidebook to Romania I’d liberated from my stepbrother’s room I peered through the tinted glass, surprised to find we’d already left the mountains and the grim darkness of the forest behind. We were speeding along a straight road between sunlit fields planted with line after line of regimented trees, all heavy with scarlet fruit I supposed to be apples.

  “Why, are we there already?” I asked, as a blood-red barn whizzed past us on the right. George was driving really fast. Funny, I’d never imagined him being able to drive a car. I’d always pictured him as a hatchet-faced charioteer viciously cracking his whip as he raced four black horses round ancient Rome’s Circus Maximus.

  “We’ll be there soon enough,” growled George, glancing round. The look he shot me was one of complete malevolence. If his look could have killed, I would have been reduced to dust in an instant.

  I glared right back at him. Two could play at that game, and I could glare longer because Esteemed Stepfather needed to keep his eyes on the road. Ha!

  Mom had her hair loose, not tied back in a tight bun as she usually wore it. I guessed she was out to annoy George too. Seemed to be everyone’s favorite pastime this fine morning.

  I decided it would be a good idea to change the subject. “Who came to visit you last night? I heard voices.”

  George growled again. “None of your damn business.”

  Mom turned round and stared at me, her face tense with concern. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. Okay, if my dear parents were refusing to enlighten me, I didn’t want to know.

  Avoiding the dubious-looking dark brown stains on the seat next to me I leaned forward to check out the road ahead. Beneath the wide blue sky a police patrol car lazed along ahead of us and we were gaining on it too fast. George swore and nudged the steering wheel to the left and as we swept past the cruiser I looked at the speedo. “Hey, are you crazy? You’re way over the limit!”

  George didn’t deign to answer. I twisted round to see whether the blue light would begin flashing as the patrol car accelerated after us, but nothing happened and soon it was a dot in the distance.

  I sighed with relief. My first morning in human country and George almost got us arrested. I’d been nervous since we left home, and the closer we came to our destination the more the moths and butterflies were multiplying in my stomach. Was I ready for this big adventure? It was an enormous risk, coming to live with my aunt and study for a year at high school, pretending I was a normal teen instead of a bloodthirsty monster. However, a little voice in my head persistently reassured me it was a risk worth taking.

  Just as long as my cousin Emma didn’t find me out. Mom said her sister had agreed to take me in on a trial basis until Christmas. With one condition—her daughter mustn’t discover the truth. She was too young to be entrusted with our secret: it would be all round Rosenberg High before recess the first morning. And statewide by nightfall.

  I reopened the guidebook, at the beginning of the chapter about Transylvanian myths and legends, but I could hardly begin to read it. I’d lost all concentration. The dream I’d had for so long was finally coming true and I couldn’t suppress my excitement, the hunger I had for life. All the same I was sad to be leaving Mom behind and hoped she wouldn’t be too lonely without me. I wondered what she was thinking.

  CHAPTER 3

  (Ophelia)

  Parting is not Sweet Sorrow

  I hoped my daughter would have better luck in her new home. I’d been dreading this moment all morning and it was all I could do to keep tears from my eyes as we pulled into Wicket Lane. “It’s the third house on the right,” I said, as we drove between manicured emerald lawns and past blue hydrangea bushes and white-painted houses that shone in the sunlight. On the sidewalk, two girls jumping rope stopped to stare. I covered my head with my scarf, and George and I donned our dark glasses.

  When George parked up, a short blast of the horn soon had Jean striding down the driveway to meet us, while her daughter hung back looking timid at the front door. It was no surprise to me my sister’s husband James was nowhere in sight. As usual, nothing was more important to my couch potato brother-in-law than the latest NFL game. I glanced at George to make sure his seatbelt was securely fastened, because unrestrained this close to humans there was no telling what he might do.


  “Aunt Jean looks nice,” remarked Astrid.

  “She is, darling, and she’ll take good care of you. And look, there’s your cousin! Wow, she’s grown.” Emma was the image of her mother, a natural redhead like Astrid and me, pale-skinned and slim of body. “How old must she be now, sixteen?”

  Astrid clicked her seat belt undone and her face dropped when she noticed I didn’t do the same. “Mom, you are intending to get out with me, aren’t you?”

  I scrunched up my face. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, I don’t dare.”

  Astrid looked at me in what I can only describe as open panic. But I couldn’t get out of the car and face my sister right then, not that close to her religious artifact museum of a house. My daughter’s first meeting with her new family shouldn’t include witnessing me cringe in fear of God’s vengeance on the damned or, worse still, watching me burst into flames in the front yard and burn howling to a crisp.

  “Your decision to come live with these people has consequences, Astrid,” growled George, pulling the lever to open the trunk. “Haven’t you upset your mother enough? You have to go into that place alone. So go.”

  I stared at my husband openmouthed. If I hadn’t been about to meet my sister for the first time in years I would have slapped his face so hard.

  Jean rapped with her knuckles on the car window. “You found the house okay?”

  “Naturally,” I said. Hello would have been nice. “Jean, this is Astrid.”

  “Hello, Aunt Power,” said Astrid.

  “She sounds respectful at least,” said Jean, her superior smile the same as ever, the sunshine making her face almost glow. “And it’s Aunt Jean. Or just Jean. Emma, come on out here and say hi to your cousin.”

  But Emma didn’t move from the front porch. She stood gripping the doorframe, staring at George with an expression of pure fright. George leered back at her. Maybe I should have left him at home.

  Jean walked round the car and crouched next to my husband’s half-open window, an expression of bemusement on her face.