Infection

Prolouge

   Vampires are just mythical creatures created to scare kids, or at least that's what I used to think. This was my belief system until one morning when I woke up with bite marks on my hand.

   My name is Rayne Ellison Berns, but my friends all call me Ray. I have honey-colored hair that falls to the middle of my back and deep ocean blue eyes. I'm 15 years old, and accorrding to my hometown, that's how old I was when I died.

   Yes, my hometown thinks I'm dead, but they don't have a body to prove anything, so I can pretty much go back anytime I want to. Of course at the current moment I can't go back even if I wanted to.

   Right now, I'm hanging for dear life to a vine hanging over the lip of a volcanoe. I'm dangling 300 feet over a river of bubling magma that is slowly rising to meet me. I would scream, but the nearest person is 6 miles up in airplane, probably watching an inflight movie.

   In my entire life, I never dreamed that I would be dangling over the edge of a volcanoe, being forced to face facts about my life. As I hung there, waiting for the magma to come get me, in my mind's eye, I replayed all the events that led up to this moment. These events start with the infection caused by the bite on my left hand.