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When the vampire did not immediately react, his glossy eyes unseeing, Izzy thought about saying something, when he started sniffing at her. Her muscles tensed as she waited for the bite that never came.
She looked at him with part relief and concern when his head returned to the ground. She blanched at his next request. She opened her mouth to protest, to say that that was not a part of the bargain, but he did not have the time to argue. And, she realized, the last thing she wanted was to watch someone die, vampire or otherwise, especially in such a brutal way.
“Okay,” she breathed, her heart racing in her chest. “I’m... I’m going to help you up.” Ignoring the smear of red he had left on her arm, she moved to do just that, to lean him against her. “But I swear,” she continued, her soft voice as shaky as her hands, “if you kill me, I’ll haunt you for eternity.”

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Though neither too heavy nor light, Izzy did her best prop him against her, the thick wetness of his blood on her hands making a shiver run down her spine. For a moment, Izzy feared the movement had been too much for him, what remained of his body limp against her. Then, he began to move. Holding her breath, she closed her eyes and turned her head, exposing as much of her neck to him as possible.
She inhaled through her teeth at the sharp pain that momentarily spiked near the base of her neck. The rest happened far quicker than she would have expected. Whether her stomach churned and heart rate quickened more from terror or blood loss, she could not say. As the edges of her vision blurred, she reached up to pry him lose and push him away, but her arms felt heavy, and the park around her was beginning to spin.
Before she could so much as place a weak hand on him, her chest heaving with short, panicky gasps, her world went black.


Izzy groaned as consciousness slowly returned, the night a blurry memory, a dull headache lingering from a dream within a dream and an uncomfortable sleeping position. Until she realized that it was not the comfort of her bed beneath her, but a hard, rough floor.
Inhaling sharply, Izzy’s eyes snapped open. It had not been a dream. And, at least, she was still alive. But where was she?
She looked around from where she laid, taking in the rundown place, before she realized where she must be. After all, there were not very many abandoned schools in the area. Her clothes felt stiff, the fabric stained with dried blood where Cerasus had leaned. She groaned again and tried to sit up, to feel where the vampire had drained her, but she found her arm trapped within the grasp of an oddly dressed child, his weight preventing her from getting up.
She instinctively tried to pull her arm away, but he had stirred and gripped her arm tighter.
What in the world?
“Hey,” she said, rolling onto her side and tentatively nudging the boy with her free arm. “Wake up. Please wake up.”

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With her arm freed, Izzy pulled it to her and flexed her hand. Casting a quick glance around to be sure there were no immediate threats, she sat up, her knees bent in front of her, and rubbed her jaw, hoping to alleviate the ache in her mouth. Had she hit it, or something? For all she knew, she could have. She let out a slow breath as the cloudiness of sleep fogging her head slowly diminished.
She took a better look around the room, taking in the faded, peeling posters that had been left up, forgotten, and a chalkboard at the front of the room, a large crack cutting it almost in half. She tried to find a source of light, but there was none, making her brows furrow in confusion as she added the question of how she could see the room in the first place to her quickly growing list.
Turning her attention to the boarded-up windows, it dawned on her that she had no idea how long she had been out for. She reached into her pocket, hoping beyond hope she still had her phone--the device she always used to keep the time. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt its familiar form.
She quickly pulled it out to check the time. When the screen lit up, she flinched and blinked at its sudden brightness, then nearly dropped it; the lock screen displayed 6:04 PM, Saturday, June 18th.
“Three days?” she hissed, panic blooming in her chest. She had been unconscious for three days? Her parents must be worried sick!
Unlocking her phone, she found multiple missed calls and text messages from them, each increasing in worry. She hastily called her mother’s number back, and placed it to her ear. It rang a couple times, the ring jerky as it struggled to maintain a connection.
“Hello?” she said when the ringing stopped, but she received only a garbled mess from the other end. “Hello!”
The telltale beep of the call disconnecting rang loud in the silence of the room.
Izzy took a deep breath, trying to keep her growing panic at bay. She needed to get somewhere she could get a better signal. To get out of the school.
With the sleeping child offering no help, she got slowly to her feet. She looked to the child. Not wanting to leave him behind in case he was just as ill-informed as her, she decided she would make sure it was safe, find an exit while he slept, and come back for him.
“I’ll be back,” she told him. Without waiting for a response, she headed to the door.

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When the searing pain disappeared in the shade as quickly as it had begun, Izzy stayed on the floor, propped up by her elbows. Though her body held no burns, her mind was still a step behind it. She stared, horrified, out at the evening sunlight beyond the crack in the door.
She tried to say something, but only unintelligible sounds escaped her mouth. Momentarily forgetting about the child, the sound of his voice startled her, and she scrambled a couple feet away, looking at him with wide eyes.
She stared at him a moment when he finished, unable to speak, her mind reeling. She took in the familiarity of his golden gaze.
“C-Cerasus?” she asked uncertainly, her voice quavering.

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Izzy stared at him dumbly. The child--or whatever he was--was either one good actor with the best make-up artist and special effects crew known to Hollywood, or was telling the truth. Though something deep inside her told her it was the latter, she was still rooting for a hidden camera crew to jump out and the boy to yell, “Gotchya!” and start explaining how they had simulated the flames. But, alas, none did. The hall around them remained eerily quiet save for a few creaks and groans from the weakening bones of the building.
Out of everything Cerasus said, one thing stuck out to her and rung in a loop through her mind: “our kind.”
“Our...” Izzy pulled herself slowly into a kneeling position. Suddenly, she noticed something. Rather, did not notice it. Since she woke, she had not felt the frantic beat of her heart in her chest, no matter how heightened her emotions got. “You... What did you do?” she hissed, enunciating each word slowly, her voice slightly higher than normal.

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Izzy returned his stare, his gaze bizarrely unnerving on the face of a child.
“An honor?” She gave a soft snort, refusing to admit that he had a point, or show exactly how unsettling his presence was. “Conceited, much? Did you miss the part where we can’t even go outside in daylight without becoming a bonfire?” she gestured to the door with her arm, half turning toward it. She stood and took a slight step back. "And eating people?"
She glanced back to him and shifted her weight awkwardly. She could only imagine how ridiculous she looked yelling at a child. “And why in the world are you an eight-year-old? I thought you were, I don’t know, thirty or somewhere around there.”
He said the form was "necessary"...

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Izzy watched Cerasus with a cautious eye as he collected a chair, giving no indication she intended to follow. She simply stood there, her face a mix between anger, fear, and resentment. Killing people to survive was a “small price?”
Of course it would be, she thought bitterly, to someone--something like him.
“Powerful, huh?” she said with feigned interest. “What, can I turn into a bat?” she scoffed.
She got stuck on another word he had used. Did he really just call her his “servant?” Her stomach churned uneasily.
Regardless, she nodded stiffly at his explanation. It made sense, and that he was actually far older than he looked came as no surprise. That was one of the commonalities between all the lore she had ever heard or read.
Then, there was that word again, servant. It made her blood boil.
Her fists clenched at his last statement. “I am not your servant,” she growled, her gaze hardening. “And you, you arrogant wretch, are certainly not my master.”

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Izzy inhaled at the harrowing laughter that came from the childlike form and seemed to wrap around her, as if trying to create a cage that would hold her even after the sun set. Though she knew where it originated from, she could not help but turn her head to follow a couple of the echoes as they bounced off the walls beside her, and ducking slightly as a few louder peals of laughter rang maliciously in her ears.
She snarled as he began speaking, a retort rolling around on her tongue, until he spoke of punishment. She snapped her mouth shut and stepped back. If it still could, she suspected the blood would have drained from her face, and fear flickered in her eyes. It was a cruel reminder that she had no idea what he was capable of, what powers it was he possessed. For all she knew, the lack of strength he had shown outside could have been nothing but another side effect of the sun. And he had had an indefinite number of years to hone his abilities.
She quite suddenly and utterly regretted saving him. As boring and monotonous as her hometown was, as much as she had wanted something exciting to happen, this, being prisoner to the night and servant to a monster, was not what she had had in mind.
But, as he stated being at his weakest, a glimmer of mutiny flashed over her features. Perhaps there was still some way out.
“Meaning?” she growled out softly when he finished, trying to hide her thoughts behind a stoic mask.

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Not wanting to hold his gaze any longer for fear of betraying herself, Izzy looked to the floor between them, her jaw clenched. Her usual ponytail hung loosely at the nape of her neck, and more hair than normal fell around her face. The fleeting thought that she probably looked like she had fallen off a cliff crossed her mind for a short moment. However, when Cerasus took his sweet time answering, she could not help but look back to him. Something about seeing even a hint of embarrassment on him, something that wiped away his pride, gave Izzy a small brush of satisfaction, a corner of her lips twitching upward.
But the feeling did not last long.
“Dealt with?” Disgust twisted her face, sure she knew what he meant by those two simple words. But still, she asked. “And by that, you mean...?”

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Izzy eyed him as he rephrased his order. “Meaning you want them dead,” she said flatly. “Or close to it.”
Izzy shuddered at the reminder of his condition when she had first found him. Of that, she was sure she would have nightmares of for years to come... if vampires even had dreams. At least, if they did not, that would be one thing the race had going for them.
When Cerasus finished with his orders, Izzy stared at him, mouth agape. “They what now? You want me to hunt down your missing limbs?” Things just kept getting weirder and weirder. But a morbid curiosity had befallen her. “And where the freak would I find those? Because I highly doubt they’d be kept in the freezer of the local meat market.”