Blood Bond

Night vs. Day

Grimmsuki peeled his eyes open for the fifth time that night—day.

Day.

Day.

The sudden realisation was one he'd had far too many times in the last three months to still be terrified by it, but here he was. It echoed through his mind, infecting every nook, reminding him he was no longer human.

He sat up, his eyes aching from the brightness that even his blackout curtains couldn't completely quell, he folded his legs against his chest and wrapped his arms around himself.

Day.

Less than two metres away was his dormitory window, less than two metres away was his human world, his human home.

But he didn't belong there anymore, he was no longer human.

If he just closed that two metre distance between himself and the window then he'd be able to feel the warmth being exuded from the summer outside. He wouldn't even have to open the curtains.

The light coming in from the outside led him to think it was late afternoon in the human world he no longer belonged in.

Those words, those haunting words were scorched into his brain.

No longer human.

His eyes felt like sandpaper, every blink felt rough and it took all that he had to fight off sleep. Human's didn't sleep during the daytime. They slept at night. But his newly aligned nocturnal body clock was battling with his fleeting humanity, it demanded he slept rather than mourn the fact he'd never see the sun in all its glory ever again.

He rested his cheek on his knees, his head tilted as he looked at the window, toes curling and uncurling with an unrest he'd never experienced before beginning the change.

It seemed that, with each passing day, the fledgling vampire within him gained more and more control, cell by cell it took hold, submerging him in its dark embrace that was terrifying, but also oddly calming when his inner turmoil grew too potent.

Grimmsuki flopped backwards, downy cyan hair becoming askew thanks to the down-filled pillows beneath his head. He shakily sighed, the sound teary. The warm tracks of his tears quickly connected the corners of his eyes to his hairline with saline sadness and he closed his eyes to rid himself of the sting.

Every day his love for summer; for sunlight; for human life and all its intricacies disappeared. He couldn't help but think of just how you don't know what you've got until it's gone rang true to him, and then he filled with bitterness, because of all the things he could've lost, his humanity was something he could never get back.

He longed to go outside, to feel the warmth of a fleeting sunset, be illuminated by the sunrise, and bask in the midday sun one last time, but the fledgling vampire inside him screamed in protest at the mere entertainment of such an idea, heightening his newfound senses in an attempt to stop him.

It was working.

Adjusting had been difficult, he'd lost his friends; his family; his first crush; whisked away to a coven to complete his change around mature vampires. But knowing that even then he wasn't guaranteed to survive, that he could still reject the change and die an agonising, violent death by blood loss – bleeding from every orifice to be more specific – with no way to save him was terrifying.

But, even if he did survive and become a fully-fledged vampire, he still wouldn't be safe. Knowing he'd be a part of that one percent that humans still feared, were still afraid of.

Still attacked.

It had happened to a fledgling just days earlier and everyone was on edge.

He was turned against his will, doomed to live a life without his comforts, his family to turn to dust before he even gained his first wrinkle or grey hair.