Chapter One is here! By the way, if you're a newcomer to this story, and you don't want to read Valentine Manor, it doesn't really matter. You could probably read this and it will make complete since without reading it. So please do! And don't forget to review!
Disclaimer: MAE IS MINE. BACK OFF, BIOTCHES. Lol I don't own the rest though. Dang…
CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT: CHAPTER ONE
Sora's insides flamed with jealousy when Kairi explained the next Monday at school that a boy named Mae had rescued her from rape.
"He was like an angel! After he led me away, he just disappeared, as if I had imagined him!" She said, laughing.
Riku nudged Sora's knee under the table and gave him a knowing look.
Sora was already slightly angry with Kairi for not finding him at the party, but of course that wasn't her fault. But Sora blamed her, blindly. Especially after he heard about Mae.
Kairi's senior friend, Aerith, leaned into the table with a mischievous look on her face. "Was he hot?"
Sora's hand balled into a fist as he saw Kairi's face redden with embarrassment and she shrugged slowly. "Maybe…?" she drawled.
Sora stood up, Riku instinctively following suit.
"What's wrong, Sora? Jealous, much?" Aerith giggled, nudging Kairi with her elbow. Sora felt his face flare as he glared at her and quickly walked away.
Riku tugged on Sora's track jacket sleeve as soon as they were out of earshot. "She's not your girlfriend, you know. Maybe you should lighten up."
Sora turned to glare at him with blue furious eyes. Riku knew Sora's limits, and he definitely knew this look meant "shut up or die."
Riku shrugged and added, "I just don't want to see you tore up over some chick like Kairi."
Sora sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets and setting off to fourth hour without saying another word to his best friend.
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Sora lie, balled up in his twisted Power Ranger sheets on his bed, only the light of his alarm clock blaring the time, 8:30, through the darkness.
He wasn't asleep. He'd dosed off earlier, but had snapped back into reality and lay on his back, naked except for a pair of tattered boxers.
There was something about Kairi that kept his attention, made him want her. Sora knew good and well that he could get basically any girl at school (and outside of it, for that matter) that he wanted, but Kairi was the only one that caught his eye, made him think of things other girls didn't, like serious relationships.
But Kairi never seemed to return that attention. Sure, she'd flirted with him, but girls flirt with anything that breathes. It was the day before in Science, while dissecting a pig fetus, that they had really begun to talk.
"This is disgusting. Completely inhumane." Kairi muttered under her breath, grabbing the scalpel from beside Sora, who was slowly making the incision in his pig with a grimace.
"I'd hate to be these pigs." He commented, faking a vomit gesture as the contents of the pig's insides spilled onto his wax paper.
Kairi noticed how cute he looked while he made sarcastic faces, and smiled, but made sure he didn't see.
"You going to the party at Yvette's tonight?" Kairi asked, making conversation.
Sora shrugged one shoulder. "I dunno. I don't know anyone else that's going."
The teacher, Mr. Irvine, stood up, brushing his gloved hands on his slacks, and said, "Bell should ring any minute. Be sure to clean up correctly, we'll study the intestines tomorrow."
As the students gathered their things and washed their utensils, Kairi said to Sora, so that only he could hear, "Well, I'll be there."
Now in his bedroom, thinking back on this, he realized how simple of a suggestion it was, and how it had probably meant absolutely nothing to her. She was probably just being polite.
He ran a hand over his tight stomach, to where his hip bones met his waistband. He could think of a thousand reasons why Kairi might not like him. Maybe he was too skinny, too short, too obnoxious, too quiet, too flirty…and all this thinking made him feel even worse.
He rolled over and stared at the clock, watching the numbers turn to 8:31 and wondering why things hadn't turned out better. Things had been hard for him for a while, ever since his cousin, Cloud, had died.
He'd been pretty close to Cloud ever since he was little. They were two years apart, with Cloud being two years older, but had always stuck together, with each of them the only child in their family.
Sora had even loved his girlfriend, Tifa, and just knew they would get married and live a perfectly happy life together.
That was before the accident.
Apparently, Cloud had gone on vacation after he'd graduated with Tifa and several other friends into the mountains. Everything seemed fine, and there was no word of him for five or six days, before Cloud's mother told Sora's mother that there had been a car accident and Cloud and his friend, Squall, had been killed.
Sora was devastated. Not even Riku knew Sora like Cloud had. He was everything to him, made him feel alright when he knew he wasn't. And now he was gone.
He still felt lost and helpless without his cousin and best friend to fall back on. His mother told him that death happened, it was a part of life, and that he would have to move on. But moving on is even harder when everything else in life is going just as badly.
Although it was entirely too early for him, he put his head on his pillow and made a feeble attempt at sleep, willing himself to the land of dreams.
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It was night. Dark, velvet night, the kind of night when you can't see a foot in front of you. The kind of night that, although the air is not entirely cold, you feel as if your very bones are shivering.
Sora looked around himself, trying to peer ahead of him, behind him, to identify where he was. He could see nothing except deep, endless black, and hazy fog that lingered over and around him like disease.
He put his arms around himself, hugging for warmth, and tried to walk around a little. After several minutes of walking, nothing had changed. The ground underneath him was still flat and hard, and everything still looked completely pitch black and empty.
Sora began to panic. He ran in every direction possible, hands outstretched, waiting to crash into a wall, or to see something, anything.
Finally, he stopped, realizing that it was hopeless, breathing hard, watching his breath come out in puffs of white.
It was so deathly quiet that his ears rang. Never had he heard such silence, such silence that even his thoughts felt vulnerable.
And suddenly, breaking the silence, there were footsteps.
They were slow and irregular, as if the person was walking with a limp. Sora became very frightened, and his first thought was, "RUN!" but he could not figure out which direction the footsteps were coming from.
He decided to close his eyes and keep deathly still, so that perhaps he could wake from this vivid dream. Or if it wasn't a dream, the footsteps would pass and not harm him.
Minutes passed before the footsteps came to a halt. They had never grown louder, nor softer, so Sora's fear had stayed with him, taunting him. But suddenly the deafening silence filled the atmosphere once again, and Sora slowly and frightfully opened his eyes.
There, in the fog, not a foot in front of him, was Cloud. He looked just as he had last Christmas, the last time he had seen him. His hair was up in its golden spikes, and he wore the same leather jacket that he always did, the one with the huge tear in the shoulder that he had patched with a patch that said, "POSER".
He was even smiling at Sora, the same old good-looking smile that had been his trademark. But there was one very big difference. His eyes were pitch black.
When Sora noticed this, he cried out and stumbled back, but Cloud took a step forward, keeping silent.
Sora couldn't find his voice. What would he say to his dead cousin? What was left to say?
"There is too much blood, Sora."
Cloud's voice was different. It was deeper, it was more melancholy. It sounded as if he had spiderwebs clogging up his throat.
Sora tried to figure out what he meant, but couldn't possibly make sense of it.
"W-what?" he stuttered, his voice shaky.
Cloud's facial expression left him, and replaced itself with a deeply concerned look, the same look his mother might give if he had pneumonia.
"I only see blood when I look at you." He told him.
Sora shook his head and said, "I…I don't know what you mean."
Cloud reached out and grabbed Sora's wrist. His grip was like steel. Sora struggled, but found he could not get away.
"Timing, Sora! Timing is everything. We don't have enough time!" he cried, pulling Sora close to him and looking him straight in the eye with irises like black coal.
"I didn't have enough time. You don't have enough time. There's so much blood, Sora…"
A tear streamed hopelessly down Sora's face. "I…don't know what you're talking about! What are you trying to tell me?" he whimpered.
Cloud let go and backed away from his cousin, looking confused, as if he didn't remember where he was.
"There is so much blood…" He whispered, his voice carried away into the fog, as he backed away, into the velvet black, and disappeared.
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Sora woke up, drenched in sweat, panting as if he had just run a mile without stopping to breathe.
His head was pounding, and he reached over his nightstand to flip on the lightswitch. Fluorescent light filled the room, and Sora looked to his clock and saw that it was 6:45 am.
He shot up in his bed, thoughts of his terrible dream leaving him. "Shit! I'm late!" He muttered, jumping out of bed and grabbing some dirty jeans from the cluttered floor and tugging them on.
As he stood in the bathroom ten minutes later, spiking his unruly hair, he suddenly remembered what Cloud had said in the dream with those eyes like the nighttime; "There is too much blood, Sora."
Sora frowned. What did that mean, there was too much blood? And didn't he say something weird about timing?
Thinking it must have just been a meaningless nightmare, he pulled on a t-shirt and forgot all about it.
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It was the second week that Mae hadn't gone to school. He had very accurately managed to make his mother believe him to be deathly sick with the flu, and it wasn't hard for him to fake, either.
His world seemed to be turning in on itself from the inside. He was like an alien in his own home. Everything seemed foreign. When his mother would bring him lunch in on a tray, seeing her long, loose ponytail of white hair and watery blue eyes was like seeing a stranger.
His sister sensed it. She was only two years older than Mae, and had always been very close to him. She could see it in his eyes, that he was different, that he was doing something strange, and very bad. He knew she was onto him.
His father had left their mother when Mae was in the eighth grade. His father was always a very uptight man, and he spent a lot of time in his office, where Mae and his sister were not allowed to go. He thought the children were a burden that took up his work time. Eventually, Mae woke up one day and he was gone.
His mother had never remarried. She said one husband was enough to last a lifetime, and she'd much rather be married to herself. She was a free spirited woman, a Buddhist and a vegetarian, and saw the positive side in everything.
She still thought Mae was bound to get better any day now. But Mae knew good and well that he would never get better.
He lay on his bed sideways, with his long legs hanging off the end, feeling in a daze, a weak throb pulsing in his gums. He had learned to ignore the subtle pain, but eventually it would become unbearable and he would be forced to satisfy it.
His hands were twisting in the sheet beside him as he looked into the long mirror that was across from him on the wall. Nothing was reflected, and he was glad for that. It was as if he weren't ever there at all. He was glad he couldn't see his horrible reflection, and how much he was changed. He wouldn't know the man in his reflection. That man was so sickly thin and pale, and the ghostly hair hang limply in the eyes. The eyes that were the most frightening feature of all. The eyes like piercing blue eyes, with a thick ring of black encircling them.
"What am I?" he whispered to himself, touching the perfect face, the stunningly beautiful features.
Mae had been beautiful even before he had transformed. He had a strong jaw, thick lips, and those incredible oceanic eyes. He almost had a feminine quality, so that even straight men would stare at him with his angelic features. Truly, the transformation had made him even more beautiful, with his features becoming sharper and paler, and when he drank they lit up with godlike quality.
Mae wondered if it was his cursed looks that had attracted that cute female vampire to him in Spain. The night was a blur now, but he could remember the trip up until his siring very clearly.
His sister had always wanted to travel. As a child, she would sit with huge historical books propped open in her lap, fantasizing about the mystical world of Greece, the cultural country of Spain, the people of Japan.
They were not very wealthy, so every opportunity to travel was practically closed. With his sister, Athena's birthday nearing, he saved up enough money from his job at a fast food joint to fly them both to Spain for the weekend.
Little did he know that that trip would ruin his life forever.
The trip went well, and when Athena suggested that she wanted to go to the club, naturally, Mae had agreed, even though clubs weren't really his speed. He went without thinking, and when she danced off with some Spanish man, he didn't think to follow her.
And Yuffie was so sweet, so cute, so like him. He barely had time to think anything sexual towards her before she had returned the favor, drank from him, and left him unconscious in the alley.
The details after that grew fuzzy. He woke up in the Spanish hospital, feeling positively dreadful, and extremely confused. Athena was beside him, holding his hand with tight fingers, explaining to him that he had been mugged and was found in an alleyway.
"I was so worried. I'm so glad you're okay. " Athena had whispering, not realizing that her brother was not okay, not nearly.
He transformed the next night, back in New Orleans. He had no idea what was happening to him, and thank whatever gods watched him that he was home alone when it happened. He thought he was dying, having a stroke or a heart attack, never remembering once what the girl had done to him in the alley.
When he felt his mouth after the throbbing had subsided, he felt the fangs. Alarmed and surprised, he screamed and ran for the bathroom. Where he discovered he had no reflection.
He didn't tell anyone because he figured he was going mad. He rented all sorts of movies and read all the vampire books he could get his hands on. All had different theories and traits of a vampire, and it was never clear whether he truly was one or not until he felt the bloodlust.
That was when he had killed that girl in the park.
And now, two days later, her blood was no longer coursing through his veins and he was growing thirstier by the second. He imagined pale throats in his head, plump breasts and tight stomachs, fantasizing about ripping the flesh and lapping up spicy, New Orleans blood.
Athena entered his bedroom, and at this he switched off his lamp so that she could not see how deathly ill he looked.
His sister had the same long, baby fine blond hair, that she wore in a braid that reached her waist. She was the spitting image of her mother, but the expression she wore on her face was much different. It was concerned, it was almost…accusing.
She sighed as she came in and sat beside him on the edge of the bed. She looked back at him as she studied his pathetic condition, with his sweatpants hanging from his hips and his chest gleaming ghostly white in the dim room.
"I'm worried about you." She said softly, looking away from him. Mae said nothing. There was nothing to say.
"Something's changed in you, something bad, and I don't understand why you won't tell me." Mae saw for the first time that there were tears in her eyes. He tried with difficulty not to look at the ashen cheeks and imagine the warm blood coursing through them. To stop himself, again he said nothing.
"I don't think you're sick, Mae. You don't act sick. You act as if you're dying inside, and you won't tell me a thing!" Athena exclaimed, her voice shaky.
"I've got the flu, Athena. I just don't feel well." Mae croaked, his voice not supporting his statement.
"You aren't the same brother anymore. You're someone else." She said, and left the room, slamming the door behind her.
And she didn't realize then, how right she was.
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Please read and review! Next chapter should be up soon, I've got it planned out and whatnot. Yay!
Mel