BLOOD, a vampire story

It was the night of parent-teacher conference at Des Pontonniers High, and everyone in the school parking lot was panicking. A wild super-human was racing up and down the rows of parked cars. Max Blake could hear it growling; when he focused his vampire vision, he could see flashes of it as it slunk along, stalking a warm and fleshy prey. People ran, leaped into their cars, didn't look where they were going. Someone backed into Sheriff Joe and he fell down, hard enough to make it impossible for him to get to his ankle holster.

Then Miley's father shot twice.

And it was over.

Max kept Miley in his sight as they joined the circle forming silent witness of the execution. On the ground lay a white pale muscled human beast- the blood sucking human that everybody had been blaming for all the brutal deaths in Des Pontonniers, a small Strasbourg town. But Max knew it had done nothing to deserve this. It hadn't wandered onto the school grounds on its own accord. It had been lured.

And the deaths would not end, and the real culprit is somewhere out there watching. Gloating. The Alpha Vampire, the vampire that had bitten Max and cursed him, was still at large, free to kill.

Miley looked up at Max, her big blue eyes wide, lips pressed together. Her long black curls hung over the shoulder of her brown leather jacket as she wrapped her arms around herself. Then she gave another pitying look at the pale human, the folds of her white and black scarf brushing against her chin. No one was cheering the death of the human, least of all her. Max smelled her dismay, heard her heart pounding. He would have done anything to keep her safe tonight. He was relieved beyond telling that he hadn't transform in all the stress.

She was still safe from his terrible secret.

Narrowing his eyes at Max, Miley's father put a hand on her shoulder. Buck Evelyn was the leader of vampire hunters, and he had shot Max a silver bullet the very first night Max had transformed. Ryan had rescued Max and told him about the hunters. It had been a terrible shock when Max had discovered that Mr. Evelyn was also Miley's father. So far, though Mr. Evelyn hadn't realised that Max was the vampire he had nearly caught just a few short weeks before.

Now, in the parking lot, Miley took one last look at Max, as if she was memorising what he looked like, and then father and daughter walked toward Miley's car. Mr. Evelyn opened the passenger door and Miley got in. Obviously, he was going to drive her car home, and Miley's mother would take their LEXUS back to their house. As Mr. Evelyn shut the door, he turned and gave Max a last, long, hard, so-pissed-off stare. But it was only the look of a protective father angry with a boy for encouraging his daughter to ditch school.

"We are so busted," Max thought.

It was not the perfect ending that he had imagined for the perfect birthday for Miley. It was just that she'd looked so stricken when all those balloons from Amelia had floated out of her locker this morning. Max hadn't even know that it was her birthday. Turned out that she hate celebrating her birthday at school. Max hadn't know Miley was sixteen, a year younger than the other kids in their class-younger than him and didn't want anyone to know. It was because of all the moving around. But people in other towns had assumed all kinds of things- that she was dumb, that she'd had a baby.

He'd wanted to protect her from a day like that. So they'd taken off. And the day had been magical. Once darkness had fallen, she'd said she never wanted it to end. And then she'd told him that she wished she could spend the night with him.

"With me," Max thought, his own heartbeat picking up, a thrill rushing through him even now, as his mom gave him the evil eye and muttered, "In the car. Now."

He let her march on ahead, like a hangman leading him to the gallows. Her back was ramrod straight, her shoulders raised. Everything about her spoke of her intense disappointment in him. She was really mad, and he didn't blame her.

In addition in skipping school, he had blown off the parent-teacher conference, so blissed out to be with Miley that he'd forgotten all about it. Just as he'd been forgetting about school, too. He was flunking chemistry and had a grade not less than grade C. Finding out he was a vampire and being with Miley took all of the attention.

His mom got behind the wheel and he buckled up. Unlike so many other drivers, she was careful starting the car and pulling out of the lot. As they merge up to the street, it started to rain and she flipped on the windshield wipers. One of the wipers sqeauled against the glass. They needed to be replaced. Their car was falling apart like their house. He knew his dad was keeping up with the child support payments. Not that his mom has never mentioned it.

Having vampire enchanced senses was a mixed blessing. Sometimes you'd hear Somethings you'd rather not to know.

At the moment, he was listening to his mother's heartbeat. It hadn't slowed. Maybe tomorrow people would be relieved that the blood sucking human had been killed, but tonight, the freakiness of having a supposedly man-blodd sucker slinking up and down the maze of cars was just too much.

"I'm so angry at you Max, how could you do this?" she said as they pulled up Infront of their house and the car rolled to a stop. Then she sighed, turn off the car, and gave him a look. Before he could say anything, she got out of the car. The rain poured down on him heavily as he got out too. Walking quickly, he looked around, wondering if the Alpha Vampire had followed them, lurking in the shadows. Stalking him. Creeped out, soaked to the skin, he dashed into the house.

Making sure that the door was locked, he braced himself for a lecture, but his mom went straight to her bedroom and shut the door. He headed for his own room. He could hear the rain dripping into the bucket in the bathroom. They had a leaky roof. Leaky pipes. And the furnace needed replacing. He went to his room and tried to video chat with Levi, but his best friend wasn't online. Levi's parent-teacher conference had probably gone a lot better than his own, even if you counted Levi's AHCD. He wasn't blowing off his classes and getting D pluses on assignments.

He texted Miley but she didn't reply. For all he knew, her parents must've confiscated her phone and her dad would be the one to read his message. Better not to push his luck.

Max switched off his mobile. He was so amped up that he'd some chins up; push ups; took his bath; brushed his teeth and climbed to his bed.

"That super-human didn't do jack," he thought. "And Miley Evelyn wants to sleep with me."

Smiling faintly, he bunched his pillow under his head and turn over on his side. . .

. .. rolling onto the cold ground of irregular shapes. He was shirtless wearing only his jeans. Max lifted his head and sniffed the air. Smoke.

Fire!

He bolted upright, his bare feet rummaged the rough ground as he scrabbled to his feet. He sniffed again, trying to figure out were the fire was. There were so much smoke. Dread panic threatened to overtake his human mind. But he kept it together, getting his bearings. An enormous building that looks like a cave filled with fog also with wooden structures. He had awakened here before- the very first time he had gone sleep walking, at least that's what he thought.

After the bite.

Ash floated down; the smoke was getting thicker, and max heard the cracking of burning wood. He heard a strange whoosh and looked up. The tops of the towering wood had burst into flames that rocketed towards a hole, the only hole which he could see through. The moon.

The huge, full, bloodred moon.

"Blood moon," he thought. "That can't be right."

Coughing, Max jogged forward as the towering woods above him caught fire, as if they were chasing him. Closing in. Suddenly, as his pace increased, he found himself outside the caved hall or room, now into the forest for the first time.

A growl ripped from his chest and his eyesight shifted, everything going as red as fire. He saw things moving, transforming. Animals fleeing the flames. Heat prickled his naked shoulders and backs of his legs. Embers floated down and one landed on his chest. As he brushed it away, he lost footing on the damp leaves and fell hard onto his back. His breath was knocked out of h

him, and his thoughts shot to his inhaler. He didn't have it with him. Smoke was pouring over him like someone throwing a blanket over his face. He couldn't breathe; he was out of air, and be was a severe asthmatic.

"I'm going to die!" he thought. Had been an asthmatic, he reminded himself. Past tense.

Before the bite. Becoming a Vampire had cured him of his lifelong asthma.

An enormous, fiery limb broke from a tree above him and plummeted downwards like a bomb. He rolled to his side and leaped to his feet. Another branch crashed to his right, sending up sparks.

He was driven forward, coughing hard, his eyes watering. Then, just like the night he had been bitten, a herd of rat burst out of nowhere, leaping in a distressed stampede around him, at him, over him. As before, one squarmed under his foot and he lost balance and rolled end over end over end down the hill. Balls of flame careened down the incline at him, as if someone had torched a dozen of tumbleweeds and aimed at them.

Then he hit a tree trunk and pushed up against it. Reaching for a limb, he hoisted himself up, then raised his legs as the balls of fiery brush slammed into the trunk, mere inches beneath him. Sparks skittered upward. His stomach muscles ached, but he held the position. Then the treetop exploded into flame. The heat singed his hair, crackled in his ears.

He dropped down, stamping out the tinderbox of leaves under his bare feet. His soles blistered and stung.

He began to walk up the hill. Dead ahead, two red eyes glowed like hellfire itself. Surrounded by darkness, they bored right into his. He could feel the pull of that gaze. Sense the power, and the rage behind it.

"Come to me," the voice said inside Max's mind. Commanding and insistent. He didn't want to obey but he saw himself moving forward like a sleepwalker.

"Come with me," the voice ordered him.

A tree crash right Infront of Max, sending up huge clods of dirts and a shower of burning leaves that barely missed him. Then a wall of fire rose up, creating an inferno between him and those eyes. And still Max climbed towards them, unable to stop himself, heading for a certain death. Into hell itself.

And then the voice said:

"Kill with me."

.. .

"No, I won't!" Max yelled, bolting upright. He found himself half-naked in the forest, alone, and halfway up the hill. He was wearing only his boxers, and there was no fire to be seen. The trees stood tall and silent, with dew clustering on their needles. The lavender painted the sky with the colors of early morning, and a bird chirped in the distance. As something rustled in the bushes at his feet, Max scratched his chest and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He got to his feet with an antsy feeling of déjà vu.

He hated the sleepwalking thing and waking up after a blackout to find himself miles away from home, deep inside Des Pontonniers Preserve. He never had any memory of how he'd gotten there or what he'd done before he'd come to. This morning was no different.

Max wondered, "Did I do it?" Ryan Harley, the other Beta vampire in Des Pontonniers, had warned him that sooner or later, he was going to kill someone. Ryan, who had been born a vampire and had lived in Des Pontonniers when he was in high school, had come back to find his sister, Kate Harley, who was the murdered jogger that Levi had heard about on his father's police scanner the night before school started. Kate was the only survivor of a house fire that killed the rest of the Harley family six years ago. Ryan had left, but now he was back to help Max find the Alpha Vampire and kill him. Ryan had told Max that if he dealt the killing blow himself, he would be free of the Vampire curse.

Max was a young vampire who had experienced only one full moon since his Bite. He was resisting the call of the Alpha Vampire as best he could. He'd already refused to kill with the Alpha once, but Ryan said it was only a matter of time before the Alpha forced him to hunt and to butcher. Max's only hope was to help Ryan find the Alpha first and kill him.

Max began to stagger through the forest as the rustling in the bush grew louder, a bit more frantic. He cocked his head and listened, sniffing. As he bent down, he noticed the print of a single, perfect human-like claw stamped into the damp earth. He laid his hand over it and told himself that it wasn't his. Max didn't change into a vampire exactly, and neither did Ryan. However, Ryan's dead sister, Kate Harley, had turned into a vampire. Max and Levi had seen her in vampire form when they had dug her up beside the burned-out shell of the Harley family home a few days after school had started. They had removed the vampire bane circling her grave, and she had been a girl again. A dead girl. Half of a dead girl.

As Max became aware of something watching him, he tensed. His fingernails lengthened into claws, and he quietly growled, preparing for a potential attack.

Slowly he raised his head. His eyesight bright red, then became human again, as twenty feet away, a beautiful silvery clothed figure stared calmly at him with red eyes, a vampire, he knew. The rising sun cast a glow around it, almost as if it were a magical creature, and it stood statue-still. Max wondered if he was still dreaming. Then the figure turned and trotted gracefully away, slipping among the trees.

School.

"Hey, Max," Levi called from the parking lot of Des Pontonniers High as Max chained his bike and took off his helmet. Before the Bite, Max's three main goals in life had been playing first line in Rugby, getting a girlfriend, and buying a car. Accomplishing two out of three was excellent, but he wished he'd put and stay human on his list. Funny how it seemed a little more important than getting his own wheels.

"Levi, I had another weird dream last night," Max said, as Levi loped up to him and they walked shoulder to shoulder into the school. Levi had on his bull's-eye T-shirt, and it kind of freaked Max out when he wore it. As if it meant that Levi was a target. They both knew the Alpha wanted Max to kill with him, to cement Max's acceptance that he was a member of the Alpha's pack. Who better to take down than the guy Max's mom had once referred to as his "litter mate"?

"Dream? Did you wake up in the woods?" Max asked him. "With rabbit breath?"

"God. No." Scott grimaced. "At least, I don't think so. But there was a fire, and-"

"Fire. Which is a recurring theme in the drama that has become your life," Levi said, aping Max's grimace. "And we know that this is because-"

"Hi, Max," Miley said, bobbing over with a worried expression on her face. She was wearing that black-and-purple top with no sleeves and the heeled boots, and she gave him a kiss on the lips right there in front of the whole school, which was awesome.

"Catch you later, Bugs," Levi said, shoving off.

For a moment, Max thought he might pass out from the sheer amazingness of Miley's kiss. He had been so caught up in the moment that he almost missed what she was saying. Her beautiful face was filled with even more concern than Levi's not-as-beautiful face had been, and he focused hard on what she was saying through his kiss-induced stupor.

". . . missing," she was saying. "He wasn't at his house last night, and Amelia found an odd note in his dresser drawer," she told him. "And his Porsche wasn't in the garage."

Max's mind began to race as he tried to make sense of what Miley was telling him. Amelia. Porsche. Leo Rupert. The pieces slowly started to fall into place, and alarm bells went off in Max's head. Leo Rupert was missing, and it was the morning after Max had had a blackout.

"Wait. Amelia was at his house but he wasn't?" Max asked, feeling a knot form in his stomach.

"Yeah. His parents are out of town," Miley said, and Max could see the concern in her eyes.

He didn't know what to do. Leo was missing, and he had no memory of what had happened the night before. He felt queasy, wondering if he had something to do with it.

"I have to scoot," Miley said, and gave him another kiss.

Max watched her walk away, feeling a sense of unease settle over him. Then, Amelia passed by, looking exhausted and worried. Max swallowed back his dread, trying to convince himself that he had nothing to do with Leo's disappearance.

"I didn't kill anyone last night," he told himself. "I'd know it if I had."

But the nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach refused to go away. Would he really know if he had done something terrible?