Edie's eyes flew open and the blurry haze covering her eyes slowly dissipated. The sky was a clear blue, only a few clouds littering it, and a soft breeze was blowing.

Huh. I would have thought I'd go to hell.

The whole afterlife thing honestly left her a little disappointed. She ached all over, and she could distinctly feel rocks digging into her back. In fact, if she didn't know any better she'd have the impression that she was still alive. But that was impossible.

After all, she distinctly remembered the feeling of getting her throat ripped out.

She spent a moment or two contemplating her situation and trying not to get too worked up, but dying had not been on her list of things to do senior year of high school. However a sudden shout broke her out of her musing, and she whipped her head to the side to locate the source of the voice.

An elderly man was approaching her, having apparently seen her from the sidewalk.

"You okay kid? You don't look so good."

Without thinking, Edie quickly responded, "Oh I'm fine, don't worry."

He didn't seem convinced, and raised his eyebrows when he said, "Your definition of 'fine' is lying on your back under a tree at the edge of the preserve, covered in what looks like blood?"

It took only a second for her to reassess her situation. She evidently wasn't dead, though logically she should have kicked the bucket. And right now her top priority was making this guy go away so she could figure out what the ever-loving fuck was going on. She slowly climbed to her feet and tried to hide her wince when her joints all decided to go on strike. Brushing off the back of her jeans, she pasted on a wide smile.

"Sorry to worry you, I'm just resting. As you can see I get pretty awful nosebleeds and I was feeling lightheaded. I'm actually on my way home as we speak."

The man opened his mouth, looking entirely unconvinced, but Edie was already off, walking down the path through the woods that she recognized as the trail that would lead her home, shouting a quick "have a nice day" over her shoulder.

She reached her house in minutes, thanking God that her parents were away for the weekend before quickly climbing up the front porch and stripping off the shirt that was, as the stranger had pointed out, stiff with dried blood.

Not allowing herself to think in depth about what was happening just yet – evasion was her specialty - she went into the kitchen and grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge before walking up the stairs and entering her room. She pulled on an old t-shirt from a fundraiser she'd helped out at and quickly wiped the blood off her neck that she could see in her mirror with a nearby face towel. Plopping down on her beanbag chair, she popped open the top of her drink and decided to finally work out what had happened.

Alright, itinerary of last night.

Went to Vicky's house to study for AP English.

Decided to walk home.

Stopped to help the injured guy –

Wait. The injured guy. Flashes of memories began coming back to her, annoyingly similar to the process of trying to recall a night after getting wasted.

She'd nearly been home, just entering the forest when she saw a young man, more like a teenager, leaning against a tree and pushing out labored breaths. When she'd approached him he'd looked up and lunged at her before biting her ne –

Nope. Fuck no. This wasn't happening. Edie had enough shit to deal with. Things like this couldn't exist. Or at least she really, really didn't want them to.

Of course she had noticed the "animal attacks" last year. She had been surprised that everyone had bought the mountain lion crap. Mountain lions were not pack creatures, and rarely attacked humans – anyone who knew how to Google should have known that. Further more, she watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer religiously, and had seen Twilight. Loads of incredibly unlikely animal attacks appearing out of nowhere was always the cover when something else was at work. Something that people wouldn't believe existed.

Edie had spent weeks thinking over what had happened, and was convinced that something outside of the ordinary was going on, before she decided that she would rather not get dragged into whatever dangerous, possibly supernatural stuff was going on.

She preferred being alive, thank you very much, so she swiftly decided to push it out of her mind.

Well, that's kind of a moot point now.

Every one of her senses was on edge and Edie wanted nothing more than for someone to set her off. A thrumming desire for violence or manic behavior wouldn't leave and she hastily reached for the prescription bottle on her bedside table, popping two pills and washing them down with her soda.

This was out of the ordinary, even for her. The hunger was beyond anything she had ever felt. It was warping every thought and all she wanted was to sooth the ache building in her throat.

Edie was skeptical, but she was neither blind nor stupidly in denial. She had been bitten on the neck by a teenager who had sported fangs, and even though she had tried her best to fight him off, going so far as to bite at the hand that covered her mouth, he had effortlessly overpowered her. When she tasted the rusty iron of his blood on her tongue and she was covered with her own blood he had ripped into her neck.

Waking up the next day, apparently completely healed, was not something that could be written off. And she was 95% sure that she hadn't had a bad acid trip last night. So.

This would definitely complicate her life. And it definitely wouldn't end well.

Fucking vampires.