Chapter One

Kelli the Empousa

By: crushcrucify

She had just finished serving breakfast on the table when her aunt shoved a list of chores in her hands.

"You'd better have those chores finished by lunchtime, girl; otherwise there'll be no food for two days." Petunia sneered and turned around to fuss over her precious son.

Frowning, Althea Potter pocketed her breakfast (a strip of bacon on a piece of burnt toast) and went out of the house. It was a hot summer day and even though they were running on a drought, many neighbors could be seen watering their rapidly wilting gardens and insistently scrubbing away at their continuously dusty cars with a water hose.

Children consumed ice cream after ice cream, emptied water bottles over their heads and even dived straight into swimming pools with their clothes on! They were all bothered by heat, something Althea genuinely couldn't understand. The feeling of the sun caressing your skin was simply divine and the light the sun gave off literally made her day better. She felt safe underneath the sun, as if someone was watching over her. So she really didn't mind working out in the garden, (except for the fact that the Dursley's never supplied her with the proper tools) it was somehow fun.

As she pulled out weeds with her bare hands, Althea wondered if her parents would've made her do these kind of chores if they'd been alive. She doubted it, because she never saw Dudley even move to put an empty glass in the kitchen sink, much less do the laundry or clean his room. Even though the boy was lucky in that aspect, Althea would never wish to be her cousin.

For one, he was a stubborn, mean git who bullied anyone that went against his wishes; two, he was honestly very fat and overweight (no matter what Aunt Petunia would say) and three, he was just simply pathetic. He couldn't do basic math, spell the easiest words in the English language or even read more than a sentence without stumbling on the words. Honestly, Althea would rather be a slave for the rest of her life than be as stupid and moronic as Dudley.

"Are you done with the garden, girl?!" Aunt Petunia shrieked.

"Almost," Althea yelled back.

"Hurry up!" Petunia snapped. "If you don't have it presentable in five minutes, I'll see to it that you won't come out of your cupboard for the next few days."

That made Althea rush. She hated the cupboard with a burning passion. It restricted her movements, had absolutely no light (the only lamp was burned out) and made her feel claustrophobic.

As an ADHD kid, Althea had never had it easy. Added to the fact that she had dyslexia too, she'd quickly become the freak of first grade in less than a week after starting school. They all mocked her for being so fidgety, that she couldn't read or write without struggling and so on and so forth. It made her feel miserable, added to the fact that vampire women kept trying to kill her.

She never told anyone, of course. They would send her to an asylum if she did and besides, she took this as a sign that she really wasn't normal. It was a relief, seeing as everything in this neighborhood was organized. It was like a clean room that you just wanted to bomb with filthiness, and Althea was genuinely happy that she wasn't 'normal' like her relatives. And speaking of vampiric ladies ...

"Hello, Althea!" A familiar voice squealed.

Sighing, the ten year old turned around. "Are you trying to kill me again, Kelli?"

"Why else would I be here then, silly?" Kelli giggled.

"You know, you never told me what you are." Althea said conversationally, getting up from the ground and dusting dirt off of her worn out jeans.

"Why, I'm an empousa, of course." Kelli sounded genuinely surprised that she didn't know.

"Silly me, how did I not know?" Althea inquired dryly, sticking her hands into the over-sized pockets of her jeans and tightly clenching her dagger. It had been something she had snagged off of Kelli during their first fight, and how she had turned the so called 'empousa' into golden dust.

"I know, right?" Kelli giggled, apparently not sensing the sarcasm in the ten year old's voice.

"Kelli?" Althea started slowly pulling the dagger out of her pocket, as to not attract the empousa's attention.

"Yes, little demigod?" Kelli inquired.

"Bye." Althea stated and hurled the dagger straight at Kelli's chest.

The empousa blasted into golden dust, wailing about the unfairness of it all. Althea calmly walked over to where Kelli had stood and picked up her dagger.

"Man, is she going to be mad next time." She shook her head and quickly finished weeding the garden, running inside to report her progress to Aunt Petunia.