The Vampire's Moon

I drifted. I don't have a better word for it. Everything was black, then suddenly, it wasn't. I looked around me, and realized I was in my old house back in the countryside, back when I was little. I knew I was unconscious, or dreaming, but couldn't seem to wake up. I looked down and froze.
I was small. Not tiny, small, but ten-years-old small. I looked at my hands, so tiny, so fragile. I was in the kitchen, sunlight streaming through the window, the warmth of it playing on my skin. I saw the far wall, where a long mirror hung, and walked slowly forward to peer at my reflection.
Yes, I was ten again. Short, pale, and green-eyed. My hair hung in a black curtain around my waist and across my shoulders. But something was different, something significant...
My eyes widened when I realized what it was. My scars. I wasn't wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck. I was wearing a pale yellow, short-sleeved T-shirt. My skinny arms had no marks, no bites. My neck was missing it's side-by-side silver dots.
Tears sprang to my eyes. I was unmarked. I was fresh, clean. It felt so good, so nice to be the me I was again from before it all started. Before I lost my ability to trust for so long. I felt a vague sense of deja vu.
"Honey, Michelle," a sweet voice spoke from the doorway, "come here and help me with this, dear."
I found myself turning, and saw a face that I had been unable to look upon for so long.
Mother.
She stood there, her straight black hair framing a face that was tan and kind. Her golden eyes looked upon me with such love, I knew I would weep. She was peeling off her gardening gloves, trowel set on the counter. A single smudge of dirt was on her left cheek, and she reached up to wipe it away. The chills I always felt in the presence of vampires crawled down my spine, but it wasn't unpleasant with her, and I was used to it. Her checked shirt was frayed at the edges, and her dirt covered jeans had holes in the knees. A smile tugged at slightly dry lips, from working in the sun all day. A breeze through the window sent her scent my way, a sweet smell of freesia, with the added bonus of gardenia and lilac from the flowers in her garden. She was dirty, disheveled, and her clothes were a mess, but in that moment, she looked so beautiful to me she could have been mistaken for an angel.
I wanted to run to her, wanted to embrace her in a hug and never let go, wanted to tell her over and over how much I loved her. But I couldn't I found myself walking forward, stopping a foot or so from her; so close, yet so far away.
I tried to speak, tell her I loved her, but my mouth wouldn't listen. "Yes, Mommy?" I said instead.
No! That wasn't what I wanted to say! With a surge of horror I realized what was going on. I recognized that shirt, those pants, the outfit I was wearing. I was reliving the day of my mother's murder. And I couldn't control myself, nor what was going to happen soon. I was powerless to stop it.
"My little vampire, will you help Mommy take some food outside for a snack? We can play a game, if you want." She smiled fondly at me.
"Okay, Mommy!" I felt myself smiling when all I wanted to do was cry.
"That's a girl," she said, spinning me by the shoulder and giving me a slight push towards the fruit basket on the table. The doorbell rang, and she looked over her shoulder back the way she came to the entrance hall. "Now, who could that be? You go along, little vampire, I'll be right along."
While my body moved toward the table, I wanted to scream for her to come back, not to answer the door, but could not. I wanted to yell for her to touch me again, to not leave me, but could not.
I gathered apples, bananas, and pears in my little arms, carrying them all to the counter. As I reached for a paper sack to put them in, a scream ripped through the house.
I froze. In my mind I screamed, don't hesitate! Run to her! Run to her! If you don't go now, you'll be to late! My mind weeped, please, run to her! Please, God, don't let it happen again! Please, run to her now!
My body refused to listen, and simply stood there frozen in what had been fear when the real event had happened. My body waited until the second, weaker scream came two minutes later before slowly walking from the room to the entrance hall, and freezing once more.
There was mother, pinned between the wall and a man about a foot taller than her. He was dressed entirely in black, and his long black hair brushed my mother's shoulders from where his head was bent to her neck. His hands gripped her arms so tightly, it would definitely leave bruises. He made slight sucking noises from her neck, and mother was making incomprehensible gurgling noises.
He was biting her. I knew that. When it had first happened, I'd wondered why this man was biting my Mommy, when Mommy had told me that only couples could bite each other, and he wasn't my Daddy. It was when he bit down so hard a strangled scream escaped Mommy's throat and her face contorted in pain, that I'd realized this wasn't a pleasure bite. This wasn't the intimate, close, loving bite my parents sometimes indulged in in the privacy of their room, or the caring, passionate, tender thing my mother had always said it was. This was carnal, intended to cause pain and suffering to the receiver. I'd figured this out, but been too shocked to do anything.
I now already knew all this, and cried out in panic in my head to stop him. To attack him, to do something, anything! Just save Mommy!
I didn't. Instead I could only watch as the man slowly pulled back, red fangs glistening, and let Mommy's lifeless body fall to the floor in a heap, eyes blank.
I opened my mouth and screamed, "DADDY! Help! MOMMY!" But I knew Daddy wouldn't come. He was gone, fishing at the lake in the center of the woods. Too far away to help us now. The me then didn't know this, didn't want to believe this. The me then wanted Daddy to come in and save her, to save Mommy, even though she knew it was already to late for her. And when the man that was vampire turned his attention to me, I couldn't even run anymore.
He pounced, so fast I couldn't see him, and knocked me to the ground, holding me against the floor. I tried to struggle, but he merely held me down with a strength I'd never felt before. I met his eyes, and suddenly I stopped struggling, too shocked to move. His eyes were red, bloody red. They were the eyes of the Devil himself, and they scared me more than Hell itself.
Suddenly, he struck his head like a snake at my neck, and bit down with a force that made me scream. It hurt, it hurt so bad. Pain flamed in my neck, in my head. And even though this was a mere vision, a dream of sorts, I felt it all as though it were happening again.
I knew I was going to die if this continued. If he kept drinking as he was. Some part of my mind at the time had known this, and had acted upon instinct. I bit back, snapping down on his neck as my fangs extended to their full length. His blood poured between my lips, sweet, and metallic, and....powerful. Raw power, such as I'd never felt or seen before, filled his blood. I sucked the blood as fast as I could, and I heard him hiss against my neck.
Just as I though I was going to pass out from blood loss, he pulled back, and jumped off me to stand a few feet away. I sat up slowly, weakly, to look at him, but he merely stood there, sagging against the wall, as he watched me with those eyes. I watched him as I dragged myself over to Mommy's body, pulling her head to cradle it in my lap.
The tears I'd been wanting to cry the entire time I'd been reliving this event finally fell from my eyes, crawling down my face. Just before I could pass out from the physical exertion of moving myself and the loss of blood, I looked up into those red eyes, and in my head I froze.
His eyes weren't full of surrender, or defeat, as I'd always thought they'd been. No, those eyes were curious, laughing, and anything but those of a person giving up. His eyes said he would definitely see me again. There was something else, though. Something that confused me, that didn't make sense.
Because his eyes said that he'd let me live.