Sleep was impossible.
I lay in my narrow dorm bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to Sarah's steady breathing from across the room. The silver butter knife under my pillow dug into my skull every time I shifted, but I didn't move it. Mark's warning echoed in my head: Just in case.
Just in case I turned into a monster while I slept.
The digital clock on my nightstand read 3:17 AM in angry red numbers. I'd been lying here for four hours, and I felt more awake than I ever had in my life. Every sound in the building was crystal clear. The couple two floors up having sex. The guy next door grinding his teeth in his sleep. A mouse somewhere in the walls, its tiny heart beating like a drum.
All those heartbeats. All that blood pumping through veins, warm and alive and...
I sat up abruptly, pressing my palms against my temples. Don't think about it. Don't think about how they would taste, how warm they would be, how easy it would be to just—
"Stop," I whispered into the darkness.
But the hunger was getting stronger. It had been building all night, a gnawing emptiness in my stomach that regular food couldn't touch. I'd tried drinking water, eating crackers from Sarah's stash, even doing push-ups to burn off the restless energy.
Nothing worked.
I threw off my covers and padded quietly to the tiny bathroom Sarah and I shared. Maybe a shower would help. Cold water, focus on something normal and human and routine.
The fluorescent light flickered to life, harsh and unforgiving. I caught sight of myself in the mirror above the sink and froze.
My skin looked pale. Not normal pale – I'd always been fair-skinned – but white as paper. Like all the blood had drained out of my face. My lips were colorless, almost blue.
"What the hell?"
I leaned closer to the mirror, studying my reflection. My green eyes looked brighter somehow, more intense. And was it just the fluorescent light, or did my pupils look...
As I watched, my pupils dilated until they were nearly black. Then, slowly, the darkness began to shift. Red crept in around the edges, like drops of blood spreading through water.
My eyes were turning red.
I stumbled backward, hitting the shower door with my shoulder. The sound was loud enough to wake Sarah, but I couldn't worry about that now. I couldn't worry about anything except the fact that my eyes were glowing like a demon's.
"No, no, no." I rushed back to the mirror, blinking hard, willing my eyes to go back to normal green.
The red faded slightly, but it didn't disappear completely. It lurked there in the depths of my pupils, waiting.
I gripped the edge of the sink, and the porcelain cracked under my fingers.
The sound made me look down. Five perfect stress fractures spread out from where I'd grabbed the sink. I'd barely been holding on, hadn't even squeezed hard.
But I'd cracked porcelain like it was an eggshell.
My hands started shaking. I held them up in front of my face, studying my fingers. They looked the same – same short nails, same small scar on my knuckle from when I'd cut myself opening a can last year. But they felt different. Stronger. More solid.
I pressed one fingertip against the mirror, very gently.
The glass spider-webbed around the contact point.
"Oh God."
I jerked my hand back, but it was too late. My reflection stared back at me from the broken mirror, distorted into fragments. Red eyes in one piece, pale skin in another, my horrified expression split across multiple shards.
Except...
I leaned closer to the largest piece of unbroken glass, squinting at my reflection.
It was faint. Translucent. Like I was fading away.
I could see the bathroom wall behind me, right through my own face.
No reflection. The classic vampire trait that every movie, every book, every story had mentioned. Vampires didn't cast reflections in mirrors.
"I'm a vampire."
The words fell into the silence like stones into still water. Saying them out loud made them real in a way that thinking them hadn't.
I was a vampire. The thing Mark hunted. The thing he'd killed seven people for being.
The thing he'd been sent to watch for in me.
My knees gave out. I slid down the bathroom door until I was sitting on the cold tile floor, staring at my ghostly reflection in the broken mirror.
Everything made sense now. The enhanced strength and senses. The hunger for blood. The way silver made my skin crawl. The pale creatures at the observatory calling me "princess" and talking about royal bloodlines.
I was one of them.
I was the monster.
A sharp pain shot through my mouth, like the worst toothache I'd ever had. I pressed my hands to my jaw, gasping. The pain was focused on my canine teeth, a burning ache that made my eyes water.
I could feel them growing.
I stumbled to my feet and looked in the mirror again. My canine teeth were longer, sharper. As I watched, they extended further, becoming genuine fangs that gleamed white in the fluorescent light.
Vampire fangs.
"Sarah," I called softly, but my voice came out strange. Slightly slurred by the new fangs. "Sarah, are you awake?"
No answer. Just her steady breathing from the other room.
I needed to get out of here. Away from Sarah, away from all the sleeping humans in this building. Away from all those beating hearts and warm blood and—
The hunger hit me like a tidal wave.
I doubled over, clutching my stomach as the emptiness inside me yawned open like a black hole. It wasn't just hunger anymore. It was starvation, desperation, need so intense it felt like dying.
I needed blood. Human blood. I needed it right now or I was going to—
"No." I bit down on my own tongue, hard enough to taste copper. The pain cleared my head for a moment. "I'm not doing this. I'm not becoming this."
But even as I said it, I could hear Sarah's heartbeat from the next room. Slow, steady, trusting. She had no idea she was sleeping three feet away from a predator.
A predator who was getting hungrier by the second.
I had to get out.
I threw on jeans and a hoodie, moving as quietly as possible. The silver butter knife under my pillow called to me as I passed my bed. Protection, Mark had said. But protection against what? Against me?
I left it there.
The hallway was empty, lit only by emergency lighting that cast long shadows on the institutional carpet. I made it to the stairwell without seeing another person, but I could hear them everywhere. Heartbeats through thin dorm walls. The whisper of blood through veins.
The exit door's crash bar felt warm under my hands. Everything felt warm now, compared to my skin.
Outside, the campus was quiet. A few security lights illuminated the pathways between buildings, but most of the world was dark and sleeping. Perfect hunting conditions.
The thought appeared in my mind unbidden, and I froze on the steps of my dorm.
Hunting conditions.
I was thinking like a predator. Like a monster.
This was what Mark had been talking about. The point where someone stopped being human and became something else. Something that saw other people as prey.
I pulled out my phone with shaking hands.
Me: I need help.
I hit send before I could change my mind, then immediately wanted to take it back. What was I going to tell him? That I was a vampire now? That I was standing outside my dorm at three in the morning, fighting the urge to hunt down some unsuspecting student and drain them dry?
My phone buzzed almost immediately.
Mark: Where are you?
Me: Outside Warren Hall. Mark, something's wrong. Something's really wrong.
Mark: Stay put. Don't move. I'm coming.
Don't move. Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one whose entire body was screaming for blood.
I sat down on the concrete steps, wrapping my arms around my knees. The cold helped a little, gave me something to focus on besides the hunger. But I could still hear the heartbeats from the dorm behind me. Dozens of them, all so close.
A group of late-night students walked past on their way back from the library. Three girls, laughing about something, completely unaware of my presence in the shadows. One of them stumbled slightly, probably from drinking, and I caught a whiff of her scent.
Warm. Alive. Her pulse was elevated from alcohol and laughter, blood flowing freely through her system.
I was on my feet before I realized I'd moved.
The girl looked over, noticed me standing by the dorm entrance. "Hey, you okay? You look sick."
She took a step closer, concern clear in her voice. Sweet girl. Probably a freshman, still trusting enough to worry about strangers.
Close enough that I could hear her individual heartbeat over the general noise of campus life.
"I'm fine," I managed, but my voice sounded wrong. Hungry.
The girl frowned. "Are you sure? You look really pale—"
"Get away from me." The words came out harsher than I intended, but they had to. Because I could feel the fangs extending again, and the hunger was getting stronger.
The girl's friends called her name, and she backed away reluctantly. "If you're sure..."
They walked on, and I collapsed back onto the steps. My hands were shaking again, but not from cold this time. From the effort it had taken not to grab her. Not to sink my fangs into her neck and drink until the awful emptiness inside me was filled.
This was what Mark meant when he talked about the ones who were "too far gone." The ones who couldn't resist anymore.
Was I there yet? Was I past the point of no return?
A car door slammed somewhere nearby, and I heard familiar footsteps hurrying across the parking lot. Mark appeared around the corner of the building, still wearing his clothes from earlier but with his silver knife visible in his hand.
He stopped when he saw me, taking in my appearance with those hunter's eyes.
"Jesus, Ella." His voice was barely a whisper. "What happened to you?"
I looked up at him from the steps. "I know what I am now."
"Tell me."
"I'm a vampire, Mark. I'm the thing you hunt." The words felt like razor blades in my throat. "I'm the monster you were sent to watch for."
Mark didn't deny it. Didn't try to tell me I was wrong or that it would be okay. He just stood there, silver knife in his hand, looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
"How long have you known?" he asked.
"About an hour. Maybe less." I laughed, but it sounded broken. "My reflection is gone. My eyes are red. I've got fangs. And I'm so hungry, Mark. I'm so hungry I almost..."
"Almost what?"
"Almost attacked some girl who was trying to help me."
Mark was quiet for a long moment. The knife in his hand caught the light from a nearby streetlamp.
"Are you going to kill me now?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "Are you going to try to kill me?"
I thought about it. Really thought about it. Part of me – the vampire part – was definitely considering it. He was standing right there, full of warm blood, and I was so hungry...
But another part of me, the part that was still Ella Black, still the girl who'd fallen in love with him, recoiled from the idea.
"Not if I can help it," I said.
"That's not very reassuring."
"It's the best I can do right now."
Mark stepped closer, but kept the knife ready. "What do you need me to do?"
"I don't know. Help me figure out how to not become a killer? Help me stay human?" I looked up at him, and I could see my reflection in his eyes – pale, fanged, monstrous. "Is that even possible?"
"I don't know," he said again. "This is new territory for me."
"For both of us."
We stared at each other across the few feet of concrete that separated us. Hunter and prey. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Human and monster.
All of it true at the same time.
"Mark," I said quietly. "I'm scared."
He lowered the knife slightly. "Me too."
And in that moment, sitting on the steps of my dorm with fangs in my mouth and blood on my mind, I realized that being scared might be the most human thing I had left.
The question was: how long would it last?
End of Chapter 5