Author Note: Hey guys. I am so sorry that this took so long. School ate most of my life, and I spent a lot of the rest of that time dealing with social drama. Most of it wasn’t even my own. Anyway, I’d like to thank my friends in real life, AnOddityOfSorts and Elevanya for rocking so hard. I’m also like to thank Shadepray, Carmel March, Dooks, objectivebias, Vampires Bane, and Moonlit Promise (wow, a long list this time) for all of the reviews, even though I hadn’t visibly done anything with the story for so long! Alright, then. Here we go!

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I have absolutely no idea how, but I went back to sleep after that nightmare. It took me a while, and there was some daytime television involved, but once I started, I slept peacefully.

I slowly woke up around 7:00 PM to the sounds of Damien walking around in the kitchen, fixing himself something to eat. I sleepily trudged into the kitchen, mentally preparing myself for a possible rehashing of last night’s conversation.

“Good morning, Callie. Want some bacon?” Damien asked cheerily from the stovetop area. “Or is that not your thing? I’ve got some cereal around here somewhere. Get yourself whatever you want to drink.”

What the fuck? I thought. After all of the emotion from the last night, I couldn’t fathom how he could be so fucking cheery. Part of me was relieved. I didn’t have to deal with his hurt anymore. I didn’t have to deal with his hurt anymore. I wouldn’t have to actively deal with my guilt. But another part of me was worried. Keeping this kind of thing inside isn’t usually good for you. It reminded me of this show that I used to watch on TV, and still caught the reruns of on occasion. One of the main characters frequently acted as Damien was feeling, but even more so. He almost never said what he was truly feeling. That’s not entirely true, I thought. Hr always showed when he was angry. He just had issues with showing affection. I remembered, though, that keeping those feelings inside usually resulted in disaster, at least in his relationships with others. I realized that, obviously, there were some big situational differences between these two things, but I still thought that it didn’t bode well for Damien. Keeping strong emotions to yourself never ends well, especially for the person feeling the aforementioned emotions.

“Callie? You still with me, here?” Damien asked, derailing my train of thought.

“I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Yeah, sorry. Still not totally awake.”

“So did you want something to eat?”

I thought about it. I could feel that my stomach was empty, but I wasn’t hungry. I was thirsty. And a feeling in the back of my throat told me that some orange juice was going to cut it.

“Not this,” I replied, unconsciously licking my lips. I swallowed. “I’m thirsty.”

Damien wasn’t looking at me, still cooking. “Well, as I said, feel free to grab something to drink from the fridge.”

No, I shot at him mentally. “I’m thirsty.”

That made Damien turn around. It was the first time that I had ever made a point of my thirst to him, and he seemed thoroughly surprised. I’m sure I would have been, too, if I was him.

“Um…give me a minute, Callie. Let me just finish this. Then we can head out. Why don’t you get dressed?”

I nodded before turning and leaving to grab my bag of clothes. I took it into the bathroom and got dressed. That night I decided to be a little more casual than the previous one. I was not usually a skirt wearer, so wearing one multiple days in a row would have driven me nuts. I donned a pair of tight, black hip-huggers and a purple tank-top. I brushed my hair and then left the bathroom.

I exited to see Damien had dressed, also. He looked good in his dark blue jeans and a black button-down collared tank-top. Oh, Hell, who am I kidding? He didn’t just look good. He looked gorgeous. I felt mediocre and inadequate in comparison. Stupid pretty, tall people

“We’ll leave in a couple of minutes. I just want to eat some of the bacon I made. Don’t want good bacon to go to waste.” Damien walked into the kitchen and came out a little less than a minute later with his mouth and left hand full of bacon. “Sure you don’t want a piece, Callie?” Damien asked again.

I shook my head. Normally, I would have scarfed down that bacon so quickly that Damien wouldn’t realize his hand was empty until I had already swallowed it all. But I was starting to be able to tell the difference between my normal hunger and thirst that lingered from humanity and the deep, insatiable need my stomach and body had for blood, and the latter was what I was feeling that day. “No, thank you.”

Damien nodded and put another piece of bacon in his mouth as he led us both out the door. Once we were outside and were positive that no humans were nearby, I grabbed Damien’s forearm and a few seconds later found myself standing behind an old, rundown apartment building. The fire escapes were ancient-looking and rusty, and many of the windows were broken or boarded up. The bricks were crumbling.

Damien reached up and pulled down the fire escape ladder, and we climbed up to the seventh floor. I did a mental sweep of the apartment in front of us. No one too fancy inside. A couple of gang leaders measuring the ounces of coke they had so that they could package and sell it. I already, in my head, could see the possible police interpretations of this murder. Rival gang. Strung out addicts. Family member of someone who overdosed giving out some vigilante justice. It was almost too easy.

We slowly, silently opened the window. As soon as they heard us step inside, we each took control of one of them. I was grateful that the one I got was the cleaner of the two. When he came to me, I wasted no time battling with my conscience before sinking my teeth into his jugular. I let the copper taste, the sweet and salty liquid, take me away from myself. I didn’t think about the world as my thirst diminished into a tame almost nothingness. I wasn’t in this dusty, dank, drug filled hovel. I was anywhere and everywhere in the world.

When I pulled away, I felt some slight guilt, but not a whole lot. I then started to worry about that lack of guilt. My humanity seemed to be slipping through my fingertips, and it had been all I had had only a couple of days ago. Why the Hell can’t I be me anymore?! Another voice in my bran immediately started coming up with responses.

Maybe because you need to feed in order to liveMaybe because you’re killing killers? You’re practically improving society with your nasty eating habits!

I sighed and shrugged to myself, licking my lips clean of any excess blood. “So, where to now?” I asked.

“Are feeling up to trying The Pit out again? I’ll check to see if she’s there before we go in this time.”

I nodded, needing to ask who he was referring to. Autumn. “Yeah, sure.”

Damien smiled. “Maybe this time you’ll get to meet some of my friends.”

I shrugged again, not entirely sure if I wanted to meet them, but knowing that if they were there, that’s exactly what we’d be doing. I wondered what Damien’s friends would be like. Would they be more sane versions of Autumn? He had stuck with her for 800 years. Would they be like him? That frightened me almost as much. The would did not need any more Damiens.

We went back outside, and Damien took us to the alleyway outside of The Pit. He stood there for a moment, eyes closed, before going, “Ha! She’s not here! And some of my friends are at the bar. C’mon, let’s go in.”

I sighed and followed Damien down the stairs into the club. He pulled me along to the bar and didn’t stop until we found a group of three people standing together and talking. One was a tall guy, maybe an inch shorter than Damien, with short dirty-blond hair, who had his arm wrapped around an African American woman. She was fairly tall, only a few inches shorter than the man, with shoulder length black hair and a beautiful smile. The last was another woman, with crazy chin length hair that was dyed several different colors in different places. At that moment, I noted red, purple, blue, green, and pink. But I could easily have missed a color or two.

“Hey, Damien!” the man called over the loud music. “Long time, no see! And who’s this?”

“Tom, Carrie, Ronnie, this is Callie. Callie, these are my friends Thomas, Carolina, and Veronica,” Damien said, gesturing toward the man, the black woman, and the punk looking girl respectively. I nodded nervously as they all looked me over.

“Is this the girl you told us about, Damien? So you finally changed her? You didn’t mention how cute she was,” Veronica commented. Her voice sounded like she didn’t really have much of an accent beyond the normal East Coast American, but there seemed to be something I couldn’t place in it. I felt my face heat up in a blush as Damien gave her a disapproving look. “What?” she questioned. “I was just making an observation. I can tell she’s straight.”

Damien continued to glare. “Ronnie,” he said in a warning tone.

“Just because your ancient and don’t approve of it doesn’t mean that everyone feels the same way,” she teased.

Damien just sighed. “I’m not homophobic. You know that. Callie’s just already nervous and uncomfortable. Please don’t exacerbate the situation by hitting on her. I would have told Tom off, too, had he done it.”

“I would have done more than told him off if he’d had the balls to hit on her,” Carolina said with a slight southern accent. We all laughed, even me, even if it was a little uneasily on my part.

“What is Callie short for, anyway?” Tom asked. His voice sounded as if he might be English.

I laughed slightly. “Calina,” I replied. “My parents were a little strange.”

“Strange: maybe so. But I like it,” Tom said.

“So are you from around here, Callie?” Carolina asked.

I nodded. Yeah. Born and raised in Manhattan. What about you guys?”

“I’m from around Savannah, Georgia. I grew up on a plantation. This handsome gentleman here,” Carrie said while nudging Tom, “Knew my…the owner of the plantation, and started hanging around there more and more, just to see little old me. This was about seven years before the Civil War, mind you, so we thought that I would be stuck there for life. So he changed me and got me the Hell out of there. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

I nodded and averted my eyes slightly. I hadn’t expected a whole back story, and although it was interesting, I didn’t know how to respond.

Luckily, I didn’t have to. Tom then gave his own answer to my question. “England, originally. But I was one of the original settlers of the Plymouth colony.”

I held back a gasp. Not nearly as old as Damien, but still really old.

“Arbutus,” Veronica said. I just stared blankly. “It’s a tiny suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. I’m not nearly as old as these guys, I was turned back in ’86. It’s going to be awesome not being the young one anymore.” She said “Baltimore” like “Baldmore.”

“Is that where your accent is from? Baltimore? I’m just curious about that type of thing.”

Veronica laughed and nodded. “Yeah. It’s not that bad, but I still color with ‘crowns’ instead of ‘cray-ons’,” she said, exaggerating the last word to show that she didn’t normally pronounce it that way. “I drink ‘wooter’ from the tap, which comes from a ‘zink’.”

The rest of us laughed again. As we were doing that, the song playing in The Pit must have changed, because Carrie suddenly ejected, “Oo! I love this song! C’mon, let’s dance!” She darted toward the dance floor, pulling Tom behind her. Veronica laughed again and followed the couple, grabbing Damien’s hand and taking him with her. Damien smiled and held out his other hand for me to grab.

Might as well, I thought and took the offered hand. We followed Carrie to pretty much the middle of the dance floor and all started dancing together, our bodies swaying to the throbbing bass beat. We couldn’t not be pressed against each other; it was impossible. There were too many people in the vampiric club to have anything resembling personal space. Despite the hot, almost claustrophobic feeling of it all, I actually found myself to be enjoying it. It surprised me.

Maybe this isn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe I don’t completely hate this new life.

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End Note: Again, sorry that it took so long for me to get this chapter out. I’m sorry it’s not as long as that time length should probably warrant. I hope you guys like it, though. Until next time, guys. Bye!