I've never been much of an athlete. Before middle school I only ever halfway and unwillingly participated in a few community-run sports. But once I was at the age to decline my mother's offer to sign up for summer pastimes I immediately made my disinterest in physical activity known. I took P.E throughout school because it's a required credit and I wanted nothing to do with the actual sports that were played during the school year. The very thought of joining a team only to work out for three-hour days five days a week makes me physically ill. Up till today I can hardly climb a flight of stairs, which is the only exercise I get by the way, without all the blood in my body rushing to my head causing me to feel faint. That is, until now.

I jump out of the building made entirely of concrete onto the paved road outside. Looking up at the building I realize that it's an abandoned parking garage several stories high. I scan my surroundings having no idea where I am. I pull out my cellphone flipping it open and closed in an instant to see the time is 11:27 a.m. I've lost three hours. Without a second thought I start to run. In the direction of city lights far ahead of me, I start running in the direction of home. I'm running fast, faster than I ever have before, faster than someone like me should be able to run. I never know how to breath when I run and would normally end up doubled over gasping for air with pain expanding across my chest. But now I'm not breathing. And I mean at all. I'm even conscious of the fact that I'm not breathing yet, I keep running completely effortlessly. There is no pain. I'm not dizzy. I'm running, and the street lamps and signs are passing my field of vision faster and faster with each stride I take. As I enter the city I continue to run without breaking a sweat. I've been running for a little over a minute now and I don't seem to be getting tired. I don't need to stop to take a break. Even with the amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins this sudden surge of energy seems excessive, almost unnatural. Then again, the speed at which I am moving seems unnatural as well. Which is how I reach my next observation: I shouldn't have entered town so quickly.

But I let these thoughts subside as I'm faced with yet another, more impending dilemma. I'm hungry. No, no it's more than that. 'I'm starving.' I'm unbelievably hungry and seemingly out of nowhere. Running through the streets of New York I smell Chinese food and Italian food and hotdogs wafting through the air as I pass small businesses or food truck and my hunger somehow grows. My need for a meal is so intense that I begin to smell the bread from my favorite pastry store even though I know that it's four or more blocks away. And there's a new smell. A smell I've never noticed in the city, but now it appears on every street. It's breath taking, but not overwhelming. As if it is just under my nose regardless of where I turn my head. It smells like the freshest spring and the sweetest chocolate mixed into a bottle of the most expensive wine. I must find it.

"No," I hear myself voice suddenly. 'What am I thinking? I have to get home.'

Night life is alive and thriving in Manhattan and I find myself running past more and more people the further I enter town. I've never been happier to be ignored then I am right now as I pass pedestrians who seem to be acting as if they cannot even see me. Only six blocks away from my apartment and I'm stopped by a horde of them waiting for a crosswalk to signal green. Unwilling to wait for technology I stop running and notice I can once again read the signs around me. Then I push my way through the irritable crowd.

"Hey, got somewhere to be?" – "Ouch!" – "Watch where you're going."

I don't bother to mutter the 'sorry' that the people shouting at me wouldn't hear. I fleetingly notice that the smell has become more prominent as I surround myself with people before breaking free of the group to sprint across the street and continue my quest to reach my apartment.

Before I do however, I come up on my place of work and stop dead in my tracks.

I turn to face the building from the street. Only two stories high, a rather small business building to be so far into the bustling city. It's a private practice and has grown dark and cold for the night. No one is scheduled to arrive for another 6 hours.

And the smell is coming from inside.

Without warning, I'm standing before the employee entrance located on the left side of the building. My hand holds the key which will allow me to enter and I quietly slink inside. I opt not to turn on lights in fear of disclosing my location and find that my night vision has spontaneously improved. Since the age of 12 my vision has slowly deteriorated yet, I'm able to see clear down the hallway in the pitch black of night.

But I pay no mind to my suddenly exceptional eyesight as I creep down the hall. I'm aware that there are patients currently in boarding and I attempt not to disturb them as I follow my nose through the clinic. I turn into the first open door which is at the end of the hall. I'm greeted by an empty exam room with a sink and cabinets presumably hanging full of medications. A small scale is resting on the exam table that someone was too lazy to put away.

I find a similar setup in the room next door and continue my search upstairs. I poke my head into the large boarding room and look to the first patient I see. A black Great Dane lifts its massive head silently in my direction from the first kennel facing the entrance. It sniffs at me before choosing to go back to sleep instead of alarming its neighboring captives. Almost every cage lining the walls of the small room is filled with a cat or dog of some distinct breed and I'm suddenly reminded that it's spring break next week.

"Sorry," I mutter into the room only to advance down the hallway. The smell had increased in intensity when I entered the boarding room, but I convinced myself it's coming from elsewhere in the building.

I pass the pharmacy and the smell leaks out from the fridge. I open it expecting to find some staff members forgotten lunch from several days back and am, for some reason, surprised to find medicine. Well there's no reason for me to be surprised. This is the pharmaceutical refrigerator after all. The staff fridge is in the conference room down stairs. Yet the smell permeating my nose is distinctly emanating from this fridge. I stare into the ice box half expecting a T-bone steak to push a few vials of steroids out of its way and present itself to me, but all I see is prescription medicines, many of which I'm extremely familiar with, and a few bags of a deep red liquid.

"Oh fuck," I whisper while reaching into the medical tray that holds bags of preserved blood which are to be sent out to a lab for further testing for this and that which the clinic itself doesn't perform. I startlingly realize that it is the blood that I have been searching for since I entered the building. It is, in fact, blood that I was smelling while on the street and in the boarding room still in the animals themselves. I can't help but to consider the fact that if the pharmacy had been any further away I wouldn't have been drawn to its smell and could have hurt the animals I'm licensed to care for. And yet this thought doesn't stay with me for long because the hunger that has been growing inside me since before I entered the building takes over. I don't ponder why the blood in the fridge has been collected or what it will be used for in the future. I don't stop to consider that it might be needed later for emergency transfusions. Instead I grab the first bag my fingers touch and rip it in half before downing the cool red syrup almost too quickly to taste.

But I do taste it. And it tastes like the most comforting and filling meal you can possibly image. It tastes like nectar from a flower and a gamy piece of meat that has been salted almost too much. It tastes like life itself and twice as good as it smells. It's only after the fifth bag that I find my hunger subsiding and I slow enough to read the packaging.

A complex serial number used to distinguish it from other nearly identical pouches and other important information about the sample are stamped out across the front. What disturbs me the most about the chilled plastic wrap in my hand is the fine print towards the bottom which reads Feline sample. The red liquid I just consumed like Gatorade had once flown freely and given life to an animal who had come to my practice for attention and medical care.

I dispose of the bags quickly and neatly as not to leave room for question or error. The missing bags I handled won't be spoken of for several days, or possibly weeks, if they are remembered at all. After all they can only be missed if someone is expecting the bags to produce answers to an awaiting client. Anyone who notices that the results haven't returned in a timely manner is unlikely to question their disappearance.

"Oh, the lab must have miss-placed them is all," I hear a nameless voice say to soothe my conscious. "Or they were simply lost during transit. We'll just schedule appointments with the clients to take additional samples. It was no one's fault. Everything is alright."

Everything is alright.

Not when less than an hour ago, I fled a parking garage from a man who drugged me. Not after losing over three hours of memory only to escape from a man who tried to "convert" and rape me. Not when after escaping with my life, short just one match from my matchbox, I discover new found powers and heightened senses which helped me to locate the liquid I just consumed. Not after breaking into my own office building at midnight only to steal and consume 80 ounces of blood from animals I've likely never seen or treated after being a devout Pescatarian for almost 20 years.

'Is everything alright?'

Suddenly I'm moving in the direction of the exit. My anxiety, sneaking up on me as it is prone to do, completely overcomes me and I no longer care how many animals I disturb as I desert the clinic. I hardly remember to lock the back door as I step outside once more and run all the way home.

And then I'm home. The lock clicks audibly, but the door opens silently allowing me to enter the apartment unheard. All the lights, excluding lights in the kitchen, are off. I lean my back heavily against the wooden door and breathe deeply to calm my nerves and all too quickly realize that it's a mistake to do so. Because what I inhale is unmistakably the smell of home. I smell my cat who has been with me for six years. I smell her coat on the living room couch and in the carpets upstairs. I smell her toys resting by her empty food bowl in the kitchen. I smell the remains of seafood dishes I've eaten during the week in the trash and the alcohol is the cabinets. I smell the laundry, yet to be run through its cycle so much more powerfully than I would normally be able to. I smell ashes sitting in the tray from a newly put out cigarette and coffee brewing in the kitchen.

And him. The smell is curling through the air from the top of the stairs and drifting throughout the apartment. The smell is like cigarettes and motor oil and…

Feet.

'Feet', I think, tugged out of my positive thoughts, as I look down at my own and realize that his shoes are sitting beside the door waiting for my own to join them. It's his shoes that make me realize the kitchen light is still on, not because I left it on, but because I'm not alone. He's home and my anxiety nearly doubles. Because there's something new mixed in with his smell. Something sweet, like icing. It's more than his normal musk and all I can think of is the scene I caused in the clinic.

"Meow."

My head jerks to the staircase to find Midnight's round yellow eyes brooding at me on the bottom step and I suddenly feel like I've been caught by my mother after sneaking in well past my curfew.

"MeOow."

"Hey Lace?"

Norman, oblivious as he can be, hears Midnight and calls to me from the kitchen assuming I've returned. Looking to the greenly lit clock numbers on the TV stand I read 12:03. Even with delays, Norman wouldn't have returned any later than 11 o'clock and, assuming I would be home waiting, has expected me to walk through the door ever sense.

Jumping clear over Midnight's head I bound up the stairs hoping he won't follow. Though I flew up the stairs in hardly more than a single second with minimal stomping I scared Midnight with my speed and she ran into the kitchen towards the safety of her dad.

I search for my own safety in the form of my bedroom and bolt the lock on the bathroom door effectively separating myself from the remaining residence of the household. Cutting on the lights I'm shocked to see that my hand is dyed a harsh red. My arms are covered in blood from the elbows down. I realize this is the first time I've been in proper lighting and stopped to look at myself since I woke up. I frantically attempt to scrape the blood off my limbs in the porcelain sink only to realize that my t-shirt and jeans are speckled in it as well. My anxiety, ever growing, and with no rational explanations to calm myself, I do something I've only allowed myself to do a handful of times in my 34 years of life.

I have a panic attack. Cutting off the faucet only to sit down on a worn to shit bathmat I hang my head between my knees and shut down.

Too many thoughts swarm my head and I'm so freaked out from tonight's events I can't convince myself to grab onto a single one (which is how I would normally stop my attacks from progressing). With a weight sitting high on my chest, my body shakes uncontrollably, and a migraine begins to take root. The only reason I'm not gasping for oxygen is because I no longer seem to need any. I guess there's a bright side to everything.

A minute later and my mental breakdown is disturbed by the sound of feet trudging down the carpeted hall towards the bedroom. Norman enters and allows Midnight to jump from his arms onto the queen-sized bed in the middle of the room. I hear him walk, or stomp considering his steps are so much louder in the quiet apartment than the last feet I found myself alone with, towards a dresser and press play on an old CD player.

"Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica begins to play as he sits on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom door. "Lacey?" he calls out after the melody begins and I don't even lift my head in acknowledgement. My body continues to vibrate on its own accord and I try to shift my thoughts to the song that's playing.

"I heard you come in." - 'Oh, did you now?' - "Any reason you didn't stop and say hi?"

Normally I'd respond with a sarcastic response somewhere along the lines of "I didn't realize I had a curfew" or "No, not particularly, but thanks for caring mum" or by simply telling him to fuck off, but all I can manage to mumble is, "I don't want to hurt you."

There's a word for what I am now. There's a word for the things that eat what I now eat. That do the things I can now do. There's a word for what has the kind of thoughts about human beings that I suddenly have about my partner. There's a word.

"Ace?"

Raising my head, I begin to burn holes through the bathroom door. I'm looking in the exact place where I know Norman to be sitting on the bed, leaning forward to hear any noise I might make through the thin wall that divides us. I can imagine the exact look on his face and the concern in his eyes. He's worrying about me. I just know it.

But he's not supposed to worry about me. I've always been the one to worry for both of us. He's known me for long enough to know that I don't stay out late by myself. He knows that I would have wanted to be home when he arrived and if I had been able to I would have shot him a text as to why I wouldn't be. He knows me well enough to know that if I didn't greet him upon my return after not having seen him for three days that something is wrong.

I know he's expecting me to stroll out of the bathroom with a confident air about myself and make some offhanded remark that the only reason I didn't stop to say "Lucy, I'm home" is because I had to take a piss. Because by doing so I would be saying "I'm okay" and he would know that he had just been over reacting. Everything would instantly return to normal and we could go on about our evening.

But I don't feel normal and nothing will ever be the same again. And no amount of anxiety or sarcasm is going to get me out of walking through the door that is meeting my glare with full force and having a serious conversation with my boyfriend. Which is something neither of us are inherently good at on our best days.

Humming along to the new melody as "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" begins to play I unsteadily rise to my feet. Though it's no longer necessary to do so, I take a few deep breathes as I raise a shaky hand to unlock the only barrier that is keeping Norman safe.

He's calmed me from one other attack before. It was while I was still in college and having a total mental break down over the uncertainty of my future. It was the only time he had ever seen me scared. Seen me lose control. Compared to what little he physically did last time, he did absolutely nothing to ease me in this moment. Even though I'm terrified of hurting the man in front of me, when my eyes lock with his upon opening the door, I instantly become the epidemy of self-control.

"Your eyes."

My nerves harden. No more shaking. I must remain calm. We stare at each other silently and I examine his features with a critical eye. I can tell he's still in the clothes that he had worn on the plane. He's recently lost sleep since traveling if the darkening circles around his eyes are anything to go by. However, he's wide awake now, waiting for my response.

"Lacey?" he asks, and I watch as his mouth forms my name intently as if I've never seen him speak before. The stupid mole above the left corner of his mouth that he's so damn self-conscious of draws my attention for a second and I have an urge to kiss it. Then he swallows purposefully, drawing my attention to stare blatantly at his neck. His skin is pale white, and his shirt happens to be positioned to expose his left shoulder. A small tattooed "X" is printed on the juncture of his neck.

My teeth sharpen on their own during my examination. I gasp and quickly cover my mouth with my right hand. I turn my body purposefully away from the eyes staring at me from the bed.

"Lace?" he asks, discouraged at the loss of eye contact. Normally he would wait for me to begin a conversation, yet his own nerves are starting to build. "What's wrong?"

"I don' know," I finally answer with a half-truth. "I don't know."

"Can you come sit on the bed?" and it's the first complete sentence either of us have spoken.

I look to the spot he indicates and notice that Midnight is sitting close at hand. She's waiting for me to join her in bed to go to sleep for the night. "I can't."

"Why?"

Under different circumstances, I would be laughing at our communication skills. As I've mentioned, we are both people of few words and intensive conversation is difficult for either of us to partake in. But how do I begin to explain the biological change that has taken place in my body without sounding as if I've genuinely lost my mind or scaring Norman straight out of the house?

I do the only thing I can come up with on the spot and remove my hand to expose the fangs that now adorn my face.

Norman jerks his head back slightly, but his elbows remain on his knees. He's not scared, just taken aback.

"Where were you?"

"China town," I cave, "for dinner. Waitin' on you to get home. I was walkin' back through an alley and my vision went black."

Norman's back straightens; I know where his minds goes. "What did he do?"

Suddenly I have a new reason not to look him in the eye as I toss my too long hair over my left shoulder and answer, "Nothin'. Really. I mean he drugged me, as far as I can tell. And he did this," I motion towards my fangs, aware that I'm hiding behind my right shoulder attempting to put up another boundary with my body between myself and the bed. "But I got out. Woke up in an abandoned parking garage outside of the city. I took care of him."

The last sentence seems to shake the man on the bed as he takes in the state of my clothing. "You realize how far away out of town is? How did you get back?"

A smile ghosts across my face as I reply, "I ran."

He barks out a laugh and I'm forced to look at him again. "Do you think I'm an idiot? You're covered in blood! What the hell happened to you?"

"What do expect me to say," and suddenly I'm the one being defensive. "I woke up on a floor with a man standing over me and suddenly I could do things that no other human can physically do? He attacked me, so I defended myself and escaped without injury because all my injuries heal by themselves."

"Lacey, your eyes are yellow," he says, a little quieter. As a couple, we rarely fight. I can't even recall the last time either of us raised our voices towards each other in a way that wasn't playful or accompanied by a laugh shortly afterward. There's just no reason for us to really, especially considering how often Norman is away due to work. Norman, as aware of this fact as I myself am, is hoping to keep this from turning into an actual argument.

"Guess it's a side effect. Or a mutant change. Hell, maybe I'm a superhero now," and just like that, sarcasm returns to my voice to keep me safe as if I was never on that bathroom floor.

"Really? You think now's the time? We need to know what really happened to you. What you might be."

"I think I know actually. And I think you're in danger because of it."

"Why?"

"Because I'm hungy."

Silence. Neither of us are mad anymore, but we are both at a loss for words. What do you do when your spouse is taken from you and turned into a blood thirsty vampire? A few thoughts enter my mind and all of them strike me as nothing less than horrifying.

"Have you eaten?" I can't tell if it is a question or an assessment of my position.

"Yes." I figure lying will only confuse the situation. I'm thankful that the source of "food" came from an animal. "I stopped at the clinic. Stole some reserved samples. They won't be missed."

"How can you be sure?"

I roll my eyes, a nasty habit of mine, and I'm starting to, strangely, feel like myself. "For the same reason I know the man isn't going to be bothering myself or anyone else ever again. I handled it."

"You always do," the statement sounds harsh, but Norman smiles and I know he can sense it too. The awkwardness or unfamiliarity that we've never once previously had before is dissipating. "So, now what? My roommate is a vampire?"

"Suppose so. Assuming you're not scared of me," I say grinning with my mouth wide open (something I would have never done previously) to show off my new pearly whites.

"I've never been scared before," he replies and it's true. I've always had one of those faces that suggests that people should stay away from me, but Norman's the only man that's never feared me.

"Meow," Midnight whines effectively making herself the new center of attention.

Norman stretches across the bed causing his shirt to rise past his jeans and picks her up into his arms. "Now, you are not allowed to eat this one."

"No, never," I state while watching the cat nestle into my partner's arms and can't help but to wonder what I will eat instead.

Norman notices my shift in thought and attempts to make a light-hearted joke by saying, "Well, I guess you'll just have to eat me."

Looking to his neck once more, "I already do," but the comment comes out sounding much more possessive than I intended it to.

A look crosses Norman's face that looks dangerously close to excitement before he reminds himself of where he is and bottles it once more. With a wave of his hand gesturing towards me, he asks, "How does all that work?"

"I don't know." I'm still tracing the artery down his neck that has suddenly become very prominent.

Midnight bores once Norman stops stroking her back and she drops off his legs effortlessly, rubbing against my own, before excusing herself to the litter box located in the bathroom.

"We should probably figure that out," Norman comments and the mention of "we" suddenly wakes something inside me.

"Should we," I ask and my words, laced with my Southern accent, come out a bit too sultry for the current situation.

"You have to eat," he nearly insists, creating a new sort of tension in the room.

The choice is mine. The choice has always been mine, that's just how our relationship works, but I'm finding myself unable to make the mature decision. Unable to make the right decision. Because right now all I can think about is the conveniently located tattoo and the sound of a pulse growing in its intensity.

I close the distance, a mere three feet, between myself and the bed. This time Norman does lean away from my movements. He takes a startled breath at the unnatural speed at which I move. I stand stoic over my boyfriend who leans back on the bed against the palms of his hands.

My senses are once again over loaded. Norman, adrenaline coursing through his veins and blood rushing in both directions because he is unaware of what he wants or the level of danger he is in, releases what are recognizable as pheromones that I'm only just able to pick up on.

He smells like food, and sex, and need.

And I've never been so conflicted.

"I don't know how," I state with conviction and I mean that I don't know how to stop.

He remains silent. He knows I'm thinking faster than the speed of light and he doesn't want to be the pressure that breaks the dam.

Because a dam is about to break inside me and I'm weighing all the cons because currently the pros are winning.

Before I've even made up my mind I'm on the bed. Or more specifically, in Norman's lap. My left hand is suddenly in Norman's short hair and his breathing increases dramatically.

His eyes having never left my face seem to witness a change in it. He decides to inform me in this moment that, "Your eyes are black."

And for the second time tonight, I'm consuming red.