Page 46Return

I woke up to the sound of a loud thumping in my head. At least I thought it was in my head. It turned out to be someone knocking on the metal door, rather loudly. The sun must still be setting, I had a really hard time trying to be awake. But the knocking was too incessant to ignore.

"Yes, yes. I'm awake!" My voice rough with annoyance.

"Amy, open the door. I'm back!" It was Esmeralda.

Didn't she have two more days or something before she was supposed to come back? I wasn't happy getting up, but her return was at least a little bit fun. I got up and opened the door, feeling a little bit grumpy and wobbly. I hoped she wouldn't notice though.

Esmeralda literally stormed in. "I've got something important to tell you."

I tried to look awake. "What?"

"You'll never believe what happened to me, well, not me but a friend of mine. She's a really good friend who I've met once before. She's, well... Very flirty. Even more than me. Yes I know it's hard to believe. But she was at the festival too, can you believe it?" A waterfall of words flowed from her lips.

"Hold on, sit down and tell me, a little slower."

We sat down and Esmeralda continued. "Eh sure. She and I experimented a little, you know. She was my first girl I really went all the way with, anyway that's not really important. She's totally free, you know. She told me about this guy she met like half a year ago at a party. Eh, oh right. I haven't seen her in like a year or something."

I just nodded, letting the words wash over me. I had never heard her talking this excitedly. Well, not such a long story.

"So, she tells me about this guy, really classy, pretty and cute. A bit nerdy, but she likes that kind of thing. Says that they are a bit more attentive to her. Anyway, she could see the guy was more into other guys, but once she has her mind set she will really try unless she can see it's not wanted."

Esmeralda took a deep breath, I just smiled and listened. I wondered why this was so relevant to tell me, but she'd told me some other stories before. Still, it never sounded this important to her.

"Mmhmm." I just grunted understanding.

"That guy was really pretty, in a cute innocent way, but he had this silence around him. At least that's what she said. She looked really impressed and that was kind of rare in itself. She manages to seduce him, eventually, and starts making out, right there at the party. Not that it really mattered, I'm sure that there were other couples doing their thing as well."

"Anyway, her memory blanks out at that point, kind of after the first kiss, and she feels really dizzy. The confusing thing is that she's a diabetic and really well aware of her own blood-sugar levels, you know. She knows something weird is going on as the guy says goodbye. While she felt a little high on sugar before she kissed, she was way low after. And that just isn't possible without insulin, normally."

Was she telling about a vampire? It even sounded a little bit like Kai now that I thought about it. I hoped not.

"She actually goes back to her place and does measurements on her blood. She knows something was wrong immediately and goes to the hospital post. They receive her and test her blood pressure and stuff, noticing something is really weird. It looks like she's missing like a quarter of her blood, so they ask her if she'd been going to the blood bank to donate blood. Not that she's allowed, obviously. Of course she says no and they're completely puzzled."

I didn't like where this was going. I hadn't said anything for the past few minutes.

"So, while she is not in any danger or anything, she starts thinking. And, the only thing she can think of is that the guy must have taken her blood in some way or other. But that's kind of hard to do, right? You'd feel needles and shit like that. The only other option she sees is that it could have been a vampire draining her, but letting her live. So I think, naturally that she's just playing me for a fool. But she actually had the hospital thing with her! For some reason I really had to think of you when I saw that she wasn't lying."

I blinked.

"Amy, are you a vampire?"

It was so easy to respond to that question with another one. 'Why do you think that?' or 'Are you serious?' but that just wouldn't make sense. She was obviously serious and if I had to ask her why she thought that, I must have not been listening for the past few minutes. Part of me wanted to be honest to her, so that she'd know before Seriph. Another part of me wanted to say yes and then play it off as a joke, so she wouldn't believe it was possible.

But she did. She was asking me in earnest.

And waiting for an answer.

"Yes, I am." I don't exactly know why I said it. Maybe I just wanted recognition. Maybe I wanted to be seen for what i was... Maybe... I just really didn't know.

Her reaction was stupidly contrasting my emotions. "Really?!? I mean, I kind of made a joke about it a long time ago, but I didn't think it would really exist and... Eh... Amy, really?"

I nodded. "Yes."

Silence dawned on both of us, me with my worries that anyone else might have heard me. Worries quenched by listening and feeling through the building around me. Esmeralda's silence was filled with thoughts racing through her head. Through the things she'd seen and felt with me. Trying to find if I'd bitten her.

"Did you bite me?"

I giggled. "Sorry, I just thought you would ask that. No, I didn't bite you."

Again tension rose, this time a bit gentler. She looked at me in disbelief, but the simplicity with which I answered must have given her reason to see it was real. She looked in my eyes and tried to find things that looked weird, different, alien even. She probably knew of stories of vampires but that didn't match with how she'd seen me behave. I was normal to her. Yet no longer. What she asked, however, did surprise me.

"Would you?

I blinked. "Would I what?"

"Bite me?"

I wanted to be absolutely sure about this. "You want me to drink your blood..."

She nodded. "I want to know how it feels. Feel the high of lacking blood."

"Are you really sure?"

"Yes. Please.

She bend her neck and pulled her hair aside. She was truly serious in wanting me to bite her, drink her blood. I wasn't too sure if I wanted it though. Still, she was offering something my body wanted. I'd kissed her before, made out with her as well. Why would I refuse her this.

I bit.

Amy has strange friends...