I haven't really had an interest in vampire stories until recently, but I have had the urge to write a story about one for a couple of weeks now. Please tell me how it is. It is sort of a Darren Shan 'fan-fic', but I haven't used any of his characters or plot lines, merely the idea of the vampaneze. Instead of the human siding with the vampires, my character becomes one of the darker creatures of the night.
The night was cold, and wind whistled through the alleyways and streets of the town. The girl looked over her shoulder and listened for footsteps. All was quiet, except for the constant howling of the wind, like a deathly whistle of the dead.
You couldn't be too careful in these parts of the town. Youth spent in the slums of the city had taught her that you must always be on your gaurd. People would attack children and steal the possesions they happened to have on them, and, more often than not, kill them for good measure. If you would do it, then someone else would. First rule of living in the bad parts of town; trust no-one, and pity none, not even yourself.
Yana loved this time of night; when all had gone to sleep, weary from begging, or working in the whore houses, and the streets were hers alone. Hers, and the serious crinimals. Petty theives did not hang around at this time; only people who hid in shadows to stop people who went past, and kill them for fun, or for money, prowled the street at this hour of night. Yana didn't really need to fear these people. Most wouldn't bother to stop a 12 year old girl like her; knowing she wouldn't have any money, but there were always those who would stop her for other. . . purposes.
Nethertheless, Yana sighed with releif when she found the ladder on the side of the house she had been looking for. The house was poorly made, but it had been built with a wooden ladder that climbed up the side of the house and lead onto the roof. Gratefully, Yana sped up the ladder, like a rat up a drainpipe, and clambered onto the roof. Up here, Yana couldn't smell the rotting stink of filth that covered the ground of the slums, and she didn't have to fear attack; she could see for miles across the twisting, unplanned roof system of the slums. In the distance was a bottle-kiln, it's top still giving off the faint glow of dying embers from a day of clay-baking.
Monnlight drenched the scene in a silver light and made everything seem beautiful and crisp. Yana was unacustommed to such beauty in her surroundings. She stared out out the pace where she had lived since she was 6. Her mother had abandoned her here; but she prefered to think of her in a good light. Her mother was the only good memory that she had to cling onto, she had never known her father.
She remembered the day though, when her mother had come home from work in the silk factory and put her head in her hands and began to cry. Yana had never seen her mother cry before. It was a sign that life was not going to be good from now on. Sure enough, in the following months food became scarce, hunger set in and Yana had to go out to the market to beg every day. Somedays a passing sympathiser would put a coin or bread into her hand, and she would eat that day: but most of the time, she would go hungry, and her mother would beat her. Then came the day she had been abandoned. Her mother had took her out to the city, and told her to beg in a new place. She said she would be back. Yana had begged all day and had earned 3 gold coins and two silver (she had never learned to count the money: or read for that matter). However, her mother never showed at the end of the day. Yana had tried to find her way home, but she couldn't. She had spent the money on food and had slept in an abandoned kiln with other homeless children. Her first night alone.
Since then, Yana had haunted the town at night. Night was her time. Other children would have perished; many did; but not Yana. She was a survivor. She developed a knack for creeping into houses in the darkness, whilst the occupants were sleeping, and stealing food, clothes, anything she needed, from beneath their noses. She slipped in and out of the houses like one of the spirits the other children talked about; the spirits that crept into your bedroom and took your soul from your mouth.
Yana shook herslef from her memories and concentrated on the task at hand. She stood up and looked around. There was a low roof next to this one that she could jump onto. She ran across the roof and leaped like a cat across the street below, and onto the other house. She tried to land lightly, so that she wouldn't wake up the people inside the house, but stumbled all the same. She tensed, then relaxed when she didn't hear anything.
Pressing an ear to the roof she listened for movement within. Through the thin, chipboard and slate roof, she could hear somebody moving around.
'No good' she growled to herself then ran and leaped onto the next roof. She ran as lightly as a mouse and leaped as gracefully as a cat. Yana took pride in the fact that she was the best child thief in this part of town. She felt like a true creature of the night when she leaped around the canopy of the slums, hunting for a house with sleeping occupants.
Finally, she found what she was looking for. The shanty below her was literally been rocked by the deep snores of a man inside. The occupant was obviously in a very deep sleep. Houses around here didn't have glass windows, so the occupants usually hammered nails into the window sill and hung carpets against the hole in the wall to deter people from climbing in. Yana looked around quickly from the roof. There was a brothel down the street, but that looked quiet at the moment, and there was nobody in the area that she could see. Quickly, she leaned down over the edge of the roof and looked at the window. She was surprised to see wooden shutters over the window, but she quickly prised them open with a smal tool she carried in her pocket. It had a small crowbar at one end, for opening and breaking things, and there was a small knife at the other end, for 'just in case'. As she had expected, there were nails hammered into the window-sill, their sharps points sticking up and glinting in the moonlight. This was no match for her. She reached further down over the edge of the roof and grabbed the hook inside the house, that used to keep the shutters closed. She took a breath, let her feet slip off the roof, and let her momentum swing her into the house.
She landed as quiety as a feather, and the man sleeping in the room didn't stir. She regarded her surroundings. It was the usual one room slum house; with bed, table and kitchen-cuboard area all in the same room. Moving quickly, she opened the kitchen cupboards and took the food she could find, (not much) and cramming a roll of bread into her mouth for now. She searched the room but found no money. Yana was puzzled, there should be a penny at least. Then she saw the floor was made of boards, nailed together. She slowly tried to lift each one, finally finding the one that did. Underneath, was a hollow, scraped in the ground and in that was glinting coins. She snatched them all, except one, which she left for the man to buy back the food he had lost. Yana didn't like to feel that she was completely ruining her victims, and condemming them to stravation. She knew theives that did that, but she got a guilty twinge whenever she stole from someone and this small act of kindness made her feel better.
Yanna opened the door to get out (the lock was on the inside). Her pockets were bulging with food and money. She left the house; but before she did, she couldn't help having a fun idea. Holding the door open, she pulled it back as far as it would go, then slammed it as hard as she could against the doorframe. There was a crashing bang, and a muffled cry from inside the house. Yana sped off through the winding dark streets, her stomach bubbling with exhillerated happiness and fear. She gave a strangled sort of giggle, and paused to watch the house she had just left. There was a lot shouting coming from inside, and suddenly the door flew man looked out; rage and fear plain on his face. Yana, laughed, then felt bad, then laughed again as she saw the man running the opposite direction; looking for her.
As she climbed up to the roof of the houses again, to find her sleeping place (a blocked off chimmney breast) she didn't see a dark figure standing in the gloom between two houses. It looked at her scrambling away across the roof and silently laughed to itself. The figure shook its head and smiled before slipping away down the alleyway again.