The Iron in Blood

"Oi! Freakface!" Original, Shanice. Nice one.

I said nothing, just watched her, anticipating the blow, and wondering if I could do anything about it. I could put weight in my injured leg, but I would be clumsy, and my hands were tangled in the handles of the crutches.

"Not so brave now, are we?" she taunted me.

"Shanice Smith!" the headmasters voice rang out. "To class please. Now!"

The bell must have rung. I hadn't noticed it. Shanice flushed angrily, her bloated face turning an unhealthy puce colour.

"Whatever!" she said in her whiny voice. "See you later, Freak," she hissed at me, and then she turned and left.

"Well, Miss Harding, I can see why you were late for school today. Carry on." Our headmaster was a harsh but fair man, but he still made me nervous, so I nodded and left as soon as I was able to coordinate the crutches. I knew Shanice had detention that afternoon, so I would be able to escape home unharmed. But I also knew I'd see her tomorrow again. I shuddered.

Angus

I was halfway through my second coffee in what was supposed to be an upmarket breakfast café type thing, when my mobile started vibrating. It was Marcus. He sounded jubilant.

"She's one of us!"

"I know. You said we had a match."

"No, no, that was just a blood group match." Marcus always became impatient with us when we failed to grasp something, even when he had neglected to actually explain it properly. It was like he expected us just to know what he knew. It was flattering in a strange way, but also very frustrating.

"She has an unusual subgroup that I had Fergus flag when it came up. It's the same subgroup that we have, sure, but I wasn't certain that she would have any of our peculiar genes. But today I ran the second DNA comparison. She's got all three genes, Angus."

"Which means?" Sometimes I could be a little slow.

"She's a vampire!" Marcus was really getting excited now. I looked around to make sure nobody had heard his yelling.

"God, Marcus, don't use that term. You know Father hated it."

"This is brilliant, I can't believe it, it's just fantastic." Marcus sounded a bit hysterical.

"Explain, Marcus," I said. "Don't you have to be a, er, like us to have children like us?" Our father and mother had both been iron metabolisers, people who can use iron in a different way to normal people. Traditionally, I suppose we would have been called vampires, but we no longer had to drink blood to fulfil our iron needs. Iron tablets sufficed, and we had become slightly more civilised as a result. Well, Marcus and Fergus, certainly. But the underlying physiology was there, and we still really liked blood; we just didn't need it.