There I stood, in the flames of hell. As he looked down unto me, he spoke the three words I will never forget:
“You have failed,”
I failed my life as a normal human being. I remember my last moments of life; I was lying in my bed at about 9 at night, and I was home alone. I think I must’ve fallen asleep because all I remember after that was waking up to find my neck slashed across and blood splattered on my shirt. The pain was unbearable but only lasted a couple of minutes before everything ended.
That leaves me here. I couldn’t tell if I was so hot because of all my stress and fear, or the fire itself. My final judgment day was now, in the pits of Hell, and as I stared up to what I believed was the devil himself, he spoke once more. “You can stay here and burn for the rest of your afterlife, but you have done so many horrid things, I don’t think I want you here in my world Robert Downer. Your judgment is to serve me in the human world, as a Strigoi along with the rest of your family. Your mission is simple; sustain your hunger and take down the Vatican City and kill the Pope once and for all.”


Sustain my hunger and take down the holy city of the Vatican? What do I have against the Vatican City? Why must I sustain my hunger? What kind of hunger is this? I had so many questions back then, especially like “What is a ‘Strigoi’?” I now know that my life now is to serve the devil and take down the Vatican. I must quench my thirst for the substance that enables humans to live. I am a strigoi, and so are my brothers Anthony and Jarett and my girlfriend Jenna. Why I don’t know. Oh, and by the way, Strigoi means vampire in Romanian.
What else did I have to say to him at the time? Well, I said the only answer I could:
“I accept.”


After that, everything flashed a bright red, and I awoke to find myself back in my room on my bed. Blood was nowhere to be seen, and a note was left on my dresser. I opened it and read it: “Robert, what the hell is going on? We all thought you were dead.”
It was from Jenna I could tell from the handwriting. She was scared and she knew what she was, I could feel it. A vampire, I never thought at the time they existed. Boy was I wrong. Most of all, I never thought I become one after my death. I guess you call this my second chance at life, but in reality, I was only here to end people’s life and kill the Pope. I can’t kill. That’s what I thought back then, but now I have no choice. Either I kill to get blood, or resist and die.


Chapter One
WAY OF LIFE
As the sun went down at the Downer house, the residents awoke with excitement. Tonight was feeding night one of two for this month. I was the first one up, but I hadn’t gotten much sleep. I was still ready to feed tonight. My brothers and I had our eyes on a particular victim. His name is Greg Krisna and is very skinny. Greg is fourteen years old and is the only one in his family that believes in our kind. This is why we have to kill him. I honestly don’t like killing humans, it doesn’t seem right to kill someone so we can fulfill our thirst for only a couple weeks. Though Greg seems like he doesn’t want to live anymore, I still find it hard to kill after a whole year since my rebirth.
I changed into my usual outfit; a band T shirt, black skinny jeans, and my hair combed to the left. My name is you already know, is Robert Downer and I’m sixteen years old. I was fifteen when I was changed. I live with two younger brothers Anthony and Jarett, and my girlfriend Jenna Lucy. My parents died five years ago, or at least that’s what me and my brothers think. We never take the time to look into it. They left us by ourselves without any warning so I took it upon myself to let Jenna move in. Her parents basically banished her because of her beliefs and she needed a place to stay, so I offered my home. We’ve been together for two years, and now we share the same secret. We all share the secret. We can’t let anyone ever find out. We are basically vampires but I hate calling us that because it sounds too much like a fiction. We are different than the ones you see and read about. We have egos. If we don’t feed, we become monsters. Pretty literally actually. The blood rejuvenates us, lets us live longer. Without blood, our true identity reveals itself. You know how a person transforms into a werewolf? Well, we sort of have the same idea. Without blood for a long period of time, we transform into something like a werewolf. At least this is what I theorize. Jenna tells me stories about it so I just go off her stories. What I do know, is that once we transform in these monsters, we go on a rampage for blood. When we kill, we not only drink the blood but we dismember the victim and eat the remains. If you think about it, it’s actually worth the kill two times a month than a city’s worth of kills without feeding.
I sat on the couch and watched TV until everyone else was fully awake and functional. After a long hour and a half, I was getting my coat on and waiting for Anthony, Jarett, and Jenna to do the same. As Jarett, Anthony, and I were about to walk out the door into the night, Jenna grabbed my hand. “I’m not going tonight, Robby. I don’t need any tonight.” She looked sad as she said this. I grabbed her other hand and looked deeply into her beautiful eyes and said, “Tell me what’s wrong Jenna.” A tear rolled its way down her cheek and she looked up at me. She started to cry. “I can’t keep doing this Robby. I can’t kill a boy this young. It’s too much this time. Can you imagine how he’ll look at us as he dies?” She said all this in between sobs.
Anthony, the youngest yelled back at us, “Come on, we haven’t all night!”
I wiped her tears and felt a bit of sadness for her. “Alright, you stay tonight. You can’t keep holding out like this on every kill, Jenna. You’ll become one of…” I didn’t know how to say this. Jenna had a looked of fright as she spoke. “One of what?” She was scared.
“One of them, you know? Our true identity.” That was all I could say. I never wanted to say anything about our “other side”. This didn’t help her. “Jenna, you know neither of us want be what we are. We have no choice though.” She shook her head. I wiped her tears and she sniffled, and I couldn’t help but give her a big hug. I began to walk out the door as Jenna said, “Robby?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
Love. Can we even love?
“I Love you too, Jenna.”
Then my brothers and I walked out into the night.