Chapter 3

The sun was bright and it hurt my eyes so I didn’t really see the ground before jumping from the roof and crashing onto a pair of metal garbage cans, knocking them over and making way more noise than I had intended. I didn’t look back to see if I was making a mess, I just ran away, not sure what to do or where to go. I didn’t recognize the maze of old buildings or the sounds around me so trying to go for the police was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Then I realized how fast I was running. I could go from one block to another in the blink of an eye but I tried to tell myself that it was just my panic playing tricks on me. Vampires didn’t exist and there was no way that I had become one. I was pretty sure that I would at least remember that.

The hunger inside me for something unknown was driving me crazy quickly. I darted around through crowded streets and damp alleys that were quickly going dark as the sunset. The more I darted, the more energy I used and the weaker I felt until I finally lost my footing and landed face down at the edge of an alley and didn’t have the strength to get up or keep moving.

~~~

It was a cop who found me first, the light of his flashlight blinding me and preventing me from seeing his face but he knew my name.

“Raven? What are you doing out here?”

I lifted my head but didn’t reply to the faceless officer. Something on him smelled delectable but I didn’t know why or what it was so I dropped my head and closed my eyes. If I hadn’t passed out, I might have discovered what the smell was.

~~~

I woke up in a grand bed that I felt like I should remember but didn’t and I didn’t know why. A man was sleeping next to me and I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t remember having a boyfriend, let alone one with expensive taste. It seemed a little pompous to me. I could hear people outside the bedroom door but I was weak and confused so I didn’t get up. Instead, I simply fell back to sleep, hoping that I was having a weird dream.

~~~

“Raven, sweetie, wake up. You’ve got to eat something.”

I opened my eyes to find a pair of dark brown eyes looking back down a long pointed nose that I didn’t recognize. I scrambled away from him and into the guy still sleeping next to me.

“Who are you? Where am I? What’s going on?” I demanded.

He put up his hands as if to surrender but didn’t move away from me. “Raven, calm down. You know me. You’re home. Everything’s fine sweetheart, you just need to drink something.”

I attempted to move the guy next to me, hoping for someone to be on my team in all of this crazy. Instead of waking or making any reflex movement at all, he fell off the bed with a loud thud and still didn’t move. Horrified, I looked at the man who was now no more than a dead body and covered my mouth to hold in the scream. The other man, the live one, didn’t seem at all concerned that there had been a dead man in bed with me and continued as if nothing had happened.

“Raven, I’m Warren, your sire. You’re home; this is your room. It’s been yours for a long time now. If you calm down maybe things will look more familiar.”

How could I calm down? I had been in bed with a dead body.

“You aren’t in any danger here, Raven. You’ve been living here for a while. I consider you my daughter. Do you not remember me?”

I looked from the dead to the living then back to the dead.

What kind of horror movie was I stuck in?

I had to find a way out quickly and get somewhere safe but dad’s warnings and vague teachings on self-defense never covered this.

After a long moment in my own mind trying to calculate my escape, the living man sighed heavily then spoke again.

“Raven, get over here and drink this before I get mad. I’m done with your little game,” the man ordered gruffly. His tone gave me goosebumps and I was afraid of what he would do if I disobeyed so when I heard him stand I turned to look.

In his hands, he held a glass of what I thought was red wine. It was the right color for red wine but it wasn’t translucent. I heard my stomach growl but was confused by the impulse of it. What was in the glass that my body craved?

I didn’t move toward him so his expression of patience turned darker. “Raven, I swear that I will pour this down your throat if you do not come over here and act like the vampire you are!”

I looked over my shoulder at the dead body again, now wondering if I had killed him. The living guy seemed to think I was a vampire and so had the lady before if she wasn’t a dream, so was I in some kind of elaborate prank, or was this all terrifyingly real?

All I knew was that if I didn’t obey this Warren guy, he might hurt me.

So I stood carefully, cautiously, and took the glass that he shoved into my hands roughly. Then he tipped it into my mouth, not allowing me to stop to think about the thickness of the liquid or how it threatened to choke me. All I could do was swallow and focus on not spitting the stuff so he wouldn’t be even madder than he already was.

At the bottom of the glass, I found the answer to some of my questions.

The liquid was blood. It was human blood and I could feel it rushing through me, taking off some of the terror I was feeling.

I was most definitely a vampire.