Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,48

eyes and close-cropped hair, like he just got out of bootcamp.

“You new?” he asks, slightly confused.

“Not any more than you are,” I say. I don’t want to make a big deal that I’m technically two months shy of graduating high school.

“Where’s the guest of honor, anyway?” one with a handlebar mustache asks. “I’ve got a bone to pick with her. She’s got to loosen the reins on this vampire curfew.”

“You’re telling me,” the young guy mutters. His muscles flex when he takes the flask from his friend. He doesn’t drink, though. “I know Imogen is still pissed, but that’s another story.”

“Imogen wants to turn every model that catches her eye. That’s why we didn’t sign the petition.”

“Wow you guys are really into this RPG stuff,” I say.

I’m about to shoot Brittany a text when her name lights up my screen. I reread the line where she says she won’t be able to make it. Oh, no. Unacceptable. I text back without looking and pocket my phone.

The guy with the crew cut looks at me with suspicious curiosity. He grins and it gives him the appearance of a wolf. “Want?”

Do I want a drink out of a flask from a strange, but objectively hot, boy at the party where I’m the hostess and the guest of honor hasn’t shown up or texted me back? I grab it and drink.

The liquid is warm and slightly thick. Metallic. I feel my gag reflex at work. Blood. That’s definitely, 100 percent blood. The tiniest sip pools on my tongue and dribbles down the corner of my mouth. Before I can wipe it off, the boy drags his thumb along my chin and brings it to his lips.

Gross.

When he smiles again, taking the flask back, I see teeth. Not the neon canines decorating the bar. Real, sharp ones, so sharp I know they’d break skin at the barest touch.

Maybe, just maybe, Brittany wasn’t lying.

Maybe, just maybe, I’m in the center of a basement full of vampires.

* * *

THEO: how come you only have one selfie?

BRITTANY: i think i’d rather take pictures than be in them.

THEO: i used to think that if i took enough pictures, i’d learn to love myself more.

BRITTANY: have you?

THEO: i dunno. maybe i’m getting close.

* * *

BRITTANY

I didn’t choose to become what I am.

I was made during a lawless time of vampires, when consequence was a thing only for mortals. I was hardly older than Theo when I met my—well, I’ve never quite determined what to call him. Sire is hardly the right word, though it bears some piece of the truth. In two hundred years, I have failed to find a word that encompasses both the immaculate violence of his actions and the transformative power I found in their aftermath. Offender. Trespasser. Malefactor. They all lack some piece of the horror I experienced during the attack and after.

He may have been the catalyst of my transformation, but I was the architect. Every choice I made thereafter was a response to his opening argument. If his argument was something along the lines of being more powerful than me by virtue of his sex and his circumstance, then I have been crafting my answer ever since. Not everyone I bite becomes like me. I have to choose. I get to choose. And over the years, I have chosen women like me. Women who were told they were less than, unworthy, weak. Women who were hungry for the world. Women with fangs. My petits crocs.

My phone chimes softly, reminding me that it is 10 p.m. and I am missing an appointment. I dismiss the reminder without looking at the words.

There’s an unfamiliar feeling spreading beneath my ribs. Not hunger, but something close enough. As I button my frock coat to my chin and step out onto the streets of New York City, I push Theo and the disappointment she is surely feeling now as far from my mind as I am able.

I may not have chosen the path of the moon and shadows, but I did choose New York City. One hundred years ago, I left the windswept valleys and rolling mountains of Virginia for the frenetic energy of a city. It’s easy to become a drop in the ocean when the ocean is so unimaginably vast.

I turn away from the river and aim for the park. We don’t hunt here. We used to, soon after it was established in the late 1800s, but I outlawed it decades ago. Now hunting here would