A/N-This is Levi’s baby. Aby probably won’t be helping on it too much.

Night. It’s a dark, whispered word, barely palpable and a talented escape artist when it is released off the tongue. I loved it. The word, the time, the existence. I thrived from it, fed off of it, existed only to serve it in my own dark ways. Of course, I hadn’t always been like that. I hadn’t always been a slave to the call. But then, I hadn’t always been dead either.

No, I’ve only been dead for slightly over 100 years. The youngest in our race and by default, the one they pick on. The fights I’ve struggled to survive after. Darwinism at it’s best. They root out the weak ones and they’re determined I’m one of them. They’re wrong, however. I’ll survive. Somehow…

This night, however, was different. They wouldn’t catch me. I would avoid them. I was younger, smaller, quicker. That worked to my advantage a lot. I slipped across the street silently, muffling the sharp sounds of my boots hitting the cobblestones with a small whisper of the magic the night granted me. My eyes brightened. I was on the hunt and tonight, they wouldn’t stop me. They couldn’t. If they did, I would probably die. The hunger and lust of the night would kill me. They had kept me from hunting for too long.

I darted into an alley, pulling my cloak around my body and blending into the shadows as a lonely prostitute walked past me. I waited a moment and her John followed her out, avoiding the problems being seen walking out of an alley immediately after her would cause. I could smell the scent of new disease clinging to him and I smirked. He’d die soon anyway and everyone would know.

As he walked away, I scurried up the wall, my fingers scaling the brick as if it were rope. I launched myself onto the roof and looked down. “Nicholas…” a voice behind me whispered. I spun; dropping the disguise the night lent me. It was my sire, a potential threat but usually my only defender. He took abuse for me as well. I was a disallowed vampire. He hadn’t taken the necessary precautions when he’d sired me. It had been a mad lust and he’d done it out of insanity and love for my human form.

“Sebastien,” I said softly, bowing. “You are alone?”

“I wouldn’t come with a crowd, my love,” he said, approaching. I side-stepped him. My own night lust didn’t call for males. It desired women and Sebastien, to be perfectly honest, scared me.

His eyes flashed at my movement and he backed away. “You play a dangerous game, fledgling. A very dangerous game.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Sebastien looked saddened but he began to dissolve. “They are closing in, Nicholas. Be quick in your hunt or they’ll finish you off.”

I turned away and hurried across the rooftops, cloaking myself in darkness again. Casper, Landon, and Marcius would be coming for me soon to torment me. They were the oldest of our race in the area and they wanted me dead to fix the ‘mistake’ Elder Sebastien had made.

I continued my quest, the tendrils of my mind reaching out across the expanse of the what we called, ‘the plain.’ It was a space our thoughts occupied. I could sense theirs, calling for mine. They were extraordinarily close. I moved faster, nearly flying.

“Get off of me!” some one below me shouted. I stopped, glancing down. A girl pushed a drunken man away. She looked young, no older than I had been before I’d been turned.

He lurched again, pulling at the neckline of her dress. I didn’t like the thought of this girl being hurt. I didn’t know why. I never cared about the women I killed nor the men I killed in the process. I felt things, more than most vampires and more than all humans. Being dead doesn’t deaden the emotion. It makes it sharper, more painful. The girl screamed again, for help that time.

I took a step off the top of the building and dropped down, silently, behind him. Her eyes, a dark, brooding blue, widened in panic. She seemed more terrified of me than she was of the man and rightly so. I wasn’t something to be shrugged off as a grain of sand.

My pale, cold hands latched around his throat and drew him backward. “You will release that girl, good sir, and continue on your way home. If you don’t, you’ll deal with me,” I hissed, pulling his ear to my lips. My cool teeth grazed his flesh as I spoke.

“And what will you do? You’re a boy!” he slurred.

I lifted him off the ground, throwing him out of the alley. “Go home,” I ordered.

The man didn’t seem to comprehend that I had lifted him. He was three times my size and height. But he was too drunk to care and he stumbled away. The girl, however, stared at me. She took in the black curls of hair that fell around my face, damp from condensation and the dark brown eyes that stared back at her.

I approached and she stood perfectly still, her chest rising and falling quickly through her dark blue gown. She appeared to be wealthy, probably lost and coming home from a party. I could smell a trace of alcohol on her breath. “Are you hurt?” I asked silkily. She shook her head. “That’s good….”

I lifted a thick strand of hair from her pale throat and tossed it over her shoulder. I moved forward, smiling at her paralyzed state. She couldn’t move, and she wanted to. The night had wrapped her up in a blanket and tied her there. She belonged to me and I was about to take her up on the offer of her blood when the air around me turned thick.

I stiffened and stood up. She remained still, staring into my eyes with a mixture of lust and fear. They all looked like that. She loved me already but she hated me too. I ignored her. The air around me crushed in on me, hurting every cell of my existence. “Nicholas,” it whispered.

It was Landon. He was the only one that could do this to me. “Nicholas….” I whimpered, and began to collapse into myself. I couldn’t fight back. I didn’t have the power to fight back yet. I was weak anyway; I hadn’t fed in weeks because of him and his friends.

“Landon….stop….” I whispered. The girl stared, she couldn’t feel it. Only I could feel it. The weight of the world, crushing me. The atmosphere trying to rip me apart because my life defied its laws.

The weight lifted and he materialized near me. “Nicholas…finally. I caught you.”

I looked at the girl and at him, scrambling for plan to keep him from abusing me that night. “Don’t do anything or I’ll tell her the truth...the name.” The truth. To tell a human a vampire’s name rendered him helpless. To say, his name is Landon…would give me power over him. It was illegal by our code, but I wasn’t ready to die.

Landon smiled, leaned forward near her ear, and whispered, “His name is Nicholas. Command him at your will, my love.”