Walking between tombs near midnight was something normal for the 16 year old boy sitting against the last home of 'Samuel Finnigan'. He usually came every other night, hanging down the widow, climbing the tree and out after his parents were asleep. This were the times of his only peace. Nobody would disturb him here. He chuckled, the only to ever see him had thought of him a ghost or something as he looked at them with the ghoulish look of someone looking into his soul and hating it, all dressed in black and carrying no light about except that of waning moon. That night he'd also suffered from scrapes as he tried to walk back home in almost complete dark.

That wouldn't be a problem today though, full moon shined proudly over the grass of the mounds of St. Peters cemetery, the biggest of the little town he was still doomed to live in for two years. Doomed...he sighed and looked up at the sky again, the little smile fading as he pondered life. His life. Only to be scared out of almost a year of it by something suddenly moving behind him.

He was a-top of one of the mounds, a place selected because it gave him a good look around, and time to escape in case someone not scared of him would follow. He almost screamed, but was too frightened to follow that instinct once he turned around to face...well, a monster. "What the hell...?" he asked out loud as he stepped back, hitting against Samuel Finnigan's tomb and almost falling.

Part of him was scared as hell, the other almost felt pitiful. The man...dressed in what seemed to be some kind of tuxedo was all covered in grime, his hands covered in blood like he'd digged half way to China with them, the nails all broken and bleeding. The hair was falling almost to his neck and hadn't been cleaned for a month.

"Who..." the boy stumbled over his words, fear strangling them. Coughing, he tried again. "Who are you?" came out, trembling, but still understandable, while his hands gripped the marble tomb.

The face of the man finally came into full view, the drapings of black disgusting hair falling apart as he lifted his eyes looking for the source of the sound. The eyes...deep in his face, way more than could be natural...they were like drops of a cliff, and didn't shine in the light of the moon. And the face...twisted in what he could only describe as 'unburied' fury. When the eyes seemed to finally settle on the boy a spark of red awoke in them, and he knew that if he didn't run away, he'd soon find himself in a box six feet under the ground he was standing on.

He didn't dare scream, he ran. He turned around and instinctively headed towards the nearest exit, the big metal gates on the West side of the walls that surrounded most of St. Peters, except for the part facing the woods. He ran as if followed by the Devil, and he knew, though the thought was almost too much for his mind, that it wasn't too far from the truth.

The air was searing hot when he was close enough to see the gates, his side hurting in a way it never had, and he wasn't exactly in bad shape. He hit the graveled path, afraid to look back, afraid to find those eyes again. The unsteady footsteps behind him enough. And they seemed to be getting closer...

"Oh God...Oh Gods..." he gasped with what little was left of his breath. "Oh Gods..." tears now covered cheeks, blurring his vision, making him thankful for how well he new the place, and the surrounding streets.

Gravel turned to asphalt and he made a sharp turn to the left, up Hunter's Road, heading to the center of the city. The house was too far, he couldn't keep this pace much longer. But he could surely find police...people, someone in the town. With that sureness, he pumped his legs harder, harder.

Hunter turned into Garden Lane, making him look desperately to both sides. People...people! Where were they!? He asked himself, clearing the tears from his eyes, trying to calm down enough to think. Where? He couldn't keep going, he couldn't...he was worn, the legs screeching protest as he dashed into the intersection of Garden and G. Fiddle and stopped. Deserted...almost whimpering, drawing breath into unwilling lungs, he turned around, and it hadn't disappeared into the night as he'd hoped with every tired fiber of his soul. And it looked hungry, a starving predator about to claim his hunt.

"Please, please..." one step back as the...thing came nearer. "Please..." he continued, unable to think anymore, overcrowded, his mind in shock. It ran the few steps separating them and threw at him, showing the interiors of his mouth, which at the moment seemed full of sharp teeth, and with it a cold-freezing scream...of pain.

Opening his eyes, he saw the being trying to pull something from his chest, a really long wooden bolt it seemed, before the screaming stopped and it fell into a pile of dust that smelled of earth and old. Gaping, he saw what had been the thing, surprised out of tears and even trembling. 'What the heck...' for the second time in barely 5 minutes he'd been severely surprised.

Shakingly he stood up and took the shaft that had killed the being, cracked in two by its efforts to tear it out. He tried picking one of the sides and had to let it fall. "Ahh! Hot damnit!" and then looked around. Who had fired the bolt? He blinked into the dead streets, with the blinking yellow lights of the semaphores all around. It wasn't dark here, even in the middle of the night, and even less with the moon shining as it was. But where was the person then?

A step. With a sharp intake of breath, he turned around to face a man, no, a boy. A bit older than him. Kneeling by the mound of dust and about to take the parts of the broken bolt.

"Careful, those are..." his fast words interrupted by the other boy.

"Hot? No...it taken only a minute." He said calmly, his face mostly covered by dark long hair, so like the thing he half-stepped back.

"What...what...who..."

"Vampire. Him, Jason Phillips. Me, Bennet. Bennet Rodriguez.""Vamp...vamp...vampire?"

"Yes."

"Oh..."

The boy looked up, no smile, no consolating gesture, nothing. His eyes were almost as dead as those of the vamp...vamp...vampire. He cringed, he was even thinking in stutter. Taking a deep breath he tried and say something without looking like a fool.

"Thanks. Really...thanks." Not having succeded much he just kept the stair coming from the boy and suddenly realized what he recognized, himself. A much, much more troubled self though. Something that he hadn't considered in his teen meditations.

The guy shrugged, put the bolt into one of the pockets of what seemed to be a long black trench coat wich flickered in his mind, so typical...but then also remembered he'd always wanted one. Bennet stood up and turned around, heading down the street before he stopped thinking.

"Wait!" he shouted at his back. But he kept on.

"No." came the answer back. "Don't follow Alexander." And froze Alexander Seaman to a stop.

Nobody called him that...not even his parents. And he wasn't mad, just frozen in place as his savior walked away.

"Good boy, Alexander..."