I tried one thing at a time. I closed my eyes. After a breath, I opened them again. Still, the world before me was gargantuan and divided into thousands of prisms. I could see all around me. My human arms were gone. In place of them were delicate wings. They were black at the edges but bled into a brilliant cyan and forest green color that shimmered with my every movement. Beneath me were six little legs. I tried taking a step forward. Well, six steps, technically. I have no idea how they all knew to move in sync, but somehow they did, and it sort of tickled.
So that was it? I was a butterfly now? As if I hadn’t been through enough change recently. Becoming a vampire was one thing; at least I still resembled a human. Now I was an insect! I was terrified that somehow this, too, would be permanent.
I opened my mouth to make a sound, but there was only silence. I watched as my long spindly tongue unrolled itself in front of me, like the haunted hill in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
At that point I lost it. The panic took over. I was so constricted I could hardly breathe, and I was filled with an immense need to get out of this body, out of this form. I pumped my little wings as hard as I could, flexing every minuscule muscle, tensing every millimeter of my tiny being.
I careened toward the ceiling in jumpy little circles. I had no plan, only a single unbearably potent desire to escape.
Finally, after a dizzying ninety seconds, I felt a sudden jagged intake of air into my lungs followed by a deafening POP. My eyes blurred and refocused manically as little stars sprinkled my vision. Then, as quickly as it had happened, I was back to normal. Well, normal for a vampire. But at least I looked like a human.
The weight of my regular-size body submitted instantly to gravity as I came crashing down on the floor, stark naked. My clothes rested on the bed where I’d transformed.
Mom heard the massive thump. I could hear her running upstairs to check on me.
KNOCK-KNOCK.
“Noah, are you okay?”
“Fine, Mom.”
There was a beat of silence. She was considering something.
“Is there anything I can get you?” she offered, hopeful.
“No thanks, Mom. Just leave me alone, please.”
“Okay.” I heard her footsteps meander down the stairs and into the kitchen.
I collapsed on my bed. When I’d had a good ten minutes to let the shock melt away somewhat, I stood up from the floor and walked over to my dresser. I thoroughly inspected myself in the mirror to make sure I was still a vampire (For the first time, that thought was actually a relief) and wasn’t sporting antennae or something. Speaking of myths, all I had ever known about vampires was what I had seen portrayed in pop culture, so all of this was throwing me for a huge freaking loop. What other myths that existed about my kind were completely false? What other surprises were in store for me? How on earth could I have any idea what to expect? There was no pamphlet you received once you entered the realm of the undead. Did I absolutely have to drink blood? I craved it like a madman, but what would happen if I starved myself? After all, I hadn’t eaten regular food in days. I wasn’t hungry for it at all. I didn’t need it either.
I was floating in a sea of confusion without a compass. I wished I had some sort of direction. Someone to ask. A guide. I couldn’t be the only one, right? I mean, there had to be someone who made me what I am. Who was he or she? Why did he or she pick me? Why? Why did someone choose to destroy my life? Why didn’t the person who turned me even stick around? Was it possible to go back to the way I was? What did I do to deserve this? Did I bring this on myself in some way?
I could torture myself all day with questions. I reasoned there had to be at least one other vampire in the world. But beyond that? I wasn’t narcissistic enough to think I was really the only one, but I still wondered why I had never heard of us before—do we all randomly turn into butterflies? Why was there no hint of our existence beyond the stories people tell? Where was my vampire welcoming committee?
So I did what any normal high-schooler would do in a time of confusion and need.
I Googled it.
There were a billion sites. I wasn’t sure that any of them would hold the answers I needed, but what the heck? I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
It took some time to sort through a lot of movie junk: Lost Boys forums, Dracula fanatics, True Blood reviews, Interview with the Vampire blogs. Apparently the mainstream really dug a hunky bloodsucker. But all these sites were just fluff. I needed answers, not myths.
I tried Wikipedia, only to find that there were as many theories on vampires as there were options in the cereal aisle:
The sugary-cereal version of vampires: We slept in coffins, had an affinity for capes and widow’s peaks, and lurked around dark corners in the night waiting for helpless maidens. Silly.
The tasty-cereal-with-a-prize-in-the-box version of vampires: We were reckless lovers who originated in Europe and treated humans as our toys. We didn’t appear in mirrors, and daylight turned us to ash. Hmm. Not so much.
The boring-healthy-stuff-your-mom-makes-you-eat version of vampires: We were descendants of Cain, damned to an evil undead existence of feeding off the blood of the living. That’s just morbid.
I didn’t feel evil. I didn’t have a heartbeat either, but that didn’t mean I was soulless, right? If you cut me, did I not bleed…black? And was I really going to live forever? If I never died, how could I possibly be damned to hell?
I scrapped that search, and decided to visit some chat rooms on sites that are apparently run by “real vampires.” About half of what I encountered was people who call themselves vampires, who were just normal people with a compulsion to drink blood and a slight sensitivity to daylight. All the black, purple, and red fonts seemed a bit misleading and dramatic, especially for people trying to tell others that they are probably not vampires and to stop believing everything they’ve seen in the movies. The other half was people who claimed to be high-flying, all-powerful, supernatural, blood-drinking, coffin-sleeping vampires. This didn’t seem like it was going to be a big help either, but I needed to find out something.
I entered under the inconspicuous screen name BLOODBOY957. Real original, huh? When the chat loaded, SUCKALUVR was in a heated argument with FANGRL233.
SUCKALUVR: U CANT TELL ME U HONESTLY THINK THAT JUST CUZ U TASTED UR OWN BLUD ONCE THAT U R THE TRU VAMPIRE.
SUCKALUVR: I DIDNT SAY THAT STOP TWISTING MY WORDS!
SUCKALUVR: IM NOT TWISTING UR WORDS, IM JUST SAYIN, I KNOW UR NOT A TRU VAMPIRE CUZ I AM AND WE CAN TELL WEN SOMEONE’S LYING.
FANGRL233: IF YOUR A TRUE VAMPIRE THEN HOWCOME YOU HAVENT EVEN LEARNT TO SPELL?
SUCKALUVR: HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY DIFFRENSE?
SUCKALUVR: IF YOU WERE PSYCHIC AND STRONG AND ALL THE THINGS YOUR SAYING, YOU WOULD AT LEAST KNOW HOW TO SPELL RIGHT? YOURE THE KIND OF FREAK THAT GIVES US REAL VAMPIRES BAD NAMES.
SUCKALUVR: UR WRONG. SO WRONG. U DONT EVEN NOW WHAT WE GO THRU AS VAMPIRES. ITS NOT ALL FUN AN GAMES AND THE POWER COMES AT SUCH A PRISE. U ARE SUCH A POSER.
SUCKALUVR: YOURE THE POSER!
BLOODBOY957: HI EVERYONE.
SUCKALUVR: ITS A GOOD THING IVE MASTERD MY POWERS OF SELF CONTROL CUZ OTHERWISE ID COME DRINK UR BLUD TONITE WILE U SLEEP.
BLOODBOY957: I’M NEW TO THE SITE.
SUCKALUVR: I DARE YOU! I BET YOU CANT EVEN TELL THE DIFFERENCE (SPELLED WITH A ‘C’ MORON) BETWEEN TYPE A AND TYPE O.
SUCKALUVR: I BET U CULDNT FIND UR WAY AROUND A MASULEUM.
SUCKALUVR: DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A MAUSOLEUM IS?
BLOODBOY957: I HAVE A QUESTION.
SUCKALUVR: UR THE BIGGEST FAKER! UR SO NOT A VAMPIRE U WANNABE FREAK! U CANT EVEN TELL ME WHAT CLAN U BELONG TO!
SUCKALUVR: I’M GONNA BLEED YOU DRY!
BLOODBOY957: CAN VAMPIRES CHANGE INTO BUTTERFLIES?
SUCKALUVR: THAT IS THE DUMBEST QUESTION IVE EVER HEARD.
SUCKALUVR: WERE DID U HEAR THAT?
BLOODBOY957: I DON’T REMEMBER. I THIN
K I READ IT SOMEWHERE.
SUCKALUVR: AS A TRU VAMPIRE, I CAN TELL U, WE DONT TURN INTO BUTERFLIES. THIS IS HOW STUPID MITHS GET SPRED. HUMANS ARE SO FREAKIN GULLABLE, NO WONDER THEY’RE SO EASY TO TURN.
SUCKALUVR: STOP SAYING YOU ARE A REAL VAMPIRE!
I lingered a moment longer as two more people logged on. HOTFLESHERRR joined the debate, while DOUBLEHELIX1178 did nothing. I signed off at that point. This was getting me nowhere. It was really amazing how many delusional people there were in the world. Scratch that—how many delusional people there were online. I sat still for a minute, staring at the screen. If that was the best lead I had on figuring out how I became a vampire, I might never find an answer. My quiet heart sank. I was on my own for now.
Chapter 3
It was my fourth night in a damned eternity. After many more hours of extensive research, I was burned out. The only consensus on vampires was that they drink blood and are immortal. Good to know. I started taking walks at night. Short ones at first. I was still ignoring Malcolm’s calls and texts, under the guise of being sick. I was going to have a lot of explaining to do.
I kept my walks close to home and in the wee hours of the morning to avoid rousing any suspicion. I was surprised by how much activity there actually was in Whitehaven at three o’clock in the morning.
There was your usual brand of freshmen on the prowl, armed with rolls of toilet paper and shaving cream. There were a couple of homeless people sleeping on benches in the park.
On one of my walks I saw a sixteen-year-old girl I recognized from school sneaking out her first floor bedroom window. She didn’t have a bag with her, so I assumed she wasn’t running away. I wondered why she was sneaking out, particularly since there was still a shroud of fear blanketing the town thanks to the unsolved Esther Jones case. Granted, since no body had been found and the police had let the case go cold, people started to wonder if she’d simply run away. It was this kind of thinking that allowed them to return to a complacent sense of security, whether it was warranted or not. I didn’t really have an opinion either way, but I kind of wanted to follow her to make sure she didn’t get abducted. Then again, I also kind of wanted to drink her blood, so I decided against it.
I rationalized my nightly excursions as necessary to counteract how stircrazy I was becoming alone in my room, day in and day out. In rare, fleeting moments, however, when I was being honest with myself, I knew I was just testing my limits. Pushing my luck. I wanted to eat people. That was the truth. At the heart of my purportedly innocent walks was a deep and unsettling desire to feed. Each time I set foot outside the familiar confines of my bedroom, I was tempting fate. Tempting myself. I wanted to see how far I could go, how close I could come, without giving in. The curiosity burned inside me.
And so I wandered.
I clung to the shadows cast by the crisp light of the moon. I traced a random and squiggly path through my sleepy neighborhood. I enjoyed my solitude in the night. It was so much harder in the daytime. Thinking about all the people living their happy little lives made the recent loss of mine almost unbearable. At night things were quiet, still. At night I felt okay being alone.
And so I meandered on. Before long I found myself standing across the street from Paige’s house. I leaned carefully against a tree as I looked over at her home, a classic, well-kept blue Victorian. I imagined her sleeping peacefully. I wondered what she was dreaming about. I secretly hoped she was dreaming about me, as I had dreamed about her for years.
Paige had such a familiar kind of beauty. She was gorgeous but approachable. Hot in a cute kind of way. When I looked in her eyes, I felt hopelessly drawn in, yet comfortable. She was a dancer. She was funny, smart, and biting at times. The little bit of acidity that laced her tone when she was irritated about something just made me love her more. It also made me terrified to say something stupid in front of her. She was a girl who held her own but didn’t make a show of her strength. She had nothing to prove. To put it bluntly, she was the girl of my dreams. Cliché? Very. True? Absolutely.
Right now she was warm. Safe. Blissfully unaware of the evils that lurked in the shadows—like me. She slept easy, knowing for a fact that all the bad things we read about in storybooks don’t exist, and that the worst trouble she might face in the next couple years would be some form of heartbreak. She slept easy because she didn’t know how badly I wanted her. And her blood.
I shook my head as if to physically dislodge such thoughts. The yearning I felt for her had been pure once. Well, um, not pure exactly…just not really, you know, morbid. Despite all that, I knew I loved her. I knew I wanted to be with her. Now I knew I never could. I forced myself to continue on my late-night excursion, before the dull ache in my chest suffocated me.
As I crossed an elementary school playground, I heard a young couple arguing quietly on the swing set. I recognized the voices. They were juniors at my school. I ducked behind some bushes.
“Why, Sarah?”
“I don’t know, Brad.”
“Is it me?”
“No, no, it’s not you at all, it’s just…” I sensed Sarah squirming from a hundred yards away.
“God, Sarah. You are making such a big deal out of nothing,” Brad said.
I knew it was intrusive to listen in, and, frankly, it was a little disgusting, but I felt really bad for Sarah. She was a nice girl. Sort of mousy. She let me copy off her Spanish homework once. I told myself I was there just to make sure Brad didn’t do anything stupid, but if I was being completely truthful, I also had the desire to sink my teeth into their necks and drink up.
There was a thick, quiet moment that hung heavy and low in the chilly night air. I heard the swing creak.
“I don’t think this is going to work out,” Sarah mumbled.
“Why are you being such a witch about this?” Brad spit.
I definitely didn’t like where this was going. Even more, though, I didn’t like where my thoughts were going. I wanted to kill him, and within seconds I had involuntarily calculated Brad and Sarah’s approximate distance and direction; how fast I could take them both out (accounting for possible slippage on the playground’s wood chips); and how to incapacitate one while I drank the other.
Wow. I was disturbing.
“Just leave,” I whispered to myself. “Leave.”
My feet remained rooted to the soft ground. Where would I take the bodies? How would I dispose of them?
“Ow! Let go!” Sarah yelled.
What would happen when their parents went looking for them? Stop it, Noah! I tried to refocus on what was happening. I couldn’t afford to get lost in my dark fantasy.
“Don’t walk away from me, Sarah.” The sudden dark edge in Brad’s voice was frightening, even to me. And I’m a freaking vampire.
Sarah’s voice grew firm. “Let go of my arm.”
“Not until you face me, you little—”
“Bite me, you freak,” she interrupted.
I could almost feel the burn on her skin as she tried to twist out of Brad’s grasp.
I wanted to bleed Brad dry. I wanted him to writhe in pain. But I also wanted a taste of her dainty little wrist. I shook my head again. Pull it together, Noah!
With one hand, Brad squeezed Sarah’s arm. With the other hand, he reached up and grabbed her roughly by the jaw. A tear fell from the corner of her eye.
He never saw me coming. In a (probably ill-advised) split-second decision, I barreled into his side with my shoulder, tossing his mortal body twenty feet across the playground. I heard his ribs crack.
It was dark. In that same split second, I darted behind a plastic playground structure and held my breath. If I took a big juicy whiff of either of them right now, I wouldn’t be able to hold back. It took every ounce of self-control I had to remain rooted in the shadows.
Sarah stood stunned and confused for only a second before taking off at full speed toward her home. I think I freaked her out a little. Brad slowly twisted on the ground in pain.
&nb
sp; It would be so easy. Too easy. All I had to do was drink. Then it would be done. I bit my lip so hard it began to bleed, trying not to tear Brad apart like I wanted to. Like I knew I could. I took a breath. His stench burned my nostrils.
This was it. I had gone too far. A terrifying roar exploded from me as I charged at him, full throttle. I saw him squirming on the ground, suffering, confused, frightened. There was no way he could have seen me coming.
Or going.
All the ferocity that propelled me toward his pathetic mortal body also managed to propel me past him. I don’t know how I did it, I really don’t. One minute I was going to rip him to shreds and indulge in his bloody mess and the next I was way beyond the playground, still running. I had charged right by him.
I kept going until I had retreated to an isolated corner of the nearby woods, where I could collect my thoughts enough to prevent myself from going back and finishing the job.
I can’t do this, I thought. I couldn’t go prowling in the night, “saving” young damsels in distress, and drinking the blood of the men who were harassing them. I wasn’t a superhero. I was Noah Vance, just a high-schooler that happened to be a vampire. Noah, of the undead variety. I was a bloodsucking teenager. A monster. I was no hero. Chances are the next person I tried to “save” would end up as my next meal. Had I even tried to “save” Sarah, or was I more interested in the prospect of food the whole time? I felt ashamed of myself, of what I’d become.
As my thoughts went racing violently through my skull, my teeth clenched, and a low, rumbling growl rolled around in my throat. My fingers curled in, and before I knew it, I put my fist through a tree. I pulled my arm back to reveal a strikingly precise hole through the trunk of an evergreen. That’s what finally got to me. Though my hunger was still burning, I managed to steady myself once again.
****
It was about four-thirty in the morning when I was strolling back through the woods to my house. Just as I was turning off the path to head for the back door, the barking started.
I Heart Vampires Page 3