Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
They never knew what I really was.
Or rather, what I was destined to be.
Not that the world thinks vampires are a myth. They don’t anymore. They know they’re out there, living among us, but as vampires are driven into hiding more, it’s getting harder for the humans to come up with any proof.
My family are the only vampires around where I live, in Newport, Oregon. Sometimes I think we may be the only ones in the state, but my father assures me there are others. The Pacific Northwest has becoming a breeding ground for them now that so many places are becoming too hot for us to live in comfortably.
Tomorrow is my twenty-first birthday. It’s the day I’ll go through The Becoming. When I’ll finally become a vampire. Though Dylan is a few years older than me, he won’t go through it until he’s thirty-five, so he has no advice to give me.
“You’ll be fine,” he says, leaning against the fridge. “Though that horny phase sounds pretty psycho.”
Ah yes. The bloodlust and the just pure lust. In the fridge there are bags of blood for me to drink when my hunger makes me crazy, but before that I’ll be tied down to the bed in the corner so I don’t go insane with needing to come. It’s definitely the part that everyone always talks about, and let me tell you, talking about it with your parents is all sorts of embarrassing.
That aside, they’ve both gone through the process so they assured me that no matter what I will be okay, and when I’m finally out on the other side, I will feel better than I ever have before.
“You’ll finally feel like yourself,” my mother said and that’s the part I’m looking forward to the most. Even knowing that I would fully transform one day, I spent my life feeling like there was something wrong with me. I just didn’t fit in. I was always different and no matter how hard I tried to fit in, I just never could.
But in a week or less, I will emerge from this sound-proof garage turned vampire transition den, and finally feel at peace with the world.
“I’d rather not talk about the horny phase with my brother, thank you very much,” I scoff at him.
He shrugs. “Well there’s always the vampire porn sites that can tell you about it. Do you feel any other changes yet?”
I give him a steady look of disgust.
“I mean otherwise,” he says with a raise of his hands. “Jeez. I mean like, cravings. For blood.”
I take a long swig of my beer and nod. “Lately all I want is meat, the more raw the better. And the world is starting to feel a little different, you know? Clearer. Brighter.”
“Well tomorrow you’re gonna step into this room as Rose Harper, pain-in-the-ass sister, and leave it as Rose Harper, bloodsucking monster.”
I laugh. “Probably not. You know how puritanical mom and dad are about feeding.”
Vampires need blood to survive. In the recent past, vampire clubs and feeding bars were common. They still are, but they’re harder to find because of some shit that went down in Italy a long time ago.
Thankfully for vampires like us, who don’t live near the cities, we have become users of both blood bags and a drug that makes it so we can get nourishment from old blood, even animal blood. When it’s supplemented with regular human food, people, like my parents, don’t have to go out anywhere and kill people to survive, or live close to the underground clubs, which are usually sex clubs at the same time.
We move around a lot, though. We have to. People get suspicious. We’ve lived in Newport for about five years and that’s the longest we’ve ever been anywhere. We’ll have to move on somewhere else before people realize that my very young-looking mother and I look the same age.
I have no idea where we’ll go next. Maybe I can convince them to take me to a city. Or maybe I’ll just go off on my own. See the world, that sort of thing. I’ll stick to cooler climates though. With my fair skin and red hair, the sun isn’t a friend of mine.
“Well, here’s to you then,” Dylan says, coming over and hitting his can of beer against mine. “I hope you turn into the bad-ass you were always meant to be.”
I laugh. “That might be the nicest thing you ever said to me.”
He laughs and we drink up.
“Rose, honey? Can you hear me? Do you know who I am?”
I buck against the restraints, opening my eyes.
I’m staring at the roof of the garage and for a moment I wonder what the hell is going on in here. Why am I…
But then it hits me.
The Becoming.
I’m going through The Becoming.