As The Blood Is Drained, It's Bad For Business

I’m sitting at the back of the bookstore, reading in a big bean bag chair. You would think that on my days off, I have better ways to spend them. But Matthew’s at work and William’s unable to get out of the house, so I’m stuck at the one place that I spend every other day at anyway; my work.

Mr. Boo’s dusting off the bookshelves as I flip through my pages of Jurassic Park. Dinosaurs have always interested me. And the book is so much unlike the movie. Mr. Boo takes a peek at what I’m reading and chuckles to himself.

“You should get to know more of the classics,” he says. I look up.

“Like what?”

“Ever read Pride and Prejudice? I think you might like it,” he ponders. I give him a half-smile.

“In my opinion, Mr. Darcy was bipolar,” I laugh. He smiles too.

“Every man can be, when he falls for the right girl.” I suddenly have an image of Will running towards me with an axe, only for it to turn into a bouquet of flowers. I quietly nod my head and giggle to myself. He has a point.

Jackie and Daniel power-walked down the hallway and I jogged to keep up with them. Something I’ve always envied vampires for is their speed. They were conversing fast and low, too low for me to hear. It was driving me insane. I stopped jogging and cleared my throat. They stopped too and turned around.

“What?” Jackie asked. I placed my hands on my hips.

“Okay. You guys need to tell me what’s going on, because I don’t happen to have superhuman hearing like you do. And you need to tell me why Cayden left and you need to tell me where he went. Okay? Now start talking.” I let out a sigh and they stared at me.

“Keep walking,” Daniel ordered. I glared at him but started walking again. “He probably left so he doesn’t have to deal with you. Sorry, the truth hurts. And we don’t know where he went. We never know where he goes when he has an episode like this. We just wait for him to come back. But usually he doesn’t leave a note.” He flashed a piece of paper in my face and I noticed the words ‘don’t look’ and ‘goodbye’ somewhere on the page, scribbled in messy handwriting. At least the vampire wasn’t perfect at everything.

“Okay. Well here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll see you later.” I strode past them and out the door, hoping I was leaving them with a dumbfounded look on their faces.

It wasn’t that I didn’t care. That’s not what my words meant, although that’s probably the kind of impression that they made. The point was that I finally did care, and that wasn’t going to go away now. I knew what I had to do, even if one half of my mind wasn’t completely with me on it. It didn’t matter, because the other half was.

I started out with a jog which soon turned into a run. I headed deeper into the trees, passing the magickal barrier that blocked and caged possible danger. I wasn’t included in that category anymore. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew that I couldn’t hurt these beings anymore. They weren’t necessarily evil, and they seemed kind of lonely to me. Ugh, I thought to myself. I was getting soft. I bet if I tried I couldn’t even give out a menacing growl anymore.

Endorphins kicked in and I moved faster through the trees. My vision seemed to increase and I suddenly felt like I could do anything; I was so empowered. I hadn’t had a good run in ages. And I finally focused my goal on one thing: finding Cayden. I didn’t know where to look, but I would find him. I was a vampire hunter. It’s what I did.

After a while I slowed down and stopped near a big boulder, catching my breath. The woods seemed darker around here, and with a slight hint of panic I realized that I only had one knife on me. Hopefully I wouldn’t need it. I sat on the boulder and listened intently for any footsteps or crunching of leaves. I heard nothing. This was disappointing. I was hoping to find Cayden right away, tell him to stop being a drama queen, and-I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found him. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to let him run off because of me. Maybe I could stay for him...no, that was crazy. It was crazy thinking about anything to do with him, actually. What was I doing kissing him? He could have bitten me right then and there, drained the blood out of me and laughed about it later. I smiled at that thought. I didn’t think he had it in him to do that; after all, he said he loved me. Nonetheless, it was still dangerous kissing him.

But that kiss...it was intense, like a fire had been set off in my mouth. While that fire was going, a jumble of emotions had been stirred up in my brain. A mix of fury, melted together with passion and fused together with whatever else was going on up there. I was so screwed up right now. I sighed again, thinking about how much easier my life was when vampires weren’t involved in it. I thought back about my life at home...which was when I heard the footsteps pounding on the ground behind me.