A teenager pushed me and dropped her dagger. Her human lips were painted black, and false teeth were shoved into her mouth. Shaved into points, trying to resemble us.

I ran to the willow. "A monster!" I scream out.

Silas tried to grab and toss her out of the village. His wrinkled arms reached for the girl, a strand of her brown hair breaking off in his ancient hands.

The teen screamed and cried, thinking we would rip out her neck and drain her blood. It's not just the fear of that; we retain memories of our and their past lives.

"You were a coward on the battlefield and are still a coward. You abandoned your children. What, you can't take the truth from a little girl?" I asked.

"You are no child." She covered her ears as she ran away.

The truth she couldn't take, and now she can remember. My words are my weapon, and it will destroy her. There is a reason the creator removed the memories from human minds, and it wasn't to hide the fact that they were once celebrities.

"You shouldn't have told her the truth, but she deserved it," Silas said to me. "Please get back to class in fifteen minutes."

I bow to him and do as the school headmaster tells me.

Vampires haven't been monsters for thousands of years, and only old Silas remembers that time when he was a child. Though I remember being a soldier at the time and living in fear of those with darkened lips. Draining memories with blood.

Everything is different.

We don't turn to ash, but we burn easily, so most wear sunblock to avoid blisters and second-degree burns.

One of the effects of being a night crawler or vampire is we remember past lives. I remember as if my memory was a photograph, being an airman on an aircraft carrier. Bombs fell, and water entered my lungs. I was just an eighteen-year-old recruit.

Two hundred years later, I was a ground soldier and an Army vet, but I didn't die on the battlefield.

I stopped drinking water hours before, and I was tired.

My family was all around me, and my doctors gave me more pain meds. They were there to watch me die, not because I had money, but because they loved me, and didn't want me to be alone.

I fought in two wars and raised my children and my grandchildren when one of my daughters chose drugs over her children and me. She never saw war because she fled.

I remember the wars, and I won't speak about the violence. But I remember my daughter. Transformed into the teenager who attacked me.

And now I am a little girl, but I have been a little girl for a long time, and one day I will be a soldier again to protect my family from humans.

I was born again.

My last human life, grandfather, drank a fifth of whiskey on his grave-digging job while the funeral director wasn't looking. She was always dressed in a top hat and a dress. I still have a photo of her.

He drank more.

The forklift rolled over him, and he died a week later. He couldn't tell his boss he'd be fired. He died after being sober for a week when his sister invited him to a party.

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She later died of alcoholism, too. I never met her children. Her side of the family died off.

My father took up drinking and married a drug addict.

My recess is almost over.

I hear him, the preacher on the edge of the grass right outside our village line, say, "Who is more evil? You are the vampires? Stop these sacrifices."

The human crowd tossed glass bottles, rocks, and whatever heavy objects they could get their hands on. He was too fast for them, and he ran, leaving his bible behind. Not that the religious folk he preached to would ever read it, but they mimicked the words like parrots.

He fled to our side.

My teacher spoke. "Most humans only venture on our side on Harvest Holiday, but they called it the Reaping. The ones who escape to our side usually have to stay here." She waved at the preacher.

He raised his voice again, so the humans on the other side could hear. "The crawlers haven't eaten blood in ages. Now we have evolved, but packs of glucose mixed with amino acids and chicken and eggs cooked in iron pans."

The teacher chatted with the preacher, and they held hands. "Henry, I will take you for dinner, after classes." She turned to us. "Students, it's time for class."

We walked back in, and I sat at my desk. But I was more interested in the farmers pulling weeds than in the story I've heard many times. And it's a gross story. It's about an entitled boy who mutilates himself to gain friends. It wasn't a story of generosity, but a lie humans tell to fake kindness and sharing.

Humans lie and say we are monsters and that we don't need food. We need more than they realize. Blood crops, they call them.

After reading, we sew. I take longer due to my coordination issues, but being a crawler or a vampire, I have time to learn these skills.

I was five years old when I was chosen. My parents neglected me, not on purpose, but because they weren't meant to be parents.

Thirty years had passed, and I looked like any other nine-year-old. They died in prison, but no one from my old family visited me.

Because I was a monster and had a new mother with fangs, not that she'd rip their flesh.

The teacher gave us a snack of oranges and collard greens fried in an iron pan, and a packet of glucose to drink. We painted and read our math books.

Afterward, we were shoved on one of ten school buses; we passed fields, two large apartment complexes, and then the smaller houses. The rest of the village houses were cottages, tiny houses, or cabins.

Our bus passed more fields, three more apartment complexes, and the syrup factories.

My parents' house is the third largest on our street, my father became a doctor, and my mother is a medical anthropologist.

I rush home around 10 a.m. before it gets too hot. I sleep for two hours, which is all I need. The sun is too hot, for anyone but the farmers, who lather their skin in protective ointments.

I heard my mother teaching my much younger brother in the kitchen.

"Human and animal blood carry diseases, but our food mimics what you get in blood or is good with blood production."

"Are there monsters like humans outside the city?" I ask, almost forgetting I was one in every lifetime, but this one, yet.

"No, vampires with the intention of murder died out. It's why you don't see them anymore. Talk to Silas. He remembers the old ways."

"Fawn, it is time for lunch," my mother called out.

My adopted family is only me, Allister, and my father.

I was made first when the village would sacrifice five a year, usually a disabled child, someone ill, or a person who traded themselves.

But they never know that we are the same people they sacrificed.

I speak to Mother.

"At nightfall, it's a Harvest Holiday or Reaping. We will get twenty-five new people. And one of them will be your new brother or sister."

The sky grew dark, and I walked with my family. The village was lit by flood lamps and silk lanterns.

The human reaper dragged a five-year-old boy with one leg. He was old, and my mother looked unhappy. "You shouldn't be the Reaper."

But I overheard it.

"Who is he?" Father asked.

"My ex-husband. He bribed the officials to pick me, so he could carry on an affair with my sister," she whispered to Father.

Mother took the boy, who was missing a leg. "You're my third child." She gave the boy the medicine he needed to turn.

He cried at first but hugged her, anyway.

Our village is fifteen thousand people now. I have my memories, and I will always be a soldier.

Another three years passed.

Mother's old husband, the one with the enormous eyes, didn't recognize Mother or the monster he had become.

"I am ready to join. I'm old, and your sister doesn't want me anymore," My Mother's ex said.

My mother and the other villages sent him away without the infection, without turning. If we don't remember the wars, who will? If we don't exclude evil, who will? The soldiers must exist and remember.