Nocte Yin

Chapter One

Nocte Yin was a perfectly normal twelve-year-old girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and short bangs cutting just above her eyebrows. She had braces (white ones, much to the horror of her mother) and no piercings (not even secret ones). She liked to wear large jackets and baggy jeans instead of pretty camisoles and lacy skirts, and preferred quiet evenings with close friends instead of rambunctious parties with countless strangers. In the late nights and early mornings, she liked to snuggle in bed with a nice book and a hot mug of cocoa with whipped cream and a curl of dark chocolate. She liked to read books starring brave and righteous female protagonists like in the infamous series of Corrine and the Blue Valley and Sister Princesses, but never Ominous Angels because Ominous Angels just might trigger that… “creative” side she had inherited from her family.

And she certainly didn’t want that.

Despite her trying to be normal and ignoring her family’s ways, they just had to drop a huge bomb in front of her (not literally, but no doubt that they could arrange for one). By the Gods of Hell, she went to a normal school, had normal friends (they weren’t even Goth!), listened to normal music, watched normal television programs and, basically, all that normal stuff. But no. Nope. They just had to do this!

She looked to the small stack of papers on her father’s desk — which was a nice genuine cherry oak (probably stolen) — and then to her parents, who were sitting beside each other with serious expressions on their faces.

Nocte had a problem. But of course, everyone had problems. However, it was very, very, very unlikely that one would have problems like that of Nocte’s. Who else had a mentally unstable scientist for a father, or a seductive sorceress for a mother? Or a whole slew of siblings ranging from destructive warlords to wicked witches, jealous psychics to evil geniuses? A three-storey mansion full of mutated servants, a pond filled with crocodiles and piranhas, and a hundred-acre property rigged with traps? They were all simply too large, too nosey and too loud for their own good, especially Nocte’s.

Nocte closed her eyes, rubbed them thoroughly, and then opened them again.

Crud, the papers were still there.

Life sucked.

People would think that she’d be crazy by now, or at least traumatized (like Grade 11 Math traumatized), but she was quite sane, thank you very much. Nocte had, after all, grown up with screams coming from the basement, mutilated arms and legs lying on the floor, and even now and then a few wannabe heroes (or heroines) crashing down on their “secret” lair to try to, as they proclaim, “vanquish all evil and purify this great blah, blah, blah.”

It made no difference anyway, because eventually those screams would be quenched, those arms and legs would be disposed of by the various mutated servants, and those heroes or heroines would be struck by lightning, set on fire, buried alive, eaten by the Venus Man Trap, stabbed by a million arrows dipped in acid and so on and so forth, etc. It was all very routine by now.

“What. Is. This?” Nocte emphasised each word with a punctuated breath, referring to the papers.

Her mother simpered. “These are the rules and regulations of your new school starting the Ninth Month.”

“Mom,” Nocte said, with a certain snap, “I can see that.”

“Then why did you ask?” her mother sounded in a flippant manner.

Nocte sighed.

Her mother was one of the most feared sorceresses in all the land, and she knew exactly how to play word games, especially when her children were close to throwing a tantrum. With long black hair and alluring almond-shaped eyes, Malise Yin, née Hēi, always wore the most revealing of dresses to attract the opposite, and sometimes the same, sex, depending on her mood. She was known for her cruel tactics in luring in her prey and using them mercilessly before discarding them in horrible ways. A manipulative mistress who had all the right cards in her arsenal at all times of the day and night, Lady Yin was a force to be reckoned with (and for many to vie for her attention). The only one she couldn’t manipulate — and she had tried (tirelessly) — was the man she’d married, Umbra Yin.