Walkers Book 1- Changing

Chapter 8: Strange victory (Part 1)

            “Alright class” Shawn Logan their teacher said strolling into the gymnasium. “I think it’s time to stop the silly fighting games. You’ve all burnt off enough bad energy for a while; time to learn something serious.”He paused for dramatic effect before continuing. “Distractions.”   Everyone mumbled in disproval. Tanner guessed that most of the students would be “absent” next class because of their new lessons. “Distractions are basically used to unbalance ones concentration so that the adversary has a better advantage. Now, can anyone tell me how to cause a good distraction?”

            Tanner’s immediate thought was cloning himself; that was a very good distraction. But sadly, he couldn’t say it out loud, because that would get him shipped off to the Government within in the next five minutes. He saw Maria looking at him from across the room, and he knew that she was thinking the same thing. She smiled, he smiled back at her, making her look away.

            Hayden was the one that answered Mr. Logan’s question. “You play on the other person’s weakness.” That works too, he thought after she’d said it. But cloning was simpler, he reminded himself, even though it was useless, pointless and of course boring compared to every single other ability her could have had.

            “Very good Miss Brooks” The teacher congratulated. “Please step forward.” Hayden did. “Now, just for fun, I want you to look around and try to determine this classroom’s biggest weakness.”

            The Night Walker’s gaze paused on everyone. Tanner could see a slight glow in her eyes, but he was sure that he was the only who noticed because he was watching her. He had bizarrely been paying a lot of attention to her lately, trying to find a possible reason why she kept avoiding him. Noticing the way she walked, the way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way her eyes sparkled when she smiled; but of course, he still hadn’t gotten any answers. He hated being so pathetically clueless.     

            After a while of looking around the classroom, Hayden finally came to a conclusion. “Bad blood” She announced to everyone, but was bizarrely looking right his way. “None of us can walk away from a good fight if the opportunity comes by.”

            Well she was definitely right. Tanner thought of the way he was ready to fight her a month ago when she’d simply touched his arm; even though the Night Walker hadn’t meant any harm; did she ever did?

Even when she was done talking she was still staring at him, and Tanner stared back; some sort of incomprehensible message passing between the two them.

            “Well said Miss Brooks, you can go back to your spot back now.” Hayden waited a few seconds, before finally breaking eye contact with him and going to sit back down beside Callista. Hayden’s friend was now the one who kept staring at Tanner, as if he were a piece of food; it bothered him to no end every time she did that. “Okay, now I want you all to pair up like usual; Day and Night vamps together, and I want to see each of you try to cause a good and realistic distraction before you start fighting. I’ll be grading you on it, so don’t do anything stupid and think I won’t notice, because I will.”

            When the teacher was done talking, Tanner then hurried across the room at the same time as all the Days that were trying to grab what they considered to be a “decent” Night Walker. Amongst the crowd of vampires, Tanner was able to find Chayton Chriss. He then pulled the Night out of the circle of people, before Maria was able to grab him. The Night Walker wasn’t that bad, in fact Tanner considered him as cool. Over the month they’d had many descent conversations, none of which resolved into a fight in any way. In fighting classes the night vampire was a good opponent, and had never attempted to rip his heart out or burn him to ashes, which was a pretty good sign of friendship in Tanner opinion. Evander wasn’t that horrible either. Sure, he should brush his mouth with soap once in a while, and maybe he should try to control his anger and rude comments and just maybe try to pick a fight with someone his own size for a change; but in the end, he was as normal as his brother. No Day Walker really saw the attitude resemblance between the two of them, they all just thought that Chayton was the tough looking nice guy and Evander was the smaller twin bastard that needed a good beating. But if you got to know them well enough, the resemblance between the two of them was easy to spot.