How do you feel about vampires?

Chapter 1 | How Do You Feel About Vampires?

What comes to mind when you hear the word "vampire"?

Count Dracula? Nosferatu? Maybe Cecilio and Carmilla?

Vampires are described differently everywhere. In some stories, they're afraid of sunlight. In others, they hate garlic. Sometimes a silver bullet turns them to dust, and sometimes the only way to kill them is a stake straight through the heart.

Although, honestly, I feel like a piece of rebar sticking out of your chest would probably kill anyone.

My name is Miu, and at first glance, I have a very normal family.

Four sisters.

A big house.

No parents.

And a rather sad story we occasionally tell people when we need to explain why none of us ever seem to age.

The truth is much more fun.

Jennie became a vampire when she was twenty-six. It wasn't particularly romantic, but it happened long enough ago that we stopped discussing the details.

She found me about three hundred and forty years ago.

I was dying of the flu.

Yes.

The flu.

Not a vampire hunter, not a werewolf bite, not even some mysterious medieval disease. Regular old influenza nearly killed me, and Jennie decided that since she happened to be there, she might as well keep me.

Some time later, Ningning joined us in China.

Ella's story is completely different.

She really wanted to die.

Jennie looked at her, thought about it, and decided that a girl that beautiful had no business making decisions that terrible.

And that's how Ella became a vampire.

Eventually, we became sisters.

Not by blood.

By circumstance.

And by the number of years we've spent together.

We travel.

Change our names.

Move whenever someone starts looking a little too closely at our photographs.

Sometimes we change our documents.

Sometimes cities.

Sometimes countries.

Basically, just your average, quiet family life.

Have I ever fallen for regular humans?

Of course.

Once, I fell pretty damn hard.

Unfortunately, he turned out to be a complete asshole.

I had to push him off a cliff.

Not because I'm cruel.

He was going to tell everyone what we were, and I don't like people ruining other people's plans.

Then Justin Bieber was born.

That's a whole other story.

We once used him to save Ella.

We had to erase his memory afterward, by the way.

These days, he probably has absolutely no idea why he once woke up in a hotel room in another country with the distinct feeling that the last few months of his life had simply been a dream.