• The voices that sang in Latin hung in the air for never ending seconds as she ran through the dark halls of the Catholic church. Her heart should have been beating fast, yet it made a slow, ominous beat for the song to continue with. What she saw was seconds behind what she was looking at. The halls were growing longer, darker. Blood pulsed with each slow beat of her heart from her wounds, most profusely from her neck. She did not know what there words were saying, she’d never been to a church before. She could only assume that the words were praising God or Jesus.
    The walls were painted and tiled with scenes from the bible, stone statues of saints after every pillar, candles seemed to float in the air in orbs everywhere around her. She smelled her blood more and more, becoming sickening and delicious all at the same time. Her school outfit was torn and stained. Her skin had tares from the rosebush thorns she had encountered escaping her attacker.
    She didn’t need air in her lungs, she found as she finally escaped the hallway of candles. She saw the main room where a Sunday mass was taking place. The room was immense and every pew was filled with every kind of person there could be. The room was singing a hymn in Latin. Her heart stopped beating and she sucked in air she didn’t need.
    She pressed two fingers a little more then gently against her wrist desperately searching for the pulse that was not there. She pressed against her neck, blood trickling down her pale fingers. She clattered to the floor, soundless against the resounding Latin around her. She breathed in, watching her chest rise and fall, but she didn’t feel anything in her lungs. She tried to breathe deeper, into her diaphragm to feel nothing, to see her stomach rise and fall weakly. She pulled her hand away from her neck as salty tears began to spill from her eyes. The women overtook the song, the sounds rising to be very high.
    She looked at her shaking hand. Her blood. Blood. She wanted it, she needed it. She was suddenly struck with a need for blood, so she brought her blooded palm to her lips, but the taste was too metallic. She looked up at the people in the pews, the song returning to all genders, and felt a rush. She had a room all to herself full of all the blood her new sick self could drink. She wiped her hand on her tattered gray skirt and stood shakily. Half a step, her eyes turning red with thirst, and a hand was on her shoulder. She whipped her head around with a quick snap to see a very handsome boy her age standing there. His eyes were a dark honey color, and that was all she could see of him the way the shadows hit him.
    “Feed on the blood of those at peace? No, no, my dear, that is simply not done.” He had a voice with an untraceable accent and sounded as if there was just a spark of laughter behind each word. He moved his hand that was free of her shoulder to her neck where blood still pulsing. He brushed the blood aside as best as he could while she whimpered and winced. He quickly put a pressure under her ear just behind her jaw, and on her collar bone.
    “A bite to kill, clearly. But you fought, am I right?” He asked. She nodded in a half daze, her desire for blood shifting between gone and stronger. “Ah, this is no good. Come with me. I will help you.” He tried to move her, but she stayed grounded.
    “I... want blood,” she croaked weakly.
    “Yes, yes of course, they always do at first. I can and will get you blood. Of a human at that. But we must leave this place. A church is not a place welcome to vampires.”