Knight Stalker E-Book

Julie Steimle

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

"What do you mean Spring Break is cancelled?!"

The entire school is in an uproar, including the normally rule abiding Eve McAllister. Everyone, including Eve, had been waiting excitedly for the week long vacation before Easter. Now it was gone, slipping from their grasps like sand.

As the students of Cliffcoast High plan an historic protest, a peculiar boy transfers in to spend the vacation with Mr. McDillan, Eve's creepy History teacher and former vampire hunter. Michael Toms.

Who is he? Why is he here during vacation when he ought to be on a beach somewhere? And who is that freaky guy in the shadows watching him? And why is Michael hiding a sword under that big coat of his?

Knight Stalker occurs a half a year after Eve McAllister discovered that she was not an ordinary girl, but a supernatural creature inclined to bite necks and cause mischief. However, Eve’s actual good nature leads her into fiascos almost worse than if she gave into her demonic appetites.

Leseprobe

Julie Steimle

Knight Stalker

A Hallowedspell Novella Vimp Novellas: Book 5

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Cancelled?????

"What do you mean Spring Break is cancelled?” Darla O’Brady complained to Señora Alvera during Spanish class Friday.

“I’m sorry, but the school board said that Spring Break, regardless of how it has been named, caters to the Judeo-Christian collective and is therefore discriminatory to all other faiths, beliefs and creeds. Beyond that, it interrupts the testing schedule we have planned for this year,” my Spanish teacher replied with a tone of annoyance. “Besides, don’t you want to finish the school year early?”

“But I don’t want to lose spring break!” Darla shouted back.

“Hear here!” I chimed in, huffing with great distaste at lost surfing time. I had been planning on spending the entire week on the beach. Most of us were.

Señora Alvera looked directly at me with disappointment. “You too? Honestly, Eve McAllister, I would have thought you would have wanted more time to seriously study. You aren’t religious.”

Lowering the sunglasses that usually hid my orange eyes, I said with as direct a glare as possible, “I am religious. I celebrate Easter and Christmas. Besides we want more holidays, not less.”

Several of my classmates cheered, though Señora Alvera stood flabbergasted. They never cheered for me, but then they never expected a girl like me to speak up against a teacher either. Lately it seemed that the school board was looking for ways to take all the fun out of life.

“Be that as it may,” our teacher said before closing her textbook with an attention-getting slam. “You are all to arrive at school Monday morning with bright and shining faces.”

Melissa Pickles grumbled and turned to her classmate. Matthew McGovern turned to his group with a plotting look in his eyes. Already I could hear their plans to picket, though the imps that flew over their heads (which only I could hear and see) talked about burning down the teacher’s lounge or even the school. Of course the imps always suggested extreme things. Not that it would happen. I knew most of us would be at school, bright and shiny faces or not.

The Start of the Non-Vacation

I didn’t want to get out of bed that Monday. My sister Dawn certainly didn’t get up. My reluctance wasn’t just because we lost our traditional vacation week, but that I had been out and about the night before stretching my wings, and I stayed out longer than I ought. I’m entirely not human—and most of the town suspected it by now. I was adopted, but my parents raised me to be just like everyone else, or at least tried to. No one can choose their genetics, and being the birth child of a vampire and an imp would not have been my first pick as a gene pool to draw from. Still, that was what I was.

Getting up, I went through the usual routine: grabbed my clothes, showered, slathered on tons of high SPF suntan lotion, got dressed, fixed my hair the best I could without a mirror since I lost my reflection last Halloween, and hurried onto breakfast. Just before I went downstairs I checked with my hand to make sure my wings were tucked and flattened into my back. When they were tucked in, all anyone could see were two birthmarks that look more like tattoos of wings.

Mom was in the kitchen making up some pancakes, looking like the perfect blond homemaker from a TV commercial. Will, my oldest brother, slumped against the table, stirring around his cereal with his spoon and looking doubly put out since it was his senior year and he had made plans for this spring break. Travis, my other brother, was busy scraping the burnt part off of his toast. He looked more likely to stab the thing, his temper still flaring over our lost vacation time. Only Dawn wasn’t down yet.

“Eve,” my mother said to me as soon as she saw me come down the stairs. “Hurry and eat.”

I smirked. My irises were probably red. Both my brothers glanced up once to look at them and then averted their eyes back to what they were doing. My eyes always turned to red when I got hungry.

Trudging the rest of the way down the stairs, I hopped off the bottom step and walked to the kitchen table, picking up one of the plates my mother had set there. Then I took up a pancake.

“Can’t we just skip school and say we went?” I asked at last, looking over to my mom.

Her eyes popped wide, scandalized.

“Yeah, Mom!” Travis chimed in. Will also looked up with a firm smile. “If Eve suggested it, it can’t be that bad to do!”

But Mom shook her head and eyed me, not entirely sure it was me speaking. “Don’t be ridiculous. Eve just wants to go surfing. Besides, you both have tests today.”

“Don’t remind me,” Will said as he slumped down again.

“I think they did that on purpose,” Travis snapped. He dropped his toast onto his plate, picking up the other one to scrape at it. “They knew everybody would want to ditch even if they cancelled the vacation.”

“I think we should stage a protest,” Will muttered into his soggy flakes.

I frowned. Mom would not like that.

“No, you won’t.” Her voice grew stern. Her hands were already on her hips.

“And why not?” Will lifted his head, staring straight at her. “They steal away our vacation just to make themselves look good. I don’t care if other schools are doing it. I don’t care about the political issue. I just want my vacation. If I don’t get it, I’m going to burn out before graduation.”

“You are exaggerating,” our mother said.

“Am not.” He shoved his bowl away and stood up. “I’m exhausted. I need a vacation.”

“Well, you aren’t vacationing here. You are going to school and that is final,” Mom said.

Neither Will, Travis, nor I ever argued beyond the moment Mom said something was final. Only Dawn dared incur her wrath by bickering long after our mother’s decree was given, and for the first time we wished she were in the kitchen with us to do just that.

However, Dawn did not come downstairs of her own free will that Monday. Mom had to stomp up the stairs and forcefully drag her out of bed, just about the time my brothers and I were walking out the door. 

Freaky New Dude

 I met my best friend, Jane Benetti, outside her house; and we walked to school, both of us complaining as we tramped across the school lawn where most of our classmates lingered with the same annoyed expressions on their faces. None of us wanted to be there. But as I walked up the front steps, I got the strangest chill.

I turned, glanced to the road, and there I saw a Mercedes parked on the curb. Climbing out, as a chauffer held the door open, was a young man. He did not have the presence of a boy, though he looked older than me by only a year. His expression was serious, like a thirty-year-old military man. His eyes certainly were grave. They were a sparkling blue, but there was also something hard and piercing about them. He clenched his hand as if shaking off an old injury, then he surveyed our schoolyard. Like my creepy History teacher, Mr. McDillan, this boy gave me the impression that he had killed a number of times before.

“Let’s go in,” I said to Jane.

Jane nodded with a look and a huff that said she wondered why I was lingering in the first place.

I had History class first. I used to think it was a bad thing until I realized that it was best to get my least favorite class out of the way before going through the rest of the day. I didn’t hate it for the subject. I disliked the teacher. He was a former vampire hunter once hired to kill me, but my father got a court order to stop that, so everything was good.

Walking away from Jane, I dragged my feet to my class and dropped into my seat, not even giving my teacher a glance. Others were already in the room, their imps shouting out suggestions like throwing paper just to drive our teacher crazy. Of course, no one in their right mind would act out in Mr. McDillan’s class.