Being A Vampire Sucks

SLAY, QUEEN, SLAY

The night air reeked of decay. The very atmosphere was filled with a sense of impending doom; the kind you could feel weighing down on your shoulders. If one were to take in a deep breath, your mouth would immediately be filled with the sour taste of death.

It was the perfect night.

The four of them sat perched on the rooftop, waiting in the still silence. No one moved. Senses on high alert, the girls' eyes darted all around the ground below, waiting for even the slightest disturbance in the grey-blue abyss that was the sidewalk. Trees rustled, cicadas chirped, an owl hooted.

Suddenly, a piercing shriek.

"TO YOUR LEFT!" cried Octavia, whipping out a crudely fashioned wooden stake. It was lopsided, but sharp. Suni dodged just as the mass of black shadow dove over her head. Octavia lunged after it.

The creature hissed and threw the girl several feet away, dangerously close to the edge of the building. Clawing her blonde hair out of her eyes, Megan ripped the cork off a vial of holy water with her teeth and tossed it like a grenade. The silent night was filled with the ear-splitting cry of a vampire.

Octavia was back on her feet, ignoring the flaming pain in her shoulder. Her dark figure came upon the vampire in an instant, and she raised the stake above her head, driving it down into the thing's chest. "I NEED A HAMMER!"

Lizzy was right beside her friend in a matter of milliseconds, holding out a hammer. The brunette pressed her crucifix into the vampire's head and began to whisper a prayer. Octavia hammered the stake into the creature's chest.

It hissed louder than before, its body seizing as Octavia struggled to hold on. Suni came next, doing her best to both hold the thing down and avoid its snapping jaws.

Octavia delivered the final blow and the stake hit the concrete roof of the building. The vampire's chest heaved one last time, then it went still. The four girls scrambled away from it, breathing hard.

Slowly, then all at once, the vampire collapsed into a pile of dark ashes. Only its teeth remained, gleaming under the moonlight like a trophy. Megan stood up and collected the teeth, shoving them into her pockets. She turned, giving a half-hearted grin.

"One down, three more to go."

***

Suni threw herself onto the couch with a groan. "I want pizza."

"It's three am," Lizzy reminded her friend, carefully slipping off her mud-encrusted boots. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to pass out."

Megan hardly had any time to dodge the speeding ball of emo that was Octavia, who had a can of Monster in each hand. "I'M SO PUMPED!" Octavia yelled. "WE'RE THE ULTIMATE VAMP-"

The blonde slapped a hand over Octavia's mouth. "I agree, but I have a feeling our neighbors won't."

Octavia nodded and went back to chugging her energy drink.

"That was pretty intense," Lizzy mentioned after some silence from her apartment-mates. "I mean, it always is but...did anyone else feel like tonight was different?"

Suni rolled over on the couch. "You're right, yeah. They seemed stronger than usual. That last one took us ten minutes to finally kill. Either we're off our game, or they're coming from a more powerful source."

Megan pulled out a massive glass jar full of teeth and emptied out the night's winnings into it, carefully placing the thing back into its cabinet. "Source? Like...do you think there's a clan or something? I hate those. First we gotta find their hideout, then we set a trap, blah blah blah... What I'm saying is, we need a crap ton more stakes if that's what we're dealing with."

The girls nodded solemnly.

"But we've killed off all the known clans in the area," Octavia chimed in, starting on her second can of Monster. "Maybe we just got a few toughies. No big deal, we're still number one! I say we celebrate tomorrow with ice cream for breakfast!"

The other three cheered.

No one slept easy that night.

***

Lizzy was sitting on the couch enjoying a book while Suni flipped through TV channels. It'd been three days since they had left the house for any supernatural reason, unless you count the sudden disappearance of cookies from the cabinet and the prompt restocking. Octavia sat cross-legged on the floor, applying black eyeliner with the aid of her iPod camera. Megan was still asleep.

Suni heaved a great sigh and set the remote down. "Wow, I never knew how much I hate relaxing."

Lizzy threw her book across the room. "I thought I was the only one!"

The emo barely looked away from her iPod. "Calm down, gals. We'll get something soon. Maybe we should all go do something normal today. I'm going to go to the bookstore to raid the manga section."

"I'll go take a nap," Suni mumbled.

"But you just woke up two hours ago!"

"GOODNIGHT." Suni's door slammed.

Lizzy mentioned something about the pet store and puppies as a sleepy Megan found her way to the couch. The blonde yawned dramatically and plopped down. "Good morning."

Lizzy rolled her eyes. "It's one in the afternoon."

"Oh."

Without caring to see what other dumb exchanges her friends would have, Octavia finished her wings and headed out the door. She sped all the way to the bookstore, surprisingly not causing a four-car pileup (one time it had been an eight-car pileup, a personal record of hers).

Octavia was excited to fill her arms with manga and sit in a quiet corner, avoiding as many people as she could. Being an introvert was difficult sometimes, but Octavia took pride in her extreme anti-social nature. She plucked out the newest installment of White Manservant and sat herself down on the floor, far away from the Starbucks-lovers and the wanna-be-weaboos.

She was halfway through when a feeling began to slowly overtake her. Octavia's dark eyes flicked back and forth, confirming that she was alone. But there was still that feeling, that awful feeling of being watched. It was foolish to have. There were people all around; it was a pretty popular bookstore. But...there it was again, something worse, something sinister.

Her senses were going crazy just a few moments later. Octavia only felt this way in the middle of hunts with her friends, just before a vampire would jump out and tackle Megan, or something like that. But it was broad daylight! The sun would kill the thing before Octavia got her hands on it.

Well, she hoped so, because she didn't have any stakes with her, let alone holy water or a crucifix. She forced herself to focus on the book.

Surely she was just being silly.

***

There she was again, the one who dressed in all black. The one with the pale skin and dark hair. She liked to be alone, in corners, away from sunlight. The only person he could find himself relating to, even if she was so utterly different from him.

He lost count of all the times he followed her around, watching with black eyes from the shadows. He shrouded himself in black clothing with hoods. People probably thought he was insane for doing such a thing in the summer heat, but if he had another thing coming if he started to worry about what other people thought of his outfit choice.

He had followed her all the way to the bookstore, a place he knew she loved. He liked it too. It was when the two of them could sit in silence, just enjoying each other's company. Er, well, at least he enjoyed it. She didn't even know he existed. And if she did, that would mean the end of their little relationship. It hurt. She could never know or see him, otherwise he could never see her again. He preferred the blissful moments where he could just stare and admire her beauty from afar. He placed himself behind a bookshelf and watched her quietly.

He didn't leave until he saw her starting to become aware of his presence.

A/N: Thanks for reading my nonsense, I hope you guys enjoy. There's much, much more to come.