February 24th, 12:01am.

  Agony.

  Sheer, unbridled, seething pain.

  Blistering. Sizzling. Guttural. Tormenting. Harrowing.

  Victoria couldn't hear her own screams, only realising she was making them from the vibration through her throat. Insects and critters who called the soil home scurried away in a startle. Dirt slithered off the stinging skin of her face as she forced herself to roll onto her side. Her nails dug deeper into the ground the harder she tried to claw her way to a bearable position.

  Each blink weighed a mountain and a half. Light seeped into her retinas as shallow flickers of the shining moon above. Any sense of wind was absent, the entire forest silent but the broken shrieks she sent out.

  Get up.

  Move.

  Find him.

  Find anyone.

  Find sustenance.

  GET UP.

  The words were echoing and blaring, far unlike her normal inner monologue. It wasn't even a voice – if it had been, she would've had the option of labelling it a hallucination – no, this was a feeling. A primal instinct to survive.

  Victoria hissed a sharp cry between clenched and oddly sensitive teeth at the crack her leg gave as she propped herself up on her knees. Her head hung back, exhausted from the smallest movement. She gazed up at the still eucalyptus leaves blocking the stars from reaching out to her. A cold exhale cemented her state.

  Powder-blue hair barely keeping from slipping out of her weak attempt at a ponytail, skin littered with scrapes and bruises that were already beginning to fade away, gums aching as if she'd suddenly formed two cavities, Victoria was barely lucid enough to comprehend the situation she was in.

  The stinging of her fingertips drew her curiosity and her gaze down to her hands, where her nail beds were leaking blood. Her clothes were tattered and dirty from the fall. There was a leaf behind her ear.

  Vic couldn't form a single thought. Her mind was busy processing everything around her.

  She could hear the crickets chirping in the bushes, and the mozzies flying around threatening to take even more blood from her. Flying leaches, she used to call the bugs. But it was more than that. Her ears could focus on the thump of her heart and the croak of her breaths, the flutter of her blinks, the strain of her muscles as she stretched her fingers slowly. Everything felt alive, especially her.

  Except she wasn't. She'd died.

  The dread returned, icy and sobering as ever, bringing with it harsh clarity.

  "I'm–"

  Victoria tried to climb up to stand on her own two feet, only to collapse against the trunk of a tree. She held onto it for support, legs shaking violently. She took in her surroundings once more, now wide awake.

  At first she tried to make light of it. 'So this is how Zach sees the world,' she thought to herself, as if she hadn't already known. The world seemed terrifying. Dark, quiet, lonely. A threat could be in any bush, hiding up in any tree. So could food.

  GET UP.

  FIND SOMEONE.

  "Ow..." Victoria winced, hands on either side of her head as her mind was taken over again. "Fine! S-Shit."

  She took off stumbling in the first direction she saw, the leg that had cracked strangely earlier starting to hurt less and less with each step. Her eyes darted all around as she trekked through the trees aimlessly. Every sleeping bird and every burrowing rabbit gave her ideas she wasn't keen on acknowledging at all.

  Eventually it set in.

  "I turned." She spoke to no one but her own dwindling sanity. "I died... I'm just like Zach now."

  The autumn leaves crumpled under her boots. Maybe one or two of them were lizards. The crunch was the same regardless.

  "It's... not that bad."

  FIND SOMEONE.

  "Shut up!" Victoria growled at the thin air in response, adrenaline heating her up. "I am trying to!"

  Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Maybe this was the worst of it, and it would pass once she was somewhere stable. The only vampire she knew always went skittish and paranoid in the darkness, for all she knew this could've been that and nothing more.

  She stepped on something that squeaked in pain and bolted to the bushes. Her eyes tracked it like a hawk, body stilling and preparing to pounce. But as she lost sight of the little creature and relaxed her shoulders, reality came crashing down.

  "Maybe I'll have to eat little bunnies." She muttered as she walked on tensely. "They're invasive pests anyway, right? I'd be helping the ecosystem. Doing nature a favour."

  She nearly slipped on something wet and yelped, deciding to switch to running for the hills without checking what it was.

  "Or people! People work! I can eat people like Zach does. I don't give a shit if humans get hurt, they've all done something to warrant it unlike those bunnies who just don't know what a refractory period is. That's not their fault."

  Rain began to gently patter down.

  "I'll be fine. I'm prepared for this. I've wanted this for years." She huffed. "I can do this just fine! I'll find Zach, explain what happened, and then I can cry in his arms for a few weeks straight. He'll put me onto his feeding habits and everything else, and we'll even share meals for the first time in years. We could even share people."

  She paused, features slowly scrunching into a grimace of utter disgust.

  "Ew! What the fuck?"

  She took off again, shaking her head.

  "ZAAAACH!"

  Victoria ran aimlessly until her legs gave out. It became clear she was more lost now than ever, with no sense of direction and nothing but forest as far as the eye could see. Eventually, with her limbs protesting every movement, she leaned against a tree and gave up. She cried her heart out, praying someone would hear her.

  The denial was gone, now only fear remained.

  She couldn't just go out and find her way back to where her tent had been, not like this. She'd have to explain to the person waiting there what he'd done to her. She'd have to watch him break. There was a chance the blackout was still going, which meant going back could've been dangerous for her. On the other hand, maybe she'd get back and find no one there. She'd left a vampire unsupervised for god knows how long.

  "He'd hate himself." Tori realised. "He'd... probably try and hurt himself."

  The thought was enough to turn her blood cold again. Memories surfaced of how her partner had been when he was human. The self destruction, the self sabotage, the times she'd have to skip classes to go find where he'd run off to go cry to, which was usually a rooftop or a bathroom stall. How could she ever forget the nights she'd ran to his house in the cold, staying up until sunrise with him to make sure he wouldn't do something stupid?

  Like him, she'd thought vampirism had helped in some degree. He couldn't hurt himself the way he had before, and he had no excuse but to eat well, but really it just made everything worse in new ways. She'd been there through it all. Every now and then she still stayed up all night with him, but now to make sure he wouldn't hurt someone else.

  Victoria couldn't do this to him. Couldn't let him drown in the guilt of knowing he'd hurt and turned the person he cared about most into the monster he hated becoming.

  How could she look the love of her life in the eyes and tell him he'd killed her?

  "I'm already dead." She shivered. "I-I'm already dead, there's no going back. He'll find out eventually."

  She truly didn't know what to do.

  Her gaze caught on something against her foot. A stick, not much bigger than a ruler.

  She took it in her hands and inspected it closely, turning it over. Her vision had sharpened to the point of her eyes focusing on the individual grooves and dents of the bark. She could even see a little ant crawling along it.

  Tori pricked her finger on the sharp edge of one end and flinched. The pain brought her mind back to the countless vampire movies she'd watched over the years.

  "Would I... turn to ash..?"

  She pricked her finger again, this time drawing blood. She dropped the stick and studied her wound, searching for any sign of the myth's truth. Instead all she found was a tiny splinter and the cut closing itself.

  "Maybe he wouldn't... have to know he did it."

  Tori gulped.

  "Maybe it would hurt him less if he thought I'd died like a normal human."

  The stick stared back at her as she refused to blink away from it. Her heart began to race once more. Could she fake her death? Or rather – fake her cause of death?

  Maybe she could run away and simply go missing until she figured everything out. Maybe she could stage a murder as if a random attacker had gotten their hands on her. Maybe she could stake herself before her fangs had time to grow in so anyone who found her would never know she'd been in the middle of turning.

  Each breath became a pant until she was hyperventilating.

  Her hands shook violently as she held the stick to her chest, a bead of sweat rolling down her temple.

  It would be a mercy, right? She'd give up her second chance of life to spare her love from knowing what he'd done. That wasn't a horrible idea, right?

  Right as she grit her teeth and braced for pain, a voice cut through the air and froze her movements.

  "Don't."

  Tori snapped her head around, heart thudding loudly.

  A woman a little older than her stood a few metres away, face scrunched with concern. Her chestnut hair fell gently over her shoulders, catching slightly on the collar of her flannel. Brown eyes searched Tori's form a few times before the woman took a step closer.

  Victoria scrambled to her feet and held the stick out in threat, her every instinct telling her to fight or flee.

  "I'm not gonna hurt you, I just want to make sure you're okay." The stranger's voice came sweet and soft, yet still low and mature. The occasional word held a slight northern accent that was hard to pinpoint. "You wanna put that down so we can talk?"

  "Talk? To you?" Tori growled and gripped the stick tighter. Her fingertips throbbed like she'd bent back every nail. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

  "My name's Autumn. I heard you screaming bloody murder from my campsite, just came to make sure you weren't being stabbed or anything." The woman's head tilted. "Are you lost? Did you come here with anyone else?"

  Victoria hesitantly lowered her weapon with a shaky sigh, mind racing. Half of her thoughts were just of whether this stranger could be food or not. She didn't exactly feel the urge to bite her like she had with every other creature she'd come across in the last half hour, but there was still a strange sense of wariness she felt every time they locked eyes.

  "Well, Autumn, I don't need your help. You can go back to your camp."

  "You were seconds from staking yourself."

  "Like I said, I don't need your help."

  "Look," Autumn raised her hands peacefully and slowly knelt down on the ground, "I don't think you should be alone right now. Won't you just sit down so we can talk?"

  Tori snarled, but paused at the offer. The stranger didn't seem all that dangerous, more like a pissed off older sibling than a serial killer. Though there was a strange sense of threat coming from her, it seemed more maternal than aggressive.

  Victoria quietly sat across from Autumn, head hung in shame like a kicked puppy. She fiddled with the stick, poking it in the dirt absentmindedly.

  "I'm not alone." She eventually spoke up however timidly. "My boyfriend's around here somewhere. I took a wrong turn."

  "Do you know his number?" Autumn immediately took out her phone from her jeans pocket. "Or maybe his socials–"

  "No!" Victoria slapped the phone away.

  Autumn blinked at her. A beat of silence passed before she cautiously took her phone back.

  "Okay. We can talk." She murmured. "Can I at least know your name?"

  Victoria glared.

  "... It's Tori."

  "Tori." Autumn noted with a nod. "Alright. Do you want to tell me what happened?"

  "I don't want to talk!" Vic scoffed. "I can hardly think. I-I don't want a therapy session with some stranger in the middle of the woods right now!"

  Autumn studied the mess of a person before her over and over again, picking up even the smallest of details. A frown set on her face as she recognised those jittery movements, the panicked breaths. She'd known this wasn't an innocent situation before she'd left her cabin in the first place, the screams she'd heard were all too familiar.

  The only thing standing in the way of her being able to offer any real help was whether or not the girl across from her knew as much as she did.

  "Is... the person who did this to you still here?"

  The blood drained from Victoria's face. Her features reset. A strand of hair fell out of her ponytail and settled against the side of her face.

  "Did what to me?"

  "Uh..." Autumn bit her lip, scared of reading the room wrong. "How much do you understand about what's... happening right now?"

  Tori's eyes began to well with tears as their eyes met. She shuddered, unsure if she was relieved or scared by those words and the knowing look on her companion's features.

  A quiet beat of understanding settled between them before Tori replied.

  "Way too much." Her voice cracked with emotion.

  "Your boyfriend, then." Autumn sighed with a nod. "Okay. That makes sense."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "He didn't mean to!" Tori cried, taking Autumn's hands in her own tightly. "H-He'd never hurt me on purpose! He didn't know what he was doing!"

  "Sweetie, I believe you." Autumn replied gently. "I'm not here to scold anyone for what's happened, I'm here to help you calm down so that you don't do something you'll regret, like staking yourself or slaughtering a stray camper."

  Tori turned her head away sharply with a slight hiss, ashamed of her own tears.

  "Let me check you're doing alright." Autumn offered and sat up on her knees.

  She took Tori's face in her hands and looked her over, making mental notes. The girl's neck seemed to have healed correctly, the purple venom stains were fading from the veins in the surrounding area, there were no visible injuries left, and there was nothing out of the ordinary from what she could tell. There were a few spots of dried blood in her hair.

  "On the plus side, you turned pretty cleanly." She said. "How bad was the pain?"

  "Fucking unbearable?"

  "How'd you die? There's not a lot of blood on you."

  "I dunno, I wasn't bleeding or anything. I had a freakout and collapsed."

  "That makes sense. An overdose of venom can cause hypoxia, among other things."

  "Oh."

  As she let herself be poked and prodded like a toddler at the doctor's, Tori found herself too exhausted to ask any of the questions forming in her mind. She couldn't find the space to prioritise them when her brain was still on alert for any sign of a meal nearby. She looked up to Autumn, committing her pale face to memory. They kind of looked alike, she thought.

  "Do you wanna come back to my cabin with me?" Autumn pulled back. "It's not exactly five stars, but there's shelter and warm bedding. It's better than being out here in the cold."

  "It's cold?" Tori's brow furrowed. "I feel fine right now."

  "That's adrenaline, Tori. Your body's using up all the energy it has to rewrite your DNA strand by strand, which is keeping you warm."

  "Oh."

  Autumn gently parted Victoria's lips with her thumb to inspect her teeth. Traces of blood sat at the gums of her upper canines. Autumn hummed in slight surprise.

  "Your fangs aren't forcing themselves through yet. That's a good sign, it should mean your body's gonna take its time."

  "Are you real?" Tori muttered weakly, expression unreadable. "Am I imagining you?"

  "I'm real, I promise." Autumn smiled slightly. "I know, it's a funny coincidence I of all people found you. I guess my hearing picked you up better than a human would."

  "I always assumed Zach was the only vampire out there. At least mostly, since someone had to have turned him." Tori began to tear up again. "You're... right here. And you're not mean or angry or monstrous. You're just a nice person. This doesn't feel real. Are you sure you're not my guardian angel?"

  "Maybe the monster part takes time." Autumn chuckled. "I'm still getting used to this myself."

  "How long have you..?"

  "Few months?" Autumn cringed. She let out a sigh. "Glad I found you when I did. When I turned, I killed the first person I saw."

  "Mmn – Don't remind me of how hungry I am, please."

  "I can help you find something on the way to my cabin? Maybe a fox?"

  "I don't... want to think about that right now."

  "You're gonna have to eventually, Tori."

  "I said don't!" Victoria snapped.

  Autumn pulled her hands back and fell silent, leaning back slightly. "... You got it."

  The silence fell between them again. Though it wasn't silence anymore, not when the insects were chirping and the leaves were faintly rustling all around. The air was filled with an orchestral assortment of ballads Tori never would've known about if she'd been sitting there just an hour earlier.

  "Why were you going to stake yourself?" Autumn spoke up.

  Victoria poked the stick at the ground again.

  "I wasn't gonna stake myself." She grumbled. "I was gonna dig the stick in the ground to position an end upright, take a step back, slip on a rock and trip, and let myself fall onto the stick and get skewered like a kebab."

  "..." Autumn smiled nervously. "Again, why?"

  Tori shrugged. Her knee began to bounce.

  "Have you been suicidal for long or is this just a tonight thing?"

  "I'm not suicidal! I don't wanna... Well I..." Tori faltered. "I don't want to die any time soon, but I already did. I just don't want Zach to know what he did to me."

  "So you'd rather he finds your corpse skewered on the ground than have you perfectly alive as a vampire?" Autumn tilted her head. "You don't think he'd accept you?"

  "He'd hate himself! If he ever found out he'd bitten me by accident and killed me? God, he'd be miserable for centuries. He'd never forgive himself." Victoria frowned. "Every time I'd ask if he'd consider turning me someday, I'd get shot down so harshly he'd tear up just from the thought."

  "He'd be miserable finding you dead, too."

  "At least if he thought I'd died as a normal human, he'd blame someone other than himself. He'd probably spend years trying to track down a culprit before residing to picking a god and resenting them forever."

  "Or you could not kill yourself, go find him and say someone else turned you, and live happily together for many more years to come." Autumn spoke firmly. "Heck, we could say I did it. Have him hate me instead of himself. You don't want to hurt yourself, Tori, I can tell you're not the type of person to give up. It's the hysteria, the mania of turning. Everyone goes all topsy-turvy when they go through this. It flips your personality."

  "How would you know? You've only been a vampire for a few months!"

  "And you're not even a real one yet, with that empty stomach of yours!"

  Tori grunted and looked back to the trees stubbornly, brow twitching.

  "Sorry." Autumn sighed, running a hand through her hair. " I should be helping you stay calm."

  Victoria didn't respond. She continued poking the dirt in silence.

  Autumn reached for her back pocket and checked the time on her phone. The reception was iffy but not absent, she wouldn't be able to load a video but could make a call. The thought crossed her mind of contacting one of her friends back at the cabins, but it quickly passed with the reminder that she couldn't risk any of them knowing what she was, even for this.

  "I'm so scared, Autumn." Tori broke the silence with a whisper.

  "Yeah?" Autumn frowned, knowing the feeling all too well.

  "I was there when he went through this – my boyfriend. I was the one who found him. I was the one he bit right after he woke up; the first person he ever fed on." Tori murmured shakily. "I can't... do that. I can't go through all of that. I thought I could, I thought I'd be prepared having seen it all already and having spent years deep in vampire bullshit. But now that it's really happening? I'm so scared. I'm so fucking scared, Autumn. It hurts so much, and I'm so overwhelmed even though there's nothing happening, and I'm scared of how my relationship with him could change, and I–"

  She wiped her eyes as heavy tears filled them.

  "I don't wan't him to see me like this. He never wanted me to become this. Just last week he told me he'd rather stake himself and bleed out in a bed of nightshade than turn me."

  Autumn nodded. She took a deep breath before responding.

  "Look, I think you've got a far better shot at living as a vampire than most get." She spoke firmly. "Like you said, you've spent years right there at the darkest and the lightest moments of vampirism. You know what to expect. You know how to stay safe and stay undetected. I can tell you right now, maybe 80-90% of people who turn into vampires die within the first month. That's why there's so few of us that have been vampires for more than a few years. It's hard! The world is filled with cameras and phones at the ready, crime scene analysis has never been more advanced, and good luck if someone posts a photo with you online and a fang's peaking out. I'm sure there's people whose entire job is covering up the fact our species even exists, probably claiming any evidence out there is just AI garbage."

  "Why the hell do you know so much about this?"

  Autumn sighed. "... My mother was a vampire. Only for a few years."

  Victoria shut right up, eyes wide.

  "I don't want to talk about it, but she sure loved dumping everything she could find out on me. She never did anything but research, which meant I spent my free time listening to her rambles and lectures 'just in case'." Autumn rolled her eyes somewhat bitterly. "We... got into a fight one day, and I ended up bitten, while she ended up dead. So, uh, yeah. Guess I learned a thing or two at least."

  "I'm... so sorry." Tori winced.

  "We're not here to help me, we're here to help you. Okay?" Autumn sat up straighter. "What do you want to do? Other than give yourself a new death of choice. If you absolutely had to keep going, how would you want to go about it?"

  Victoria thought for a few moments. It was hard to know what strings of her internal monologue were the real her versus the version of her who just wanted blood and survival right now. At least there was still a clear difference between them and that nagging voice in the back of her mind screaming at her to attack Autumn and run.

  "I don't want Zach to find out he did this to me." She decided firmly. "I don't want anyone to know."

  "Go ghost?" Autumn nodded. "You can do that. You can come with me and we can start you a new life for as long as you need, whether it's just for a few days or for the foreseeable future."

  "I really did die, huh? I'll never live my life again. Never trust myself around anyone."

  "You get to start a new one on your own terms." Autumn took her hands in her own. "We could use your mind compulsion to get you a place to stay, get you an income so you don't have to work when the sun's up–"

  "God, yeah, I have powers. That's so weird." Tori groaned.

  "Is there anyone else you might want to call? Maybe just to say goodbye?" Autumn asked softly. "Family? Friends?"

  Tori shook her head with a sniffle.

  "I don't really want people to think I committed, I just want to disappear."

  Autumn nodded.

  "I'll have to come up with some excuse for where I picked you up from when we get back to the campsite." Autumn checked the time on her phone again. "My friends don't know anything about vampires."

  Victoria froze.

  Her pupils dilated. Her heart stopped.

  Prey drive kicked back in.

  "Your friends are human?" Her voice was low.

  "Yeah." Autumn quirked a brow. "But I'll make sure you have plenty of blood before you meet them–"

  Tori was up in a blink, already marching off in the direction Autumn had come from.

  "Woah! Hey, no!" Autumn shot up after her, grabbing her arm. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Don't touch me!" Victoria snapped, nail beds stinging and gums aching once again. Now she knew that was her body trying to form weapons that hadn't grown yet. "I'm just gonna go say hi–"

  "You are not going over there to feed on my friends." Autumn snarled, claws digging into Tori's wrist. "They're off limits."

  Victoria's eyes narrowed in a warning glare. Her blue irises weakly flickered pinkish.

  Autumn's confidently turned scarlet.

  "You're hungry. I get it. I know it takes over out of nowhere, but you are not hurting them." She stood tall. "We can find you as many animals as you want."

  "I don't want animals!" Tori tore her arm free and took off.

  "Damn it!" Autumn raced after her.

  Victoria panted as she weaved through the trees and over the foliage. She hadn't noticed how well she could see earlier, but at some point her night vision had appeared. It was a lot more subtle than she'd expected, more like someone turned on a lamp than how night vision lenses looked on cameras.

  She could feel her blood racing through her body as she sprinted, muscles supplied with more oxygen now than they'd previously ever been able to handle. It felt like swimming.

  As freeing as the movement may have been, her body was set on survival. Her ears strained in hopes of picking up something from the campsite, only picking up absolutely everything else. As much as she wanted to lay down and go back to crying hysterically, the promise of a meal felt overwhelming. Like nothing else mattered. Everything else could be put on hold until after.

  And then she felt the world spin as Autumn tackled her to the forest ground.

  "GET OFF!" Tori yelled.

  "Don't bother fighting!" Autumn snarled, fangs bared and dripping with venom as she pinned the girl's wrists above her head. "You're barely strong enough to walk and you know it. Give up."

  "I need it! Please!" Victoria squirmed desperately, legs kicking the air and boots digging into the dirt. "I-I'll only feed on one of them! Is that better?"

  "Do you hear yourself right now?" Autumn scoffed. "You're really easily influenced by hunger and I do not like that."

  "I'll leave them alive! I know how to feed without casualties, I've seen Zach do it a hundred times!" Tori pleaded, panting. Exhaustion weighed on every limb. "Just a few sips, I swear! How about a few kangaroos first just to prove I won't kill them?"

  "God, you justify it so quickly!" Autumn shook her head, bewildered. "You really are used to vampire feedings."

  "Look. Look." Victoria slumped, still out of breath. "How about we line up at the road with our thumbs out and feed on the first person who stops their car for us?"

  "Tori! Breathe." Autumn growled. "Don't think about murder right now, god!"

  "I need blood." Tori winced, feeling her insides coil at the thought of sustenance. "You know it. I know it. I'll probably pass out if I don't feed soon, right? How long do I have until I die? Or is that just a myth?"

  "I'll keep you here all damn night if that's what it takes to bring you back to sanity."

  "Fine! Fine. I won't run. I don't even know where your campsite is anyway. I could be running in the total wrong direction for all I know."

  "I'll help you find some animals once you calm down. I'm just gonna ignore whatever you say until you're back to normal."

  "Great." Tori rolled her eyes. She sighed in defeat. "You win! I won't do anything dumb. Please just get off of me, I'm not gonna hurt anyone."

  Autumn looked her over closely, unconvinced.

  "I can hear your heart racing."

  "Ugh, what, can you smell my epinephrine too?!"

  Autumn didn't answer.

  Victoria paled.

  "Come." Autumn helped her back up, keeping an iron grip on her arm.

  Tori grumbled as she trudged behind her, led back to the open space she'd been before taking off. She leaned against a tree, anger simmering deep in her gut and mixing with hunger. Autumn sighed and let go, pacing a few steps. She didn't know what to do anymore.

  Victoria's eyes burned a deeper pink as her mind only darkened further.

  Autumn was a threat, an obstacle standing between her and food. Nothing else mattered but blood. Not anymore.

  "Maybe you had a point." Autumn ran a hand over her face, utterly stressed. "Maybe you should have human blood before going to the campsite. I just... don't know how to make it work logistically."

  Tori's gaze darted to the branches of the tree beside her.

  Her eyes glossed over as a new thought formed.

  A solution to her problem.

  "We could try and find other campers?" Autumn continued talking to herself, pacing. "I'm sure there's other tents. But then we'd risk running into your boyfriend."

  Tori quietly took hold of the branch, judging its strength with a slight tug.

  "Maybe we could try your idea with the hitchhiking. That could take hours, though."

  Tori glanced back over her shoulder to Autumn, checking she wasn't paying attention to her.

  Autumn stopped pacing and looked up to the moon.

  "We've got a few hours until sunrise, at least. I'm sure we can figure something out–"

  Suddenly she found herself spinning around before her mind could figure out why, and her claws latched onto the torn off branch that was reaching out for her heart.

  Victoria snarled in panic at her attempt failing.

  Autumn scowled and ripped the branch from her.

  "Are you fucking kidding me?!" She barked.

  Tori stumbled a few steps before turning on her heel and pouncing for her regardless, too desperate to see reason anymore.

  Autumn roared and spun the branch out of reach in one hand while her other struggled to block the incoming slashing. She sidestepped and held the branch between her and Tori to maintain distance. Tori grabbed on and the wood splintered under her nails as she fought for grip.

  Autumn frowned.

  "Is any part of you even still in there, Tori?"

  "SHUT UP!"

  Victoria cried out as her nail beds finally loosened and out shot fresh claws, bringing blood with them. With the added strength she managed to slice the wood as she let go and reached for Autumn's face instead.

  The two spun in a dance of piercing nails and bared teeth before Tori gripped Autumn's shoulder with one hand and grabbed her by the neck with the other. Autumn choked out and thrashed.

  The branch fell to the ground. The two followed suit, tumbling in a fight. Every injury wound itself closed. Every drop of blood dried and flaked away.

  Tori clawed down Autumn's neck as she lost her grip, making the other girl howl out in pain in response.

  "I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU!"

  "THEN HELP ME!"

  Dirt went flying. Hair was sliced. Blood seeped into clothes.

  Autumn fought with all she had to keep Victoria down.

  Tori spotted the branch in the corner of her eye. She kicked Autumn off of her and ran over to it, picking it up with what little strength she had left.

  Autumn scrambled up to her feet and snatched it at the very last second, whipping around and thrusting it right through Victoria's chest.

  Everything stopped.

  The air went still.

  The only noise left was the sound of Autumn's rugged panting and Victoria's trembling exhale.

  "..."

  "..."

  Autumn nearly collapsed on the spot as she finally realised what she'd done. "No. NO NO NO–"

  Tori's breath hitched as she slumped. She looked down at the stick piercing her, suddenly unable to move a muscle.

  "I-I didn't mean to!" Autumn burst into tears. She bit her lip and tore the branch out.

  Victoria let out a silent shriek and fell stiffly to the forest floor, a gaping hole in her chest now flooding with blood.

  "You're fine, you're fine, you're fine!" Autumn lied, dropping down beside her and helping her sit back against the nearest tree trunk. "Y-You're gonna heal. You'll heal."

  Tori didn't respond. She blankly met her eyes, her own glossing over and fading back to dark blue.

  "L-Look! You're gonna be fine!" Autumn sobbed as she gestured to the muscle beginning to form in the hole, closing it up. "It only went through part of your heart. You'll heal."

  Tori looked down to her hand. She couldn't move it. She couldn't move anything. Her spinal cord had been severed.

  Autumn took notice of her attention and gulped. "It'll grow back. You can regrow bones and everything just fine now."

  Victoria blinked at her.

  Autumn felt her heart shatter again.

  She lifted Tori's shirt to get a better look at the wound. The skin was beginning to reform over the muscle. She then carefully turned Tori's torso slightly to glance at her back, where the other end of the wound was healing just as quickly.

  "See? Perfectly fine! I-If anything your healing's at peak performance since you only just turned. Y-Y'know our powers surge for the first week? Isn't that cool?"

  No response.

  "F-Fuck!!" Autumn cried hysterically, head in her hands.

  Victoria managed a faint smile.

  "I'm... not mad." She whispered.

  Autumn looked at her like she'd grown an extra head. "Don't talk right now! Focus on healing–"

  "It's okay." She shook her head slightly. "I'll be okay."

  "Don't..." Autumn sobbed, eyes locked on the wound. "It's closed. Why aren't you okay? You should be okay. I don't understand."

  "Autumn?"

  "Yes?"

  "I wanted this."

  "No! No, you didn't want this! The hysteria made you think you want this!" Autumn shook her head firmly. "What about your life? Your boyfriend? You don't deserve this!"

  "I didn't want him to know what he did." Tori coughed. "This... is better."

  "Tori..." Autumn wiped her eyes. "That's not fair. I barely just met you and now I've..."

  "I'm not mad." Victoria insisted. "I'm okay. I'm gonna be okay."

  Autumn nodded, putting on a brave face. She sniffled and forced herself not to cry. "You deserved a second chance at life, Tori."

  "You gave me it." She smiled back. "Gave me the chance to go in peace, not scared like the first time."

  "What about Zach?"

  "He'll... be okay. He's strong."

  "Y'know, vampires aren't exactly known for handling loss very well."

  "He'll find a way to live without me. He'll never know he hurt me."

  "Okay."

  Autumn began to cry again. She couldn't help it. She leaned in and hugged Victoria as tightly as she could.

  "You're a good person, Autumn." Tori whispered. "Thank you for trying to help me."

  Autumn let out a sharp sob.

  "I just wish I could've met you earlier." Tori smiled, voice weakening further. "I wish we could've become friends."

  "We are. You hear me?" Autumn nodded again. "We are friends. I mean that."

  "If you find Zach, please don't tell him you ever found me. I don't want him to figure it out."

  "I promise. I'll respect your wishes."

  Victoria gave one last attempt at a grateful smile, before her features softened. Her lungs stilled. Her heart slowed to a stop. Her eyes glazed over.

  Autumn waited with bated breath. The wound had sealed from both sides, but there was no way of knowing how well it was healing internally. There was a chance Tori's heart could repair itself in time, just as much as there was a chance her heart wouldn't and her brain would go without sufficient blood flow for too long to reverse.

  The moments passed achingly slowly.

  And as Victoria's body finally went completely limp, Autumn cried her lungs out.

  She threw a hand over her mouth, scared the other vampire that was somewhere out in the woods would catch the sound. She had to keep her promise.

  For a while, Autumn didn't move. She just sat there.

  Blank. Numb.

  Maybe an hour passed. Maybe two.

  Victoria's skin had begun to fade a greyish tone. Autumn knew her kind didn't decay the way humans did, so it wasn't until Tori's pupils began to turn white that she finally accepted she wouldn't suddenly wake back up.

  Her tears dried, as did all of the blood. It wouldn't be long until that vampire would come looking for his missing lover. She had to do what she'd assured Tori she would, and clean things up.

  A stifled sob escaped as she walked over to the bloody branch. With a huff of effort she threw it into a bush where it wouldn't be found by anything but critters and rodents. She dusted her hands off and returned to the tree.

  Autumn laid Victoria's body down at the foot of the trunk ever so gently, brushing her blue hair out of her face.

  "You're okay." She whispered, lip quivering. "You're okay."

  Her hearing caught the sounds of distant hyperventilating and desperate running. She stood back up stiffly.

  "VICTORIA!" A masculine voice called from the trees, broken with sobs.

  Autumn looked back to the body at her feet and took a deep breath.

  "You're okay. He's coming." She gave a final smile. "You'll be okay."

  With that, she shoved down her emotions and bolted back in the direction she'd originally came...

  ... And forced herself to block out the hysteric screams coming from behind her, as Tori's body was found for the first official time.