16. PREDATOR AND PREY

I stretched, rolling onto my back. I opened my eyes and was blinded by the bright light shining through the single window next to my bed. The low, morning sun was adding a slight sheen to my crimson comforter, which I pulled up and tucked under my chin. I turned my back to the window and snuggled back into my bed, not wanting to wake up yet. The sun was beating down on my neck, but I tried to ignore it. The morning was so peaceful and perfect; I didn’t want to let it go.

But, sooner or later, the hot sun on my neck was enough to get me to roll out of bed—it was just so uncomfortable. I’d been tangled in my sheets, so they came with me as I slid onto the floor. I contemplated just lying there and going back to sleep, but the sun still beat down on me, causing my skin to twitch, so I regretfully hefted myself off the floor and stumbled to the window.

I looked out on the ice and snow-covered grounds and the forests beyond. One lone, brown, fluffy-tailed rabbit hopped out of the trees. Someone crept out slowly, behind it. I didn’t know who they were. It was a woman, though. She was tall, with dark skin and short black hair. She was hunched over slightly as she stepped gently though the snow, towards the rabbit.

No way. This could not be happening. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman or the rabbit—the former the hunter, the latter the hunted. So I stood, there, intrigued by the hunt that was unfurling in front of my eyes. The rabbit stopped, distracted by a few blades of grass that were shooting up through the snow. The huntress lurched forward, towards the unsuspecting creature. It didn’t even have time to prick its ears before the woman snapped its neck.

I gasped, appalled. The woman was still crouched over, in a defensive position, as she brought the rabbit to her face and bit into its soft, furry flesh. I grimaced, disgusted, but at the same time, very much in awe. I watched the woman with fascination as she quickly sucked the life out of the rabbit, then threw it aside, back into the pines. The woman leapt back into the forest—probably in search for more prey to satiate her thirst. I guess one, small rabbit wasn’t enough.

I closed the curtains and turned away from the window. I pulled my sheets off the floor and crawled back into bed with them. As I closed my eyes I tried to think of nothing but going back to sleep. But, of course I couldn’t. My brain was already awake and kicking, despite the fact that my body still felt tired. I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman and the rabbit. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I hadn’t accidentally pictured myself doing the same thing. I wondered what it was like to hunt, to creep stealthily behind your prey, undetectable, unnoticed. I wondered what it would feel like when I snapped someone’s neck for the first time and pressed my teeth into their soft flesh, drinking their hot, wet, pulsing . . .

I shuddered and grimaced at the thought, so alluring in its morbidity. So curiously enticing. . .

I tried desperately to shut off my brain, but was, again, unsuccessful. My mind was moving in random directions and had switched to thinking about class—about how today was the first day. I wondered what it would be like. Would it just be the normal first day of class like it always was in high school? ‘Hi, what’s your name? Here are the rules. Here’s why you’re going to follow them.’ Or would we get down and dirty to begin with—just start class—no use for introductions and such? I couldn’t be sure—and a part of me never wanted to find out. However, another part of me was insanely—almost to an unhealthy degree—curious. That part of me wanted to run to class that second and learn everything about what was happening to me as possible. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know why this was happening. Sure, Ryan had told me the story, but I wanted to know exactly why. Why me? Why now? Why ever?

I shook my head, hastily trying to dislodge my sudden thirst for knowledge. It couldn’t have been normal to want to learn so much…but, then again, maybe every newborn Vampire that ever walked the earth had felt, or was feeling the same as I was right now: apprehensive, curious, and down-right terrified. I suppose that was probably the dominant emotion in me at the moment, fear. Even though I hated to admit it, I was scared, mostly of the fighting. I had no idea how that would work. I mean, we had to be learning it, right? They didn’t just expect us to go out there and do our best, hoping to come out clean, did they? Of course not. That would be silly and utterly reckless on their bloodthirsty part.

I knew I was going to have to fight and be taught how to fight, but, for some reason, just learning scared me shitless. Maybe it was just in my nature. I had never been a fighter. My family knew that, my friends knew that—everyone knew that. I was the one screaming, “Peace and love!” on the playground whenever someone would steal the foursquare ball. I hated violence with a passion, and now I was going to have to grow accustomed to it, to fighting. I was going to have to believe fully in the one thing I’d always believed fully against.

That made me think of Sam. Sam was exactly like me; or maybe I was like him. Either way, neither of us ever had the urge to break out in a brawl with someone. It was kind of ironic how that’s exactly what we’d be doing twelve months from now. The two peacekeepers fighting each other. Why was everything always so backwards?

A thick, poison tear rolled down my cheek and my hand flew up automatically to wipe it away. I hadn’t realized until now how much I truly missed Sam. Even thinking about him made me upset. I wanted to see him, to hear his voice. I wanted it right now. I leaned across my bed and grabbed my cell phone off the desk. I propped myself up on my elbow. I slowly clicked down my list of contacts until I got towards the end. Sam’s name lit up in blue and I clicked it. There was a picture of him smirking ruefully next to his cell number. Ah, Sam. I hope you don’t hate me for this. I pressed ‘Send’ and held the phone to my ear.

Brrrrnngg.

The phone vibrated against my ear and I realized I was shaking. Why was I so nervous? It was only Sam—Sam, my brother and best friend. No, I corrected myself. Sam was not just my brother and best friend. He was now and forevermore my enemy. But I didn’t hate him yet. Would he hate me? I pulled the phone away from my ear and flipped it open, pressing the speaker button. This way it could sit on my bed and wrestle with my shaky fingers, trying to calm myself before I had to speak.

Brrrrnngg.

Come on, please pick up!

Brrrrnngg.

No, wait. Please don’t answer! I’m not ready for this!

Brrrrnngg.

Deep breath.

Brrrrnngg.

Okay, he must not be answering for a reason, I told myself. He knows it’s me and already hates me, so of course he’s not going to answer.

Brrrrnn—“Hello.”

Gasp.

“This is Sam. Sorry I couldn’t answer, but if you leave a message, I promise I’ll get back to you!”

Beep.

I snapped the phone shut and breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, so I was just going to have to call him back later. I was not going to leave him a message. Although, he said he promised he’d call back…but he had recorded that message before he’d been turned into a Caduto Angelo and his sister had been turned into his enemy. I mean, I could leave him a message. What was the worst that could happen? He’d not call me back? Or he would call me back and tell me he never wanted to speak to me again unless it was in the form of snarls while engaging in a battle to the death?

I shook my head, trying to dislodge the nervous ball of tension that had formed like a tumor in my brain. I looked at my phone in my hand and then decided it was worth the risk. I quickly dialed Sam’s number, not wanting to waste time sorting through my contacts, and pressed the phone once again to my ear.

Brrrrnngg.

Okay. I just have to wait until his voice mail comes on. No worries.

Brrrrnngg.

I took a couple deep breaths. In. Out. In…

Brrrrnngg.

Okay, Emma, get a grip. You’re only going to be talking to his voice mail. Just get it over with.

Brrrrnn—“Hello?”

‘This is Sam. Sorry I couldn’t ans—

“Hello? Emma?”

The imaginary message in my head cut off along with my intake of breath.

Plop.

My phone had slid out of my hand, landing on my squishy crimson comforter.

“Um, Emma?” I heard Sam’s voice faintly through the speaker. “Are—are you there?”

Shaking my head fiercely, I quickly grabbed my phone and held it back to my ear. I cleared my throat, for some reason, dead scared of what I or he would say. But I had to say something. If not, he’d hang up on me. I slowly took a deep breath in and spoke. “S-Sam?” I whispered.

“Emma,” he breathed. Had he been holding his breath, too?

“Sam,” I tried again. “If you don’t want to talk to me…I’m sorry I called, it’s just that—”

“Emma, no! Don’t hang up!” he pleaded. “I need to talk to you.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. So, he didn’t want to kill me. He wanted to talk to me. But what if he wanted to tell me that he wanted to kill me? “Okay,” I choked out.

“Emma, you’re a Vampire.”

No kidding. Even now, I couldn’t help but mentally insert my sarcastic comment on the obvious. “Yeah, and you’re a Caduto Angelo,” I muttered hypocritically.

“You’re my enemy.”

Okay, were we just going to state the obvious, or actually get around to having a conversation? “Sam, I know all that stuff. I know what’s happening. You don’t have to inform me of anything.” I felt sudden bitterness towards Sam. I didn’t know why, but he was irritating me to death.

“Okay, good,” he mumbled back, sounding almost as bitter as I felt.

I didn’t reply.

“Well, Emma—” he hesitated—“How do you feel about this?” Sam asked, his tone only betraying a hint of irritation, still.

How do I feel? How did I feel? Well, I felt angry. I felt upset, and hurt, and abandoned, and alone, and hopeless, and…and… “I feel like we’ve got some pretty crappy luck.”

Sam’s breath blew into the receiver. “Yeah, we do,” he agreed, and then went on to shock me. “But, Emma, this is how it is now. This is how it has to be. There’s no choice. We’re enemies. You can’t change that.”

WHAT?! My mouth dropped wide open, my eyes bulged. “What are you talking about?!” I demanded, outraged. “Are you saying you want this? You want to fight me?!”

“Well, no…but, Emma, you have to understand…”

“Understand what?!” I shrieked. “That my brother wants to kill me as much as I don’t want to kill him? What’s wrong with you, Sam? I thought we’d be on the same page with this!”

“Rules are rules, Emma. We have no choice but to do what we’re told; how we’re told, no matter if we like it or not.” That was his legal side speaking. Damn him for not sticking with sports.

“No, Sam,” I pleaded. “We don’t have too. We could…we could…I don’t know, protest or something!”

“You can’t do that, Emma.” ‘You’? What had happened to we? I ignored it for the time being.

“Why not? It’s my right! First Amendment, Mr. Attorney, Sir,” I snapped, bitingly sarcastic.

Sam hesitated. I’d cornered him.

“Well, technically, Emma, the Bill of Rights, Amendment One, states that people have the right of free speech and the right to petition. You’re not technically human.” Again with the ‘you’/me.

“What happened to we?” I asked angrily.

“We are enemies.”

“God dammit, Sam! I don’t want to be! I don’t want this!”

“It doesn’t matter what either of us wants. I’m sure plenty of the other Caduto Angelos and Vampires don’t want this, either. No one has a choice here. Sorry, Em.” He didn’t sound sorry.

“But it’s not fair!” I complained. Damn, damn, damn his legal mind!

“Sometimes life isn’t fair,” he countered.

“But this—this is wrong!”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he muttered, sounding nonchalant and slightly exasperated.

“What?” I spat into the phone.

“Well, maybe this is the right thing to do. Maybe…maybe your species does need to be eliminated.”

My face shifted into a mask of fury. Did hell just freeze over, or was my window open? No fucking way was Sam—my brother, Sam—saying this!

“We might as well just let things happen as they happen, Emma,” he continued.

“What happened to peace and love?” I asked wistfully.

“What?”

I sighed, feeling hopeless. “Nothing,” I mumbled, restraining a curse.

“Come on, Emma. You know there’s no turning back, now. There’s no way to reverse this; so let’s just take it and be normal about it.”

But I didn’t want to take it. I didn’t want to be cool with the idea of me killing Sam or him killing me. I didn’t want any of this! “But I…” I couldn’t speak.

“I have to go, Emma,” he said abruptly.

“W-what?” I breathed.

“Just leave it alone, Em,” he advised, his voice condescending and hard as a rock.

I stayed silent, unmoving, my face, body, and mind frozen from shock.

Click.

I continued pressing the phone against my ear for a few minutes after he’d hung up, trying to recover from what had just happened. Sam wanted to kill me. He was okay with fighting me—his only sister, his best friend—all because of a rule. A rule! An ingrown prejudice. Didn’t lawyers want justice? Where was the justice in this?

I shook my head and finally pulled my phone away from my ear, setting it back down on the desk, trying with all my might not to crush it in the process. I didn’t want to think about this anymore. I’d been too stressed out already this morning and my phone call with Sam had raised my stress-level to about a fifty (out of ten). I was going to go into overload soon if I didn’t do something to distract myself from the inevitable. I sat ramrod straight in my bed, facing my door, thinking. I glanced at my alarm clock. The little red numbers read: 10:57 AM. Joy, I thought, sarcastically. I had to find something to do for the next four hours, until it was time to go to class.

I laid back down hoping I could, maybe if I was lucky, waste some of that time with a little R.E.M. Of course, my brain had other ideas. It would not turn off! Damn it! I did not feel like thinking right now. There were too many things to think about; I just wanted to block them all from my mind.

Think about something happy, I told myself. The thing is, I honestly didn’t feel like thinking happy thoughts right now. I felt…well, I felt like hitting something. The ‘peace and love’ girl was finally showing violent tendencies. If I could keep this mind-frame for the rest of the year, I’d be set when the fight rolled around. Just by letting the pent-up anger flow out right then, I’d be able to kill him in an instant…

Wait! What was I saying? No! I didn’t want to kill Sam! He was my brother. It didn’t matter if we were supposed to be enemies. Did it? But he wanted to kill me, didn’t he? Or, at least, that’s what it had sounded like over the phone. But still, I didn’t want to kill him. I was just angry. Upset. I’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed. I didn’t actually want to kill Sam. I just wanted to—right now, at least—hit him really hard. Or curse him out. Not kill him.

Maybe I needed more sleep.

I rolled over and faced the wall, my back to the desk. I tried to relax; relax my body and my mind. Don’t think, don’t think, I told myself over and over again. But that was probably the problem. By trying not to think, I’d ended up thinking more about stuff I didn’t want to think about. Okay, happy thoughts, I revised. Butterflies and daisies and little lambies. I shuddered. This was not working. So I just lied there, looking at the texture on my dark red walls. I eventually drifted into a half-awake, half-asleep form of consciousness. I found myself slowly slipping into a dream…

I felt oddly at ease in my half-dream—almost calm. My mind narrowed in on the details around me and I saw that I was in a field. I looked up to the sky and saw nothing but purple clouds. Dusk. I looked around me and saw that there were other Vampires (I only knew they were Vampires because I saw their glowing green eyes) on either side of me, standing tall, looking fit for battle. They all faced straight ahead and I followed their gaze. Approaching us was a line of angels, engulfed in shadow, only their bright silver eyes standing out. As they got closer, I could make out the outline of something on each of their backs. Wings.

Suddenly, they all charged. The Vampires around me shot forward and joined their siblings in battle. Massive wings and sharp teeth met each other as species collided. I stayed behind. I was searching for Sam amidst the chaos. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. Sam was standing right behind me, his off-white wings, tinted blue in the darkness, hovering behind him. He looked menacing.

He reached his hand out for me to take and I just looked at it, not sure what to do.

In the next instant I was grabbing it and he was lifting me high in the air. He pulled me along through the dark clouds, away from the battle raging below us. I looked up at him and saw him looking down at me, as well. A small smile spread across his lips and he turned his face back to the sky. We flew for what seemed like hours, until we landed in another field, much like the one the others were in, only smaller and filled with sweet-smelling plants. A lavender field!

Still holding my hand, Sam pulled me to the center of the field and we sat down amidst the lavender. He looked at me and smiled wider, his silver eyes twinkling. I smiled back at him, not sure what was happening.

“This is the meadow of Peace and Love,” he explained.

“This is where it all went,” I gasped, amazed.

He opened his mouth and a dark shadow crossed over his features. My grin faltered.

Suddenly, the swaying lavender around me shivered and the crinkled. The sweet perfume disappeared and the purple-blue plants shriveled, turning a dark brown, all the life gone from their stems.

I looked around nervously. “W-what’s happening?”

“The peace has died,” Sam murmured. He looked me in the eyes and his gaze sent shivers up my spine. “Now the love must join it.” He moved into a crouch and faced me, holding me there with fear. I couldn’t speak as he lunged towards me capturing and suffocating me in his wings of death.