HUNTER'S ELIXIR

(THIS STORY CONTAINS MILD VAMPIRE AND BLOOD SCENES)

I throw my clothes into my backpack and sigh. What do I even pack? How would I know what to pack as a vampire?! I dump my clothes back into my drawer.

“Knock, knock!” My dad says, from the doorway of my room.

“You’re so weird Dad.”

“Well I figured you wouldn’t wanna be late for your last real meal of human food before you turn.”

“You’re right.”

I think about pizza and mac and cheese and ice cream. How much I’m gonna miss eating.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I don’t need to eat food any more.”

“Well if you were British you’d still be able to eat blood pudding right?” My dad chuckles at his joke.

But when I don’t laugh, he looks up. “That’s a thing right, Hunter?”

“I think so dad.”

I’m sitting at the picnic table in the yard, shivering as the sun goes down.

“Best burgers this side of Pennsylvania!” Dad proudly sets a plate of burgers in front of me.

“Mmmm yummy.” I say, as I take a bite.

A little bit of bloody burger juice trickles onto my hand as I take a second bite. I shudder. I always had liked my burgers a little more well done than my dad makes. But now I’m gonna only be eating the blood. Human blood. Every day.

I take a breath. No, my Mum is working on making an elixir so we won’t have to drink blood anymore. I hope she makes it soon.

“You okay squirt?” My dad asks.

“Yeah, yeah. Just trying to wrap my head around this whole vampire thing.”

“I mean you don’t have to turn on your sixteenth birthday. You are half human…” Dad smiles. “Thanks to me of course. But you do have a choice cause you’re half and half.”

“Wow Dad, you make me sound like creamer.” Is all I say.

What if I don't become a vampire? But I only have till I’m 16 to decide, because after that I’ll be stuck a human. And Mum would be so upset. I have to do it

After dinner me and Dad pull into the airport parking lot.

“I love you. I’ll miss you.” I hug Dad. “When will I see you again?”

Dad frowns. “Now that you're gonna be living with your mom we’re gonna see a lot less of each other. Especially because once you become a vampire you can’t come back into the city. It’s too dangerous. Maybe this Thanksgiving?”

My stomach twists. I won’t be able to come home anymore?

Mum lives up in the Canadian mountains of Ontario. My uber driver drops me off at the gates at the edge of my mother’s property. Her house is at the end of a one and a half mile long driveway edged with hedges and just on the outskirts of a deep dark forest. I remember the summers I’d spent playing just outside the woods. For fear of something attacking me. I shudder as I remember the shadows.

It feels like the hedges are closing in on me even more with each step. And when I finally get to the door I punch in the code as quickly as possible.

The inside of the house is old, and big, and fancy. I wriggle my nose. And it smells like dust.

A note from Mum directs me to go to my room as soon as I arrive because she’ll be at work all night. Mum actually works with a group of other vampires who are all scientists trying to come up with an elixir so that vampires don’t have to drink blood anymore.

I clump into the dark room and soon enough, I fall asleep on the musty sheets.

I wake up in the morning to clunking in the hallway and slamming in the kitchen.

“Oh, Hunter,” Mum says when she sees me. “I forgot you were coming so soon. I woulda cleaned.”

When I came in the room, Mum was sipping on a wine glass full of blood. Blood covering her mouth in a morbid way. Her island was cluttered up, covered in crusty wine glasses and empty IV type bags that came from the blood donation place.

She sets the glass on the island and walks up to me as if to size me up. But gives me an uncomfortably stiff hug.

“Hunter, love, your sixteenth birthday is tomorrow. I’ve arranged for you to meet with some other vampires who are fresh like you. They had just turned last year. Do be careful though love, because they haven’t quite mastered their skill of not draining people yet.”

Oh yay. I think.

“Um, so this might seem weird, but like, do you have any food or anything? Y’know, just for today.”

“Yeah I got something for today.” Mum grabs a grocery bag and hands it to me.

I open the bag. It’s full of jars of peanut butter, Cheerios and American cheese.

“Oh wow thanks, Mum.”

“It was all I could remember your father eating. Is it ok?”

“Yeah. So how exactly do I change into a vampire?” I ask, because after this whole time no one’s actually told me how.

My Mum lifts her glass to her lips. “…Well, when your birthday comes you will have to drink the blood of a human.”

“And that will turn me into a vampire?”

She nods.

“But won’t I still be human when I have to drink the blood?”

She nods again.

“Wow. Ok.” I let that sink in.

Later that afternoon Mum brings me to the edge of the woods. Mum stands tall. A vampire.

Then three vampires walk just to the edge of the shadows. They look like pale teenagers. If they were humans they’d look sickly. But they’re not. And they have an otherworldly glow to them. An air of strength and power.

I step back and look at my feet.

I feel weak. I feel small. I feel human.

There’s a tall blonde girl. A short girl with black short hair. And a tall boy with curly brown hair.

Before I know it, Mum is gone and the tall blonde girl is lurching towards my neck. But she trips and the other two reach for her to hold her back.

The boy walks towards me and I instinctively take a step back. “Sorry, Ayla can get out of control when she’s around humans.”

The tall girl—Ayla—just shrugs.

“Well, anyways…” The boy sticks out his hand. “This is how the humans great each other right?”

I nod slowly, then shake his hand.

“My name’s Garnet.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and say. “I’m Hunter.”

The boy eyes me curiously and adds. “And she’s Kirsi. She doesn’t talk.”

The girl with short black hair in her face, waves.

“Well, let’s get on with this.” Garnet says. “You’re Mum wanted you to get familiar with this forest so we’ll just show you around.”

I walk deeper into the woods that I’d been hiding from my whole childhood.

I step over a fallen tree and have a thought. “Hey guys, why were you acting like you haven’t been around people? Haven’t you been human your whole lives before you turned last year?”

The tall girl—Ayla—who’s now keeping her distance from me says. “Well we are half and half like you, but our vampire parents are so strict they didn’t want us to choose to be human when the time came so they made us live our whole lives in a pre-vampire boarding school.”

“Wow,” I say. “That sounds sucky.”

“It was.” The boy—Garnet—says.

And the short girl who doesn’t talk nods enthusiastically.

“We had to waste the entirety of our mortal lives in that prison.” Garnet says, his eyes shiny.

I don’t say anything I just keep walking.

“Why did you decide to turn?” Ayla asks.

“I don’t know. I guess I just feel like I have to. I think I’d regret it my whole life if I didn’t.”

Ayla shrugs and they continue to show me all their favorite spots in the forest.

The next night I’m in the forest with my Mum and she’s bringing me to the center so I can drink the blood of a person and turn into a vampire.

“How do I find a person anyways, these woods are empty?” I ask, leaves crunching under my feet.

“I’ve already caught one.”

There’s a long silence before Mum says. “I’ll be so happy when my elixir is finally completed and we won’t have to do this anymore.”

I nod.

Mum points to a tree and I see a person tied to it.

“Is he already dead?” I ask.

“Yes, I borrowed him from the morgue.”

“Great so I don’t have to kill anyone?”

My Mum shrugs. “Not tonight.”

The blood tastes sour in my mouth. And heavy. But I swallow. And as soon as the first drop hits my stomach it feels like a punch to the gut and my entire body is shocked. My eyes are forced shut and I fall to the ground.

When I stand up I feel different. I feel stronger.

“You’ve done it Hunter.” My Mum says. But it sounds loud.

In fact everything does. There’s an owl hooting in the distance, but it feels like it’s perched inside my ear.

The next night me and Mum are sitting in the kitchen drinking our dinner of blood.

I hate the taste of metal that seems to be permanent in my mouth now. I thought once I turned it would be different.

“Why does the blood still taste bad?” I ask Mum.

She takes a long swig and swishes it around in her mouth. “It’ll take time, love. Half and half metamorphosis is different from one like mine. It’s more slow. And some part of you will always feel human, because you are. See I was bitten, so my change was fast. So I immediately had a thirst for blood. I can barely remember my human life. But maybe it was because it was over three hundred years ago.”

My eyes bulge. This is the first time my Mum’s talked about this kind of stuff. I’d never really noticed that while I grew older my whole childhood my Mum always looked like a teenager. But I’d never stopped to realize how old she really was.

“Well, Hunter, I’ve gotta go to work. See you in the morning.”

I just sit there. Why did I do this? I don’t need to be a vampire. I don’t want to be one either.

That night I get so lost, not sleeping and all. I stare at the ceiling for hours before I decide to go outside.

I walk into the woods. It’s peaceful. Funny how I used to be so scared of this place.

“Ayla!” I hear voices yelling. “Ayla!”

I hear the footsteps pounding from a mile away and it’s ten minutes before they actually reach me.

“Hunter, Hunter!” Garnet says, out of breath. “Have you seen Ayla.”

His face is about as red as a vampire’s face can get I suppose.

Kirsi is with him too, but she still doesn’t speak.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

Garnet grabs my shoulders desperately. “Ayla’s disappeared. I think something might’ve happened to her.”

Still flustered, he points to Kirsi. “She—she can hear the essence of fellow vampires. Hear if they’re in distress. If they’re happy. But she can’t hear Ayla at all. Last place she heard her was in some old country town. A human town.”

I take this in. It’s a lot, but I feel responsible.

“Will you help us Hunter?”

“Yeah of course.” I hear myself say.

We head to the village where Kirsi last heard Ayla and I walk down the street alone. Kirsi and Garnet were too scared to follow. They said I’d know how to act more human. Plus Garnet was a little scared they wouldn't be able to control their thirst.

Everything’s normal until I get to the main street. People are flooded around and cop sirens are wailing. Through the flood of people I can see paramedics carry a few bodies onto a stretcher and cover their faces with cloth. WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED HERE? People are shouting and crying.

As I approach the crowd I feel a little stitch of hunger in my stomach, and push it down. It seems as though my thirst for human blood increases slowly everyday, but it’s still at a very low level. Especially compared to Mum and the others.

An elderly man walks up to me. “Did you know any of them?” He asks motioning to the stretchers.

I shake my head. “No I’m just visiting this town.”

But I fear that sounds suspicious, so I add. “I came to see my grandma.”

The man shakes his head, fear in his eyes. “Be careful. There’s vampires in this town. That’s what happened here. Killed three people in the dead of night. But luckily a brave fellow, killed it. I hope it was the only one.”

I gasp. “What’d…what do you—”

And that’s when I see it. As the crowd parts I catch a glimpse. And tears start rolling down my face.

It’s Ayla. She’s lying cold and stiff in the middle of the street. An iron spear stuck in her chest and blood on her face.

I turn to the old man. “Th-thanks for warning me. I better go to my grandma.”

I start walking down the street and as soon as I get out of sight I take off.

When I get to Garnet and Kirsi I don’t have to say anything. They just fall to the ground sobbing.

When Mum comes home from work that night I tell her everything.

She just shakes her head, but doesn’t look surprised. “You know Hunter, stuff like that happens all the time. That’s what I’ve been trying to stop. I mean a young sapling of a vampire can’t control themselves when they get so thirsty. And with the amount of humans deciding not to donate blood anymore. Us vampires have no other choice.”

“Well what’s taking you guys so long to finish the elixir?” I ask.

“Honestly we need more research. More experiments. More volunteers. But it’s literally just me and this one old man. We need more help.”

“I can do it. I bet Garnet and Kirsi would help too.”

Mum smiles. The kind of half happy, half sad smile, that perfectly reveals her sharp vampire teeth.

“We need more volunteers.” I say at the end of my story to Garnet and Kirsi.

“Of course.” Garnet says.

Kirsi looks like she needs to say something. She pulls a note pad from her pocket and writes. But I can’t read it.

“It’s Latin.” Garnet explains. “She said that her aunt has been doing research on this plant that might help with the elixir.”

“Yes!” I exclaim. “That’ll definitely help.”

Garnet perks up a little. “Let’s go see if we can find anyone else that’ll help.”

A while later at Mum’s house.

It’s thanksgiving and I’m seeing my dad for the first time as a vampire. But I’m not scared or ashamed. Like I thought I’d be. I’m proud.

When I hear the knock on the door I run as fast as I can. Which is pretty fast now, if I do say so myself.

When I whip the door open I stand there for a moment. My dad. He looks old. His hair is a little more gray. The circles under his eyes are a little more dark. But there’s something lovely about it. He’s human. He may be delicate and fragile like a flower, but it’s beautiful.

I hug him as tight as I can without hurting him. “I missed you so much Dad.”

“Ugh.” My Dad stands up straight after I hugged him. Seeming to try to un-crunch his bones. “I missed you too squirt.”

My Mum walked up behind me but I don’t notice until my Dad says something.

“Amelia. You look the same.” He says.

“And you look old as hell.” My Mum counters, and I give her a look.

Are they really gonna fight today?

My Dad laughs out of nowhere and says. “Well you’re so old you knew burger king when he was a prince.”

I laugh. Mum just rolls her eyes, but I can tell she’s holding back a smile.

Finally we sit down at Mum’s tiny island.

“I brought sweet potato casserole dad says.”

Me and mum share a look.

I walk to the freezer and pull out two red popsicles for me and Mum.

“I thought it’d freak you out less if it was in popsicle form.” I tell Dad.

My dad shrugs. “I used to be married to your Mum, don’t forget. I’m pretty used to blood everywhere.”

Mum just shrugs.

“Well,” I say. “We’re this close to finishing the elixir. And now that we have a team of over five hundred it’ll be done in no time.”

Dad smiles. “I’m so proud of you squirt.