Youth

#54 - Blood

"So... you're trying to tell me that... our friend, who's been our friend since we were very little, is half-vampire," Sally laughed, shaking her head. She picked up her phone and checked the date - "guys, it's not even April Fools," she shook her head, but there was something strained in her voice that told Tara and Damien she believed them more than she was willing to let on. Damien sighed.

"I can prove it to you," he hummed.

"If that means drinking my blood then I'm out," Sally joked, and Damien let out a small, strained laugh too, before walking over to Tara's dressing table.

"Tara, do you have a pair of scissors?" he asked. Tara furrowed her brow, before realising why he was asking.

"No! You're not gonna hurt yourself to prove a point," Tara muttered.

"I have a higher pain tolerance to ordinary people, Tara. I'll hardly even feel it. And then Sally can see it heal," he responded, looking over at Sally, who seemed uneasy - not because she was afraid of blood, though she was, but because she didn't want to see her friend bleeding. Tara crossed her arms over her chest.

"Why not just show her the stab wound from last night? You still have the hospital papers to prove that it happened," Tara shrugged.

"Stab wound...?" Sally questioned.

"Yeah. It's why I found out. I heard the ambulances in Damien's area at a ridiculous time in the morning and saw he'd only just come offline when it happened, so my paranoid self went to check it out. I asked for him at the hospital and my intuition was right, so I went to see him. His wound healed ridiculously quickly and he refused to have any family around, so after he was discharged I went to his house to find out what was going on. Turns out what we thought we knew about him was a lie all along," Tara hummed, sending a glance to a nervous Damien. "No family, no pets, no room... no nothing. Except for the revelation that he was half vampire."

    "It's... hard to believe," Sally laughed, rubbing the back of her neck. "I..."

    "I'm not asking you to believe in things that don't exist, Sally," Damien said calmly, "I'm merely asking you to trust me."

    "I do... I do."

* * *

    Back in the original place — where it all started. [Y/n] stared over in the corner where she'd first met Nyais, closing her eyes and remembering. She'd almost been safe - she almost escaped them for real. How did they do it? She didn't feel any wounds from a tranquilliser or something of the like, and she knew Nyais definitely would've reacted before something like that could possibly happen. She raked through her memory, digging into it meticulously.

    Then it clicked.

    Mitzu had been humming. Had he used that stupid hypnosis trick of his on her and Nyais?! Nyais didn't know about it, so it was quite possible- after all, it seems so inconspicuous. And Nyais focuses on sound - he was listening for things that were unusual or malicious. Of course he would've heard Mitzu's humming, but he wouldn't have noted it as anything to be worried about.

    "This is all my fault," [Y/n] whispered to herself, her eyes slowly opening as she stared down at her hands. "I should've noticed— I should've warned Nyais!" she hissed, before placing her palms over her eyes and cursing as tears flowed down her cheeks. She was trembling and her breath hitched as she cried, only allowing her to draw in unstable and unreliable inhales of air.