The Vampyre's Best Friend
Prologue
Remember that weird, tomboyish girl that always hung around the prettiest, most popular girl in school? Well, that girl was always me. Sophie, my best friend, has always been gorgeous, even when we were kids. Back then, parents and other adults called her "angelic." Nowadays, guys called her "sexy." Of course, when she got Marked, it didn't really hurt her and that rep any.
The day she'd been Marked, it'd been a Thursday. The upcoming Wednesday was the last day of freshman year, and Sophie had been getting some last things out of her locker before the janitors threw it all away. I'd been leaning against the locker next to hers; I vaguely recalled that it belonged to Owen MacGuire, the runningback for the football team. Mainly, I was focused on getting the hell out of here. SIHS had been a prison since I first walked on the place, and I always wanted to bolt the minute the final bell rang. But, unfortunately, Sophie wouldn't hurry up.
"Soph, will you please get a move on? I hate being in here. It's freezing." And it was. The principal was crazy about the temperature, and it never went aove 62 degrees.
"I'm coming, I'm coming," she'd murmured absently, shoving things into her bag. I remember that she'd been a little jittery, but Sophie was a good actress, so she brushed it off with a delicate hand easily.
She'd finally gotten everything after a while, and we walked down the deserted halls towards the front exit. Some teachers meandered around their rooms, throwing away posters and doing some last-minute packing up. I heard Sophie gasp, and whirled around to see an extremely tall and, if I may say so, extremely hot guy. He had dark brown hair, nearly black eyes, and creamy skin. What caught my eyes, however, was the dark sapphire crescent in the center of his forehead, and the silver knotwork framing his eyes. He's a vampyre, I realized with horror.
He spoke, and I felt my skin crawl at the power I'd heard in his voice. "Sophia Penelope Luck! In the name of the Great Goddess Nyx, you have been Tracked and Marked for the House of Night!"
Sophie's scream still haunts me to this day, and she immediately hit the floor. "Sophie? Sophie!" I instantly kneeled beside her, not worry about the Tracker or where he'd went, though I looked up at the click of classroom doors as teachers came out to investigate, and he was gone. "You'll be okay, Soph. We can do this. Together, we can do this."
