He grows. Upward and outward. He stood a little over six feet when he approached me outside. His frame expands with dense, thick muscles until he’s well over seven feet tall with raw power radiating from his physique. His pants split and strain as his legs thicken, the tattered remains of fabric barely clinging to his body.
His hair lengthens, dark waves cascading to the middle of his back. The stubble along his jaw spreads and darkens into a full beard that frames the features that are still shifting and sharpening. His face becomes more angular, his jaw wider, his cheekbones more pronounced.
But it’s his eyes that make my next breath catch in my throat.
The darkness in his eyes gives way to a burning amber glow that cuts through the darkness. He barely looks human. He looks like a giant instead of a man. A brute that could smash walls and crush bones.
The transformation only takes seconds, but it seems to happen in slow motion, like Ineedto see every moment of it. I take several steps back up the stairs. He no longer looks like the guy who was staring at me.
“What… what are you?” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the thunder in my chest.
“Someone who can keep you alive,” he rumbles. His voice is deeper now, rougher, like gravel grinding against stone in the depths of a cave. “Now stay behind me like I said. They won’t have enough time to drain you if they bite you, but it hurts like a motherfucker.”
Despite the brute that has risen in place of the man who was stalking me, I still feel like I trust him. If my instincts are failing me now, then I only have myself to blame for listening to them. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And those screeches… they don’t sound human. Maybe Daisy really was taken by a vampire. I can’t believe I’m entertaining that thought.
It only remains a thought for a few seconds more. Hayden steps into the main part of the crypt and I follow.
I shine my light and nearly drop my phone when I see something charging down the hallway, blood dripping from a grotesque mouth, the skin around it bloated and pale. I see fangs, but not the kind I pictured for a vampire. They’re small, underdeveloped, barely longer than normal canines. Sharp enough to puncture skin, but crude and unfinished, like they’re still growing in.
It looks human. Sorta.
But it moves wrong. Too fast, too jerky, like its joints don’t quite work the way they should. Like a marionette being yanked along the floor by an amateur puppeteer.
The thing—vampire?—is wearing tattered clothes, a shirt that might have been white once, but it’s now stained brown and red. Its skin is corpse-pale, almost gray, stretched too tight over bones that jut out at odd angles. The veins in its face and neck are dark, bruised lines that spider-web underneath the skin.
Its eyes haunt me. Milky white with just a hint of red bleeding through, like blood vessels that burst and never healed. The color is muted, but they look like they were blue at one time. Now they’re fixed on me with a hunger that makes my stomach turn.
It screeches again, but Hayden closes in on. One massive hand snatches the creature up by the neck. The other plunges into its chest. The smell of death and rot makes me gag, but I gag more when Hayden rips the vampires heart out of its chest. It beats as blood gushes, but Hayden crushes it in his palm like a child crushing a grape. The creature slumps and Hayden tosses the limp body to the side.
“That wasn’t the guy who took Daisy,” I whisper, visibly shaking as I watch the grotesque scene.
“That was a fledgling. Recently turned, but it hasn’t fed enough to gain any real power. There will probably be a lot of them down here,” Hayden growls. “There always are in vampire nests.”
I still know, deep in my soul, that Daisy is here. Somewhere in this crypt. But what if she’s like that creature? A fledgling? Did the guy she went on a date with turn her into a vampire? I try to shake it off, but the concern lingers. I don’t want to watch Hayden rip my best friend’s heart out of her chest.
Another screech. Another fledgling. Another splatter of blood and a beating heart for Hayden to crush in his massive hand. I thought vampires were just… dead. That their hearts didn’t beat at all. I guess there’s a lot I don’t know about vampires. Real ones, at least. I’m still trying to process the fact theyexist. Vampires. Exist.
“More are coming. A lot more,” Hayden growls.
The hallway fills with the sound of screeches and wails. Hayden takes a fighting stance and the look on his face… he’ssmiling. Like he’s eager for this fight. I’m sure as hell glad I didn’t come down here on my own. I don’t think my taser would do much against these creatures.
But Hayden obliterates them. It’s like watching a warrior wade through a battlefield without a care in the world. I count at least a dozen that die at his hand before I lose count. Broken, twisted bodies pile up at his feet and when the screeches stop, he just continues on like he’snotstepping over bloody corpses.
“Oh god,” I groan, blood soaking into my shoes as I try to make my way through the viscera and muck. I really wish I wasn’t wearing work clothes. “I hope none of those were Daisy.”
I shine my light on the macabre faces on the ground, some still twitching. If Daisy is in the pile, I can’t see her.
We don’t get much further before more fledglings appear, but there are less of them this time. I count four and I’m sure none of them are Daisy. They look more human than monstrous. Their skin seems to have healed, and the traces of death aren’t as pronounced. Their fangs are longer, much closer to vampires from the movies I’ve watched.
Still, they are no match for Hayden. He rips out a heart, then catches a neck before fangs can sink into this skin. A loud growl makes it evident how angry he is by how close they got. He smashes the vampire’s skull into the wall, stones and bones exploding. Then he uses the broken body as a shield to fight the remaining vampires. In a matter of seconds, they’re on the ground.
“Guess I didn’t need my brothers to deal with this nest after all,” Hayden growls, continuing on.
Brothers? There’s more of them? Whatever Hayden is. He didn’t answer me when I asked.
We reach an intersection. Empty coffins stretching to our left and right, down hallways that are so long I can’t see the end of them. I see a flash of white light again, and it compels me to go right. That’s where Daisy is.
“That way,” I say, pointing ahead.
