Part I

“Let’s break up.” That’s what I heard instead of getting my good morning kiss, when I met with my boyfriend before classes at campus.

At first I thought that I misheard, but the seriousness on Michael’s face told me that it was not the case. Maybe some cruel, bad joke, but I knew him for a long time, he was not a jokester type and for sure not with this kind of jokes. I tried to somehow deal with it with nervous laughter, but it didn’t help.

“Why?” I would never expect my voice to tremble out of fear, of what I could hear.

“I don’t want to be your puppet.” He said coldly, that a shiver went down my spine.

“No one uses that word anymore, now we call…” I quit scores with a smirk on my face, and then I realised I fucked up.

“Should I add lying for years to the list, or is it obvious enough?”

He just turned around and left me, devastated and in shock. I knew there was no point in trying to stop him. I would do the same if I found out the person I trusted lied straight to my face since we actually have met. In our case years have already passed. Deep breath and some time, then I was going to explain everything to him and make him come back to me. That option I could deal with, but not in the moment when he came to the group of werewolves watching us for a while. Of course he had to find out from somewhere.

However, considering the pact we signed with them so long ago no one actually remembers when exactly it happened, in that matter, they shouldn’t interfere with. For sure no one told him directly, but there are tricks to let people know or at least make them anxious enough to start asking questions. I felt like my heart was breaking into pieces, while the anger was growing from the impression of treason of the worst kind possible for vampires.

One of the worst aspects of this was that the werewolves were included, as we were natural enemies. Like nature made them just to keep the balance and somehow atone for creating us, instead of wiping us out. I have always thought that my kind was a successful experiment, because who would create something that could live up to seven centuries while having to feed people blood and going into uncontrollable rage controlled by pure instincts when hungry.

That’s why we also got the possibility to have a partner as we started to call these people, because puppet seemed a bit outdated and offensive. The tranquilizer also wouldn't sound nice enough, however that is what their role was. For us vampires they were significant, because they were bound to us as a person whose blood we tasted first ever. In exchange we often offered them bits of our blood, using its amazing properties to keep humans in good health and conditions for years. For most vampires it’s almost always a person they have romantic feelings for as I had a crush on Michael for years before we got together. After a partner's death, the next person whose the vampire will taste next will become a new one, but it would never be the same bond as with the first one, but it works pretty the same. These relationships would be more friendship or business based.

The thing was that vampires needed partners to somehow exist in the society without killing people by feeding too much on them or being extremely aggressive when hunger or anger kicking in. Partner’s blood was working like a substance helping to keep it under control. Michael had no idea about me so I had to be extra careful with drinking his blood. Always small amounts when he was sleeping, bite marks well hidden, my blood smuggled in the muffins he loved so much. Even he noticed that he started to get sick not so often. And I was happily in love, so I would never have thought of not having my partner around, so I was pretty sure my life would go pretty unproblematic.

My family couldn't accept Michael because there won't be any offspring from our relationship. However I have two older sisters who already have children, so my lack of efforts to transmit the vampire gene was not such a big deal. They were also happy about it, because the attention was more on them and not me, who as the youngest was the apple of everyone’s eye but since I have become a black sheep, suddenly for them I was a little brother they had to support instead of being jealous. Michael was a bit sad about it and disappointed in me, that I didn’t even get him a chance to make a good impression on my family. I just wanted him to avoid all the rudeness. Bringing him to my house also never seemed like a good idea, when he wasn’t aware where we were actually going. With that knowledge his approach could be slightly different, so I was swaying him from that idea with all my might.

You couldn’t be created as a vampire, you had to be born as one. We were similar to human beings. However when the vampire gene decided to activate standardly before between the ages of twenty one to forty, later with females so they could have enough time to have offspring; once it does it's like time stops for us and after a few centuries suddenly it goes back again and catches it. No big transformation, you fall asleep and the next day you wake up wanting blood and feeling like you could anything. Another thing we were different was that we were stronger, faster and our senses were much better. And then you fall asleep like that and when you wake up you are old, so you know your time is up.

It's enough if one side has the gene in almost every case but there were situations when or the gene wasn't transmitted or just never activated, so you could never be sure. Vampires were rather not pairing up, because we could be too jealous about the partners, so we were mostly choosing humans to stay with.

And I have chosen Michael, I loved him and I definitely didn't like to be heartbroken. That couldn't go unnoticed by my sisters, who wouldn’t miss the opportunity to make jokes about my devastated look. I tried to go away and immerse myself in the pain I felt, but they just couldn’t leave me alone. They were nagging me for so long that I told them what happened so they butt out. When I did, their will to tease me suddenly disappeared, as they knew how troublesome this situation could be for me.

“Just fix it before mother finds out. I am not in the mood to hear all that ‘I have told you and I didn’t like him from the beginning’ talk,” said the middle of us.

“I wouldn’t care about our dear mother so much,” the oldest wanted to point at something else. “I would be much more worried about the last time and how much our brother drank Michael’s blood and how much time he has until the hunger makes him lose control.” They both were looking at me narrowly. I avoided their gaze because the truth was I didn’t have much of it. “Oh dear,” they sighed heavily.