There was nothing else apart from the blood. I could smell it, and I could see it. It controlled everything, it seemed. The sky was burning red, showing no sympathy to the cruelty down here. I myself seemed to be in the middle of a kind of a field. There was a small pool of water beside me, but as I looked more carefully, it turned crimson, than dark, finally drained in the sunlight.
Before me, there were figures in dark cloaks. Vampires, they were. They were advancing, not even bothering to fight. Dead bodies of humans lay beside me. Amy, Peter, Helen. I counted their names as I watched the enemies march forward. Some of the people were trying to fight back, but some of them just stood by.
A high-pitched snarl left my mouth, and I lunged towards them. The vampire in the front bared his fangs in response, but my finger dug deep into his heart, and he was on the ground, blood spilling from his chest. My feet kicked his cloak away, and he screamed, soon he was nothing more than a pile of dust.
I went forward, struck again and again, wanting to stop but could not afford it.
I gasped and opened my eyes. I was on my bed in my dormitory. Not soon after the little trip to the big city, I attended college. The school work was not a big problem to me, and I could pass the tests with good results easily. Amy and Peter had decided to arrange their wedding at the end of the second semester. I even got into a designer’s club, where I could relax myself by cutting the fabrics apart.
Everything seemed pretty normal if I looked at it from this angle. Actually, apart from this, my life was a total battle field. Kerwin became a little weird after I told him of Beno’s death. I didn’t say that I killed him, just told him a vampire came and got killed. He went silent and avoided meeting me for a few days, and then returned back to normal. He seemed would attend the same college as I, and Tiffany was sent back to her hometown.
I shook my head, and made myself think more clearly. I put on a sweat shirt and a pair of jeans, and went outside to breathe some fresh air. The wind was gentle and sweet, with the smell of flowers. Suddenly, the sound of insects, the sway of flowers and trees, the soft singing of birds and everything else went to a stop. The ice-like silence spread across the field.
I screwed my eyes together, sniffed with all my might, and ran in the direction of the blood. I found it after running across the whole campsite. A strangled girl’s body lay lifelessly in the flowerbed near the main gate.
There were two small wounds on the victim’s throat, and the skin of the girl was white as chalk. I tried her pulse. A crack of a branch behind me announced some one else coming. “Another one. This is the third time this month.” I said without looking back, examining the body and detecting the scent left.
Kerwin answered in a grim voice: “The same one did all these, didn’t he?” I nodded, and we both fell silent.
There were a few sets of different vampire attacks going on here. After Beno, we found another four or five vampires lurking around in the neighborhood a little later. In my opinion, they took advantage of that crack no one else could see in the sky.
Though I didn’t think I was the creator of this world, I decided to protect this world that I cared about in any possible way. Kerwin helped a lot. He even hunted one vampire down himself. In the spare time, he taught me how to handle weapons, and a little fighting skill. He seemed to have a lot of experience, and he was a very patient teacher. I had mastered the use of bows and arrows in less than two weeks with his help.
This vampire that lurked around was in the college, absolutely. There had been at least three victims, and that was only inside the campus. I had been working on him for a month now, and still couldn’t find any sign of him. He didn’t come to murder me, though. In that case, I just had to wait until I caught him.
The school teachers and guards still hadn’t figured out what was doing these terrible crimes. They thought it might be a dangerous animal or something, and they had tightened the security around the school. Which made it more difficult for me to sneak around at night. The students were getting more suspicious every time an attack was announced. Some of them guessed that a vampire was doing these, which was the truth, but none of the teachers listen.
“These are not even true, now go back to your dormitory.” The teachers often reply like this.
However, I was more worried about this than usual. I had a bad feeling. Just like the one I had before Zach’s death. And the dreams of the cloaked figure of an army of vampires always struck me at night. There were some vampire hunters here too, I could sense them.
Kerwin turned to leave as usual, after a sniff of the body. I hid behind a tree trunk and waited for the hunters to come. There were three of them. My guess was they were divided into teams of three, because the ones I had met before were made up of three hunters also. This time, they were all men, two teenage boys, and one a little older.
They stood by the body of the victim for a while, and talked among themselves. Whatever they were talking about, I doubted they would know more than I did. After they left, I showed myself, and hurried back to the dormitory.
I had been working a lot on finding out who killed Zach, of course. Kerwin went to the police station while I was at the party at my request, and stole some of the papers about it for me. After reading everything and collecting information from the library, I made a list of the things I knew.
He was definitely not committing suicide. That was from what I know about him and the fact he didn’t cancel the party arrangement. As I had said before, there were still decorations on the wall.
There were no sign of a struggle. There were the marks of the fire, and scratches made by Zach because of the pain he had from the burning, but nothing else. This suggested that he at least obediently went into the center of the fire, and waited there until there was no way out.
I scratched my head in impatience. This was the thirtieth time I looked at my notes, and found nothing else. These two points that I collected were both perfectly true, and yet they could not be in one consequence.
I tapped my pen unconsciously, so that meant he was killed by someone either had the strength to make him unconscious for a long time, or one who had the power to control his movements. Believe me, it would be almost impossible with Zach and his talent around.
My temper had been really bad. It seemed nothing was going in a right direction. The vampire released in this school was still committing murder, hunters were in the school so I had to keep careful in case they noticed me, I was nowhere near finding who had murdered my brother than finding out what those continuous nightmares of a battle field meant, and my diet of pure animal blood was driving me crazy.
I took a deep breath; the thirsty and burning sensation increased a little as I took in the scent of human blood. They were as near and as weak as a hunter could hope for his target, but I had to restrain myself. With the vampire around, I instinctively felt my personal safety in question, which meant that my body wanted a more vampire-ish diet to keep myself strong.
I took out a bottle, and drank deeply. I made a face as the wrong flavor touched my tongue. Maybe I would do it like Kerwin, he bought human blood under the name of a doctor, who had no idea because he was out of the country right now. I could ask him to spare some for me, probably.
I lunched myself on the bed once again and looked at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to rise. Tomorrow, I would possibly find out something I wanted. It would be a new day, after all.
Not the most prompt update, for which I am sorry, but we hope you enjoy the chapter!
