Written in Her Blood

Chapter One

Chapter One:

Anna drummed her pen on the desktop. Mortal school was quickly losing its luster. Storm gray eyes stared longing at the door, silently cursing herself for becoming bored so easily. To make things worse, the pervert behind her, Mark, was flying paper air planes at her head. She tried to return her attention to the lesson but there was little in the way of entertainment. The teacher droned on about 18th century Vienna, not that she cared much. Having spent 40 boring years in that very same Vienna, anything about it had lost its charm. She found her mind drifting back toward a large, gothic castle in the depths of Romanian mountains, warm fire and Uncle Vladimir reading her stories in his study. A sudden longing for her homeland came over her. The cold mountain air, the snow falling slowly all around her, the view from the window of her play room when she was very small and she thought she could see the world from her small room. A paper plane grazed her pointed ear, bring her back to the present. Frustration quickly ate at what was left of her patience. She caught the plane between two fingers and was about to throw it back to the bastard but a soft knock on the door.

A girl poked her head in the door, the teacher paused her lecture, smiling at the tentative new comer. "It appears we have a new student!" the teacher said with a giggle. Anna scoffed. So many mortals had a flare for stating the obvious. It made her laugh at how stupid it sounded. A vampire like herself made easy prey of the idiotic mortals of this so called advanced era.

The girl stood at the front of the classroom, shifting her feet and watching as her laces swung over the tops of her high tops. Her bright red hair fell past her shoulders and effectively hiding her eyes. Anna's stomach did flips as she eyed the girl's slight frame. She could vaguely hear the teacher ask the girl her name. She lifts her head and icy blue eye met storm gray ones and the world seem to fade away as they looked at each other. "It's Natasha, Natasha Wells." Her voice, sweet and tender, barely above a whisper, but she clung to them like the last drops of dew in a summer's heat. Anna's cheeks flushed and she broke eye contact, trying to hide the blush with her severely short black hair. Anna watched as Natasha took the only available chair next to her. As she went past, Anna caught the scent of her blood, sweeter than the freshest roses. Gray eyes turned red, she ran her tongue over polished fangs. She itched to drink from her heavenly veins but something inside her made her hesitate. A paper plane landed on her desk. She opened it to reveal untidy, almost illegible hand writing. Squinting at the text she managed to read:

'The fresh meat is mine vampire bitch!'

She peeked over her shoulder at Mark, who was licking his lips as his amber eyes probed Natasha hungrily. Bile built up in the back of her throat. Animals... the whole race was disgusting and disgraceful. The mere sight of her werewolf counter-parts made her uneasy. She had a strange feeling about that look but she brushed it off and went back to the lesson. It probably nothing anyway.

..............................

Natasha doodled on her notebook reading the fourth chapter of another fan fiction about yet another set of lovers who could never be together when someone caught her eye. She watched as what could only be called tall dark and handsome walked past her. He paused and flipped a lock of hair out of his eyes then smiled at her amber eyes gleaming. "Do you believe in love at first sight or do I need to walk by again?" Natasha laughed. "Is that the best you've got? How pathetic..."

Anna, who was half way across the cafeteria, saw this scene play out, quickly shut her journal and made her way across the lunch room. She crept up behind Mark, grabbed him by the ear and twisted until he was bent over. "Hey, dog breath, can't you open your fucking eyes? The lady isn't interested." Mark struggled in her vice like grip but she twisted harder and he stopped fighting. "Let go of me, you vampire bitch." He growled. Something pegged him in the face and Anna glanced over to see that she was holding a sling shot and a bag of rocks. "Just needs a lesson in manners," she said with a smile. With that she pegged him in the face again and laughed as he squirmed in Anna's grip. Natasha, still smiling, thrust her hand towards Anna in a sign of friendship. "Natasha Wells, don't believe we've met Ms...." Anna dropped Mark, who scrambled away from them. She took Natasha's hand. "I'm Anastasia Benningham but you can call me Anna. God knows everyone else does." She looked puzzled by the length of Anna's name. Anastasia wasn't very typical for a girl not over the age of fifty. A spark of suspicion began to grow at the back of her mind and became a roaring fire when the light made Anna's eyes turn bright red. Anna let go of Natasha's hand and turned her head as if she smelled something foul. Putting a hand over her mouth, Anna was becoming extremely dizzy, swaying back and forth like a drunken bar boy. "Sorry Nat... I've got to go..." Anna stumbled away from Natasha, keeping a hand over her mouth to hide her fully extended fangs. She was shaking violently, having never been so greatly affected by the scent of blood before.

Locking the bathroom door behind her and double checking that she was the only one inside she leaned against the door slowly lowering her hand from her face. The tips were visibly protruding from between her closed lips. In combination with her blood red eyes, she looked quite frightening. She glanced down at her hand and watched a small trickle of teal blood gather in a puddle on the floor. She licked her hand and fingers, sealing the puncture wounds in her palm and cleaning the last of the blood from her fingers. She splashed water on her face and cleaned up the last bit of her teal blood off the floor. Her eyes returned to their normal shade of storm gray and she curled up in the corner of the room and stared at the spot where her strangely colored blood had dripped onto the floor. She had only seen its strange color once before but every time she did she hated it more and more. It marked her mutation from the pure vampire and showed that she didn't need to fear the sun or even drink blood. Teal tears stained her cheeks and she wiped them away as a flood of memories opened fresh wounds in her heart. Wiping away the horrible color she bandaged her still healing hand and regained her composure. Her thoughts drifted back to Natasha. Why did she have to look so much like her? Was the whole God damned universe out to destroy her and her sanity?