by Zara Zenia
“Hello.” I lean up against the wall and give her a charming smile.
I do find myself to be somewhat handsome, and now that I’m a vampire my attractive features are even more pronounced and magnified. I know how to make a girl swoon. The only problem is, most women instantly know I’m a vampire just by looking at me. When we went public, the elders decided it would be wise to make sure the Humans could recognize us in their midst. They said it would keep us honest. Now, most human girls don’t want to have anything to do with me because they are too afraid to go near me.
I know there is a certain level of trust that I must conform and shape myself into in order to fit the mold. I also am fully aware that these things take time to produce. In my humble opinion, every leap of faith has a jumping off point and I might as well snag it up while I can.
“Why do you keep following me?” Katie’s blue eyes flash with a quiver of darkness that I am not expecting.
“Uh…what?” I ask and glance over at Roger who’s staring me down.
“You heard me.” Her voice is trembling, but I can tell she’s using all her internal strength to hide her fear. “I see the two of you every day.” She points an accusatory finger at Roger as well. “You always follow me. Why?”
Her gorgeous scent fills my nostrils. I watch the blood in her neck pulse through her bulging veins. I swallow hard and try to keep myself from biting into her aorta. If only her anger wasn’t so heated, then maybe I wouldn’t be having these impulsive desires because her veins wouldn’t be so prominent and teasingly in my vision.
I decide I need to switch gears. “I’m sorry,” I tell her in a seductive voice. “I just like you. That’s all.”
Katie shifts her weight and furrows her brow as if she’s debating my sincerity. I don’t expect her behavior to be anything less. My goal works, and I throw her off her loop, but only briefly.
Her glare comes back instantaneously. “What about him?” She points to Roger again as if she loathes him without even knowing him.
My eyes wander over to Roger who is in the distance and trying to subtly signal to me to forget the entire encounter and move on. The thing to know about Roger is, he’s the quiet one. He’s the thinker. He doesn’t ever act before thoroughly putting his mind through hell first, weighing each and every sizable option.
I had to turn Roger. He was going to die if I didn’t. He had cancer, and he was my best friend. I couldn’t imagine life without him. He is, and always will be my best friend and sidekick. I would be void and empty if not for him.
I grew up orphaned and alone. Roger was my only friend growing up. He saved me, in more ways than one. Mentally, I am put together now because of him. He calms me down when I feel a rush of emotions that I can’t control.
Roger knows he owes his life to me, and unfortunately it makes him the submissive one in the friendship. I tell him all the time to just forget about it because I need him just as much as he needs me. We like to party all the time and get distracted by the fact that we are always on the hunt for the most top-notch blood out there to find.
Our friendship is everlasting, an eternal bond that can never be broken and is bound by the fact that I am the one who turned him.
I glance back at Katie, scrutinizing her features, but it doesn’t take much to understand what she’s mentally going through right now. That’s another perk of being a vampire, besides the fact that you basically live forever. Your senses are sharper and more precise. You can read everyone, especially if they are still human.
“Again, I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“It’s…fine.” Katie looks flustered and kind of caught off guard as if she isn’t expecting to be having a civilized conversation with someone like me.
I lean in, so I can smell her delicious scent a little better. I have to bite my tongue to keep from audibly groaning out with pleasure. “Anyway, if I seem intense it’s because I really like you, that’s all.”
“You like me?” Katie wrinkles her nose as if she’s used to getting pick-up lines from guys all the time and she’s trying to believe that I’m genuine in any sense of the word.
“Yes.” I grin eagerly and lay on an extra flare of charm. “You are really pretty.”
“Um…thanks.” Katie blushes and looks away, glancing toward her class. “I gotta run. My lecture starts in like…thirty seconds.”
She spins around to walk away to class, and I watch her silky blonde hair fall over her shoulders like gold.
“Wait,” I call out to her before she has a chance to get out of earshot.
“What?” She turns slowly with an expression etching skepticism.
“Would you like to go to grab a coffee with me sometime?” I ask and hope that she can’t hear the desperation in my voice.
She gives me a sour look as a lightbulb triggers over her expression. She smirks at me as if she now has the upper hand.
“I didn’t know that vampires drank coffee,” she says and walks away.
Crap. The encounter reels in my mind even after she disappears from sight. My conversation with Katie did not go anywhere nearly as swimmingly as I had hoped.
Chapter Six
Roger
“What the hell are you doing?” I hiss at Carl under my breath, grabbing his arm as we walk away, back down the hallway from where we initially followed Katie.
“Are we not going to class?” Carl ignores my question and poses one of his own as he points his thumb in the direction of our lecture and feigns surprise.
“No, we aren’t going to class,” I growl and move to a private area of the hallway where there’s no other college student’s shuffling along within earshot.
“Why not?” His eyes perk up with alarm.
“That’s not the ultimate goal of our mission and you already know that,” I remind Carl because sometimes his head drifts into the clouds. “You want her blood.”
Carl scoffs and shoots me a look as if I’m utterly ridiculous. “And you don’t?”
“Of course, I want her blood,” I retort with a dramatic role of my eyes. “Her scent is incredible, but you know we can’t have her that way.”
Carl shrugs. “It sure would make things easier.”
I lean up against the side of the hallway wall and glance up at the ceiling in frustration. “I know.”
“Well, let’s go then.” Carl begins to walk away.
I grab his elbow again, hooking him in. “Where exactly are you going?”
“Back home,” Carl says and shoves his arm from my grasp. “Get off of me.” His tone is erratic.
Carl and I don’t fight very often. We are best friends. I’d be dead if it weren’t for him. I don’t sleep anymore, but I still have vivid and recurring visions about what it was like those last few days of still being a human.
I’m not really sure that I miss those times, but the nostalgia still lingers every so often and sometimes it will hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s the thing about being a newly turned vampire. I’m still trying to adapt to being stronger. I’m still trying to equip myself to the fact that every emotion and physical feeling I had as a human is now magnified by a million. It’s definitely taking some time to get used to everything.
I owe Carl my life. I feel like sometimes it’s hard for me to argue with him because of the fact that I’m still walking the Earth because of him. I’m eternal, just like him. We are brothers, from now until the end of time.
The cancer had been aggressive and painful in those ending days. I’d looked up at Carl as we sat in the bedroom of my quiet, peaceful suburban home that I still lived in with my parents. My mortal clock had been ticking away. Carl was there to give me the vampire kiss of life through a bite that would save me. My pulse had already been subsiding as the sting of fangs against skin seared me. I had gasped and cried out, but he had been right. The pain didn’t linger for very long.
“You won’t hurt anymore after it happens,” Carl told me as he met my gaze. His eyes had been like fire an
d ice at the same time, staring through me and giving me chills.
“Will I want to devour my parents afterwards?” I remember asking as I had picked at a thread on my blanket. My heart had pounded with anxiety and trepidation.
“Probably.” Carl had grinned mischievously. “That’s just part of the challenge.”
Carl had always tried to explain to me how the thirst was consuming, but I could never understand exactly what he was talking about until I was living in the moment of the experience myself.
It turns out, that he’s absolutely right. The thirst is always there, never satisfied. Sure, if we get a kill from an animal in the woods it will quench our needs, but the thirst for human blood is always far more luxurious. The craving for human blood is something that can’t be matched.
Carl and I have a unique gift as vampires. We can read human thoughts and we can gauge their emotions just by entering a room and instantaneously absorbing their auras.
“You shouldn’t keep messing with her,” I warn him.
“Who?” Carl gives me a spastic glance.
I know he’s pretending not to understand again, or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.
“Katie,” I respond sternly.
Carl turns around to face me so that we are only a few inches apart. “We need to talk to her.”
“I know.” I nod stoically.
“So…” Carl twirls his hand dramatically, slicing it through the air. “We have to keep messing with her.”
“Not by scaring her,” I point out. “She’ll never talk to us if we freak her out to the point of just being disturbingly creepy.”
“We’re vampires.” Carl rolls his eyes. He’s always worrying about something, and always spot on with the retorts. “Everyone thinks we’re creepy.”
I groan because I know he’s right. At the end of the day though, arguing with my best friend is better than rotting in the ground with a cancer eaten body and a soul drifting around the Earth like a shadow in the night.
“I just think we need to change our tactic a little,” I suggest.
“What do you mean?” Carl frowns in confusion as he shakes his head.
I pause and try to look normal as I wait for a cluster of fraternity brothers to pass us in the hallway.
“I suspect that Katie is on to us,” I propose, descending my voice into a whisper.
“I’m still not following…” Carl trails off and squeezes his eyes shut. He’s trying to get inside my head, but it’s not as easy for vampires to be equipped with that gift against each other.
“Just listen,” I tell him as we begin to casually walk away. “She might know the reason we want to talk to her.”
“So, what do you want me to do about it?” Carl asks defensively.
I halt my stride and give him a knowing look. Carl is hopeless with these kinds of situations. He becomes flustered and just makes everything worse.
“Let me take over,” I suggest. “I know I haven’t been turned as long as you, but I feel like I have a less invasive quality that can reel Katie in.”
Carl inspects me. I know he’s trying to weigh the options internally. He shifts his weight and stares down the hallway skeptically.
“Fine,” he says after what seems like a very long pause of silence between us. “I guess you are right.”
My shoulders relax with relief. “Thank you.”
We start to walk away but there’s something else I feel like I should mention just so Carl’s ego won’t be completely bruised. “I’m not trying to take the lead because I feel like your inferior or anything.”
Carl glances over at me. “I know.” He slaps the side of the brick wall as we venture outside. “I am making a mess of it.”
“Thanks for agreeing with the plan,” I tell him with a fond smile.
“Yeah well, ultimately we have a job to do. We have others waiting on us and we can’t screw it up.”
“That’s right.” I nod in agreement. “We need to be quick before they come in and take control.”
My heart no longer beats in my chest, but I feel more alive than ever as I stare into my best friend’s eyes. The click of understanding seals the bond between us.
“We don’t want that to happen,” Carl whispers with an eerie glaze over his voice as his frantic energy latches onto mine.
“No.” I shake my head somberly. “But we have to be ready for them.”
Chapter Seven
Katie
When the lecture starts, my eyes immediately dart to the entrance door. I search the room. Those vampire brothers are nowhere to be found. I know for a fact that they are also in this class because they follow me down the hall and through the door every single day.
My heart starts racing, but I don’t know why. An ominous shudder engulfs me. I tremble even though I can’t find a reason for this shock wave of nervousness. I take a deep breath. Inhaling oxygen in slow, drawn out batches usually has a knack for momentarily pacifying me.
The instructor begins the lecture and I stare blankly as he scratches white chalk against the blackboard, secretly laughing at the fact that this guy is incredibly old school to be using a blackboard and not a smart board and presentation. It makes me feel nostalgic and childlike to be in a class like this.
My thoughts begin to fork off on their own as I pound notes into the keyboard of my laptop. I’ll have to study later, but for right now, none of the words are really saturating into my mind.
I start thinking about Carl and the fact that I might have been trying to be too clever when I spoke to him in the hallway. That plan might have backfired on me. Did I scare him off? Surely not. He is a vampire. Nothing should scare him because he can’t die.
My subconscious begins to weigh me down. My eyelids are heavy. I’m in the back of the class, but the only thing present in the moment is my body. My thoughts are burrowing into a dark web of festering and vibrant imagination.
I see my nephew, my sister’s four year old son, who resembles a grown man. His hair is made of strands of gold, just like Eva’s and mine. He’s running toward me. I try to meet him in the middle, but my legs are immobilized. I try to scream out, but there’s no sound escaping my lips.
I know I’m in another one of my vivid dreams. I can’t help dozing off. The instructor is droning in a monotonous voice. The muffled sounds coming from the room subside and fade away completely as if they are floating off with the sunset.
My nephew is next to me now. He hugs me, and his touch is sincere and warm as we embrace. He smells like the ash of a bonfire. “What are you doing here?” I whisper into his ear.
His expression turns cold and stark. “You know,” he tells me.
I nod as if I understand exactly what he’s talking about. “My nightmares.” I choke on the words, but then my throat immediately feels scratchy and dry.
My nephew nods somberly, but says nothing.
“I can’t sleep at night.” My eyes are full of tears that sting with the burden of anxiety.
He takes his hand and places it on my head, stroking my hair in sedative motions up and down my scalp.
“Last night was the worst dream,” I confess. I don’t know why I suddenly feel the urge to expel the contents of my fears to him, but the timing feels natural.
“Tell me,” he states nobly.
“The vampires are following me in my dreams and in real life,” I blurt out.
He pulls away from me and scrutinizes my face. “You are far stronger than you think you are.” The wisdom of his eyes goes beyond his youthful age and match his grow up appearance.
“I am?” I blink and gulp hard.
“Yes.” He nods with assertiveness.
“What do I do now? How do I stop the dreams from destroying me?” I’m trying not to cave emotionally, but I can feel the sobs rising in my chest like a tidal wave crashing to the shore.
My nephew pulls away from me. His lips are pursed together in a thin, tight line that goes across his face. His cheeks are no l
onger vibrant and rosy. His eyes become dark and hollow and he drains of color.
“What is it?” I cry out in a panic.
He doesn’t respond. Before I can ask him again, I hear the voice of my friend Betty which confuses me.
“Huh?” I call out. My eyes jolt open and I glance around at my surroundings. I’m back in class, rooted to my seat.
I feel sweaty and cold at the same time. I look over at my friend Betty who’s staring at me with concern.
“Are you alright?” she asks. Her eyes are wide and enormous, exposing her apprehensiveness. Her eyebrows knit with confusion.
“I’m fine.” I run a shaky hand through my hair. I feel wobbly as if my insides are made of jelly instead of flesh and bone.
I know she doesn’t believe me because she’s still staring at me with a dumbfounded look of perplexity. “Who were you just talking to?”
I lean up in my chair. “Um…no one.” I fumble and glance suspiciously around the room. It’s only then that I realize that I fell asleep in class.
“Maybe you should go get some fresh air,” Betty suggests. Her expression leads me to believe that she’s unconvinced by my feeble attempts to reassure her that I’m alright.
“Yeah…” I nod and scratch my elbow. “Maybe that’s a good idea.” I still feel a little scatterbrained.
“I can come with you?” Betty states as more of a question.
“No.” I shake my head. “You don’t have to do that. You need to stay here and get the rest of the notes on the lecture for me.” I chuckle, attempting to make a little joke.
It works. Betty smiles and looks slightly relieved. “Take care of yourself.”
“I will,” I say as I scoop up my things and hurry from the room before the instructor gets a chance to call me out for leaving early. I think that deep down, the root of my problem might boil down to the fact that my mom is getting married…again. I didn’t expect her to move on so quickly after my father’s death, but five years after we moved to the city, Mom found Ryan. They divorced less than a year later. Now here she was marrying again. She hadn’t been happy really in all that time. I put it up to her mourning Dad, but it’s been nine years.
