• The window latch was shut as silently as it had been open as she stepped into the room, her feathered crimson hair as still as it had been in the winds outside. She moved barefoot through the living room, as she had outside, each footstep silent as she moved towards the location she wanted in the house. As she stepped into the hallway, she heard was she was looking for – a faint scribbling of a pen or pencil.

    Cautiously, she moved towards the door where the sound was emitting from, and placed herself against it, listening as he worked frantically with his writing utensils. She could listen to him write for hours; she had done so before, and she would have again, had she not heard the very thing that chilled her spine. It was not how he said it, how his voice sounded, it was what he said – “Are you planning to come in, Maria, or should I ignore you?”

    She gasped. How had he known? Her own abilities should have been enough to keep her quiet enough. Regardless, she twisted the bronze handle once to the left and stepped inside the room.

    It was dimly lit; this didn’t surprise her. There he sat, at the end of the room, his back gently arched over his oak desk, his thin posture, slightly masked in the creeping shadows of the room, the dim light bouncing off his pale skin and his ruffled brown hair. All those things she recalled so detailed; they were the things that had made her fall in love with him all those years ago. A fairytale of the past.

    He swivelled the chair around to stare at her – she pierced her lips tight with her teeth to stop herself from gasping at how strongly she remembered his face. Hair covered down lightly over the top of his left eye, swerving around to might the side of his style, also masking the scar on the left of his forehead. His slender lips almost always curved into a wicked smile, a smile she had never seen on anyone else’s face. His sharply curved nose, albeit not large, and his eyes. The brilliant, golden-yellow eyes. The sort of eyes you could mistake for car lights in the dark. She remembered how she had met him.

    “What can I do for you?” He asked, his tone icy cold, although not out of any spite. That was his general tone. She took a moment to gather what she was about to say.

    “Why do you stay cooped up in here?” She said, rattling the words out with mere force. He smiled, and opened his mouth to talk a lecture she knew all to well, but she stopped him. “You’ve taken what you are, read about it, and convinced yourself that’s the reason you don’t see the sun anymore!” He gasped at her words, which had stricken him far deeper than he had expected her to ever strike him. Further than what she had said all those years ago.

    “This is why it never worked, and you know that! Because you’re too busy pretending you can’t do something you can!” She hissed, and he just sat back in the chair, glancing out at the window. Full moon. Twenty-three and a half seconds till midnight.

    He looked back at where she had been, for she was gone. He sighed.

    Twenty-three and a half seconds after she had left, he heard the howling, and he cringed, his fangs drawing blood on his slender lips.