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sound of cadets outside the door. They were exchanging raucous goodbyes before boarding buses that would take them on the first leg of their journeys to new hometowns.
    He sat on his bed and flipped through his tattered copy of
Watchmen
. He had read it so many times the graphic novel’s vividly colored pages and blood-soaked panels had faded. But while the colors had lost their punch, the story hit him with a disturbing immediacy.
Watchmen
was the saga of masked heroes being murdered by a supervillain. Now that Morning had impulsively accepted Birnam’s challenge to be “a hero to all Leaguers,” each gruesome death of a masked hero in
Watchmen
seemed to foreshadow his own destruction. If he did become the first vampire to come out, there was no shortage of forces that would rather destroy him than see vampires accepted as the newest minority with special needs.
    His grinding doubts were interrupted by another boisterous farewell out on the walkway. It reminded him that he could still chicken out. Before leaving the office, Birnam had told him that if he had second thoughts he only had to walk out of Leaguer Mountain with the others, get on the bus headed for San Diego, and begin the quiet, secretive life of a Leaguer. There would be no shame in choosing comic books, video games, and a Star Wars stormtrooper suit over what might be a suicide mission.
    Outside his room, the goodbyes grew further apart.
    Birnam had also told him that he would instruct the driver of the San Diego bus to wait an extra five minutes in case Morning got cold feet.
    The walkway fell silent.
    The bell in the clock tower rang twice, echoing off the mountain’s dome. Morning snatched his backpack off the bed and started out. He stopped at the door and looked at the book in his hand. The cover of
Watchmen
was an extreme close-up of a yellow smile button. It featured one black oval of an eye, crossed by an arrow-shaped splatter of blood. As he gazed down at it, a smile tugged at his mouth. He tossed the book on the bed. It was still his favorite novel of all time. He just didn’t think it was a good idea to begin his journey with a book that ended in a lowering curtain of blood.
    Morning stepped onto the walkway and climbed down the three ladders that provided the only access to the Academy’s cliff-dwelling dormitory. Carving the students’ dorm into the inside wall of the mountain served a dual purpose. The long climb up and down was a constant test of a vampire’s urge to CD into a Flyer and skip the ladders. Not yielding to temptation was the keystone of the Leaguer Way.
    As he hurried across the empty parade grounds and passed the grandstand, an old man cleaning the stands saw him and called out, “Better step on it, Morning, you’re gonna miss your bus.”
    He stopped and recognized Reggie, the school’s janitor. “I already did.”
    Reggie looked baffled. “You did?”
    â€œYeah,” he answered. “A little change in my Leaguer Goals.”
    The janitor shot him a disapproving frown. “You’re not even out of the mountain and you’re changing your Goals?”
    Morning flashed a smile. “I was gonna be a stormtrooper in the Rose Bowl Parade. Now I’m gonna be Luke Skywalker.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Morning hurried down a lighted tunnel until it ended at a rough-hewn wall of rock: Leaguer Gate. He stepped under a red light protruding from the wall and pressed a large button. A door in the rock slowly opened.
    Walking through it, he stepped onto a dust-covered stage at the rear of a dilapidated western saloon. He looked down and marveled at the lack of footprints in the dusty floor. A half hour earlier, graduates had walked through the saloon on their way out of the mountain. He glanced up at the sprinkler heads in the ceiling. They didn’t spray water, they sprayed dirt to cover all traces of vampires coming in and out of the