We finally reached my building, then my apartment. At least I had remembered to close and lock my door despite my fears to the contrary.

  I unlocked the door, fingers trembling, letting the weight of the moment trail behind me like a second shadow. The walls pressed inward, the stillness sharp as broken glass. My sanctuary wasn’t safe anymore – I had let a wolf in with me.

  I grabbed the pepper spray as I reached for the light, thinking myself rather clever for how smoothly I had done both tasks so that I could hide the spray from Michael. It felt good to hold onto the cool, reassuring plastic. Something real. Unlike the rest of this night. The click of the deadbolt echoed like a gavel in a courtroom where I was the only juror and he, the strange, guilty defendant with fangs.

  I motioned him over to the small couch, grabbing a chair from the table for myself and setting it across the coffee table from him.

  Sitting down, I noticed how small this large man looked when he was so dejected. It was odd to see him like that when he was so bubbly and loud at work.

  I stuck with clarifying for now. I sat forward, “So, vampires are real?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you are one?”

  “Yeah.”

  That sentence shouldn't make sense. And yet there we were, me, my tiny couch, and the undead guy who asked me for spreadsheet access twelve hours ago.

  An awkward pause fell over us again. I continued to struggle believing what I had seen and heard. I glanced between the window and the door, wondering which would be a better escape route, praying to the universe that I wouldn’t need one.

  You’re the idiot who let a vampire into your home, why are you looking for escape routes now?

  I shook my head to clear it. “But there’s no way there are actual vampires. That’s all fairy tales and magic and things that go bump in the night. If you’re a vampire, show me your teeth.”

  They had looked odd just before he had started biting Kelsey.

  Michael shrugged and bared his teeth to me, holding his lip back with a finger.

  I leaned forward, trying to figure out what made his teeth look different earlier. Right now they looked normal to me, not like how they were at Kelsey’s.

  “How do the teeth work? You’re not going around wearing fangs all the time so there’s got to be some mechanism for it.”

  “My canines elongate and sharpen into points.” He demonstrated. My heart kicked like a trapped rabbit. I barely held my scream.

  He retracted his teeth. “Have you ever heard about how a venomous snake’s teeth work?”

  I shook my head, completely unfamiliar with this random turn of conversation. I was confused what it had to do with vampires at all.

  “Venomous snakes have hollow, needle-like teeth, kind of like a hypodermic needle. The difference is that snake teeth deposit venom while my teeth act more like straws. Normally, the process isn’t as messy as you saw earlier. Something is seriously wrong with me tonight. I haven’t been this thirsty in a very long time. I had spent just enough time with Kelsey tonight to be able to hypnotize her like you saw, and I could see the pulse on her neck. Seeing it…” his eyes widened, “It was like putting steak in front of a starving man – I couldn’t resist.”

  He sighed, his countenance falling even further. “It’s been a very long day.”

  Preaching to the choir, brother.

  He wouldn’t meet my eyes. His hands hovered in front of him, twitching like they didn’t know what to do anymore – reach out for comfort or cover his face in shame. The blood had been wiped away, but guilt still clung to him like a second skin.

  “How I am at work,” he looked me in the eyes, “It’s a mask. I act all happy-go-lucky and like nothing could bother or stop me, but that’s not what I’m like most of the time. I guess you could call me an extroverted introvert, someone who can be extroverted when necessary but would rather not deal with anybody else the rest of the time.”

  “When I’m not at work, I’m usually completely alone and perfectly content with it. I occasionally go out with others but that’s not a regular thing for me.”

  My head was swimming around this new information, struggling to absorb everything that Michael was telling me.

  Wait, he’s not always so peppy and annoying? He actually prefers silence too? Who is this man and what has he done with Michael Anderson?

  I was still getting over the fact that vampires exist at all. And I had been working with one and now training one for how long? How many other vampires were there out there? How does a person even become a vampire?

  I only had more and more questions and sorting them into coherent thoughts was a struggle.

  I tried to think. “Are you dead then?”

  “Technically, I am “dead…” I think,” he punctuated with his fingers, “But the term “undead” makes more sense since I’m not a rotting corpse. I guess it would be easier if I started at the beginning.”

  Michael shifted on the couch, as if settling in before beginning his tale.

  “In short, I’m not exactly sure how I became a vampire. I was out for a drive and I remember seeing oncoming lights and trying to swerve.”

  “Then there was only darkness and stillness, a kind that I can’t really describe in a proper way, no matter how much I think about it, and I don’t like to. Far off, I could see a pinpoint of light. It wasn’t warmth that approached, it was inevitability.”

  “I knew that I was dying and I knew I didn’t want to die. I started bargaining and praying and pleading in the darkness.”

  “A disembodied voice drifted to me, not from the light, but from behind me. It was low, almost musical. It asked if I wanted to live.”

  “I told it I’d give anything, I was desperate. A bargain that rewrote my soul. And next thing I knew I was waking up beside my totaled car.”

  Michael sat back, heaving another sigh and rubbing a hand over his eyes and face.

  I blinked a couple of times, dumbfounded.

  “...That’s it? You died and then heard a voice and then didn’t die? That makes absolutely no sense, you know that right?”

  Disbelief colored my face.

  He has to be hiding something; his story is too vague.

  “You’re a vampire, I’ll give you that, but what kind of weak-ass origin story is that? What did you give up to not die?”

  A groan from Michael, “I don’t know. I obviously gave up something or else I wouldn’t be here, but what it was I haven’t the foggiest.” He twisted on the couch, seeming too big on the small loveseat. “But you interrupted my story, and rather rudely I might add. Don’t call it “weak-ass” without a little more context.”

  I raised my brows at his tone and gestured for him to continue, trying to hide how scared I felt.

  Please don’t get mad and eat me!

  He shifted in his seat once more. “That was last autumn, so it's been a little less than a year. I learned pretty quickly that I needed blood.”

  “The guy in the other car, an overtired driver I later learned, was passed out but more or less fine.”

  “As I was coming to, all I could think of was how thirsty I felt. I went to check on the other driver, not knowing if there were any other survivors or casualties.”

  He played with his hands as if he couldn’t think of anything else to do with them. Or he was fidgeting. I tried to focus on his story instead of his presence for the moment.

  “His head was lolled toward the passenger seat and I checked for a pulse. After feeling that pulse under my fingers, that dire thirst rushed forward again, almost unbearable this time.”

  “And his pulse felt… Well, it felt delicious. It's frustrating that I don’t have another word I can think of, but that is the closest descriptor I can come up with: delicious.”

  “My new instinct immediately took over and I drank his blood. It was a really odd sensation at first, the drinking itself, how it felt having his blood course through my teeth and into my body.”

  He bit him?! Is he going to bite me too?

  “I started to become aware of myself and I recoiled from him as quickly as I could. Like you saw tonight, no wound left behind. I haven’t figured that bit out either, how a bite leaves no marks–”

  “You just went and bit some random stranger?!” I blurted. “For one thing, violating people yet again,” emphasizing to remind him of his earlier incident.

  “For another, what if he was a drunk driver, huh? Are you going around sucking on random people willy-nilly? Seems rather nasty, in my opinion, not to mention unsafe.”

  His voice was low but playful. “Is that the kind of person you think I am? I’m actually rather hurt by that,” he said, his hand on his heart and his lower lip jutting out like a pouting child. His eyes twinkled with humor.

  I’d had enough.

  “Quit it! That juvenile, bubbly,” I continued with a flourishing hand, “Energizer bunny-leveled persona. I had to put up with that at work, don’t make me have to while I’m off the clock.”

  “Wow, grumpy much?” He said with a surprised chuckle.

  “But since you insist…”

  He leaned forward, his forearms on his knees, hands clasped gently in front of him. His face grew serious, mouth slightly downturned, his brow lowered to nearly a glare. He loomed on the tiny couch and I suddenly felt even smaller than I already was.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  His entire demeanor was suddenly changed; the aura in the room felt charged at the simple transformation.

  This was a vampire I was dealing with. What was I doing insulting him like that?! Well, I mean, it was Michael and he was irritating and I was not prepared for a person like that to be suddenly passing by and crashing my evening. But the man who was sitting in front of me now was not the office bro. Not a homebody. This was a predator.

  “I am not going around ‘willy-nilly,’ as you say. In fact I only ever had blood one other time, about a month after the accident.”

  He took a breath in through his nose and slowly released it through his mouth, seeming to want to calm himself a bit before continuing.

  “I had gone home to visit for the holidays, and there was a lot of extended family around this last year. It was the definition of chaos. The thirst started happening again and I was afraid of myself, of what I might accidentally do to someone I love if I didn’t get on top of it quickly.”

  That makes sense. If I were a vampire, I think I’d be wary of being around my family at all for their safety.

  “Fearful that I might hurt someone, I looked up and drove to a slaughterhouse and managed to get a pint of blood, “for an old family recipe,” I think is what I made up.”

  “After I was out of sight, I opened that container and drank right from it like it was a bowl of soup. It wasn’t as satisfying as human blood, but I didn’t have that thirst again during the holiday.”

  “But that scare had me looking up ways to get my hands on some blood, or even substitutions for blood, on a regular basis; I even went so far as to attempt the vampire rabbit hole on the internet until that had my head spinning.”

  “I’ve opted to stick with animal blood from various slaughterhouses and farms, and since I don’t need it every day, it's been really easy to hide my condition.”

  “Huh, alright then,” I nodded, still very wary of the man less than four feet away. Even if he was getting blood from sources other than people – usually – he was still a very dangerous person who was close enough to touch me.

  The silence stretched between us, taut and thrumming like a live wire. He looked at me like I held his whole existence in my hands. Maybe, for tonight at least, I did.

  ? ?? ?

  “So, uh,” I started, mindful of the pepper spray that I had hidden in the pocket of my hoodie, “What do you know about vampires? It’s been nearly a year, you said. I’m sure you’d have done some research into your… condition, by now.”

  Michael leaned back on the sofa, fingers still twined together. His eyes searched over me, aware of my own change in demeanor. He seemed nearly as cautious as I.

  “Unfortunately, the internet is chock full of all kinds of crap about vampires, and I do say crap because from my own experience at least, I haven’t been able to do most of what is claimed on the internet, including from self-proclaimed “vampires” who I’m pretty sure are complete bogus.

  “I can go out in the sun just fine, I can eat garlic just fine, I don’t have to sleep in a coffin. At this point, I’ve only developed one power and it’s been pretty recent. As you saw, I can now hypnotize people. The caveat that I’ve noticed is that I have to be around that person for at least an hour, and sometimes it doesn’t even last that long.”

  Michael rubbed his hands together, still fidgeting.

  “Kelsey and I had been out for a couple hours before I started becoming thirsty out of nowhere. I was trying to get Kelsey home faster so I could see if there were any butcher shops or something nearby that might still be open, but it was just getting worse and worse.”

  “By the time we got to her door, I felt like I hadn’t drank in weeks and her pulse was almost loud, though neither of those things made any sense.”

  “Normally I can get by with feeding only once a month. I switch between a few different slaughterhouses and farms, they only see me randomly for however long a transaction takes so like I said, detection has been easy to evade.”

  Seemed like I wasn’t the only one having a strange night. What even was happening right now?

  I swear, if this asshole kills me, I’m going to haunt him for the rest of his eternity.

  “So up until tonight you were totally fine with blood just once a month? When was the last time you, uh, drank? Ate? Fed?”

  He smirked at my confusion, his eyes mischievous.

  “About two weeks ago, I always drink blood at the beginning of the month,” he said offhandedly as if everyone drank blood on a regular basis.

  “I usually wouldn’t start feeling thirsty again for another couple weeks and even then, it is a gradual thirst. You know how you don’t go from full immediately to famished? The same thing applies here. I haven’t ever let myself get that thirsty before, I don’t know how long it would even take to feel that thirsty for anything let alone for blood.”

  “Mmhmm,” I hummed in affirmation, at least understanding his analogy even if nothing else made sense.

  “And that’s when you came, right when I started drinking Kelsey’s blood.”

  “Let me get a few things straight,” I started listing on my fingers. “You almost died in a car accident, a strange voice asked you if you wanted to live, you came back as a vampire, and you only need blood once a month? Huh, guess the media got that thing way wrong didn’t they?”

  Michael breathed a small chuckle. At least the vampire had a sense of humor.

  “You started being able to hypnotize people when, exactly? You haven’t been using that at work, have you? You haven’t hypnotized me before, right?” I asked sternly at the end.

  “No! No, I’ve never hypnotized you, Drew, and I promise I never will without your consent. I may have accidentally discovered this power at work though.”

  At least he had the good sense to buffer the bad news with the good first.

  “Do you know Garrett, in accounting?”

  I teetered my hand as if to say I knew of him but that was it.

  “About a month or two back, there was an error on my pay stub that completely messed everything up and was going to give me only a fraction of what I was owed. I wasn’t about to let that pass so I brought up the problem to my buddy, Garrett.”

  “For whatever reason, the computer was struggling for the longest time to try to fix the error. Either that or Garrett was bored and wanted to shoot the shit for a bit.”

  “In any case, I had been at Garrett’s desk for an hour without any luck from the computer. Then it suddenly felt like I had a tether to his brain, like I could feel what he felt for just a moment. It felt really weird and I stepped back, unintentionally causing Garrett to nearly fall out of his chair since I didn’t know how tethers or hypnosis or any of it works. Heck I’m still figuring it out, but I guess I’ve gotten better if I was able to hypnotize Kelsey so quickly at her door.”

  “I don’t want to admit it, but I have used hypnosis on some of the guys from work but, BUT,” he raised his voice at my look of outrage. “But it was never at work, it was at after work stuff.”

  “A lot of the guys have a bar they like to go to a couple times a week after work and I sometimes tag along. I figured some of these guys are voluntarily getting drunk on a weekday, they can be my guinea pigs. What?” He asked, exasperated at my pointed look.

  “Isn’t that kinda like kicking a man when he’s already down?”

  “Not when they volunteer for it.”

  Incredulous, that’s what I was at that moment. “Pardon, uh volunteer? What exactly did you tell these guys they were volunteering for?”

  “The truth, that I wanted to try to hypnotize them. I might’ve sweetened it with a promise of cool video footage if something awesome were to happen.”

  “You wanna know what they did?” He asked, a boyish gleam in his eye as he took out his phone.

  “You’re gonna want to see this.”

  I wasn’t terribly sure about that, but I had to admit I was curious.

  He pulled up his photos and videos, clicking on one where Garrett was doing a one-handed handstand and another coworker was doing backflips off one of the bar room booths.

  Had to admit, there was a bit of satisfaction in seeing all these people who are usually so professional being completely… not. Doesn’t it get tiring trying to be perfect all the time?

  I swear, if I cared as much as some of these other people do about the minutiae of life, I’d never get anything done. I felt like I hardly got things done anymore anyway with how frequently my desk was bombarded.

  “So, you said that’s your only power? Hypnotism?”

  Still plenty dangerous.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t something that I was born, er uh, reborn with? I don’t know what I’d call it, when I came back. Anyway, I figured I got a cool new gift about sixish months into being like this, maybe there will be more gifts in the future.”

  “Slow down there, cowboy,” I said with a hand outstretched. “What makes you think this is going to be a pattern? What if this is the only “gift” you get, ever think about that?”

  His glare chilled a few degrees. I swallowed, my heart thudding.

  “If you must know, it's because I’m pretty sure I finally found another vampire. I ran into this guy online, goes by the tag @c0unts, and he has all the markers of someone who might actually be supernatural instead of just faking it like some self-proclaimed vamps.”

  Alright, color me curious.

  “What makes you think he might be a real vampire?”

  Michael switched apps so he could show me this @c0unts. There was a picture of a slender, fit male with skin so light it nearly seemed translucent, pink eyes, and a shock of white-blonde hair sticking out in all directions from the top of his head.

  “He’s albino.” I looked back up at him. “Are you telling me you think this guy is a vampire because he looks like one? That’s just silly, even for you.”

  “I haven’t told you my reasons for thinking he’s a vampire, and it has nothing to do with his appearance. Though now that you mention it, just add a cape and some Halloween fangs, and he’d make a pretty good Dracula.”

  “But no, it wasn’t because of his looks. It's because of how he talks about things that are normal for normal people but not for him… No, that doesn’t make sense. He has… enhanced senses. In videos, he’ll stop talking because he hears the train whistle over a mile away from his home. His nose and mouth are sensitive to the point of pain when it comes to some food challenges. He can outsprint anybody who comes on his channel; he’s so fast generally that I wouldn’t be surprised if he could actually catch a bullet in his teeth. And this is just evidence that I’ve gathered by watching his Instagram reels.”

  “Uh huh,” my lack of enthusiasm hung on each syllable. “You do know he could just be really weird, right? Lots of people have insane hearing and tons of people have food sensitivities, and there are plenty of fast people in the world. Is this really all you’re going off of?”

  With exasperation, he clicked on a video showing @c0unts sitting in front of a table attempting an Italian food challenge. He was alright for the first minute or so and then started gagging when he switched to a new dish.

  His teeth glinted in the camera for the smallest moment, but it was just long enough for me to notice something weird about his teeth, almost like when I saw Michael’s teeth at Kelsey’s.

  But that couldn’t be, surely not…

  “Ah, they used so much garlic! It’s burning my eyes! Oh my sinuses!”

  Garlic, really?

  I looked at Michael, an eyebrow raised, and he just gestured as if to say I know but look.

  “Hahaha, this dish is going on my no-eat list for sure, that was awful!”

  Michael stopped the video and put the phone down, having made his point.

  “Yeah, this might just be a random person who happens to have similar traits to a vampire. Or this could be someone else like me.” His brows were creased; he looked so downcast.

  My heart tightened a little at his words. I couldn’t imagine how lonely it must’ve been, searching for months to find answers and suddenly there might be someone else, possibly just like him.

  “So what do you plan to do now? Are you going to try to contact this @c0unts? See if he’s willing to meet with you?”

  He nodded, “Basically. Not sure exactly what I’ll say. Influencers like him probably get asked for meet ups all the time, so I need to word things just right.” He looked up. “Wanna help me?”

  Gobsmacked is probably the closest word to what I was feeling then. What was even happening today? I went from forgetting my shoes to inviting a literal vampire into my home in less than an hour.

  Slack-jawed, I looked at him and asked, “Are you serious? I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that you’re a vampire! And now you want me to help you contact another maybe vampire?”

  He scrolled on his phone and opened an app. “Do you have something else on your calendar? I’m pretty flexible.”

  “It’s not about schedules! You really are an idiot sometimes.” I snapped my mouth shut with an audible click of my teeth.

  What did I just say to an apex predator? That he’s an idiot?!

  Despite the fact it was true, I instantly regretted my words.

  Michael straightened, hit by the word. Then his shoulders slumped and his back bent.

  “I know I’m an idiot. Only an idiot would make a deal without knowing what he’d lose. But the other choice was literal death, what was I supposed to do?”

  He sighed through his nose, leaning on his knees with his hands dangling between.

  “You are the only other person in the entire world who knows what I am. I don’t have anyone else to ask for help with this. Please, Drew. I know it's silly but can you help me contact @c0unts so I can try to learn more about my new way of life?”

  Torn between good sense and empathy, my heart gave in. “Fine. What do you need me to do?”

  A bright smile glowed on Michael’s face at my words. He sat up, looking like a dog who just got told he’d be going out for walkies soon.

  “Thank you! Alright, so I have a little bit of a plan at least. I know @c0unts is going to the Renaissance Faire a few towns over and I’m planning on going to find him during that. I guess you’d mostly be moral support, but it really would help.”

  I rolled my eyes, “I get it, I got it.” So what even is a Renaissance Faire?”

  Michael’s eyes crinkled with his smile. “It’s way cool. Everybody dresses up in medieval and fantasy style clothes, there’s ye olde events like jousting you can watch, and there’s booths for food and handmade goods, and there’s music, and everybody is just there to have a good time and enjoy being nerds together.”

  My face scrunched. “It sounds like a lot of people. Does it get crowded?”

  “A bit,” he answered, “but not like a regular county fair might be. But it really is way fun! I wish I was better at describing to you what one is like. So, will you come?” I stared at him for a good ten seconds before I answered, blandly.

  “Do I have to dress up?”

  “No, but you'll have more fun if you do,” he sing-songed. “Please, Drew? I won’t ask for any more help after this.”

  Well, at least the night couldn’t get much weirder than this.

  “Fine,” I said, “but I’m not dressing up.”

  Going to a fair with a vampire? It sounds like the setup to a bad joke. But something in his eyes was too human to ignore. Well, my job is helping people. I guess I’ll be helping him now…

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