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Chapter 4
"Lincoln! Dinner!"
The eleven-year-old dhampir (half-human, half-vampire) set down his pencil from working on homework and walked out of his bedroom. He was dressed in a gray herringbone vest over a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the top with the sleeves rolled up, black slacks, and polished black dress shoes. Despite being well-fed, he was very slender, almost skeletal. He unconsciously ran his long, bony fingers through his short but messy white hair as he walked down the stairs to join the rest of his large family at the dinner table.
"Finally!" groaned Lynn Jr. "Bro, this is the third time this week you almost missed dinner! What the heck is keeping you so busy?"
"Don't blame me. If anything, blame Mr. Huggins," Lincoln replied with an unconcerned shrug as he sat down and filled his plate with the various food items distributed across the tabletop. "I swear, the old fogey has his heart set on seeing me fail. He keeps piling on homework without warning, then expects me to do all of it in a timely manner. I suppose I could just use my vampire super-speed, but I feel as though that would be cheating."
Mr. Huggins was Lincoln's current homeroom teacher and the principal of Royal Woods Elementary. His old homeroom teacher, a fresh-faced young woman named Agnes Johnson, was new enough to her teaching career that she was unprepared for the unexpected number of students from wealthy backgrounds that were used to getting their way with everything. After several bad encounters with their equally entitled parents, the poor woman had a nervous breakdown in the middle of teaching a lesson, and was now on an extended leave of absence. It was doubtful whether she would ever return.
"There's no way he's targeting you specifically. I mean, everyone else in your class has to be in the same boat, right?" Lori asked.
"Not very many, to be honest. Just those of us he suspects are potential troublemakers, such as Clyde and myself," Lincoln replied.
Clyde was Lincoln's best friend; as a matter of fact, he was one of Lincoln's only friends. Their friendship started two years before, when Clyde was a new student in their school. Unfortunately, Royal Woods Elementary wasn't very...diverse in terms of its students, so Clyde was ostracized for a while due to his chocolate-colored skin. One day, a group of bullies had him backed up against a fence, threatening to beat him to a pulp. It was then that Lincoln came to his rescue, tapping into his superhuman strength to fight the bullies off. Not enough to reveal his heritage, of course, but still enough to make sure they kept their distance for a while. It was then that the two boys really hit it off and bonded over their shared hobbies, and their friendship strengthened over time to the point where they were nigh inseparable.
The principal considered Lincoln a potential troublemaker as well because, like Clyde, he didn't fit in well with the other students. He wasn't trying very hard to fit in, seeing as just being himself was a bigger priority. While he still withheld the secret of his heritage, his strange choice of clothes, peculiar sense of humor, and passion for outlandish practical jokes made him stand out.
A lot.
So much so that most of the other students thought he was creepy and avoided him like the plague. Lincoln didn't care; he was far from lonely, considering the size of his family.
Back to the topic at hand, Lincoln's sisters all looked at him in confusion.
"But you're not a potential troublemaker, you're an actual troublemaker!" Lola pointed out. Lincoln only scoffed.
"I only do it to the ones who deserve it," he said. "Besides, it's rather hard to pin the blame on someone as slippery as I am."
"That's only because you use your freaky shadow powers to vanish into thin air!" Lynn Jr. protested.
"Now, girls, you know the rules your father and I gave Lincoln regarding the use of his powers," Rita admonished while using her telekinesis to gather the dirty plates into a stack. "He can use them however he wants as long as he isn't caught and as long as no serious crimes are being committed. If he feels the need to prank someone who deserves to be pranked, let him prank them. From what I've heard, some of those kids need a reality check in the worst way." She then placed the dirty dishes in the arms of her eldest daughter. "Lori, I need you to wash the dishes tonight. Lincoln, you're coming with me."
"Ah, so it's feeding night, then?" Lincoln asked with a wide smile and a twinkle in his eye.
"Yep, feeding night," Rita confirmed with a warm smile.
...
Just like his mother, Lincoln needed to drink blood to survive. Therefore, they made mother/son bonding time out of going out at night, catching a large animal, and feeding from it together. Wouldn't you know it, the more blood a vampire drank at one time, the less often they had to feed. If there was ever a night where a large animal like a deer wasn't available, then they caught a handful of squirrels or rabbits apiece and talked while they fed. If either Rita or Lincoln was in a particularly foul mood and needed to take it out on something, they broke into the nearby prison and fed on whichever unlucky Death Row prisoner they happened to come across first (fortunately, those particular instances were few and far between).
That night, the sun had long since set, and the moon was high in the sky as mother and son walked out of the house through the back door. They walked hand-in-hand across the back yard and stopped just before the line of trees that marked the edge of their property and gave way to the small forest after which the town was named. They turned toward each other.
"The usual rules?" Lincoln asked.
"We have rules?!" Rita asked, looking astonished. After a moment of silence, they both burst out laughing.
"In all seriousness, though...last one to catch something's a rotten egg!" Lincoln declared. Before Rita could react, Lincoln's body lit up with orange tendrils of electricity, and he dashed into the woods as an illuminated orange blur.
"Oh, it is on!" Rita replied, smirking in determination before shapeshifting in a puff of pink smoke. When the smoke dissipated, she had turned into a large bat with blond fur and her Vampire Sigil on the back of her left wing.
Mother and son raced each other through the woods before returning to a designated clearing, Lincoln with a pair of rabbits and Rita with a trio of squirrels. Determining that it was a draw, they sat down on a log to feed.
"So...extra homework aside, how are you doing in school?" Rita asked, snapping a squirrel's spine and sinking her fangs into its abdomen.
"Eh, the usual, I suppose," Lincoln replied with a shrug. "My grades are the same as they've always been. Most of my free time is spent putting self-righteous hooligans in their place. Oh, and there's the matter of the upcoming Sadie Hawkins dance." He ripped out a rabbit's throat with his teeth and tilted its limp body upwards as if it was a waterskin.
"Ooh, that ought to be fun! Any special ladies on your mind?" Rita asked excitedly. Lincoln swallowed his mouthful of blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"First of all, Mother, with this kind of dance it's the girl who asks the boy out. Second, I highly doubt that I will be getting a date for the dance. I try to be more courteous to the girls than I am with...frankly anyone else, but they're still terrified of me. The minute I try to talk to them, they scream and run away."
"Aw, sorry to hear that, sweetie. But...why do they scream and run?"
"I'm not openly using my powers, if that's what you're suggesting. I blame the gossip surrounding my reputation. I'm afraid it's the kind of thing you have to be there to properly understand."
"Ah."
...
The next morning at school, Clyde stood in front of the building, tapping his foot as he impatiently waited for someone to arrive. As stated previously, he was a dark-skinned, fairly overweight boy of average height, with short, wiry black hair, a large pair of glasses with round lenses and cheap plastic frames, and wearing a blue hoodie over a blue-and-yellow striped T-shirt, faded denim jeans, and scuffed black sneakers.
Pacing around behind him was his and Lincoln's only other close friend, Ronnie Anne Santiago. She was a short, slender Hispanic girl with her straight black hair in a ponytail and a slight overbite. She wore a bright purple hoodie and denim shorts over pale purple leggings and purple slip-on shoes.
"Face it, Clyde, if we wait for him any longer, we'll all be late for class!" Ronnie Anne said with a loud growl of frustration. "It wouldn't surprise me if he decided to skip school entirely today!" Clyde opened his mouth to reply, only to be cut off by a bout of chuckling.
"As if I had a reason to. Even I wouldn't dare to sink that low, Ronnie Anne," Lincoln said, emerging from the shadows of the bus stop with an ear-to-ear grin. He was much taller than either of his friends; in fact, he was one of the tallest students in the school. Just like the previous night, he was impeccably dressed in clothes that seemed much too fancy to wear every day. He firmly believed that one's outward appearance directly reflected their inward personality, which was also why he always sported a smile, even when irritated or angry. It was when he didn't smile that his friends knew to walk on eggshells.
"Well, well, well, look who finally decided to show up. The five-minute warning bell rang two minutes ago!" reprimanded Clyde, to which Lincoln rolled his eyes.
"I would have been here sooner, but Lola needed help with her makeup again. You know what she's like," Lincoln explained his near tardiness as the trio walked inside. The few students lingering in the halls spotted Lincoln and fled to their classrooms in terror, to the dhampir's amusement. "Ah, my fans; they love me," he smugly stated, rubbing his fingernails on the front of his shirt.
"Lincoln, I know this might be a lot to ask, but can you please not do any of your usual shenanigans today?" Clyde begged.
"Now, why in the world would you ask for something as ridiculous as that?" Lincoln teasingly replied as the three friends entered their classroom and sat down at their desks. When he didn't get a response, Lincoln looked at Clyde and discovered he was staring in a completely different direction with a dreamy look on his face. Lincoln followed Clyde's gaze out of curiosity and nodded in understanding. "Ah. That's why!"
Clyde happened to be staring intently at his crush, Penelope. A skinny, fair-skinned girl with glasses very similar to Clyde's, crooked front teeth, and wild flaming-red hair. She wore a pink turtleneck sweater and a purple skirt.
Mr. Huggins soon walked into the room, and Lincoln handed in his completed extra homework with a confident smirk. At the end of the class, Lincoln got his homework back, and the front page had writing on it in red ink. Once Lincoln deciphered the frankly appalling penmanship, his smile tightened along with his grip.
Dear Mr. Loud,
Although you answered every question correctly,
you still get an F for the simple reason
that I don't like you and never have.
Your chubby friend and the border-jumping girl
got the same grade you did purely by association.
The teacher's insensitivity and name-calling made Lincoln's blood boil, and as he gave Mr. Huggins a malice-filled grin, his eyes flashed bright gold for a split second. When the classroom was empty, Mr. Huggins tried to leave the room as well, only to promptly fall flat on his face.
Using his telekinesis, Lincoln had tied his shoelaces together.
Okay, there's one thing I want to clarify right now:
Lincoln's powers.
When he's using his vampiric powers to their full capacity, Lincoln is capable of pulling off Beetlejuice-level insanity, and his powers will only get stronger as he gets older. Although it's good for comedic gags, Lincoln can also be absolutely terrifying when he wants to be, as you will see in upcoming chapters.
