So, I decided to make an alternate AU for my AU MtI. It's going to be a bit different. Yeah, I'm taking the *shudders in disgust* Twilight vampire love story route… but I'll steer the story more in the direction of a real vampire romance that I could stomach, John Lindqvist's cult classic Let the Right One In. You'll be getting this story updated every month or so on the first Thursday. Now then, without further ado, I present As Her Heart Beats.
The city of Vale was known for one thing, it had a large part of the inner city that had fallen into a state of disrepair. A number of people wanted it demolished twenty years prior, but the mayor and city council members moved to keep it as it was and let nature reclaim it. After months of neglect, it started to look like a picturesque deciduous forest. Since that event, the center of the city was closed off and it would remain that was for one hundred fifty years, in accordance to a restoration act. Although, the action did do two things, it improved the city's air and water quality, but only slightly. There were, however, reports of something living in the restricted zone of the city. No one knew what it was. And even stranger, the sporadic reports only took place at night. At that is where our tale begins.
It was a calm and peaceful night. The moon shown bright overhead, the early Autumn air was crisp yet comfortable. The streets of Vale City were empty aside from a few people out on the streets. Perfect conditions for a little late night jog.
In the city park, a young boy in navy blue sweat pants and a bright orange hoodie jogged the twisting paths. His strawberry blonde hair flowed in the night air. His light green eyes remained trained on the path in front of him. The boy's name was Cypress, but his friends called him Cy. He had a good number of people who cared about him, but he was mostly alone outside of school. Two years ago to the day, his widowed father had been lost in a tragic accident. The only person he had left to care for him was his older sister, Ivy. The only reason he was out so late was because Ivy was two towns over on a business trip. These nights happened almost every other week, but they didn't bother Cy that much.
The park Cy was jogging in was on the edge of this part of the city. He'd jogged half way through the park and came to a fork in the sidewalk. The fork on the left went toward his home while the fork on the right went into the inner city. It was still early in the evening, and Cy's curiosity had finally gotten the better of him. There was a three mile stretch that met at the East entrance of the park, and Cy had taken that route in the mornings as the sun was rising, but never at night. He turned onto the left fork and took out a head lamp from the pocket of his hoodie. He turned it on a low light setting so his eyes could adjust.
The sidewalk in front of him grew darker. As he drew closer to what had been the North entrance to the park, he felt the air around him getting colder. The night rendition of this jogging route felt like a total opposite of the morning rendition. Not because it was darker than in the day, Cy was eleven and loved the dark. But, he felt like he was being watched, no, followed.
Cy was jogging half way down the darkened sidewalk. The light on his head lamp shorted out, not a good sign. He let his eyes adjust to the shadows and dappled pale streams of blue moonlight. But his ears picked up on something, the sound of someone behind him. There were the subtle sounds of bare feet hitting the pavement at a rapid pace. He hastened his pace. The footsteps' pace hastened with him. Not wanting to be attacked by a local thug, Cy broke into a run. The footsteps behind him… hastened to a sprint. Suddenly, he was jumped from behind. He wheeled around and kicked the cloaked figure in the stomach and sprinted as he tried to get away. The figure behind him got up and rocketed toward the young boy. He jumped onto a wall and ran along the narrow ledge as fast as could. But he looked behind himself and saw nothing. As he turned around and was knocked off the wall, both parties were sent tumbling onto the grass. Cy's attacker made sure to keep themselves on top and pinned the boy's arms to the ground and straddled his waist.
Cy struggled to get free, but the figure was too strong. The force holding him down was inhuman. "Why," He heard the figure ask in a raspy voice, "Why are you out so late in my territory?"
Cy looked up into the silver, red-rimmed, eyes of his aggressor. They mystified him to no end, but what caught his attention more was the question asked of him. This figure didn't use home, like a battered and disheveled vagrant in the local shanty towns and back-allies. No, they said territory, as if separating it via a primal boundary system. No one in their right mind used that to describe their home, not for the last two centuries or so. "Answer my question, trespasser," The figure questioned accusingly, "What are you doing, coming into my territory in the middle of the night? I won't give you the luxury of asking a third time."
Cypress steeled his resolve and stood his ground. If he was going to get out of this alive, telling the truth was the only thing that made sense. He swallowed, "I was out for a jog and decided to take a longer route." He said, "I was going to follow this path all the way to the gate on the east end of the park."
The eyes above him narrowed as they slowly shifted toward the eastern end of the park. Their gaze shifted back to Cy's light green eyes, "How am I sure you're not lying to me?" They asked.
"Because I jogged this route in broad daylight before, at least half a dozen times," Cypress stated, "These days when I'm not studying myself into a headache for my classes at Signal Middle School, on the North end of Vale, I'm out jogging or over at the rec center swimming or something. This just happens to be one of my favorite routes. I just wanted to see what it was like at night."
The figure examined the boy carefully for any signs of trickery, they saw none. "Alright," They said, "I can see that you're telling the truth."
"Of course I'm telling the truth," Cypress protested, "I suck at lying. Everyone in Vale knows that."
"I'm not everyone in Vale," The figure said, "so forgive me if I don't take the word of a trespasser at face value."
"Alright," Cypress said, "you've got me dead to rights on that note. Now, could you please get off of me so I can get out of your hair?"
"If you promise never to come here again," The figure said easing off their grip on the boy's wrists.
Cy used his wit to turn the scales in his favor, nothing was going to remove him from a favorite jogging spot. "What's to stop me from coming her in the morning or the heat of the summer afternoons?" He asked confidently.
The figure froze, but only for a moment, "You said you were going, right?" They asked removing their hands from the boy's.
As they pulled their hands back, Cy rushed and grabbed hold of theirs, "Oh no, I'm not letting you off the hook without answering my question."
The figure growled, "I don't have to answer to the like of a human whelp like you." They hissed.
That reply struck Cy as odd. The use of such terminology suggested that the aggressor wasn't human. Cy took a moment to examine the figure above him. Then he found what he was looking for, their teeth. To the untrained eye, they looked normal. But the canines differed from those of a normal human being. "What does a vampire like you have to lose from answering an innocent question like mine?" He asked confidently.
The figure's eyes widened, "You know?" they asked.
"I can see the fangs pretty well in the dark," Cy said, "Now are you…" In the blink of an eye, the figure effortlessly yanked their hands free, rose to their feet and ran back into the forest.
Cypress got up and dusted himself off, "So," He huffed, "the inner-city jungle has a vampire, huh?" He turned and walked back to the path. When he got on the sidewalk again, he looked back over his shoulder at the massive forest. He felt a smile start to form on his face, "That's actually pretty cool. I hope they have a good night." He continued his jog down the sidewalk.
Unbeknownst to Cy, the vampire wasn't done following him. They crept behind him, being careful not to go into the lights of the street lamps in the park. But they stopped when they saw the boy leave the park. They were glad to see him go, but something felt… upsetting. They didn't like trespassers, but they also detested the loneliness of the forest in the inner-city.
The vampire felt something in their chest. It was like a small drum beat that appeared in an instant and left as soon as it had come. They looked around the park, not a human in sight. It wasn't some sort of trickery, no it was something else. They thought back to the days of old the last time they felt this sensation in their chest. A grand total of one thousand years, they realized it was their heart beat. But what made it beat again after so agonizingly long? Was it that boy? Or was it something else?
A growl in the vampire's stomach cut their train of thought. They'd forgotten to feed on the boy when they caught him. They'd wanted some manner of sport, but the shock of the boy finding the silver-eyed being's identity made them fear away for their life. Now they'd need to leave their territory, and they knew exactly how to get their share of the sweet crimson nectar they craved.
Cy had gotten home to his older sister's apartment in the southern end of Vale and gotten ready for bed. He laid down in his bed and looked out toward the inner-city jungle. He couldn't get that vampire's silver eyes out of his mind. A sound like a stomach growling caught his attention. He turned to see a cloaked figure hanging onto the wall and clutching their stomach. They were whimpering like the hunger pangs were driving them crazy. "Hey," Cy asked, "are you okay?"
The figure looked at him, "You," it said.
Cy recognized the gruff voice, but he didn't like seeing the suffering in the figure's silver eyes. "Would you like to come in out of the cold?"
The cloaked figure made their way in through Cypress' window and swiftly pinned him to his bed. "Our conversation earlier, interrupted my meal." The figure said. Before they could make their move, they were hit by a debilitating hunger pang.
Cy watched as the vampire in front of him curled into a ball. Cy couldn't believe what he was going to do. He took his index finger and nipped it with his canines. He winced as he squeezed out a little blood and offered it up to the figure, "I know this is what you came here for." He said, "If you want it that badly, I'm only going to offer a little. I may be young, but I'm not getting bitten tonight."
The figure stared at the crimson fluid being offered to them, "Why are you offering me blood? Hoping I'll be your pet or something as deranged as that?" They asked accusingly.
Cy shook his head, "I've seen enough suffering in my life," he said, "I'm not going to sit by and watch a creature, undead or otherwise, suffer in front of me. Now please hurry up and have your fill, it's not like I do this every day."
The growling of the vampire's stomach got to them. They hadn't fed in weeks, and it wasn't like they could turn down this offering in their state. They grabbed the boy's wrist and sucked his finger. They sighed in satisfaction, something about blood that had been offered to them made the metallic taste of the crimson fluid almost like sweet honey. It'd been a long time since anyone had offered their blood to them. The memory brought tears to their eyes. When they were satisfied, they let their arms fall to their sides as they tilted their head back and let the hood of their cloak fall to their shoulders.
Cypress gave an inaudible gasp. Sitting on his bed in front of him was a young female vampire. He guessed that she couldn't have been more than a few years older than him. But he remembered reading something, a particularly nauseating vampire saga put out a few years prior that vampires didn't age from the point that they were bitten. Though he'd also remembered that in Braham Stoker's Dracula, that the vampire affliction extended the life span of those bitten and that some vampires were powerful enough to alter their appearance to keep from drawing attention to themselves. But those were all fiction, this was a shocking jolt of reality. "Thank you." The girl in front of him said in a less gruff voice.
The voice snapped Cypress out of his puzzled state, "What?" He asked.
The silver-eyed girl sighed, "I said thank you," She repeated.
"Oh," Cy chuckled, "You're welcome."
The vampire stood up and put their hood back over their head, "Tell no one about what you saw tonight," She said as she climbed out through the window and hung from the sill, "or the next time we meet, I won't hesitate to silence you before we part ways."
Cy nodded and swiped his finger over his heart, "I won't tell a soul, I promise." He said.
The girl narrowed her narrowed her eyes and turn to leap down to the alley below and took off back to the park and her forest.
Cypress looked down to his finger, it was starting to close up, but he knew Ivy would kill him if she found a drop of blood on his bed sheets. He went into the hallway bathroom, grabbed a band-aid and the tube of ointment and quickly bandaged his finger. He sighed as he remembered the experience from only a few minutes ago. "Man, what a crazy night," He said, "First a vampire ambushes me in the park, and the next thing I know, she pays a visit out of hunger and threatens to kill me if I tell anyone." Did someone place a curse on me or something?"
He walked back into his room, littered with posters, a few handheld gaming consoles and books, and the odd stacks of graph paper he and his circle of friends played Dungeons and Dragons with every other week. He crawled into bed and stared at his ceiling, sighing before going to sleep, "I wonder if I'll see her again," He asked as his eyes closed.