Sorry guys, we switched internet connections. It may be a little bit before I update again so enjoy!

Chapter 13

Horror of Darkness

So the rest of the week went pretty well. I couldn't get the image of the cat from my dreams out of my head. I know it sounds weird but there was this inane tugging under my skin that told me that she was around somewhere. Every time I turned a corner I would get that funky feeling that eyes were watching me, I knew that the other fledgling were watching me, and Zoey had said that I should definitely expect that. The difference was there though, I could tell that they were the cats' eyes and it wasn't just one- it was all of the cats that were "ownerless". You could just tell that they expected something to happen and from the way they were staring- it had something to do with me.

I went to my classes and they weren't exactly the same as Sharland's. I have to say that a whole bunch of the classes were really cool and I could have definitely spent more time in the school library. About two days after I got to the House of Night my fencing teacher, Professor Dragon Lankford- although everyone called him Dragon, took us to the library and I was having the best time. I was always a book worm, so I guess that it wasn't that much of a surprise, and I seriously loved the library. I was thinking that it would be filled with a bunch of gory, disgusting, blood books but, boy, was I wrong! They had the best authors ever, not to mention the most amazing books! They had all of my favorite fiction books and the most up to date computers. Even though it was a school it seemed more like a collage campus to me.

Zoey was there by my side through most of everything. It was nice because it felt like I belonged. I had Damien, my best friend, back, and even though I felt immensely guilty that I was just barely thinking about Jasmin, Katelin, and Nirall I couldn't help but feel happy. I had my old friend back, and there was no way that I was giving him up again. On top of all of that euphoric-ness there was also the fact that one of the most (... feared?... no that's not the word… admired? Well I guess that'll do) admired group of fledglings had accepted me into their group. That was probably because of Damien, but it was still weird to me- every now and then I would catch Shaunee or Erin staring at my forehead and every time I would send them my signature "questioning look". They got used to it eventually, I guess, but I could still feel their eyes, along with every other fledgling's, on me. Add on Neferet scaring the hell out of me and the cat stares and you have a pretty non-normal first week of 'Vampyre Finishing School'.

I went to all of my classes that week and nothing was really all that interesting. I had the same classes in the same order every day. At Sharland you had a different schedule for every day of the week- talk about confusing! My teachers looked at me with a mixture of awe and fear, but they respected all of their students, and in turn we respected them. The only person that made my blood boil was Neferet. Not only did she lack respect for her students but she scorned them. No one else could really see that.

I would look into the other fledgling's eyes and I could see that they couldn't read her expressions. The only people who put out the same looks of contempt as me were Zoey, Damien, Shaunee, and Erin. I guess it was a group thing, but I also thought it was weird for me to catch on so quickly to the vibe that everyone was giving off, and it was even more weird how, even before I met Zoey, I understood that she wasn't someone that I could trust. I was truly freaking myself out because usually I was out of touch with other people. I would be off in my own little world- getting those weird feelings in my stomach and trying to weasel out the reasons behind them. Now all of the sudden I was catching vibes from people and just going with it??? Yes, this was getting a little too weird- even for me.

The last day of the week had just ended. I was walking down a path that went to the dorms, thinking about the speech Zoey gave to me about joining the Dark Daughters, when I heard this weird scratching noise. It was getting louder and louder as I walked away from it. I was getting more and more freaked by the second. I could hear nothing other than the scratching and I think that's what scared me most. Usually I could hear the sounds of creatures breathing or footsteps or something- even when I was human, and being a vampyre fledgling had only increased that ability, but all I could hear was the scratching. A shiver went down my spine- over the week Zoey had told me about her encounter with the ghost/spirits of dead vampyres and she was graphic. She had also told me that my most powerful sense was my intuition and right now my intuition was screaming at me to run and get the Hell out of there, but I couldn't move. I felt like my legs were pinned to the ground underneath me.

I was spooked by just the story and now here I was living in the nightmare itself. I could feel my body getting colder and I got this feeling that whatever was floating in the darkness could hurt me. Whatever it was, it wasn't anything good. The freaky sound wasn't metallic so it couldn't have been a machine and cats made less noise then that. I was trying to feel calm but my heart was pumping so fast I was sure that someone would come running asking "who's playing the drum?" My heart picked up speed as the sound got to a higher pitch and I was focusing all of my energy on stopping my racing heart in case whatever it was heard me. I gathered all the strength inside me and I was about to turn around - which in retrospect was probably stupid if I knew that it could hurt me- back towards the noise, but as soon as I moved a light caught my eye. I looked around me to find the source but I couldn't see any. My palm and forehead started to tingle and since I couldn't see my forehead without a mirror I instinctively looked down.

My hand was what was glowing! The glow had a bright green rim with a shimmering spectrum of colors filling the middle. I was frozen again, and I'm pretty sure that I had gone into shock. I looked up, back to the oak tree that was blocking me from whatever was making the noise, but instead of seeing the tree I couldn't see anything. Had I gone blind? And why had everything just gotten colder? I literally felt frozen- and I couldn't move. I could sense something surrounding me, and soon a spiral of wind was wrapping around me. Whatever had made the high-pitched noise had stopped. My 'intuition', as Zoey called it, told me that my blindness was being caused by the thing and that it was probably what was surrounding me. That only made my breath come more quickly and my heart speed up. I could feel my hands convulsing even though I couldn't see them. My Mark turned freezing and then went numb. I put my hands up to my face with my palms facing forward, which was a defensive position that we had learned in gym last year. Whatever IT was suddenly let out a piercing screech and then stopped as soon as my hands went to my face. I felt my breathing stop, I didn't feel cold anymore and the wind had dropped after picking up for, like, ten seconds. I waited a few more minutes, just standing there. My eyes were closed and I got the feeling that if I opened them I probably would be blind anymore.

I let out a breath that I hadn't known that I was holding. I was so glad that whatever it was had gone away. Its presence had giving me a sense of horror and fear that wouldn't disappear even after IT, whatever IT was, had. I had been learning quickly to listen to that intuition and as I searched inside myself for what to do next Nyx's words came to my mind,

"You are not "just some fledgling" because you are special. You see the truth immediately while others linger on false pretenses."

I felt better as soon as the words entered my thoughts. They were just words though and they didn't have the caring tone of the Goddess added to them so they didn't erase all of the horror that had entered my mind. I could hear myself breathing and nothing else. My breaths were short, shallow, and fast. Man, was I glad that I hadn't inherited my mother's acute asthma! I turned around to face the opposite direction and ran for the cover of the dorms. I almost fell four times, which was odd because the ground was smooth and I wasn't a klutz- well most of the time… I ran right up the stairs to mine and Zoey's dorm room and at that point I really didn't care who was staring. I stopped right in front of the door. I had to think first.

I sat down a couple of feet down the hall from the door. That was just some type of dream, right? Nothing that weird could have happened during my first week. I talked myself into believing that I wasn't seeing clearly that way. That was probably why I saw the glow and then went blind. It was just cold. The wind had picked up and it was all my imagination. I was still felt terrified and I was sure that my eyes were wide as I stood up and walked to the door. Zoey looked up from her homework, she had been cross-legged on the bed, but as soon as she saw the look of pure terror in my eyes she immediately flung herself upwards.

She grabbed my hand and we ran to Shaunee and Erin's room. I hadn't really been there that much, but oh my goodness, it was HUGE! They had these amazing, and of course, totally in style beds which were Twin four-posters with some wicked awesome comforters. They each had a vanity and desk with their laptops open and waiting. Their carpet looked like it was thick enough to be a mattress itself and the walls were a soft lilac color. They had a gold trim where the walls met and it showed that they paid great attention to detail. There were neat piles of Seventeen Magazines on their dressers and the closet must have been the biggest one on campus. It was stuffed to the brim with clothes and they had a separate closet that was only a tiny bit smaller than the first which of course held and endless supply of shoes that were organized by season color and fashion. I had to admit that if I had, had all of those shoes then I probably would have only worn the sneakers. Granted, Shaunee and Erin wore only a couple pair for P.E. but they were definitely of a designer origin. Shaunee and Erin's families had big money and I do mean BIG. They weren't as rich as Aphrodite, the biggest Bitch on the House of Night grounds, but they came pretty close.

Zoey dragged me in and shut the room door. She told Erin to get out her cell phone and call Damien. I didn't get why she was acting all freaked. I mean, honestly, she didn't even know what was going on. I guess it was because she had been through this kind of thing before. Either that or she knew the look of horror that was now dominant on my features. I tried to compose my face. I looked over to where Shaunee and Erin were sitting. They were staring at me, as usual, but they seemed almost as worried as Zoey. I decided to ignore all of the pity and fear in their before it could make my stomach ache. I turned back towards Zoey, who apparently thought that Shaunee was being too slow today. She had taken the cell phone off of the charger and was speaking quietly yet quickly to Damien, explaining why he suddenly hat to come to the girls' dorm room in the middle of the night/day. I still wasn't getting why she was using such a clipped to. If it had been any one else talking to Damien like that I would have smacked 'em, but this was Zoey and I knew that she was just worried. I could also tell that Damien was being difficult. Over the last week I had learned how to read not only Zoey's expressions but her tone of voice as well, but I could only hear part of what was being said:

"-ause she does… just come down?...No, what do you mean?"

She was almost pleading by then. Damien must still not be comfortable with me being as different, and apparently as important, as Zoey. I still had no idea why he was being so uptight. Up until then I'd been trying to ignore it but I made a snap decision right there to confront him-soon.

Zoey looked back to me. By her expression you could tell that she was being way too serious about all of this. She looked away from me, to Shaunee and Erin. They stared right back at her. They both had blank question marks blaring out from their faces. She turned back to the phone, most likely because she didn't have any answers to their questions. As she turned away I realized that anything I said would sound crazy. There was nothing that should have scared me. It was just some weird noise AND we were on the House of Night grounds where weird noises were probably common AND since this was only my fifth day here it wasn't exactly like I knew all of the sounds that were made around here.

Okay, yeah, the sound wasn't really human, fledgling, cat, or any other common animals for that matter but I didn't actually have any idea of what was on campus. And alright, yes, I admit that it had filled me with a sense of fear and foreboding but honestly, maybe it was just some scratching… thing? Either way it was nothing and here I was watching everyone fuss over this little nothing of a problem. That added to the fact that I was mentally incapacitated and my mind was playing tricks on me just made me sound more insane- even to myself! And if I told them that my hands had started to glow they would take me to a Vamp mental hospital.

I looked back over to Zoey who was still on the phone with Damien. She looked way too stressed out and as her new room-mate I felt guilty for being the one to put that stress on her. I could feel Shaunee and Erin's eyes on my back as I walked over to her with, what I hoped was, a tranquil expression. I took the phone from her ear and nodded my head when she gave me a questioning look. Her tension relaxed and I put the phone to my ear. Damien was still talking, unaware of the phone exchange.

"-told you this would happen. Nothing good is going to come from this. If she looked worried then something was definitely wrong and I do-" I cut him off right there. If he thought that it was a bad thing that I had this Mark then that was going to get him into trouble with me. It already felt like it was supposed to be apart of my life, and I knew that it was already making an impact on my personality. Before I never would have made friends with these perfect strangers or just taken the phone from Zoey like that. Now I was more confident and here Damien was trying to say that nothing good was coming from it? He didn't even know what was wrong!

"Damien?"

"Wait, Lela? Where'd Zoey go?"

"I just needed to talk to you for a minute." I decided to try and use reverse psychology on him, I just hoped that it worked.

"You don't need to come down, I'm seriously okay, it was nothing big- you guys just make a big deal out of everything." I sighed like it was nothing new to me. There was silence on the other end for a good two minutes before he started to speak again.

"No, it's okay I can come down. I mean if it's nothing big then something did happen and it could turn into something big." He was starting to go into his scholar voice, something that only happened when he was trying to stay calm and look at all of the perspectives of a problem. I internally smiled at the fact that my reverse psychology had actually worked, but my thoughts turned black as I realized that I had just made my problem bigger. I had nothing to tell them, just that some squeak in the night had scared the living crap out of me, and how I had been seeing glowing and then gone blind, and now I was convincing Damien that he should come down, but I couldn't do anything because I could already hear him picking up his jacket and getting ready to come.

"I'll see you in five, Kay?" Then he hung up. I don't see why people do that. I mean if you ask someone if it's okay for them to come down then you would usually wait for an answer… Anyways, I clicked the end button and turned back to face the girls. Even though it had seemed really long, the conversation had been quick, only like three or four minutes. When I turned around Shaunee and Erin were giving me identical looks of awe and Zoey had a huge grin on her face.

"What?" I asked, suddenly feeling strangely self-conscious. Had I done something stupid or wrong? Why were they giving me the weird looks?

"Nothing it's just that you have more skill than all of us put together." Zoey answered. She still had that weird smile on her face.

"You guys are seriously starting to freak me out, what's with the riddle?" I was honestly curious as to why she was making me guess what she was talking about.

"Oh she didn't mean anything freaky, just that you have Damien wrapped around your little finger," Shaunee said with a sly smile.

"And we do mean that he's wrapped around it. He doesn't listen to us, EVER, and now you got him to come down here within two minutes." Erin went on to say.

"Zoey spent at least ten over there trying to convince him," Shaunee said.

"And now he's coming just because you say not to, nice touch twisting around the request, by the way." Erin finished. I guess she understood the little psychology bit. Zoey was still grinning like a fool.

"What's with the smile, Zoey?" I asked. I was a little scared of her now. She just made the grin wider.
"Oh, it's just that we could use Damien's protective side against him some time." What was she talking about "protective side"? I didn't understand any of what was going on.

"What do you mean?" Everything was getting more confusing by the second.

"Come on, Lela." You have to realize that Damien is super protective of you, which is one of the many reasons that he's wrapped around your finger. You guys go back a long way. I mean you were childhood-best-friends which means that he's gonna be protective of you no matter what. Not to mention the fact that he's way worried about you being upset with him for never calling or anything in the past couple of months that he's been away from you." She kept going but I was basically tuning her out. It was starting to make sense now. Damien had a big brother-like quality that kept him from doing anything stupid that he knew I would be upset over. That also meant that he was "wrapped around my finger" as Shaunee and Erin were saying. They were thinking that I could use this new found power over him for 'evil'. It was actually pretty hilarious. There was really nothing to use it for, rather than to get him to come down to our dorm when he was being to thick-headed for the others to deal with him.

With all the time I'd spent with Shaunee and Erin I've come to find that the only thing they would want to use my 'power' for would be to get Damien to go shopping with them and use his incredible sense of fashion. I had to admit that even after all of this time he still had a gift for coming upon clearance sales for Prada Shoes and Gucchi bags. And oh man, does that boy have the ability to find good cashmere! Shopping was never really something that I had the opportunity to do. Most of my friends thought that just because I wore some slightly baggy clothes and only tennis shoes, oh and of course I wore jeans at all times, that I didn't have a sense of fashion. The truth was that my family didn't have lots of money to just go spending, and my mom was a penny pincher. She liked to get things cheap and that wasn't always a bad thing. (Once I found some awesome lights for my room when I went shopping with her one.)

Suddenly someone's hand was waving in front of my face. It was then that I realized that I had spaced out for a couple of minutes and Zoey was trying to get my attention.

"Hello, anyone in there, Earth to Lela." My eyes focused on the closest thing to me. Zoey was sitting next to me on Erin's bed and she had put her hand down.

"What?" Whoa I didn't mean to sound that snappy.

"Jeez it takes some work to get your attention," she muttered, "I asked what was going on. You know, before you got to the dorm room." This was what I was dreading to talk about there wasn't really that much to say, and nothing had really happened. I guess that I could always use the fact that they overacted as a defensive maneuver… They were still waiting for an answer and I noticed that Damien had finally gotten here and he was talking to Shaunee and Erin about the new sales. (I knew that they would try to butter him up for a shopping trip! If they didn't get him to come along they would get me to use my 'power' on him instead, I suppose.) As soon as they heard what Zoey was asking about they turned their attention to me. I thought I was going to get really nervous but instead I felt calm. I knew that I would have to explain to them eventually and even if they thought I was crazy then Damien would probably be happy that my Mark didn't mean anything bad was going to happen to me. He would be really understanding about the entire thing, that's how he had always been. If nothing had changed in the short time that we had been away from each other that is.

I looked back at their eager, yet scared, faces. They probably thought that something had attacked me (which technically I thought that something had, but honestly I was probably just going insane), and Shaunee and Erin looked ready for some good gossip. I had learned that if anything had to do with gossip it had to do with Shaunee and Erin. I felt like clearing my throat or something just to stall but that would be too obvious. What was I afraid of anyways? That they would reject me? That they would shun me from their group? That was absolutely ridiculous. Damien would always be there for me and I knew that, because of his weird protectiveness for me. I think that they could tell I was nervous, or afraid, or whatever. They had looks of sympathy, and they probably knew how hard it was to be the 'New Kid' to the House of Night.

"Nothing, seriously guys. Nothing's going on. I guess that Zoey just overreacted a little." I was trying to blow it off, and from the looks on their faces they could tell.

"Oh nu uh, you are not blowing off any good gossip," Shaunee said.

"Not if there's a chance that we can get our hands on it." Erin finished, in true Twin style.

"From what Zoey was telling me, it looked like you had seen a ghost or something." Damien added. This was seriously not helping my situation. They were not going to drop it. I looked back to Damien and he looked really worried. He had learned at a young age that if I was ever hesitant to say something that it was either some huge news, or that I was crazily nervous. A sympathetic look crossed his face. He gave me a small nod.

"It wasn't seeing a ghost, more like NOT seeing a screeching thing…" Wow that made me sound crazy and I wished that I could take the words back and shove them down my throat. They looked at me for a second but I didn't meet their gazes. Just as I was about to think that nothing could get more awkward Damien spoke up in a voice that made me think that maybe I wasn't crazy after all. It sounded reassuring and totally like a best friend would.

"Okay, Lela, start from the beginning. What happened before you got to your dorm room?"

" Um, it was nothing just that I-was-walking-and-this-screeching-sound-started-and-everything-was-cold-and-I-was-blind-and-myhandsglowed-and-then-it-went-away-butitwasprobablymyimagination-sorry."

"Okay, Lela could you go over that one more time for us so that we could actually understand?" Damien asked.

I then went into a detailed account of how I was walking to the dorms when the screeching started and how there was a weird glow but I didn't see where it was coming from when I looked around and then my Mark and hands started to tingle and my hands were glowing. Then about how I went temporarily blind and then it was freezing. Zoey had an interested look on her face when I mentioned how my intuition was telling me things. Like, how I just knew that it was around me causing my blindness. Damien actually squeaked when I said that IT went away as soon as I put my hands up. After I finished they stared at me for about five minutes with looks that just screamed "You are totally insane!". The only person who looked slightly composed was Damien. He had a look on his face that showed that he was thinking deeply.

Zoey finally snapped out of it and she put on the same face as Damien. The twins were the last to get out of the fog, but when they came out their expressions didn't really change that much. They looked like they thought I was crazy and that the only reason that I was still in their room was because Damien would kill them if they kicked me out. Zoey come out of her deep-in-thought position. She stared at me, running her eyes over my expression of fear and embarrassment. Suddenly she smiled. I didn't understand her expression but at her next words Damien's jaw locked and his teeth started to grind- a sure sign that he was blistering mad.

"Well we're just going to have to test this."