I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that if I did not look at what I was about to drink, I would not have to think about it. But as always, my efforts were futile. I trembled, imagining the crimson liquid pouring down my throat. The more I thought about it, the harder I tried to fight back. Cool, unrelenting hands held me down, pinning my arms and legs as I thrashed and kicked.
“Hush, Stefan,” someone murmured. “It will all be over in a moment.” I pressed my eyes shut even tighter and clenched my hands into fists, stiffening my spine. I tried to sit completely still, focusing on that action alone so that I would not think of what was about to be done to me.
“Very good, Stefan,” another voice whispered somewhat sarcastically, and I heard the familiar sound of liquid sloshing in a glass as it was lifted to my lips. I refused to move a single muscle, knowing that if I did I would try to fight again. I heard a sigh as someone tilted my chin back for me gently. I whimpered as I felt the rim of the glass against my mouth, and then the liquid was being poured down my throat.
At first I gulped greedily, thinking only of my burning thirst. The blood soothed my raw, itching throat as I swallowed. But the euphoria could only last so long. After the first few mouthfuls were down, I remembered what I was drinking. I choked on the blood, gagging and trying to spit it out. I needed it, my throat burned for it, but I couldn’t force myself to swallow it down.
Hands were upon my shoulders and face once more, holding me back and supporting my chin, forcing me to drink the blood or suffocate. A trickle of blood made its way down from the corner of my mouth, and I whimpered again when I felt the blood on my face. I heard another sigh, but gentle hands wiped the liquid off for me. A few painful swallows later, the glass was finally pulled away from my lips.
As soon as the glass was gone, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes slowly. Two pairs of eyes stared back at me. Eliza’s stared at me scornfully, her lips curling in a smirk. Her mate Leon watched me indifferently, his eyes dull and his face devoid of expression as usual. They both turned away when we heard footsteps approaching, hurriedly busying themselves with other tasks.
My sister Annabelle appeared at my side a moment later. Her hair, black as charcoal and perfectly straight, fell down her back and over her forehead in long tresses. Her eyes were wide and the irises were iridescent purple, the color of the sky the moment before the sun rises.
When I looked at her, I did not immediately see my identical twin. I saw a face that was completely different from my own: the cold, unyielding mask of a leader. She led our coven, and she placed her responsibilities as such above anything else.
When I blinked, however, the mask was gone, and I could once again see the kindness in her eyes. Ironically, our eyes were what set us apart. We had identical builds and hair, though mine was cropped much shorter than hers, but my irises were the deep violet of a sunset sky.
At the moment, her eyes shone with a mixture of concern and disgust, both of which she was trying desperately to hide. I told myself not to be offended by either emotion, reminding myself that she was simply bothered by the sharp scent of the bleach she had to dip her hands in to remove the smell of blood. I shuddered at the thought of blood and quickly tried to focus on something else.
“Anna, where is Anton?” I asked.
Her brow furrowed in response. “I don’t know. He should have returned from–”
She broke off abruptly, but I knew what she had been about to say. He should have returned from his hunt. By now, the sun was close to rising. He had had enough time to feed to his content and be well on his way back home hours ago.
“He will return soon,” I said quickly, trying to simultaneously reassure her and take my mind off the fresh reminder of blood.
Annabelle nodded quickly and turned away, pacing around the perimeter of the room and wringing her hands, her brow still creased with concern.
Anton was our oldest friend. He had short blond hair so pale it was hardly distinguishable from his pure white skin, and his irises were the glacial blue of ice. He spoke with a Russian accent, and occasionally we would hear him speaking to himself in his native language, but he had never revealed anything about his human past.
He was shorter than Annabelle and I, but he was thin and more muscular than he appeared. I remembered all too well the sight of him ripping out the throat of an enemy vampire with his teeth, bodies strewn on the frozen ground around him. Venom seeped into the snow, sizzling as it burned its way through the grass beneath the coating of ice that the dead vampires lay on, limbs torn from torsos that had been mangled beyond recognition.
That was the first memory I had of him, and after making a military alliance, our friendship quickly grew until he rose to the position of Annabelle’s lieutenant. He was her second-in-command, and above all, he was my closest and practically my only friend.
The other members of our coven were nomads, a pair that had traveled together for some time before they joined our group, recognizing the benefits of having a large coven as well as any other drifter.
Leon, the male, was taller than all of us and, although he was thin and hardly more muscular than me, he could move like lightning. His hair was long and dark, always pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and his eyes were dull brown and never seemed to show signs of either emotion or intelligence. He preferred to let his mate Eliza speak for the two of them, hardly ever leaving her side. He spoke only when he had something very important to say, and even then his sentences were usually monosyllabic.
Eliza was my least favorite member of our coven. Her hair fell nearly to her waist in tight red corkscrew curls and her eyes glowed like a cat’s, bright green and serious when they weren’t focused on me. In that case they would almost always be disdainful.
“Stefan,” she began now, her tone promising nothing but pure mortification. With one swift glare, Annabelle silenced her. I was grateful that she had spared me from Eliza’s taunts, but I was humiliated nonetheless.
Despite Annabelle and Anton’s reassurances that my phobia was not to be helped and certainly not my fault, I knew what they all thought of me. I was a freak among vampires, and a danger to the entire coven. I was a hindrance, in need of constant care to survive. I was an invalid in the most ironic sense, crippled by my phobia of the sustenance I needed to live.
Hemophobia. It was the medical term for my fear, and by now the word rolled off my tongue easily. When that single word was uttered, it was laced with a myriad of implications that triggered a rush of memories.
I saw my limbs flailing as Annabelle held me down and poured blood down my throat, barely able to keep me pinned. That had become much easier once Anton joined us, and it was hardly a chore with Eliza and Leon helping as well.
I saw the bright red stream, rushing from the glass in a miniscule waterfall that caused me pain whether I was drinking it or not. The mere sight of blood forced me to close my eyes and turn away. The scent of it had me covering my airways and whirling for an escape route. The taste soothed my thirst, but it caused my throat to burn with fresh pain.
I was the reason we had so few allies. Our alliance with Eliza and Leon was one of convenience, and our friendship with Anton had been nothing short of a miracle. Other members of our race avoided us at all costs for fear that they would catch my disease. It was not contagious, but a handicap I was born into this new life with, one that I must endure for eternity.
My brooding was interrupted suddenly as the door flew open and slammed into the opposite wall, Anton rushing through it and reeking of fresh blood. He was shouting unintelligible phrases, mixing English and Russian swear words as he ran. I instinctively turned away, drawing in as much uncontaminated air as I could before pinching my nose shut and covering my mouth. I began to edge away from him, toward the open doorway on the other side of the room, but he shouted for us to stay where we were.
“We must decide, and quickly,” he said, his eyes darting from side to side as he spoke, as if he were expecting an attack at any moment. He glanced toward the sole window in the room, which had boards nailed over it, and let a few more incoherent Russian words slip through his clenched teeth.
“Decide what?” Annabelle asked in a crisp tone, approaching him swiftly, and he stared at her with unconcealed apprehension.
“Another coven is moving this way,” he explained, steadying himself with a deep breath before speaking again. “Their numbers stand somewhere from ten to fifteen.”
Eliza’s head snapped up upon hearing this, and even Leon’s eyes sparked with interest.
“Impossible,” Annabelle breathed. Indeed, such an enormous number of vampires peacefully assembled in one area was unheard of. They were as liable to turn on us as they were on each other, if they had not done so yet.
They must have been moving swiftly, stopping only to feed before continuing on their journey, leaving little time to war for dominance over to group. But it was clear what they wanted. We lived on a prime feeding ground, one that we had fought for once before. It was only natural to assume that this coven wanted possession of our land.
And once they had it, they would fight each other until there was a victor left standing, ready to settle into the position of leader of whatever members of his coven were left alive.
“We must choose now,” Anton repeated. “We can run, or we can stand our ground and fight.”
“Fight?” Eliza hissed incredulously. “Anton, have you lost your mind? The four of us against fifteen opponents? It’s madness!”
It was true. As difficult as it was to grasp the idea of the sheer number of vampires in the approaching coven, there was no doubt in my mind that we would not stand a chance against them. Six of them could be eradicated without difficulty. Eight might prove challenging, but we had a fair chance of victory. But fifteen? They would destroy us.
“There are five of us, Eliza,” Annabelle snapped without turning. “You would do well to remember that.”
Eliza ignored the warning in my sister’s tone. “He is incapable of holding his own against a vial of blood, Annabelle!” She jabbed a clawed finger in my direction, not bothering to look at me. “You expect him to stand his ground against fifteen of our kind?”
At the mention of blood, my throat seized up. Suddenly, I could not tear my gaze away from the ruby droplets that stained Anton’s shirt and ringed his lips. He had evidently been interrupted in the middle of feeding, and had most likely been evading his pursuers all this time.
“I do,” Annabelle answered, and when she turned, her eyes were ablaze with fury. “This is our land. My land. I will not allow them to take it from us. I fought for this feeding ground once before, and I will fight for it now. What say you?” She swept the room with her eyes, letting her gaze linger on each of us in turn. “Do we run? Or do we stand and fight for that which is rightfully ours?”
Leon was the first to reply. “Fight,” he said, standing and clenching his hands into fists. Eliza stared at him disbelievingly, while Anton took a step forward.
“We fight,” he said, nodding. After a long moment of contemplation, Eliza jerked her head in an affirmative motion, never moving her gaze from Leon’s face. The two of them seemed to be having a silent argument.
I finally tore my gaze away from the blood on Anton’s shirt and gathered enough strength to run from the room, keeping my nose and mouth covered. Just before I was out of earshot, I heard the words that Annabelle echoed, in a tone that left no room for arguments or questions.
“We fight.”

_______________________________________________________________

When Anton came to find me, he was dressed in a fresh shirt and his mouth was wiped clean, though I still shuddered at the memory of the blood drying on his lips and chin. He knelt on the floor near the corner in which I sat, studying me silently.
Finally I cracked under the pressure of his icy gaze. “How long do we have until…until the others arrive?” I asked, my voice hoarse with the effort of forcing the words through my dry throat. Despite the faith Annabelle had in all of us, I knew we were doomed.
“The other coven, if you can call it that, is moving quickly,” Anton said, avoiding my gaze. “The sun was hardly an hour away from rising when I arrived on the boundary of our land. There is no chance of them crossing the field in broad daylight. But I know that they are lying in wait in the caves on the edge of the land, biding their time until darkness descends once more. Then, they will strike. When they do, we must be ready.”
“You don’t believe that such a vast number of our kind can assemble peacefully.” I phrased it as a statement rather than a question, and Anton inclined his head.
“I do not,” he replied. “Though I stand by what I said. I saw them with my own eyes. As it was, it was difficult to outrun such a large number.” His irises hardened so that it seemed that he was staring at me through two chips of ice. “They are young and foolish. They think that they can defeat us easily and claim the land as their own.”
His eyes narrowed and his mouth contorted in a grimace. “They are mistaken. As your sister said, this is our land. And no group of bloodthirsty renegades will take it from us. This I swear.”
With that, he stood and marched out of the room, his back ramrod straight. I watched him go, my eyes fixed on the doorway long after he was gone. I pretended I had heard neither the breathless, reverent way he spoke of my sister nor the steely edge to his usually lighthearted tone. I forced myself not to seize up and tremble in fear at the mention of blood.
Anton had vanished, and in his place was a true lieutenant. He may have been my friend, but he knew his duty. A furious war loomed in the near future, one that neither Annabelle nor Anton had any intention of losing.

***

Annabelle was adamant about the inevitability of the fight. When I entered her room, she was lacing thick-soled black boots onto her feet, her head bent in concentration as her fingers flew over the intricate laces and knots. Her hair was raked back and tied in a tight knot at the back of her head, and when she raised her head, her eyes shone with determination.
“We will not lose this battle,” she said, giving me a hard stare. “This is our land. Do not forget that.”
I nodded quickly, trying to hold her gaze. “I know that. But Anna…Eliza is right. This is madness. We cannot succeed. Young or not, they outnumber us far too greatly.”
In a flash, she was on her feet, her usually light footsteps seeming to echo like gunshots in the sudden silence as she marched toward me.
When we no more than a foot away from each other, she reached out and pulled me closer by the front of my shirt, baring her fangs at me. “You think we cannot defeat them? You underestimate me, brother.” She let a low growl slip between her clenched teeth. “Have you so easily forgotten how we came to own this land?”
No, I had not forgotten. I remembered that day all too well.

***

On that bleak winter night, a thin layer of ice coated the dead grass, blanketed with fresh-fallen snow. A blizzard was brewing, though at the moment only occasional light snowflakes drifted from the grey clouds above. The moon was full and the stars must have been a magnificent sight, but their splendor was wasted, as the clouds coalesced to drape the sky with a gloomy mantle.
Anton, Annabelle and I crept along the overgrown hedges and gnarled oak trees that ringed the edge of a small town they had been watching for days. The three of us burned with thirst, although I forced myself to think of anything but the blood that would soothe the ache in my throat.
None of us were bothered by the chill or the snow. While humans might have complained of freezing temperatures and snowstorms, the ice was no colder than our wintry skin and our heightened vision pierced through the darkness easily.
Anton wanted nothing more than to quench his thirst, while Annabelle had other plans. She had discovered that another coven lived nearby, a small one that had staked a claim on this land. She intended to take it from them.
I was growing weary of waiting, my thirst nearly powerful enough to overpower my fear. Just as I opened my mouth, however, a hand clamped over it. I stared at Anton, my eyes wide with disbelief, and he shook his head and pressed a finger to his lips. As he released me, I looked past him to see my sister standing stock-still, her head cocked to the side and her expression one of intense concentration.
We sidled closer to a particularly tangled clump of nettles, and when Annabelle reached out and pushed a few thorny vines aside, I went rigid at the sight before us.
A vampire crouched on the frozen ground, his hands wrapped around the upper arms of a girl who looked to be no older than sixteen. He raised his head, his eyes the color of coal as they pierced through us. Blood dripped off his fangs and rolled down his chin, and ever so slowly his tongue flicked out and he lapped up the droplets.
Splinters of pain erupted behind my eyes just as the burn in my throat intensified to an open flame. The vampire tossed the body of the girl aside as if she were a rag doll, her limp head lolling on her bloody neck as she crumpled to the ground. In my peripheral vision, I saw white shapes rising to surround us, and within seconds the three of us were trapped within a ring of vampires. Their eyes glowed in the darkness, watching our every move as they circled us slowly.
I shook with terror. Blood pooled on the ground below human corpses, staining the snow red, strands of hair threaded into the oozing crimson puddles beneath their heads. That alone was enough to render me motionless, my eyes searching for an escape. But there was none. The bloody corpses lay all around us, slowly forming a ring of red slush behind the vampires that were closing in on us, their fangs bared and venom already dripping from the razor-sharp points. I counted seven of them before I began to close my eyes and pray for them to kill us quickly.
By some unseen signal, or perhaps sheer coincidence, Anton and Annabelle both struck at once. They had been standing back-to-back, and now they leaped forward at opposite sides of our ring of captors.
I watched in frozen horror as my sister grappled with a vampire twice her size, his meaty hands closing around her waist as he lifted her off the ground and threw her bodily into a tree fifty yards away. She was on her feet and back at my side before I could blink, lashing out with a sharp kick that was punctuated with the sound of ribs crunching as another vampire flew backward into the snow.
“Fight!” she shouted to me, whirling to avoid another attack. “Fight, Stefan!”
I stumbled forward clumsily, a haze settling over my mind. The ring of vampires drifted in and out of focus. I watched Anton sink his fangs into the shoulder of one of his attackers, ripping out a large piece of flesh. He wrapped his thin fingers around the vampire’s throat and, before the other could pull away, twisted his arms to the side with enough force and speed to snap the vampire’s neck.
Venom oozed from his torso as he toppled to the ground, the snow and ice sizzling when the venom burned through it. Anton side-stepped the falling body and turned toward me, shouting a word that was seemed to echo unnaturally, becoming so distorted that I could not make sense of what he was saying. He opened his mouth to shout it again, but just then the haze constricted and my world went black.
When my eyes focused again, I saw hands reaching for the neck of a vampire that cowered before me, his eyes wide and pleading. To my shock, the hands were attached to my body. I did not feel them, and yet I watched as they wrapped around the vampire’s neck, the fingers overlapping as they tightened, causing the vampire’s eyes to bulge. He choked out a last plea for mercy before the hands twisted rapidly, the sound of the crunching bones echoing in the silence that followed.
When I looked up, I saw nothing but bodies. There were limbs torn from torsos that had been shredded to pieces. Heads lolled on broken necks or rolled over the snow, dripping venom from what was left of the neck, mouth and eye sockets. A swatch of black hair fanned over the ice, wide lilac eyes staring upward. Annabelle.
“Anna!” I shouted, feeling returning to my hands as I yanked them off the broken neck of the vampire. I sprang to my feet and whirled around when I felt a hand clasp my shoulder, but I relaxed immediately when my eyes met Anton’s. Together we approached my sister, who was mercifully beginning to sit up, staring around groggily.
“Stefan,” she gasped, her voice sounding like it was coming from underwater. She reached for me with fumbling hands. I helped her stand, watching how she gingerly tested her ankle and hissed, her fingers reaching down to feel the bones that even I could see jutting out at a strange angle. The bones had already started to set in place, her ankle healing rapidly, but I let her lean on me as she surveyed the damage.
“You did well,” she said, and for the briefest instant I imagined that her eyes had flashed red. I told myself that her irises were reflecting the blood on the snow, and all of a sudden I was seized with terror.
Blood. There was blood everywhere.
“Anna? Anna, what happened?” I asked, clasping my hands together imploringly. Something slick coated my palms, and when I looked down I gasped at the sight. Translucent venom, mixed with traces of red. Human blood. What had I done?
“You did well,” she repeated, her gaze sweeping the array of bodies. I followed her gaze and stared at the object it came to rest on.
It was mangled and shredded, hardly recognizable as a body. The head was nearly severed from the neck, multiple bite marks visible on the remaining skin. The eyes had rolled upward into their sockets, venom dripping from the tear ducts and pooling by the open mouth.
The limbs had been torn off, all except a portion of the left leg. When I looked closer, I was shocked and disgusted to see that it, too was ringed with bite marks.
“I…I did that?” I gasped, staring at the corpse. Annabelle watched me, her expression a strange mixture of satisfaction, pride, and something dark, something I could not place.
“Yes,” she said, watching my eyes go wide with horror.
“I…I killed him…it. I killed it.” I refused to believe that I had been capable of such grisly violence, but Annabelle’s nod indicated otherwise.
“Yes. This is our land now,” she said, and when I gaped at her, she shrugged daintily. “They owned it,” she explained, her eyes flashing with ruthless determination.
“This is the coven that owns this land?” I repeated dumbly, and her gaze swept the pile of bodies once more.
“Not anymore,” she answered, her gaze lingering on the contorted corpse of the vampire I could not remember killing. “It is ours. And so it shall remain.”

***

Annabelle’s voice cut into my thoughts and brought me back to the present.
“We will not lose this battle,” she said, forcing me to hold her stare. I nodded dumbly, dazed from the memory. For an instant I could even feel the neck of the second vampire I’d killed, ice-cold and slippery beneath my hands, slick with others’ spilled venom. I saw his eyes, wide with terror. I heard his desperate pleas for mercy.
I met Annabelle’s steely glare with one of my own. “We will not be defeated,” I said, and she nodded in approval, her lips curling into an evil-looking smile.

_______________________________________________________________

The hours flew by until the sun finally set and darkness descended. The sky was a deep shade of blue when we set out, creeping slowly toward the caves on the outskirts of our land. By the time we were within a hundred yards of the caves, it was nearly black. Thick clouds covered the stars and the moon, turning the sky into a replica of what it was the night we first fought for this feeding ground.
I opened my mouth to ask Anton where exactly he had last seen the other coven, but thought better of it. The possibility that they would hear my voice was too strong, and it would cost us greatly to lose the element of surprise.
As it was, there was no need to ask. Moments later we emerged into a clearing, and, just like the night we first fought on this land, I froze in terror at the sight that met my eyes.
Human bodies littered the ground. Some of the vampires had finished feeding and were lazily leaning against tree trunks and boulders, watching the others drink with only a hint of hunger in their eyes. Others had their fangs sunk deep into rapidly paling necks, the human faces already slack and their moans of pain nearly inaudible.
I watched as one of them, a tall, lanky vampire whose golden hair shimmered even in the faint light, slowly pulled his mouth away from the neck of a small human girl. Her face was one of a teenager, but her limbs were thin and she looked like a tiny porcelain doll in the vampire’s hands. She was still screaming in terror, blood dribbling in two slow rivers down her skin. The vampire tossed her aside, and as her head hit the solid layer of ice, her screams faded into unconscious moans of pain.
The golden-haired vampire slowly licked the blood off his fangs, seeming to take pleasure in the horror that filled my eyes as they followed his movements. He lunged for Eliza, who stood on the far left side of our group.
Leon thrust his arms out, his palms meeting the other vampire’s chest, and the golden- haired vampire flew backward while the others sprang into action. I stood and shook with agonizing fear. I had not thought it was possible to feel such terror.
Leon snarled as his head swung from side to side, fighting off two at once. Eliza hissed nearby, sinking her fangs into the arm that was wrapped around her neck and freeing herself from another vampire’s grip. Anton shoved me backward and leaped at a vampire that had been reaching for me, fighting hand-to-hand with him, their fangs snapping inches from each other’s necks.
I searched frantically for my sister in the fray, one thought echoing in my mind.
Blood.

There was blood on the snow, blood on their fangs, blood on their clawed hands. I could not move for the fear that seized me.
I felt a stinging pain at the base of my skull, a razor point of white heat that forced itself deeper and deeper into my head until my sight was abruptly shrouded in black. Through the dark haze I saw Annabelle’s eyes flash ruby-red as she opened her mouth and shouted something at me. A moment too late, I saw the golden-haired vampire lunge for her throat, fangs extended, and I watched her topple to the ground under his weight before my sight was extinguished completely.
I sank into a sea of black, wondering idly if I would drown or if there would be something below to break my impossibly slow fall. My thoughts grew incoherent and words became difficult to string together in my mind, and soon the thoughts were extinguished completely.
Stefan! Stefan, let go! It’s over, let him go!

Voices sounded through the blackness, dragging me slowly into consciousness.
Stefan! Let go!

Someone was shouting my name…The voices blended together, Annabelle and Anton and Leon, and even Eliza, her usually mocking tone now tinged with fear and hysteria.
“Let GO!” someone yelled, and all of a sudden I could see again. I could feel my hands, constricting around something, twisting and yanking something that, despite being cold and hard as stone, gave way easily beneath my fingers.
I looked down and nearly retched. My hands were coated in venom, and I watched in helpless horror, unable to pull away as my fingers methodically dismembered a torso. Limbs littered the ground, torn to pieces by what I could only assume were my own hands. My fingers were wrapped around a head, twisting it off the neck of a vampire that seemed oddly familiar.
It was the golden-haired vampire, the one who had leaped on Annabelle just before I blacked out.
“LET GO!” Annabelle screamed, and that same point of pain shot through my skull, heat threading through it. Someone screamed in agony, and as my hands came up to clutch at my head, I realized that I was the one screaming.
Instinctively, I pushed against the pain, trying desperately and irrationally to drive it out of my mind. The heat seemed to falter, and before it could spread any further, I gritted my teeth and tried with all my might to force it out of my head. Abruptly, the heat vanished, but with it came the excruciating and shocking sensation of my mind being pulled through an impossibly thin tube, my thoughts bleeding into someone else’s head. For a moment I was linked with another being, and in that instant I saw the battle unfold before their eyes.
“Fight!” they shouted at someone, whirling to avoid an attack.

I realized that it was my sister’s voice, screaming at me to fight off the vampires that were descending.
I watched myself stumble forward, and a strange red light illuminated my horrified face. The light was suddenly doused as the perspective tipped and rolled.

I realized that this was the moment when the golden-haired vampire jumped on Annabelle.
An arm entered the vision I shared, swiping at a hand that reached for something. Fingers barely grazed the neck of the body I occupied before the arm pushed the hand away.

Annabelle. I was in Annabelle’s mind, watching the fight as she remembered it.
My body went rigid, and I stood stock-still in the middle of the icy field. Around me, the battle raged on. Anton sank his fangs into a vampire’s neck and jerked his head back, the vampire shrieking in the instant before his throat was ripped out, the sight nearly identical to that night we found him, so many decades ago. The body fell to the ground and Anton leaped over it, growling as his hands grabbed at another’s shoulders.
Leon moved like a flash of lightning, lifting a petite vampire girl and flinging her over the ground, her body skidding several yards. Eliza, fighting off another vampire near the spot where the girl’s body came to a stop, lifted her foot and brought it down on the girl’s neck before she could rise to her feet. The sound of shattering bones could be heard all around the clearing.
I saw that my body still stood motionless, my irises clouding over until they were completely obscured.
By some signal, perhaps the flash of red light that illuminated my face once again, my body lurched forward and I sank my fangs into the shoulder of a vampire who had his back to me, reaching for Eliza’s hair and trying to yank her backward. My fangs tore out most of the flesh on the vampire’s right shoulder as he shrieked and whirled to face me, and my hands snapped his neck before he could retaliate.
I saw myself whirl around in search of something, someone, and I watched as my hands latched onto the next thing that passed by.
A streak of gold flew past, stopped abruptly as my hands wrapped around the vampire’s neck. His fingers curled around my shoulders, but my body quickly spun away from his grasp and my hands reached for him once more, my fingers tightening around one of his wrists and yanking. With a horrible screech, his arm came free, and venom oozed from the ragged stump at his shoulder. He snapped his teeth and let out another awful shriek of pain before he leaped forward.
Again, I sidestepped him and sank my fangs into his leg, jerking my head sideways and tearing out a portion of his calf. He screamed again, more venom burning through the ground as he tried to latch onto my neck with his remaining hand.

I watched in horror as my hands wrapped around his torso and lifted him into the air, still shrieking, and brought his body down over a cluster of rocks that shattered under the force of his fall. My hands tore at his torso and limbs as he tried in vain to twist away from me, and then, finally, my fingers were wrapped around his neck and I was twisting it, his eyes bulging and his screams echoing in the night.
A solid wall of heat slammed into my head, forcing my thoughts back into my own mind, and with it came the feeling that someone was splitting my skull open. The link was severed, but the pain raged on.

***

“Stefan. Stefan, wake up.” I recognized my sister’s voice, her tone commanding and desperate at the same time. Hands shook my shoulders, and my head snapped back as I blinked rapidly.
When my vision cleared, I found myself staring into Annabelle’s eyes. I started to turn my head, trying to see where we were, but her hands held my head in place.
“What do you remember?” she asked, watching me intently. I grimaced and shook my head, shutting my eyes. Memories flashed through my head, strangely vivid.
I remembered the golden-haired vampire leaping at Eliza, Leon pushing him back, Anton shoving me aside when I refused to move. I remembered Annabelle falling as she struggled with the golden-haired vampire. But everything in between then and the moment I regained consciousness and found my hands wrapped around his neck was gone, as if someone had reached into my head and pulled it out.
There was something else. Pain. Heat. Needles of pure agony threading through my skull.
“Pain…” I groaned. “Pain in my head…”
“You remember no pain,” Annabelle commanded, her eyes flashing red.
Had her eyes changed color? No, surely her irises were simply reflecting the bloody snow. What had I meant to tell her? I remembered something about the battle…something I could not recall now, something important…
“Stefan?” Annabelle’s eyes widened at me innocently. “Stefan, did you say you were in pain? What hurts?”
“Nothing.” My answer was mechanical, my lips moving almost before I was aware of it. “No pain.”
“Good,” she said, staring down at me. Her expression was strangely cold, even calculating. “Very good.”
“Annabelle.” Anton’s tone was urgent, pleading. My sister released me and turned to him, allowing me to observe my surroundings.
Blood coated the ground, mingling with rivers of venom that flowed from the bodies of vampires we had killed, throats ripped out or limbs torn from torsos, flesh missing from their shoulders and calves with bite marks ringing the wounds.
Miraculously, the five of us were mostly unharmed. Eliza’s hair was matted with blood and venom and, even as I watched, a gash sealed itself on her cheek. Leon was watching his broken knuckles heal with his perpetual apathetic expression, but we had suffered no serious injuries.
The wave of shock that hit me was so powerful that I was able to gaze at the blood with only minor pain. For now, nothing could overpower the crippling sense of regret. How many I had killed was inconsequential. What mattered was that I had killed them, had dismembered their bodies and broken their necks, and did not remember doing any of it.
Anton argued with my sister in a low voice, distracting me from my morbid thoughts, and I rose slowly from the ground and moved to look at what he was crouched over.
It was the girl, the one the golden-haired vampire had tossed aside, the one that was still screaming when the fight began. Blood had dried in two thin streams on the side of her neck, and her hair was congealed with venom that had seeped into it. She was whimpering and trembling, her eyes shut firmly and her hands clenched into tight fists.
“Impossible,” Annabelle hissed, and just then, I realized that the bite marks on her neck were gone. Her skin had stitched itself together like Eliza’s had, leaving no trace of the wounds.
She was changing. The venom that had entered her bloodstream when the vampire fed on her had been left to spread.
“We cannot leave her here,” Anton declared, although his firm tone faltered as he recoiled slightly from my sister’s furious glare.
“We cannot bring her with us,” my sister said in a tone that promised violence if he refused, but Anton shook his head.
“She looks just like her…” he muttered, and I wondered if he was talking to us or to himself. “Just like Valentina…”
“She is not your sister.” Annabelle’s reply shocked me. Anton had a sister

?
“I know that!” he snapped, his hand moving to curl beneath the girl’s limp neck. “But Anna, I cannot leave her here!”
My sister stared into his eyes, and the two seemed to have a silent conversation, much like Eliza and Leon had when they agreed to the fight. Finally, Annabelle turned away, her icy gaze piercing through me.
“Leon,” she called, looking away from me, and he stepped forward silently. Annabelle jerked her head in the direction of the girl, and Leon nodded once, moving toward her quickly. Ignoring Anton’s protests, he reached for her, but was stopped when Anton suddenly grasped his arm and yanked it back, hissing at him and baring his fangs, looking perfectly capable of tearing Leon’s arm off.
Annabelle stared at him, her incredulity quickly replaced with fury. “You defy my orders, Anton?”
To my amazement, he nodded determinedly. “I cannot leave her here,” he repeated, and Annabelle’s glare intensified. Her expression was as cold as the ice on the ground.
Suddenly, her eyes softened, her cold expression fading to be replaced by the kindness I knew she was capable of. “Take her,” she said quietly, and Anton pulled the girl up, cradling her body in his arms.
Leon and Eliza quickly piled the shredded corpses together and Annabelle struck a match on the sole of her boot, throwing it onto the heap. Flames blazed up and engulfed the bodies as the five of us ran swiftly toward the house we occupied, leaving all evidence of the massacre behind us along with the rapidly lightening horizon.

______________________________________________________

That night, sleep overtook me despite all my efforts to remain awake. Though we could last weeks without sleep, the exertion of the fight had exhausted me. When I closed my eyes and the blackness washed over me, I found myself standing on the scorched battleground once more.
I knelt among the ruined remains of the pile of bodies we had burned. I saw whole bits of flesh, scraps of muscle and tissue that had escaped the flames and now lay shriveled on the ice, soon to be covered in a blanket of fresh-fallen snow.
The blood had burned away completely, the only evidence of the human massacre being a large pile of ash on the burned patch of land where Leon had piled their bodies along with those of the vampires.
Innocent people, every single one of them. I still saw every dead face, all those heads dangling on bloody necks as the vampires drank. Countless pairs of eyes, wide with horror. Countless frozen mouths, open in silent screams of agony.
A flash of gold flew past me, and I whirled around to see the lead vampire, the last one I had killed, standing behind me with a cocky smirk on his face. In his hands he held that tiny blonde human girl, the one that resembled someone Anton knew.
No, not just someone he knew…his sister. Valentina, he had called her.
The vampire slowly lowered his mouth to the girl’s neck, and she whimpered as his lips brushed her skin. Without warning, he plunged his fangs into her neck. She shrieked in surprise and pain, but her voice cut off quickly as the vampire turned her neck and bit down on the hollow of her throat. When he raised his head, his fangs were coated in her blood and the girl’s eyes were rolling upward into her head, already starting to glaze over.
I snarled and lunged at him, both of us toppling to the snow. The girl fell aside, forgotten, as her blood stained the snow ruby-red.
When we fought, it seemed so familiar that I could have sworn we had both done it before, as if we were acting out choreographed steps we had been practicing. My hands were around his neck in a flash, and when he grasped my shoulders in retaliation, I spun away and reached for him again.
I took hold of one of his wrists and jerked it towards myself, his arm coming free with a screech like nails on a chalkboard. He snapped his teeth and screamed in pain before he leaped forward. I sidestepped him, the motion all too familiar, and bit into his leg. He made one last attempt before I grasped his torso and slammed him onto the frozen ground, tearing at his limbs before I got a grip on his neck and twisted it, snapping the bones as his screams died down, leaving their echoes behind.
I turned to the girl, lying forgotten on the snow. Her eyes were wide open and glassy. I reached over, nausea settling in my stomach, and made to gently close her eyelids.
Just before my fingers touched her face, a hand shot up and grasped my wrist with inhuman speed. The girl sat up, and as her eyes rolled down so that her irises were visible, I saw that they were glowing with newfound life. She opened her rosebud lips, and smiled at me, revealing fangs.
Human blood dripped from their razor-sharp points.

With a gasp, I bolted upright in my bed, my hands clutching the sheets so tightly that I had trouble loosening my grip. Scarlet waves filled my vision, and for a moment I thought I was going to drown in the blood.
I took another breath and forced myself to look around, remembering that I was safe in my own bed. Shaking my head, I slid off the mattress and walked to the door, peering out into the hallway to ensure that it was empty before making my way to the staircase at the end of the hallway.
The steps creaked under my feet as I climbed the rickety staircase, my hand trailing along the metal railing. Somewhere in the house, Leon’s snores cut off abruptly, and I came to a standstill, scarcely breathing. A moment later, the chainsaw-like rumbling started up once more, and I took a calming breath before continuing up the staircase. The wood was coarse and splintered beneath my bare feet.
The girl was being kept in the attic, Annabelle had told me. Because Anton refused to let any of the others dispose of her, they had agreed to wait for her to complete her transformation before deciding what they would do with her.
I pushed the trapdoor open slowly, waiting for it to thud quietly onto the floor of the attic before I reached through the opening and pulled myself up and into the room.
Moonlight streamed into the room through a small crack in one of the boards that covered the sole window in the room, and I quickly draped a scrap of cloth over it, covering the light. The room darkened slightly, the only light source now being the small lamp that rested on the nightstand near the ancient, intricately carved bed that the girl lay on. The lamp lit the room with a rosy glow, though the shadows that it cast on the other wall of the carvings in the bed’s headboard were significantly sinister.
The girl whimpered quietly, and I whipped my head around, staring intently at her. She whimpered once more and then fell silent, her hands twisting in the sheets much like mine had been. I wondered if she, too, was having a nightmare.
I crept closer, glancing warily over my shoulder at the trapdoor every few steps. I stopped when I was about a foot away from the bed and stared down at the girl.
Human skin had always fascinated me. It wasn’t quite as smooth as ours, but it was warm and it came in so many shades and hues. Vampire skin was icy and white, impenetrable by all but another vampire’s teeth or claws.
This girl still had color in her cheeks, two pink stains against a rapidly fading, light peach background. Her hair was pale blonde and appeared to be shorter than mine. It was tangled and matted with dirt and bits of grass. I was amazed at how small she was. Her face was one of a young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, but her size was that of a child. Her clothespin legs were bent at the knees under the blanket, and her ribs stuck through her shirt like matchsticks. Her hands were pressed together, palm-to-palm under her cheek.
I had never taken a human life. I was brought blood by Anton or my sister, but I never saw the victims’ faces. I never heard their screams.
I watched the girl turn slowly onto her side, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. She shifted slightly in her sleep, the blanket slipping off to reveal a large bloodstain on her pale green shirt. I cringed away, grimacing, and when I turned to leave I found myself face-to-face with my sister.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a deadpan voice, and I jerked my head, standing and moving away from the bed. My sister followed me, throwing a look over her shoulder at the sleeping girl.
“You want nothing to do with her,” my sister said in a commanding tone, and for a split second her eyes turned red. Then my vision clouded over for a moment. When I blinked, I did not immediately understand where I was. I looked past my sister and saw the girl lying on the bed, and realized that I was in the attic. For some inexplicable reason, the sight of the girl displeased me. For some reason, I wanted her out of our home.
“I want nothing to do with her,” I informed my sister, the words tasting bitter in my mouth and sounding strangely familiar.
“She is a danger to us,” my sister added, and I was quick to agree.
“She does not know our ways.” I stared at the girl, her innocent features seeming to twist, the pained frown on her face seeming like an evil smirk. “She could betray the coven. She could ruin us.”
My sister nodded along with my words, glaring at the girl. “Leave her be,” she said, and prodded me toward the staircase. “Get some rest, brother. You overestimate your strength. You are weakened from battle.”
I turned and lowered myself through the trapdoor, extending a hand to my sister to help her through. She leaped down delicately, forgoing the stairs, and landed softly on her feet despite the distance of the fall. I carefully stepped off the staircase and turned back in the direction of my bedroom.
I felt my sister’s eyes on my back the entire way back to the room, but when I turned around, the hallway was empty once more.

______________________________________________________

I slept free of nightmares for the rest of that evening, and it was well into the next morning when I finally awoke. My memory of the night before was a blur. The clearest part was my sudden contempt for the girl upstairs.
When I peered out into the hallway, it was empty as usual. I slipped through the door and up the splintered staircase that led to the attic, pulling myself through the trapdoor hastily. The girl was lying in the same position on the bed, but I could hear the difference in her breathing. It was harsher, labored. The pink had faded completely from her cheeks, leaving her skin frigid and white. Her hair was still knotted, and I felt an inexplicable urge to untangle it for her.
I moved toward the bed slowly, listening for movement on the lower levels of the house. When I was close enough, I knelt by the girl’s bedside and reached over, my fingers drifting over the crown of her head. I let my hand hover for a moment before lowering it gently, so my fingertips just barely rested on her head.
She looked so young, so fragile. Her now-white skin completed the image of a tiny porcelain doll. I pitied her in that moment. She had nearly been killed that night. A memory like that would haunt her for the rest of her eternal life.
Without warning, her hand came up and her fingers wrapped around my wrist, just as they had in my dream the night before. She bolted upright, the blanket falling away to reveal her bloody shirt. I gulped and forced myself to lock eyes with her, praying that her glowing emerald irises would be enough to distract me from the sight of the blood.
“Who are you? Where am I? What do you want from me?” the girl hissed, her voice high-pitched but menacing all the same. I looked closer, and saw the fear that lurked in her eyes behind the burning anger.
“I am Stefan, you are in our home and we do not want anything from you except your silence,” I hissed back in an equally threatening tone, forgetting both my fear and my feelings of sympathy for the girl.
“Your

home?”
“We are a coven of five.”
“A what?”
This girl was irritating me, and I could not help but wonder if this was the reason for my wariness of her. Perhaps my subconscious had sensed her dullness. Surely she was not so thickheaded as to imagine any alternate explanation for what she had witnessed the night of the battle. It was a traumatic experience, to be sure, but for some reason I was having difficulty pitying her again. The emotion had fled my body, and I found myself speaking in a harsh tone and staring down at her with a resolute look.
“A coven,” I answered. “A family of vampires.”
“Vampires

?!” she screeched, pulling her hand away from my wrist and reaching up to feel her face, her expression one of pure terror. Her fingers drifted toward her mouth, and she yelped when she felt her fangs.
I clapped a hand over her mouth, muffling her sounds of protest.
“Be quiet

,” I hissed through clenched teeth, glancing over my shoulder for signs of movement on the stairs. After a few moments, I released the girl and glared at her. “If you make another sound, so help me, I will–”
My words were interrupted by the sound of creaking wood. I turned toward the sound, and a moment later my sister pulled herself through the trapdoor and into the attic. Her steps were heavy, and I noticed that she was wearing those same thick-soled combat boots she had been on the day of the battle.
“Stefan.” Annabelle studied me critically, her eyes flashing. She seemed to take no notice of the girl, who was now beginning to hyperventilate on the bed.
“You should rest, brother.” My sister’s voice was colder than usual, and sharper. “I will stay here for a while with her.”
I nodded obediently, my movements almost robotic as I stood and descended the staircase from the attic. I felt as if I could not stop moving if I tried. I knew my sister’s eyes were watching me the entire way down, much like I had the night before.
When I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, I soon fell into a deep slumber, oblivious to the pained cries that echoed from the attic.

***

Snow swirled around me, my sharp vision unimpaired by the thick fog that hovered mere inches above the frozen grass. I blinked, and bodies appeared around me on the icy ground. Beneath them were pools of fresh blood and scarlet slush.
I turned and saw the familiar golden-haired vampire, his mouth stretched into his signature smirk and his hands wrapped around the shoulders of that petite blonde human girl. Blood dripped in two thin lines down the side of her pale neck.
She stumbled forward, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping. Fresh blood gushed from her wounds. She took another step and started to fall. Instinctively, I moved forward to catch her, and when I had set her on her feet once more, I saw that my palms were slick with fresh blood.
“Help me…” she whispered, staring up at me. Her irises were beginning to glaze over.
“Help…help me…help…” her voice was growing steadily louder as she took another step toward me, and then another. “Help me…help me...help…” her voice was near a shout now.
I stood there, unable to move as she continued to stumble toward me.
“Help me…HELP ME!”

I shot up in my bed, gasping, just in time to hear the girl’s voice scream those exact words from the attic.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.01.2010

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