Turning Saylor

𝐒 𝐀 𝐘 𝐋 𝐎 𝐑

My feet pound loudly against the asphalt of the road, mixing with the sound of my heavy panted breathes. The sweat that coats my body rolls down my back, making the material of my shirt stick to my skin in an uncomfortable way.

The soft breeze that blows around me does nothing to cool down my heated body. I want nothing more than to stop, to catch my breath but I know stopping means game over. I can’t have that.

In my hometown of Onryx, the people of this town believes that vampires are just something made up. Scary campfire stories to scare children, funny rumours made up to see how far teenagers could spread and spin the words spoken.

Growing up, I had been that scared child. I spent a week to scared to sleep, worried that a vampire was going to spring through my window and drain me dry. I didn’t quite understand that a vampire needs an invitation to enter a home. Eventually, I had grown out of it, became a teenager with my own mind and laughed at my parents and their stories.

But now? Well, I don’t just wear pure silver jewellery because it compliments my skin tone.

It was two years ago that I had learnt the truth to the rumours and the stories.

Vampires haunt this town, living on the outskirts of Onryx, hidden behind the forest that circles the town almost perfectly. Not all vampires are what I saw in movies or on television shows. Sure, some of them are beefed up men and beautifully stunning women with no brain cells shared between them. But a lot of them are just like regular humans, just more dangerous and conniving.

This deathly path I’m on has been this way for almost four years now, just six months after my older brother, Vaughn was found dead on the very outskirts of Onryx. His heart had been ripped from his chest, torn out in an inhumanly way. No human could do such a thing. There was more to his murder than the Onryx police tried to make me believe, no matter how believable their lies were.

It took me a little less than two years of endless digging and multiple dead ends to work out the truth.

Vaughn was classified as missing the night after he had attended a party held in the Onryx Forest on the north side of Onryx, the opposite direction of where the nest of vampires live.

These parties were something that happened almost every weekend, an invite to the party was just the word of mouth and the parties that had been almost tradition for those of us willing to attend.

I had my fair share of attending the forest parties, stumbling out of the forest with friends and waking up the next morning with a decent hang over. The last one I had attended was two months before my last living parent died, which was only two years after my father died. Even then, I started shutting everyone out, grief gripping in a vice grip that only got worse when Vaughn died.

Digging into my brother’s technically closed case wasn’t a good idea, it only led me down a dark path that came to an end tonight.

I shouldn’t have been doing it alone, spending endless nights with no sleep and getting into a lot of situations that could’ve killed me. This situation is no different to the rest, if I really think about it.

My search for answers is what lead to vampires in the worse way possible.

I crossed paths with one wrong vampire, asked the wrong question and the next thing I knew, I was knocking on Death’s door like I was getting paid for it. Somehow, I was saved. A witch named Dahlia had saved me, brought me back from the brink and I have never asked her how.

Dahlia does not answer questions she doesn’t want to.

Over the last one and a half years, Dahlia has helped me look for answers, but she has also tried to get me to rethink what I was doing. The past six months, I think she has given up on me. I haven’t seen or heard from her, and I wouldn’t know where to start to seek her out. Dahlia had always found me first.

Just like every other time I had seen her, she warned me to stop, to not seek out the one I think killed my brother, to think of the consequences that would come. I should’ve listened.

Four years has led to Darna Lowes, the one vampire that is linked to my brother and the one I feel is responsible for my brother’s death.

Everything had pointed to her. Darna had been seen with Vaughn many times, but never in Onryx. Vaughn had never been seen without her, like Darna had glued herself to him and never let him out of her sight. Nobody could tell me if he had been turned – which I assume is what might have happened.

I spent weeks watching Darna, following her like some sort of stalker. I took notes and times, following her wherever she went and there wasn’t truly a thing I missed. She was easy enough to stalk which should’ve been a warning sign considering she was a vampire.

Darna had barely paid attention to anything around her, almost as if she was depressed and didn’t care what happened. She went through the motions, something I had once done before I found something to focus on. Humans have a scent to vampires, and not once did it ever seem as though she scented me.

If she did, she didn’t show any signs.

There was no real challenge of getting into her room. She lived on the bottom floor of the two-story house she shared with other vampires – ones I should’ve made attention but did not, rooky mistake.

I watched her light go out, gave it almost two hours hidden within the shadows of the forest before I made the dash across the lush lawn surrounding the house. I climbed through her window like some wannabe-copycat seventies serial killer.

Darna never really moved when I had slammed those chains over her. I had laced those chains with a Juniper berry oil and finely crushed garlic. There was no chance of a getaway, no chance of screaming for help.

That small voice that had been screaming at me for years had finally silenced as I stood over her.

Fear swirled in her peacock blue eyes, satisfying me like nothing else had before. But another emotion had swirled in her eyes, something that looked almost like Darna had breathed for the first time in years.

When she tried to speak, anger had me seeing red and my hand had pushed that Juniper berry into her mouth, slamming her jaw shut to squish the berry.

The only words I had caught when that berry was in her mouth was Vaughn’s name, my own name and an apology of all things. It wasn’t long after that Darna’s blue eyes had turned white and the last breath had whooshed out of her lungs.

An Ashwood stake had been slammed into her chest for good measure.

Just for a single moment, I stood staring down at her corpse. Something swirled inside of me, something that said Darna may have not been the reason of my brother’s death. But as quickly as the feeling came was as quickly as the feeling went.

I didn’t hang around any longer than I needed to, disappearing out the same way I had come in.

I haven’t stopped running since. Highly unfortunate for me because me and running have never gotten along, something I don’t see in my future for a very long time.

Glancing over my shoulder, I see the shadow blur across the street. A small gasp breath escaping me at the sight of it. Vampires are very much real with the whole super speed and hearing, and fangs that burn when they bite into your flesh. I have two chasing me, hot on my heels and taunting me with the hope that I might just make it to the safety of my home.

Though I know better than to hold onto that hope, I still cling to it like it’s going to be something I can achieve.

I’m still not sure how I got out of the forest – dodging tree, ducking branches and managing to fall over just once. Drying mud still clings to my jeans and bare skin that isn’t covered.

My heart pounds in my chest, almost threatening to burst out of chest and a huge give away to where I am. Loose strands of my hair have fallen out of my ponytail, the sweat that coats my skin has it sticking to my forehead and back of my neck.

Loud, menacing laughter echoes around me in a haunting way as I turn onto the street where my house is. I don’t look around me, I don’t make another sound, I just push my legs harder and faster.

My body is going to be aching tomorrow in a way that it never has – that is if I’m alive tomorrow to see the sunrise.

The house finally comes into view, something that makes me want to breathe a sigh of relief, but I don’t allow myself too.

My two-story house sits like a beacon of the night, and I have never been so happy to see the house I had grown up in for almost twenty-six years.

The front porch light is on and glowing, illuminating my front lawn that is almost ready to be mowed. Green hedges cut into the perfect rectangles and in front of them are flower bushes I had planted months ago. The flowers are bright and a pop of colour against all the green, but I know those colours will be gone when the winter months hit.

Pristine white paint of the house seems to glow underneath the moonlight, calling to me with open arms. The dark navy-blue guttering and railings that line the front deck and small staircase seems to blend into the shadows that the light does not reach.

My eyes zero in on the matching dark navy-blue door and I refuse to look anywhere else as I beeline for it.

Unable to help myself, I’m looking over my shoulder again.

Another gasped breath escaping me when my eyes land on the two, large shadowy figures stand in the middle of the street. Their figures are relaxed, casual as if they are just standing around watching a race and almost as still as statues. I turn back around and as much as I feel like I’m running faster, I am truly not.

But just my luck, as I place a single foot onto my stone driveway, the long length of my ponytail is grabbed. A blood curdling scream is ripped from my lungs and my body is pulled backwards so roughly that I almost lose my footing.

My back collides with a harden body that feels as though I’m pressed against a cool, concrete wall. Had this been any other time, I’d welcome the coolness into my body. A large hand wraps around my throat, feeling just as cool as the body I’m pressed against.

The hand squeezes just enough to warn me not to do anything stupid, but not enough to take my panted breathes away. My lungs still struggle to gain the breathes it wants, my heart pounding so hard that I’m sure they can both hear it and my body is slick with sweat.

It seems death is going to reach me long before I will ever get back into my home.

My body seems to still on its own when another vampire steps in front of me.

His hands are tucked inside the pockets of his charcoal coat, his pretty green eyes swirling with darkness and anger, betraying his casual stance. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak, just looks over me like he is trying to get the best read on me. I’m not sure what to do, so I just stare back at him.

This vampire towers over me so much so that I have to tilt my head back a little to look at him.

Much like most vampires I have met before, there is an allure about him that drags me in. But this time seems different to the rest. I won’t lie; he is handsome – one of the most handsome vampires I have ever laid eyes on.

Though, there is a power about him that oozes over me, a smell that makes me think for a second that I could breathe it in until he kills me. He is the perfect predator.

Underneath his coat is a tight-fitting shirt that hugs his broad chest, tucked into a set of dark denim jeans that fit his thick thighs in an amazing way. Not only is he tall, broad and handsome, he’s also muscular with large arms.

This creature is every woman’s walking wet dream come to life, or maybe just mine.

His hair is as dark as the night sky, if not darker and blending into the darkness. It’s combed back off his square shaped face, a soft part off slightly to the left side of his head and the sides slightly shorter than the top. My hand itches to run through the thickness of it.

High cheek bones, a straight nose, slightly full lips and a clean-shaven chiselled jawline – it’s like he was carved by the supernatural Gods perfectly for me.

Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome is beyond attractive. He’s something I could fall hard for if he wasn’t about to kill me in retaliation for killing a member of his nest. Plus, he smells so good. Like amber and spice and a little of the forest.

I just want to kick the bastard in the shin for making me swoon like this.

“You killed a member of my nest,” He states. His voice is deep, a little rough and makes a shiver run through my body. I’m fucking screwed in all ways to Sunday. “A large price for you to pay,”

“Well, she killed my brother and dumped him like trash,” I answer him, my voice stronger than I feel. I try to keep the bite out of my voice but fail at doing so. “It would seem you monsters think that you can get away with murder,”

"Humans,” He muses, as if it is some sort of private joke between him and the one behind me. “You silly little things cling to one little piece of information and run with it. You spin it so much in your heads that you believe the lies you tell yourself. But you, darling, have gotten it so wrong to think Darna killed Vaughn,”

I frown at Mr. Stupidly Handsome wondering what he means but not giving it too much thought right now.

I just breathe an unamused laugh. “That’s tends to be your opinion, doesn’t it?”

“There is everything in my mind telling me to rip your heart out the exact way it was done to Vaughn,” He steps forwards just a little. Slowly but surely, he is going to close the space between us. “You will be alive just long enough to see it beat one final time outside of your chest,”

“Funny how you think your threat scares me,” I lie through my teeth. I keep my face void of any emotion, praying that they think my heart is beating because of all the running I just did. “I accepted my death long before we got into this situation. So, do your worst, princess,”

Soft laughter comes from behind me; the chest I’m pressed against moves gently against my back. The vampire in front of me looks over my shoulder, his pretty green eyes slightly narrowing in a way that makes the laughter stop.

My eyes stay focused on the handsome one because I know that looking away would be yet another rooky mistake to make tonight.

I wasn’t lying when I said I accepted my death long before tonight.

There has always been a chance I would die long before I figured out who Darna was, long before they could’ve caught me. I don’t have anyone to raise the alarm when I go missing. I have no friends, I haven’t for a long time. And my family is already dead.

My parents died within eighteen months of each other. My father dead from an aggressive cancer, my mother from her own hand. She was heart broken so much when Dad died that it lead her to a deep depression and there was nothing to bring her back from it.

Vaughn and I should’ve known that it would’ve only been a matter of time before she was gone too, but we were caught in our own grief that we missed it.

Now, they are all buried in Onryx Cemetery. A place I have visited many times.

A smart person would be begging for their life right now. They would be pleading to make a deal, asking them to understand what they have done. But a smart person also wouldn’t have dug so deep into something and found out the truth of the supernatural, nor would they have killed a vampire.

But I have never been a smart woman and this is just the consequences of my actions catching up with me.

I don’t say another word to the vampire, allowing the silence to circle around us.

My mind, body and soul are almost grateful that this is all coming to an end. Dying will allow me to be with my family, to be somewhere far, far away from here.

I almost let out that breath of relief that I’ve wanted to do since I saw my home.

“Does your life mean so little to you?” The vampire breaks the silence.

Those green eyes pin mine in place, holding me hostage in a way that I haven’t before. The shade of his eyes remind of the green on the large pine trees that circle Onryx almost perfectly. It’s the type of green that you see when the shadows are meeting the light.

The more I look, the more I take notice of the tiny black specs and the black ring that circle his irises. Mr. Handsome seems to be more intrigued by me than he is angry now.

I shouldn’t like the way he is looking at me, it should make my skin crawl with disgust. But I feel the complete opposite. Maybe it’s the lack of male attention over the years, or maybe I’m finally going crazy like my neighbours have already titled me as.

Stupid handsome vampire. Fuck.

“Honestly,” I finally speak, tilting my head a little to the right. A ghost of a smile touching the corner of my lips. “I haven’t truly thought about it. If I had given it a single thought, I wouldn’t have done what can’t be undone,”

The vampire raises a perfect dark eyebrow at me, as if I have made him question what he thought he knew about me. I’m not sure if he is taken back by my answer or pausing to think before he speaks again.

When he does finally do something, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand.

A smile is pulled at his lips, showing me perfectly straight and white teeth. There is something sinister about his smile, something that makes me step back into the vampire that has stayed silent behind me.

“Seems to me that an answer has been answered for me, little pet,” The vampire in front of me almost purrs in a way that sparks through me. I watch as he takes a large step forwards, his large hand reaching out. My head pulls back as far as it possibly can – which isn’t much with my hair being held. “A new member might not be so bad, it has been a while,”

The back of Mr. Dark and Stormy’s hand brushes against the skin of my neck. Sparks flood my skin, spreading goosebumps across my body and another shiver racking through me.

A frown falls upon my face, my mind racing to put the pieces together without so much as talking. Questions flying around my head, but my mouth can seem to form any of them.

“What?” I spatter.

“Open her mouth, Cassius,” He orders the vampire behind me.

Cassius – the one behind me – unwraps his hand from my hair, but I’m quicker to clamp my mouth shut. My teeth grind against each other, my lips pursed together, and my head shakes in a silent no.

My body begins to thrash, trying to fight Cassius off to no avail, not even when my foot collides with his shin harshly. The nameless one standing before me doesn’t even bat an eye at us, more focused on rolling up the sleeves to his coat and shirt underneath.

Trying to fight Cassius off only makes him try a different tactic that fills me with nothing but panic.

His large hand tightens around my throat, and his other hand squeezes my nose. The breath is taken away from me, my lungs burning with the need to take a breath. I fight harder to get Cassius off me, but it seems to only make my mouth open just like he wanted.

His hand is quick to move, keeping my jaw open and his other hand finally letting go of my throat. I gasp in a breath, my jaw and throat aching.

Mr. Handsome Nameless takes one step forwards, closing the space between us so much that our bodies are almost touching. His cologne mixed with the smell of the forest entangles with every breath in take in as I watch him bring his wrist to his mouth.

My eyes take in every movement he makes – the way his jaw slacks, the way four fangs appear where his canine teeth should be in his top and bottom row of teeth, the sound his bite makes when he bites into his wrist.

I don’t have time for my mind to catch up when the vampire glances at Cassius just once with a silent command in his stare and slams his wrist against my mouth.

There is officially no escape for me, no getting out of this.

A blooming feeling spreads through my chest as it all starts to dawn on me.

Death isn’t waiting for me on the other side of this, death is only the second step.

Blood fills my mouth as I stare at the nameless vampire. His slightly full lips stained with his own blood, dark crimson that makes my eyes zero in on them. Although I’m stopping myself from swallowing blood, my body is responding in a way to the blood on his lips.

Part of me is disgusted in myself, a bigger part wants to lick the blood from his lips just to see what it tastes like from his skin.

My lungs burn with need, my throat working to swallow the blood that has filled my mouth just so I can take the burn away.

I try to pull away, to stop this but it only makes his blood leak from the corners of my lips and trail down my chin to my throat. I feel it soak into my shirt, making it stick to my skin in an uncomfortable way.

This vampire is definitely going to kill me, but only to make me transition into one of them.

Dying with vampire blood in my system should’ve been a thought to cross my mind, to make me stop and rethink everything I had been doing. But it was never something I thought of, only read about it in my research.

I don’t want this, I don’t want a life tied to the moon. The sun leaving warm kisses on my skin is one of my favourite things, one of the things that reminds that I’m still alive. I have no say in this, I have no power to stop it, no magic to take it away.

All I can hope for now that it doesn’t take and I’m left in a grave where no one will ever find my rotting corpse.

His blood is sweet and energizing, spreading a warmth through me like a hot mocha on a cold winter’s night. It makes me feel like I’m invincible, able to do anything I put my mind to.

My body thrashes against them; my pointed fingernails scratching and digging at the both of them, coating my fingertips with their blood. My feet colliding with parts of their bodies without either of them flinching or making a sound.

A new life has been signed to me without my signature.

Nameless keeps hold of my widened stare when he finally pulls his wrist away from me, taking a small step back and looking over me like he is taking a snapshot of me. His blood leaving me wet and sticky and wanting nothing more than a shower to wash it all away.

Cassius lets go off my jaw and my throat, my body slumping against him and the fight taken out of me. The hand he had around my throat rest against my shoulder as his fingers toy with a strand of my hair, as if he is trying to sooth me.

I’ve lost the war before it was even able to begin.

I watch as the vampire I shouldn’t find attractive reaches out to me. His fingers brushing back my hair over my shoulder before tangling them into the back of my hair. His grip is tight and almost painful and his other hand cups my jaw, tilting my head back to stare up at him. Cassius steps back, taking away any sort of support I had thought I had.

“Maybe now, you will realise just how valuable your human life was,” He purrs, my body shivers again and the electric sparks from before sparkle across my skin again.

For a moment, he has me hypnotized. No words are spoken between us, his grip becoming harder and tighter on. My jaw slacks as words begin to form but they never leave my mouth. The handsome nameless vampire twists my head, a loud crack echoing through my skull and my world goes black.

I definitely should have listened to the fucking witch.