The first thing Jerry ever learned was the taste of fear.
It wasn't a lesson taught with words, but with the subtle, coppery tang that clung to the air of his nursery. It was in the way his mother, Seraphina, would sometimes freeze while rocking him, her crimson eyes darting towards the shuttered window, her body as rigid as marble. It was in the low, urgent whispers of his father, Cassius, that slithered under the door long after midnight.
Hemlock was a city of beautiful monsters, a sprawling metropolis of obsidian spires and perpetual twilight, where the crimson glow of blood-orchids illuminated streets walked by the immortal. Vampires. Jerry's people. They were beings of grace, power, and terrible, unending hunger. A hunger for the one thing that sustained them: human blood.
[ And Jerry was… different.]
The realization didn't come in a single, dramatic moment, but in a series of unsettling fragments.
At age five, during the "Blood-Tasting Festival," all the other fledgling vampires were given thimble-sized cups of synthesized human plasma, a treat to celebrate their developing palates. They giggled and lapped at it, their eyes flashing with delight. When Jerry's turn came, the thick, metallic scent made his stomach lurch. He retched, turning his head away as the other children stared.
"He's just sensitive," his mother had said, her voice a little too high, her smile a little too tight. She'd swept him away, her grip firm on his small shoulder.
At age eight, he was playing a game of "Hunt and Seek" with the other children in the crystal-lit caverns beneath their apartment spire. Lucas, a boy with a cruel smile, had pinned him down, not out of malice, but as part of the game. In the struggle, Lucas's sharp fingernail scratched Jerry's arm, drawing a single, shimmering drop of violet blood—the color of every vampire in Hemlock.
A primal, all-consuming hunger, alien and terrifying, erupted within Jerry. It wasn't a thought; it was an instinct, a deep, cellular scream. Before he knew what he was doing, he had lunged, not to bite, but to press his tongue to the tiny wound on Lucas's arm.
The effect was instantaneous and electrifying. A surge of vitality, of pure, unadulterated power, flooded his small body. It was like drinking lightning. For a fleeting second, his senses sharpened to a painful degree—he could hear the hum of the city's core, count the dust motes in the air a mile away, feel the pulse of every vampire in the vicinity.
Lucas had screamed, scrambling back. "What was that, freak?!"
Jerry just stood there, trembling, the phantom energy already fading, leaving a hollow, aching need. The taste of Lucas's blood was the most exquisite thing he had ever experienced. It made the synthesized human plasma his parents fed him taste like ash.
That night, he heard the hushed, terrified argument from his parents' chamber.
"He fed on another vampire, Cassius! A child! The legends… they can't be true."
"Silence,Seraphina! We do not speak of the old tales. It was an accident. A child's curiosity."
"Curiosity?He drained the energy from that boy! Lucas was weak, listless for a day! What are we going to do? If the Conclave finds out… they will call him an Abomination. They will execute us all!"
The word hung in the air, colder than the Hemlock stone. Abomination.
That was the night their secret routine began. His parents, their faces etched with a fear deeper than any they held for the rumored human Daylight Hunters, began to offer him their own blood. Every full moon, when the city's energy was at its peak and could mask any strange fluctuations, his father would slice his own wrist with a ritual dagger.
"Drink, son," Cassius would say, his voice strained but gentle. "Only a little. Just enough to sate the… the hunger."
It felt wrong. It felt sinful. To feed on the very ones who loved him, to see the slight pallor that would touch his mother's perfect complexion afterwards. But the alternative—the yawning, ravenous void inside him—was worse. Their blood was different from Lucas's; it was richer, more complex, a vintage of power and age that both satisfied him and made him feel like the monster his parents feared he was.
His differences didn't end there. While all other vampires, even the most powerful Elders, would blister and smoke after mere seconds of exposure to the sun's lethal rays, Jerry found it… warm. At age ten, he'd accidentally stumbled into a sliver of unfiltered daylight piercing through a faulty shield in their balcony. He'd braced for agony, for the smell of his own burning flesh. Instead, he felt a comforting warmth that seeped into his bones, a vitality that was different from the electric charge of vampire blood, but just as potent. He'd quickly hidden the discovery, a secret within a secret.
School was a special kind of hell. He was the quiet one, the pale one who shied away from the sanguine refreshments. The children, who could sense weakness with a predator's acuity, called him "The Ghost," "The Human-Lover." All except for one.
Laura.
Even as a child, she was grace personified. Her hair was the color of midnight, and her eyes held the warmth of a banked fire. While the others tormented him, Laura would simply sit beside him in the history class, listening as the instructor droned on about the Great Purges and the glorious, eternal dominance of the Vampiric race.
"You don't like the blood-fruit, do you?" she had asked him once, her voice soft.
Jerry had shaken his head, unable to meet her gaze.
"That's okay," she'd said, offering him a piece of shadow-melon instead. "It's too bitter for me, too."
It was a small kindness, a flicker of light in his dark, confined world. That kindness grew, year by year, into a deep friendship, and then, as they entered their teenage years, into something more. A stolen glance, a brush of hands in the grand library, a shared smile during combat training—it was the only thing that felt real, the only thing that was truly his. He loved the way she laughed, a sound like chiming crystals. He loved her fierce spirit, her unwavering loyalty. And he lived in constant, gut-wrenching terror that she would one day look at him and see the monster he was forced to hide.
To survive, Jerry became a ghost in plain sight. He learned to mimic the others, to pretend to sip the blood-wine, to fake a shudder at tales of the sun. He honed his mind, becoming observant, strategic. He learned to feed just enough from his parents to maintain his strength without drawing attention, to control the beast within through sheer force of will. He was a predator living among his prey, and his survival depended on perfect camouflage.
He was sixteen now, tall and lean where other boys were filling out with overt muscle. He was intelligent, quiet, and desperately in love with a girl he could never truly have. And he was hungry. The carefully measured sustenance from his parents was no longer enough. The hunger was a constant, gnawing presence in his gut, a whisper that was growing into a scream.
It was on a day like any other, in the grand courtyard of the Obsidian Academy, that the carefully constructed walls of his life finally cracked. Lucas, now broader and more arrogant than ever, had cornered him again, his cronies forming a half-circle around them.
"Look, it's the Ghost," Lucas sneered, shoving Jerry against a polished black pillar. "Still pretending you're too good for the rest of us? Still pining after Laura? She's out of your league, pallor-face."
The taunts were nothing new. But the hunger was sharp today, a razor's edge in his soul. The proximity of so many powerful young vampires was a torment. Their life force called to him, a symphony of power he was forbidden from tasting.
"Leave him alone, Lucas." Laura's voice cut through the tension like a knife. She stepped between them, her small frame radiating a surprising authority.
Lucas laughed. "Or what, Laura? You'll protect your pathetic little pet?"
In a flash of anger, Laura shoved Lucas back. It was a minor scuffle, a tangle of limbs. But in the chaos, Lucas, off-balance, fell hard, his temple cracking against the edge of a stone bench. A gash opened, and shimmering, violet blood welled to the surface.
The scent hit Jerry like a physical blow.
The world dissolved into a red haze. The whispers in his mind became a roaring command. The careful control, the years of suppression, shattered. He saw nothing but the blood. He heard nothing but the beat of his own ravenous heart.
Time seemed to slow. He was on Lucas in an instant. He didn't think. He acted on an impulse older than the city itself. He sank his teeth not into a vein, but into the flesh of Lucas's arm, near the wound, where the blood-scent was strongest.
It was not a vampire's bite, meant to drain and kill. It was something else. A connection. A conduit.
And he fed.
Power, raw and untamed, flooded into him. It was a thousand times more potent than his parents' blood, vibrant with youth and arrogance. Colors became blindingly vivid, sounds became a symphony of intricate details, and he felt invincible, god-like. For the first time in his life, the hollowness was completely, utterly filled.
He was ripped away by shocked hands. The circle of students stared in stunned, horrified silence. Lucas lay on the ground, not dead, but… diminished. His skin was ashen, his vibrant vampire aura visibly faded, his body trembling with a profound weakness.
Jerry stood panting, the taste of lightning and power on his tongue, the evidence of his true nature stark on his lips. He met Laura's eyes across the courtyard. Her face was a mask of confusion, then dawning, terrible fear.
From the high balcony of the Headmaster's spire, an Elder who had witnessed the scene turned to his aide, his ancient face grave.
"Send word to the Conclave," he whispered, his voice trembling with a dread not felt in centuries. "Tell them… the Vrykolakas has returned."
The legend was real. And Jerry had just announced his existence to the entire world.