by A. Vers
Deaths
And
Vampire Girls
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
As I walked out into the stone courtyard between buildings, I couldn’t deny that my pulse sped. Or that my breathing quickened as the sun crested the tops of the trees.
I stood stock still, eyes tracking its approach.
Lokworth’s schedule kept me asleep during the daylight hours, and even on the weekends the same held true.
When was the last time I saw a sunrise? A sunset?
In my mind, I knew that I was innocent. I hadn’t hurt the human girl. My fangs did not pierce her skin.
But I also had not protested louder when the announcement came that humans would be attending Lokworth. I had sat by and idly grumbled that it would be an epic mistake to mix both races. Especially in such volatile circumstances.
But being right did not make me guilty either.
My racing heart did not understand that though
ALSO BY A. VERS
New Adult Urban Fantasy
Lost Nights Series
Blood is Forever
Bloody Thanks
Fire & Blood
Hunt for Blood
Blood Lines
Requiem Codices
Grave Night
Young Adult Paranormal
The Covenant Trilogy
Witch’s Hammer
Veil of Midnight
Shadowed Fire
Fire Weaver
Adult Paranormal Romance
Dark Ties
Marked
Mated
Seven Hells
Circle of Fire
Cover Art & Design: Dark Wolf Graphix
Deaths and Vampire Girls
Book 1
Misfit Academy
www.authoravers.com
Copyright© A. Vers, 2019
Lost Nights Publishing
All Rights Reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the permission of the copyright owner.
Author’s Dedication
To scented candles and peppermint candy.
You are the true heroes of this story.
Deaths
and
Vampire Girls
Misfit Academy
1
A. VERS
Chapter 1
Morgan
A witch, an elf, a vampire, and a shifter walked into a school.
It wasn’t the start of a terrible joke. It was my reality.
Standing at the attic window, I watched as the foursome strode up the brick steps and disappeared into our dark halls. The newest group of students seemed happy to be sequestered off the grid at a boarding school for wayward supes.
Lokworth Academy for Misfit Supernaturals.
Or The Dump as the locals called it. Home of every discarded outcast ... even among the monsters.
The last few cars pulled back down the drive, leaving the front of the school deserted and oddly bare.
Dropping onto the old bench seat, I leaned back against the frame of the window and glared sullenly at my reflection in the dark glass. This year was supposed to be different. But not in a good way.
Sometime over the summer, all the local officials decided it would be a fantastic idea to integrate a select group of human seniors into Lokworth. And if this special lottery worked out, maybe some of us could go to their school next Fall.
But it was less than an hour until the first bell at midnight, and the new meat still hadn’t arrived.
Had they finally come to their senses?
Doubtful.
The government was all about destroying boundaries and creating new friendships between all the races.
I scoffed.
It was a damn circus waiting to happen.
Never mind that the humans would be outmatched and outwitted here. That was the least of the problems that could and would arise.
Instead, we had witches capable of creating real fire if the humans so much as looked at them wrong. Shifters who changed shape without meaning to. Sometimes losing their clothes in the process. The elves had no use for mankind. With their technology and affinity for iron, humans were like poison to the Fae. Literally, too.
And my kind?
Vampires my age could barely control our thirst around the ones who could survive our bites. And they wanted to put walking blood banks in our paths? During our transitional phase into a full-blood vampire?
It was one wrong fang from the human six o’clock news, that’s what it was.
And all I could do was sit back and watch it all happen.
The lamps in the courtyard below flared on. Each softly glowing amber globe was like the sun to my rapidly changing gaze. I mourned the days when we used candles or nothing at all. It wasn’t like any of us needed light to see by. But instead of the headmistress changing the nighttime schedule for Lokworth, we got stuck with new solar powered lights all over the academy campus.
With our new guests, we had to give them a fair chance and a little light to see the things hunting them.
Disgusted by the whole thing, I crossed my arms.
Because that was what was fixing to happen.
You couldn’t put humans into a school like this and expect roses and unicorn fluff. And it was an insane idea to even try.
Most humans hated our kind. Detested us, actually. There was no hope for this to go any way but bad. Unfortunately, I was the only one that felt that way.
Even Riki, my best friend since arriving here, thought the whole thing was grand.
Humans. In Lokworth.
Her expression had lit up with delight when the announcement was made. She was studying them so she could become a human relations ambassador when we graduated.
I just wanted far away from here.
Under the too bright lamps outside the window, the first flash of yellow had me sitting forward.
The bus was older, but the headlights were fierce as they tracked across the front of the school. I came to my knees and pressed a hand to the glass. My uniform skirt pulled taut over my legs, but I barely noticed.
Far below, the long vehicle had rolled to a stop, door wide. Fresh-faced seniors, with backpacks in hand, filed one after the other onto the concrete walk. They gazed up at the academy’s turrets and towers with equal parts curiosity and just a hi
nt of fear.
All but the last male.
A mane of thick blond-brown locks ducked under the bus’ doorway as he exited. The boy was closer to a man, tall, and built of hardened muscle. His tie was crooked, and he had turned his blazer inside out, leaving the Lokworth crest like a muddled beacon in the dark of his lapel.
He peered around with his comrades for a moment. Then his head came up.
I inhaled sharply at the almost feline quality to his face. He was aristocratic, and from excellent breeding. Almost too handsome if that was even possible.
And utterly human.
His dark eyes roamed over the stone exterior of the school before halting on me. There was no way he could see me this high up, or in the darkness of the attic. But my heart beat wildly anyway as I stared down at him.
I dug my hand into the glass as the chiseled line of his jaw collected new shadows the longer he stood in place.
There was something different about him. About the way he stood or the bearing of his shoulders. He did not slouch or lean. He stood tall. Straight. Proud.
One of the other male students stepped between us, pulling his gaze from mine. The brief connection snapped.
He turned to him. His brow arched as he grinned in a mischievous display before following his companions toward the entrance. Soon he faded from my sight.
I sighed.
It was for the best. The new humans needed to stay far from me, and I far from them.
The bell sounded, and each peal was shrill and echoing through the drafty room. The first crackle of the school speaker made every hair on my body stand on end.
“Attention students and staff. Please make your way to the auditorium for a special assembly. I repeat, please adjourn to the auditorium for assembly,” the voice intoned.
I clamored backward off the bench and nearly fell on my behind in the dusty attic.
Of all the rotten luck, I thought, speeding to my feet and rushing from the room.
The auditorium was on the far side of the campus. I would be late, drawing attention to myself again. Which was precisely what I didn’t need my final year at Lokworth.
***
Lokworth Academy was founded in 1810 by Charles Lokworth II. As an upstanding member of the local pack, Mr. Lokworth was paramount to a leader in every way possible. He fought in the last supernatural war, headed the local government, and even made beta in his pack.
But when Lokworth’s son reached the prime age of thirteen, all that upstanding achievement went down the proverbial drain.
David Lokworth was incapable of changing shape. At least not fully. When he finally achieved a shift, it was a half-form. A wolf-boy. And in a time era that still believed anything arcane was evil, a partially shifted teenage boy was prime real estate for an old-fashioned witch hunt.
Mr. Lokworth packed his family up and moved into the dark woods of what is now Lokworth Academy.
His son could run the hills, hunt, and learn the way of the beast-kin. Though he never shifted back into either form, he lived out his days without incident.
Mr. Lokworth, seeing the good it had done for his son, searched far and wide for any others that may have need of the quiet retreat. And when he called, they came.
It was why my parents sent me to Lokworth, I reasoned as I hurried across the atrium between buildings.
My transition started early, and, after nearly five years, it had not eased. But when your parents were diplomats for a vampire colony, the last thing they wanted their aristocratic friends noticing was how odd their daughter is.
Especially after—
I shook my head, casting that errant trail of thought away. It did no good to dwell on the past.
The doors to the auditorium loomed. Flickering steel sconces danced to each side of the high panels, illuminating the white columns with amber light and shadow. The interior practically buzzed with sound, making me wince all over again.
With a slight tilt of my head, I dipped past the main door and sprinted headlong for the administration entrance.
It was quieter near the rear of the brick building. Darker, too. I could slip in quietly and no one would know.
My eyes went from squinting to open wide as I tugged on the old curved handle and slipped into the auditorium rear.
Right into a mass of waiting human seniors.
Chapter 2
Ryder
The auditorium was musty and rather old, like a church. But it was classical. Reverent. Not that half the guys from Saint Philips Academy cared.
Thomas and Rhett stood nearby, their greedy eyes roaming over everything with the hopes it would be enough to pay for their way back to town.
Or maybe just a way out of this fiasco.
“Hey Ryder, you reckon that mask is really old?” Rhett asked me, jerking his too strong chin at what appeared to be an honest-to-god iron mask. Like the one from the movie.
Thomas squinted his beady eyes at it and shook his head. “Just looks like a heap of old metal to me.”
Anything that wasn’t food was a heap to him.
I leaned against the wall, one foot pressed to the plastered brick and tried to appear as though I wasn’t scoping the place out, too.
Which was hard.
The whole damn academy was odd. Arcane. The very air thrummed with magick and mystery. Not to mention way too much noise. If I tried hard enough, I could ignore it. Tune it out. But I wasn’t trained to ignore even the smallest detail.
I rolled my head on my neck and tried to work some of the stiffness out of my muscles. But being up to take boring classes at midnight … That would take some getting used to.
At least we didn’t have to sleep here.
There would be no hope of even catching a nap in this place. Not with all the supes around and no one to watch my back.
Thomas and Rhett came from good families. Normal folk. But they were both slower than a bag of bricks and only useful in a fight with fists, not wits. And I needed brains over brawn while at Lokworth.
The door to the stage opened and Assistant Headmaster O’Brien stuck his balding head out. “All right boys and girls, Headmistress Harrington is almost done with the address. Line up and get ready to see what Lokworth has to offer.” He beamed, oblivious to the fact none of us wanted to be here, and ducked back into the small room behind him.
Rhett and Thomas grunted and shuffled before me. “Bones,” Thomas said to me. “That’s what this place has to offer. Bones.”
I rolled my eyes. “Skeletons, you mean? As in they have skeletons in their closet?” His brows narrowed in confusion.
Right.
Fists, not wits.
I sighed and waved for him to turn back around. “Never mind.”
There was a crash as the rear entrance was wrenched open. The old steel door clanged gently against the plaster, and if the building had not been made of brick, it would have rattled quite a bit louder.
My head whipped over to find a girl standing in the doorway. Her hair was a windblown mess of straight raven locks to her hips. Each tendril seemed wreathed in blue and purple highlights from the torches nearby. Her skin was pale, but not sickly or even like the human goths. It was smooth, soft looking. And her eyes were the oddest hue of lilac I had ever seen.
She wore the Lokworth girl’s uniform of a skirt and blouse. But her dark tie was gone and the top two buttons on her blouse were open, leaving her slim neck and collarbones exposed. Her whole body was lean and lithe. Like a dancer.
She remained poised in the doorway, the night dark behind her and one hand tight to her throat.
And she was looking right at me.
“Ms. Read?” O’Brien was back in the opposite doorway, his expression clouded. “What are you doing back here?”
The girl winced. “Avoiding the crowd,” she said, her voice soft but rasping. Husky. “I thought.”
O’Brien scoffed and clicked his tongue. “Well, you will just have to go through here then. Keep your head down an
d find a seat.”
She ducked her head and nearly sprinted across the room. Once past him, she peered over her shoulder in my direction. Her expression was almost angry. Though I couldn’t understand why. None of us wanted to do this either.
With a small shake to her head, she disappeared up the stairs and out of sight.
O’Brien waited a moment more and then turned to us with a forced smile. “Morgan is our resident dignitary,” he admitted. “She comes from quite the upstanding family. A bit of an oddball, but one of the brightest minds at Lokworth.” By the time he finished speaking, his skin was ruddy and a bead of sweat rolled down the end of his hooked nose.
What he left out was why she was at Lokworth.
It was no real shocker that the girl was a supernatural. You didn’t get eyes that color and not have a trace of other in your veins.
But what was she?
There was no telltale glow to her irises. So maybe a witch that couldn’t control her magick?
She was something all right. I just did not know what. And I didn’t enjoy being caught unprepared.
O’Brien coughed a bit. “Yes, now … If you will all follow me.” He led the way back into the stairwell for the stage rear. With little other choice, we all trailed in behind him.
The stage was brightly lit, and Headmistress Harrington was giving her introductory speech at the podium. O’Brien ushered us into a line and I gazed to look out on a sea of faces.
Fifteen humans in a population of almost eighty supernaturals.
Thomas and Rhett tensed beside me.
No one knew Lokworth’s precise numbers. But this was more than any of us expected.
Not only were we the low man on the food chain here, we were vastly outnumbered and outgunned.
And my father would need to know that just as soon as I could get him the intel. Because if we had any hope of eradicating Lokworth off the map, we were going to need all the help we could get.
