Nicholas and I pull away at the same moment.
“What the—” I murmur.
Two figures have emerged from the ocean, just walked right out of the surf. Human men. No, not human, or at least not entirely, because their eyes glow red.
Screaming, partygoers back toward the bonfire as if it’ll offer protection. The guys—creatures—whatever are moving fast, fluidly toward them. Predatorial. Like panthers or something. They launch themselves at the closest targets: a beefy football player type and his girlfriend.
My head explodes as their shrieking thoughts reach me. Fear rushes my system, overwhelms my brain. I grip both sides of my head with my hands. It feels like it might explode.
“Stay here!” Nicholas shouts, lifting up his pant leg to reveal a dagger tucked into the top of his boot.
Why is he carrying a knife?
And why aren’t his thoughts as shocked as everyone else’s?
He grips it tight and sprints toward the crowd, his thoughts eerily calm and focused on protecting me and everyone else.
My breaths come in short gasps. I feel light-headed. I can’t make sense of anything. It’s all chaos.
People scatter everywhere. The beer keg near the fire is knocked over. Someone stumbles over a group of beach chairs and is trampled by the crowd now rushing up behind her.
The firelight casts eerie shadows everywhere. The two figures advance. Their skin appears to be cut from alabaster, pale and glistening with ocean water. They might be…my age? Or close? The older one is slightly larger and more muscular than the other, but they’re both around six feet tall. I watch, horrified, as the smaller one discards the girl, tossing her like a rag doll to the sand and grabs a guy with a buzz cut in a black sweater. He sinks his teeth into the guy’s neck and rips out a chunk. Blood sprays from the sides of his mouth. The guy screams, claws desperately at the monster, but it’s got him in a vise grip, greedily slurping at the spray of arterial blood pumping from the guy’s ruined neck.
Because I’m concentrating on the dude with the buzz cut, I can hear his thoughts the most, words jumbled together, tumbling through his mind.
I’m scared.
I don’t want to die.
But it’s the last one that shakes me to my core.
Vampire.
The second he thinks it, I know he’s right. A chorus of that word emanates from everyone. It’s so loud. My head is all white-hot pain, a constant stream of thoughts assaulting me from every direction.
I take an instinctive step back and topple onto the rocks, frigid water seeps into my shoes and the legs of my jeans. The tide is coming in. The beach that stretched past the rocks has been completely swallowed. I was so caught up with Nicholas before that I didn’t notice. The only escape is the parking lot past the bonfire. I have no way of going for help. And stupid me, I left my phone at home so if my mother figured out I’d snuck out, she wouldn’t be able to track me here.
The second vampire grabs a girl with olive skin and long dark curls, his mouth latching onto her chest near her heart. He crushes her to him so hard that her back is bowed at an unnatural angle, her hair hanging low enough to touch the sand. Blood spreads across her white sweatshirt like an approaching storm cloud, as he greedily, frantically drinks.
The other vampire shoves the buzz cut guy away and runs at another kid, a girl with glasses and a thick peacoat. She’s pulled the collar tightly to her neck, but he bites into the top of her thigh instead, straight through her jeans. She screams and screams and screams.
Nicholas is behind him then, his dagger arcing through the air. He plunges it into the first vampire’s back. The vampire howls in pain, but doesn’t let go of the girl. Streams of smoke pour from its wound.
Nicholas stabs him again, this time in the side of his neck. There’s another stream of smoke, this one more intense than the first. The vampire screams.
Roaring, the other, larger vampire drops the girl he’s been feeding on and reels on Nicholas, his face contorted with rage.
Nicholas slashes the dagger at the vampire’s face. It clamors for the blade and wrenches it from Nicholas’s hand and then tosses it onto the sand before grabbing Nicholas by the neck with one hand and lifting him from the ground as if he weighs less than a handful of sand. Its other hand curls into a claw. The vampire rakes it across Nicholas’s chest, shredding his clothes, exposing the pale skin of his chest, opening a set of angry red wounds.
I scream with my entire body, the horror of what I’m witnessing too great to contain, but between the waves and the screams and the wind, no one can hear. I don’t realize I’m taking steps toward Nicholas and the vampire until I’m close enough to feel the heat of the bonfire’s flames.
Nicholas kicks weakly at the monster, the sharpened silver tip of his boot connecting with its chest. The vampire howls as a stream of smoke appears above his ribs where his skin has been flayed open. It glares at Nicholas then stomps on his lower leg hard enough to break it. Nicholas’s screams radiate both inside and outside my head. His whole being is nothing but pain. Thoughts incoherent, a gibberish born out of extreme agony, he writhes in the vampire’s grip.
He’s going to die. I can’t just stand here and watch. I have to do something. My heart crashes inside my chest, as violently as the waves.
“Help!” I sob, but who am I even talking to? People are scattered everywhere and the other vampire is biting anyone it can reach, in a full out frenzy, blood dripping from its fangs, its sweater drenched in crimson.
In the shadows cast from the bonfire, Nicholas’s dagger glitters in the sand. If I stab the vampire, distract it long enough, maybe it’ll let him go. And then? Then…I don’t know what, but I can’t just stand here and watch everyone die. I need to plunge the dagger somewhere that might kill it—the heart. Yes! The heart. Like in the movies. The blade is smaller than a stake, but it’s already injured them both. Plunged into their chest it’s bound to do a lot of damage, right?
I scrabble to the dagger and grip it tight, my head full of everyone’s thoughts and screams. It’s overwhelming, but so is my own terror that if I don’t act, Nicholas will die.
I grit my teeth, my body coursing with adrenaline, my throat so tight with panic I can’t speak, can’t breathe. Move, Seraphina. MOVE!
Raising the dagger, I run full speed at the vampire. It feels as if the distance between us closes in an instant, as if I simply materialized one hundred yards to the vampire’s side. Like my body is acting on its own and I’m watching from somewhere deep inside my head. It’s odd, how fast I go, but there’s no time to dwell on it. My arm arcs down in one smooth motion. There’s the give of the vampire’s skin, the sudden barrier of bone as the blade connects with its chest and sinks in deep.
It howls. Smoke rises from the wound, too close to its collarbone to be anywhere near its heart. Damn! My aim was off. But the vampire releases Nicholas and his body hits the sand with a dull thud. Oh God, I can’t hear his thoughts. Is he already gone?
But the vampire is now fully focused on me now. I raise the dagger again as it grabs a handful of my coat and yanks me close. Its eyes are wild, empty, frantic and it reeks of blood and sea water. The vampire’s mouth opens wide, revealing a pair of canines so sharp my legs go rubbery. I jab the knife at it, but this time it glances off the vampire’s arm. It pulls me even closer, its iron arms crushing me, making my back arch. Panicked tears clog my throat. This is it. It’s going to snap my spine so I won’t be able to fight anymore and then it’ll drain me like the others. I am going to die on this beach and I never should have snuck out and I don’t want this to be it. Oh God, oh God, oh God. For once, my thoughts are the only ones I hear.
The vampire’s head is inches from my own. Its wild, red eyes loom in front of mine. And then it’s lowering its head to me. Its fangs puncture my neck. There’s the sudden pop and give of my skin. A burn of pain. The horrible pull as it begins to drink.
Tears stream down my face as I claw ineffectually at the vampire. “Please,” I say, my voice as thin and reedy as a willow.
It stops, still as death, mouth still attached to my neck. The with a violent shudder, it shoves me away and I land hard on the ground.
The vampire spits my blood into the sand, face contorting with disgust. Frantically, it wipes at its mouth with the back of its hand and stares at me, bewildered. All at once, the frenzy seems to leave its face. Its eyes go wide with horror as it gazes down at the blood painting both of its palms. Blinking, it sucks in a sharp breath then coughs and gags.
I thought it was my please that got it to stop, but the way he’s grimacing. It’s like he’s repulsed by the taste of me.
When it looks up next, it’s…different. Despite the blood still staining its mouth, it looks less monstrous. And suddenly it’s human. A guy just a few years older than me. He shakes his head from side to side, his mouth open, contorted like he wants to say something, but can’t find the words. Tears well in his eyes. He glances around the beach, at the wreckage he and the other vampire have wrought. And he makes this awful, anguished sound so intense, it rattles my chest. The monster is gone and now the man is realizing exactly what he’s done.
The other vampire is on the ground, still greedily drinking from a girl wearing black jeans with pink hair.
Kaia!
I scream her name.
The vampire in front of me winces at the sound. I wait for a stream of his thoughts to hit me like a bomb, but there’s nothing. I can’t hear them.
His eyes lock on mine, deep and dark as the ocean, shiny with tears.
“What’s happening?” He swallows hard, the tendons of his neck strained. He holds my gaze for a split second longer, his face a mask of agony. He is both terrible and beautiful in the most tragic way.
But I don’t care about him. He’s a murderer. My friend’s in trouble. I have to get to her.
Before I can, the vampire runs to his counterpart and yanks him off Kaia. The other vampire is still fully monster, absent of all humanity. He struggles to free himself, to get back to his meal, but the older one is stronger even in his more human state and manages to pull him away, toward the cliffs. I watch, too shocked to move or speak as the two defy gravity and effortlessly scale the rocks then disappear into the darkness of the forest above.