Night Life – Chapter 1

Home
My voice rang out an octave higher than the song originally was. I'd only heard it once before,
but it was enough. I already knew every word, every complicated rhythm, every note of the lead
singer's tune. I weaved a complex harmony through the vocalists and instruments, my soft voice
blending perfectly into the melody. I hardly concentrated on the music. I concentrated less,
however, on the road in front of me. My car was speeding down the deserted motorway at around
ninety miles per hour. I paid no attention to the speedometer, my fingers hardly brushed on the
steering wheel. I wasn't worried about whether I would crash into anything. The only thing getting
hurt in that situation would be the car.

I wondered absently whether Ben was listening to me sing. He sat up suddenly - a fluid, graceful
movement - from the seat that he had reclined all the way back. It was as if he had heard my errant
thought.
How odd.
"Wow," he breathed, his full lips forming a dazzling smile.
The corners of my mouth twitched into a half smile to match.

"You really do have an amazing voice, Caz," he half leaned back again, and propped himself
onto one elbow, peering at me from behind his thick, straw-coloured fringe and long lashes. "You
should show it off more often. You could be famous!"
I rolled my eyes at him. This wasn't the first time he'd said something like this. "Ben, we've been
through this so many times, I could say your argument at the same time you did." And that was
true. I could remember every word we'd ever spoken to each other due to my vampire's
photographic memory.

Yes - that's what you would call me: demon of darkness. Creature of the night. Vampire.

"Yeah, well, it's true..." He grumbled in a low voice - possibly forgetting that I could hear him
perfectly well through my inhuman ears.
"You know I couldn't be famous, Ben. Even if my voice was good enough. People would notice
that I'm not ageing." I persisted my side of the argument, even though I longed for Ben's side to be
true.
"Besides," I teased. "You wouldn't listen to me anyway, you have terrible taste in music!" I
nodded towards the radio, from which his favourite band was playing." Then all traces of teasing
vanished, and I became serious. "I know you're still young, Ben, but you have to understand our
way of life. It's not easy, and secrecy is the priority." I looked down into his eyes - still carrying a
deep crimson hue from his own human blood - and sighed.

Ben had only been a part of my family for just over three months now. Jenny - my sense-
depriving best friend who was posing as my sister - found him by the side of the road in June. It
was in the early hours of the morning in the middle of our small town. It was completely deserted.
She had watched from the shadows as a speeding car smashed into him and disappeared without a
trace. When the rest of us - our "parents", Shauna and Luke, and I - appeared on the scene, we
decided it was best to try to save him.

I decided to save him. I knew I wouldn't have the willpower to change him myself - the legends
about vampires killing people more often than they saved them haunted me in the back of my mind
- so I managed to convince Jenny to do it for me.
 I still didn't know why I had wanted to save him so much. All I knew was that I didn't want to
kill him. Even though the faint drip, drip, drip of his warm, appetisingly succulent blood made my
hands ball into fists and my legs slink forward so that I was leaning toward the wonderful smelling
liquid. I didn't want to kill him, but I was close that night. Too close. I felt a huge shudder tear
through me at that thought.

"Caz?"

I jolted in my seat, suppressing a second bout of shivering.

"Caz, what's wrong?" He pulled his seat upright and turned his legs towards me in the absence of
his seatbelt, being careful to avoid the hand-break. I sighed.
"I was just thinking..." I hesitated, pretending to pay attention to the motorway.
"About?" He prompted, growing impatient with my silence. Was it impatience, or was it
concern?
"About that... That night, when... When we found you." I was barely mouthing the words by the
end of the sentence.
"Did I really look that bad?" He wondered aloud.
"No. No, it wasn't the sight. I've seen plenty of gory horror films, and stuff, but..." I paused again,
then sighed - again. "It was the blood. The smell, the thirst, the... I... I was so close to- to-" I drew
in a deep breath to steady myself. Though it didn't have the same effect as it would if I were human
(my lungs remained dormant and inactive), but it still calmed me some.
"Oh," was all he could say. He looked thoughtful as he stared forwards into the night.

"Gees, is thirst all it takes to shut you guys up?" Jenny's voice sounded muffled after passing
through the speakers of the bluetooth hookup to her car. She drove alone. "I should talk about it
more often: I could use more peace and quiet in this mad house of ours." I could imagine vividly
the expression on her face as she said it. The way she would sigh, flick her short, light blonde hair
behind her ear and roll her burgundy eyes. It made me giggle out loud. My laugh sounded tinkling,
musical. Even to me. It was so different from the way I used to laugh when I was mortal. Ben
smiled, seeming to guess what I was laughing at.
"Well, we won't be in the mad house any more, Jen," my adoptive father Luke reasoned in his
soft voice from the car he shared with his wife. "That's why we're moving on to a new place - to
turn over a new leaf."

Ben opened his mouth to speak.

"Don't worry," came Luke's voice, cutting him off in the first syllable. "We've already looked at
hunting opportunities, and everything is worked out so that we won't be suspected of murder - at
all."
Ben's mouth closed. Luke had answered his unspoken question without leaving him anything to
wonder about. He nodded, trying on a smile, but only managing a grimace.

I knew what he was thinking. It was as if he'd spoken it aloud, or I could read his mind. He was
scared.
I gave him a small smile and patted the back of his hand, which was resting, slightly curled up,
on his leg. He turned it palm-up and twisted his fingers into mine before I could remove it.
"What if I don't fit in?" He mouthed, his eyes showing clearly what I had guessed from his earlier
expression.
"You will," I smiled, squeezing his hand reassuringly. "I don't know who wouldn't want to be
friends with you." The same couldn't be said for myself, I was sure. He grinned and squeezed back,
though he didn't look entirely comforted.
 Soon enough, street lights started to appear at the sides of the road, becoming more and more
frequent by the mile. Every now and again, a car would pass by us.
"Slow down girls, you'll attract too much attention," Shauna warned us. I watched as the
speedometer dropped down lower and lower until we were abiding by the speed limit.
This was much slower than Jenny would have liked to drive. I, however, was all too happy to
prolong the journey and postpone the time of our arrival. I didn't want to move. I started to sing
again, to take my mind off it. I heard Ben's voice joining me sometimes, adding a lower harmony,
creating a near perfect chord with every note. Sometimes he would make a dis-chord, singing the
note adjacent to my own, smiling sheepishly as he did so. It still fit into the song perfectly.

About half an hour later, Shauna's voice interrupted us:

"Remember, turn left on this next street, and you'll see the house."

We stopped singing abruptly.

This was it. There was the turning. I twitched the steering wheel, and the car rounded the corner
slowly.

We were met with a small street, the houses on one side much higher than on the other. The
higher houses had flights of steps and railings with peeling paint. The lower ones had sloping
paths, paved with dull, concrete slabs. Only three of the many houses on the street had properly
tended gardens. The sign read Spring Bank.