The ceiling fan in Ethan's apartment spun with a low, rhythmic hum, but it did nothing to cool the sweat on his forehead. Every time he closed his eyes, he was back in that morgue. He could still see the girl's skin that unnatural, marble white paleness and those jagged puncture marks on her neck. It wasn't just the sight of the body that haunted him; it was the lingering chill in the air, a cold that seemed to sink into his very bones and refuse to leave.
He kicked off his thin blanket and sat up, rubbing his face with shaking hands. "Get it together," he whispered to the empty room. "It's just a job. You've seen dead bodies before."
But he knew he was lying to himself. He had seen car accidents, heart attacks, and even messy crime scenes, but he had never seen a body that looked so… drained. Like someone had reached inside and pulled out every ounce of life, leaving nothing but an empty shell.
By 1:00 AM, the silence of New York City started to feel heavy. Usually, even at this hour, there was a distant siren or the muffled thump of a neighbor's bass. Tonight, the city felt hollow. He stood up, unable to handle the four walls of his bedroom for another second. He pulled on a dark hoodie, shoved his keys into his pocket, and headed out. He told himself he just needed some air, a walk to clear the fog in his brain.
The street behind his apartment building was bathed in the sickly orange glow of a buzzing streetlight. It was eerily still. Even the stray cats that usually fought over the trash cans were nowhere to be seen. Ethan started walking, his sneakers clicking against the pavement. With every step, he felt a prickle at the back of his neck, that primitive instinct telling him he was being watched.
He was about two blocks away when he heard it.
"Help... please..."
The voice was faint, little more than a dry rasp. Ethan froze. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Hello?" he called out. His voice sounded thin and small in the vast silence of the alleyway. "Is someone there? Do you need a doctor?"
"Please... help me..."
He followed the sound toward a narrow side street where the shadows seemed thicker than usual. A single streetlight flickered overhead, casting long, dancing shadows against the brick walls. Standing directly under the light was a woman. She was slender, wearing a tattered dress, and she was standing perfectly still. Her head was bowed, her long hair hiding her face.
"Hey, are you okay?" Ethan asked, taking a cautious step forward. As a medical assistant, his first instinct was to check for a pulse, for an injury. "I can call for help. Just stay where you are."
She didn't move. She didn't even seem to be breathing.
"Miss?"
The woman slowly tilted her head back. When the light hit her face, Ethan's stomach did a slow, sickening roll. Her skin wasn't just pale; it was translucent, showing thin blue veins like cracks in porcelain. But it was her eyes that stopped his heart. They weren't brown or blue. They were a deep, glowing crimson the color of fresh blood under a heat lamp.
Ethan took a jagged step backward. "What... what are you?"
She didn't answer with words. In a blur of movement that his eyes couldn't even follow, she was suddenly inches from him. Her hand shot out, her fingers locking around his throat with the strength of an iron vice. Her skin was freezing, like touching dry ice.
"You smell... alive," she hissed. Her voice didn't sound human anymore; it was a hungry, guttural growl. "So much life inside you."
Ethan clawed at her hand, but it was like trying to break a steel pipe. He couldn't breathe. The world began to gray at the edges, and the smell of old copper and cold earth filled his nose. He tried to scream, but only a weak gasp escaped his lips. He saw her lips curl back, revealing teeth that were much too sharp to belong to a person.
"Move!" a voice roared from the darkness.
Suddenly, a heavy thud echoed through the alley. The woman let out a piercing shriek—a sound that shattered the silence—and vanished into the shadows so fast she seemed to turn into smoke.
Ethan collapsed to the ground, clutching his throat and gasping for air. His lungs burned as he sucked in the cold night air. Through his blurred vision, he saw a figure approaching. It was a man, tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a long black coat that seemed to blend into the night.
"Can you stand?" the man asked. His voice was deep and steady, showing no sign of fear.
Ethan nodded weakly, though his legs felt like jelly. The stranger reached down, grabbed Ethan's arm, and hauled him up with surprising ease. "We can't stay here. Move. Now!"
Ethan didn't argue. They sprinted down the alleyway, the man's heavy boots echoing against the stone. Behind them, Ethan heard strange, sharp snapping sounds ike wood breaking or small gunshots but he didn't dare look back. They turned a corner, then another, until the man pulled him into a dark, narrow space between two buildings.
"Stay down," the man commanded, his eyes scanning the rooftops.
Ethan leaned against the cold brick, his chest heaving. "What... what the hell was that?" he panted. "She wasn't... she wasn't human."
The man turned to look at him. His face was rugged, with a sharp jawline and eyes that looked like they had seen too much. "You're right. She wasn't. That was a vampire."
Ethan let out a dry, hysterical laugh. "A vampire? Are you serious? Those are movies, man. That was... I don't know, a drug addict? Some weird cult?"
The stranger didn't smile. "Does a drug addict move faster than a bullet? Does a cult member have glowing red eyes? They've been here a long time, kid. They hide in the cracks of this city, watching and waiting."
Ethan felt a new kind of cold wash over him. It wasn't the wind; it was pure, unfiltered dread. "Why me? Why did she go for me?"
The man, whose name Ethan would soon learn was Lucas, stepped closer. He looked at Ethan with a mix of pity and intensity. "Your blood," Lucas said. "It's different. To them, you don't just smell like a meal. You smell like a prize. They can sense something in you that you don't even know is there yet."
Ethan's mind was spinning. This morning he was worried about his shift at the clinic. Now, he was hiding in an alley from things that weren't supposed to exist. "What do I do? Where do I go?"
"You survive," Lucas replied, his voice dropping to a low whisper. "And you listen. My name is Lucas. I've been hunting these things for years. If you stay with me, I can keep you alive. If you walk out that alley alone... you won't make it to the next street light."
Ethan looked out at the street. A car drove by a block away, its headlights sweeping across the pavement. The city looked normal, but the veil had been torn away. He looked at his own hands they were still shaking.
"Why me?" Ethan asked again, his voice barely a whisper.
Lucas paused, looking toward the shadows where the woman had disappeared. "Because you're marked, Ethan. And now that they've had a whiff of you, they aren't going to stop until they find you."
Ethan swallowed hard. He looked at Lucas, then back at the dark city. He realized that the life he knew was gone. The hunt had begun, and he was the prey.