Oz

I don’t sleep anymore. And I’m kind of afraid I might sparkle like a freaking disco ball if the blasted sun ever comes out from behind all the blasted clouds.

The only thing that gives me hope that I’m literally not really a Twilight vampire is I still have green eyes. They’re not the same faded green they were—now they’re like emeralds dropped in even greener flames.

That and the fact Miss. Biddle made me bleed. Twilight vampires were made out of some sort of stone. Stones don't bleed… they crack.

Either way, being a vampire sucks.

I’m always hungry. I’m always wanting to rip my friends’ throats out. And now that I dwell not five houses down from them, I can’t escape their mouth-watering aromas.

It’s like when you walk into a movie theater and you’re inundated with the smell of freshly popped popcorn… with extra butter. It’s… it’s…

It’s freaking mesmerizing.

That’s why I’m spending less and less time at Mrs. Dickey’s old house and more time prowling, hunting, and…

And spying on my friends.

No, spying isn’t the right word. That sounds more like I’m covertly collecting information on them for either my own reasons or to relay to a master/overlord.

I’m definitely not spying on them.

I guess you could say I’m stalking them… semi-obsessively.

But not in a Jeffrey Dahmer/Buffalo Bill sort of way. Absolutely not. I’m not going to wait them out, until they’re alone and vulnerable, and then swoop in to snatch them.

No…

Definitely not going to do that.

I’d NEVER do that.

I swallow.

But I do have momentary lapses where I fantasize about…

About doing EXACTLY that.

I’m sucking the life out of a deer right now, just trying to satiate my hunger. My overwhelming, never ending thirst. I could drink a thousand deer and still feel the burning need—the literal burning of my throat and mouth—to sink my fangs into a human’s neck and suck every drop of their blood from their veins.

The deer’s heart stops, and I stop drinking. If I drink after the heart stops I get really weak, and I usually fall over and can’t get back up for an hour or so.

Not opportune during a freaking apocalypse. There’s always something looking for an easy meal.

Or just an easy kill.

On cue, Miss. Biddle sashays from behind a tree and tsk tsks at me, wagging her finger disapprovingly. “How can you kill a poor little Bambi like that?”

I groan in my head, not wanting to trigger her—since she is so easily pissed off.

“Hello Miss. Biddle.”

She looks down at the deer’s corpse. “Oops. I was wrong, it's a doe… so not Bambi. More like Bambi's mother.”

She's trying to goad me. I take another deep breath, though I really don't need to.

Her eyes sparkle as she says, “In the mood for something innocent, I see. Are you imagining ripping into that pretty little girlfriend of yours? What's her name… Ell–”

My hand around her throat cuts her off in the middle of Ellie's name. I want to rip her head right off her body.

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Our eyes lock, and Miss Biddle smiles. “Even with that seed thing in my head, I'm still too strong for you to kill.”

I press in on her throat even harder. But she just laughs.

“And I'm too fast for you to stake. I'd be gone before you could pull one out of your inventory.”

I let go of her and clench my fists, walking away.

“Can I take it that our little imparting session is over?” She calls after me.

I stalk off into the forest, hungry for another kill.

“Yes.” I growl.

She totally pushed my buttons, and I'd reacted badly. Hell, I'd overreacted.

That wasn't like Miss Biddle. She usually came to me bored and frustrated, and sarcastic, of course. That seed of Georgina's made it so she had to come to me for “rehabilitation.” She had no choice. But she didn't try to elicit violence from me.

No, that was new.

What else was new was the extra smell that was on her. A scent. Something a little musky and wild. I had no idea what it was, but it made me think that I needed to follow her.

Well, at least now I have something to do with my day.

***

Luckily, since I'm a vampire now, I don't have to keep my eyeballs on my prey any longer. I'm a predator. I can just chase their scent. Makes it hard for my prey to get away. I guess that's the whole point of being an undead predator.

Predator…

Funny word.

For a little while I keep on telling myself that maybe I should be spending my time with my girlfriend instead of chasing around a wayward undead librarian.

I shake this off, though. I love Ellie, but sometimes being around her when I feel… when I feel extra hungry, or extra excited, doesn’t seem like a very good idea.

So I slowly stroll forward, sniffing out my wayward librarian. She can't try to kill me, so that's a good thing. Just in case this is all a trap.

And yes, I do realize this all could be a trap. And I don't think I'd like getting caught in a trap very well.

Her scent takes me downtown, past one of my cousins’ houses. His family always lived right across the street from the playground. I'd always been filled with jealous that he could just literally go across the street and he could play. In a literal playground. And usually with other children.

My family lives… lived towards the edge of town, and it was a good mile before you got to anywhere that had recreational equipment.

As I passed by, I noticed that Georgina was sitting across the street from the playground, staring at the red maple tree that had, since the alien apocalypse, become a man eating monstrosity.

I don't remember there being a bench there, but she was definitely sitting on one now.

I left her to it, and made my way after Miss Biddle.

Following her scent led me to the edge of town, and up onto a popular hangout overlooking the city. I forget what it was called. It was mostly a hookup spot for those with cars.

Though I had a car, Ellie hadn't wanted to come here, and I was fine with that. We made out more than enough in private. Her room, my room, the backroom of the pizzeria. We didn't need to do it out in public.

At first I didn't see anybody there. Maybe she had just passed by this way. Maybe she was hunting, and already further into the woods.

And then I caught a whiff of that extra scent she’d had on her. That kind of wild, musky scent.

I slowed, and crept. I'm a vampire now, and I can be very quiet and sneaky when I want to be. Another thing that being a vampire was good for.

Before I know it I'm up in a tree, way above the clearing, and enjoying what I think of as a spectacular view of what’s left of Mars, Pennsylvania. My hometown. Where I was literally born and raised.

Well, I think I was born in a hospital in Pittsburgh. But you know what I mean. I spent most every day of my life in Mars Pennsylvania.

And it is where I died and came back to life.

Kind of.

Miss Biddle creeps from under a tree further towards the clearing. She stands there for a bit, her arms wrapped around herself in a hug.

If she was hunting something, she wasn't trying very hard.

A man came from the other direction, and stood beside her.

He was tall, with longer hair in the back than in the front, and I spied a red crescent moon tattoo on the side of his neck.

He was one of the Travai. One of the three Travis's who had terrorized Mar High School most of their adolescent lives.

This wasn't good. I had a distinct memory of snapping one of his fellow werewolves’ neck not too long ago.

I had done it with very little forethought. All I needed to know was that he was trying to kill my friends. He had torn his way through the roof of the pizzeria, and was already inside trying to kill them. I’d yanked him out through the whole he’d caused and snapped his neck.

That left two more. That is, unless they could propagate. The folklore was that werewolves could make other werewolves by biting people. They didn't have a lot of variation in that story, so I was pretty sure that’s how these guys multiply.

I didn't have to wait long to figure out what they were doing up here. Miss Biddle rushed toward him, throwing her arms around him and giving him one hell of a kiss. I looked away, feeling like a peeping Tom–plus they were groping each other madly.

He pushed Miss Biddle back under one of the trees, and I started to hear the sound of things being unzipped, and their breathing coming faster and more raggedly.

Okay, I’d seen enough here. Miss Biddle had a boyfriend, and he was a bady-bad-bad kind of boyfriend.

But as I walked away, going off into the woods a little further out of town, I realized that I felt jealous. Not that Travis was with Miss Biddle, or that she was with him. No, my brand of jealousy made a lot less sense, but made perfect sense to me.

They were both monsters, like me. But they had found each other. They may be two different kinds of monsters, but they fit in a way me and Ellie would never, ever fit.

And though I knew that was stupid, that we had years of being friend before we ever became more, and that meant that we indeed had a connection. A connection that could not be duplicated by just the fact of us both being monsters.

But it made me sad anyways, as I walked slowly out toward Rocker Pond.