Aurora Sky Vampire Hunter - By Nikki Jefford Page 0,20

hit the pillow, I was gone. Sweet oblivion until I woke sometime in the middle of the night. My room was shrouded in darkness. I knew I'd left the light on before falling asleep.

What concerned me more was I could hear breathing that wasn't my own.

Two sick yellow eyes glowed from a twisted face. He wore the same dirty flannel shirt. I sat up in bed. "What are you doing here? I killed you."

He grinned and approached slowly.

My hands trembled above the covers. "I'm warning you. Get out of here. You're not real." I covered my head in my hands and rocked myself. "You're not real." I squeezed my eyes shut. When I reopened them his teeth were affixed to my neck. I screamed. I began flailing against the covers all the while screaming to a shattering pitch. "You're not real!"

"Aurora! Aurora, wake up." My mother shook me.

Didn't she get it? I was awake. I'd always been awake. I slapped at her and resumed the fetal position, face in my knees and arms covering my head.

"My God, what's wrong with her?"

There was an edge to my father's voice. I didn't have to look at him to know his jaw bones were clenched around his chin. I listened from the safety of my tight enclosure.

"It's just a nightmare."

"It's more than that. She hasn't been right since the accident."

"We have to give her time, Bill. Bill?"

My parents' voices moved out of my room. They crossed the hall into the master suite, fainter now.

"Bill, what are you doing?"

"I'm packing a bag."

"Where are you going?"

"Somewhere I can get a decent night's sleep."

I smiled inside my cocoon, not because I thought it was funny, not because I was glad, but because I couldn't help it. People reacted so predictably under pressure. Running was the easiest course of action. If only I could run away too.

My father's footsteps moved in a flurry around the room down the hall. It wasn't until he'd zipped his bag that my mother attempted to appeal to him one last time. "Bill, please don't go."

He didn't answer. His feet pounded down the stairs. I heard him grab his set of keys from the hall table. He started his car in the garage just below my bedroom. The garage door went up, and the car pulled out with a roar then took off down the street.

I heard my mother walk inside my room. "Your father needed some time alone," she said weakly.

I kept my head planted in my knees.

Mom rubbed my back. "My poor girl. You need to get better. This needs to stop."

I lifted my head. "Don't you get it? This is who I am now. You signed the contract. It can never be undone."

"You don't have to act this way. We can go back to the way things were. You're just not trying hard enough." She looked at me with pleading eyes.

I sighed. "Get some rest, Mom. I'll try not to bother you with any more of my demonic dreams."

As predicted, my mother didn't ask for details about the aforementioned dreams. She kissed my forehead and shuffled into the empty bed that awaited her. I lay back and stared at the ceiling. I shut my eyes, but he was there looking at me again. He would always be looking at me. No matter what he'd been, I'd killed him. I was a murderer.
Chapter 8 The Mouseketeers
The throbbing inside my skull woke me the following morning. I dragged myself downstairs and found my mom not looking so hot herself. She wore a light blue robe and fuzzy slippers. Her face was puffy when she looked up from her paper. She eyed the red scarf around my neck warily.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"I have a headache."

"I saw the empty bottle of champagne in your room."

"Had to celebrate somehow." I shrugged. "Which reminds me, Happy New Year."

Mom's lip quivered. Tears gathered in her eyes.

"Look, sorry about the scene last night. Obviously I was under the influence. Tell Dad I was drunk and that it won't happen again."

Mom blinked several times and nodded. "You shouldn't have had the entire bottle."

"I learned my lesson."

The lesson was to lie through my teeth so my mom wouldn't worry so much.

While I had been off getting my neck chewed open, Denise spent the holiday with her family at Alyeska Resort - skiing by day, hot tubing by night.

She and Erin sipped out of paper espresso cups in front of the lockers the first day of school.

Second semester.