The Tortoise and His Sunrise | ✓

20. Backstory

"Did you know that some people are absolute psychos?" he asked conversationally. "They go around killing other people for kicks and never think about how it would affect others."

Nolan's glance flicked to me, and our eyes met for just a second.

"Before we encountered that psycho," he continued. "Sierra was fine. She had normal dreams for her life, just like any other regular fourteen year old. Do you know—what am I talking about; of course you know—that when you bite others and don't finish your meal, they get turned after a day?"

A shiver slid down my spine at his use of the word 'meal', as if it were a perfectly ordinary word used to describe people.

Nolan looked shaken. I moved closer to him, close enough that I could feel the heat emanating from his hoodie through the front of my shirt. His hand shot out and guided me gently but firmly behind him.

He wanted to protect me. I understood, but if I stood behind him, I wouldn't be able to see anything apart from his back.

To distract myself from the sense of unease grappling with my gut, I grabbed onto the back of his hoodie. The soft cotton material under my fingers failed to provide the same comfort it usually did.

"No. I don't drink blood from people."

He sounded taken aback by Nolan's angry declaration. "Not even once?"

"No."

"Not bad." His voice seemed to switch from dismissive to almost admiring. "Anyway, we were young and stupid. There were horror stories about people in our town going missing, people who had been living on the town outskirts right beside the woods, or people who went in for a nice camping trip. We went in with a group of friends anyway.

"We went in deep enough to stumble upon him. He was lying in wait. He hadn't drunk in a while, apparently. He drank from our friends and finished them off, and then stalked us into a dead end. It was a game for him."

He barked out another laugh. "He didn't even need to do that. He was already stuffed from our friends, but hey, here were more perfect victims to sample from. Just to taste-test, you know?"

The nausea in my stomach swirled around and around, threatening to head up my throat.

"He only had a couple of sips from each of us before he got bored and flew off. I had to carry Sierra on my back because he broke her leg for making too much noise, and we barely made it home before the sun rose."

"Sierra's leg was miraculously healed. It was like nothing ever happened. There was no proof that we ever got attacked, except for the bitemarks left on us. I almost thought it was all a dream. But then we saw the morning light in the room. You know how it feels like, don't you, to be afraid of the sunrays coming into the room that first morning?"

Nolan's mouth pressed into a thin line.

"I think our parents would've committed us to a mental asylum if we tried telling them what happened. We would've come forward as witnesses after our friends' parents started filing the missing persons reports if we hadn't lost control."

"Lost control," Nolan repeated. "What did you do?"

The guy's voice dropped. "Our dad came into the room. We were so thirsty."

I thought he'd said he was a normal person. His words seemed to swim around in my mind, resisting my attempt to form a logical conclusion from them.

"You didn't." Disbelief tinged Nolan's words. "That was your dad."

"He tried to make us get ready for school," he said. "We knew we couldn't go out into the sunlight. We couldn't even walk past the light filtering in through the kitchen windows. He pulled us there anyway because he thought we were trying to skip school that day.