Night Walker

Chapter 1

Three days. Seventy two hours. Four thousand three hundred twenty minutes. Two hundred fifty nine thousand two hundred seconds.

I did the math. I've always been really bad at math, but I had time to figure it all out and check my work as I've been stuck in a room all day and I got bored. The sun was about to set, I think. Or it was already down, and the moon was shining as bright as ever. It was around five, I spent most of the day sleeping only waking up a few hours before.

I hoped by the time I woke up it would all be a dream. I would be home, in my bed, getting ready for the New Year's festivities that were about to take place. Or have they already passed? I really don't know, this last week or so has kinda been a blur.

I haven't been keeping track of the days I've out of out our vampiric world. All I remember really was being in a plane on my way to New York.

When I woke up, I found myself in the same New Orleans Hotel, plotting my escape. The night before I was kidnapped by my ex boyfriend, Roman Svelsky. Normally I would be up for a last minute adventure, only things were different as we're vampires, and he's the bad one, a strigoi.

Strigoi live off human blood and only come out at night. They have superhuman speed and strength. There are only three easy to kill them, with a charmed stake, fire, and decapitation And we spend our entire life fighting them.

As in we, I mean dhampirs, we are the guardians, the protectors. Half vampire, half human. Us dhampirs don't drink blood and we love the sun, that's what makes us different from the strigoi. We train our entire lives to protect the good vampires.

The good vampire, the moroi. They drink blood, but they also need some human food to survive. The sun bothers them and doesn't kill them. The major difference between them and the strigoi is that they wield magic, specializing in the five elements, earth, air, water, fire, and spirit being the newest and rarest element. Spirit users can heal, walk in dreams and read auras. Spirit might have already been around for nearly two decades but there is a lot we don't know about it.

In the last couple of weeks or so, I died after a strigoi ripped my throat out. I was brought back to life, when my friend, Asher Zelkos brought me back, making me shadow-kissed, bonding me to him. I can feel what he feels, think what he thinks, and I occasionally jump into his head.He wanted to keep his spirit a secret, so we ran away with a couple of our friends. I had ulterior motives though. My ex boyfriend, Roman turned strigoi, and I know that spirit users can turn them back into their original form, my dad was turned back. So we went on this trip hoping to find out how to turn him, and to find him to do so. He knew we were coming, as he compelled me to bring him a spirit user. So when I did, Asher was supposed to stake him as that's the only way I can turn him back. He didn't as he had feelings for me and restoring my ex boyfriend's soul was not part of his plans, which left me with two choices; letting my friends and family die or I turn with Roman. I chose to turn, that was before I knew there was a possibility I couldn't even turn.

So now, I'm in a hotel room, waiting to be turned or killed. I was going to get killed either way. My dad, Dimitri Belikov, made the man I love, promise him if they couldn't turn me back if I do turn strigoi, to kill me. He would have his chance in four days as that's when I would storm the royal moroi court with the rest of the strigoi if I survive this transition.

I was getting lost in my thoughts as I stared at the ceiling. Death was something I didn't like thinking about, as I died once, and barley made it out. I was going to die in this hotel room, which was more of an apartment but the details didn't matter. I was going to die all by myself.

I wanted to sleep, my body still wanted rest. I was also starving. I couldn't find a phone or a room service menu, so I opened the door. Not that I should be surprised, there was a strigoi at my door. He was facing the wall across from the door, so I saw his neck. He had a promise mark, a mark us dhampir get to show we finished our training after we graduate. He also had two molnija marks, each showing how many strigoi he killed. He killed two. I rubbed the back of my neck, where my tattoo is, a zvezda mark, a mark that shows I fought in a battle against strigoi and killed too many to the point I lost count. I looked back at him and noticed he had one too. I clenched my neck knowing a molnija mark was to come my way after I killed a strigoi last night, Roman's right hand man, Kevin.