Note: I did not copy this story. I just put it under the category of vampires. Even if you completely hate the story, pleae give a review and tell me why so I can make my writing better. Thanks.

I narrowed my eyes and clamped down harder on the spear. After as many years of practice as I'd had, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that when I decided to throw it, the spear would hit my target. My father gave the signal and in one fluid movement, I had jumped up and thrown the handmade wooden spear at the deer. It hit the deer and killed it instantly.

My father, as always, was very proud of my hit. Our family had dinner for that night. The other people from the village were not so happy about my hunting. To them, I was a girl, who should have been helping my mother in the fields, not hunting with my father.

I guess that was only to be expected; because back then, women "could not" do things like that. It just wasn't proper. Even back then, I had never cared much being proper.

That is, until the leader of our village told my father and me that if I didn't stop hunting, I would not be able to stay in the village. So, I tried my best to do as told and what a young girl was expected to do.

"Anya," my mother called. "Please, stop fooling around and go help Mezli." Mezli was the closest thing I had ever had to a friend. She had really only liked me because she thought what I did was brave. As soon as I had to stop hunting, she and her brother, Balaam, stopped being so nice to me.

"Anya." Mezli didn't look at me. I didn't expect her to.

"Mezli." She still didn't look at me. I sighed. Maybe I didn't really want her to. It still hurt not to have at least one person actually pay attention to me, though.

What was worse was how her brother treated me now. He used to adore me for my courage, but now he treated me like a stupid girl, even though he was the idiot.

"Anya," he had said once," why must you be so stupid?" I had been trying to hunt in secret, just to help my father, who wasn't used to having to hunt alone and was getting older now. He always caught me and stopped me with the same empty threat. "If you don't stop this nonsense then I will have to report you to the other hunters,"

"It is not nonsense!" I cried. "I am trying to do what is best for my family, and you all are acting like idiots!"

He gave me a stern look, which honestly just made him look more like a child. "We are doing this to protect you. You are just a girl, not cut out for this."

"I am more skilled a hunter then you! I have been hunting longer then you! You are a chicken who cannot stand to see even the tiniest drop of blood fall from the hide of a cow!"

It just made him blush with embarrassment. His eyes burned with his fury. He walked away without another word to me.

After a few pointless hours of harvesting crops, I went back to my home. It was a rather small hut, but since most of the time it was just me and my mother, it worked fine. I crawled onto my "bed" and picked up my diary. It was made of papyrus paper and a hide cover with my name carved into it. Most of the time you only got a book if you had an important reason. My father and I hunted, so I had the hide, and Mezli had once showed me how to make paper. I made my own diary.

After I wrote about another awful day, I curled into a ball and fell asleep.

When I woke up, I immediately hoped up and got dressed quickly. I couldn't wait to go hunting! It was always so fun to . . . But I couldn't hunt, I remembered sadly. I was forbidden. Shoulders hunched, I walked out of the tent to the fields. There was no one there. I looked all around the village until suddenly I saw a crowd of people standing around something.

It was a man. Covered in blood. Screaming about creatures of the night that were going to kill us all if we didn't leave the village. Some thought maybe he was a young man that was cursed by the gods. Just something about him made some of us believe his telling's. Most of the younger children started to panic.

Of course, when Kirem, the village leader, stepped in and said that this man needed a good ritual preformed to help please the gods enough to make him sane, everyone stopped listening to the man. Even though I didn't believe he needed a ritual, I didn't believe his words either.

Luckily for the man, we had just gotten a sacrifice from a warring village. We were going to give him to the gods that night.

"You must listen! I tell truth and only the truth! No curse has been set upon me; I am simply trying to warn you!" His screams made an internal shiver run down my spine, and I could tell from the looks on everyone else's faces, that it had the same effect on the others.

I dressed in my best clothes and me and my mother and father walked to the place where the sacrifice would be held.

I was small, only sixteen, and pushed my way through the crowd when we got there. I'm not sure why, because the sacrifices always made me flinch and look away.

The priest said a bunch of religious words and I watched as the sacrifice-who had been tied down and painted blue-screamed and struggled pointlessly. Why even bother? Even if he did get loose, he was surrounded.

The worst part of the rituals for me was when the highest priest took a flint knife and cut open the man's stomach. Blood flooded out of the long gash and he screamed even louder. Then, as fast as he could, the priest stuck his hand inside of the sacrifices body through the gash and ripped out his heart while it was still beating. With one final scream, the sacrifice went limp and the heart in the priests hand stopped beating. Blood covered the stone the priests had tied him to, his body and the priests hand.

"We give this man to the gods to please them and to make them lift the curse upon-"

Someone gasped, cutting him off.

"The crazy one is gone!"

A roar of outrage came from the crowd, along with some screaming.

"We give him a purifying ritual and this is how he repays us?"

"We must hunt him down and kill him!"

"Why should we kill him?"

"He is a traitor!"

People were screaming back and forth at each other.

"Be calm my people. Calm down! CALM DOWN NOW!"

Everyone went silent at the priests cries.

"We will carry on with the celebration whether the traitor is here or not. This is still a celebration to honor the gods, and we will treat it as such." The look on his face told us all that his word was final.

The crowd dispersed into groups. Some little children went to play games, or go back to their mothers. Most people my age stood in little groups talking. No one acknowledged that I was there.

I sighed and started to walk home. It was late enough to go home and sleep. I would have a hard day of harvesting tomorrow to catch up for today anyways.

One group of people huddling around a fire caught my attention.

". . . Then, the giant wolf-creature lunged for me!" One boy said dramatically.

"So? The weird fish lady tried to eat my head!" Another argued. What were they talking about?

I walked closer towards the group. The boy who claimed to have been attacked by a wolf looks at me. He has very nice eyes, I notice. Or maybe it is just that they aren't filled with disgust when they look at me.

He smiled. "Come, Anya, sit down."

The fact that he knows my name startles me for a moment, but then I remember that I was the only female hunter in the village. My name would be well known.

"What are you talking about?" I ask them.

"The creatures."

"What creatures?"

"The ones that the man was talking about. We have seen them, too," a chubby little one says.

I blink at him. Not only because this information startles me, but because he has really let himself get large. No warrior with any respect would trade muscles for fat.

"Explain."

"There are creatures out there," The one with pretty eyes tells me. "They kill people like us for fun, and for food." He looked so sure about what he was saying, but doubt slithered up my spine. I really didn't want this man to be crazy too.

Instead of voicing my doubts like I usually did, I said, "Go on."

He and his friends explain all about the creatures that turned into giant wolves and ate people, the creatures that had fish tales and looked pretty until they tried to eat you, the tiny creatures that flew with wings and did all they could to make people get themselves killed. There were so many others too. Soon, I was so deeply in trance of all the myths that I stopped doubting them.

"Would you like to hear the story of the creation of the blood drinkers?" Asked the boy with the pretty eyes, whose name I found to be Chac.

"Blood drinkers?" I questioned.

"They are more commonly known as creatures of the night." He explained. "They are the creatures the man was talking about." His expression turned grave. "He was smart to escape while he could. They will be coming tonight."

I was confused. "Tell me the story." Chac beamed at me.

"The Aztecs and us Maya have been fighting for years. Once, long ago, the moon goddess, Ix Chel, tried to stop the fighting. She gave the Mayan man and the Aztec man incredible strength, speed, sight and hearing. She believed they would stop fighting because she had given them such honorable gifts." It was very easy to guess what he would say next. "But they continued fighting with their new strength and speed."

"Why?" I asked. "Why would he do that to the goddess?" Chac didn't seem to think the fact that I was practically drowning in the story funny at all. He was just as deep into the story as me. Balaam wasn't.

"Oh please, Anya, stop listening to this."

Chac ignored him. "They could not get over their hate for each other, even for the goddess."

"This is ridiculous!"

"When the goddess found out, she was very upset with them. So-"

"Nonsense!"

"So, she cursed them to have to drink blood, and not be able to go into sunlight."

"Anya! These people are clearly also insane!"

"Then, because she was so upset, she went to the god of the sun, and killed herself."

"This. Is. Nonsense!" Balaam's face was turning scarlet. "Anya you will go home now!"

I jumped up to face him. I was tall for my age and gender, five foot four. He was older than me, but he was shorter than me.

My face burned. "You do not tell me what to do, Balaam."

"No, but I do, Anya." I turned to see my father. The gentle and proud look that had usually been on his face was gone. He was just another man who thought that I was acting foolish. Something in my chest clenched. Who did I have now?

Tears threatened to fall down my face. I was about to run home, when someone screamed. I spun around to see a giant wolf ripping off a man's arm. His body fell to the ground.

More wolves ran out of the woods and began attacking people. I looked up, because according to Chac, the wolves only came out on nights of a full moon. The moon was huge in the sky. What was worse, he also said that were the wolves were, the creatures of the night would be too.

Everyone started screaming. I turned to run, but someone grabbed a hold of me and pulled me back. I expected it to be my father, but then the creature sunk its sharp teeth into my neck. The world went black.