Word count: 2860
To say the least, Arion was shaken as he walked back home. The seemingly very nice girl he shared four of eight classes with had turned out to be a bloodthirsty vampire. Every time he closed his eyes, he could still see the voracity with which she attacked the poor coyote. She had toed the line between animalistic and calculated, her eyes wild with hunger. The blood that covered her muzzle was horrifying. Even when he saw her humanoid form, he noticed her wolfish smile, like if she hadn’t been containing herself, she might have attacked him as well.
Tomorrow, he chided himself. Wait until tomorrow because you won’t get answers until then.
As soon as he arrived home, he immediately headed to the basement – where his parents kept an entire library of books of spells, creature information, and potion recipes (is “recipe” the appropriate word, he wondered, for the instructions outlining how to make a potion even though it is something one consumes?). He decided that homework had waited this long – another few minutes wouldn’t hurt.
When he found the book he wanted, he pulled it down from the shelf and took it to his room to put in his book-bag. There were a number of things he wanted to discuss tomorrow.
~
“We need to talk,” Arion muttered as he made his way to sit beside her behind the school sign. The sign stood in the middle of a clear field of grass, about ten yards wide and twenty-five yards long. Despite the size of the field, it was unoccupied by other students. There was a second patch of grass on the other side of the entrance to the parking lot where other students flocked.
Bronwyn didn’t acknowledge his presence, most likely because she didn’t even seem to know he was there. Her earbuds were in her ears, and her nose was in a book. The latter fact mildly surprised him, for Bronwyn Norcross was not known for her interests in books or academics. In fact, she seemed to be quite similar to the other popular athletes of the school – both male and female. They didn’t tend to study much after school due to the fact that they often didn’t have the time, let alone curl up to read for leisure by themselves.
Why was she alone? She had friends, or at least, people claimed her to be their friends.
By the time she glanced up at him, her eyes tired, he had taken his backpack off and glanced around the grass around him for small wildflowers. She took an earbud out and rested the book on her thighs.
“Arion?” she asked, tilting her head with wide and bright eyes.
He was never going to reconcile this Bronwyn – Winnie, as the other students nicknamed her – with the vicious one he saw in the previous evening.
“We need to discuss last night,” he explained as he stooped to open his backpack and take out her notebook.
As she put it away, she remarked, “What’s there to discuss?”
He gaped at her. Obviously, she could have been pretending, but she seemed completely clueless. Either she was a really good liar, she had forgotten about the previous evening, or he had imagined it all. She was in Drama, so the liar option was completely plausible. From what he heard, she was an impeccable actress. However, maybe she had forgotten? She didn’t seem to be herself at all; although once again, she could have been pretending. Maybe it was his imagination after all.
Cautiously and slowly, he narrowed his eyes and responded, “You know exactly what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” she insisted. Her eyes glimmered dangerously with a red spark, and her smile dropped. The voice she used next was the same voice Arion had heard last night. “I think you ought to go back to your friends and have lunch with them.”
So he hadn’t imagined last night – least of all that sudden change of character. He narrowed his eyes at her before kneeling down on the grass in front of her. Bronwyn raised an eyebrow at him as she closed her book and set it aside.
“Look, you’re very persistent on this matter, so I’ll explain it to you in very clear terms. We will not talk about last night – especially not at school.”
“After school, then?” he inquired carefully. “I know you’ve just had your last basketball game of the season, so there’s no practice right now.”
That wouldn’t do either, Bronwyn thought to herself. Even though the full moon passed, she still had cravings, and it wouldn’t be safe to be around her in the evening for at least the next three days – unless she was willing to make a big sacrifice. But that was something she couldn’t afford to do yet…
It was a simultaneously selfish and selfless choice not to drink human blood, frustratingly so.
Suddenly, though, an idea dawned on her. “On one condition,” Bronwyn breathed. “You have to help me…,” she looked away bashfully before finishing, “help me hunt.”
“You want me to kill an animal?!” If Arion were ever attacked by a wild beast, he wouldn’t hesitate to fight back, but the idea of even injuring something that wasn’t on the offense… was a little startling.
At his dramatic response, Bronwyn rolled her eyes and refuted his implication quietly. “I didn’t kill the coyote.”
“It sure looked like it.”
She sighed before looking around to ensure that there was really no one around either of them within earshot. After she was satisfied, she leaned in closer. “I drank a few gulps of its blood, and when I was done, I healed the bite marks. Vampires are adapted to have regenerative powers, even in our tears. Unlike our blood, however, when it’s consumed or taken intravenously, it won’t turn you into a vampire. It’ll just heal you. I cried on the wounds when I was done.”
“This is so complicated.”
“Well, if you think about it, so is magic.”
“Which is why I don’t think about it,” he breathed. “I just accept it and keep moving on.”
Bronwyn shrugged, glancing at her watch. She mumbled something to herself and put her book in her backpack before fishing out a water bottle and a tupperware. Inside the tupperware was a chicken salad.
“I thought vampires only needed to eat blood.”
Instead of being offended, she laughed off the question and responded in a surprisingly airy tone, “Think of human and animal blood as a treatment for a sickness – vampirism. When you take medicine for a cold, you still need to eat food, right? Also, we’re not dead. Our bodies still go through the processes of humans: Digestion, circulation, respiration.” Unbeknownst to Arion, she wanted to say more, but didn’t. Maybe it wouldn’t be best, she decided, to tell him everything until she knew for sure that she was safe around him.
The young man in front of her examined her closely before he brought out a small thermos with soup inside. It was a reddish-purple, and he took out a small container with white cream.
As he garnished his meal with the cream, Bronwyn quietly tried to change the topic of conversation. “I’ve never seen violet soup before.”
He responded excitedly, “Oh, it’s roasted beet soup. The white stuff is crème fraîche.”
Bronwyn scrunched her nose up. “Beets?”
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it.” He concluded his point by plucking a spoon from his lunchbox in his backpack and scooping up some soup. “And you should try it. I don’t wanna toot my own horn or anything, but if there’s anything I can do right, it’s cooking.”
She hesitated. Was this normal friendly behavior – to share food? She didn’t eat lunch with others for a reason, and she never observed the students in the field across from her.
The gentle smile of Arion’s coaxed her into leaning forward and meeting the spoon he held out. It tasted earthy (because of the beets), but the spices that were in it smoothed over the stronger hints of beet.
“Well?” he asked as she leaned back against the concrete post.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, that was actually better than I expected.”
Arion grinned at her, and it was rather contagious, causing her to flash a smile back.
Apparently, it was friendly behavior, but they weren’t friends – at least not yet. Friends. Could they be friends, if he began to eat lunch with her and talk with her more while also harboring her secrets and helping her hunt? Was that a qualifiable friendship, or a means to an end?
And if it was a means to an end, what was the end?
After that, lunch was passed with relative silence since Bronwyn clearly wanted to get back to her book. Then they each went to their next classes with little more than a few words of farewell.
She waited for him at the school garden a few minutes after the final bell rang. Once her eyes landed on his lean form, she grinned and approached him as if he were one of the guys she normally hanged around – an effortlessly charming and humorous jock. The reality wasn’t too far in many aspects. He had a way with words – if given a chance to speak – because he knew their power to create or diffuse tension. Additionally, though he was not by any means a star athlete, he was rather fit due to the amount of walking (and occasionally running) through the forest he often did.
He was greeted by the familiar and fabricated Winnie, who smiled a little too much for his liking. “Hey, Arion!”
With a lowered voice, he responded, “Sundown isn’t for three more hours.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t walk home with you, you know. Besides, this way, we get more time to be acquainted with each other.”
Over her shoulder, Arion could see his friends crossing the patio. They met his eyes and a couple of them waved.
He promptly waved back before grabbing Bronwyn’s wrist and dragging her in the opposite direction out of the school patio. They walked to his house quietly and sat on the porch once they arrived. Neither his parents nor his sister were home, so there was no one there to diffuse the tense air between them. Bronwyn immediately took out the book from earlier to finish reading it, and Arion decided to text the friends he left behind earlier.
Sorry I couldn’t hang out today. I have to help cook dinner tonight. – Arion
Ah, it’s cool, man. – Sally
No big deal! See ya tomorrow! – Hawkeye
Suddenly, the girl beside him murmured in her normal smooth voice, “Where’d you get the idea that vampires only ever ate blood?”
“Huh?”
She closed her book and looked over at him with her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Earlier. You said, ‘I thought vampires only needed to eat blood.’ Where’d you get that idea? The internet?”
Shaking his head, Arion showed her the book he grabbed the previous night. The cover read, Supernatural Creatures and General Information on Them. She took the book and flipped almost to the back, where vampires were.
Bronwyn looked at the dusty tome with amusement etched on her face. Every sentence she read seemed to make her snicker. Bored, Arion examined her as she grinned goofily and rolled her striking pale eyes. He could barely feel the corners of his lips tug upwards every time she covered her mouth with her hand before giggling. Her giggles were light like the voice she used at school, but light in authentic way. They were honest and true.
Suddenly, a question crawled into Arion’s mind and disturbed his train of thought until it went off-course. Why hadn’t Bronwyn dated anyone before? She had never been a part of any romantic relationships or scandals before – at least not that he had heard of – but he knew that other boys found her to be attractive. He certainly would, at least. Someone would have had to have asked her out at some point. To have held her hands and intertwined their fingers with her slim but strong digits. To have curled up with her and kept her warm on a cold night. To have whispered gentle confessions of adoration against her ears. Someone would have had to. It was an unfathomable concept that absolutely no one did.
“This is so – gosh – so wrong, it’s hilarious. In fact, I think this is almost as bad at representing vampires as Twilight,” she giggled, tapping her fingers on the page. “Oh, goodness, no wonder magical cultures used to fight with us all the time. We’re so misrepresented.”
“You could correct it,” Arion suggested, only half-listening to what she said. He was currently still staring at her and admiring how she bit her blood-red lips as she read.
“Well… maybe I could just tell you what’s wrong.” She handed the book back to him and looked around at the neighborhood he lived in. “Read me something.”
“‘The vampire is a ravenous creature that requires the blood of humans to survive. They feed nightly—‘”
“Not all of us. Some do, I suppose. The gluttons.” Bronwyn shook her head dismissively as she narrowed her eyes. “No. Most feed during the full moon, and even less often if they’re drinking human blood.”
“What’s the difference between the blood of a human and that of an animal?”
She had to think about the answer to the question for a few minutes before explaining, “I guess it’s stronger for us than animal blood because it’s the blood that used to run through our veins – or in some cases, the blood of our parents or ancestors. It made us human at some point. Without it in our bodies, we get weak and die. Animal blood is effective for us because they have a common ancestor with humans. However, the farther from human DNA the blood is, the weaker it is.”
“Oh. ‘They feed nightly—‘ Blah, blah, blah. ‘They do not age.'” He said the statement like a question.
This was what Bronwyn forbade herself to tell him earlier. “Before I explain anything else, can you promise me that you and your relatives aren’t, like, vampire hunters or something?”
Arion raised an eyebrow. Slowly, he responded, “I promise. Do you often come across vampire hunters?”
She momentarily frowned. By the sound of his heartbeat, he was telling the truth – or he was good at lying. “No, it’s not that. You can just never be too careful, you know?” She exhaled sharply. “Vampires age at a pace that matches humans – until they first drink human blood. Then all the bodily processes slow down.”
“How does that work?”
“You know how I referred to vampirism as a sickness earlier?” She paused to let him acknowledge that. “It’s more like… a viral curse that changes you from human to something in a human-like body that must either live a long life controlled by an insatiable hunger for blood or die a slow and excruciating death. But the curse isn’t really complete until you first drink human blood because then you’re not human anymore. You’re unholy, unclean. Beastly. And you have to spend eternity – or the greater part of it – knowing how wretched you are.”
After dropping that heavy weight on Arion, Bronwyn finally glanced back over at him to see his dark brown eyes on her. They were wide with shock.
“That’s… that’s a lot to deal with as a teenager.”
“What about mages?”
“What about us?” He closed the book in his hands and let it rest on his lap.
Her eyes sparkled with curiosity as she rested her chin against the heel of her hand. “What makes you different from humans?”
He knew the answer but never really phrased it aloud before. “When the universe was created, there were these pure pieces of the first cosmic star that drifted around before a few ended up mixing with the organic matter on Earth. Some refer to it simply as magic, but others call it stardust. It’s in our blood, and it allows us to manipulate and create other kinds of matter.” He ceased talking for a quick second to add, “Well, at least that’s the leading scientific theory.”
Bronwyn’s eyes lit up with even more wonder. “How do spells work? Like someone just says one specific word or phrase randomly and it triggers flames to come sprouting out of their fingertips?”
“No, no, not at all. The person who creates a spell has to be extremely focused on what they want to happen. The words have to be connected to the action in order for them to work. Then, it’s easier to teach someone else the words and what they’re supposed to do. And spells can only be made by fully-trained mages who completely understand their powers and how to use them.”
Bronwyn nodded in understanding. Then her eyebrows drew together again, giving her a very focused and thoughtful look. She said, “We should get going if we want to make it before sunset.”
Scraps of Notebook Paper 