(1)

Mom-

I need some time
to get my head
together. I'm
turning my phone
off. Everything is
fine, please don't
worry, I will call in
a few days.
-Sidney

Sidney Crosby didn't wait for a response before he turned his cell phone off. He flung his duffel bag in the back of his Range Rover and drove straight from his condo, in Pittsburgh, to the confines of his house on Grand Lake. The word heel crossed his mind many times knowing that he was going to be only a half an hour from his parent's house in Cole Harbor, but he couldn't bear to see them. Not yet anyways. Sidney's mother, Trina, was only trying to help. He knew that. But Sidney was tired of pretending, even with her.

The concussion, the headaches, the short temper during the disastrous Play-offs, it was all a lie. Every last bit of it. The temper was real, the uncharacteristic fights on the ice, the post game interviews of him coming unraveled, highlighted and dissected on NBC for the world to see. Yep, that was real. But the world was handed a pile of crap, and they bought it. Rumors circled from the locker room to the Internet. Post Concussion syndrome is what they called it. Lingering side effects from the nasty hits he took nearly a year and a half before. Sid the Kid was no longer the golden boy with the golden charm. He was the punk that started fights from a short fuse.

Crosby still appeared daily in the sports sections throughout Northern America, but the headlines were not as candid as they once were. Renown sports writers declared him done, damaged goods. He would never play at the same level of superiority that he went out at. And it was showing, leaking from his demeanor on and off the ice.

Dawn was approaching fast, and Sidney was trying like mad to beat the sun before it came up. Even though the windows to his SUV were specially equiped with industrial tint, his skin was exposed for too long during the day, causing his pale flesh to pinken. His driveway lay secluded before him beneath the vast umbrella of trees that towered above the pavement. Home, he thought.

The house stood just as he left it two summers before. Trina pleaded many times for Sidney to come home to recover, but he hadn't been ready to be that close to people. He pretended the headaches worsened, conjuring a therapy regimen that the doctors needed to do in Pittsburgh. The concussion was a great cover for a time, it made it easier for Sidney to avoid people altogether. Changing into a vampire felt a lot like being concussed. The world became that much brighter. Every sense became amplified a hundred times over. And the sun.

The Vampire world took knowledge of its newest representative, assigning Sidney with what they called a Promotor; a seasoned Vampire who assisted Sidney throughout his "transition." Sidney knew little about his Promotor, other than he called himself Carson, he knew how to get blood, and somehow, he made all the lies work.

And then the comeback. Sidney wasn't sure if he was ready, but Carson insisted he was. Sidney wore tinted contacts to dull the light, drank gallons of blood before games, but the moment a player got cut, his body tensed, trying to resist the need to attack. There was nothing else he could do but become symptomatic again.

The blood he kept on ice in the cooler traveled well. His stock was running low, but there was enough to last until more was sent. Sidney stocked the freezer with the remaining bags of blood, and stuck a stray in the microwave. Without a second thought, he poured the warm liquid into a glass, chugging the entire quantity in a single gulp.

"Fucking Vampire," he said, as he launched the glass across the room, shattering the tumbler on the wall. Remnants of crimson stained the beige carpet that lay beneath.

"Get it together Crosby," he said as he stammered his way to the bedroom. The blinds were already drawn, but the light shone through brighter than he wanted. After many curses created out of frustration and exhaustion, Sidney opened the door to his walk in closet. With a roll of his eyes, he threw his pillow and blanket onto the floor, shut the door behind himself, and crawled under the covers.

The sun was going down, and Dylan was wide awake...again. She spent the previous night walking the lake as she did the night before and so on. As soon as the moon was out and she was nestled under her comforter, the anxiety began to build like lightning in her chest. She, as usual, wasn't hungry, nor did she care to lay in a dark room with her own thoughts. The past year had been too much to bear, and she wasn't sure if hiding at the lake was best thing to do, but the idea of putting a smile on her face and pretending that she was OK, happy even, was just painful.

Dylan started on her normal path around the lake. The houses to the left of hers were the lower end rentals that were thankfully divided by the vast overgrowth from the treeline. The lot stayed vacant all these years because potential buyers were immediately turned off by "summer partiers" that invaded the peak season. Dylan's grandfather was wise, before he passed away, and bought the undesirable property that served as the now grateful fence between her solitude and the outside world.

It took Dylan almost two hours to make the journey to the other side of the lake where the high end houses began, and another hour to swing around to her side. She had nothing in the world but time, and her nightly hikes were the only way she could tire herself, allowing her body a few hours of sleep.

The last stop before her house was Dylan's favorite part of the journey. The long wooden dock, that stuck deep into the depth of the lake, welcomed her like an old friend. Dylan took her flip flops into her hands and slowly strolled down the wooden pier to the end, which stopped just before the moon's reflection on the water. Heaven, she thought.

It was after two a.m. and the world around her was peacefully silent. Only the sounds of the crickets and the occasional toad jumping in the lake broke the still of the night. Dylan's toe grazed the surface of the water, testing it as she did the night before. The sun had simmered off the water all day, leaving it the perfect temperature for night swimming. A wicked smile spread across her face. Dylan knew she should be wearing a bathing suit, but her end of the lake was so secluded. It was late, the sky was dark, and there were no other houses remotely close to hers except the one that sat empty behind the pier.

Dylan wasted no time. She took a quick look around and began pulling her shirt off over her head. Her shorts and underwear fell to her ankles in one swift movement exposing her pale skin to the moonlight. She kicked her clothes into a pile as she unhooked the bra from around her back, tossing it beside her. She didn't try to lie to herself. Standing naked on the edge of the pier felt so erotic. Dylan imagined the touch of a man from behind, caressing her breasts and kissing her neck. The familiar tingle ran through her body and out her mouth with an erotic gasp.

"Having sex on the dock would give you splinters in your ass," Dylan said cynically, as she walked to the edge of the wooden ledge and dove out into the water.

Only four hours had passed since Sidney emerged from his closet, but he felt like he already accomplished so much. He showered and shaved, thinking it was a crock that not only did he have to deal with all the inconveniences of being half a vampire, he also had to deal with the daily annoyances of being half human. Sidney wondered if his great-great grandmother knew what she was doing when she decided to let a vampire impregnate her. He had to think it would be easier if he had been bitten and turned like most of his kind, or better yet, sucked dry. Instead, he carried the gene that lay dormant in his bloodline for centuries that finally emerged on that fateful New Years Day a year and a half ago.

The Coven of Vampires were watching him for years, waiting to see if he would join them for their eternity. They called it a Canicular New Years. His changing body had sucked the icy winter out of the air as his once warm flesh died, causing the ice to melt on Heinz field. Many people, including his parents, blamed the soft ice for his "concussion," but only a select few knew the truth.

Sidney sighed as he tacked the last panel over the window in his bedroom, eliminating any light that would attempt to trickle through. He had no intentions of sleeping in his closet another day. The package, encased in dry ice, sent from his dealer,had weathered through the sun on his front porch. Introduced only as Claret by the Promoters, Sidney hoped that his whereabouts would be kept as vague to the Coven as his relationship with his blood distributor was.

There was nothing left to do but relax. Sidney cancelled his cleaning service, secured his Range Rover in the garage, and as long as he stuck to allowing only movement in the night, he should be able to successfully hide from the world. The only house remotely close to his was now vacant. It once belonged to Mrs McKinzie, Grandmother to his best friend growing up. Shane brought Sidney to the lake many times as a kid. It was a second home to him, the main reason he decided to buy his lake house and renovate it. The last time Sidney saw shane was the summer he was drafted, and Mrs. McKinzie passed away in the Spring. Sidney knew he should have attended her funeral, but his second comeback was in full swing and he had no intentions of socializing with the locals. Instead, he sent flowers and that was that.

Sidney stepped out the back door, breathing in the warm night air, allowing the solitude of the lake to encompas him. The still of the tranquil night only lasted for about a minute before he heard the frantic cries and sporadic splashing coming from the lake. In the distance he could make out a figure next to the pier, bobbing up and down for air. Sidney darted across the lawn onto the dock, reaching the middle easily in a few strides. His oversized hand was able to cup itself under an arm and pull the figure from the water.

"Turn around! Turn around!" she screamed as flashes of pink and flesh lay before him on the darkened wood. She brought her hands to cover her breasts as she pulled her knees in to protect the slit between her legs.

Sidney couldn't look away, she was laid out in front of him, naked. It was over a year and a half since he last touched a woman, let alone looked at one. Her legs were long and her body was tight. He ached to lay his lips on her nipple that hardened before his eyes in the night air. Just above the soft mound of her chest lay a throbbing beat below her skin. Sidney's pulse began to quicken and he could feel his fangs start to grow. Their eyes met in a rash of panic. .

"Sidney, turn around!" she screamed, matching her voice to her eyes.

"Dill?" Sidney said, cocking his head.

"Yes, it's me, now turn around," Dylan said as her one hand left her breast, pushing her onlooker around. She didn't hear him coming. She didn't even know he was there. And the next thing she knew, she was laying naked before Sidney Crosby. Mortified and unable to think, her mind raced to no prevail as to where she left her clothes.

"Give me your shirt," Dylan said as Sidney turned his head to protest. "Just give it to me!"

Sidney leaned back on his heels, gripping the back of his white cotton shirt that he pulled over his head. His mind raced in disbelief that the girl curled up behind him was Shane's baby sister that followed him around like a lackey. Her hair had always been cut short, in a boyish bob, and there was never an inch on her stick skinny legs that weren't covered with bruises. She was so much younger than him. Sidney raced through the timeline in his head. He was about to turn twenty-five, so that would make her twenty. Lustful things filled his mind, and then reality hit in. Slowly he reached his arm behind himself, offering Dylan his shirt.

Dylan grabbed the cover,slipping it over her moist skin, only to look down and cringe. The thin white cotton fabric did little to cover the darkened skin that bore from underneath.

"You have got to be kidding me," Dylan said, as she sprang to her feet and sprinted from the dock to the confines of her house.

Sidney sat on the edge of the pier, watching Dylan run as his shirt lifted slightly over her backside, ignoring any attempts her arms made to hold it down. As she disappeared into the house, Sidney looked down at himself, embarrassed by his own indiscretion that bulged from beneath his pants.

"God, what am I a thirteen year old boy?" Sidney said as he fell back onto the dock.

Sidney starred at Dylan's house, trying to fight any primal instinct he had to have his way with the girl he once knew. The sun was coming up soon and Sidney needed to erase the contents of the night from his mind forever. His body seemed ready to allow the suppression until he spotted Dylan's clothes at the end of the pier. Reluctantly, Sidney walked towards the pile of clothes that he knew would cause his senses to replay every last detail of the night all over again. He should have left Dylan's clothes on the pier, but his body moved on auto pilot, scooping the pile into his arms. Her scent traveled deep inside of him with every breath he took. The white cotton lace of her matching bra and panty set sat so delicately in the palm of his hands. "I shouldn't have come here."