It took hours for me to find the courage to even reach for the handle of that damn supply closet. Small and windowless, the air inside of a damp, stagnant quality that seemed to cling to the skin. Yet it was nonetheless also quiet and secure.

  There was certainty in the dark. A sense of quiet security that the world beyond it lacked. Especially with daylight shining just beyond the door.

  Who could blame me, though?

  All the stories, all the myths and legends, painted vampires as creatures of the night—monsters who would either burst into flames or suffer horribly the moment the sun touched their skin. That’s how it was supposed to be, how everyone knew it was.

  At least, that’s what the tales always said.

  I took a deep breath, forcing my nerves to settle, and braced myself.

  And just past this door? A potential pyre.

  But I had to know.

  Sooner or later, the possibility would come that I’d have to do something during daylight. So I had to know how it would affect me. If it even did.

  Still, I wasn’t about to rush headlong. It was going to get done with caution. Carefully.

  I didn’t open the door all the way—just cracked it, inch by slow inch, pressing myself into the wood as light peeked through the crack, creeping in like a slow tide, a sliver of brightness.

  Had it always been this bright?

  I exhaled through clenched teeth, my hand reaching forward. Slowly, carefully, extending a finger and pushing it into the light. Nothing. No burning, no sizzling, no pain. I waited, counting heartbeats, before I pushed my whole hand into it.

  Still nothing.

  Curious now, I stepped forward, one foot, then the other. The light stretched across my body as I stood fully in the doorway, the full force of it spilling over me, filling the gymnasium with its harsh glow, filtering through dust-caked windows.

  No fire. No spontaneous combustion. But not normal either. At least, not fully.

  Light filled the room, glaring, blazing, almost blinding me, as if I was trying to stare directly at the sun, forcing me to squint against it. It was far too bright. Like someone had put up the bloom or lens flare too strong on a camera. More than that, it was warm. Downright suffocating.

  I checked my phone: 55°F. Normal February temperature. But to me, it felt like a scalding summer day—an easy 104 degrees, if not more, thick and heavy in the air, like mid-August in full force.

  Upside? I wasn’t bursting into flames.

  Downside? Apparently daylight, aside from being borderline blinding, felt much warmer than it should.

  Still, a good tradeoff for not experiencing spontaneous immolation.

  I took a few more tentative steps forward, if only to make doubly sure I didn’t suddenly find my skin begin to smoke. Still, no catastrophe happened and with each passing second I was growing more and more comfortable. The heat was certainly annoying, but I was no worse for wear, as spry and sure in my steps as during the night. Disconfort. Nothing more.

  That’s when I made the mistake.

  The instant I stepped beneath the window I’d broken, sunlight—raw and unfiltered—touched my skin. And my legs buckled beneath me.

  I hit the floorboards hard, air blazing inside my lungs as I collapsed like a lifeless sack. My limbs went limp and useless, wet rags flopping bonelessly at my sides. Every part of me felt crushed, as though some unseen weight had suddenly pressed down on me, heavy and unyielding. Vertigo hit with the force of a hammer, twisting my vision into a dizzying blur, and a sharp rush of nausea rose in my throat, blood and bile fighting to escape.

  It was familiar, in a way. The same sensation I'd felt when heat stroke had crept up on me after a triple shift at the construction site. Weakness. Exhaustion. Skull pounding like it was about to split open.

  But this? A hundred times worse. A raw, primal pressure inside my head, a pain that gnawed and pulsed with a relentless, savage force.

  I groaned and shuddered, trying to get my arms or legs under me and move out of the unfiltered sunlight. Red, frothy spittle clung to my chin and my innards roiled and bubbled. It was no use. I couldn’t put any strength in my limbs.

  Something wet and warm ran on my upper lip, the bridge of my nose and my temples. Horror filled me. Blood was gushing out from my nose, eyes and ears. The roiling sensation wasn’t just a feeling. My blood, that black, tar-like ichor that flowed inside my veins, was quite literally boiling inside me.

  “out. Out. OUT! OUT OF THE LIGHT!” my own voice screamed in the back of my head.

  It took ten long minutes of thrashing and writhing on the floor, body jerking with spasms I couldn’t control. My shoulders, my knees, my hips—hell, even my face—scraped against the rough floor, each movement driven by the maddening thrum of pain pulsing through my skull. I shoved myself, inch by agonizing inch, away from the unforgiving sunlight, frenzied desperation carving my every move.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I felt the first taste of strength return to my limbs, a trickle of relief in the torrent of agony.

  I pushed hard, rolling onto my side, shoving myself away from the light with all the force I could muster. Each movement was a battle, each inch gained a small victory and I didn’t stop until I was as far from the broken window as I could manage, face and chest caked with my own blood.

  It was all I could do to lay there, splayed on my back, in a groaning heap. Bursting into flame would have probably been a kinder fate. The sun wasn’t death for me. It was suffering. Incomparable suffering.

  It took a solid twenty minutes before the fog of agony finally lifted enough to be able to gather my thoughts and regain some strength. In that time, the questions came flooding back.

  Why the hell did unfiltered sunlight hit me like this? Ultraviolet radiation, maybe? But that didn’t add up. From a physics standpoint, it couldn’t be. Glass might block some UV, sure, but it would still be present. And ambient light—the kind that leaked in from every crack and corner—carried trace amounts. I think.

  I wasn’t a genius, but I’d paid attention in class to know the basics.

  So why was it only direct sunlight that had this effect?

  The question gnawed at me. What about shadows? If I stood in the shade of a tree, out of the full reach of the sun, would I still feel it? Or was it only the raw, unfiltered rays that could do this to me?

  This was clearly what the vampiress had referred to when she’d said “the weakening sun”. When we’d fought on the pavement in the daylight, she’d not been nearly as powerful as inside the nurse’s office. And the fact that she’d been able to fight in the sun at all, clearly meant that a vampire’s age played a role in how much of an effect daylight had.

  At least, it was a safe assumption to make.

  The conclusion was simple. Direct sunlight wouldn’t kill me. But it sure as hell would make me wish it did.

  I pushed myself to my feet, every movement slow and clumsy, still feeling the weight of the last few minutes hanging over me. It was like trying to walk after running a marathon, every muscle felt wound too tight around my insides.

  I stumbled back into the storage closet, hands still slightly trembling as I rifled through the shelves. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for—two large, rough linen sheets. Thick, durable and sturdy, probably meant to cover the tumbling mattresses stacked in the corner. Their original purpose didn’t matter now. I had a new one in mind.

  I spread the sheets out, one over the other, and stacked three 20-kilogram weight discs on top of them. Three minutes of fumbling with knots later, the makeshift flail was done. 60 kilos. More than a hundred pounds. It should be heavy enough to come in handier than my hatchet or spear-dagger and the linen durable enough that the fabric wouldn’t tear apart the moment it was swung.

  Probably.

  It would be good for a few swings at the very least. Better than nothing.

  The tests were done and some answers gathered, for better or worse. A little clarity had seeped through the chaos, but not nearly enough to make me feel any safer. Either way, there was no more point in wasting time in the gym. Not like I was going to go anywhere with daylight outside, but there was still more I could explore and do.

  It was time to move—time to see what the back entrance, the one that connected the gym directly to the main school building, had to offer. I’d scavenge what I could, get what I needed, and hunker down until nightfall.

  Then, I’d be gone. Fast.

  Maybe even find some survivors along the way? Or maybe not. Preferably not. Considering my new “dietary needs”.

  I shook the thought off and made my way to the gym’s back door. No sense in worrying about what I’d do if I ran into others. I’d deal with that when it came, if it came to it.

  For now, focus on what I could take and use to keep moving.

  Keep it simple. One step at a time. As always.

  *SNAP*

  The plywood door gave way under my shoulder like it was cardboard, lock still attached and hanging by its socket precariously.

  To be fair, any average person could’ve taken this flimsy thing down with ease. It wasn’t the smartest move, though—the noise would draw attention—but I wasn’t exactly a master of locks.

  Guess I should add that to my list of things to learn. A book on lockpicking might not be a bad idea.

  I shoved the door open the rest of the way and eased my head into the darkened expanse of the old school’s grand hall, senses straining for any sign that my little break-in hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  Not a peep. The only thing that hit me was the musty scent of aged wood, thick with the weight of time, and a haze of dust that seemed to cling to everything in sight.

  The building interior itself was, or rather had been, grandiose back in its heyday. Built in the British style of a boarding school by some Colonel or another, it’d been one of the first private schools built outside of Austin, Texas.

  After getting seized by the government it was repurposed into a public school and eventually abandoned about a decade ago in favor of a modern building when the costs of keeping it up to fire code and its small size became too much to justify.

  Still, despite the age, it was no less impressive. The spacious entrance hall featured a large, central staircase that rose to the classroom floors, flanked by intricately designed mahogany double doors leading to the teacher’s lounge on the left and the mess hall to the right.

  Despite being abandoned, it was set deep in the campus hill and used often enough for storage that it had avoided being cleaned out by looters or squatters. All the mahogany and rosewood just laying about in old furniture and parquet could fetch a pretty penny.

  Well. Could have. If the world hadn’t gone tits up.

  *THUNK*

  My head snapped toward the sound, every nerve alight and my makeshift flail gripped tight, ready to swing at whatever came next. The massive entrance doors creaked open just enough to let the wind slip through, then slammed shut with a sharp THUNK, the air howling as it twisted and tugged at the wood.

  My shoulders sagged for a moment. Just the wind….

  Wait. The wind?

  The double doors had always been locked tight, chained up like the ones at the gym. Only faculty had the keys.

  But as I took a second look, something was off. The chain that had once held the door firm was hanging loose from one of the handles, thick steel links bent and broken, twisted like rubber. Someone—or something—had gotten past that lock. And not by using a key.

  Suddenly, the quiet and gloom of the building no longer felt as comforting. Every shadow hid something. Every quiet second, nothing more than the preamble to a snarl or growl. I stood there frozen like a statue, for minutes on end, waiting for something, anything.

  Nothing.

  No aberrations jumped from the dark, no great bellow of bestial rage broke the silence. Just the quiet of an abandoned building, occasionally punctuated by the slam of the door and the wind behind it. What did, however, slowly dawn on me, was the smell.

  It had been hidden. Masked by dust, mildew and stale air. But once I caught it, I couldn’t shake its coppery tang out.

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  Blood.

  I could smell the faint but unmistakable aroma of stale, cold, coagulating blood.

  The musty scent seemed to trigger something in me, sharpening my senses instantly. My mind locked into a heightened awareness, picking up every detail I had missed before.

  The parquet floor, worn and aged, covered in a blanket of dust, save a few spots where it was thinner, almost absent, as if something had recently disturbed it—smudges of disturbed cleanliness. A boot, maybe? A footprint, faint but unmistakable, leading from the entryway toward the mess hall.

  I stepped closer, my gaze drawn to the knob. It was bent, misshapen, grabbed and turned by someone with too much strength and not enough care. And it was slightly ajar.

  There was something inside the building with me.

  I hissed softly through my teeth and gingerly eased my flail onto the floor, slowly taking off my jacket, sneakers, and anything else that would create unnecessary noise when moving.

  The fact that whatever it was had not just burst into the gym while I tested my capabilities or groaned under the sun meant it was either asleep or was deep enough into the school building so as not to hear me.

  Either that or it was actively biding its time, letting me come to it.

  An ambush predator.

  I tried not to think about that option. For now, I was going to carry on assuming I still had the element of surprise and roll the dice.

  Sneaking to the mess hall took longer than I cared to admit. I tried to move as quietly as possible, shifting my weight to the balls of my heels, but still, the floorboards betrayed me. Each time my foot landed wrong, a loud creak cut through the stillness.

  Whenever it happened, I would stop. My eyes shut tight, listening, waiting for any sound that might tell me I’d been heard.

  For better or worse, nothing came of it. It was just me and the quiet.

  The acrid, coppery stench of stale blood wafting from the mess hall was all I needed to tell that this was the lair of whatever was inside the building with me.

  Opening the door was a process in itself—getting past the rusted, squeaky hinges without them screeching loud enough to wake the dead took more focus, and patience, than I liked. It was almost as bad as trying to cross the minefield of creaky floorboards that lay between me and whatever lay ahead. By the time I was halfway through the cramp corridor connecting the entrance hall to the mess rooms, I was seriously considering throwing caution to the wind and calling out just to get whatever was waiting out in the dark out in the open.

  At least whatever it was couldn’t be worse than the monsters my imagination was conjuring up during this drawn-out, painfully slow task. At least I could see what I’d have to fight and do something.

  Sneaking, it seemed, was not my strong suit.

  I hated uncertainty, hated the waiting, the unknown.

  Then, from somewhere within the mess hall, a noise. Barely audible, but enough to cut through the tension and pull me back to the present.

  Was that… snoring?

  I waited there for a few moments more, trying to focus on the noise. At first it almost sounded like a rumble, too deep to be a snore, but the more I listened and picked up on how rhythmic it was, the more certain I became.

  It was definitely snoring.

  Crossing the thirty foot long corridor was a much faster process on account of its linoleum floor. Mahogany wall travertine apparently had great soundproofing capabilities. What had been barely audible at the back end of the corridor, was full-volume at the front. And it was loud.

  I poked my head slowly around the corner and nearly stuttered.

  In the heart of the mess hall, two massive figures lay sprawled out in deep sleep, their snoring echoing through the silence like a low rumble. They were a grotesque sight—immense bodies draped in hide armor that barely managed to cover the rolls of bloated fat beneath.

  One of them rested on a bear pelt, the other slumped against some kind of shapeless mound. But it was the second figure that caught my attention. A strange, unsettling detail- the creature had the head of a pig.

  The thought struck me like a jolt. Pig-men…Orcs? That was a term I'd seen tossed around in those cheap, no-frills JRPGs I liked to lose myself in.

  Despite the similarities, to call these creature orcs was a bit of a stretch. The similarities were there, just like the little green monsters I called Goblins, but it was… off.

  There was no fantasy here. None of the storied esoteric or exotic of fantasy creatures brought to life from books or games. These were Orcs.

  As imagined by a demeted psychopath locked in the grip of a fever dream.

  As a grotesque distortion of both man and pig, a nightmarish melding of two creatures that should never have shared space. Their bodies were hulking, bloated in all the wrong places, with sagging rolls of flesh that oozed beneath crude armor, as though the skin itself was straining against the weight of their own corpulent forms. The shoulders were wide, too wide, bulging with muscle in a way that felt unnatural, like something stitched together from mismatched parts. Their bodies were cacophonies of muscle and fat, thick legs that seemed to bulge unnaturally, ending in feet that splayed out with pig-like hooves, calloused and cracked from years of heavy use.

  Aberrations. Abominations.

  The head was the most disturbing feature. A face—if you could call it such—that was a twisted mockery of human and boar features, broad, flat snout twitching and pulsing with every heavy breath, nostrils flaring like twin black holes. Thick, gore and gristle-covered lips pulled back in a perpetual sneer, peeled over and disfigured by tusks that jutted out from either side of its mouth, yellow and jagged like the chipped teeth of a beast that had been gnawing on bones for too long.

  This was no noble beast or brutish warrior—it was a mockery of nature, a creature born of some twisted mind's fevered imagination, a grotesque parody of what it meant to be human, to be animal, to be alive.

  I squinted my eyes, clenching my teeth against the urge to dry heave, trying to discern what the mound behind the sleeping creatures was. My eyesight may have improved by leaps and bounds, but the entire gory ensemble was still a good 50 feet away and the mound stood directly against the grime-painted windows, making what little light was peering through, damn near blinding to my hyper-sensitive eyes.

  Still I could make out colors, blues and purples and a lot of red. Something almost like…tree branches sticking out from the top?

  And the stench of it all.. Smelled like an abattoir left to bake in mid-summer sun. All acrid blood, rot and excretia…

  Realization dawned on me like a slap in the face and I nearly recoiled in sheer disgust.

  The things sticking out, they weren’t branches, but human arms, gnawed on and ripped into, fingers and entire chunks of flesh outright missing. That small mound… students and teachers… it was a larder made entirely out of human corpses.

  I clenched my teeth tight to prevent myself from cursing and gripped my improvised flail tighter.

  This was bad.

  If these orcs were similar to fantasy and pop-culture, they’d be much stronger than a human. Which, considering the sheer size and bulk of them, was a safe assumption to make. Vampirism had improved my body to the absolute pinnacle of human physicality, but if these orcs were as strong as their frames hinted at, fighting two at the same time would be idiotic.

  In gaming terms it would be like aggro-ing two mobs with skulls instead of level indicators.

  The rotbloods, goblins and the vampiress had been situations foisted on me. They had been do or die, no third option.

  This?

  This was just looking for trouble.

  “Nope. No, thank you.” I thought.

  Combat was out of the question. That was the sort of nonsense heroes did in works in fiction. And I hadn’t lived my life like that. When you grow up the way I had, you either learn quickly how to steer clear of trouble and stay out of sight, or you end up as a corpse in a ditch. Pick your battles and keep your head down.

  Don’t go making your business what ain’t yours.

  Simple mottos to live by.

  Well…simple in theory. Sometimes trouble finds you whether you like it or not. The situation with Andreas was the perfect example of that.

  But, all in all, despite certain hiccups along the way, I’d walked that invisible, unnoticeable line quite well before all this. Vampire or human, I had no intention to try and fix what wasn’t broken.

  And I’d already fucked around and found out when I’d ignored this tried and true habit. Such as playing the hero and “saving” a screaming girl who’d turned out to be a centuries-old vampiress.

  All this shot through my head as I began to retreat back the way I came. A plan had already formed. I’d lay low in the gym’s supply closet until nightfall and then haul ass somewhere else.

  Not two steps within my retreat that I seized up and toppled to one knee.

  Something was wrong.

  EVERYTHING was wrong.

  My entire body stung and itched as if it had been submerged in acid. Every muscle ached and went painfully taut. My mouth suddenly felt too small as my teeth elongated and sharpened. Drumming, throbbing pressure wracked through my skull, like an adrenaline high but so much stronger, and, without even realizing it, I turned my head towards the mess hall.

  Just like when the rotbloods had torn the goblins whose blood was rightfully mine, raw, red rage covered my mind like a crimson sheet.

  The audacity.

  The temerity.

  The sheer balls on these orcs to occupy and sleep in a territory that I had decreed was mine.

  I wanted to carve them. Rip and tear them into red ribbons.

  Not just wanted to. Needed to.

  They had to remember that they were prey and I was the predator.

  An example had to be made.

  It was the sheer absurdity of the thoughts gnawing at the edges of my mind that kept me rooted in place, preventing me from charging into the mess hall like some rabid ape and throwing myself into the fray. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my skull, beneath the tide of rage threatening to swallow me whole, I could feel a scream of disbelief clawing at my thoughts.

  What the hell was this?

  This wasn’t me. This wasn’t how I operated.

  I didn’t lose control like this. I didn’t have tantrums, didn’t let my emotions burn away the thin thread of reason. And words like predator and prey—they didn’t belong to me.

  The thoughts felt alien, a dark poison seeping into my mind, twisting it into something unrecognizable. I felt... wrong. My pulse raced, my teeth gritted so hard I feared they might crack, and yet all I could think was—Why would I fear my prey?

  My legs moved.

  “Stop it, you idiot” in my mind I bellowed at myself.

  Another step.

  “Stop it”

  No use.

  In the midst of a whirlpool of hate and spite, the speck of sanity that was myself, was drowning.

  My body was moving, simultaneously beyond my control and fully in my control. I both dreaded the idea of doing this… and wanted nothing more than to do it.

  To fight.

  To kill.

  To prove myself the predator.

  Another step. Almost at the end of the corridor now, a hand pulling the rusted hatchet from my belt, froth and spittle edging my mouth, a low, deep growl thrumming out from my throat.

  “If I’m gonna fight these things, it won’t be like a suicidal berserker dammit!” I bellowed in my mind, a last, desperate protest against the madness.

  The moment my thoughts shifted from flight to fight, the madness snapped back with a jarring suddenness, as if someone had thrown a switch.

  My muscles loosened, the tension draining from my limbs. The blood that had boiled in my veins cooled, and the red haze that clouded my mind evaporated like fog under the first touch of sunlight, coiling itself into a tight knot in the back of my skull. The shift was so abrupt that I nearly stumbled forward, caught in the aftermath, but I managed to steady myself just in time, instead of careening face-forward straight into the mess hall.

  I stood there for long seconds, utterly still, listening. The only sound was the heavy snoring of the orcs—deep, rhythmic, and undisturbed. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, then slid down against the wall, burying my face in my hands.

  Of course.

  Of bloody damn course.

  Wide-eyed optimism had never been a fault of mine, but even I couldn’t ignore the bitter irony of it all. I’d been overly optimistic—naive, even—in assuming that the red-hot fury I’d woken up to was some kind of one-off, a product of thirst and nothing more.

  What the hell had I been thinking? If vampirism had twisted my body this much, it only made sense it would warp my mind too.

  “But why now? Why not against the goblins or the rotbloods?”

  Again, questions with no answers. And unlike with my physical capabilities, there was no way to test this out.

  I was aware of it now. The red fury, that pressure, I could perceive it now, even “dormant” as it was. It had been there since waking up like this. Since I’d become a vampire. Coiled in the back of my mind, waiting, like a constant tension that would not dissipate, egging me on to do… something.

  There was no getting out of this.

  I was going to have to fight.