“Try me.”
She shook her head adamantly. “Let’s just go with yours. I’m familiar with it as well. I can’t handle reading on something I have no idea on at all.”
Easton sat straight and rested his elbows on his spread knees.
“Why do you hate history?”
Perturbed at the sudden question, she paused writing and pursed her lips. “I don’t hate it. I hate memorizing names and dates, I guess.”
“It’s interesting, though.”
“It is,” she agreed. “Just, I’m not good with it, so I tend to stray away from it.”
They were supposed to talk about their paper, their timeline and how they were to go about it, but they found themselves talking about their classes. It then drifted on to a talk about her Aunt Courtney, and how she hated sweeping away her cat’s fur but hugged Phoebe tightly anyway.
She talked about how annoying it was, when middle school students from the public school near her workplace played with her and changed their orders repeatedly, testing her patience.
They conversed until she glanced at the wall clock, surprised that they had been there for almost two hours. Time passed rapidly without her knowledge.
Easton was great company. He asked her questions and laughed at her stories. He did not share his own, but he smiled and huffed at all the right times, and Madison was pleased. She could not remember the last time she had a good conversation with someone who listened.
The sun started to set, and she knew she should go home. She still had sheets and a report to work on for next week.
“I have to go.” She offered him a tight-lipped smile. In the past hours, the weirdness between them had dissipated, which was good. She did not fancy the idea of working with someone she was not comfortable with.
“Let me drive you home.”
“No need. It’s not that far.” She looked at the table. His coffee was completely untouched.
“I’ll walk you home then.” She was about to protest, but he raised a hand to stop her. “I insist. Best I know you’re safe.”
She did not argue further, but did not back down against him when he tried to carry her bag for her. She would never let anyone do things for her when she could do it herself.
Ten minutes later and they were at the corner of her street. She insisted that she was alright there. There was also the unspoken truth that she did not want the neighbors to talk about a man walking her home or worse, her Aunt Courtney seeing them together. She always tried to filter what her aunt knew about her school life.
There was a small park by that corner, with a rusty swing set and a slide with one side tilted downwards due to a missing foot. The shrubs were growing everywhere, and the whole place looked unkempt.
“You sure you’ll be fine here?”
She nodded. “I’m good. Thank you for walking me.” She waited for him to turn around or start walking away but he did not. Instead, he fixed his sight on her, making her insides squirm.
“You can go ahead.”
It was sudden. She felt her shoulders being pushed until they were at the side of the slide, the metal creaking at the impact. There was a sharp pain on her back, and she yelped as a scrap metal dug against her skin.
A confrontation was on the tip of her tongue, when he swooped in and captured her lips roughly. It was more like he was devouring her lips rather than kissing her. He tilted his head to the side and pressed harder, coaxing her to open her mouth. Madison resisted and struggled to free her wrists, which were locked together above her head with his hand. His other hand was wrapped around her waist as he brought their bodies closer, closing any gap that was left.
She growled in pain when he bit her lips, and the taste of blood filled her mouth. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he was pressing his lower body against her. His thighs were strong enough to keep her in place.
As he continued to ravish her lips, the will to fight gradually drained out from her until she stopped struggling. He pulled back for a second and licked her lips. Madison’s breath hitched at the sensation.
The next kiss was a lot less harsh than the first one. He slotted their lips together and gently pushed his tongue in and intertwined with hers. She moaned when his tongue roamed and lingered at the roof of her mouth and pressed insistently against her tongue again.
She was getting dizzy. It was reeling and making her heady, she did not realize she already had her eyes closed tightly, feeling the meshing of their lips.
He gulped when he detached his lips from hers and Madison opened her eyes and drowned at the pool of blackness. His eyes were black, but it was glinting against the light from the moon.
He dropped her hands, and they swayed down lifelessly. She looked at him with lidded eyes. It felt like all the energy was sucked from her.
He studied her face and drew in again and traced his lips from the lobe of her ear to her jaw and down the column of her neck. He dropped small, light kisses that lit up her body on fire. Her toes were curling yet she wanted more. Her body was screaming for more.
Just like in the library, he stopped at the spot with the marks. He pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, eyes unblinking. Madison met his gaze and felt a breath escape her. His face was perfection.
He breathed in deeply and smiled, or so she thought until she saw fangs in his mouth. A scream lodged in her throat. She froze at the spot and was not able to protest when he went down and sank his fangs on her neck, piercing through the skin and flesh, the blood oozing out from the punctures.
Madison’s mouth opened in a silent scream. The pain was agonizing, something she had never felt before. It was not just the wounds, it’s the effect the wounds were giving her as she stood there, helpless, letting Easton suck the life away from her.
It felt like hours but after a few minutes, she could feel herself blacking out. Too weak to support herself, she slid down to the ground. She felt a cry of anguish before everything got black.
Chapter-4
She tapped her pen against the table, not noticing that Lilia had stopped talking.
“Would you mind stopping that tapping sound, Ms. Blake?” Her eyes were narrowed into slits, and Madison stopped instantly, feeling her face crimsoning with the attention.
She lowered her head in shame and as if on reflex, reached to her neck and traced the healing wounds.
It had been a month since then. Easton was a no-show in school while she had to stay in her bed for a week before she could muster the energy to walk on her own.
The doctor prescribed her medicine and vitamins to recuperate. The whole time, her aunt stayed beside her, looking at the wounds warily but never pried on what happened.
Whenever there was a sound outside her room, she would flinch and hold on to her pillows for dear life. When there was rustle, she immediately scrambled off her bed, deeming the floor safer. Her aunt had come running to her whenever she screamed in her sleep, shook her hard until she was awoken from the nightmare.
It had been a month since Easton sucked the life out of her, literally.
She did not know what exactly happened, but when she had woken up, she was in a hospital room, and blood was being transferred into her body. Her aunt told her that she had been out for days with the lack of blood and that if she lost even a bit more, she could have died.
That left Madison perplexed. She was sure she would be dead. She was so sure she would never wake up again. But here she was, attending her classes like nothing have happened. Fortunately, her professors excused her from the requirements, and decided to just omit those she missed in the computation for her final grades, including the paper she was supposed to do with Easton.
Thinking about the what ifs and what could have been up to the whys was taxing. It had her head reeling from all the possibilities that sometimes, she wished Easton was there so she could demand answers.
Answers as to why did he leave her alive? Why would he risk letting someone who knew about him live? Wa
s he really a vampire, or just a psycho who ran around biting people for fun? If he was a vampire, then why was she spared?
It was an endless cycle.
***
Madison was walking along the campus when she caught sight of Easton. She followed him back to the building of the library. What she was doing was stupid. She was trailing after a possible vampire who may kill her anytime he wanted to. But that was what boggled her. He could have killed her, but he did not. Madison held on to that.
When he reached a secluded corner, beneath the shade of the trees, he stopped and abruptly turned around, catching Madison. She stood up straight, feeling foolish for crouching down.
He smirked, though his eyes looked forlorn. “You’re pretty brave. What, are you planning a revenge against me? Bury a stake through my chest?” He chuckled dryly. He did not look so intimidating anymore with his shoulders drooped and eyes downcast.
“So you’re really a vampire?”
He scoffed. “Get away from me. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? Do you want to be dead?” He glared at her, but she persisted.
“For the record, you were the one who followed me. I tried to put some distance, remember?” She raised her voice, feeling the surge of courage. His eyes softened.
“Indeed.”
“You haven’t answered me.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed a lump in her throat, feeling the braveness fading away.
“Before, I had strange dreams. Twice. He looked like you, the vampire in my dreams.” She observed his reaction. His lips curled into a smile.
“Those weren’t dreams. I put you in a trance but everything indeed happened.” One mystery solved.
“But the first time it happened, we hadn’t met yet. Are you telling me you knew me from way back?”
“Are you not scared?”
“Answer me!” she shouted. She was not going to let him divert the topic.
His shoulders sagged. He gestured at the dilapidated bench nearby and motioned for her to sit.
Hesitantly, she complied, maintaining a good distance between them. She gave him time as he curled his hands until his knuckles were white.
“I’m a vampire. That first time, that was the first night I smelled you.” He drew in a deep breath and released it loudly. “Your scent drew me in. I was lurking aimlessly, trying to find a homeless guy or maybe a dead animal when your scent became apparent.”
“When I found you, I tried to bite you. But... you blinked so I got scared.”
“It was just a blink.” She huffed, not getting his apprehension.
“Madison, when a vampire uses their hypnotic powers on a human, you cannot even move a finger, or twitch your eyes. You were not supposed to blink.”
“So I scared you away?”
He scoffed, but admitted that she did.
“But at the same time, I was intrigued. The following day, you were suddenly my classmate, and then the next. I never talk with people as much as I can avoid it but... you pull me in. I tried to stop myself but my feet automatically stepped closer to you, and my mind screamed for you.”
“I think it was the scent.” He turned to her and faced her fully. “Yours is different from the other humans.”
“Different?” It was a murmur, but he still heard.
“Very. It was different, but it was intoxicating. Back at the library, you surprised me again when you still managed to move. I’ve been alive for almost a century, but I’ve never encountered someone like you before.”
“Century?!” she shrieked.
He laughed, clutching his stomach. “Was that the only thing you got from my confession?”
She shook her head embarrassingly. “Sorry. I… I don’t know what to say.”
She studied his expression. He now looked solemn, relieved. That pull he was talking about was not something new, because as much as she wanted to deny it, she felt it as well towards him the first time she saw him. It was a pull so powerful, like a parched throat seeing a drop of water in the desert. It was strange and inexplicable.
She took comfort from the fact that he seemed to be puzzled as she was.
Chapter-5
The light filtered through the windows, giving the room a warm glow. Easton rested his chin on the hand propped on his desk. The class was taking longer, and the TA was practically reading off the presentation instead of actually explaining them. No wonder some students hated this subject. It was a clusterfuck of facts that teachers tried to drill inside the students’ heads instead of explaining the context and morals.
Just like Madison, who was on the verge of sleeping. Her head lolled forwards, and she sat straight in her seat. From his row, he could see her trying to pinch herself awake. He snickered.
He observed Madison, as he usually did. There was no need for him to listen, he had taken the same lessons for years now; they could circumvent through questions, and he could still answer them.
Madison wore her hair up that day. To Easton, it felt like she was taunting him, luring him to have a taste. His mouth watered.
Her blood was as intoxicating as it smelled. It was like a drug that made him high. He was particularly alert and jumpy days after he sucked her blood.
He wrinkled his nose as he remembered how calmly she took everything in when they talked last week. He was expecting her to scream, or faint, or to call him names but she stayed seated there and interrogated him like a delinquent who just stole alcohol.
It was baffling. She should be scared of him, just like the other humans in his lifetime who ran away from him when they knew about the real him. They were very few; he could count them with his two hands.
The first one was his real mother, and the second one was his best friend. He was just a newly-turned vampire who loathed himself for being the way he was and was bottling all the angst and anger he had for the world and the creature who did that to him.
But when he confessed to them, they left the city without a word, a silent declaration that they had no intention in keeping him in their lives. It was a big slap to him, but he got over it. The next few people were irrelevant and ones who ended up dead a minute after.
That was why Madison, more than ever, fucked his mind. She was an enigma from day one. From her scent to her ability to break through the trance, to making him lose his mind. Every day he was torn between sinking his teeth on her neck or ravishing and worshiping her body just how his own craved.
At first, he dismissed it as a pointless obsession and innate curiosity. That was the rationale that pushed him into tasting her blood. He thought that afterwards, once she was lifeless and drained, he would be satisfied. But when she was on the brink of death, he gathered all self-control left and pulled back. It was the first time he ever managed to pull back from drinking blood from prey.
The image of her drained also pained him, and it was confusing. He never felt like that before. Hell, he was supposed to be numb. His purpose was just to go through and live and blend with the mortals, feed off the useless ones, and proceed. All these years he had been indifferent, never feeling an ounce of guilt or sympathy for the people he had killed.
So why, after everything, did he feel hurt at the prospect of killing Madison? Fuck it. He did not know the answer. All he knew was that he wanted her so much that he could not get enough of her. He wanted to stay as close as possible, to smell her the whole day, to taste her.
She was like a forbidden fruit.
***
Easton was lost in his thoughts when Gavin sat beside him.
“A penny for your thoughts?”
Easton was hesitant, embarrassed, but he knew that Gavin had been tiptoeing around him for the past weeks, observing him, waiting for the right time to ask.
And so he told him everything, including about the pull towards Madison that he could not explain.
Gavin, the man he treated as a brother, the only other creature he would call a family, looked at him with worried eyes.
&nb
sp; “I can only tell you to be careful. This is new. She might mean danger.” He pressed a hand on Easton’s shoulder before walking away.
Could something that made him feel really good mean danger?
***
Madison played with her fork, twirling it around the pasta until she made a huge roll before dropping it back on her plate.
“What’s the matter?” Courtney watched as she repeated her actions.
Madison licked her lips apprehensively. Should she?
“Aunt Courtney.” She squeaked. She cleared her throat. “Do you believe that vampires exist?”
A Chosen Fate Page 3
