Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Ian Hall and April L. Miller. Hallanish Publishing, thru Smashwords Inc.

  ISBN; TBC

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  Copyedited by: Carolyn M. Pinard www.thesupernaturalbookeditor.com

  Vampires Don’t Cry

  The Collection

  By Ian Hall & April L. Miller

  Vampire High School (Vampires Don’t Cry: Book 1)

  The Helsing Diaries (Vampires Don’t Cry: Book 2)

  The Rage Wars (Vampire’s Don’t Cry: Book 3)

  Blood Red Roses (Vampires Don’t Cry: Book 4)

  Vampires Don’t Cry: Blood Anthology

  (Backstory Collection)

  Vampire High School (Vampires Don’t Cry: Book 1)

  By Ian Hall and April L. Miller

  Chapter 1. The Visiting Cheerleader

  Chapter 2. The Gregor Six

  Chapter 3. Conflict of Interests

  Chapter 4. The Myth Takes Hold

  Chapter 5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  Chapter 6. Being a Helsing

  Chapter 7. Buffing It All Up

  Chapter 8. The Cheerleader Returns

  Chapter 9. Vampire Executioner

  Chapter 10. More Questions Than Answers

  Chapter 11. Vampire’s Revenge

  Chapter 12. Keeping the Story Straight

  Chapter 13. Going All Corporate

  Chapter 14. New Car, No Hope

  Chapter 15. Break a Leg

  The Visiting Cheerleader

  It all started on Friday evening; football night.

  The first high school game of the season, the excitement ran high, and there were kids milling around everywhere. The visitors, nearby Everton High, hadn’t arrived in numbers yet, so the area was a sea of white and crimson. Flags, jackets, shirts, balloons; we had it all. The Gregor Academy marching band rehearsed near the main entrance, doing dips and the well-rehearsed shimmies, the final practice before taking to the field at the start of the game.

  I knew my best friend, Alan McCartney, marched somewhere in the middle; he’s first clarinet. Great guy, he’s got a bunch of the greatest friends, and he plays clarinet and guitar. Girls melt at his feet most of the time. Everyone wished they were Alan.

  I’ve known him for just over a year.

  The school band wears white with burgundy trimmings, (Mrs. McCartney always complained about washing Alan’s uniform) and the white uniforms shone like fresh snow in the early floodlights. I stood, waiting for the cheerleaders who normally followed the band; I mean, a guy’s got to have some entertainment in his life.

  The band turned, doing a boogie version of the school’s anthem, (Go Hawks!) when the music slowly fizzled to silence. The band began to run in all directions, like someone let off the stink bomb of a lifetime. The musicians evaporated from the center out, and I just watched in fascination as some stampeded towards me to safety.

  I jumped up on a low wall and clung one-handed to the black lamppost like that guy in “Singing in the Rain.”

  When the rout died, standing alone on the concrete were Alan and a visiting cheerleader, in a way too tight embrace.

  Snogging like dervishes.

  Well, at first I thought they were kissing. She had her back to me, and I couldn’t see much of anything at all.

  (I heard later that she marched with him, holding his hand down her top; so he wasn’t playing much clarinet. Then she got kinda passionate and started to drill his neck).

  So there they were, standing in a crazy, tight embrace. She had one hand rubbing his crotch, while she feverishly chewed at his neck. This chick had the cutest butt you’ve ever seen, long blond hair - everything a guy could want. And her butt wiggled as she munched on my best friend’s neck.

  I began to get a wee bit jealous, when I suddenly knew something wasn’t quite right. In fact, it felt as wrong as it could possibly be.

  Alan dropped his clarinet - his pride and joy. His folks had paid a fortune for it.

  The ebony tip hit the concrete with a loud ‘popping’ sound, and shattered, sending shards of black wood and silver parts in all directions.

  Then the cheerleader turned around to face me. Her mouth and lips were covered in blood, and her teeth shone a bright white. As she turned, I saw Alan’s neck. Man, no matter what stain fighter Mrs. McCartney used, she wasn’t getting that color out in a hurry.

  “Mandy,” I hissed, remembering her once visiting the school. I didn’t know her full name, but I knew they had an off-and-on thing going on.

  My best friend’s white tunic hung in shreds from his bare shoulder, and a mass of the deepest red spread from his neck to his balls. The blood stain got worse as my mouth opened, and arcs of deep ochre pumped rhythmically from his neck, the dark red pulses flashing in the spotlights.

  “Help!” I roared, but it did more harm than good. Hearing my cry, Mandy let Alan go, and he fell to the ground like an empty suit.

  Mandy caught my stare and flashed me a fleshy-bloody grin, then ran off as fast as her pretty legs would go.

  Man, her tits bounced real good.

  Yeah, I know I’m going to take some ribbing for that observation, but there are a few facts to learn before jumping to the wrong conclusions about me.

  My name is Lyman George Bracks, but due to a mop of shaggy ginger hair, everyone calls me ‘Red’.

  It’s the ultimate teenage curse; worse than zits or halitosis. Yeah. Laugh now, but you don’t have to deal with it every day.

  I do.

  I know I’m destined to never get to first base with any girl anywhere, because they’ve already been warned off by their friends for even thinking about dating a ‘ginge.’

  Yeah, laugh.

  So, yes, I did check out Mandy’s tits as she ran away.

  I waited ‘til the last of the retreating bandsmen had passed, then I ran to Alan’s side. I knelt down on the grey stone and lifted his body onto my lap. The blood still pumped from his neck, but not with as much pressure as before, and I knew that wasn’t a good thing. I looked around, and gasped; so much blood already spread outwards from his body onto the concrete. I put my fingers on the wound, and pressed as hard as I could. Despite my pressure, it still surged through my fingers.

  “You’ll need replacing in the band,” I joked through my tears. “When your throat’s ripped out by a visiting cheerleader, you’re not likely to be returning to the Gregor Academy marching band. At least not anytime soon.”

  Go Hawks!

  I thought of the opponents from Everton High, a town ten miles west.

  I lifted my eyes to see the crowd gathering round me. A hundred cell phones were dialing 9-1-1. My voice trembled. “Man, this is going to put an edge on the age-old rivalry.”

  Then he spoke his last words, and blow me down with a feather if they didn’t come from way left-field; “Vampires don’t cry.”

  Hi. My name’s Mandy. Mandy Cross.

  Bei
ng a vampire’s not necessarily all fun and games. Sometimes it kinda sucks. Pun intended. First of all - you’re technically dead. Secondly - you have to eat your friends. Thirdly - after a couple snack attacks, you don’t have too many friends left. Least not the human ones.

  And if that’s not bad enough - then to be a vampire and have your unbeating heart ripped right out of your chest, thrown to the ground and marched over by some fanged Don Juan…

  If you’re buying into that fire-crotch’s BS about Alan being all Mr. Wonderful, then you’re just as lame as he is. Pick up Gregor Academy (Vampire High), turn it upside down, and shake. Not one of the jerk-offs that falls out will know the real Alan McCartney like I did.

  The guy was a total douche.

  And he had it coming. If you just skip over all the chapters written by that effing red-headed retard, I’ll tell you the for-real story. Of course, if you like being a loser, then skip my parts and listen to the Ginger-bred Man, the King of Loser-Town.

  BTW—he totally checked out my rack as I ran away. What a geek.

  Last summer turned out to be a very rough time for me.

  I should have been a senior at Everton High this year; the school for regular kids; the ones who haven’t been forced to drink vampire blood, killed, and then came back to life.

  Like I said…last summer was not a good time. I’d spent my junior year being all into this total jock named Craig. I was seriously in love with this guy; we did it and everything. But, as soon as summer hit, he hooked up with some other chick and like, totally just blew me off.

  BTW- that other chick just happened to be my BFF, Cami. Spoiler alert: Cami is now fish food.

  That was one of the things so totally awesome about getting in with a real-live vampire. Alan was all, “You don’t have to take s-h-i-t from anyone; your soul is already gone, so it’s not like you can go to Hell or anything.”

  But, it’s not like I just went, “Oh, cool. I’ll become a vamp so I can tear out Cami’s throat.” In fact, it took a long time for me to make that decision. Not that Alan didn’t work overtime to try and convince me it was worth the gross blood-sucking and even getting bitten. Seriously - that dude was so stoked up on plasma half the time, who knows if he really believed what he said.

  His VH buddy’s gonna try to tell you Alan was all cool and stuff, such a nice vampire and wouldn’t hurt anybody. Like I said before, though, I’m the one who really knew him. He’d jump through my bedroom window at two in the morning and have red Kool-Aid stains all over his face. Except it wasn’t red Kool-Aid. We pretended, so I wouldn’t totally hurl. But, for real, it was… feline blood. Yep - that a-hole drank cats! One of my cats even. Mr. Stinky; may he rest in peace.

  That’s how Alan and I met, in fact. I felt so depressed that summer that I couldn’t sleep like, at all. So, I’d go out to the gazebo in the middle of the night and just kind of, you know, chill. One night I sat there, ironically, reading Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, when I heard a rustling in the hydrangeas behind me.

  I dropped my book and ran for the back door. I don’t know why I did this - total brain fart - but, instead of running inside, I just flicked on the flood lights and stood there like a dum-dum.

  I made that kissing sound you call cats with. “Stinkmesister, is that you, baby? C’mere, Stinkyson…”

  I watched in like, total horror as my sweet little Persian came limping out from behind the hydrangeas. Two stumbling steps later and he fell over, dead as a dodo. I freaked and then launched into some weird Superwoman mode.

  The rake just, like, leant up against the house so I grabbed it and went to town on the bushes. I swung, and hit something that couldn’t have been bush. Next thing I know, this dude is like, popping up from behind the plants, blood all over his face and holding up his hands like I was gonna arrest him or something.

  “Okay! Knock it off,” he said.

  I totally slugged him with the metal part of the rake. The pointy things went right into his temple and he dropped. I felt so pissed about my cat that I didn’t care; I went to Mr. Stinky and tried CPR.

  Of course, Mr. Stinky stayed dead. But the guy with the rake for a face didn’t. He crawled at me like a snake, all yellow-eyed and bleeding. Then he grabbed my ankle and bit. It only took a little blood for him to heal.

  Anyway, that’s how Alan McCartney and I met for the first time.

  I shook my head in total disbelief at what he’d said to me.

  Then he closed his eyes, and with a small throaty gasp of air, he died.

  The cops were called of course, I mean, a hundred-piece marching band has at least fifty cellphones tucked in pockets and bra cups, but that kind of stuff takes a while to arrive. I knelt in the growing pool of blood and held him and cried. I could tell by the sea of white trouser legs that the rest of the band had gathered back around, but there was no, “Let’s do what we learned in First Aid.” That bitch had hit a big artery, and I couldn’t see a way back.

  Alan lay in my arms, either very dead, or dying before our eyes.

  Trust me, for all my inattention at first aid classes, I felt certain.

  In two minutes he’d bled out totally. I knelt in his shiny red-ochre, and probably ten others stood in the same growing pool.

  Then, bursting through the silence like a firework on the Fourth of July, Grant Porteus hit the first notes of ‘Last Post’ on his cornet. I knew it would be Grant without looking up. Alan was pretty well liked, and Grant was the kind of guy who knew instinctively the right thing to do - always.

  For all the hundred or so kids on the concrete, you could have heard a pin drop as Grant’s plaintive tune rang out into the evening.

  The ambulance eventually came. Its siren pierced the silence, and the band parted reluctantly to let the paramedics through.

  They didn’t attempt resuscitation, though, they just nudged me out of the way, wrapped him up, lifted the body onto a gurney, then left.

  The police came and like school kids all over the country, the band kind of dispersed, standing in guilty groups, most having nothing to say.

  A few did something very strange, and they all did it in the same way. In the midst of all this weirdness, it got suddenly weirder.

  They bent down to the pool of blood, ran their forefinger in it, and licked it clean. I counted them; six altogether. I knew them all; counted them as quasi friends; friends by association with Alan, no more.

  I didn’t ask. I just observed. But I took mental note of the names of ‘the six.’

  Soon, a cop tapped me on the shoulder and asked me questions.

  “Mandy something,” I answered. I wanted to mention her tits, but I just closed my eyes and remembered them.

  “Do you know her?”

  “She came to school once.”

  “Here? To Gregor Academy? When?”

  “Last week. I don’t know.” I must have looked like a real wacko, but he took my name and told me they’d be back for more questions later. “Alan spoke to her. That’s all I know.”

  With the front of my shirt and my jeans all covered in his blood, I kinda wandered around aimlessly after that.

  “Tonight’s Game is Postponed.” the big electronic scoreboard read ten minutes later.

  I looked around for a friendly face, but found none. Girls were crying, but each of them seemed to have someone with them, and I wasn’t bold enough to intrude.

  I looked for ‘the six’, but they were conspicuous by their absence.

  In the depths of my loneliness, I decided to go home. I set out for the gate. I had walked past the school sign when I spotted Dorothy Squires sitting on the curb. She’s one of our cheerleaders, and sat so low, her knees were high in the air, her already-short skirt bunched up at her waist. She wasn’t crying, but she looked pretty beat-up.

  “You ok?” I asked.

  Okay, I’d blurted out the dumbest thing, but I wasn’t really expecting an answer anyway, she’s a cheerleader, and they don’t talk to the likes of me.

>   She looked up at me and presented a grim smile, lips closed. Then she stuck her legs out onto the road, and smoothed her skirt down. It was too late for that kind of modesty; I’d already seen her white knickers lots of times on the field. She’s a cheerleader for goodness sake.

  “Hi, Lyman,” she sniffed, then pointed up to my bloody clothes. “You’re covered in his blood.”

  Lyman, the name hit the back of my brain in microseconds. She hadn’t called me ‘Red.’ No one called me Lyman, except grown-ups.

  “You need anything?” I asked, hoping a grope wasn’t out of the question. I had nothing else; no cigarettes, no gum.

  Dorothy got unsteadily to her feet. “You guys were close, huh?”

  My tears started without warning. I felt a fool until she came close and hugged me. I was bloody from head to toe, but she still pulled me close. Not to lose a chance to feel those goodies against my chest, I hugged her back, but the tears didn’t stop, even though I wanted them to.

  My friend had just died, and here I stood, getting farther with any girl ever. And Dorothy Squires was a cheerleader!

  She held me, then, stepping back, looked up into my eyes. Man I thought we were going to kiss. I moved forward like the awkward geek, and she instantly held a waving forefinger in the air between us.

  No kiss then.

  She shook her head slightly, but for some reason I focused on the swaying finger.

  Yes, it was the bar to our kiss; but it was more.

  Her nails were manicured, her fingernails varnished white.

  But under the nail, arcing back and forth like a metronome, winking at me like a sliver moon, lay a wet ridge of crimson.

  The white-nail part had been licked clean, but under her fingernail, Dorothy Squires had Alan McCartney’s blood.

  Okay. Back to me - Mandy.

  There are lots of things humans think about vampires that are just totally false. Let’s get them out of the way right now.