Excerpt of Fangs For Freaks by Serena Robar

Chapter 1

A body launched from the bushes, straight at me, before I
had time to register who or what it was. The force of the
impact alone was enough to knock the breath from my
lungs-that is, if I breathed. Instead of crushing me, I
rolled with his momentum and neatly turned over once, then
used my feet to send him flying over my head, crashing into
crates of recycling awaiting pickup on the sidewalk.

Doing a quick flip from my back onto my feet, I, Colby
Blanchard, moved toward my would-be assailant without
trepidation.

“Are you okay, Cyrus?” I questioned, looking for signs of
injury as he lay sprawled among the old newspapers and empty
soda cans.

“Mmmph,” came his muffled reply as he disentangled himself
from the bins, “…finish me?” He stood and I was relieved to
find him relatively unharmed.

“What did you say?” I asked, a bit dubious of his reply. His
left pant leg was ripped at the knee and I could see the
scraped skin starting to bleed.

The scent of fresh blood filled my senses and I had to take
a step back. A familiar ache in the roof of my mouth and
loud rumbling from my stomach reminded me I hadn’t fed last
night. My treacherous hand involuntarily reached for the
pocket housing specialized orthodontic headgear embedded
with stainless-steel fangs. What? Just because I’m
fang-handicapped doesn’t make me a freak or anything. I can
still get the job done, ya know. Just not right now. Now it
was a battle of wills, between my true self and the inner
demon who demanded to feed.

I took a Zen moment and subdued my hunger. It was so not
getting the upper hand here. The first rule of thumb was no
feeding on friends, and I wasn’t about to break it because I
was feeling a bit peckish.

“I said, why didn’t you finish me off? You stood there like
some clueless victim waiting for me to find a weapon to take
you down.”

“Uh, I knew it was you?” It was an obvious answer, but Cyrus
was always all business.

For the last eight months, Cyrus spent two hours a day
teaching me how to fight and protect myself. I met him on a
routine visit to see my Great-Aunt Chloe at her condo in
Providence Point. Her neighbor, Bits Walker, was bragging
about her grandson, a self-defense instructor and former
special operative in the military. Like anything Bits said,
I took it with a grain of salt. After all, she’d been
married four times but on last count, she mentioned seven
husbands. I wondered if perhaps she wasn’t all there.

But one day, there was Cyrus, holding Bits’s yarn as she
knitted and listening attentively to her stories. He was
smaller than I imagined, with craggy skin and a
wicked-looking scar across his chin to his left ear, which
appeared to be partially missing. He was wiry and muscular.
I doubted he had an ounce of fat on his frame.

My thoughts were interrupted by Cyrus digging around the
refuse. “What are you looking for?” I asked skeptically.
Cyrus was, well, let’s just say he and his grandmother were
very alike in the sanity department.

“Aha!” he shouted triumphantly, brandishing what appeared to
be a sharpened piece of wood.

“You had a stake?!” I gasped incredulously.

“It’s like I’m having a conversation with Jello?,” he
muttered to himself. “Of course. Did you think I was going
to continue attacking you with just my bare hands? You are
far too advanced for those tactics. At least, I thought you
were. I thought you had achieved the black zone.”

Oh crap, not the zones again.

When he first started training me, I was in the white zone,
which meant I was completely oblivious to my surroundings.
Then came the blue zone or was it the green? I could never
keep them straight. Anyway, I quickly raced up the zones to
the black zone, which meant I was in ninja-like awareness
all the time. Personally, I liked being in the white zone,
but when you’re the most unpopular half-blood Undead in the
neighborhood, you couldn’t afford to be in the white zone
anymore.

Ever since I was attacked and turned into a vampire-oh,
excuse me, that would be half-blood vampire-I’d become
persona nongrata in the Undead community. I think I might
have been able to live out my days in relative peace and
solitude if I hadn’t petitioned for half-blood rights and
emancipated an entire species. That move made me a little
less than popular with the full-blood population.

Well, excuse me for fighting injustice.

I did such a good job at freeing my people, I was elevated
to being their Protector, which I am sure was the Tribunal’s
way of getting rid of all of us. I imagine they were still
kicking themselves that not only was I Undead and around, I
was becoming a pretty kick-ass Protector in the process.

Today was the day I would meet the rest of my half-blood
family. Yep, we were going to show those bigoted full-bloods
that we’re every bit as useful and viable a species and
deserve to exist. At least, I hoped so. I hadn’t met any
other half-bloods yet, but I held out high hopes for our
success.

“Colby? Hello? Colby Blanchard? Are you even listening to
me?” Cyrus asked impatiently.

“Uh, sorry. What were you saying about the zone?”

He sighed in exasperation (he did that a lot with me) and
repeated, “Since you refuse to allow me to test your skills
in the evening, you have to be in the zone all the time.”

I held up a hand to stop him. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m
sorry. It’s just today is the day I meet my new sorority
sisters and I?m really nervous.”

“Oh well then, that’s fine. I’m sure no one will be out to
get you today…”

“Ha, ha,” I retorted sarcastically.

“Today of all days you need to be most aware.”