Hunter!!!!

You could hear a pin drop after I uttered the words, but something in my gut tells me that I can trust these people. So I do, I trust them with my real name instead of the one Elina wanted me to use for the duration of my stay.

  A few older boys stare at me with narrowed eyes while others openly gawk at me. "Okay then." Jeremy claps his hands and smiles a little uncomfortably before ushering me out of the room. "So sorry about that." He mutters quietly as he continues to push me up the stairs, a down a corridor with dark blue painted doors with golden numbers bolted into them.

He stops seemingly at random and opens the door with the number 13. "Here we are, home sweet home." The room is fairly big, I mean two twin beds, two decent sides closets and two desks fit comfortably in the room without it feeling too cluttered. One side of the room looks lived in, meaning the left side is mine. "Oh, uh...you might find it that Walter has already packed away your clothes into the closet." That's why I don't see my suitcases anywhere.

"So? What do we do now?" I question as I sit down on the memory foam matrass with a happy sigh. At least now I will no longer have a pain in my back when I wake up in the morning.

"I donno, what do you want to do? A tour of the school and its grounds?" He asks, sitting down on his own bed, leaning back on his hands as he swings his feet lazily. "Or we can get you settled in today and wait for your official tour of the school and its ground tomorrow by the student body president. It's your call." He shrugs a little at the end.

"How does the dorm thing work? I mean I have seen a couple of older guys and what are the rules of this dorm?" I frown a little as I lean forward as I see Jeremy smile. He shuffles backwards on his bed until his back hits the wall behind him.

"The dorm is divided in several sections; there is the Dorm Head whose name is Flint, he is a Dhampir. He—" 

"Hold up, hold up." I hold up my hands, as Jeremy looks at me in question. "There are Dhampirs and Vampires? I thought those only existed in fantasies, myths and legends?" I am not too sure I buy this whole Vampires and Dhampirs are real business. He looks at me and burst out laughing. I frown as he continues to laugh like I said the funniest thing in the world.

"God..." He snickers as he wipes a tear away. "I never thought that you'd be this clueless. I figured you'd be quite clueless but not like this." He takes a deep breath and grins slightly. "I will start from the beginning okay?" He seems to be waiting on some kind of signal from me so I nod my head so he can continue. "You know all the legends about vampires right? Like turning into mist and bats and that kind of crap right?" I grimace at the ridiculous notions made about vampires through the ages. "Well just so you know, we don't sparkle in sunlight, nor do we die." I snort as he tells me that, I never believed vampires would sparkle.

"However, Full Blood Vampires do get burned quite easily when the sun is at its highestpoint and they are exposed to it over a long period of time without properprotection. This is what happens to Dhampirs in the sun." He demonstrates it by rolling up his sleeve and puts his arm in the direct path of the sunlightstreaming through the high windows. I look on unimpressed, but after a while Isee a slight change in his dark skin colour. It seems like very bad sunburn. Hehisses as he tears off the dead patch of skin, revealing lighter unmarked skin."The sun doesn't bother us Dhampirs as much they get only a sunburn, since our humanblood triumphs their vampire blood. No matter how old that vampire blood is."

"Doesn't it hurt?" I question pointing to his lighter skin, intrigued that he could just tear it off without being in pain or feeling uncomfortable. "Does that make you a Dhampir too?"

He looks down at his arm and shrugs. "Yeah, I am a Dhampir born of a full blood vampire of a light house and a Dhampir of a dark house. And no, I do not know how those genetics work to make me a Dhampir." He shakes his head as I open my mouth to ask how it works. "But back to our story of Dhampirs, Flint our dorm head is the only Dhampir I know to have an ancient full blood vampire father. Flint's father is one of the Four Founding Royals. You do know who they are don't you?"

"Yeah I do. They were basically the Counts generals in his wars right?" I let out a tiny breath of relief when I see Jeremy nod. Glad that at least some part of the miles long history stuck with me. "They also represent the dark and lighter sides of the vampire race. There are two Dark Royals; Lady Madeline and lord Bran and the two Light Royals; Lady Vanessa and Lord Ivan. Together the form the High Council, the highest power within the race with exception of The Count and Lady Elisabeth."     

Jeremy grins, "That's right and basically they make sure we don't violate the rules set out by the Count when he signed a truce with the human population. But when the Count returns then they too will answer to him just like everybody else."

"Wait... so the Count is not around?" I frown, I am pretty sure they would tell us if our Founding Father was missing. Jeremy sighs as he shakes his head.

"Nobody knows for sure where he and Lady Elisabeth have gone. After the failed attempt on his life, he and Lady Elisabeth disappeared. Some say for good, some say he is biding his time to return. That this is for some philosophical crap reason or a test for us as a race to see if we are worthy of his rule. I don't believe it by the way, I think there is more to it. More than we know and they are not telling us."

Desperate to get rid of this heavy atmosphere I pose the question that has been bugging me since he mentioned Flint having an ancient full blood vampire father. "So what does Flint do for this dorm and who would his father be?" 

If he was glad for the change of topic, I couldn't tell. Jeremy had the same sad look in his eyes when he continued. "People say that Flint's father is lord Ivan, and that his mother was Scandinavian Royalty but nobody ever confirmed it. So we don't know for sure and Flint doesn't respond to favourably when asked in person. But what he does here at the dorm is keeping us all in line and makes sure we keep this place clean and he notifies the school board of things that needs to be fixed, that kind of stuff.  You know, normal mundane stuff. As long as it has to do with the dorm you can ask either him or any of the dorm watchers."

He continues before I can even ask my question. "Dorm Watchers are people who aspire to become Dorm Head or they use the points that the activity gets them to show the teacher or the High Council that they can do a certain job. The way to recognise a dorm watcher is the colour of their logo. There are six colours black, white, blue, green, silver and red/gold. The Dorm Head has the red/gold logo, his second in command has the silver one, and the one below him has the black one and so forth all the way down to blue. Our dorm logo is a phoenix." I nod my head as I saw several phoenix logos as I stepped up to meet most of the guys downstairs.

"Why do you get points for doing things like becoming a Dorm Watcher? Why not assign grades?" I find it illogical to assign points instead of grades. Grades are easier to work with and reflect what someone knows about the subject.

"The reason they assigned points instead of grades is that the High Council decided that grades don't really represent your drive to accomplice something. And the High Council see grades as an obstacle, people will only do the absolute minimal to get a passing grade. Although you need a proper education to get anywhere, so you do need to do the things you don't like. Anyway the student body president can explain it better than I can. The clueless look on your face tells me you don't get it."

"Uh... Yeah I really hope the student body president is a bit clearer about what is going on here with the points and stuff." I smile a little sheepishly and scratch the back of my neck. Jumping as a loud toll bell sounds through the building, I follow Jeremy down the stairs, down the hall into a large kitchen/dinner room. Every guy in the building seems to be present since there is only one chair left and Jeremy ushers me to the vacant chair besides a guy with a green phoenix logo.

Looking to my left I see the famous Flint stand at the head of the table, looking like a regal king watching over his people. "I know there are a few of you who will complain, but we have a new dorm member so we will be having a feast instead of our usual pizza night." His voice is low but soothing, not really fitting his physic. "Phoenix dorm, welcome Ainsley Dragomir." I let out a small breath as he doesn't announce my parents that would be way awkward to explain over dinner.  With murmuring of numerous greetings we all sit down at the table and dig in.

The next day I was awoken pretty early by an insistent knock on my door. "Go away mom, I will be up soon." I grumbled, still half asleep. Thankfully the knocking stopped, but there was a chuckle from close by making me glare at the sound. "What?" I blink several times and see a hazy dark skinned male face instead of my mom's and remember where I am and why.

"Don't worry too much about it." Jeremy grins a little evilly, "Most of us were like that on our first day. But the student body president is here for your tour so you better get ready." The ass has the nerve to turn his back to me as he snuggles deeper under the covers. "Oh and Ainsley?" I pause in putting on my jeans from yesterday and a clean shirt. "You better hurry up, she is an very impatient woman."

  Jeremy wasn't lying about president Natasha being an impatient woman. I groan as I sit down on a low wall near one of the gym buildings, thinking of her scolding me for ten minutes about the necessities of being punctual and the school's dresscode before marching me through the whole school building, talking a mile a minute. I vaguely remember her telling me about the reason of the school's point system instead of a grading system but can't really remember it.

A deep grunt has my interest perked and my earlier fatigue forgotten as the sound isrepeated followed by a sound of flesh meeting flesh. Walking towards an openside door, I can see I am not the only one interested as there are severalstudents about cheering and shouting advice at the two half naked males on themat. Who are they and what are theydoing? The younger looking guy with the tan skin and the short black hairlands a solid roundhouse kick to the older paler guy making him grunt in defeatas he lands on his back with a loud smack. "Winner, Blood Heir Hunter DeSilva!" The cheering and other noise fade to the background as the guy turns and looks in my direction. I can see him with crystal clarity, like I am standing right beside him. But that can't be, I am several feet away from him. What is going on?