#auliver

The moon is bright and full, and that terrifies me more than if a gun were pointed at my head.

“Ready, Oli?” Jordan asks, holding up two wooden stakes. They’re old-fashioned weapons, but then again, these are old-fashioned creatures that we’re hunting.

“When am I not ready?” I reply, taking one stake from out of his hand.

Jordan nods approvingly. “I hear this one’s killed a lot of people. He’s new, though; no one ever saw him until a couple months ago. He’s not used to it yet, so we’ll have that advantage.”

I know all of this already. “Let’s go, then.” So without any more hesitation, we jump out of our dorm room’s window and into the woods behind it.

Jordan and I live in a boarding school for vampire hunters. We all take turns hunting every night, and tonight, it’s our turn. We don’t know who, exactly, we’re looking for, but we have a pretty good idea. We know that he’s a vampire and that he hangs around these woods, and that’s pretty much all the information we need.

“Split up?” Jordan whispers, and I nod. We’d stick together if this one had more experience, but since he’s new, we don’t have to worry all that much. We just need to find it and kill it as quickly as we can.

Jordan heads to the right, so I turn to the left and start scanning the area, breathing a sigh of relief that he’s gone. He’s nice and all, but I want my old hunting partner back. I want Austin back.

Focus on the hunt, Oli, I tell myself, and just as I think that, I hear a scream. It’s Jordan.

In a flash, I’m sprinting back in the direction that he went. The screaming continues for a few seconds before it’s abruptly cut off. I know what that means.

My heart nearly stops when I get closer. On the ground is Jordan’s body, but that’s not what shocks me. It’s the tall, skinny frame of the person—the vampire—standing over it, with Jordan’s blood all over his shirt.

“Austin.”

Austin was my boyfriend, and I say “was” because he disappeared a few months ago—around the same time that this new vampire showed up. We all thought he was dead. We should’ve known better.

Austin turns to me. “Oli,” he says, taking a step forward.

I can’t stop staring at Jordan’s body. “You killed him,” I say in disbelief. I’ve seen lots of dead bodies before, but I never imagined that Austin would kill a human.

“I needed to feed,” he explains softly, coming even closer and reaching a hand out to me. “I still do.”

My every instinct is telling me not to give in to him. He’s not the same Austin, my brain reminds me. He’s a monster now.

But, oh, God, that look in his eyes. It’s one of want, of need…and also of love.

I nod ever so slightly, and then Austin’s lips are attached to my neck.

It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would; just a tiny prick, and then the blood starts to flow. Austin drinks slowly, his lips almost massaging my skin, but stops before I bleed too much. “Thank you,” he says, lightly touching my face with one hand.

“Did you poison me?” I ask. A vampire’s bite is what turns you into one, but only if they choose to inject you with their poison.

“No,” Austin says. “I wanted to give you that choice…whether or not to join me.”

I didn’t realize there was a choice. I hate vampires with a passion. He knows that. I’d rather die than live as one.

And yet…

“I want you to stop killing innocent people for food,” I tell him.

He stares at me, seeming to think deeply. “What if,” he says slowly, “you were my main food source?”

“Me?”

“Yes. You. I’d keep you alive, obviously; it’d just be that I’d drink your blood every night.”

This is insane. I should just turn around, leave him here, and go back. Or kill him. Yeah, I should probably kill him.

But I don’t want to kill him or leave him. I want to be with him.

“Okay,” I find myself saying. “I’ll…I’ll be your food source.”

“Unless you decide to join me someday,” he adds, but there’s sympathy in his eyes. He knows that would be a hard decision for me to make. He didn’t like vampires, either. Now he is one, and here I am, agreeing to help a creature I usually destroy.

But that doesn’t matter.

“Austin,” I whisper, leaning forward a little. Suddenly, I realize how much I’ve missed him.