So she did.

It wasn’t long before her wait was rewarded. From nearby, she heard voices and faint laughter. A screen door slammed. Moments later, a well-built guy in shorts and a blue Nike T-shirt walked up to the bus stop enclosure. He nodded, and leaned against the steel pole that held up the roof. Danika sized him up. He appeared young, attractive, healthy. She assumed he probably smelled okay, unless he’d just been jogging … and even then — she didn’t mind the cologne of a workout. She grinned in the dark at the word that came to mind: manly! So yeah, maybe he was a better candidate than the bum. She could hear her stomach growl, and hoped he didn’t notice.

She considered how to lure him over, but before she had a plan, he took care of the problem for her. He joined her on the bench. “Do you know when the next bus is due?” he asked.

Danika shook her head. “I’m actually just here waiting for a friend. You headed home?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just was at my girlfriend’s, but I’ve got to get home. Early start tomorrow.”

“Cool,” Danika said, and let the silence rest for a moment. Then she composed her face, and considered the inflection of her next words carefully. “This is going to sound weird, because you don’t know me from Adam, but … I’ve had a really bad weekend. My sister died a couple days ago, and …” she coaxed two tears on silent command as she paused. “I could just really use a hug right now, you know?”

“Geez, I’m really sorry,” the man said, and slid closer to her on the bench. “Don’t worry about it being weird. I know what you’re going through,” he said. “I lost my mom last year. At one point, I think I hugged the funeral director.”

He opened his arms to her and she slid in close, stifling the urge to smile with victory. People were so easy to push.

“Thank you,” Danika said, as she laid her head on his shoulder. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. She could make out the clean spike of his deodorant and the faintly floral scent of perfume, but also the sharp spice of recent sweat. And the musky smell of … sex? Again Danika stifled a grin. Was she really smelling the aftermath of this guy’s sex with his girlfriend? She’d never had a good sense of smell, but this seemed strong to her. Another gift from her new disease?

Maybe the rich scents of life would awaken her inner vampire, she thought. She hugged him tighter, and he returned the gesture, patting her back gently. “You’ll get through it,” he promised. “It’s hard, but you do.”

“I know,” Danika said, taking the opportunity of speech to flex her jaw. She held her teeth open, centimeters from the pulse of his neck and felt … nothing. Well, she felt nausea mixed with hunger pains, and her entire body ached with a dull heat. But her jaw didn’t swell. No demanding pain shot from her groin to her teeth and changed her in that instant to make her ready to feed. Danika waited for a minute, and then gently kissed his neck, thinking that perhaps that gesture would trigger her body. But nothing came, and so, before the moment became embarrassingly long, she pulled back with a sad smile.

“Thanks, I needed that,” she said.

“Happy to help,” he answered. “I’ve been there.”

She got up and began to walk away.

“Hey, I thought you were waiting for a friend?”

Danika looked back and shook her head. “I don’t think he’s going to come. Goodnight.”

— 8 —

They discovered Mila was missing on Monday. When she hadn’t shown up to work again, and didn’t answer her phone or email, one of her co-workers had driven over to her apartment at lunchtime, and saw that her car was there. When Mila didn’t answer the door, she called the landlord, who unlocked the door to look inside.

He walked the apartment; then picked up the phone and called the police. There was a dried pool of blood on the front room carpet, and smears of it on the couch and end table. But Mila’s body was not there.

Danika got the call from the police that afternoon. But she didn’t understand it.

“There’s blood all over … but my sister isn’t there?” she repeated to the officer on the phone.

“Exactly,” the cop said. “We’d like you to come down and give us a statement, tell us anything about your sister that might help us find her.” She agreed to be there in an hour, and then dropped the cellphone back in her purse, looking perplexed.

Lon noticed. “What’s up?”

Danika shook her head. “They found blood in my sister’s apartment … but not Mila.”

Inside, she relived the scene from last week again and again. Mila’s wide-open eyes, and the gashes on her neck. She had killed her, she knew she had. She had sucked all of the blood from the poor girl’s veins. Mila is dead! Her inner voice repeated. So where is she?

— 9 —

Danika gave her statement at the police station and went home and thought about all she knew of vampire lore. The recent outbreaks of vampirism that had been reported all across the world seemed to point to some kind of disease or mutation, nobody was sure which yet. But people had been suddenly turning feral and strange without warning. No bites involved. Yet … the legends said that you could be turned into one by the bite of a vampire. Usually, they suggested that the person had to still have a trace of life left in their veins to allow the change. Danika thought she had drained Mila, but could she have left enough life in her that she’d changed?

Was her sister now stalking the night too?

— 10 —

On Tuesday, Danika thought that she might die. There was a throbbing pain that ran from her skull to her toes, and her belly churned and turned and spasmed. Pains shot through her joints every time she moved a finger.

She tried to keep smiling on set, but a haze was growing over her vision, and she found it difficult to focus on the questions she was asking her guests. Her normal sassy patter was missing. Errant pains shot through her guts and head without warning. It was tough to mask that when you weren’t expecting it, and there was a camera trained on your face.

It all came to a head when she stood up to thank her guests at the end of the show. Danika opened her mouth to speak but instead, her legs turned to water. She toppled to the ground.

Lon rushed out to help her as the cameras quickly shifted to focus on a wide shot of the crowd as the credits rolled. One of the other stage managers hurriedly escorted the guests off-stage.

“Danika,” Lon said, cradling her head in the crook of his arm. As he did, her eyes shot open. “What happened?” she said.

“You tell me!” he answered, eyes fraught with concern.

“Shit,” she said, taking his arm to get to her feet. “I fainted, I guess.” Then she groaned. “Crap. I fainted on camera!”

“We’ll take care of it,” Lon said. “We’ll just put out the word that you’ve been sick and your sister was reported missing yesterday … Everyone will understand — probably get us lots of positive PR, actually.”

“Shit,” she whispered again, and then turned to wave at the audience. “I’m okay,” she called out.

With that, Lonn rushed her offstage and back to her office. As they walked, Danika felt the heat in her body grow. It burned so hot, she could barely move. Lon wrapped his arm around her waist and she leaned into him as he opened the door.

“I want you to sit down here for a couple minutes,” he said. “And then I want you to go to the doctor. You have not gotten over whatever you had last week.”

She felt the red haze before she saw it in her vision; it rushed up the back of her spine like a wave, and the molten pain in her jaw returned as it crested. She knew what was going to happen next.

“Lon,” she said, looking him in the eye, as he settled next to her on the couch. “I need something from you,” she whispered.

Hope flickered in his eyes, as he mistook her tone for something else. Something that would answer his own long-held dreams.

“Anything,” he answered, and Danika laid her head on his shoulder. She could feel her teeth descend, and the pains of the past three days changed to a symphony of sensations that all pushed towards one thing. Her mouth ached to open, and her arms throbbed with the desire to embrace. She didn’t have to force this encounter, her body had chosen.

Danika opened her mouth and sank inch-long fangs into Lon’s bared neck. He jumped as the pain hit, but this time she didn’t waste time or blood. She locked her mouth to him, suckling, and slapped her hand over his mouth, stopping his initial attempt to scream. His legs kicked out and his arms pushed against her, but Danika found some secret well of strength in the moment — she easily pinned him and continued to drink, the warmth of his blood setting off explosions of ecstasy down her throat. In seconds, his body relaxed and stopped struggling. His eyes stared at her, just as Mila had. If Danika didn’t know better, she would have sworn that his mouth was smiling.

The heat spread to her belly and then her groin, and Danika moved to straddle his thigh, rubbing herself against him in a gentle rhythm. She could feel that Lon had an erection. Danika laughed inside — she was killing him, and he got hard! The blood inside her somehow turned her on as no man had ever been able to — it only took seconds from the initial brush of her crotch against his thigh to feel the first explosion of orgasm. The sexual heat joined with the vampiric, and Danika longed to rip off her clothes and revel in the sensations. She lifted her face from his neck, and threw her head back to moan as her moment crested, and as she did so, she saw a vacant stare in Lon’s eyes. He looked to be in a euphoric trance. She could feel his blood drooling down her chin, and saw it staining Lon’s shirt as it ran quickly down his neck.

With much of her hunger sated, some moment of sanity returned, and through the haze of bliss, Danika told herself to stop. “I don’t want to kill him,” she told the beast inside her.

She bent and licked the blood from his neck, and then pressed her fingers to his throat, staunching the flow. She held them there for several minutes, and still Lon didn’t move. But he was breathing, his chest continued to move. She could feel the hard-on beneath his pants, as she hugged him. He was still turned on!