Reminiscence {Book Two of the Vengeance Trilogy}

Chapter Thirteen: Pictures

Romania was a strange place to be if you didn't know anyone there. If you had friends or family here, then they would be able to show you around and how to navigate and survive these streets. Being here alone was another story. Nothing made you feel more like an outsider than entering an underground city of vampires. No matter which corner I turned onto, someone was glaring at me. Even the children playing football in the street shot me dirty looks.

Everyone who lived in this city had the same idea of what it meant to be a vampire. If you lived in Romania, you fed naturally because not not giving into the natural thirst meant that you weren't a real vampire. I knew vampires that were banished from the city for trying to find alternatives to human blood. Little did the other vampires here know that I was here to be one of them. I knew that if there was a vampire heaven or whatever and Aunt Aileen was looking down on me, she would be less than pleased with my decision. She and Uncle Daley always kept me from giving into the natural thirst, but they weren't here to stop me, so who would?

Before coming to Romania, I had naturally fed for about a week. I had gotten used to the change and my eyes had lost their normal caramel hue and now glistened a deep blood red. It was strange to see, but there was a part of me that liked it. There was a certain thrill from killing that gave me the largest burst of adrenaline I had felt since I was changed. Not to mention giving into the natural thirst had some pretty nice perks. I was running faster, thinking on my feet quicker, and my ability was stronger than it ever had been before.

Still, there were parts of it that I hated. Sometimes I would think about the people I had killed and I would hear their screams ringing in my head. I still remembered the first person I had ever killed. He was a teenager, no older than sixteen. He was walking home with his headphones in and didn't have a care in the world. That is, until I came up from behind and sunk my fangs into the side of his neck. Charley had always told me that snapping their neck before you drank made it a bit easier. You didn't have to worry about them squirming around and they would be dead before the venom would change them.

I couldn't do it my first time, though. I just wanted to drink, not kill, but I knew that if I had kept him alive then he would turn. The last thing I wanted was a newly turned vampire leeching at my side. I ended up using a fire pit in someone's back garden and burning his body before he woke up from being turned. It was strange, but it prepared me for what I would need to do next time. After that, I snapped the neck of every single person I drank from.

I wandered down an empty alleyway that was hidden between two apartment buildings carved from sandstone. There were no doors that led out into the alleyway so I figured I was safe to rest here for a bit before moving on. I threw my bag down against the wall and took a seat, the back of my head pressing against the warm stone, the sounds of the bustling underground city echoing through the air.

For a moment, I thought about Elliot. I thought back to the night I had told him that I was leaving, how he told me that he never wanted to see me again, and how I could hear him crying as I turned around and walked away from him. I wanted him to come with me, but no matter how hard I tried, he wouldn't budge. Elliot was convinced that he was supposed to stay in Dublin with the pack in order to honor his parents. Even when I told him that they would want him to get out of there, he wouldn't listen. I told him that he was being an idiot for putting himself in danger like he was, but it seemed as though when I brought up reason, he tuned me out. Funny, just as I started to believe that I actually had a family, it was ripped away from me just as quickly.

"There is no loitering on privately owned property in Romania, sir," a deep voice said. I glanced up towards the entrance to the alleyway and saw three vampires in burgundy robes with their hoods concealing their faces. The only feature I could make out were their eyes beaming a bright crimson color. At first, I felt myself beginning to worry about how they would react to the color of mine, until I realized that they actually looked the same. The man who stood in front of the other two slowly removed his hood, revealing a wicked smirk and long platinum blond hair. The other two vampires followed his actions and removed their hoods as well. The vampire on the right was a woman with sharp features and jet black hair that was in a neat braid. She looked as though she would rather be doing anything else. The man on the left was much larger in size and lacked any kind of readable expression. I wondered if he even knew how to smile. Did he know what a smile was?