To Those Who Are Reading This For the First Time: Please don’t be intimidated by the fact that this story contains 40, 50—perhaps someday 100—chapters. It is divided into parts according to years—Year One, Year Two, etc—and each year has a name—Vampire, Tree, Immortal, etc. Don’t feel pressured to read the whole thing, but if you want to—go ahead, it’s fine with me. (wink wink)

The quality of writing in this story definitely changes as you progress. The first chapter’s level of writing is about that which you will find in the beginning of part two. After the first chapter, it falls to back to the original chapters, and a not-so-great writing style. The story’s decent, however, so if you can make it through the first part, you’ll be able to stomach anything. (grin grin)

AN: A revised first chapter. Hopefully, it will bring in more unsuspecting victims. It’s actually the first chapter of the original version of Blackthorn, with a few details changed (like the fact that all the characters have different names).

Summary: A young boy mourns the passing of his mother. Flash forward years ahead to the present. A girl is sent to a school far out of the reaches of civilization after her mother dies. However, she soon finds that this school is not as normal as it seems…A moving painting, a carved wooden box, a cursed family…where will it end?

Details/Warnings: This an AU—or alternate universe, which means that the characters do have the tendency to be OOC—or out of character—occasionally. In this story, the juunishi curse does not apply, just so you are aware. There is no hentai/yaoi/yuri, and any chapters containing lime will have a warning at the top of the page. There is violence, bloodshed, mayhem, death, suicide, and crazy family members who kill each other. Rated M as a general precaution.

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Blackthorn: Vampire

Chapter One: Beginnings

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Years ago…

Far away, in a place long forgotten by the minds of men, a young boy stood alone in the tower room of a large black marble castle, standing out a window that overlooked a thriving forest. Behind him on the cold stone floor lay the body of his mother, who had killed herself only hours before. The boy knew what had happened to her, but he refused to cry, biting his lip so hard that it bled, a trickle of red down his pale skin. He would be tough, like his brothers. Maybe if he had been tough like his brothers, Mama wouldn’t have killed herself. Maybe…

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Elsewhere, in the middle of a bustling city, a young girl sat alone on a swing in a daycare center. All of the other children where on the other side of the yard, playing kickball or some other such team sport. But they wouldn’t let the little girl play. They never let her play anything with them. No child could say what it was about her that was so strange; there was just this air about her. Today, however, was different.

She sat on the swing, morosely pushing herself back and forth with one little sandaled foot, her turquoise eyes focused on the ground. Suddenly a pair of sneakers appeared in her vision, and she looked up to see a boy standing in front of her. He was interesting to look at, with blonde hair that seemed silver, and eyes the color of mahogany, brown and liquid soft. He was older than her, too, probably about two or so years age difference.

“Hello,” he said in a voice that lisped slightly. “Would you like to play with me?”

The young girl’s eyes filled with happiness, then sudden mistrust. Why would someone want to play with her? No one ever did, so why should this boy be different? He was still staring at her, waiting for her response. Finally, she made up her mind.

“Alright,” she answered quietly.

“Follow me!” he said brightly. The girl hopped off her swing and followed the boy to a spot under a slide. He sat down and patted the ground next to him. She sat down and watched him out of large blue eyes. “Watch,” he whispered in a scheming voice. Holding his hands a foot or so apart, he frowned intensely at the space in the middle. The young girl gave a tiny squeak as a little ball of light appear between his outstretched hands.

“That’s neat!” she cried softly, her eyes glowing. The little boy turned to look at her, a huge grin on his face revealing a missing front tooth.

The next day when the classes at the daycare were sent outside to play, the little girl sat on the swings, wondering when her new friend was going to show up, but he never did. She waited faithfully the next day and the next day and the day after that, but the little light producing boy never showed up again.

But she never told anyone what the boy had shown her, not a soul.

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Present, year 2004 of the Gregorian Calendar

In a part of northern Europe that had yet to be explored thoroughly, a teenage girl named Tohru approached a school, looking up with awe at its massive black marble heights. She was thin and of normal height, with light brown hair and sparkling turquoise eyes. Her puffy light-blue winter coat was worn and comfortable, down feathers poking out of the fabric here and there. She wore stiff navy-blue boots that laced up to the knees over windproof gray snow pants, but this was normal for anyone who had come in the direction of the swamps. With a small smile on her face, she poked her guide in the side.

“Are we there yet?” Tohru whispered in a joking voice.

Her guide, Shigure, pushed his black hair out of his eyes, smiling down at her. He was tall and thin, with a cheerful air that had lasted for the last two weeks, even with the trip through the marshes. “You guessed it.”

She smiled again. “Great!”

He continued smiling, but his chocolate eyes were serious. “Now, since you’re joining in the middle of the year, the assistant headmaster wants to meet with you, just to make sure that you understand everything.”

Tohru’s cheerful eyes looked back at the tall building they were approaching. The stone walls appeared to be made of black marble, their sides gleaming in the setting sunlight of dusk. Windowed towers loomed over the snow-covered grounds, creating an eerie air. Trees dotted the grassy lawns, A gilt sign hung over the tall double doors, scripted letters spelling out “Blackthorn School.” “Alright,” she agreed amicably.

When they reached the black wooden doors of the building, her guide opened one of the doors for her, and said quietly, “Start up the stairs to the right. I’ll be along in a minute.”

With a nod, Tohru followed his orders; she stepped inside—and sighed happily. Inside the castle was heavenly warm, one of the first heated buildings she had been in since leaving London two weeks ago. The girl looked around, staring at the massive hall that she had just stepped into with considerable awe. The room was huge; it would have fit her aunt’s flat in London ten times over, easily. The walls inside were made of massive stone blocks, each at least three feet high—and that thick as well, she had to guess. There were hallways that branched off from this huge room, and on her right, a pair of massive black doors were open, revealing a blue room beyond. She looked to her right and saw the stone stairs, massive and winding, and it was these that she began to climb.

As Tohru plodded up the many steps to the top, she found herself thinking again, as she had many times during the trip to this school. When she had first been offered the chance to go to this school, it had seemed like a dream, the perfect opportunity to escape from real life. Now that she was actually here at the school, things were sinking in again.

She had lived her whole life alone with her mother Kyoko, her father having disappeared when she was only three. They had been happy, a little stretched for money at times, but always content. Then had come that horrible time two months ago when her mother had been killed in a car crash, right in front of Tohru’s eyes.

She had gone to live with her aunt Juri in London, but although her aunt was kind, she had no time to deal with a grief-stricken sixteen-year-old. One day had changed all of that. Her aunt had come into the small room that Tohru had been given. Tohru could remember being curled up in the window seat, staring outside. It had been a beautiful day, perfect blue sky with fluffy white clouds like balls of cotton, her aunt’s small backyard covered in sparkling white snow. Aunt Juri had handed her a letter, gave her a hug, then left the room to cook supper. Tohru had stared at the postmark in surprise for a moment. Who did she know that lived in Norway?

Although she was unable to think of anyone, Tohru opened the letter regardless. As she read through the letter that invited her to join Blackthorn School, thoughts began to occur to her; she could escape. This is how she could leave all of her worries behind. If she went to this new school up in Norway, there would be no ties to her old life. It was not as though she even had any true friends to leave behind. A slight frown grew on her face. She had never had anyone that she could call a true friend, not that that she could remember, anyway. Something suddenly flashed across her vision and she caught a glimpse of a forgotten memory; a small boy with a ball of glowing light in his hands. Before she could grasp at its significance, the memory slipped back into the far reaches of her brain, leaving as mysteriously as it had come. Tohru sighed, shaking her head.

Two weeks ago, on January 15th, almost three months to the day after her mother’s death, Tohru Honda had met Shigure Sohma outside one of London’s many subway stations. In his dark blue robes like those she had seen modern-day Druids wearing when she visited Stonehenge on Midsummer’s Day last year, Shigure had stuck out like a sore thumb among all the trendy young teens and adults. Despite his odd dress, Shigure had greeted her cheerfully in a voice that was slightly accented with the dark, heavy accent usually associated with places like Ukraine and Russia.

It had been odd, traveling with an older man that she barely knew. Their trip had included taking a ship—“Things go wrong when I go on planes,” Shigure had said seriously, but his eyes danced, “They have a nasty tendency to go tumbling from the sky.”—from London to Mandal, Norway, then walking to the school through an unpleasant stretch of marsh and forest; the towns that they had passed Shigure had cheerfully told her that they didn’t usually do this for students; usually the school had other means of transporting new students, but she was, apparently, a special case.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Tohru had to stop with some surprise. Everything was so elegant…The walls were a lovely cream-colored stone, with a framed picture placed every few feet along the way. The carpet was a rich red, and she felt ashamed, dirtying it with her muddy swamp boots. She began walking down the hall, feeling the deep carpet compressing under her feet. While she walked, she amused herself by studying the pictures. Most were landscapes, depicting lonely deserts, thundering waterfalls, the normal landscape scenes. However, one picture, different from al the others, made her stop in her tracks.

It was a boy, sitting on a fence with his back to her, looking out over a field of hay. The sky overhead the field was an ominous black color, mixed with the nasty shades of gray and purple that foretell a storm. It wasn’t the picture, however, that made her stop. It was the sense of extreme loneliness that was radiating from the picture, the feeling of nothing and sadness. Then…was she imagining it or did it really happen? The boy slowly turned to look at her, and their eyes locked. Suddenly, her mind was full of sound, the screaming of wind and many voices combined, clashes of thunder, the splattering of rain. The loneliness filled her then, so incredible it was that Tohru forgot she was standing in a red carpeted hallway, but she was next to the boy in the field, staring out over the field with him.

It all went wrong, said a voice in her head, low and remorseful. I messed up…

With a sudden burst of strength, Tohru managed to pull her eyes away from the picture, and the feeling and sounds were gone, replaced by the peaceful silence of the hallway. Shaking her head, she told herself that this was no time to hallucinate. Waking herself up, Tohru hurried down the hall, absorbed in thought. So absorbed, in fact, that she wasn’t aware of the young man until she ran into him. She fell over backwards, hitting the soft carpet. The young man looked down at her with raised eyebrows, a look of slight confusion on his face.

“Can I help you?” he asked, a note of irritation in his voice.

She stared up at the young man, taking in his black hair and green eyes, the black robes that hung loosely his thin frame. He stared down at Tohru, one of his pale hands clenched tightly on the handle of a carved wooden box. She stared at the carvings, trying to make them out, but they seemed to shift and change as she stared. Even as she watched, an elf turned into a flower.

“Well?”

Tohru was jerked out of her reverie by the young man’s voice. It was sharp and cold, like the prick of a needle. A shudder ran down her spine involuntarily.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she stuttered. “You see, I’m not a student. Oh, I mean, I am a student, but I only just arrived today, and I-”

“Oh, right,” interrupted the young man, waving a hand impatiently at her. “Go down the hall. The door is labeled.” Without another word, he continued down the hall, his strides long and purposeful. Tohru stared at his straight back, and wondered who he was. With a tiny shrug, she stood up, brushing off invisible dust instinctively. After a final look over her shoulder at the young man’s receding figure, she walked down the hall…

…And was thrown into total confusion. The young man had said that the door was labeled, but he hadn’t said anything about the labels on the doors being in an entirely different language. The symbols weren’t even close to the English that she knew, looking more like Egyptian hieroglyphs than actual writing. It was only by sheer luck, she guessed, that the assistant headmaster’s office had both English and the other language written on it. She knocked softly on the black door, wondering at the same time what it was made of. It sounded and felt like wood, so that’s what she assumed it was, even though she had never seen any wood that dark.

“Yes?” called a deep voice from inside. “The door’s unlocked.”

Taking this as a welcome, she slowly twisted the silver knob and opened the door. Tohru was greeted by the sight of a very tidy white office—the stones were made of some kind of white stone that had swirls of the lightest blue running through it— with many wooden filing cabinets lining the walls. At the back of a room there was another black door. The contrast of the black door to the white walls seemed almost eye boggling, as though all the color in the room was sucked towards it like a black hole. In the center of the room, a tall man was standing behind a polished wooden desk, a folder of papers in his bony hands. He looked rather like her guide Shigure, tall and thin, with black hair that hung into his murky green eyes and light green robes like a priest’s. There was one difference between Shigure and this man, though; this man, unlike Shigure, had a cool, almost unfriendly air about him. He gave her what she guessed was a friendly look, for his face was one of the kind that does not smile easily.

“Welcome,” he said in a baritone voice that resonated around the small office. “to Blackthorn Academy. You are Tohru Honda, are you not?”

She smiled and bowed politely. “That’s me!”

He gave her another one of his friendly-grim looks. “Again, welcome. I am Hatori Sohma, the assistant headmaster of the school. Since you arrived late in the term, I wished to meet with you and answer any questions that you might have. Indeed, is there anything you wish to ask?”

She opened her mouth to reply, when he added, “Oh, please excuse me. Would you like to take a seat?” He gestured to a carved wooden chair, one of the type that makes the sitter sit up straight for fear of falling off the impossibly small seat. Tentatively, Tohru took a seat, while Hatori did the same on his side of the desk, although his chair looked more comfortable than hers did.

“Now,” he said, “How was your journey??”

Tohru squirmed in her seat, trying to get comfortable, but it was impossible. The way she was currently sitting, the carved head of a wolf was sticking into her back, but if she moved either right or left, she would be stabbed by the axes of dwarves. “Um…” she said as she thought and squirmed. “It wasn’t too bad. This is the first time that I’ve ever walked across the country. The swamp was probably the worst part of it.”

Hatori nodded agreeably. “Of course. That’s perfectly understandable. I’ve been through the swamp before, and I know it is not a pleasurable experience.” He stood up again, and moved to a filing cabinet that stood against the far wall. Tohru found her eyes lured out his window, where she could see the corner of a silvery lake or pond in the distance. Hatori turned back from the cabinet, which was made of wood, like most of the things in his office. “I was once traveling through the swamp, and was almost eaten by a man-eating turtle. It was my first time in the swamp, and it’s rather influenced my idea of it ever since.” He handed her a piece of paper. “Here you are. This is a copy of your schedule”

“Ah, thank you, Mr. Sohma!” said Tohru happily.

Hatori gave her another friendly look. “Please, call me Professor, or Hatori. I really don’t need the respect given by the title ‘Mister.’”

“A-alright,” said Tohru, a little uncertainly. Just then, they were interrupted by a knock from the black door that led into the hallway.

“Yes?” called Professor Hatori. “Come in!”

The door swung open, revealing Tohru’s guide to the castle, Shigure. He looked slightly sweaty and was more ruffled up than he had been since the few moments that Tohru had last seen him.

“Sorry that I’m so late,” panted Shigure, brushing his eye length black hair out of his face for the umpteenth time in a row. “I had some difficulties getting the gates closed.”

Gates? Tohru wondered to herself. We didn’t come through any gates.

“That’s quite alright,” said Professor Hatori. “A bit stubborn today, were they?”

“Rather,” laughed Shigure, his brown eyes dancing merrily. “I wager they missed me.”

Tohru noticed a bloody cut that ran down Shigure’s elbow to his wrist. That certainly hadn’t been there when he’d accompanied Tohru to the school from the train station…

“Miss Honda?” Professor Hatori was asking while Shigure pulled up a chair. “Do you have any questions?”

“Um…hold on,” replied Tohru. “Just give me a second to look through my schedule.”

The black-haired professor nodded. “Please let us know if any of the classes aren’t your level. They can always be changed.”

Tohru nodded in reply, scanning the list of classes. She stopped halfway, shook her brown-haired head, then reread the list. Then reread the list again. Finally, she asked Professor Hatori, “Is this a joke?”

The professor looked confused, green eyes looking at the paper that Tohru held in her hands. “Is what a joke? Is there a problem with your classes?”

She nodded furiously. “I haven’t heard of half of these! What’s ‘demonology’? What is ‘resurrection’?!”

Hatori looked at Shigure, his face growing more confused. “Are you sure you got the right girl? She should know about all of this.”

Shigure nodded. “She had all the right papers and stuff, even that letter from you. Just look at her; she’s definitely Kyoko’s daughter.”

“And this never came up in any of your conversations?” Hatori’s voice was incredulous. Shigure looked uncomfortable.

“Well, I didn’t want to overload her brain with too much information at once!”

Professor Hatori frowned and looked at Tohru, his placid green eyes serious. “Are you quite sure you’ve never heard of any of this?”

Tohru nodded, not understanding what was going on. Was this some big joke? She could believe it—Aunt Juri didn’t have the money, never mind the sense of humor that would be needed to pull this trick off.

Hatori sighed and sat back in his chair. “I can’t believe it,” he murmured, half to himself. “She didn’t tell you…”

“What?” asked Tohru, sitting up what seemed impossibly straighter in her hard seat. “Who didn’t tell me what?”

“Your mother didn’t tell you anything?”

“What do you mean? Was she supposed to?” Tohru was growing more confused by the moment. What was it that her mother was supposed to tell her? Was it bad?

Professor Hatori rubbed the bridge of his nose in a tired fashion. “Oh good gods…Miss Honda, are you prepared to hear information that may change the very structure of your life?”

“I’m ready,” said Tohru firmly after a moment of indecision, staring at the professor with determined turquoise eyes.

“Miss Honda…you’re a demon.”