Erm, hi. So . . . aside from the fact that I'm not quite sure how to introduce this thing, I'll just let you (assuming there is a 'you' reading this) to go ahead and find out everything that happens and stuff.
Oh, and just in case anyone here had this really weird idea that, woah, maybe the person sitting at her crappy laptop, staying up late on a school night to write this, might be, like, Stephanie Meyer, or something! I'm not. Disappointing, I know. If I only I were, then I could own the Twilight Saga and stuff -*~*- (That's my "shrugging" face, just for future reference)
The woman died before the scream could leave her throat. Dropping the lifeless body to the ground, Maisy sent me a look of disgust, crinkling her nose at the sour taste alcohol added to an otherwise perfect drink.
"Disgusting," she said, voicing my thoughts exactly. We weren't normally forced to hunt in the dregs of human society, but since our accidental slip up that had almost caused our small coven to be discovered by a band of pimply teenagers, Annmarie hadn't let us near a non-tainted blood. She claimed that we needed to learn control. Psh, control my ass! In comparison to the rest of them, we're the poster vamps of control.
"You're telling me," I nodded in agreement. "All I could get was some damned prostitute." I gestured to the pale corpse I had slung over one shoulder. As if responding to me, the brunettes head rolled to the side, revealing the shredded, bloody remains of her throat. What can I say? I'm a messy eater.
Maisy made an unintelligible grunt of agreement. "What did you expect, Myra? They're everywhere."
With a sudden flash of movement, Maisy jumped up to the roof of a cheap apartment building, the sound of impact causing such a loud bang it was a wonder the roof hadn't caved in.
"Careful," I hissed, "Unlike you, I actually want to get some proper food sometime soon, which won't happen if you keep breaking shit like last time!"
Maisy laughed in response and leapt from the rooftop to the next one over, thankfully with a quieter noise than last time. Sighing, I pulled the lifeless body of the human Maisy had drained and slung it over my shoulder, before I followed her.
It didn't take me long to catch up. Even with the (admittedly light) weight of two bodies, I was still faster than my friend. Bouncing from roof to roof, we moved silently so as not to attract any attention to ourselves. As always, we took longer on our hunts than strictly allowed. If we were lucky we'd get back home before dawn broke. Annmarie forgave the fact that we were almost sighted on our way home once, but I didn't wish to push my luck a second time. I don't think she'd be patient enough to refrain from ripping our heads off.
Our destination was the dark Lake Quay. Despite being the town's largest tourism attraction, pollution and heavy disregard for the environment allowed the water to become a dark, murky grey. At best light you could only hope to see a few centimetres down into the lake's depths. Since our arrival to the city, we'd been quick to utilise this feature. If anyone were to take the time to actually clean up the lake, they'd a find a forest of people buried in the water. But trusting the lazy council responsible for maintenance of the lake, we wouldn't be at risk of discovery for at least another few decades.
Dumping Maisy's human on the ground for her to deal with; I dove under the water, searching for a free place for the new human. Being organised was one of Annmarie's many talents. Placed in neat rows along the lake's floor were large round boulders, all with loose chains around their circumference, all the easier for making sure the bodies didn't float up too high. Quickly tying my meal in with a man who'd been Maisy's lunch a few weeks earlier, I pushed myself up to the surface just as Maisy dived into the water.
She didn't take too long, probably because she took a shortcut, like always. She never wasted any time in getting out of the disgusting water, and managed to splash water over me, despite that I was standing a safe two metres away from the water's edge.
"Thanks," I said, wiping the worst of it off my face, "I needed that."
Maisy sent me an unapologetic smirk. "You're welcome." That said, she bounded off back in the direction of the city, me following her quickly. Much as I would have liked to stay behind at have at least a few minutes of quiet to myself, I knew that if Maisy, by some off chance, felt the sudden desire for drug-riddled blood and made a big mess, I'd take the blame for it, which so wouldn't help with Plan Keep Head Attached.
Not that I think anyone else would care that much. A nice fight between Annmarie and whatever poor bastard got in her way was one of the few forms of entertainment we had.
Our destination was an apartment building found just by the end of the city. It was a small, rundown place that had been there just long enough to save it from demolishment, community activists always protesting with the claim that it was a historical building and important to the towns heritage. Occasionally a small group might come out and sleep in front of the building in protest whenever talk of demolishing the building arose. Such visits always inspired the people with the sudden desire to go on a nice long holiday, and only leave a messy handwritten note explaining their decision. According to baffled families, the handwriting wasn't even their own! But the simple minded police couldn't do much else but say that the note was all the evidence necessary.
Aside from these odd disappearances that we couldn't help, we were fairly skilled at keeping low key. We kept the blinds closed during the day so the sunlight didn't affect us, and Annmarie always made sure that we never made any noise. Not that it was a hard feat. There were only six of us in the house, and we all knew to keep out of the way if someone was in a bad mood.
Well, we kept to ourselves either way. There was an unspoken agreement between us all about who got what area. As far as I knew, James spent the entire time up in the attic, which was fine with me. Despite that physically he had to be about six years younger than me – eight, if I had to use a specific number – he had a dark aura about him that was nothing short of creepy. Being in the same house as him was bad enough; it was easier to cope with the dark feeling that I felt whenever I was within ten metres of him if he was well out of my sight, and I was out of his.
Carrie and Henry took up the second and third floors. Technically the third floor was officially 'theirs' but the two were the types to pick a fight in an empty room. It was safer to leave an extra floor between us and them. We'd all been caught in the crossfire before, it wasn't pretty.
Maisy and I were the only pair to be able to coexist peacefully, and so were given the one floor to share. I was fine with that. The first floor wasn't the worst place in the building, and Maisy was capable to holding a decent conversation, and as we were around the same age, we found that we were interested in the same things. Maybe. We assumed that if we were allowed to know more about what was happening out in the human world, we'd like the same things. She also knew better than to start and argument with Carrie or Henry, and thus bring them down to our area.
The basement belonged to Annmarie. It was quite unusual to think that Annmarie voluntarily took that room; I'd thought she would've opted for the attic, or at last the third floor – she always struck me as the CEO, penthouse type with her speckles clothes and composed nature, but maybe I saw her as the leader type just because she was the only adult there.
Regardless of my thoughts on where her area of the house should be, Annmarie chose the basement. She never bothered to lock it, didn't see the need to, I suppose. She knew that even Henry, much as he claimed to be the strongest and bravest in the house, was too wimp to disobey orders and go snooping around in her things.
On a normal day, Maisy and I would sneak in through the door and try to ignore the death glares we'd receive from whoever's turn it was to go hunting after us, maybe receive a sarcastic "Welcome back" from Carrie before she stormed off to do whatever it was she did during the day (other than fight with Henry). Maybe if we were really unlucky James might've crept downstairs to see if we made it back before sunrise before slinking back up to his dark room.
We were a few streets away before we realised that there was no way that was going to happen.
From the our place on the rooftops it was easy to see the bright orange light and see the thick cloud of smoke that was slowly rising from one of the buildings on the outer edge of the city.
"Oh my God," Maisy said, "Is that?" she didn't feel the need to finish the question.
I nodded in reply, unable to speak.
When it became obvious that I wasn't about to lead us into battle, she grabbed my arm and pulled me forward onto the next roof. I didn't let her go any farther than that.
"Don't," I said, before she could protest. "Watch."
She looked at me like I was insane. "Watch? Myra –"
I held up my hand to cut her off. Not even a second after I had done that, did four figures emerge from the burning building. Annmarie, Henry, Carrie (who was, for once, not trying to rip off the boy's arm), and James, who I've never been so glad to see.
This, however, wasn't enough for Maisy, who instantly tried to move towards our coven. I held onto the back of her shirt, the only thing I could reach before she continued jumping.
Immediately she glared at me and fought to get out of my grip. On a normal day I would've let her do her own thing. But unlike her, I was focusing on the new figures emerging from the flames, the ones that certainly weren't from our coven.
Covered in black, the four figures moved like ghosts towards the four members of our coven. I expected to see Annmarie step forward and take control, like she always did when one of Henry and Carrie's fights got out of control. I didn't understand why she wasn't doing that! Even I could connect the dots and see that the black figures had something to do with the fire! If this were one of us, she would've killed us already!
But Annmarie did nothing. She stood at the very back, as far away from the cloaked vampires as possible. She didn't flinch when Carrie suddenly dropped to the ground, writhing on the floor like she was having a seizure. She didn't do anything when Henry suffered the same fate immediately.
She didn't even move when James was pulled forward and pushed back into the burning house.
Maisy didn't wait for me to follow her this time. She charged off towards the rest of the coven, leaping along the roofs, faster than I'd ever seen her run before. It was the shock of the whole day, I decided, that had to be the reason for her reaction. Because I know for a fact she wouldn't have given a damn if James had died any other way. In fact, she probably would've helped rip his head off. But any feelings of dislike for the disturbing vampire child had disappeared, and I knew that even if I did catch up to her before she got to the rest of the coven, nothing I did would be able to convince her to be sensible and stay.
So I didn't wait to see what would happen when she reached the fight that was soon to start, because I didn't need to. It didn't take much to guess the outcome.
I didn't do the brave thing and follow my friend.
I didn't try and help the vampires that were, for a short while, at least, my family.
I turned in the opposite direction, and I ran.
Erm, hi . . . again. Yeah, two authors notes; I must like adding personalised comments a lot! Which I do . . . And that's your fun fact about me for the day!
But yeah, this is my first story and everything, so, I dunno, if you could maybe waste a minute or less and tell me what you think? Please? Pretty please with Cameron Bright on top? Lol, jk, he's mine, bitch. Back off.