True Darkness

The teacher seemed to take forever to arrive and when he did I was disappointed to say the least. He wasn't like the students here, or any of the teachers for that matter. He wasn't flawless, he wasn't extraordinary looking, he was plain. Weird looking to say the least. He was ginger, pale, freckly with indents in his skin from a previous acne attack. He wore glasses and was quite small and thin. The be honest he looked clumsy too. Not a very impressive mix if I was honest.

I closed my eyes and sighed. This wasn't going to go well. No-one paid any attention to him and carried on their oh so important discussions. There was still no sign of Julian. I grabbed a notebook out of my bag and started to write. I liked to write in my spare time and I was already half way through a book. The book was basically my life, the weird things I've seen, the things I've had to deal with, the people I've met, but written in a fictional form due to the fact that I doubt anyone would believe me if I said it was an auto-biography. I mean, come on, would you?

"Erm... excuse me class?" the teacher said timidly from the front of the class, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

No-one paid any attention to him still. One or two of the other students paused but, after seeing that no-one else was listening, soon turned back to their conversations, phones or books. I raised my eyebrow at the teacher and carried on writing.

"Class it's time for you to listen." he said again, equally as timidly.

There were more pauses but, again, no succession. The teacher went slightly red in the face.

" I said listen to me! "

Everyone's heads snapped to the teacher as that weedy looking man transformed into a bright red demon. One that looked like he'd been kicked out of hell not two minutes ago. My jaw fell open as I took the (for lack of a better word) beast of a man in. He had, at least, tripled in size, had two great big rams horns on the top of his head, a tail which looked like it'd cut you if it touched you, claws, extremely sharp teeth and black eyes. You could literally see the power radiating off of him. It looked like red smoke.

"Good. Now that I have your attention I would like to reveal that today's class will require pair work."

My heart sank. Julian had left about five minutes ago and there was still no sign of him now which meant I had no partner. I looked down at my book and scribbled furiously, hoping he wouldn't notice the empty space beside me. The last thing I wanted was to be paired with some other freak who had no friends and had to be placed with people.

"Does anyone not have a partner?" the Demon asked from next to the whiteboard.

I sighed and was about to put my hand up when I was interrupted by a voice on the other side of the room.

"Stacey doesn't, Sir." Ashton said calmly.

" What?! " Stacey shrieked from beside him.

Sir raised his right eyebrow at Ashton, which was extraordinarily funny when done by a Demon of his appearance and size.

"Oh really? Because I was given the impression that you were sat next to her. Therefore you were her partner in this exercise, Mr Noire."

Ashton stood up and grinned slyly, narrowing his eyes in the process. He looked ready to kill.

"Actually, Sir, I was assigned the job of looking after, and working with, the new girl, who was sat beside me at the beginning of the lesson before Stacey came in and bullied her out of it. So if you don't mind I would like to resume my duties." Ashton said smugly, bowed his head and walked over to me.

Everyone was silent as they watched him walk towards me and once they had seen me that was it. The thought I had had before of that the students here are used to new students flew straight out of the window once I saw the expression on most of their faces. Almost all of them were frowning but a lot of them just looked offended and angry that I was there. I fixed my gaze on the table, blushing furiously, suddenly very embarrassed about being there, like I didn't belong.

Ashton slid in beside me and smiled.

"There we are. Back to how it should be." he said simply then crossed his arms behind his head, crossed his legs at his ankles, put his head back and shut his eyes. Same old Ashton.

"Okay then. So that leaves you, Stacey, with Peter. Peter you can come and join Stacey."

I watched Stacey's face drop as Peter stood up from the back of the class. Peter looked dumb. Simple as that. He looked like he had been hit on the head one too many times and his one brain cell was having a little trouble keeping up the work load. Poor boy. He lumbered across to the desk and slumped down into the chair with a grunt. Stacey rolled her eyes at him before turning to glare at me. My gaze returned to the table, the familiar heat rushing to my face again to see what all the excitement was about.

"Just ignore her. She'll get over the fact that she's not the only girl I talk to pretty quickly." Ashton said from beside me.

I looked at him but his eyes were still closed. I frowned.

"Does she not know about Lamia?" I inquired.

Ashton smirked and opened his left eye to study me.

"You mean my sister Lamia?" he replied simply and shut his eyes again.

"Oh." I blushed again and mentally kicked myself for being so stupid.

"Stop blushing there's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"How did you know I was blushing?"

"I could hear your heart beat increase so either you just saw the love of your life or you're embarrassed. I'm guessing it's the latter given the quality of the people here." he remarked.

"You could hear my heart beat increase?"

"There's a lot you don't know about me Libby. I wouldn't be so surprised if I were you."

"What like your eyes changing colour? Or the fact that you're extremely strong?" I questioned and raised my eyebrows at him.

"Ah you noticed. You're quite a clever girl aren't you Libitina."

"My name's Libby."

His eyes opened and he opened his mouth, probably to make some witty come-back, but stopped and frowned.

"Libby. Are you okay?" he asked leaning towards me slightly.

"Yeah why?" I asked leaning away and eyeing him warily.

"Your eyes. They're black."

I froze. Black meant death. death . I could feel the colour drain from my face and I quickly bent to grab my bag. Pushing my chair out from my desk, I got up and sprinted out of the room despite Ashton's and the Teacher's calls after me. I was going to die. In this school. If I was going to be attacked, most likely option here, I was going to find a weapon to protect myself and lock myself into some storage room somewhere. It was my best option.

I sprinted around a corner and tripped over something heavy. I landed awkwardly and slid in some sort of liquid. Closing my eyes, I sighed trying to regain some sort of composure as I put my hands to the floor to push myself up. Only I didn't push myself up because as soon as my hands hit that liquid I knew that something wasn't right. It was warm and slightly sticky. I opened my eyes to find my hands covered in red. Blood. I looked around to see that I was sitting in a pool of blood and that what I had actually tripped over was a dead body. A dead girls body actually.

I screamed and pushed myself backwards as quickly as I could, moving faster and faster until I hit the wall of lockers behind me. I didn't stop screaming. I couldn't take my eyes off of the dead girls face. Her dead, empty eyes just boring into mine. I could almost see the look of fear that remained, her last thoughts before whatever happened happened. Whatever it was wasn't good.

"Libby?!" Julian's voice said from the corner.

I looked up from the girls body, still screaming, straight into his eyes. That was when I noticed the blood on him too. He was covered in it. It was on his hands, shoes, face, clothes and even in his hair.

It was him. He killed her. my brain screamed but I couldn't make any sense of it. Non of this made sense.

He rushed over to me and went to lift me up just as Ashton came around the corner. He stopped dead in his tracks and his eyes quickly took in the scene before him. Then his eyes went that same bright violet colour they were before and he growled.

"You sick, murderous bastard ." he snarled at Julian.

Then he snapped and all control was lost. The last thing I remember before I blacked out was Ashton launching at Julian and the two flying to the floor. All the rest was just a blur.

So much for a normal school and a fresh start.