Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,69

off her hands. “About being the only one.”

I closed the book. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

But she wasn’t buying it. I could see it written in her pained expression.

“You can’t believe everything you read online, mijo,” she said. “We are just trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what? Is someone coming to get me?”

“Well, no,” she said, her shoulders drooping. “But that’s because we’ve kept you safe.”

I shook my head, then rose. “You’re always saying that, Mami. But you never explain what I’m safe from.”

“We can’t let the other clans find you,” she blurted out. “Ever. It’s just too risky.”

“What could they possibly do to me?!” I shouted. “I’m a vampire! I can just run away or you can fight them off or something. Instead we just hide? Are we nothing but cowards?”

“Don’t speak to her like that.” Papi’s voice sliced through the tension in the air.

That’s the thing with us vampires; we can sneak up on each other really well, and he strode right up to me. I had never seen him like this. Papi wore his fury like a mask, like an adornment for war. His mustache twitched as he spoke, and he pointed a straight finger at me. “Do you know what we gave up for you? What was asked of us?”

I shook my head.

“We lost our clan,” he seethed. “We lost a community. A home in one place. We gave it up because we loved you, long before you were born. Can’t you appreciate our sacrifice?”

“We would have chosen something different if we could have,” Mami added, and she came to Papi’s side, caressed his back, up and down. “Anything else. But this is what we had to do.”

It took a moment. They presented such a unified force, but Papi didn’t even realize what he’d said. “What do you mean?” I asked him. “What was ‘asked’ of you?”

The masks broke.

The facades cracked.

And for a second—if even that long—their expressions betrayed them. Told me everything I’d wanted to know.

As quickly as they’d broken, their faces became stony again. But it was too late. I’d already seen what I needed to see: They had been lying to me. My whole life.

“You said you left on your own,” I said, tugging on that loose thread. “You said as soon as Mami was pregnant, you escaped in the middle of the night.”

Mami hesitated. Just a moment. Just enough for me to know that the next words out of her mouth weren’t true.

“We had to leave,” she said, and uncertainty crossed her face again. “We had to keep you safe.”

“Then why can’t you just tell me the truth?” I shouted back. “What am I? Why did we have to leave?”

“Someday,” said Papi, his eyes pleading as much as his voice. “We will tell you everything. But just trust us that you were unsafe, and so we did what we could to make sure you were protected.”

They smiled at me. It was hollow, empty, an attempt to placate me, to keep me complacent.

I smiled back. My offering. My peace.

But I’m telling you now, Kwan. I hope you’re reading this. I can’t do this anymore. I have to know what I am.

Tomorrow. Meet me at the lakeside. 3:15 a.m.

Please. Please, tell me who I am.

FireOfTheSea: lol what is happening. why is this so INTENSE.

FireFromTheGods: first

FireFromTheGods: ah, damn

NoOneKissesLikeGaston: Oh, Cisco, I hope you find what you’re looking for. I believe in you. So much! I already ship you and Kwan <3

941 Notes

invisibleb0y

July 19, 2018

I killed my first human when I was eight.

We store blood below the house. You never know when the population is going to wither away, or when people will move too far for us to hunt. My parents have tried to prepare for every possible scenario. When we hunt, we drink, and we take another to keep belowground just in case. I can go three months at most without feeding, but every so often, it’s too hard to find a new meal. So it’s the same in every home: We move in. Mami and Papi get to digging, and soon, we have a storage room below the earth, one that is cool, one that can protect what we need to survive.

You’d be surprised how long all of you humans can last with just a little food and water: months. Once we kept someone for a year and a half, and the only reason he didn’t last longer is because a bad drought made it impossible for us to hunt. It