Marked House of Night - Kristin Cast (best classic books of all time .txt) 📗

Just when I thought my day couldn't get any worse I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker. Kayla was talking nonstop in her usual K-babble, andshe didn't even notice him. At first. Actually, now that Ithink about it, no one else noticed him until he spoke, which is, tragically, more evidence of my freakishinability to fit in. "No, but Zoey, I swear to God Heath didn't getthat drunk after the game. You really shouldn't be sohard on him. ""Yeah, " I said absently. "Sure. " Then I coughed. Again. I felt like crap. I must be coming down with whatMr. Wise, my more-than-slightly-insane AP biologyteacher, called the Teenage Plague.

If I died, would it get me out of my geometrytest tomorrow? One could only hope. "Zoey, please. Are you even listening? I think heonly had like four-I dunno-maybe six beers, andmaybe like three shots. But that's totally beside thepoint. He probably wouldn't even have had hardly any if your stupid parents hadn't made you go home right afterthe game.

"We shared a long-suffering look, in totalagreement about the latest injustice committed againstme by my mom and the Step- Loser she'd married three really long years ago. Then, after barely half a breathbreak, K was back with the babbling. "Plus, he was celebrating. I mean we beatUnion!" K shook my shoulder and put her face close tomine.

"Hello! Your boyfriend-""My almost-boyfriend, " I corrected her, tryingmy best not to cough on her. "Whatever. Heath is our quarterback so of coursehe's going to celebrate. It's been like a million yearssince Broken Arrow beat Union. ""Sixteen. " I'm crappy at math, but K's mathimpairment makes me look like a genius. "Again, whatever. The point is, he was happy. You should give the boy a break. ""The point is that he was wasted for like the fifthtime this week. I'm sorry, but I don't want to go out witha guy whose main focus in life has changed from tryingto play college football to trying to chug a six-packwithout puking.

Not to mention the fact that he's goingto get fat from all that beer. " I had to pause to cough. Iwas feeling a little dizzy and forced myself to take slow, deep breaths when the coughing fit was over. Not thatK-babble noticed. "Eww! Heath, fat! Not a visual I want. "I managed to ignore another urge to cough. "Andkissing him is like sucking on alcohol-soaked feet. "K scrunched up her face. "Okay, sick. Too badhe's so hot. "I rolled my eyes, not bothering to try to hide myannoyance at her typical shallowness. "You're so grumpy when you're sick. Anyway, you have no idea how lost-puppy-like Heath lookedafter 3you ignored him at lunch. He couldn't even... ?

"Then I saw him. The dead guy. Okay, I realizedpretty quick that he wasn't technically "dead. " He wasundead. Or un-human. Whatever. Scientists said onething, people said another, but the end result was thesame. There was no mistaking what he was and even if Ihadn't felt the power and darkness that radiated fromhim, there was no frickin' way I could miss his Mark, the sapphire- blue crescent moon on his forehead andthe additional tattooing of entwining knot work thatframed his equally blue eyes. He was a vampyre, andworse. He was a Tracker. Well, crap! He was standing by my locker. "Zoey, you're so not listening to me!"Then the vampyre spoke and his ceremonialwords slicked across the space between us, dangerousand seductive, like blood mixed with melted chocolate.

"Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thydeath will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken toHer sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the Houseof Night!"He lifted one long, white finger and pointed atme. As my forehead exploded in pain Kayla opened hermouth and screamed. When the bright splotches finally cleared frommy eyes I looked up to see K's colorless face staringdown at me. As usual, I said the first ridiculous thing thatcame to mind. "K, your eyes are popping out of yourhead like a fish. ""He Marked you. Oh, Zoey! You have theoutline of that thing on your forehead!" Then shepressed a shaking hand against her white lips, unsuccessfully trying to hold back a sob. I sat up and coughed.

I had a killer headache, and I rubbed at the spot right between my eyebrows. Itstung as if a wasp had bit me and radiated pain downaround my eyes, all the way across my cheekbones. Ifelt like I might puke. "Zoey!" K was really crying now and had tospeak between wet little hiccups. "Oh. My. God. Thatguy was a Tracker-a vampyre Tracker!""K. " I blinked hard, trying to clear the pain frommy head. "Stop crying. You know I hate it when you cry. "I reached out to attempt a comforting pat on hershoulders. And she automatically cringed, and moved awayfrom me. I couldn't believe it. She actually cringed, likeshe was afraid of me.

She must have seen the hurt in myeyes because she instantly started a string of breathlessK-babble. "Oh, God, Zoey! What are you going to do? Youcan't go to that place. You can't be one of those things. This can't be happening! Who am I supposed to go to allof our football games with?"I noticed that all during her tirade she didn't oncemove any closer to me. I clamped down on the sick, hurt feeling inside that threatened to make me burst intotears. My 5eyes dried instantly. I was good at hidingtears. I should be; I'd had three years to get good at it. "It's okay. I'll figure this out. It's probablysome... Some bizarre mistake, " I lied.

I wasn't really talking; I was just making wordscome out of my mouth. Still grimacing at the pain in myhead, I stood up. Looking around I felt a small measureof relief that K and I were the only ones in the math hall, and then I had to choke back what I knew was hystericallaughter. Had I not been totally psycho about thegeometry test from hell scheduled for tomorrow, andhad run back to my locker to get my book so I couldattempt to obsessively (and pointlessly) study tonight, the Tracker would have found me standing outside infront of the school with the majority of the 1, 300 kidswho went to Broken Arrow's South Intermediate HighSchool waiting for what my stupid Barbie-clone sisterliked to smugly call "the big yellow limos.

" I have a car, but standing around with the less fortunate who have toride the buses is a time-honored tradition, not to mentionan excellent way to check out who's hitting on who. Asit was, there was only one other kid in the math hall-atall thin dork with messed-up teeth, which I could, unfortunately, see too much of because he was standingthere with his mouth flapping open staring at me like I'djust given birth to a litter of flying pigs. I coughed again, this time a really wet, disgusting cough. The dork made a squeaky 6little soundand scuttled down the hall to Mrs. Day's room clutchinga flat board to his bony chest. Guess the chess club hadchanged its meeting time to Mondays after school. Do vampyres play chess? Were there vampyredorks? How about Barbie-like vampyre cheerleaders?Did any vampyres play in the band? Were therevampyre Emos with their guy-wearing-girl's-pantsweirdness and those awful bangs that cover half theirfaces? Or were they all those freaky Goth kids whodidn't like to bathe much? Was I going to turn into aGoth kid? Or worse, an Emo? I didn't particularly likewearing black, at least not exclusively, and I wasn'tfeeling a sudden and unfortunate aversion to soap andwater, nor did I have an obsessive desire to change myhairstyle and wear too much eyeliner. All this whirled through my mind while I feltanother little hysterical bubble of laughter try to escapefrom my throat, and was almost thankful when it cameout as a cough instead. "Zoey? Are you okay?" Kayla's voice soundedtoo high, like someone was pinching her, and she'dtaken another step away from me.

Page 4 P. C Cast & Kristin Cast: Marked- House of Night (1)I sighed and felt my first sliver of anger. Itwasn't like I'd asked for this. K and I had been bestfriends since third grade, and now she was looking at melike I had turned into a monster. 7"Kayla, it's just me. The same me I was twoseconds ago and two hours ago and two days ago. " Imade a frustrated gesture toward my throbbing head. "This doesn't change who I am!"K's eyes teared up again, but, thankfully, her cellphone started singing Madonna's "Material Girl. "Automatically, she glanced at the caller ID. I could tellby her rabbit-in-the-headlights expression that it was herboyfriend, Jared. "Go on, " I said in a flat, tired voice. "Ride homewith him. " Her look of relief was like a slap in my face.

"Call me later?" she threw over her shoulder asshe beat a hasty retreat out the side door. I watched her rush across the east lawn to theparking lot. I could see that she had her cell phonesmashed to her ear and was talking in animated littlebursts to Jared. I'm sure she was already telling him Iwas turning into a monster. The problem, of course, was that turning into amonster was the brighter of my two choices. ChoiceNumber 1: I turn into a vampyre, which equals amonster in just about any human's mind. ChoiceNumber 2: My body rejects the Change and I die. Forever. So the good news is that I wouldn't have to takethe geometry test tomorrow. The bad news was that I'd have to move into theHouse of Night, a private boarding school in Tulsa'sMidtown, known by all my friends as the VampyreFinishing School, where I would spend the next fouryears going through bizarre and unnameable physicalchanges, as well as a total and

Publication Date: 12-06-2011

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