High Stakes

Fate hated me.

It had always been that way. Life had always been a bit cruel—from the day I came into the world, Fate had been there to push me to the ground.

For one, there was my name. I was the only Eyre I'd ever met in my life. My mother had always said she'd given me the name as a blessing, and that I was named in honour of a strong and amazing woman, but twenty-five years of “How do you pronounce that?” (it's 'air', like the stuff we breathe, okay?) and awkward telephone conversations had taught me one thing, and that was that my name isn't a blessing. Eyre Langlais. A mouthful on it's own, even worse if you knew that my middle name was Charmain (apparently after a character in a play by the ever-so-famous Shakespeare, although extracting which one and why had never been easy with my mother.)

The second blow was my parents. Or lack of them, as the case would be. I never knew my dad, and I never honestly cared. My mother—an innocent eighteen year old English major at the time—had no clue how to raise a child, although nobody could say she didn't try. She was determined and head-strong, and, whilst it led to days when our stomachs went without food, she never accepted help. She taught me from a young age to be independent, and to be able to care for myself. A good thing she did, since she spent the majority of my childhood working three jobs to scrape together enough cash to pay the bills and leaving me on my own.

I had an awkward time in school—always on the outside; never bullied, but never accepted either. I didn't make friends, only acquaintances. Kids whose faces I can no longer remember, and whose voices are just distant memories. Blips in my past. My experiences, however, taught me that life wasn't fun and games, and whilst I never saw it then, it would set the tone for the rest of my life. After secondary school, it was just more boring, lifeless days, only these ones were spent trying to find a job and a house—not a home—rather than studying for tests which would get me nowhere.

It was on yet another of the days like this that my life would change...

I hesitate to say for the better.

My lovely old beaten up wreck of a car was playing up, and after yet another ominous groan emitted from the depths of the engine, I reached out a hand and patted the dashboard.

“Please don't die on me,” I said, despite knowing that there was little chance that my car would hear me and decide to change its ways. I'd had a hard day and it was now seven at night, pitch black, and extremely cold. Only a few minutes earlier snowflakes had begun drifting down from the sky, and they were sliding—as clear droplets—down the length of the windscreen and pooling at the bottom. Winter had once been my favourite season, when I was about ten and it meant presents and warm cocoa, and being curled up next to the heater under a duvet, but now all it meant was shorter hours of daylight, bad weather, delays and extra work.

Finally, after a few more miles at snails-pace, the car came to a grinding halt. It had done it's job, however, because I realized as I got out and carefully closed the door behind me (carefully because otherwise it was liable to fall off) that I was standing in the street connected to my apartment's block by a narrow alleyway. I knew the route, so I started walking, confident that I would soon be back home to enjoy a evening of late night television, ignoring the steadily growing stack of 'important!' emblazoned bills piling up near my door, and a microwave dinner.

It was only as I stepped into the dark alleyway that I first noticed the dead guy—although, admittedly, I didn't realize he was in such a state when I first saw him. But hey, it was an easy mistake to make, after all, since he was stood up, clad in a black sweatshirt with the hoodie pulled up over his hair and hiding his face, and leaning against the wall. I felt nervousness clench in my stomach, but I didn't let it show on my face. I planned to just inch past him, but when I got close he looked up, and I stopped dead.

His eyes, glinting out from the sharp shadows of his face, make my heart skip a few beats. They were a bright, glowing yellow—not a warm brown, or caramel, like autumn leaves, which might be considered normal, but piercing, predator-like yellow. I knew, instantly, what this meant, but my brain took a few long moments to process the information. All I could think was how I should be sprinting away, but I found myself rooted to the spot.

Then, suddenly, the man shifted as if he was getting ready to strike, and this apparently worked to jolt body into action, because I spun on my heel and started running. But it was a hopeless cause. I'd reacted too late, and the burst of energy I felt was soon gone—like it had been drained straight out of my body—and then, sealing my fate, I felt ice-cold fingers close around my wrist, and I heard a low chuckle. A laugh which sent shivers down my spine, and tingles to the tips of my fingers—like my body was physically responding to the sheer evilness it conveyed. His grip on my wrist was iron-like, and I found no matter how much I struggled it was impossible to pull away.

Instead, I found myself yanked towards him, and I saw his nostrils flare slightly as he leaned closer, cracked and bright pink lips curving up into a smirk in an ashen-pale face. Those awful eyes looked me up and down, and yet another low chuckle bubbled from his lips. “Ahh, you're a nice 'un,” he said, his voice hoarse as if from disuse. Grating and abrasive, I couldn't help like feel it seemed fitting. There was appraisal in his eyes. “Tomas will certainly like you, no? He has a thing for the pretty dark-haired girls.”

I felt his gaze, acutely aware of his words and the meaning, but my own eyes were drawn to the hand now clamped around my wrist. And what I saw marking his skin confirmed my earlier suspicious—a simple black cross inked on the spot between where his hand ended and wrist began.

The mark of a vampire. The blood-suckers. The undead, or rather the changed, because nobody had settled on what to actually call them—scientists said one thing, mythology said another. They were the monster that parents used as a scapegoat to scare children in behaving (“You better clean your room, Eyre, or the vampires will get you!”) and one of them was standing in front of me now, apparently completely at ease and ready to kill me.

My breath caught in my throat, and he glanced down, as if noticing what I'd seen, and when he looked up again his smirk was bigger, now more foreboding than anything. “Oh, smart, too. You know what that means, don't you pretty one?” Suddenly his gaze no longer felt appraisal, and instead, it held something all that much worse. Hunger. He opened his mouth only a tiny bit, but it was enough for me to spy his rapidly elongating canines, now pressing against his bottom lip.

“You're lunch, sweetie.”

I felt his other hand—the only not clamped around my wrist—move to my neck, where it pushed my dark hair back and away from my neck. I was still struggling, but I found my limbs heavy and hard to move, and it took more effort than normal to even roll my eyes to look at him. I knew why. I'd read enough books on blood-suckers to realize it was him doing something—using his powers—which had caused my inability to fight back, that it must be some kind of energy drain. It was getting stronger, too, so much so that even my little struggles were finally too much effort, and I was forced to give up. I literally could not move, even if I could find a way to get him to let go.

I was resigning myself to the fate I knew awaited me—I'm sure their were many more gruesome ways to die, and I'd heard from survivors that vampire bites were meant to be the most pleasurable experience they'd had, and it was only the unfortunate after effects (mostly death) which had made blood-suckers so scary—when, suddenly, I felt him tense, his nostrils flaring even more. My first thought was the scent of my blood had caused the reaction, but then I heard something which both made my heart soar, and plummet.

Footsteps.

I had no clue who they belonged to, only that each one was careful and measured, and that there was no hurry to the pace. I wanted to scream out, to warn them, but my mouth wouldn't move. Desperately, I tried to raise my hands, to take advantage of the distraction to push this monster away, but I only managed to make my fingers twitch pathetically. Then, suddenly, my attacker pulled away, and whilst he kept the hand on my wrist making sure I couldn't run—there was little chance of that anyway, considering my lack of energy—his other one dropped from my neck. I was pushed back, behind him, but I caught a glimpse of him baring his teeth in a snarl.

“Why, my old friend,” I heard murmured from the shadows, the owner of the voice impossible to see despite my frantic searching eyes. The footsteps had stopped though, and I realized that this was who they belonged to. My attacker hunched his shoulders forwards, the tightness of his grip on me increasing so much that it began to hurt. I gasped in pain, but he paid no heed, and the pressure on my wrist didn't stop.

“You,” he said in response. His tone was full of something which surprised me—panic.

I heard a laugh in response, and then a man melted out of the shadows. He was as dark clad as the other, but there was a red scrap of fabric tied around the sleeve of jacket, stark against the blackness of his outfit. I saw him glance at me for a split second, but his attention was on my attacker. “Yes, yes, it is me, I believe. At least it was the last time I looked in the mirror.” I couldn't work out the features on his face, only that he had matching glowing yellow eyes—so he was a vampire, too—and that his skin was as milky-white as the other's. Vampires don't have reflections, I thought, stupidly, and I saw him roll his eyes. “Figure of speech, sweetie. Now do you want to be rescued or what?”

Holy shit, he heard my thoughts. My eyes widened so far I was sure they'd pop right out of my skull, but he gave no more looks my way and turned his full attention to the guy who'd attacked me. He took a few steps forward, giving him a look between calm and pitying. “Shall we do this the easy way or the hard one?” He asked quietly, as he reached into his jacket and pulled out something which glinted deadly silver in the dim lighting—a knife. I swallowed nervously, still unable to do anything but watch as the two vampires faced off.

Suddenly my attacker let go of my wrist, but without the support it provided I feel to the ground, throwing out a hand to stop myself. My arm, however, wasn't able to even support my own weight and I crumpled like a lifeless doll. I tried to pull myself up, but there was literally no strength left in my body, and I watched, helplessly, from my position on the ground as the new vampire darted forward, grinning in a purely sadistic way as he backed the other one against the wall. He pressed the knife to the first one's throat, and he didn't do it gently... I saw the blade cut into the skin and the blood well up at the edges.

“Neither,” the now cornered one said as almost a hiss, his yellow eyes now outlined with blood red. It was a change I had only ever seen in textbooks in Biology class when we were learning all about our vampire relatives but I instantly knew what it was—pure anger. He had his head pushed up against the wall at an awkward angle because of the position of the blade, but I saw his hand moving behind his back, and yelled out in warning just he swung it forward and smacked his fist into the side of the knife-wielding vampire's head. The guy swayed, as if he was about to collapse, and dread clenched my stomach.

Then, suddenly, he recovered, as if nothing had happened at all, and I watched him smile. “Alright, my way it is,” he said, kicking the guy's legs out from underneath him and then putting a boot-clad foot straight across his throat and pressing down. I saw the guy's eyes roll back in shock, but the fact he didn't need to breathe in the first place made the foot on his windpipe rather ineffective. They locked eyes, staring at each other for seconds which seemed to last hours, and then the other vampire pulled out an old-fashioned looking revolver and calmly shot him through the heart.

He kicked the body away from him, then turned and stood, watching me. I knew I was probably a sickly white colour, but then again he wasn't looking much better himself. Now he was closer I picked up on the black hair curling in wisps around those off-putting yellow eyes, the sharp planes of his face and the pallid hue to his skin. He dropped into a crouch, reaching out and pressing two fingers to the side of my neck. I tried to wriggle away from the freezing cold touch, but my limbs were dead weights attached to my body.

“Hmm, still alive then,” he said, nodding, and dropping his hand back to his side. “I'm guessing you're just in a bit of shock, huh?”

My mouth felt like it was full of cotton wool, numb and dry. I tried to open it to respond, but he was already moving himself. He sprung it his feet more nimbly than I'd seen ever anybody do, and I felt myself being hauled up too, an arm looped around my waist and the other gripping mine around his shoulders. He, using the arm he had around my waist, touched his fingers to my wrist and a rush of something raced through my veins, a burning sensation which made me jerk away instinctively.

Then my head exploded in pain and I fell into blackness.