Knight Stalker, Julie Steimle [best books to read all time TXT] 📗

What do you mean Spring Break is cancelled?” Darla O’Brady had complained to Ms. Alvera during Spanish class that Friday before.
“I’m sorry, but the school board said that Spring Break, regardless of how it has been named, caters to the Judeo-Christian collective and is therefore discriminatory to all other faiths, beliefs and creeds. Beyond that, it interrupts the testing schedule they have planned for this year,” the Spanish teacher said with a tone of annoyance. “Besides, don’t you want to finish the school year early?”
“But I don’t want to lose spring break!” Darla had shouted back.
“Hear here!” I chimed in, huffing with great distaste at lost surfing time. I had been planning on spending the entire week on the beach. Most of us were.
Ms. Alvera looked directly at me with disappointment. “You too? Honestly, Eve McAllister, I would have thought you would have wanted more time to seriously study. You aren’t religious.”
Lowering my sunglasses that usually hid my orange eyes, I said with as direct a glare as possible, “I am too. I celebrate Easter and Christmas. Besides we want more holidays, not less.”
Several of my classmates cheered, though Ms. Alvera looked flabbergasted. They never cheered for me, but then they never expected a girl like me to speak up against a teacher either. Lately it seemed that the school board was looking for ways to take all the fun out of life.
“Be that as it may,” our teacher said before closing her textbook with an attention getting slam. “You are all to arrive at school Monday morning with bright and shining faces.”
Melissa Pickles cast our teacher a huff and turned to her classmate. Matthew McGovern turned to his group with a plotting look in his eyes. Already I could hear their plans to picket, though the imps that flew over their heads talked about burning down the teacher’s lounge or even the school. Of course the imps always suggested extreme things. Not that it would happen. I knew most of us would be at school, bright and shiny faces or not.

I didn’t want to get out of bed that Monday. My sister Dawn certainly didn’t get up. My reluctance wasn’t just because we lost our traditional vacation week, but that I had been out and about the night before stretching my wings, and I stayed out longer than I ought. Actually, I’m entirely not human and most of the town knows it by now. I was adopted, but my parents raised me to be just like everyone else, or at least tried to. No one can choose their genetics, and being the birth child of a vampire and an imp would not have been my first pick as a gene pool to draw from. Still, that was what I was.
Getting up, I went through the usual routine: grabbed my clothes, showered, slathered on tons of high SPF suntan lotion, got dressed, fixed my hair the best I could without a mirror since I lost my reflection last Halloween, and hurried onto breakfast. Just before I went downstairs I checked with my hand to make sure my wings were tucked and flattened into my back in the place where all anyone could see was two strange birthmarks that look more like tattoos.
Mom was in the kitchen making up some pancakes for Dad and her, looking like the perfect blond homemaker we see in TV commercials. Will, my oldest brother, slumped against the table though, stirring around his bowl of cereal with his spoon looking doubly put out since it was his senior year, and he had plans for this spring break. Travis, my other brother, was busy scraping the burnt part off of his toast. He looked more likely to stab the thing, his temper just as irritated as I felt. Only Dawn wasn’t down yet.
“Eve,” my mother said to me as soon as she saw me come down the stairs. “Hurry and eat.”
I smirked. My irises were probably red. Both my brothers glanced up once as if to look at them and then both looked down again at what they were doing. My orange eyes always turned to red whenever I got hungry.
Trudging the rest of the way down the stairs, I hopped off the bottom step and walked to the kitchen table, picking up one of the plates my mother had set there. Then I took up a pancake.
“Can’t we just skip school and say we went?” I at last asked, looking over to my mom.
Her eyes peered over at me as if scandalized.
“Yeah, Mom!” Travis suddenly chimed in. Will also looked up, starting to smile. “If Eve suggested it, it can’t be that bad to do!”
But Mom just shook her head and eyed me as if she was not sure it was me speaking. “Don’t be ridiculous. Eve just wants to go surfing. Besides, you both have tests today.”
“Don’t remind me,” Will said as he slumped down again.
“I think they did that on purpose,” Travis snapped. He dropped his toast onto his plate, picking up the other one to scrape at it. “They knew everybody would want to ditch even if they cancelled the vacation.”
“I think we should stage a protest,” Will muttered into his soggy flakes.
Frowning, I knew Mom would not like that.
“No you won’t.” Her voice sounded stern. Her hands were already on her hips.
“And why not?” Will lifted his head, staring straight into her face. “They steal away our vacation just to make themselves look good. I don’t care if other schools are doing it. I don’t care about the political issue. I just want my vacation. If I don’t get it I’m going to burn out before graduation.”
“You are exaggerating,” our mother said.
“Am not.” He got up and shoved his breakfast bowl away from him. “I’m exhausted. I need a vacation.”
“Well, you aren’t vacationing here. You are going to school and that is final,” Mom said.
Neither Will, Travis nor I ever argued beyond the moment Mom said something was final. Only Dawn dared incur her wrath by bickering long after our mother’s decree was given, and for the first time we wished she were in the kitchen with us to do just that.
However, Dawn did not come downstairs of her own freewill that Monday, and Mom stomped up the stairs to forcefully drag her out of bed to make her go, just about the time me and my brothers were walking out the door to school.

I met my best friend, Jane Benetti, outside her house; and we walked to school both of us complaining as we tramped across the school lawn where most of our classmates lingered with the same putout expressions on their faces. None of us wanted to be there. But as I walked up the front steps I got the strangest chill.
I turned, looked to the road, and there I saw a Mercedes parked on the curb. Climbing out as a chauffer held the door open was a young man. He did not have the presence of a boy though he looked older than me by only a year. His expression was serious like a thirty-year-old set in a career with the military. His eyes certainly were grave. Though a sparkling blue, there was something hard and piercing about them. He clenched his hand as if it twinged from an old war wound, then he peered at our schoolyard with seeking eyes. Like my creepy History teacher, Mr. McDillan, this boy gave me the impression that he had killed a number of times before.
“Let’s go in,” I said to Jane.
Jane nodded, giving me a look with a huff that said she wondered why I was lingering in the first place.
I had History class first. I used to think it was a bad thing until I realized that it was best to get my least favorite subject out of the way before going through the rest of the day. I didn’t hate it for the subject. I disliked the teacher. He was a former vampire hunter once hired to kill me, but my father got a court order to stop that so everything was good.
Parting from Jane, I walked with a dreaded step to my class and dropped into my seat not even giving my teacher a glance. Others were already in the room, their imps shouting out suggestions like throwing paper just to drive our teacher crazy. Of course, no one in their right mind would act out in Mr. McDillan’s class.
I waited just staring at my desk in dejection until the first bell rang. When I looked up the entire class was full as if this week had not been a vacation week ever.
“Settle down,” Mr. McDillan said as he rose from his chair. His imps were telling him to walk out of the classroom and go home. It was clear he was not any happier at losing his vacation than we were. “Today we will have a freak quiz.”
Most of us sat up in our seats. A freak quiz was not unlike a pop quiz only it was about facts we never studied in class, usually trivia in the subjects that Mr. McDillan liked. No one suffered a grade drop from a freak quiz. On the contrary, he made them up to give us opportunities to earn extra credit points.
“Number your papers from one to five. Put your name in the upper left hand corner of the page and the class per—”
All of us heard the door creak and everyone lifted his head. I looked up also. There in that doorway, that boy from the Mercedes this morning stepped into the room with a man in a nice suit who could have been his father for all I knew. The man nodded to our teacher as Mr. McDillan looked puzzled at them both.
“Hold on,” our teacher said and walked over to the pair. They started whispering, but I could hear their imps shouting strange things. The man in the suit’s only shouted things like light up a cigarette and smoke, but the young man’s shouted things like “Find the monster and kill it now.”
My skin pricked up with a shiver again. Who was this guy?
He looked over the room with the same tense gaze as he had in the schoolyard. And as the whispers between our teacher and these men continued, I got the distinct impression they were talking about me.
But then Mr. McDillan did not look my way. He nodded to the man in the business suit and led out his hand to the young man into the classroom. No one could keep his eyes off of the