his lips were crimson [vampire]

two

CHAPTER TWO

CHRISTIAN'S BODY HIT THE COLD CEMENT FIRMLY; his skull bashed against the brick wall of a scuffed-up building, his back crunched as it collided with the hard pavement.

The structure of the building was rotting away and falling apart, it had pieces of missing bricks scattered about, and when Christian's body hit the building, it cracked and his blood splattered against the wall. The streets—almost empty—echoed with the sound of his body hitting the ground.

There were only a few people near the building, and most of them hadn't noticed his fall; too busy waiting for their rides to pick them up. Morning wouldn't be for a few more hours, people were sleeping and the sky was dark. The crash blurred in with the sounds of cars moving around the busy streets of New York.

The only person who noticed Christian was a woman on her way home from a late-night shift at a bar she worked at. He landed behind her with so much force that the sound of his body hitting the concrete vibrated against the alleyway's walls and a gust of wind pushed her forward.

She turned around at the sound, the sight of Christian filled her with fear and a scream escaped from between her lips. Horror washed over her face, her hands wrapped around her cheeks as her stomach churned from the fright.

Christian's posture laid limp; face busted from the fall. The cuts and wounds that infested his lifeless body pushed out dark blood slowly. He laid jaggedly on the ground; his legs contorted in such a way that it was nauseating to look at.

To the woman it seemed that he fell from the sky.

The next sound to echo through the hollow and empty street were her cries, ear-piercingly loud as shock and terror consumed her entirely.

People turned their heads toward her, her cries so loud that her fellow servers could hear her from blocks away. "The man fell from the sky!" she yelled frantically. "He fell off the building." She was throwing fits of hysterics, repeating herself. "He fell from the sky I swear." The woman looked like she was in pain, taking in sharp breaths of air as she tried to breathe.

Tears fell from her face, unable to get the image out of her head. Trauma hit her so hard that she fell to her knees in the process. Her body shook as she looked at the man, chills running up her spine.

An onlooker pulled out his phone from around the corner, dialing 911. Christian laid lifelessly on the ground, the only sign of life dictated by the slow rise in his chest. As he waited for the line to pick up, he looked down at the woman who was crouched over the fallen man's body.

"Did you say he fell from the sky?" he asked her, looking the body up and down. There was no sign of trauma. All the wounds he had when he fell were nonexistent now, healed up by the immortality they knew nothing about. To the man, it seemed as if the woman spouted lies. What was once concern, became a feeling of doubt, denying that he even fell from the sky in the first place.

As a mortal in the twenty-first century, before the Sei took over, he wasn't aware vampires existed; he couldn't wrap his head around how fast Christian healed. The man thought that if he fell from the top of the eighteenth-floor, the blood, open cuts and broken bones would not be able to disappear or heal that fast. Even in Christian's comatose state, his body would still heal itself.

"Yes," she whimpered. She hadn't noticed his body healing because she closed her eyes when she saw the body; she feared what she'd see when she opened her eyes again.

"Where are his wounds?" The man searched Christian's body for any sign that he fell from the sky, but there was no proof. The woman, confused of the question asked of her, opened her eyes to squint at Christian.