I still don't own jack... er, I mean, MATT and all the other Digifolk. Doesn't that just blow?

Thanks for the reiews, InfynitiStar and DigiFrontier!


CHAPTER SEVEN- Matt's P.O.V

Breakfast (more eggs) was dull as ever. Like I cared much. We'd just been riled up quite well. When Cherry dragged Tai into the woods, Agumon completely lost it. Palmon had to wrap him up quite nicely with vines before we could talk him into a calmer state. In the ruckus, that other new girl- Kendra- she vanished. Everybody else said she was going off to find a nice lavatory bush… I wasn't so sure.

After half an hour, I was starting to wonder- no, WORRY about Tai. He was so adamant. His claims that Cherry and Kendra were vampire were ridiculous… but when I thought about it a little more, Myotismon was a real vampire, and English Digidestined don't grow on trees. They had appeared too suddenly after my… attack. Too suddenly for this be a coincidence.

Did I mention that my wounds were healing three times faster than Joe and Izzy said they would?

By the time we were done with our fish breakfast, it had been nearly an hour. Now I was really worried. But I didn't say my fears out loud to anybody. Not even Gabumon, who asked me several times what I was thinking. The sun was climbing high into the sky, but it was masked by clouds, which kept getting darker and darker… I knew it was going to rain, but in the meantime, the sun wasn't going to shine on us.

No sunshine… I hadn't seen the sun since I was attacked. I was starting to miss it...

"Oh my GOD!" I heard Mimi screech, followed by a horrified squeal from T.K. I looked up from my dismal thoughts and completely froze in mortified horror.

It was Kendra, carrying the limp and bloody form of Tai. He wasn't nearly as cut up as I had been, but he was three times as bruised. His face was turned away from me, and I wasn't sure I could have kept my lunch in if I saw it. There was a splash of blood running across Kendra's face, and that was all I needed to see to form my judgment.

That murderous, subhuman, undead, cannibalistic BITCH.

I nearly screamed from the onslaught of emotions, but I swallowed it down. Tai was right about her. She hurt him. She might have killed him. How dare she. How DARE she. And here she was, waltzing up to us, looking as innocent as pie. I would have given my legs to punch her. Of course, after taking one slow step forward and falling to the ground, I realized that I would indeed do so.

The instant I fell over, there was a crack of lightening and the rain began to fall. The world was so dark.

"What happened to him!" T.K demanded.

"Was it a Digimon?" Izzy demanded, pulling out his laptop.

"Is he alive?!" Mimi squeaked.

"Mmmph!" Agumon whimpered (they had put another muzzle on him) as he tried to break out of his greenery bonds.

"You bitch!" I screamed out over the babble of the others. They all fell silent. Their shadowed faces all turned towards me. I glared at Kendra, who's eyes were so easy to see that I was certain they glowed. I choked slightly as I sat up. "You really are a vampire! He was right! Why did you do that to him, huh?!" At that point, I stopped paying attention to my words. They just tumbled out freely and spitefully. Sentence structure? Completely forgone. I just wanted to see the looks on her face.

It took a few minutes for me to ramble myself to silence. I can't believe I had exploded like that. My friends had all shrunk away from me and were now staring at me with wide eyes. Kendra looked freakishly neutral. Didn't she care about what I just said?

"Well?"

Kendra looked me over, her lips pursing slightly, ever so slightly. Then her cheeks tinted slightly pink (visible under her makeup) and her lips pursed even more. Her eyes narrowed and became slightly shiny. I thought she was about to explode with rage.

But she only started laughing. "You're crazy too! Vampire's do not exist."

"Than you're not real." She ceased not to laugh joyously and exclaim that I was being a fool, that I needed to stop before I made myself out to be crazy. Izzy and Joe quickly liberated Tai from her arms, laying his limp form on the ground. I batted my eyes against a raindrop that fell on my upper cheek, effectively hiding an enraged tear. Now she was making fun of me.

"You shut up! Why did you hurt him?!"

"I didn't," Kendra giggled.

There was a snapping noise as Agumon's muzzle broke. "Pepper breath!" A fireball twice the size of my head went careening toward the pink teen, who didn't see it in time to duck. Mimi and Sora shrieked in shock as the flames hit their target. Kendra's fanged lips parted as she screamed in pain, her hair and shirt bursting aflame. Now her folded wings were exposed as well, currently nothing more than little black folds of skin and bone, but quite visible. "Gotcha!" Agumon snarled. The screaming vampire thrust her face into a forming puddle, letting her hair fall in it and extinguish itself. T.K, who was nearest to the puddle, hopped a foot away and squeaked in terror.

I shakily heaved myself back onto my feet, feeling a bit less pain than I expected. Mimi's brown gloved hand lurched forward and held mine to help me steady myself. I smirked. She believed me now.

Kendra pulled her face from the mud, her red slit eyes focusing on my blue ones coldly. Her arms folded over her burnt and exposed chest as she stood up- not using any muscles, just floating up into the upright position. Just like the vampire movies. T.K leaned against me, and I rested a hand on my brother's teal helmet in a supportive manner. "I thought vampires weren't real," I spat at the angry Digimon.

"If vampires aren't real, you'll be figment of our imagination in three days," Kendra snarled, fangs bared.

… What? I froze completely. If vampires are real and I'll be figment of her imagination in three days, doesn't that mean…

I looked down at one of the cuts that had been on my arm, and stared at it. There was little left of it but a scar. No wonder I had been healing so quickly.

This monster in front of me had stolen my soul and was beginning to warp my body.

"Matt?" Sora whispered. "You're not really turning into a vampire… right?" Her chocolaty eyes gazed at me with disbelief, as if pleading to hear that Kendra was lying.

"I don't know," I mumbled.

"You can't blame me for everything," Kendra snapped. "This whole thing was Cherry's idea, and by the way, we don't mean any harm. She's the one that mauled Tai, and I stopped her! She didn't even do it on purpose! She was just angry…" Her voice softened, as did her red eyes, which were now glazed with red. "We just want you to trust us."

I wouldn't buy that for a second. "You're trying to kill us!" I yelled. Agumon fired more of his pepper breath at her, and his attack was joined by all the other Digimon's attacks. The vampire Digimon leapt into the air, evading them all at once, and she flew away. Her flight was slightly wobbly.

We watched her retreat into the black rain. The very second she was gone from our vision, I fell to my knees and choked back a sob. She had showed up out of nowhere, acting so nice, and she turned out to be a monster. A monster that was trying to make me one. And Tai…

I crawled towards Tai, intent on seeing how badly injured he was, but I found my legs being pinned to the ground. I whirled around and stared into the anxious eyes of the other Digidestined. Mimi was holding my ankles still, batting her huge eyelashes against the splashes of rain and the tears that were making her nose turn red. "Don't you touch him. He's all bloody, and you'll be DRINKING blood soon enough."

"Are you suggesting that I'm going to hurt Tai?!" I demanded, trying to kick my legs free. Joe, his glasses fogged from the humidity, leapt forward and held my right hand to the ground, while faithful Gomamon snared my left. "Guys, I'm not a vampire yet! I won't hurt him! I won't hurt any of you! I just want to see if he's okay!" I turned my pleading blue eyes to Gabumon, who looked completely torn.

"We have to tie him up," Mimi sniffed, swaying her pink hair as drops of water fell gracefully from it. As if I wasn't there.

"Mimi," I whimpered. I felt so… defeated. It hurt to see so much distrust in her eyes. But the same cold sadness was in the eyes of everyone else as well. I realized it was bad, that I could even smell their sadness now.

It was inevitable. They were going to tie me up. I let them. I closed my eyes and cried and let them tie me to a tree. They had the decency to give the choice between standing and sitting, but that didn't make the ropes any more comfortable. Gabumon sat against my feet, leaning on me, saying nothing but offering me slight comfort by his presence. I was glad that he wasn't as afraid of me as the others. But it still stung that he was afraid of me.

As if that wasn't bad enough, my old friends did the worst thing to me that they had ever done. In all my years facing abuse and depression on earth, through all the battles in the Digital World, through thick and thin, they had always been nicer than this. But not now. Now that I was tied to a tree, you'd think they would do no worse to me. But they did.

They refused to tell me if Tai was okay.