Okay, I know everyone does things where the Cullens come into their life, but this has no Twilight characters (yet). All characters are mine (so far) but the whole vampire concept belongs to Stephenie Meyer. Read and review, please.

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter de la Mare

It was a normal day. I woke up early for school and had breakfast with my Mum. My Dad was already at work and my little sister, Eva was still sleeping. She was so lucky she didn't have to get up so early to go to school.

The day started off normally, until we watched the news. There was reports of serial killers attacking schools all over England. Luckily, none of the schools near where I lived, in Warwick, had suffered from any of these attacks.

"Pepper, I don't want you to go to school if there are serial killers on the loose. It's not safe!"

My Mum was worried and she didn't want to send me to school that day. I phoned my friends, to see if they were going to school and most of them were. Some of them were using it as an excuse to get the day off and miss the Geography exam.

"Mum, all of my friends are going. It's fine. As if a serial killer is going to attack the small, quiet town of Warwick!" I scoffed.

Finally, I persuaded Mum to let me go. I hated being stuck around the house all day with nothing to do. I left and went to call on Emma and Laura, to walk to the bus stop. Emma had dark, shoulder-length hair, that hung straight and framed her pale face perfectly. Emma was a funny person. She would always think of fun things to do and would be making jokes, but today she was sullen.

Laura was normally very bubbly and her short brown curls bounced as she laughed. Today, she also was down. Emma and Laura must have been as worried as my Mum.

The bus stop was practically empty. Almost no-one was there. The young first years were there, buzzing with excitement to get to their new 'big' school, but nobody else was.

Emma and I went into the shop to buy some chocolate, which we would eat on the bus journey. On the newspaper rack, there were headlines all about the same thing. I picked one up and we started to read it.

Serial Killers Attack Schools

All over the country, there have been reports of mass murderers wiping out whole schools in less than an hour. Police say it's a serial killer, others say it's more than one.

"How could one person possibly kill thousands of school children in less than an hour? My guess is that there are people out there working together. The weird thing is how they killed the victims. They completely drained the bodies of blood and then they burnt the carcasses." PC Marks says.

Each attack had a pattern. The attacks were always around two weeks apart. The killer or killers murdered every person inside the school gates, even the teachers. Every body that was found had bite marks, no blood left and was burnt to the extent that dental records were needed to identify the victims. For some cases, certain bodies were never found.

The attackers always fled before the police could arrive at the scene, leaving them to clean up the bonfires they had started in the school fields. No trace of fingerprints have been found, so far, but investigators are searching the scenes for evidence.

I stopped reading then. I didn't want to know any more. What kind of monsters could kill thousands of school children and teachers in such a horrible way and just leave the corpses burning? It disgusted me.

What worried me was that the attacks were getting further and further south. First it was Scotland, then Cumbria, York. It would soon get down to the Midlands. I dismissed that nasty thought. The police would catch them before they could get any further.

At school, everyone was talking about the serial killers. Some were joking about it to others, while some were generally scared.

"It's going to get to us soon."

"I bet they'll choose to kill you first."

"I think I'll take the rest of the year off."

"Probably just a group of psychos who hate education."

"Apparently, they don't just attack schools. Factories and office blocks, too. Basically, anywhere that's got loads of people, all in an enclosed space."

"Definitely got a problem, though."

I ignored all the conversations about murderers and went to the library to study for the Geography exam, with Paige; neither of us had revised. Paige hates exams. She's one of those people who would rather chat for the whole lesson.

We were revising volcanoes and earthquakes, leaning over two huge revision guides. Paige leaned back on her chair, flipped her long mahogany hair over her shoulder and sighed.

"God, I wish someone would kill me right now, so I didn't have to sit this exam!" Paige complained.

"You shouldn't say things like that, Paige. You never know, the serial killers might decide to-"

"Stop! I don't want to hear another thing about those psychotic serial killers!" The librarian hushed us, as Paige shouted. "Sorry. Hey, this weekend we should do something. We should invite Lizzie, Laura and Vicki, too."

"Yeah, what like? Shopping?"

"Definitely! I really need to get some new shoes and there's a sale on in River Island. We need to buy Christmas presents, too." Paige gushed. Her favourite sport was shopping, typically.

Just then, the bell rang. Paige huffed and grabbed her revision guide. I followed her to the bag rack and we walked to Geography together.

The Geography exam was awful. Everything in there wasn't even in the revision books. To cheer us up, our English teacher, Miss Price, let us watch a movie, in our next lesson. Of course, everyone had brought in their own DVDs, to watch on the last couple of weeks. There was a vote, the majority chose 'Shaun of the Dead'.

It was a zombie comedy. Pretty funny actually. The whole class was howling with laughter, mostly at the wrong parts. I couldn't help but think of the killers because the zombies were biting the victims and eating them alive. Reminded me too much of the attackers killing their victims in the

most disgusting way I could think of.

The bell rang, half way through a zombie killing scene. Miss Price told us to stand behind our desks and wait to be dismissed. Then, an ear-splitting scream rang down the corridor. Miss Price went to the door.

"Oh, those pesky first years! They're always acting up and getting over-excited." she muttered under her breath.

A dark-haired man suddenly appeared at the door frame. He was frighteningly beautiful, despite the fact that he was covered in blood. Screams erupted from around the room as he picked Miss Price up by her shoulders and bit into her neck. Blood spurted from her wound, over the desks. The door was blocked, so people smashed the windows, to escape.

This couldn't be happening. This was the serial killer, a vampire, a myth and he was killing my teacher. He moved onto Vicki, who was sat by the door, leaving poor Miss Price on the floor. Her skin had turned a ghostly blueish-white and she lay lifeless in the doorway.

Paige tugged on my arm, gesturing towards the window. Her lips were moving, but I could barely hear what she was saying, over all the screams. I felt dizzy and my head felt hot. For a moment all I could hear was my own heartbeat.

I felt someone pulling me by my shoulders. Cold air rushed into my face. I opened my eyes, we were by the window, Paige and me. I had fainted, but Paige had risked her life by staying in the room to save me.

"Come on! Pepper, wake up!" Paige urged.

"Just leave her! We're all going to die anyway!" another voice shouted.

I looked at Paige's tear-streamed face, mascara running down her rosy cheeks. I got up and smiled weakly. She smiled back and hugged me. I looked back at Laura and Lizzie and a scream sounded. Laura had been bitten. Lizzie panicked and fumbled around in her pockets, also screaming. She pulled out a stolen Stanley knife and ripped it across her wrists. She was distracting the monster, to save her best friend. It worked and the man's head whipped around, staring at her with crimson eyes. In a split second, he lunged at her and locked his jaw on her arm.

He was closer to Paige and I, now. We scrambled across the desks and reached the window. Outside, it was chaos; it looked like hell had broke loose. It looked like a scene from 'Shaun of the Dead', which was still playing, in the classroom.

Paige leaped nimbly, through the window. She turned and faced me, holding her hand out. We were going to make it out together. I took her hand and jumped through, catching my leg on the sharp glass that remained in the frame.

The vampire hurled himself at me, going straight for where the blood was gushing from my leg wound. He bit my left shin and I screamed so loud it hurt my ears. My whole leg was suddenly on fire. Flames licked their way through my blood stream, as he sucked me dry.

I was on the floor, writhing in pain, my left leg in the tight grip of the vampire. Paige stood beside me, shocked. On her face was a look of pure horror. She screamed and snapped a shard of glass from the broken window and pulled it from her shoulder own to her wrist. Only such a good friend could end her own life to save mine. She motioned for me to run, away from this havoc, to leave her to die, as the vampire that has destroyed my school killed her.

I complied with her dying wish and hobbled away, past corpses lying in the playgrounds. The burning was so fierce that I could have collapsed. I closed my eyes and breathed heavily, to breathe through the pain. It didn't work. The reason I limped forward was the face I saw behind my eyelids.

My best friend, tears running down her cheeks, mascara smudged all over her face. Eyes begging me to run, to save myself. Long mahogany hair, matted with her own blood, swept across the floor. A beautiful face, even in death.

I went round the corner, to the back of the school and I saw a figure leaning over a body. Another vampire, a woman with rich, burnt orange hair, tied back in a ponytail. The body didn't look cold, yet, but it was too late for whoever it was. I kept quiet and wrapped my school tie around my leg, to cover the blood. I didn't want Paige's efforts to have been wasted.

I proceeded towards the field, behind the school, heading for a rarely used barn that was owned by the farm at the back of the school. As I walked forward, I saw the face of the body that the redhead was killing. A pale face, framed by short dark hair. Emma.

I fought back the scream that would give me away, as I looked into her sad, green eyes. Next to her was the body of Jade, one of Emma's best friends. Jade's face was pale, her body limp, her brown dyed hair sprawled out on the concrete. I ran as fast as my burning leg would allow me.

The burning was excruciatingly painful. It had spread up my side and across my stomach. I fell down, into a crawl. It seemed like hours later that I reached the old, run down farm building, but I knew it couldn't have been.

The grass by the barn was longer. This area hadn't been used for years and it showed in the long, wild grass. I hid in the barn, leaning myself against a plank of wood that had fell away from the wall. The grass bent and made a soft bed for my dying body. This didn't matter because I was in so much pain that I wouldn't have noticed if I was lying on a bed of rocks.

My whole body was burning, the flames licking their way through my veins and I wished that I could have just been killed like everyone else. I wondered how long it would take to die this way, instead.

I heard things being thrown about, landing on top of each other with a thud. I hated to imagine what they were about to do. The crackling of flames seemed to be too far away, considering there was another bonfire going on, inside me. Soon, there were sirens. Police cars, fire engines and ambulances. The paramedics would hardly be useful if everyone was dead, already and who would the police arrest? The vampires, no doubt, had fled well before I had even heard the sirens.

I closed my eyes and hoped I could sleep. I would wake up and this would all be over. My friends would all be alive, my teachers, too. I tried to sleep, but how can you sleep when your on fire? I kept my eyes closed and tried to focus on happy memories, instead of the agonizing, flaming–

Eva's birthday was last month. I remembered her face lighting up as she opened her presents. Her face must have ached from all the smiling she did that day. We all went out for a meal, that evening, my Mum, Dad, Eva and I. How would they feel when they found out that I was dead?

The burning carried on for days. I've never went so long without eating, but I was afraid to move, in case someone found me. I wondered why I hadn't died yet. I thought that this was just a slower method of death; the pain was the same as when the vampire had bitten me, just intensified.

On what might have been the third day, the flames reached my heart. This was the most painful, most torturous feeling I had ever had. Death had to be near. I held my breath and waited. Soon I would reach Paige and Laura and Lizzie and Vicki, who had been waiting for me, for days.

For a moment, the happiness distracted me from my heart, which was thudding faster and faster, each second. My heart raced until it sounded like a humming bird flapping it's wings. My heart was flying. It stuttered twice and, with one resounding thud, it stopped.

I waited for the darkness to pull me under, or for the light to appear, beckoning me towards it, but none came. I lay there, waiting and nothing happened. My eyes were closed, I wasn't breathing and my heart had stopped, but I was still here. Was this heaven? Was I here? I opened my eyes slowly, not knowing what to expect.

It was still the same old barn: wooden walls broken, long grass growing, abandoned spider webs in the corners, but my vision had changed. I could see every dust particle floating in the air. The sun shone through a crack in the ceiling and I could pick out each colour of the spectrum, including a new eighth colour.

My hearing had also improved. I could hear the ants marching beneath me; the spiders spinning their silky webs; birds chirping from trees. I could hear cars whizzing past on the motorway; the wheels of a bike, whizzing round; a woman talking on the television. I could hear everything.

So what was this afterlife? A place where you could keep living, but with improved senses? It didn't seem right, regarding my blood, that was dried into my tie. Some of my blood had leaked out of the makeshift bandage, onto the grass. Heaven didn't have blood, did it?

I realised that I still wasn't breathing. I wondered if my sense of smell was enhanced, as well. I decided to test that theory out and took one deep breath through my nose. My throat suddenly burned and ached with dryness. This wasn't as painful as the previous burning and it was a different kind of burn. Thirsty, my brain connected.

Thirsty? I didn't understand. Then, I realised: I was a vampire.

So, what do you think? Review, please... You know you want to! Please? :)