Blood Isn't Always Thicker Than Water

“Get your fucking cape the hell out of my fucking way, fuckin’ Prince,” Fallen said to me a week after Samantha’s departure. I no longer had those romantic feeling for her. It was just one of those teenage love flings or whatever. Now we were just friends, nothing more. Yes, I still found her extremely gorgeous and utterly attractive, but what else was to be expected from a model? Yeah, I thought so.

“Sorry,” I said in reply to Fallen, sweeping out of the doorway. I then trekked over to the Long Room. Dyrren met me there. The rest of the Senior Council was gone, as well as Pete, George and Jon. Those left here:

Hannah and Freaky McHorrific who were in Kaitlin’s room.

Sandy and Monty: my room.

Fallen: next to Jeremy’s room. Balto stayed with him in there. Jeremy’s door was now locked.

Lancaster: somewhere on Troy’s floor that had heating.

Ivy: who knows.

Dyrren: what used to be Logan’s room.

I was starting school in about two months, so Dyrren had decided to sit me down and talk about classes now that my application had been accepted. G. Ross U actually has a program for vampires with no former education, so the place just seemed perfect for me. Except for the no-pet thing, of course. You were allowed to enter by age sixteen, and by your twenty-fifth birthday you were gone, courses finished or not. Once you reached your prime you weren’t allowed in the school anymore. And I was no exception. I’d need to get my education in seven years. Not pretty.

“Sup, Dyr?” I said, flumping into a chair. Monty settled by my feet, and that was it for my followers today. Sandy was struggling in some other room with Ivy to fill out his application for G. Ross U.

“Good afternoon, Prince,” Dyrren said formally.

“Dude, just call me Cas.”

He glowered. “Well, I should show some formality occasionally.”

“No, you really shouldn’t. Say something rude or snide for once in your life.”

He frowned. “Offer declined. Now, here’s the school course list.”

I cocked my head to the side. “That’s a novel, man, not a course list.”

“Oh yes it is. Now, I want you to read through them all and tell me which ones you have any interest in. Here’s a highlighter to mark them.”

He handed me an eye-watering yellow stick. Yeah, much use that’ll be; maybe in blinding me, but not much else.

"I’ve already highlighted the classes you absolutely have to take.”

“Which are?” I asked, peering at a random page I had opened up to.

“Language Arts 1, Mathematics Connections 1B, Introductions to Vampire History, World History 1, and Physical and Life Sciences B.” He flipped the pages a bit and showed me one certain page. “Okay. You need to pick at least two foreign languages, something academic of your choice, some sort of health or wellness course, and at least one extracurricular activity. Well, the ECA will be determined when you get there. And, last but not least, a PS.”

“A what?”

“PS—Power Stimulator. Depends on what category your special power is in. However, if you don’t have one, this period is used as a spare free block. Currently, there are three students, I believe, with special powers. They really aren’t that common.

I shrugged. “I can’t get burnt, I glow in the dark, and I can sense Guardians. I also think that…oh, never mind.” I was going to mention my strange “vision”, but now didn’t seem like the right time.

“You sound like a Heat or Light Type.”

I shrugged. “Sounds right.”

He chuckled. “Just go through it, and don’t forget to highlight.” He walked out of the room, but stopped at the door. After a second of thought, he waved his hand and suddenly there was a figurine of a brown wolf on the table in front of me.

“Um, what?” I asked as the tiny wolf began to prowl around the table.

“It’ll keep an eye on you,” Dyrren explained and went to exit.

“Could I learn to do that?” I asked excitedly.

I “sensed” him smile. “Yes, My Prince. You can.” He simply didn’t call me anything but “Prince” or “My Prince” or “Your Highness” anymore. “But only if you qualify.”

Gee, thanks for the help. Means the world to me.

I wearily opened to the first page of the list. I attempted to read the lesson descriptions, but soon decided that if the title of the class didn’t interest me, the description certainly would not. It took me about an hour and a half, but I managed to pick out all the necessary classes and get an idea of what was up for extra-curricular activities. Fallen and Hannah helped of course, but when do I ever do anything independently? Once we three were all satisfied with my list of classes and Monty was getting blearily onto his feet again, we trooped across this floor of the house to where I kinda had a feeling that Dyrren was. I just have a knack for that, don’t I?

“Can I tell ya?” I asked him with very obvious excitement.

He nodded from the armchair that Fallen had sat on top of the first night I had been back.

I cleared my throat and rattled off. “Language Arts 1, Math Connections 1B, Introductions to Vampire History, World History 1, Physical and Life Sciences B—the ones you told me before—then Spanish 1, French 1, Health—the open one for all ages that doesn’t look too hard—plus I’m thinking about maybe swimming for an ECA, but I also kinda wanna do something artistic, but I’ve never done much art stuff, and I don’t have a tendency to be very…colorful…and painting just doesn’t seem like my forte, so I also thought abut ceramics, but I didn’t choose an ECA—I’m gonna pick it when I’m there—and I believe that I’m an HL” (Heat/Light) “most likely, so I highlighted the series of courses for them, ’cause I don’t know which one to take, and, yeah, I think that’s it.”

“What about that extra academic class?” Dyrren asked smartly.

“Uh—oh yeah. Um… I couldn’t think of one.”

He frowned. “All the choices were right in front of you.”

“Well, I mean that there is something I wanna do, but it’s not there.”

“Oh really. And what could that be?”

I smiled sheepishly. “Government…”

Dyrren rolled his eyes and laughed. “You are definitely destined to be a great Prince, Caspian. I’ll see what I can do for you. I may just need to teach it to you myself…” He looked thoughtfully down at his laptop. “But good choices. Why Spanish and French?”

I shrugged. “’Cause they’re so common.”

Dyrren raised an eyebrow. “Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world.”

"But I hear a lot more people speaking Spanish or French in a normal store than Chinese. Don’t you say so, Fallen?”

“Damn straight,” he affirmed.

I nodded. “See? More common in the US.”

He sighed but finally approved of my choices. “Okay. Good job, My Prince. Just write them down on this form and get it back to me.” He gave me a yellow piece of paper.

I stared in horror at the thing. “Another paper?!”

Dyrren nodded. “And this is just the beginning.”

Now he was quoting Sandy. Crap.

Sandy and I were lounging around my room, wasting time, as was usual at night. I mean, I didn’t sleep, and he did during the day. Night was our simply useless time.

I had accepted my freakiness readily. I was kinda used to being different. Now I just had to add “unable to sleep” to my Freak Factor list. Not that hard, really.

However, I still hadn’t asked Sandy why he had said he didn’t care about me in front of Ass Squared. I guess I was simply too chicken. But I decided that tonight was going to be different. He seemed to have noticed a weird hostility coming from me over the past week. Seriously, I couldn’t help it. Why would I let someone who said they didn’t like me ride on my back 24/7?

“Um, Sandy…”

He looked a bit surprised at the fact that I was breaking our usually pure silence, but nodded. He wasn’t one to show much emotion, anyway.

“Okay, look. I’m not going to beat around the bush. Do you or do you not care about me in any way, shape or form?”

He now looked genuinely shocked. “Oh… Well…” I was sitting on my only window’s sill, one leg bent, the other extending down to the floor. I was amazed my pants didn’t tear. Sandy was sprawled lazily on the bed, currently moving so that his head could rest on his palm and be propped up on his elbow. “Caspian, I’m technically not that simple. Just by nature! I’ve been given a job to do, and I do it. Sometimes I’ll tell people I feel a certain way, but that’s just so they won’t run away screaming at how utterly inhuman I am in the emotion department.”

I almost told him it wasn’t much better in the other departments, but refrained.

His long hair—that was ridiculously silky—ran over his shoulder and down his back like golden waterfalls as he frowned and continued. “I’ve never fallen in love. I’ve never had a crush before. Many people think I’m bisexual or homo because I don’t pay girls attention—well, the maids thought so—but the truth is that I just simply don’t have much of an emotional capacity.” He gazed steadily at me with those light blue eyes. “I am sworn to your service and I think you’re a very interesting person, fun to be around. Don’t expect much more from me, since it’s strictly impossible.”

I nodded, knowing I must have really only been at the tip of his emotional iceberg—or, rather, lack of one. “That really sucks, man.”

He smiled a melancholy smile with one side of his mouth, then plopped back down onto the mattress, eyes closing. “You gonna stare out the window all night again?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. I like thinking about what could be going on in those woods. It doesn’t even need to be human, vampire or Guardian activity. What’s a rabbit’s life like? Does it go through anything us people can understand?” I stared in thoughtful silence at the grassy area before the woods that was extremely overgrown and just able to be seen thanks to the moon’s muted glow. “But most of all, I like to create people that get lost in those woods. It’s so much fun to put them through all sorts of perils. It’s endless!”

Sandy blinked at me. “Yeah. If they find this manor, they’ll die of fear when they meet you.”

“That’s harsh.”

“Not at all.”