Of Vampires And Darkness (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter One

There was a girl on the ground, under the lamppost. She had dark black hair that spilled around her in tangles. Her clothes were torn in places and a bit dirty. There were scrapes up and down her entire body, none of them bleeding, but they were definitely getting infected. There were bruises on her face and some on her neck. Her arms were bleeding out from deep slash marks down the length of her forearm.

I ran over to her to take her pulse. There was a faint thrum against my fingers, then another. She was there, but barely. I happened to glance at her right hand and there was a knife in it. I grabbed it and threw it away from us and pulled on my healing ability to heal her, sure that my eyes were flashing red from it.

Once the scrapes and cuts had healed to nothing but scars and her bruises had faded, I sat back, a bit magically drained, and waited.

***

I groan, waking up. My arms feel sore, but other than that, nothing else hurts. Wait, nothing else hurts.

I look down at my body. The scrapes, burns, and cuts are all scars, and my bruises have faded. I glance up in front of me, confused.

There's a boy sitting across from me, waiting. His chocolatey-brown eyes watch me, taking me in. His short, curly, brown hair waves slightly in the wind. I scramble back from him, immediately on alert. I wait for him to move, to talk.

"Hello," he says pleasantly. I don't say anything. I've known pleasant people to turn on you in a heartbeat if you let them close. But he seems different from the others. Something about him seems kinder, unlike the others, who had made me feel uneasy.

"Not much of a talker?" He asks me, curious. He tilts his head when he says this, like a dog who looks at you funny when you bark at him. It was actually kind of cute.

I still don't say anything, still uneasy about him. How long before he dropped this and became like the others? I sit silently against the lamppost behind me.

He sighs. "I guess not." He stands up and crosses the street. Thinking he'd left, I get up too and watch him, confused. No one has ever left that quickly. Then he comes back, holding a backpack. He sits back down in his spot. I sit down too. He's humming something, something I've heard before.

His backpack has a strange design on it, swirling red symbols on a black background. I watch him open it. He pulls out a blanket. It's a dark brown, darker than his eyes. It looks very fluffy and warm. He puts it in front of me. I look up at him. His eyes look concerned.

"You were shivering when you were asleep. I didn't know how light of a sleeper you were and didn't want to wake you, so I waited until you woke up," he says, completely calm. He doesn't seem to think it strange at all, which makes me wonder how many people like me he's seen.

I reach over and pick up the blanket carefully, watching him in case he grabs me. He doesn't even move, just lets me pick it up. I unfold it and wrap it around myself. I hadn't noticed how numb I'd become to the cold around me, but now my body burned with the heat of the blanket.

He puts his hand in his bag again and pulls out a clear, glass bottle with a thick, dark red substance in it, along with a plastic container. He passes the container to me. I reach over and grab it from him. My finger brushes his, and I flinch, dropping the container. In that split second, I'd felt how cold his hand was. Like marble. But that wasn't why I'd jumped. Any contact made me freak out, even if it was accidental.

The lid had popped open, and the smell of cold meat comes from it. I slide the lid over. Inside is a deli-turkey sandwich. I look at him. He's drinking from the bottle.

I slide the sandwich back in front of him. It's his, I shouldn't take it.

He shakes his head, smiling a bit. "No, that's for you," he says, sliding it back in front of me. I shake my head.