Blood. The forbidden wine. The life essence. Sustenance. It's what keeps… immortals… like me alive. Vampires like me. I can even remember when the hunger started. I was maybe five years old at the most and I craved for it like it was everything I ever needed in life. My parents told me I needed it before then, but I believe I was just too young to reminisce anything before that.
It was suffocating. Almost a debilitating pain that your body succumbs to when you are starving for blood. It takes over everything you are and your calm and collected side gives way to your natural, animalistic side. Your canine teeth grow long and razor-sharp, your normal eye color turns into a deep, bloody red and all your mind can focus on… is blood. Ripping through human flesh and drinking in their life.
It's simple really. When you're starving, you begin to suffocate. You feel as if your lungs cannot obtain enough oxygen even if you take the deepest of breaths. Vampire blood immediately kills off all red blood cells in your body, meaning there are no cells to give oxygen to your brain, heart, nerves… So that's why we drink the blood of humans. With human red blood cells in our veins to give oxygen to us, we can live forever. In addition to that, it's delicious and serves as our food.
Of course, killing humans would be an option for us. Usually that's what we do to gather our fill of blood for the day, but not all of us kill to survive. Me? I don't kill. I find that taking life to sustain our own is a waste. Humans are such interesting creatures that have so many secrets and emotions… It would be wasteful to throw that away because of hunger.
The rest of the Nightworld, the society of vampires, werewolves, witches and shapeshifters, usually kill humans for their extracts or for meat. I find that… Revolting to a certain extent. I hypnotize them, feed off of them, they pass out for an hour or two from loss of blood, and then wake up and they're fine.
It's funny how your destiny can lead you to certain places and you don't understand how you got there, and for me, this is how I live life. Being a blood born vampire is a "privilege," but that's what other Nightworld vampires say. I don't mind being one of them, but the way some people treat me is bothersome. They look up to me and treat me like royalty when I did nothing to earn it. I was born this way, yet they treat me like I am a God. Well, at least some of them do. Others know I dislike it and see me on common ground with them.
In being a vampire hiding among humans, I have to hide my identity, which I've held up doing quite well, until now. When I met him when I was very young, he seemed to have an investigative heart underneath his devastatingly handsome good looks. I knew he would catch onto my secret someday, but I didn't think it would be in college…
It was just like any ordinary summer day in Boone, North Carolina. Students at Appalachian State University, ones like myself, were bunkering down in their dorms or going out on the town for the official start of autumn break. I smiled kindly as my friends danced by me happily on the way to grab a bite to eat at Macado's, the restaurant where every college student hung out to eat. I walked through the tree-covered school grounds to get to my sorority housing silently and alone.
Being a Tri Psi sorority girl was… interesting work. No one knew it on campus, but every single one of the Tri Psi sorority girls is a Nightworld vampire. We had to keep our presence a secret, but of course, we all had to wear or be marked with some type of a black rose. This informed other Nightworlders about who we were and how we were one of them. Werewolves wore black foxgloves, witches wore black dahlias and shapeshifters wore black plumeria.
I walked up the black, marble staircase to our housing and opened the enormous black cherry, double doors that led inside. A dark grand staircase stood in front of me as our dorm leader, Buffy Saunders, strode down them step by elegant step.
She was, of course being a vampire, absurdly beautiful. She had long, graceful legs and flowing blond hair that gave her an ethereal look.
"Lana! Welcome back. Terra, Jess, Elena and I were about to go out and give out our invites for our Annual Halloween Costume party. Do you want to tag along? We were going to get a bite to eat while we were out, too," she finished, emphasizing the word "bite."
"Actually, I was just about to go see a friend of mine here on campus. Sorry. I'll catch up later," I said kindly and walked up the stairs, passing Buffy on the way up.
"Okay! We'll catch you later, Lana!" She said and walked out the door with a stack of intricately made invites in her arms. The others girls followed her out, and then firmly shut the door behind them. Candles lit the entrance and sent an eerie glow that flickered across the stained glass window above the double doors. I turned back around and made my way up the stairs that split into two staircases heading opposite directions midway up. I took the left way and looked around our usual hang out spot. Vanilla candles were lit up here as well around the circle of crimson couches we had set up for our "hammock" we called it. I walked past the hammock and down a long hallway that led to our rooms. My room was the furthest down the hall on the left hand side, right across from Buffy's.
The girls always thought of me as second in command below Buffy, but some treated me like I was sorority president. It didn't seem to bother Buffy at all,
I opened the cedar door to my room and threw my book down on my whitewood desk. I stared solemnly at the crimson walls that surrounded me and I flopped down on my white, queen-sized bed.
I heard a knock resounding from my door and I jerked up to a sitting position, my long, dark brown hair flowing in front of my shoulders and into my face.
"Come in!' I called as the golden doorknob rattled then turned. Standing at the door, was the most preposterously beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. He was your dreamy tall, dark and handsome type of guy, but mystery surrounded his heir and that made me shiver with anticipation. He had a messy, short, not gelled fohawk type hairstyle that was raven black and satin looking. His tanned skin and broad shoulders were enticing to as well as his deep, sensual voice.
"James!" I called to him and I stood up from my bed. A smile immediately painted it's way across my features and he grin as well. "Hello, Lana," he said calmly, and the way my name sounded on his lips sent shiver up my spine.
From the moment I first met James, I knew someday I would marry him. The way I felt in his arms and the way he would smile at me every time I saw him was something I knew I could never live without.
James smiled at me and sat down on my bed beside me. I sat back down also and he looked me dead in the eye with a severity I had never seen before in those brown depths.
I looked down to my hands, not being able to take the electricity in his glance, and noticed he wore a watch that I had never noticed before. The watch had a pearly face and a black design on it that I found strangely familiar.
I picked up his wrist and held the watch to my face, identifying it carefully. I gasped and clasped my hands over my mouth in utter surprise from the design that remained burned into my mind.
A black foxglove.
That's impossible! James can't really be a… NO. He's not. There's no way! I've known him since I was a little girl. He can't be a Nightworlder… I never noticed him ever wear this before. It must be a coincidence. It has to be!
My eyes widened and I removed my hands from my open mouth. James stared at me in complete confusion. He must have thought that I saw something terrifying in his watch.
I rose from the bed and turned around so my back faced him. I pulled the left shoulder of my black short-sleeved shirt down to reveal a palm-sized tattoo I had on my shoulder blade. It was a single black rose. I had no stem attached to it and the face of it was spread delicately.
"What does this mean to you?" I asked James and he stood up, too. He grazed a hand over the tattoo and his breathing became rough and disrupted. "You're a vampire," he told me and I immediately slipped my sleeve back on my shoulder and turned around to face him. Our bodies were only inches apart and his eyes looked down on me with such relentlessness that I felt like I would melt underneath his sight.
"And you're a werewolf," I told him and he nodded. His burning gaze gave way to something softer and more delicate. Sorrow.