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She didn’t dare look back. Someone was trailing her. If not her shadow, then the nightmare that lurked in the real shadows.
As she turned the last corner, the bus approached the stop, not slowing because no one was waiting.
“Stop!”
She picked up her pace as she ran down the sidewalk, waving her arm in a frantic effort to get the driver’s attention. A group of girls in the back saw her and a couple of them stood. They called out to the driver.
When the bus slowed and came to a stop, her knees almost buckled, but she wasn’t safe yet. The doors opened and she climbed aboard, panting and pulling her student ID from her pocket, holding it out with a trembling hand.
“Almost missed me, hon.”
She gave a weak smile and made her way to the middle of the bus, looking over her shoulder at the girls toward the back dressed for a night on the town. She lifted a hand in thanks before turning back and putting her head against the window, not giving them the chance to engage her in conversation.
If she tried to talk to someone right now, she would become a hysterical mess.
Holding her cell phone in front of her, she looked at the screen.
Last night she told Aiden she would stick it out, but tonight not only tipped her over the edge—it picked her up and tossed her over it.
She needed to sit down with her mothers and discuss her career path. If she didn’t return to Athens, she didn’t have to face the man who tormented her day and night. The man who told her leaving changed nothing. Of course nothing changed if she returned. But if she didn’t? Everything would go back to normal in her world.
She didn’t even want to think about what she witnessed in the alley.
Vampires? Real?
She peered out the window as the bus stopped at a red light, certain she would see glowing blue eyes staring back at her. The relief nothing was waiting there loosened the vice in her chest.
People believed stranger things existed in the world. Was it so far out of the realm of possibility? Not if the things she grew up learning and studying with her mothers held any weight.
Her mothers always expressed a fascination with the strange and eclectic, and she followed in their footsteps.
At an early age, she developed an interest in the occult and the existence of unexplainable beings in the world. The internet had a plethora of information for her to soak in.
While her ma seemed more drawn to Western horoscopes, crystals, and the like, her mom gravitated to things like moon phases, celestial bodies, and other ancient beliefs.
She shook her head.
She put little stock into most of it but found the subjects interesting. She especially enjoyed the New Age, celestial, and witchy aesthetics. Over time, she became a fan of the unknown, darker, and unexplained side of life.
Now, coming face to face with a being in direct alignment with the things that fascinated her, she was uncertain and confused. The idea of the existence of vampires sounded amazing, but the reality horrified her. Beings designed to kill. Indiscriminately taking a human life in a dark alleyway.
No amount of study could have prepared her for the reality.
The young guy—victim—was someone’s son, might have been a brother or even a young father.
She swallowed hard. She couldn’t tell her parents what she saw.
The monster she observed looked nothing like the romanticized creatures the internet and media made them out to be.
Even if they could be like humans, they were all killers. Not just a few bad seeds like humans. Vampires needed to kill to live. There was no possibility of redemption there.
If what she saw was real.
Surely it had to be a fever dream brought on by the heat. Her real body was in her bed having a nightmare. She needed to wake up and get water to cool off.
She pinched herself in an attempt to force herself awake but sighed when nothing changed around her. She didn’t wake up in a cold sweat. No, she remained on a bus where streetlights filtered orange light through the windows as the bus made its way through her college town.
Delusional? No.
