You know that feeing of falling? Where you're in a dream and you feel like you're just floating? No pain, no traumas. Just you and that peaceful feeling. I felt that even though I knew it was wrong and that I should be feeling something totally different.
My mind dimly registered what had happened to me. I had been attacked by some physcho who claimed that I had "cancer" and was going to die. I didn't really believe him and told him as much. But lovely fate intervened and he ended up getting me.
He had attacked me. Force fed me his blood, force fed it to me again when I choked half of it up. He basically cracked my skull when he jerked my head back against the brick wall and yanked my head back.
What was with that guy? He had had the face of a god like Adonis or some other mystical figure of that nature, but he had had the menacing, frightning face of a serial killer. His cologne reeked of money from higher places and his self-assured strut and self-assured smirk would bring weaker girls to their knees.
He had killed me. He had snapped my neck. So why was feeling? Why did I feel? I felt a sensation like I was falling. But why? It didn't make any sense to me.
The first "real" sensation I felt was the feeling of softness. Of a very, very soft sofa or couch. Hmm, it smelled good. My fingers reached out and felt the warm pillows that were lined on the sides of the couch.
The feeling of just being was a nice, totally welcome feeling. It felt nice to just lie there. Some part of my brain gently tried to nudge me into awareness, into the fact that I was on some couch that wasn't familiar to me. I should be wigging out and trying to wake up. But I wasn't.
Huh.
Suddenly, and without much warning, I felt all of my senses returning to me at once and my eyes, they suddenly flashed open. I looked around. I was definitely not in Kansas! The room I had been placed in was a large room with beautiful antique furniture and a roaring fireplace.
I gazed at it open-mouthed. I wondered who owned this beautiful, majestic house. But right then, my appreciation for the house was put on hold when one of my natural senses overpowed me: Hunger. Boy, did I feel hungry.
It was like I had been starved for a week and had only just realized how it had hurt. I jumped up from the couch, surprised at how fast and how strong I was considering my lack of food. I went looking through the huge house for a kitchen. There had to be one somewhere.
The halls and turns of the house made me feel as if I were in a maze. A very beautiful, complicated maze. I pushed open a pair of swinging double doors and laid my eyes on the beautiful kitchen. It was just like the rest of the house: Dark, but beautiful.
I went over to the fridge and practically tore it off its hinges to get inside. The sweet smell of corn on the cob, salads, baked potatos, macaroni and cheese, all of those and more assaulted my nose as soon as the fridge opened. I didn't know which plate to grab first so I settled on grabbing a few at a time. I dug my spoon into the macaroni dish and had finished its contents in under a minute.
I next went to the other goods and finished them off. I felt almost like I was coming off a hangover or coming off from being high. It felt like that especially with the pounding headache and the sensitivity to the sun.
I rubbed my dirty hands on my jeans, not caring if I got them dirty and not caring if anyone saw me in them. They were ruined anyway from the blood and dirt stains. I looked around the kitchen, wondering why my eyes were hurting from the sun.
Why would my eyes be hurting from the sun? The only connection I made was that it had something to do with my headache. I ran around the counter to the large window above the sink and slid the curtains back into place, blocking the light from coming back in.
Ah, that felt better. Too better. It was like I was a vampire or something. One touch and the sun would kill. I laughed that insane notion off right away. Vampires. Our world was fascinated by the undead. Twilight, Vampire Academy, etc. So many books and movies.
I shoved the dirty plates into the sink and walked out back into the living room, careful to avoid the sunny parts. I must be crazy, I thought. That would be it. There was no way I could survive a broken neck and then wake up as if everything had been a freaky dream thing.
"Hello," a girlish, sugary sweet voice said to me. It was Elena. I recongized the voice as Elena's. I spun around, glad to see a familiar face. She was lounging on the couch with a dark red wine cup in her hand.
"Elena! Where you have you been?"
She scoffed. "I'm not Elena. My name is Katherine Pierce."
My mouth fell open. Did Elena have a secret twin she never told me about? Because if she did, that girl would have serious explaining to do. I gaped at her. They really could be twins. They had the same length of hair, same lips, ears, everything.
"How do you two look exactly alike?" I asked, voicing the next obvious question.
"We're dopplegangers. She's related to me, blah blah blah it's a long story." She sounded almost bored telling me all of this.
"Who are you?" She asked, and I knew that her interest in me was real. She sat up and stared intently at me. I swallowed from her penetrating gaze.
"Casey Anderson," I said, looking down at the ground. Maybe she could help me figure out what the hell was going on.
"I know who you are," she said. "You have a bitchy sister, Adrienne, a jocky jock brother Trey and no father but a rea winner of a mother?" I nodded. That about summed it up.
"How do you know all that?"
"Because I know people around here. I should, anyway. I was here right after it was founded."
"You mean back in 1864?" Were we both suffering from some mental condition? This woman would have to be around a hundred and forty five years old! And she looked no older than seventeen.
"That was when the town was founded, right?" She asked, as if stupid old me should know this. "I was here during the battle and escaped from it after being caught. Long story", she added.
I settled on a seat across from her and savored the soft feeling of the soft leather. The couch and the whole house told me that someone had money and lots of it. It looked like it could store about twenty people for months without a problem.
"Why do I feel so thirsty?" I asked, swallowing hard. It felt like I hadn't had a square drink in weeks. Almost as if I had been out in the desert and had been deprived of water.
"Because you're going through the change," she replied.
"The change?" I repeated dumbly
She nodded. "Yup. Where you go out and feed on some poor unfortunate soul and then you're a bad ass vampire." She smiled at the last few sentences.
I gaped at her. Okay, I now knew she was insane. She could not be a vampire. I could not be a vampire and I knew I needed to get the hell out of this house. I jumped up from my seat and began marching my way towards the front door, determined to be anywhere but there.
"Just come sit down and listen," Katherine sighed like she was talking to an immature brat.
"Who changed me?" I asked, after a moments hesitation. "Who did this to me?"
Katherine smirked. "Damon. Idiot. Weeks without human blood and this kind of thing can happen."
I gaped at her, my mouth hanging open so far I could feel spit start to come out. I closed it and wiped the spit off. She was staring at me as if all of this made perfect sense to her and I was being slow on the uptake.
"He said I was dying," I remembered.
Her laugh was like that of a wind chime-only darker and more piercing. She fixed me with her gaze and wouldn't let me go. She shook her head at me as if to tell me how incredibly stupid I was to believe that story.
"Is that the story? Vampires kill for a few reasons: 1. For love. 2. Out of boredom. 3. For the hell of it. Damon, knowing him as I know him, did two and three. No way in hell he did it for love."
"Why do I feel so thirsty?" I asked again.
"You need blood. And nothing will satisfy that until you get some."
She got up, extending her hand towards me. I grasped it and she easily yanked me up. She inspected me up and down. "Well, first things first is that you need one of these." She held up a dark blue bauble that was on her finger.
"The Lapsis Luzuli ring. It protects you from getting fryed like a fry."
"How do you get those?"
"From a witch. I had Emily Bennett make me one ages ago. She was useful. Shame that she isn't around anymore."
"Who can make me one now?"
She picked a piece of lint off her shirt. "Any witch with any ring. Bonnie Bennett is one and Lucy Bennett. Descendant of Bonnie," she added seeing my questioning look. "The problem is finding someone who would actually do that, though. Not many witches find associating with a vampire to be at the top of their to do list."
"I wonder why," I remarked dryly. A spark suddenly seemed to show up in her eyes. She held up a finger to stop me from speaking.
"Wait here. Be back in oh...ten minutes." Before I could say anything, she had run out the door and left me. I walked around, finding the huge library to be of great interest. The owners of this house obviously had a love of books.
The books covered nearly every topic there was to cover and most of the books looked as if they were hundreds of years old. I turned one book over in my hands, examining the faded and dusty leathering of an Italian book. The book was in Italian so I couldn't read or translate it.
One book in particular caught my interest. It was bound in brown leather and looked to be a couple hundred years old. It was squished in between the other books as if it didn't mean anything. I picked it up and flipped it over so the title was staring up at me:
Petrova
Petrova? My eyebrows shot up to the top of my forehead. That name sounded so familiar to me but at the same time it didn't. It was like I had heard it in a past life or had heard it once before and had lost the memory of it.
I didn't have time to ponder the thought before the front door slammed open. I hastily put the book back and turned around. Katherine had come back with a grungy looking human. He was about twenty and looked like the slums kind of kid.
She whispered something in his ear, looking directly at me as she spoke. When she drew back, he walked foreword as if he was in a trance. I stood frozen. My whole body stood frozen, like an ice statue.
I could feel the Power on the verge of exploding from me. He reached foreword and took my hand. His dark, beautiful grey eyes looked up to my confused, dark green ones.
"It's okay. I'm not scared. Drink. Drink all you need." He then shifted so that his neck was right up next to my throat. I swallowed hard.
"Why?" I asked, Katherine.
"You need human blood. I compelled him to behave." Her tone of voice-the way she said it it was like human life held little to no interest or meaning to her. They were throwaways that were objects for her personal entertainment.
"I don't mind," the man said. "Puncture right here." He drew an imaginary point with his finger.
"I can't hurt you," I whispered, looking at him, hoping desperately that he would leave.
"Do it," he replied.
"You can't deny the bloodlust, Casey," Katherine whispered in my ear, sounding almost gleeful of what she was doing. And it was true. It was like teetering on the edge of a very dangerous cliff. I didn't want to hurt this man, no. But I also knew that it was the only way.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to see his face any more than I had to. It was bad enough, and in that moment, I hated Katherine for what she did. For dooming this man to his death, to essentially bring him to the lion's den.
I felt the Power come out of me, felt thin veins push out and cover my face. I felt my jaw and teeth harden as two fangs burst themselves out onto both sides of my mouth. I leaned foreword and, without hesitation, sank my teeth into his buttery thin skin.
The blood tasted pure and unaffected. It tasted like the finest whine you could possibly buy. A whine so rare that it was only made in a certain country. This man tasted like that. I wasn't sure if it was just of the fact that it was my first kill or not, but his blood was intoxicating.
I pulled back from him when I felt his body go limp in my arms. I turned to Katherine and she grinned at me. An approving smile on her lips. I felt like Katherine's pet toy that she coul wind up and use because I was so new to this life.
"Don't worry about it. I'll hide the body," she said, coming over and taking my burden from me. She hoisted it over her shoulder like a sack of potatos and began to march out the door. The kill had probably taken under a minute but it felt like it had been much longer than that.
"Katherine, what did I tell you?" A new voice came into the picture. My back was turned to it but it sounded annoyed and disapproving.
"Someone had to show her the ropes."
I recognized that voice. Damon. The man who had taken my life away from me on the guise that I was sick and dying of some fantasy illness. I took deep, calming breaths. I was perfectly aware that I could rip his throat out if I wanted to. Rip it out and shove it somewhere not too pretty. His voice was so full of swagger and had an air like none of this mattered or did matter but wasn't important enough to get too upset about.
I finally decided to turn around and face him. It was liking facing my worst nightmare. I was facing the person who had stolen my hopes and dreams and had turned me into every person's worst nightmare. He was dressed exactly as I remembered him in, leather on leather.
I gritted my teeth and took a step towards him. He extended his hand toward me as if he wanted to shake it. His ring. His blue ring set on his left hand on his index finger. How easy it would be to snatch that tacky thing and set it upon my finger.
"Hello, Casey," he said. "I believe I didn't get a chance to introduce myself properly the last time we met."
"You were too busy deciding the best way to kill me."
"You're right and you're wrong," he replied smoothly. I stared at him. How could he do that? How could he do those sexy-ish tricks with those eyes? Those blue eyes that any man would dream to have and every girl wishes she could find on a man.
"How am I wrong and right?" I challenged.
"The full story you already know," he replied. "Its a waste to tell it again."
"Tell me," I repeated. "Now."