The first thing he heard was chanting. Breathless and frightened, the words had all strung together so that it took a moment to understand what she was saying.

"I'mnotafraidtodie. I'mnotafraidtodie. I'mnotafraidtodie."

Blood coated the air. All at once his senses were engorged with the smell of the sweet substance, virgin and terrified to the point of believing that she was truly entering the last few moments of her life. As the world grew less foggy and the memory came into full view, Dwayne realized that something was wrong. Normally when he entered a human's mind, he saw things from the third person perspective. Never interfering or becoming involved in any way. This time however, he felt himself get pulled directly into the memory. The cave around them disappeared and was replaced by brown carpeting, faintly smelling of mold, fried meat and something else the vampire couldn't identify. The rocky walls and ledges, posters and graffiti melted into tan drywall, a gray sofa, two burgundy lazy boys and a flickering bulb that couldn't seem to hold light for more than a few minutes at a time.

For the first time in years, the vampire let out a shudder of fear. Something was definitely wrong. He'd never entered a human's mind so completely as to be thrown directly into their memories of the past. The floor creaked beneath his weight and again, Dwayne couldn't help but feel the icy sting of fear in his heart. It was an emotion so repressed that he'd forgotten how real it came a situation seem. How suddenly it can strip one of their power and remind them of all their sins. But this…

It was unreal. How could he affect anything in her mind? Had her consciousness deteriorated to the point of allowing him access and the ability to change her thoughts? Or had he somehow discovered the secret on his own? While the latter brought him a sudden thrill of triumph, deeper down he knew it wasn't so easy as that. One didn't just spontaneously learn these things. They had to be taught by a vampire who knew the secret or was gifted naturally with the ability.

And the reason he knew this was for the simple fact… he had no idea how to escape.

The world was too real. His presence too sure of itself in its surroundings as he took a couple of noisy steps, wincing with each creak as he followed the sound of the chanting, the smell of blood.

One thing had not changed and for that he could only thank the Devil.

He was still a vampire.

"I'mnotafraidtodieI'mnotafraidtodieI'mnotafraidtodie…."

The voice was becoming hysterical as it cracked and broke every so often with sobs. The house in itself was seemingly small. A living room with a hallway that led to two bedrooms and a bathroom. All the while, blood seemed to coat its scent in everything he came upon and touched. It was in the carpet in footprints, the walls with finger smudges and nail bites that indicated some kind of struggle to walk. Droplets had formed in strange slick patterns that pooled in the cracks of the linoleum bathroom floor. And finally reaching the source, a third shudder tickled its way up the vampire's back.

Though this one wasn't from fear.

The water was red.

It was red because I couldn't stop the blood from leaving my body, no matter how cold or hot I made the water, testing both theories until I finally had succumbed to the fact that I was probably going to bleed to death and die this very night.

Everything had happened so quickly.

I was upstairs, flipping through basic cable whilst cursing my existence-the same thing I do every night-when he came through the door. There was blood on his face, leaking from his eyes and nose and ears, any orphic it could reach which was likely due to the enormous crack that was in his skull. My body shudder, falling in shock as I watched him fall to his knees.

"Dad!"

"Go, she's coming…." the words were gargled with blood but I already knew what he meant.

Mom.

She'd had a string of freak-outs and bad nights over the past few months. The doctors claimed she was psychotic, pleaded with my father to send her in as an in-patient at several different hospitals in the state. But the fact that she hadn't seriously injured anyone nor herself had given no one, not even my father probable cause to lock her away.

During these times, her eyes would get dark and unblinking. She would mumble sentences to you under her breath and have tea with invisible people that she claimed were watching each and every movement we made. My father would try to calm her. Talk her down from her delirium and I would help as best I could. But being fifteen and torn between loving and fearing my mother, I grasped to any scrap of positive attention I was fed from her.

And in the end, it had left me scarred.

She'd come through the doorway only moments after. My heart was beating wildly and my mind was racing for what I should have been doing. But fear has a funny way of paralyzing reason. Leaving a person stranded on an island within their mind where everything happens in slow motion for a few moments. At least until the pain begins to sink in.

She'd walked right up to me without hesitation. The blade was partially hidden in her hand though I managed to see a glint of silver shoot out moments before it struck my chest.

"You little bitch…" she hissed under her breath. "How many of them know you're alive?"

The words make as much sense to me now as they did to me then. My mind struggled to wrap itself around what it was hearing when the first puncture ripped through my clothes and my body. The knife was dull or… dull enough. Red images began to pass before my eyes. My mom and I taking walks, trying to cope with the way she saw the world as cluttered with these invisible monsters and unknowing souls. She'd had good days. And strangely, that's all I could remember as the blade peeled downwards, slicing open my chest, my stomach.

Have you ever heard the sound of towels being ripped in half?

My breath caught. I was choking and trying to breathe. Trying to hyperventilate so that maybe I could pass out and be spared the rest of her excursion on my flesh. Strangely however, she tore off of me the moment the cut passed over my naval.

"I WANT TO KNOW HOW MANY OF YOU ARE IN HER!" she wailed at the top of her lungs.

All at once, a shadow overtook her body and my father was on top of her, attempting to drag her down. She screamed in rage and attempted to throw him off, lunging again with the knife. The blade caught and unfortunately, the dullness of it wasn't enough to shield the tip from penetrating his throat. There was a gasp from deep in his body and the gurgles continued to grow deeper and more profane as the moments and blood drained away. Suddenly… there was deep sigh.

His body collapsed and drowned.

The wound began to burn as I clutched at my chest, trying to hold myself together and fearing to look down and see the damage. I had caught sight of bone and stomach fluid leaking out, causing me to retch and feel dizzy enough to pass out.

My father's sudden lack of moment seemed to snap my mother to her senses. All at once she was quiet, stoic, taking in the scene around her with practiced calm. The knife in her hands was dropped and before the world around me grew black, I could hear the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor.

He felt her. In every sense of the word, he could feel this girl as she lie shivering in the tub though the water itself was hot. The flow of blood had turned the water completely red, masking her pale body just enough so that teasing peaks of her nipples and chest were given with every shuddering sigh. He could also see the wound, bright pink with red spilling out, indecipherable from water at this point. But he could smell it's freshness leaking from every pore in her body.

He'd visited scenes like this in his fantasies. Had even created some himself and left the others to wonder at his weird fetishes and feeding habits. Not like any of them could speak up-David with his need for torturing female companions, Paul and his pot-smoking, blood orgies and Marko… well, there were no words to describe what that one could do to the human body.

Dwayne considered himself the most sedate of all the boys in his midnight cravings, but this…

It was too good to be true and too horrifying not to be.

The chanting and sobs continued for a moment longer before the hairs on her body stood straight up and his presence was felt in the back of her mind.

Green eyes opened and glanced in his direction. They were glazed and fear-stricken, seemingly unable to take him in for a few good moments before she flinched in disbelief.

"I'm not seeing this…are you associated with her?" her voice was hoarse from the chanting but unmistakable in it's delusion.

She was torn. So much blood had been lost it was hard to concentrate. Hard not to believe that what she was seeing was perhaps and illusion, brought on by death. She was literally going out of her mind.

"Her who?" Dwayne asked softly, stepping more fully toward the tub and causing her to shy away. A part of her didn't want to believe he was real for the simple fact that it was rather… embarrassing to be found by an extremely hot guy while you're naked and bleeding to death in a bathtub.

All this he could read from the forefront of her mind. It was so open, so hysterical with images that it couldn't seem to process that it had literally torn down the walls that would normally be blocking him out. Either that, or it was just another side-effect of being so deep inside her mind. Dwayne had to constantly remind himself that this wasn't real. What he was seeing was all inside of Nola… but honest to Christ. If the girl's past truly was like this, it was easy to see why she sought out the relief of drugs and Paul's mind-numbing company.

The question made her uneasy. The answer was simple… her mother. Blood was thicker than the water she sat dying in. She didn't know how to respond, how to describe anything that had taken place or the fact that they should have seen this coming a dozen times over.

Tears began to stream down. Clear little droplets of pain that made him ache inside to taste them. Tears were a delicacy amongst his kind and to either kiss or lick them away was done with the utmost pleasure in their suffering.

He drew closer, watching as her body trembled and pulled further away. Not that she had far to go before reaching the edge of the tub but with each frightened movement she revealed more and more of that deliciously young, wounded body.

Outwardly, Dwayne was no older than eighteen. Maybe nineteen at best. He honestly didn't remember what his human age had been for the simple fact that he had been a man far longer than the average teenager today. A boy had to grow up fast in his era and so it was that he held himself back just enough to stare into those frightened green eyes and soak in everything that the girl was.

Different than the Nola he knew now, there were definite similarities that still remained.

Striking, white hair that poured down her shoulders and over her face, stained with blood in some area's but still with it's dignity as it clung to her cheeks and lips in almost a sensual kind of way. She was definitely more full and healthy back then. The fullness of her body, the tan flesh contrasting so brilliantly with the blood was something Dwayne couldn't take his eyes away from. She had been human until this night.

Human until the knife had made it's first puncture into her chest and ultimately, her soul.

"L-look, you better go… she'll be back in, any moment now," she whispered, like they were sharing a secret.

Dwayne stared more intently into her eyes, reading every feeling, every thought that happened behind those curtains of emerald green. Those hadn't changed either. Fearful, untrusting, a person trying to avoid reality in any way possible at this point, even if it means talking with strange, pale men that happened to enter your bathroom.

"Your mother?" he whispered back, reaching out and ignoring her protests as he took her face in his hands. There was no breaking free from his grasp, no tearing her eyes away from his own, stark, beautifully cruel gaze.

Her lips were pale and trembling. They were almost blue from the chill that had taken over her body, the lack of blood to keep her warm. More tears leaked down, wetting his hands with their stinging warmth, as her voice cracked through the air.

"She's out back… burying him in the yard."