• Chapter 1

    When I sat down in my chair at the far end of the table, the little boys laughter I had heard in the garden, sounded in my new ears, but none of the adults surrounding me turned their heads to look for the source of the haunting sound. The people here dressed in suits and dresses, sitting next to their spouse and chewing lightly, trying to make small talk to me. Then they moved onto ask my stepfather questions why the stock moneys been going up and down, but none of this interested me. I just kept eating my food, half-listening to the conversations the rich people were having. When I went to grab my glass of wine, one of the housemaids who worked at the front door, tapped me on the shoulder.
    “Miss, you have a visitor. A young man. Said he came here to see you, uh, Midnight, I believe. Said he was a friend of yours.” I excused myself from everyone, who happened to not be paying any mind to me at all, and went to see Midnight, my best friend. I wasn’t really hungry anyway.
    The housemaid escorted me to the foyer where Midnight waited, walking about and looking at the paintings hanging above the beautiful vases. His attire consisted of holey black cargo pants with chains, a purple long-sleeved shirt (with holes for his thumbs) under a black short-sleeve with Marilyn Manson on it, and a beanie hat that was black as black could be. His hair was a short blonde color to about the ends of his ears. His body is well and healthy and his ears are pierced twice on each side. The bottom piercing is gauged.
    When I saw Midnight, I immediately ran up to him and hugged him like only best friends could do. He hugs me back and points up the stairs where my room is. He’s asking if we can go to my room and I nod. Around here, everyone thinks Midnight is deaf, but he really isn’t. He just pretends he is because he just can’t stand to listen to the rich people talk, but that’s just something you have to ignore at my house. I never paid much attention to the boring conversations that my mom and steploser had with others, it was never interesting to me. That’s what I like about Midnight, we have so much in common.
    As we climbed the stairs I said, “When we get to my room, I have something I need to tell you. It happened just before dinner started and it’s important to me.”
    “Sweet, Nitemare, just coolness.” Was all he said. That’s when we reached the door to my room. I had posters of all my favorite bands and some awesome drawings that me and my friends drew together on the door. The wood painted black and the handles were of black gold.
    I reached for the handle and turned it, opening the door into the dark space that is my room. I walked straight into the darkness with Midnight at my back while I took out my pack of matches and lit one, holding it to a few of the many candles that lit my room. The orange flames danced on the wicks of the purple and black candles as well as my walls, which were also covered in posters and things my friends and I drew. My bed was a mattress on the floor with black and purple sheets, pillows, and notebook paper strewn all over it. The floor was made of old Maplewood, chalk lines in the shape of the Star of David, two triangles smashed together to make a six pointed star, and books laid open to specific pages, plus piles clothes, all over.
    Seat cushions were used as chairs and carpet for seating and Midnight sat down, more like plopped down, and I followed him down. It became completely silent in the small space, only our breathing and heartbeats were audible while I placed words and sentences together in my head, trying to figure out how to say this to my best friend. Soon I had formed enough to start a conversation about my awkwardness.
    “Midnight,” I said slowly and carefully. “I think that, umm, I’ve become a, uh, Vampire.” He laughed at what I said, I knew he would. “Please don’t laugh at me, Mid. I’m serious. You’re the only one who I can tell.” What he did next surprised me, and I don’t get surprised very often.
    “I know, Nitemare. I’ve known for a while. I am also a Vampire and I am here to help you through your transition into your new life. The Elders want me to marry you, so I have to prove myself to them.” He said all this while playing with my hair and brushing strands out of my eyes, but my mind couldn’t get used to the idea of being a Vampire, and now I had to deal with more Vampires. I was more than confused, I was lost entirely from the conversation. Midnight was saying things that didn’t yet make sense, the buzzing in my head made everything sound far away. Then, the next thing I knew, I saw blackness starting to seep into my vision and it was a little comforting, yet at the same time it was the most scariest thing I had ever seen.
    “Um, Mid. Is the creepy black stuff supposed to be there? Cause it’s freaking me out.” I said before I passed out, giving into the dark abyss, letting it swallow me whole, yet not knowing why I did. When I awoke, Midnight was giving me what looked like a glass of red wine and I happily took it, downing the glass in seconds. I was parched. My throat felt dryer than the desert and Midnight kept supplying more of the intoxicating wine from a green-tinted and unlabeled wine bottle.
    I was wondering by the third glass what was in the wine, because the wine didn’t taste like wine at all. In addition, in my day, I’ve had plenty of wine to account for a whole vineyards worth of red wine. I smack my lips together and stare into the cup, sloshing it’s contents around and around, trying to figure out what is in the wine.
    Midnight had out his arms around me, supporting me because I still couldn’t sit up by my self. I felt better than I had earlier and I wanted to know what was in my addicting red wine. I finally asked, “Mid, what’s in my wine?” He looked away then, and I guess my brain started to turn its wheels and I finally pinpointed the taste in the wine. It was blood. Blood! I’d been drinking blood! No less from an unnamed wine!
    “Midniiight, why am I drinking blood? I cant be drinking blood. Why did you make me drink blood?” My voice was rising hysterically and again he only turned away.
    “You needed to. Blood makes Vampires stronger and stuff, I didn’t think you were gonna pass out though. I mean, it happened to me while I was eating human food. Still, you weren’t eating human food, were you?” He looked pleadingly and his eyes were saying that he already knew the answer but wanted to hear differently.
    “Yeah,” I shrugged. “I kinda didn’t know the Vampire rules or anything until now. Well, only one rule, but still. It’s not like I knew.” I had made my case and had too many questions to ask Midnight, like how old he really was or why was I hearing the little innocent laughter. My throbbing head felt calmer now and I had just started to begin my explosion of questions when a knock sounded at my door.
    My breath shortened into little gasps as I could see, yeah see, who was there at my door and it was still closed so tight that not even a little ant could get in. The person at my door was the steploser and my mother. My powers as a Vampire were just beginning to emerge, I realized. I wonder what else I could do with these new Vampiric senses.
    “Nitemare? Are you in there?” asked my mother, her face forcing a grin as I could see. “Your father and I would like to speak with you privately.”
    I really wished she would stop calling him my father, he’s nowhere near the fatherly type. He doesn’t even like me and he abuses me when she’s nowhere to be seen. Sometimes I wish he would just leave and never, ever come back. That’s what I think about him. Furthermore, he just won’t leave me alone. Such a creeper and perfectionist. Not the kind of person I’d like to have as a dad.
    “No, mother, I’m not in here, in my room, that can lock from the inside.” I exclaimed sarcastically. “Of course I am, you idiot. Where else would I be?” I wanted them to leave Midnight and me alone because I had so many questions to ask him about being a Vampire and such. Were all the fairy tales true? What happens if you accidently kill someone while you drink from them? Do we burn in the sun like Dracula or do we shine like Edward Cullen? You know, stuff like that.
    This time when they knocked, the door shook, protesting the abuse it was taking for me. “Nitemare, you come out here right now, young woman.” It was the steplosers voice that had rang through the weak door, reaching my ears with no effort at all.
    “Why do I have to?” I yelled at the poster scattered door. “It should be my choice to do whatever I want to! My choice, not yours! Just leave me alone!” I wanted to go to the window, open it up, grab Midnight, and jump, but I wasn’t sure we’d make it. The drop was, at the least, a hundred-foot and I didn’t feel like dying just yet.
    “Midnight,” I whispered. “Can we survive a hundred-foot drop?” I pointed to the window and looked pleadingly at him. “I want to jump out that window because those so called parents are getting on my last nerve. I’m gonna go pack some of my things if we can survive that jump, but I doubt it.”
    He just looked at me quizzically and nodded, “Yeah, we can make it, but you must know something,” he murmured. “Your stepfather is one of the Vampire Elders and we can’t run very far from him. He’s practically invincible compared to a newborn and a half year.”
    “Your only a half year older than me? That’s strange, I always thought I was older than you.” I smirked and he snickered. I grabbed my backpack and dumped everything out of it and started stuffing my favorite shirts and pants into the tiny bag, cramming some books and my mp3 player in there in between my clothes so it didn’t get wet. It was raining, sorta, and I wanted to beat the deafening thunderclaps that made me want to rip someone’s eardrum out.
    Once all the things I needed were packed and Midnight denied a stop at his house, we were ready to make a mind-blowing jump. I was a little scared, but I wanted to make this jump. It meant my freedom and separation from this family that I no longer wished to be a part of.
    I gave Midnight the bag full to the brim and walked over to the window to unlock it. By then, the pounding on my door had increased and now they were yelling, but I was too focused to listen to their pointless antics. I unlocked the windows fastener and hoisted the window wide open. Looking down now, it seemed like a far away place and that we were too high up.
    Midnight grasped my shoulder and whispered, “Let me go first, okay?” I nodded and stepped away from the window to give him room. Before he jumped out the window, he swung the bag over the edge and let it drop, waiting till he heard it thud again the muddy ground. He looked back at me for but a moment and then he leapt over the windowsill.
    I rant to the window to watch him descend. To my astonishment, when he landed, it was graceful. The tips of his shoes landed first, then the balls of his feet, and then his heels touched the earth. He didn’t stagger like some drunk guy trying to pick up girls at the bar or fall over.
    “Nitemare, hurry up!” he exclaimed. “Just jump!”
    I did as instructed, stepping onto the ledge, following his exact movements in every way possible. As I fell, the wind and rain thrashed at my face, soaking me entirely from head to toe. I didn’t hurt like I thought it would if I fell through the sky while it rained, but the ground was advancing toward me, faster and faster it came. I started to panic, but as the ground came into a ten-foot range, my legs automatically moved to level with the soft terrain. I alighted on the mud with Midnight’s arms finding their way around me and warming my cold upper limbs.
    I heard the door above me break open, sending shards and pieces of wood out of the open window. Yelling voices rained down on my ears and people calling my name, but I ignored them and started running towards the gates. Those gates were being guarded by the guards, obviously, but they had gone in search of Midnight and I on orders from the steploser, but they’d never find us. I know they can’t because I had a feeling of certainty that they couldn’t. So as the guards ran back to their posts, searching every corner and shadow for us, we slipped through the grand double doors that told me we were leaving the palace that has homed me since I was ten. I spat at the floor of the huge doors and ran through them, Midnight moving silently next to me.
    I felt the wind weave through my hair as we ran away from my former house, the beautiful garden lingering at the back of my head, begging me to see it one last time. Besides, it was too late for that now, we were far away from the horrid place that held me captive, like a Goth noble trapped in her tower, only allowed to roam up to the palace gates to greet guests and friends. I wonder if they’ll miss me at all, I thought. Just since I’ll be gone and their filthy arms shall never touch me ever again. I laughed silently at the thought of them trying but failing to hold me inside their evil clutches again.
    I couldn’t stop thinking about them though or stop running, I just wanted to be as far away from them as possible by the time I needed to rest. Midnight wasn’t breathing heavy or sweating as much as I was, apparently he was older than my in Vampire years. Who would’ve known. Not me, of course, but I don’t think anyone would’ve cared much anyway, so why bother think about it.
    My sensitive ears picked up sounds all around us while we took a breather. The sound of rain and nature, I loved it so very much. Even though we started to move when I could breathe properly again, I basked in the shine of the glow bugs that hid in the trees’ cover.
    I didn’t feel like moving again, out of breath, when suddenly I heard footfalls nearby in the forest. I notified Midnight immediately hoping he would tell me he heard it too, but he looked surprised, listened hard and said, “How can you hear them? They sound so far away.”
    “But, I swear, Midnight! It sounds as if they where only a few yards away from me!” I yelled, my voice cracking. I didn’t want to be found or anything. I hated it there and it was much more like a prison when he wasn’t around. That’s why he was always over, I thought. I must really love him.
    “Mid, I can’t go back there! It’s like a ******** prison there without you! I-I can’t–” My voice broke off and tears escaped my tightly closed eyelids and slowly fell down my cheeks.
    “You can’t leave me alone. I need you here to keep me together. I love you and I know you love me. So please don’t leave me alone to go back to that hellhole. I just can’t go back, I just can’t.” I sad more softly, glad that my voice didn’t crack again and gave more power to my words, even if my voice shook only a little.
    “Nitemare, I didn’t know. I never did.” He came up to me and hugged me suddenly. “I swear to never let you fall back into their arms. I’ll hold you until you don’t want me anymore. And when you do stop liking me, I’ll keep on holding on. At a distance, if you want.”
    I took a deep breath and listened. I gasped and whispered, “They’ve come.” Midnight whirled around to look for the source of my extreme sense of the steplosers evil accomplices. “No, we must run. If they find us, they’ll kill you and take me back to that place. I can’t go on living if you’re dead!”
    He just nodded and turned around. We started running then and never looked back to see if they were following us. All I had to do was yell that they were catching up to us occasionally because Midnight still couldn’t hear them and their soft steps, but my ears could. I wonder how this will work out, I thought. Why do I have sensitive hearing and Midnight doesn’t? But I couldn’t stop and listen to my thoughts, I had to keep moving or they’ll catch us. That’s the only thought I needed to have. We just kept running and running until we needed to breathe, then we still kept on running.