Hunters

She instantly knew that the unpleasant taste on her mouth was blood.

It’s been a few months since she started feeling uneasy.

She’s been having nightmares where some people were being hurt, the blurry vision of two pale hands clenching into someone face, and the teeth sinking in the flesh was so intense, she could taste the blood when she woke up.

Probably she bit herself amid the nightmare.

A week after that, the nightmares came back.

Again the trembling body in her hands, the cold sweat mixing with the warm blood.

She faded into darkness and woke up to an alarm ringing.

-“That’s mine”- said her roommate, as she pressed the “snooze” button while she balanced a cup of coffee and a frozen waffle on her other hand.

-“I would have turned it off sooner but last night I tried to wake you up and couldn’t”- she threw a cellphone on her purse.

-“What? Why?”-

- “I thought you were having a nightmare or something, you were making strange noises, like a dog… or… I don’t know…”- she put on some lip-gloss.

Maddie saw her roommate articulate something before biting into the frozen waffle but didn’t hear a thing, her phone fell off her hand, she kept saying something, picked the phone up, took her bag and left the room slamming the door.

To Maddie it was all a muted, slightly blurred scene.

She covered her hears with her hands and closed her eyes tight, when she took her hands off her ears, the laughs, chit chat and rushed steps outside the door gave her a sense of reality again.

Not being able to hear or see clearly had always happened in her dreams but never when she was awake.

The alarm rang: 8:15, late again.

Maddie tip toed in the auditorium and sat almost in the back; the professor was saying something about brain tissue when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

 An apple fell from the seat row in the back and landed behind Maddie’s foot.

She turned around and a young man was sitting in the last seat row, he looked straight into her eyes and only one corner of his lip lifted, she felt exactly as she felt in her dreams, the voice of the professor, as well as the shushed voices of her classmates were gone.

She wanted to cover her ears and shut her eyes, would that work? Was she dreaming?

She couldn’t move.

She stayed there, frozen, looking at him as he stood up and jumped the seat between them.

 He got down on his knee to get the apple behind her feet and got his face so close to hers that she could feel his cheek grace hers as he whispered:

- “My bad”-

His deep, velvety voice filled her head and she felt it linger.

A bell rang and she heard a cacophony of sounds, students leaving the auditorium, some music, people talking and some books falling down.

The class was over.

What just happened? Who was he?

Late at night she was still thinking about what happened at her class, she didn’t want to fall asleep just yet.

- “If I only sleep a few hours, I think I have less chance of having nightmares”- She thought while sitting down on her bed holding her round, small, metallic alarm clock in her hands.

It wasn’t only the nightmares.

The numbness in her body, the metallic taste and sometimes scratches on her forearms that she did to herself while dreaming, made her uneasy.

What was going on with her? Was she having psychotic episodes?

And what the hell happened on Professor Smith’s class?

She finally decided to tell Jane, her roommate.

That night, they both went to grab a bite at a cafeteria nearby.

- “So… I haven’t been able to sleep lately you know?”-

Jane took a bite of her sandwich and said without looking at Maddie.

- “Honey, nobody has”- she licked her finger and thumb.

She made a sign at the waiter and said:

- “You mean, because of what happened right?”- the waiter gave her some napkins and she cleaned the ketchup off her hands.

Maddie looked at her with a perplexed look.

- “Hello! The dead boy on the parking lot!”- She said leaning over to Maddie.

A cold rush ran through her spine, the image of her last nightmare with a crawling teenager grabbing the bumper of a car trying to get up blinded her for a second.

- “Are you okay?”- said Jane with her mouth full.

- “Yeah, I’ll just…”- Maddie stood up and tumbled her way to the bathroom, her numbed hands felt a little relief when she held on to the cold sink.

She opened and closed her hands repeatedly and when she could open the tap with her shaky hand, she splashed some water on her face.

She composed herself the best she could and went back to the table.

- “What happened to you? You look gray”- said Jane.

- “I don’t know… I just…”-

Jane interrupted her and grabbed the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

- “Oh my gosh! Don’t look now, but the new guy just got in here!”-

She looked up to the mirrors on the upper part of the wall.

There he was.

Chatting casually with the girl on the cash register.

He looked in their direction and smiled.

- “Shit Jane! Do you know him?”- said Jane gulping her bite without chewing and still grabbing Maddie by her sleeve.

- “No, I don’t know him, I mean he is in my anatomy class but…”-

– “Shut up, he is coming over”- Jane interrupted her and used the butterknife as a mirror to look at her teeth.

- “Hi Maddie”-

That deep velvety voice again.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

She took a deep breath and tried to look as cool as she could.

-“Hi…”- said Maddie almost in a whisper.

He looked at Jane and reached out a hand, which Jane took a little too quickly.

-“I’m Jakov”-

-“I’m Jane, Maddie’s roommate, she was just telling me that she had a new cute classmate…”-  

If looks could kill, Jane would have dropped dead right there.

Jakov said something she couldn’t hear, but Jane did because she laughed.

To her horror, she noticed she didn’t hear a thing, she could see Jane laughing but she couldn’t hear her; or the people in the crowded cafeteria, nor the bell the cook just hit after putting a plate on the counter.

Nothing.

She froze in terror when suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder.

She looked up and Jakov was looking right into her eyes, his hand slightly caressed her shoulder before taking it away.

-“So I guess I’ll see you in class”-

All the sounds came back along with his voice, Maddie made her best to smile and nod. 

Jane turned around to see him leave.

-“Are you insane?!”- she threw a crumble of bread at Maddie’s forehead.

-“He was totally hitting on you and it was like you were completely out of it!”-

She took another bite of her sandwich and mumbled something.

Late that night, not wanting to sleep, she looked for the news of the dead boy.

-“…no arrests have been made, though the investigation continues as the deceased had been recently involved in a hit and run incident where a mother of two was killed…”-

Later she found out that the dead teenager was the son of a prominent lawyer and all the charges had been dropped.

She didn’t give it another thought, or looked into it any further, nobody did, the thought of a killer on the campus dissolved as it seemed like a case of vengeance or something.

That is until they found an employee of the coffee shop dead.

She was found under the trash bags in the alley behind the coffee shop.

Maddie was finishing a class report on Human Physiology when Jane stormed in the room.

- “Jane, look at this!!”- she showed her a slightly shattered phone screen where it read:

- “…though there are no suspects, a new investigation is in process due to finding several small pouches of rat poison on the victim’s locker room at the coffee shop where she worked which will remained closed until food poisoning threat is dismissed…”-

- “They said she had a thing with the owner and he dumped her, so they think that she was planning on putting poison on the food to get back at him!”-

Maddie just stared at her, with her mind going a thousand miles per hour.

- “Don’t you get it Jane?” We could have died! We ate there two nights ago!”

- “What? Yes! Yes, you’re right!”- she stood up from the desk chair and pulled down her rolled long sleeves –“Have you noticed that strange things have happened since… you know…?”-

-“What?”- said madding stretching with her finger the gum she was pressing with her front teeth.

-“Well, this new guy comes and suddenly…”-

Jane spit the gum and laughed out loud.

-“Are you kidding me?! Oh my gosh Maddie!! Are you serious?”-

-“So you’re saying there is not a slight chance…”-

-“Of what? Jakov being the killer?”- she laughed again- “Well, I guess you just crack the case! I mean, if you can prove he is a vampire!”-

Maddie gave her a look.

-“What, you didn’t read the whole news?... They were bitten! They were bled to death by some animal, that’s why there are no suspects, come on! I can’t believe you didn’t know that!!”-

She could barely see Jane laughing and checking her phone as everything became blurry and the sight of the girl from the coffee shop grabbing her neck and crawling on the filthy floor of the alley was all Maddie could see.

A clap of hands brought her back to reality and saw Jane standing in front of her.

- “What’s going on with you? You really need to go out, you’re coming with me to the party tonight, we’re leaving in an hour”-  

Jane left the room and fell heavily on the office chair, rolled up her sweatshirt sleeves and saw the scratches on her forearms.

She woke up with them that morning, after having a nightmare about a young woman with a hand on her neck lying lifeless while rats crawled up on her.

That night, Jane dragged Maddie to the party, as soon as she could, Maddie got out of the house and sat on the stairs of the porch.

She had been there for a while when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

It was Jakov.

She didn’t feel uneasy as the other times she had seen him, he didn’t take the hand off her shoulder until he sat down, so close, his leg was touching hers.

She should have felt uncomfortable, but she didn’t.

His black deep eyes stared at her as usual, he combed his straight black hair back with his hands and looked down.

- “Hope I didn’t scare you this time”-

She felt stupid about even considering him being the killer, she did look as his teeth, though.

She felt even more stupid the moment she did that.

-“So… what do you think about what has been happening?...”-

- “Well…”- her voice came out as a whisper, she cleared her throat and continued.

- “I haven’t given it much thought to be honest”-

She moved a little away from him and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

 She started to feel uneasy when he moved closer to her and the moment his leg touched hers, she felt a warmth that soothed her.

He looked at her and leaned closer.

- “Doesn’t it worry you that those things happened so close to you?”-

Jakov put a hand on her knee.

She stood up and walked two steps away from him, she started to feel dizzy, he took her by the hand and walked towards a parked car.

-“No! What are you doing?!”-

He didn´t answer and kept walking, she struggled to get free from his grip but couldn’t; she screamed.

He opened the door and took her by the other hand.

-“Scream all you want, nobody can hear you”-

To her horror, she noticed that in fact, she couldn’t hear anything either.

She looked back at the house, people were coming in and out, cars were passing by the street but she didn’t hear a sound, except for Jakov’s voice.

He pushed her inside the car, Maddie tried to open the door, but it was locked, he opened the driver’s door and got in.

-“It doesn’t open from the inside”-

Her blood ran cold.

- “I knew it… I knew it was you…”- her voice shaking. -“YOU DID IT!! You killed those people!!”-

He hit the brakes so hard and sudden that if he hadn’t put his arm in front of Maddie, she would have crashed into the windshield.

He looked at her with fiery eyes.

-“No… you did”-

All the blurry images she had seen, came back like bullets in her mind.

She could hear the teenager screaming desperate as he clenched his fingers on her forearms trying to get free from her grasp.

And saw how the woman from the cafeteria did the same thing before exhaling for the last time.

The taste of blood in her mouth.

She remembered everything now, not blurry images; but crystal-clear memories.

Jacov got his hand inside his black leather jacket to reach something, but he stopped midway of getting it out.

-“What are you gonna do?”- Maddie said looking down; her fangs size increased and it made her gums bleed.

She clenched her jaw trying to hide the fangs.

He took her chin and lifted her face, wiped a drop of blood from her lip and took her hand.

-“I have to kill you and…”- he felt a lump in his throat and looked down.

She let go of his hand and hit the car door so hard it fell down.

 How did she get that strong?

Well, she had to be if she had killed those people with her bare hands…

Jakov got down the car and ran after her, she jumped to the top of a tree but was stopped midair.

She fell heavily on one side at the same time another figure landed next to her.

Maddie opened her eyes to a tall olive skin woman wearing all black pants and top, the sharp tip of a stone-like sword on her neck, stopped her from standing up.

-“Samhra, you shouldn’t be here!”- Jakov screamed at her.

-“It looked like you could use some help”- She said without taking her sight from Maddie.

-“Well, I’m of no use here anymore”- he said and turned around.

-“Jakov… you have to do this”- her voice was soft but deep with authority.

Maddie took the blade that had already let out a fine line of blood from her neck in an attempt to set herself free but she cut the palms of her hands.

-“Don’t touch it girl, there’s no fight against your own”- said  Samhra, taking the sword a few millimeters away from Maddie’s neck.

Maddie stretched a hand towards Jakov.

-“Why?! I know it wasn’t okay what I did, but they were criminals! They deserved to be punished!”_

Jakov looked at Samhra, she rearranged her waist lenght dreadlocks, nodded and took the sword away from Maddie.

He took her hand and helped her stand up.

- “Jakov, you have to do this… if you don’t do it, I will… you know letting her go is not an option”-

- “Why?... Why do you have to do this?!”- Maddie screamed at both of them.

- “We have to protect them, no matter what they did”- said the woman.

- “Why them?! Why protect them?!”- Maddie took two steps away, neither Jakov or Samhra moved, but she tightened the grasp on her sword.

-“Because they’re human… and you’re not”- said Jakov looking down.

Maddie took another step back and the woman looked at Jakov.

-“ Take my hand”- Said Jakov in a pleading tone, Maddie looked at his hand and then stared at his eyes.

-“I always numb them with my sight, so they don’t suffer a lot when I… well…”-

He took a deep breath.

-“If it doesn’t work I talk to them, but neither worked with you… I had to touch you… I’ve never done that before”-

Maddie’s fierce eyes filled up and took his hand.

He pulled her closer and hugged her with one arm, with the other, he pulled a dagger from inside his jacket.

-“That sword your friend has… and your dagger… are they made with bone coming from someone of my kind right?”-

He nodded.

-“You won’t make one with me?”-

He made a negative movement with his head.

Jakov held her against him and the cold, stinging feeling of the blade sliding through her ribs decreased as Jakov tightened his grip on her.

He held her for a while after she stopped breathing.

Then kneeled and put her lifeless body on the floor.

He took her face and with a swift movement, he took away her fangs.

-“Okay, no one will ever know”- Samhra said, and reached an open hand to Jakov, he stretched his hand as to put the slightly bloody fangs on her hand, but hesitated and put them in his breast shirt pocket.

She made a disapproval frown and turned around.

-“Suit yourself, but you know keeping them is not allowed”-

-“I’ll take my chances”-

He took off his jacket and put it over Maddie.

Red and blue flashlights approached as two figures jumped on the treetops and disappeared in the darkness.