Chapter 1
As usual, the cafeteria at Havenbridge High roared with conversation. My classmates busily gossiped with each other about the morning’s events while stuffing themselves with what passed for food at our school. Not much could tear them away from their processed lunch and the nasty rumors they enjoyed gorging on.
At least until I entered the room.
From the moment I strolled through the double doors from the main hall, an eerie silence filled the room.
It happened every damn day, and it always made me grin.
Most of them were afraid of me. It wasn’t like I was some jock who could bench-press twice his weight and had more muscle than common sense. I didn’t have scary tattoos or weird piercings, and I didn’t walk around in a trench coat that might be concealing a shotgun.
I was just your typical eighteen-year-old high school senior of average height and lean build.
Still, I terrified them. Their gazes rarely met mine. Most preferred to look at me out of the corners of their eyes, and whenever I passed, their voices dropped to whispers. Just the way I liked it.
They should be scared of me. I had more untapped potential in my pinky finger than they did in their entire bodies, and they could sense it. They just didn’t know what it was they felt whenever they were around me. It had been that way ever since I was a kid.
If I told them why I had always made them so uneasy, they wouldn’t believe me. My kind had been forced from this world and shoved into the obscurity of myth and legend. It had been necessary for survival.
And it pissed me off.
I was a warlock and damn proud of it. If I could, I’d shout it from the tops of these tables, but that was forbidden. We had to live alongside those who had once hunted us and pretend to be like them. If we didn’t, we’d face extinction once again.
