The Vampire Prince goes to High School (Book 1)

Purists

Here's the next chapter. Thanks for all your patience. Enjoy!

"How was your day?"

My mom's voice jolted me out of my thoughts. I shook my head, the plate of spaghetti in front of me came into sharp focus. My head snapped up and met her gaze. Her brow was furrowed and she had stopped twirling her fork.

I cleared my throat. "Y-yeah," I said. "For the most part, I just lounged around. It was nice." I nodded more to myself than to her. Mostly, I was trying hard to make her believe me.

"Are you heading back to school tomorrow?" Dad asked.

I nodded again. "I am," I told him. "I just needed to take a break today."

"You know you can talk to us about anything, right?" my mom asked. "We're here if you need to tell us anything."

A smile managed to appear on my lips. "Yeah, I know," I assured her.

After dinner, I mingled with my parents downstairs watching the news before heading to my room. They seemed convinced that I had stayed at home all day. At least, they gave off that impression. I didn't have the energy to look for subtle clues or question every glance. Whether I liked it or not, the only thing my mind could focus on was the fact that Carlos was part of the hate group that had threatened me. He had known about it too. How could I ever trust him or anyone for that matter?

My house was probably being watched right now – by vampires and/or humans, who knows? Honestly, none of this would have happened if I had just allowed the Prince to drink my blood. I should just gone to the hospital and donated blood specifically for him. Nowadays, I heard that you could request your blood to go someone specifically or a cause. Whether this was true or not, I didn't know. I must have heard it from one of the Prince's fans. But even as I thought that I knew I could never have done that and there was no use in wishful thinking. There was no way to go back in time and change things.

I grabbed the doorknob to my bedroom and stopped. Was I going to find another message from Carlos's so called friends? Oh, wait, no – they called themselves 'Purists' – humans were the only species allowed to be on top of the food chain. At least, that was the gist of what I got from Pat's rant.

Her words were seared into my head not because it was impactful and change my outlook on vampires but because of the sheer stupidity of what she had said. Sure, everyone could have their own opinions but this – this had been something different altogether.

Pat had taken me to a private room with only a table and some chairs. Honestly, it played out like one of those cops' scenes on TV. I'm sure there were some hidden cameras too.

"I'll be outside," Carlos had said but I'd ignored him.

The inside of the room had been hot. There was a fan that pathetically tried to cool off the room. It wasn't working. Pat had smiled all the time. We sat across each other and then she started talking about structure. Everything had a structure like a well-oiled machine but when a cog disrupted operations, the machine didn't work anymore.

'Why can't the machine adapt?' I'd asked.

Pat looked like I had told her to date a vampire. 'Why should a perfect structure have to change?" she had countered. 'When there's already a perfect structure in place, the unknown factor has to go. That is what we're trying to do here.'

I crossed my arms across my chest. 'Is that why you threatened me?'

My heart decided to lurch into a frantic state but I didn't have to worry. Instead of exploding, Pat laughed. 'If you aren't fighting to keep the structure in place then certain precautions have to be taken." Her laughter ended abruptly. She leaned forward. "Let's be frank. You've been talking with the enemy."