Haemophobia

Prologue

"Hurry up!" I yelled, not bothering to turn and check that Alex was behind me. After all, I knew that he wasn't. I wasn't trying to get my brother's attention - I was trying to draw attention away from him.

'Be careful!' he whispered, near silent as ever, into my head. I've never heard him talk out loud before - we've always had our conversations like this, speaking straight into each other's minds. Telepathy, our mother called it. It's stronger between the two of us than, say, Dad and Alex, but we are twins. Although it's more to do with constant use between the two of us and less to do with us being twins.

'I'm always careful!' I reply, still running through the forest like a headless chicken. 'Careful is my middle name!'

'I'm pretty sure it's Mercy.' Even when I'm the only reason he's alive right now, he still manages to be sarcastic about one thing or another that comes 'out of my mouth'. That's my brother for you, I guess.

Most people wouldn't be able to see my pursuer, but I can see when Rowena changes direction and vanishes into the trees. I allow myself to stop moving, knowing that Alex has it handled now. At least if our little friend (who is like two centuries older than us, but whatever) is actually trying to attack him now... if she's sensed someone else in the woods right now, that would ruin the entire plan.

'Alex, is she coming your way?' I ask, trying to listen for footsteps so I can work it out for myself. The resulting amplification of every single sound that isn't a footstep makes my head spin, though.

'I've got her. Stay put.'

Well, I'm not complaining. I feel like I'm going to collapse.

Alex keeps a weak excuse of a commentary going, letting me know when he's managed to finish Rowena off. Then I'm forced to wait for him to find me. Sounds like a bit of a task, but 'it's easier said than done' is not something that applies to us right now.

Around ten minutes later, there's a thud. It's a raven with a bloodied wing that's crash-landed near my feet - a raven that promptly turns into my twin brother.

"You're bleeding," I tell him as he pulls himself up again. Alex goes pale when he notices the red stain on his arm, screwing his eyes shut and starting to breathe slowly through his mouth. It's funny, really, his fear of blood. Not in the 'oh, this is hilarious' way, but in the 'this is ironic' one.

It's getting late, later than we really want to be out here now that we don't have a reason to. As soon as Alex is mostly fine to move, we're all but running out of the woods. If he wasn't hurt -- well, the blood might not be his, but I doubt that's the case -- we'd probably do the whole 'transforming into animals' thing. It's just not a good idea to put energy that can be used for healing an injury faster (or trying to 'hack' your twin's emotions so he doesn't start panicking out of nowhere) into something that isn't going to help you as much and might even get you more hurt.

Also, we don't have enough bats around here for it to make sense.

Still, enhanced speed, even if it's not by as much as Rowena's was, is definitely useful. We get home in just about twenty minutes when it's about a thirty minute run normally. Or... well, normal is not measured by our standards.

You see, normal is our dad, our classmates at school, most of the strangers we walk past all the time. Normal for them is not our normal. 

Our normal is full of things you'd find weird: an inability to touch silver, struggles during the school masses we get every term, the whole telepathy thing (though that one is, in fairness, way more common than you'd think), regularly bringing a wooden stake with us basically everywhere...

D'you know, being a vampire hunter when silver burns you as well is actually kind of annoying? As well as our own issues with holy symbols. Stakes or decapitation, only ways we can actually do anything that we're currently aware of. 

Because here's the thing. People might think that being half-creature would be awesome. And yeah, I think being half-witch or something would be really cool.

Being half-vampire, though?

Well... yeah, honestly, it's still super cool to be half-creature when your creature half is a bloodsucking monster that can live forever. Although that's mainly the older ones, the monster description, ones with ages above a century and a half being out for the blood of anyone who gets in their way. Younger vampires, with mortal-ish ages, are a bit more... lenient, maybe. More human-like?

I'm sure Dad would have loved to get in bed with someone like Rowena.