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Chapter I
Dreams

She hid in the foul smelling closet as she held her hand over her mouth to keep from breathing.  She silently prayed to herself that if god were to keep her alive, she would not fail him again.
A whimper escaped her lips and she froze.  She thought she heard something.  The whisper of a sudden breath?  The whip of a midnight black cloak?
She pressed her hand against her mouth so hard that her plastic, pink painted nails dug into her skin and drew a minuscule droplet of rose red blood.  The blood- thirsty vampire was somewhere in the room outside her tiny closet, waiting, taking his time finding her.  He had bled dry all her sorority sisters.  She was the only one.
She shut her eyes as a floorboard creaked.  This was it.
GOD!  She prayed fiercely, her eyes snapping open instinctively.  SAVE ME!

Her ear shattering scream pierced the musty air as the closet door burst open and the monster with death white skin, splattered with dried and caked blood stood before her.  A pure evil grin was on his chalky, bloody lips as he looked down at her.  The girl couldn't move from fright.  A droplet of blood fell off his yellow fang.
"Such irony," The vampire mused as the girl pressed herself against the back of the tiny closet.  "That in the end, it would be your own doing that led me to you."
A thin finger rose to the girls face and his yellow fingernail brushed the drop of blood from her cheek.

Her screams shattered the silence of the woods surrounding the cabin and slowly died out as the vampire ferociously ripped her neck apart.

The deaths of the girls of Pie Beta New would forever be ruled as a mass suicide.

The legend of the vampire remains.

She closed the book and looked up.  She stretched, her back cracking from being still so long.  She looked up at the sky and saw dark grey clouds.  She hadn't realized how late it had gotten.
She knew she should have started back home half an hour ago but she wanted to finish her book in silence.  She knew if she had taken it home she never would have been able to concentrate.  She yawned and shoved the tattered and smelly library book into her back pack.  Suddenly the wind picked up and she raised her head to the sky while closing her eyes.  She breathed deeply in.  The finest of mists began falling onto her face and it was the most comforting thing she could remember.  After a few seconds, she sighed and looked back down.  She sat at a molding picnic table at the neighborhood park, if you could even call it that.  The five year olds played on the swings in the day and at night the fifteen year olds made drug deals to shadowy figures.  It was almost sunset.  The shady cars parked on the curb across the street would be arriving soon.  The tinted windows of the cars would occasionally roll down just enough for small, hand sized packages to be passed discreetly to the boys.
She knew she would get yelled at for being out so late.  She sighed again.  She didn't want to go home.

She pulled the straps of her old pack over her shoulders and she jumped off the table.  At this rate, she will be out of library books in a matter of weeks…  She ground her teeth at the thought of the ridiculous excuse for a "library" she now had to use.  Some stupid kid who was pissed about his life apparently had burned down the nice library that used to be three blocks from her house.  They finally got a replacement up and running two weeks ago but unfortunately there were probably only 300 books in the whole place.  The county didn't have enough money for anything better though.
She pulled an ipod she had "found" out of her pack and put the ear buds into her ears.  She lazily scrolled through until she found something she felt like.
She stretched once more and then set off on the dying grass toward the trail.  She was lucky to have such a nice place to run.  Her last foster family had lived in a stupid suburb neighborhood where the houses were so close you could reach your hand out and shake your neighbors hand if you wanted.  Her pathetic foster "sister" had ruined everything by telling their social worker that their "daddy" was sneaking into their room every night and playing "games".  Like that mattered when you have a place to sleep every night and food to eat whenever you're hungry…

She fell into her familiar pace that she didn't even have to breathe through her mouth while she ran.  She was in excellent shape.  It was the only thing she had ever had any control over her whole life through.  Maybe that was why she held onto her exercise so fiercely.
She leapt over the puddles and potholes on the trail with ease as her mind wandered freely.  The two mile trail was always so pleasant to her.  It always cleared her head.
The music kept her mind from moving toward depressing subjects.
After maybe a little over a mile of running, she suddenly became very aware of her surroundings.  Why?
What had changed?
Her skin suddenly started crawling and she slowed to a stop.  She slowly reached up and pulled the ear buds from her ears.  The music still splashed from the tiny speakers but she was beyond noticing.  She looked around at the deserted woods surrounding the trail.  The hairs on the back of her neck rose.  Suddenly she realized what it was she was feeling.

She was being watched.

She shivered unpleasantly as that realization hit her.  It wouldn't be the first time some kid had followed her and stolen her bag or worse.  But she distinctly remembered what that feeling had felt like and this wasn't it.  Even though the January air was unusually warm she ran her hands up and down her arms in an attempt to bring warmth to her.
She spun around looking everywhere in the twilight light trying desperately to find the source to her unease.  A chilly wind suddenly whipped her short blond hair into her face and she shivered worse than every.  There was something about this wind, something unusual.  Something sinister.
She took off, sprinting through the woods as the wind trailed behind her, chasing her in a way.  Her ear buds hung, forgotten, swinging dangerously around her ankles.  She started panting as she ran at her full speed, but not from excursion.

"Uhn!"  She exhaled suddenly as her foot caught on something and she fell face first onto the ground.  She groaned as she slowly pushed herself off the ground.  She watched as the rust coloured, dead leaves on the ground got splattered by what looked like dark red paint.  It was a few seconds before she realized it was her own blood.  She snorted and stood up.  She looked down and saw her ear buds tangled with her foot.  She untangled it and turned the ipod off.  She looked around.
The wind had stopped blowing.  The feeling had ceased.  She didn't need to be told twice.  She started running again and was at her front door in under a minute.
"No!  Nah, I never promised that!  You fucking asshole…  GO TO HELL!"
She heard a phone being slammed down.  She walked cautiously through the doorway as quietly as possible.  She held the doorknob and bit her lip as she inched the door closed.
"Charlee?"  She heard her "mother" bark at her.  She gritted her teeth.  Failure…
"Yeah?"  She tried to sound pleasant but of course she wasn't ever pleasant.  Her "mother" came around the corner and stood against the doorway, her hair a pooffy mess, wearing a hideous nightgown with a cigarette in hand.  She glared suspiciously at her.
"Where've you been?"  Her "mother" said nastily at her.  She sighed.
"Just reading at the park, Charlotte."  She internally rolled her eyes once again at the ridiculous name her foster mother had changed her name to.  But of course if she called her by her actual name (Irma) she would get a pot thrown at her.  "Why do you care?"  Charlee sighed as she walked inside and set down her bag.
"I don't.  But that bloody nose doesn't exactly back up your story."  Her "mother" walked forward while pulling the cigarette smoke into her lungs.
"Oh… forgot about that…"  Charlee said quietly, walking towards the sink and wadding a bunch of paper towels.  She wet the wad and dabbed at her face, whipping the blood away.
"Well."  Her "mother" said impatiently.  "What happened?"  She said loudly.  Charlee sighed again.
"Tripped."  She muttered, holing the paper towel to her face.  Irma snorted.
"Yeah, right…"  Her "mother" turned and started walking back into the living room where the flat screen TV that had never in its life been turned off sat amidst what could only be described as a landfill.  Charlee threw the paper towels into the trash and ripped her bag from the table.  She walked over to the refrigerator and pulled open the door in an all too familiar way.  She played with her lips as she surveyed the contents, or rather lack of contents.
"I'm hungry!"  Irma yelled from her recliner.  "Make something…"
"There isn't anything to make."  She yelled back, annoyed because she had promised to go to the market today.
"Then go pick up some take-out!"  She screamed at her.  Charlee gritted her teeth even harder and gathered every fiber of her being so as not to go grab a baseball bat from the closet and go into the living room and beat her repeatedly with it.  She decided she couldn't risk opening her mouth so she walked silently up the stairs into her bedroom.
"God-fucking-dammit…"  She muttered to herself as she threw down her bag and fell face-first onto her bed.  "I hnage mu wife."  She said into her mattress.  It was supposed to be 'I hate my life.'…
It was a little past six and she still had to write a paper and make serious progress on two other assignments she had been putting off.  Tomorrow would be Wednesday and that meant only one thing of course…

Her "daddy" coming home.
She hated him even more so probably than any other single person in the world.  His name was ironically Charlie.  And that was why she hated her name.  Especially when it was being screamed by Irma.
Her foster father worked at a company that she didn't care to know anything about except the hours he worked.  He worked six days a week except Wednesdays.  He stayed home.  But what was so bad about the fact that he was home was not exactly entirely him but more of the company he kept.  He had… a lot of friends.  And these friends liked to do certain things…
He made an extra five or six hundred dollars a week renting Charlee and Charlotte out on Wednesdays…
But of course she had school until 3:30 so by the time she got home she had a lot of time to make up for…
She never got any of her school work done on Wednesdays.

She signed into her mattress, smelling the awful cat-urine smell that was forever infused in it.  She might as well get started…  She got up and went to work.  It was eight thirty by the time she rubbed her eyes sleepily and closed her books.  She had gotten a lot done, but not enough.  Looks like yet another night without much sleep…
She yawned and stood up.  She walked over to a mirror and looked at her reflection.  She had short, chin length white-blond hair (natural) and beautifully tanned skin a nice orangey colour that didn't clash with her hair.  She had a flat stomach, skinny arms and legs, long fingers and a long graceful neck.  One hundred and sixteen on her 5'8" frame was her ideal weight.  She was strong, deceptively, thin and beautiful.  She couldn't gain weight if she tried.  She had on a faded white tank and over that a navy cotton jacket that fell off her shoulders and a trusty and comfortable, stretchy pair of jeans.  She closed her eye and turned away from the mirror.  She opened her bedroom door and leapt down the stairs unhappily.  She grabbed her purse on the way out the door.  She slung the strap over her shoulder and settled into a light jog.  There was a Chinese place that Irma liked and Charlee could stand just down the road from their house.  She ordered and paid and was walking back with food in hand  within fifteen minutes of leaving the house.  She glanced at her watch.  Almost nine…  Irma would be pissed.  Oh well.  Doesn't matter…
She thought to herself as she grimaced.  It did matter…  Irma would give her most of Charlie's friends tomorrow.  Great… just great…

She tried to avoid Irma as much as possible but mealtimes were impossible to evade.  She sat in silence, watching her food as she ate and Irma watched her TV.  Charlotte had made it clear that dinner time was family time.  It was a crime against God and Jesus to not do so.  Irma said grace over every single meal Charlee had had since she had gotten here.  She found it ridiculous…  Crime against god?  Hah!  And whoring out sixteen year olds wasn't?  Charlee could only guess that in Irma's mind, god probably enjoyed a whore every now and again himself so therefore whoring was righteous work.  That was how Charlotte thought.
After dinner, Charlee ran upstairs to her room without a word.  She would come down later and do the dishes.  She finished with her school work and was nearly passed out.  She staggered to her bed and fell onto it.  She signed with satisfaction.  She was asleep within seconds.

It was strange.  She was in a forest, but it wasn't a forest she knew.  The leaves weren't green.  They were a colour she didn't know, didn't have a name for.  The forest looked so clean…  Like there wasn't any dirt or a bug for miles…  All the trees were smooth and silky like satin or velvet and were perfectly spaced beside each other.  There was a strange feeling from the forest.  Almost… sinister.  Beautifully sinister.  Because the place was beautiful.  But there was something wrong about it.  Very wrong…

She didn't feel the need to wander.  She just stood in the center looking wonderingly around at the strange place.  She started turning in a circle so she could see every side of the forest.  As she did so the sky turned dark grey.  There was no sound, but somehow she knew there was thunder not far off.  Suddenly she turned and someone was there.  The figure didn't startle her, but she stopped rotating.  She stared at the young man in front of her without thought.  He was beautiful.  That was the only thought that managed to make it into her mind.  He walked forward and even though his eyes shone with evil excitement, even though his lips turned up into what could only be a smile, she wasn't afraid.  He smiled wider.  He was close enough to touch.
"Charlee."  The figure said slowly, the evil smile still in place.  He walked closer.  "Charlee…"  He was an inch away.  His lips came very slowly onto hers.  But it was wrong.

Every thought she had now was clear.  This person, this… thing, whatever he was, was wrong.  Every fiber of her being screamed at her to pull away and run.  He was dangerous!  He was going to hurt her!  But she couldn't move.  His icy, hard as stone lips stayed perfectly still on hers.  It was a kiss, but it didn't feel like it.  In a kiss you're supposed to close your eyes right?
He stared directly into her eyes as she stared right back into his.
"Charlee…"  The figure whispered against her lips.  She blinked and he was a hundred feet away.  He smiled a parting smile and when he turned, and she inhaled suddenly, he was gone.  Not a trace.  He disappeared into thin air.
"No!"  She tried to scream but no sound came out.

She gasped as she jerked away.  The memories of the dream trickled away like the sand in an hourglass.  One second she remembered the beautiful, wrong person and the next she didn't remember who had been in her dream.  She sat up and ran her hand through her soaked hair.  She was covered in sweat.
"Ugh."  She groaned as she tried to remember.  All she could remember was that she had had a dream about someone being with her somewhere strange and that he had left her and that she was indescribably sad that he had left.  She snorted.
"Stupid…"  She muttered, letting herself fall back against her pillow.