Walkers Book 1- Changing

Chapter 9: Swimming in blood (Part 1)

I promised some action, so here it comes!

Picture: A shirtless Brenton Thwaites as Tanner Preston

Song: For The Longest Time by Billy Joel

Chapter 9:  Swimming in blood

            Night Walker code 116- We never run away from danger.

Hayden

             What just happened? Did they actually really win? Everything happened so fast. One moment Hayden was furious at Maria for breaking their sand dragon’s head and the next, Noah announced their team has the winners of the contest and was giving them a small chest. Hayden was the one that had the wonderful honour to open it. Inside, just as they were promised, were twenty blood bags; the entire team burst into screams of pure joy. Blood! Beautiful, delicious, free blood! All of the other teams looked at them in envy, and when Hayden looked around, she realised that Maria Preston was staring at her with pure hatred. The Night Walker then noticed the numerous colours that were almost flying around the Day Walker. Maria had a lot of silver Hayden noticed, and pink, but also red and a little brown. Hayden concentrated on them until the Voice appeared inside of her mind.

“Full of love and passion. The soul knows what it wants, but is very unstable. It searches for what has been lost and gives it strength and courage to continue on.”  Maria passionate? Loving? Hayden started to wonder why she even bothered to read peoples’ souls if the Voice was just going to lie to her.  

She then caught a glimpse of Tanner. He was covered in sand but he didn’t seem to mind; he was smiling, in fact, he almost seemed to be smiling at her. Hayden along with possibly everyone else had of course seen what he’d done, and she had to admit, if he hadn’t “accidently fallen on his sand sculpture”, her they wouldn’t have won.

It was four in the morning; everyone had gone to bed about two hours ago and Hayden could tell by her sister’s breathing that Aria was already asleep. Hayden had slept for about thirty minutes, maybe less, but she felt wide awake. So awake, that she was ready to start her day; but sadly, everyone else wasn’t. After a while of tossing and turning on top of her ripped sleeping bag, she finally decided to grab a blood bag and a blanket that was hanging around, and then head out of the tent. Hayden walked alone on the beach towards the water, letting her feet kick the sand as she walked. The sun was very slowly starting to come up over the ocean and the scenery was so beautiful it took her breath away.

When Hayden was near the water, she laid out her blanket on the sand, sat down just out of reach of the waves, and then stared straight into the horizon. Secretly, she had always loved to watch the sun rise. Sure, she was always saying terrible things about Day Walkers; but she always thought that they were lucky to have such a beautiful and warm light to contemplate; unlike the moon that was pale, boring and cold. When she was younger—and was supposed to be sleeping— she would stay up until dawn so that she could see the pretty colours in the sky. These days, Hayden was mostly too lazy to stay awake until sunrise, but when she did, she always thought that it was always worth it. Usually, Night Walker days were a lot shorter than day vampires’. Nights got up around three or four in the afternoon, and went to sleep around two or three o’clock in the morning. Most Day Walkers lived on a Humana schedule. Some are up at dawn, and go to bed as soon as the sun goes down, but these days that system was much less frequent. Most of the Days awoke around nine or ten in the morning and went to bed around eleven at night, like the Mortalis.