They were gathered for a momentous occasion that afternoon. The headmistress didn’t tolerate noise and she certainly didn’t tolerate weakness. He stood with his back against the wall and the toes of his uniform boots touching. The glimmer of a will unbroken.īlue Eyes raised a finger to his lips and the boy nodded in understanding. He fought without reservation and drew blood in their combat sessions like it was his birthright, but there was still kindness in his eyes. If anyone had a chance at becoming one of the beautiful gods who rose from the ashes of transformation and emerged stronger than the natural-born vampires themselves, it was Blue Eyes. The boy was sure the only gold that ran through his veins was the kind the vampires bled with their syringes and tubes. The boy found it difficult to believe when they were condemned to a life of grueling training, constantly pitted against one another in the hopes that they would one day emerge from the chrysalis of death to be revealed as the greatest treasure any vampire could possess: a chimera.Ĭhimeras were rare and indistinguishable from humans, so the human children collected from the farms were gathered and sifted through like sand, all in hopes of finding that one gold nugget in a million grains. Another child plucked from the blood farms, saved from a life hooked up to needles that would bleed him dry, if he wasn’t purchased by a wealthy vampire or an elf who wished to use his lifeblood for magic. He was Blue Eyes in the small brunette’s mind. He looked into the wide blue eyes that met his own, surrounded by a veil of long hair as black as his pupils. One of the guards blocking the door growled audibly and he saw the headmistress adjust her grip on the long handle of her prod.Ī hand grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back to his place in line. The boy let out a tiny whimper as the ragged edge split his skin. He’d caught his toe on a broken piece of white tile that seemed to morph into the same dimensionless space as every other clinical plane in the room.

Her eyes narrowed when she saw the small brown-haired boy near the end of the line stumble. The children lined up along the wall, bare feet padding silently and eyes averted as the woman with the electric prod stood by, watching closely.

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Puppet/Master by Joel Abernathy