WereVamp

By MP Sharma

Mallika couldn’t believe that it was just a couple of weeks ago when her life seemed perfect.

No, it was perfect.

She was finally beginning to feel comfortable in her own skin, her father was starting to come around to the fact that she wasn’t his little girl any longer, the one that needed his protection and guidance, she had grown into a formidable young lady and she could make her own decisions. but could she?

Because her decision may have costed her the only thing she’d ever truly loved and had within her grasp, her life had been perfect, no matter how hard it was convincing everyone else that they were meant to be, for the first time she didn’t care - Levi loved her and he was the only one who had ever really mattered in all the years her form had cursed the planet.

But not any more.

Levi was gone, no, he was worse than gone; he was here without being hers. Every time she looked into his eyes, her heart cracked a little further and each time she believed with her soul it couldn’t hurt anymore but she was wrong.

It can always hurt more.

Levi’s beautiful caramel eyes didn’t recognise her anymore, didn’t pine for her the way she had grown blissfully accustomed to any longer and she had no one else to blame but herself.

It was her fault - Mallika should have known better, how could something as despicable as her, a creature as abhorrent as her ever have a perfect life, ever have a blessed life?

She couldn’t - life after death was dark. It was bleak and hopeless. It was anything but perfect. But she deserved it, she had asked for it, laid a bed she could never truly rest in.

Mallika knew she would eventually hurt him, burn him to cinders the way she did everyone. Since when had anything or anyone that had even gotten close to her lived to enjoy life the way she once had all those hundreds of years ago? Never.

Mallika had thought leaving him would save him, eventually Levi would have forgotten her, even as seeing him every day would have ripped her soul into shreds again and again for the eternity she was doomed to live but she had been too late.

Loving Levi was his ultimate destruction and there was no one else to blame but her. Mallika has destroyed the only thing that meant anything to her in this unloved world with her own bare hands and she was the cause of it all.

Adrinius, her devastatingly evil brother had been right all along, Mallika wasn’t fit to take over the mantel from her father. How could anyone lead Dracula’s people but Dracula himself?

But he wasn’t here anymore, he had been sacrificed in the pursuit of her supposed happiness like so many after him but all she felt was a tumultuous sadness within her old vampire bones.

If Mallika couldn’t save the one person she loved with all her soul, how was she ever going to lead her brothers and sisters, her father’s, Dracula’s people into the promised vampire land the way she had been destined to? Mallika feared that they were all condemned to an undead life of misery and perpetual hell the way she was and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it or could she?

Maybe it was time Mallika sacrificed herself for the greater good this once ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: MP Sharma
• Release date: Sep 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463430347

MP Sharma

M.P. (Mituri Pradip) Sharma is a Writer, a Print Journalist, a Technical Writer, a Business Analyst, a Test Lead, and a Marketing & Communications/Public Relations Head for Nim-Véda Australia. Though she has a varied background, what has remained constant is her absolute obsessive love for writing, having written sporadically throughout the years. Mituri began her career as a print journalist while in school and continued to work as one while completing her university education in journalism, writing for a variety of local papers, university publications, online materials and glossy magazines. Even though a brief dissolution with the journalism world lead her down the path of Business Administration and Information Technology (with postgraduate degrees in both), she soon accepted the fact that writing was going to be plaguing her, happily or otherwise till she was no more. A previous recipient of the Australian based Michael Harrison Award for Print Journalism, Mituri’s forte and passion lies firmly in fiction writing. Armed with plenty of stories where as a child she would be lost in an imaginary world she had created for hours at an end, it turns out the habit never left. Mituri still finds that her imaginary acquaintances provide her with a source of entertainment whenever and wherever and she truly hopes that you will allow her to take you on the ride to some of these “worlds” as she sees it!

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WereVamp

By M.P. Sharma

Copyright 2018 M.P. Sharma

The moral rights of the author has been asserted

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

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Prologue: The Day She was Taken

Imagine being destined from the very moment you were born, brought into this World for one sole purpose. Destruction. The obliteration and complete annihilation of another.

This is what every member of my family has had to endure since the inception of time, when my kind was created centuries ago and I am no different. I too have been cursed with the intention of ridding our world of the evil immersed in its veins.

I was created for his extinction, the obliteration of the abominable creature that has sucked the life out of countless mortals since our planet was created by the Gods above in seven days. For my species I am the ultimate chance, the last hope for so many of my family that were killed, massacred in his bloodthirsty rampage in professing his reign over the Universe as the one and only True King.

Easy enough purpose right? Kill the bad guy, celebrate your victory and move on. Sounds simple enough, should be easily done but like everything there’s a hitch that my family didn’t bank on, an obstacle that I didn’t anticipate. Falling hard for his daughter and my natural predator.

My newfound love interest will undoubtedly ensure that my ancient ancestors are inherently stricken with grief, my immediate family drowned in it and my aunt, well let’s just say that she doesn’t know yet but when TJ finds out the shit isn’t the only thing that’s going to be hitting the fan.

My condition, as I like to put it, is well known in the World but seldom understood appropriately. We represent figures of speculation, persecutors of horrendous crime, illusions of fantastical hallucinations and for others, just plain bullshit. Luckily for me, I fell into the last category. Unluckily, my opinion on the matter was premature and far worse, I was wrong.

There have been misrepresentations on us since we existed and the stories like our number have been many and largely incorrect, based on the accounts and testaments who swore on their mother’s graves that they’d met one of us. The kind of humans who didn’t know what the word fiction meant or that the concept even existed. Among the most ludicrous was the idea that Dr. Frankenstein developed us, I mean the dude was cool and all but seriously out of his league.

I don’t know why I’m here or even why I was chosen as the Ultimate Saviour. They couldn’t have picked someone worse for the job in the first place, even blindfolded. It seems though that my woeful appeals against the apparent ludicrousness to the forces beyond fall on deaf ears, either that or they don’t give a crap. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s the latter.

I should have known my enemy’s daughter was all wrong. God knows I had enough signs when I was around her. The first time I ever laid eyes on her I felt them burn, almost sizzle into my brain and after that, whenever we touched it would be coupled with this most amazing electrical sensation. I knew we were hot together and there was definitely spark, just not in the normal mortal sense. Truthfully, this was also the reason why I was so attracted to her in the first place. I’ve always been a sucker for a good thriller and so few girls, if any, are able to fulfil my need for an unravelling mystery but Mallika is different. From the very first day I laid eyes on her my life changed and I was destined to be forever mesmerised with her untouched beauty.

My natural born opponent’s daughter appealed to me unnaturally, infiltrating the disease she was into my bloodstream and as I approached her, her being seeping into my body more deeply with every step I took towards her, I knew I was hooked, captivated for life.

The sting of having your soul ripped out of you and knowing how easy it is to get it back is excruciatingly unbearable most of the time and never dims. All I need to encompass myself with the warmth of contentment is to have her back, but I can’t.

Or so at least, this is what the ancient books foretell. The magical bounded hard copied encyclopaedias painstakingly hidden from prying human eyes and our opponents’ evil bleeding pupils don’t even exist in the mortal world but we are told that they will find us when it is time, their true masters. I haven’t even glimpsed them yet so I guess I’m not ready, fine by me. If I could erase out this part of my life the way I did my incorrect sums and report card marks in school, trust me, I would. I’d take her away with me and never look back. Simple life, simpler love.

Our rivals attempted to demolish our texts, unsuccessfully trying to wipe out our spellbinding volumes’ survival during our last great war on their turf. As usual, their fear of the only beings on Earth that can kill them drove them to order the battle on their land, immersed in the security of their motherland’s bosom, and we were only too happy to oblige them. Liberating the World and our kind of them has always been our first priority, and it is with this supreme ideal that my ancestors declare the one I love must be hated.

Honestly, I do detest Mallika. I despise what she is, loathing her more than I have any other living being on Earth, because no matter how hard I try, eradicating my mind of her memory, removing her fragrance from my system, forgetting the touch of her hair as I twirled her locks possessively around my fingers, is impossible.

It is with this realisation that it has dawned on me that my pathological commemoration of the Vampire Queen will end only when my lungs have stolen their last breath, and my heart has beat for the last time. I do hate Mallika, the only difference between what my people want and what my soul desires, is that I hate loving her.

Chapter One:

Ever since I returned to my medical degree after the summer break at Harvard, I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the girl that had been gnawing at my brain for the last three months or so. Mallika had revealed her true nature to me a few weeks before uni break had commenced, had I known that the exposé on her personality meant she was going to be more gruelling to find and latch onto when she wanted to disappear, I would have opted for idyllic un-enlightenment.

As I flipped my thick hair across my eyes roughly against my forehead with the back of my hand, I scolded myself for not fitting in a haircut. Mallika despised my hair long, but with her separation, the urgency of having one had fallen behind by a few million steps.

I squinted against the unremitting rays of the harsh Massachusetts sun, summer was here to stay, and I was only too happy to enjoy the sights. As I walked on the pebbled walkways towards my destination a little more briskly than usual, I noted half-heartedly that the pedestrians strolling alongside me were lagging behind. Mortal speed was so trying, and I wondered how I had ever indulged in it.

I moped sulkily, this time last year, life was good. There was no Mallika, therefore obviously no vampires, and girls everywhere for the taking. Summer has always been my favourite time of the year. Blossoming flowers speckled every corner of Boston; trees were unrelentingly competing for the brightest and most outlandish greenery achievable, the sky was a picture of the bluest activity I had seen, and their cloud counterparts weren’t invited to the party.

All normal reasons people loved summer, but I was never average. I indulged in summer for one reason, and one reason only. Girls in short skirts with a lot of leg, short tops with even more midriff and best of all, bikini paradise. I’m a ladies’ man and proud of it, or at least I was until she had come along.

New England summers were like no other, and I was into sampling all the delights that came my way, and they did. The fact that Boston is often termed the City of Neighbourhoods only served to make my job of separating my culinary delights easier; my peas have never touched my carrots, and in keeping with tradition, my girlfriends never came into contact with their opponents. Besides, there was always plenty of me to go around.

As I bumped into a mortal that came my way, he scowled at my revelling in daydreaming on my way to school. I looked at him noncommittally, only adding to his frustration at me as he hailed a cab, apparently imaginary negligence was not allowed on Newbury Street. Humans had so little time for dreaming now, and even less patience for those who were still clinging onto the last few threads of fantasy in our minds, soon it was all going to be about numbers and digits, just like Mallika’s head.

I bit my lip in frustration, combing my fingers insistently through my brown hair, a blond streak revolting against the move, working its way in front of my right eye, obstructing my view. How mathematics led to Mallika in my brain baffled me, was I ever going to get the girl out of my mind?

As I sprinted towards the bus that was going to take me halfway to my destination, I noticed it glide away from the curb, rushing to it while purposefully avoiding the shocked gasps brought on by my feat, by innocent onlookers. I squeezed myself through the rapidly closing doors, effortlessly sliding my body through the vacuum sealed bus doors as they imprisoned their passengers in.

My eyes scanned the bus, partly due to finding a place to sit, but mostly for the reason they always did since she’d left me, probing the darkness, the four corners of the World for her. There weren’t any seats, and I was happy. I wasn’t really looking to sit down, the more relaxed my body got, the further my brain activity increased thinking about Mallika, and I wasn’t really interested in reflecting on her. I needed to move on, and fast.

My mind was pulled away from its thoughts by the sound of consistent incessant giggling that would have been a leeway into a kaleidoscope of possible pleasure this time last year, but at the moment, it was really annoying. I looked down, directing my gaze at the source, a pretty, perky blond girl sitting beside me flashed a smile, I attempted unsuccessfully to respond, but my heart wasn’t in it. The girl was beautiful, in fact she was killer hot, and all I had to do to get on the ride was to twitch the corners of my mouth ever so slightly and I’d be in. Instead, I turned around, turning my back to heaven on earth opting for the two year old terror on the other side. Perpetual imitated gunshot pelting in my brain was a bonus and better than the bubbly blond option any day.

I groaned; I had aged about fifty years since I’d met Mallika, obviously when they said that every guy needed a good girl, they were wrong, but then Mallika was undead, so she was probably included in the fine print on that statement. I peered at myself in the reflection of the bus window as my gaze trailed the scenery around me, storing the sites in my brain caching them for use later. Pedestrians, tall city monuments, skyways, foreboding office buildings declaring the ruins of the lives of the occupants they housed, and the poor man’s hot dog stands framing them, every rich man’s real desire, a god hot dog. If only life were that easy.

The blond was straining her neck, attempting to get my attention as she coyly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the same way my fingers used to feel compelled to do with Mallika’s locks whenever I was around her.

Drawing my eyes away from the image, I stared at my reflection in the window as the bus churned its lizard like route through the Back Bay area. My hair was ruffled in the style ramp models pay top bucks to achieve, and my caramel eyes glared back silently admonishing me, framed by my sharp features. I was muscular, but lean, like a wild animal that had nothing but the wilderness and its tough terrain to contend with for the rest of their lives, and my shoulders were getting broader as time went. A side effect of my condition I guessed.

Over six feet tall, my aunt often claimed I was hard to miss with the opposite sex and her prediction had proven to be true for all the girls that had come into my life till date, except one. I was good looking, that much I knew, some of my previous girlfriends even went as far as to suggest I was irresistible in an animalistic sort of way, except for, that is, Mallika. In our few months together, she hadn’t mentioned I was hot once, even when I pushed her on one of our many strolls along the city streets at night, hand in hand, coercing her into admitting how overwhelmingly tempting I was for the sake of my ego. The best I had got out of her was a passable, followed by a slight blush at the affirmation of my looks, quipped with a quick, in over two hundred years of life, you Levi, are typical.

Her memory invoked a twinge of excitement the way it always did, rising from the pit of my stomach, through my heart into the very tresses of my soul, which in turn brought about a rampage of sadness at her absence. The truth was that I would trade in every previous girlfriend’s viewpoints and any to come, along with their superficial ideas of my handsomeness for one truthful look in my direction from Mallika. I’d do anything to make every girl on the planet think I was passable, as long as I was uncontrollably irresistible to Mallika only.

My smile at Mallika’s thought had falsely encouraged the blond, and I groaned at how pathetic I had become as I sneaked my way through the increasing crowd, raking my way towards the exit points of the bus. As I bounded down the steps of the bus into a couple of blocks from Harvard, I cursed myself, grumbling. I was starting to sound like the main hero out of a trashy romance novel, and the thought seriously bit, more than Mallika ever could.

Chapter Two:

I couldn’t believe it. As I walked towards my lecture hall, she was standing there, her back towards me, as if she was made for me, waiting for my arrival, but there was something different, almost sinister about her image that got my hair to stand up on its roots. My body was preparing itself with every step I took towards her silhouette, alert and prepped for any unpredictable onslaught that may follow.

Mallika, I gasped hoarsely, as if approaching her clutched the very breath out of my lungs painfully. I grabbed onto her shoulder turning her body to face mine as I stumbled towards her, when it happened. The first sign that my absolute transformation was nearly complete.

My head pounded, like the very fists of God were rasping to break free, and I groaned as I bent at the knees clasping my brain between my hands, hard. My eyes glazed over, and my mind swirled, each ring taking me in deeper, the darkness increasing into pitch blackness, more cavernous than any moonless night could ever be.

I was suddenly immersed in the foggiest conditions I had ever seen, surrounded by the most angelic whiteness cloaking the ground, the kind that can only blanket the Earth when it snows. I peered around me, surprised at my ability to see as far as I could in such hazardous conditions, and my feet felt soft against the cool touch of the snowflakes encircling me. I felt a breeze as freezing as ice assaulting my bare body, but I was warm.

I could see blood engulfing me everywhere, and though I panicked at its sight, it seemed futile because nothing hurt on my body, that was when I saw them. Two bodies lay limp and lifeless on the ground a few meters away from me.

I stumbled towards them, squinting in an effort to protect my eyes from the blizzard that battered at my skin, as I got closer my eyes widened in surprise. I can’t remember my parents, and over the years no matter how hard I tried, recalling their faces has been impossible for me, but as I clambered towards the comatose figures that sprawled the snow beneath us, I knew instinctively, innately that they were my parents.

I sensed a sob conquer my insides, a cry so deep welling from my stomach, I felt it impossible to control, releasing a howl at the sight, at the despair and immense cavern of grief I felt entwined in.

I heard a twig snap under a weight, a sound that should have been indistinguishable to my ears, but was deafening at the same time, and hurled towards the source, growling, barring my teeth prepared to attack the killer, my parents murderer. That was when I saw him, his beauty unforgettable and sickening at the same time. Like a train wreck, something so majestic and brutal all at once, you look in horror but are unable to stop the event from occurring nevertheless.

My enemy approached me, and I felt the blood rise in my body, my back arching in self-defence coupled with a defiant anger so unsurpassable, it threatened to boil me over and erupt like a lave crammed volcano, demolishing everything around me without mercy or care. He approached me menacingly, snarling the way a household cat must when faced with a wild dog, seriously outnumbered, I thought with a snicker.

His attractiveness was revoltingly fragile, and I felt an extreme annoyance at the coward’s ability to pry on those weaker than him, those of the mortal kind. I watched him as he came to me, his long spirally frame concealed beneath a veil of miserable darkness, his black cape doing little to hide his wiry limbs. His coat was the blackest I had ever laid eyes on, and the only attribute on the planet that seemed to be able to offset its depressing colour was his raven long hair, poker straight, falling loosely around his shoulders, framing pits for eyes so black and so deep, they seemed to house all the wells of the earth.

The snow appeared to have more personality than his skin which was so pale it seemed to me that he was almost transparent. My logical mind told me that this was impossible, that he could not be a figment of my imagination because I wasn’t able to see through him, but if death had a face, it would be his. My fellow countrymen dying of the plague in those years would surely have seen his image, his nauseous expression of sweet contentment at their final loss of life before they took their last breath.

The creature walked towards me, entangling the claws he masqueraded as fingers in my hair, all over my skin, or at least what felt like it, tangling his long ruthless nails in my fur coat.

Such exquisiteness engulfed in such a brutal beast he snarled as he brought his face near mine, inches away.

I stared at him, my growl intensifying into a rumble, as his putrid breath threatened to overpower me, but I wasn’t about to avert my eyes, I wasn’t going to give into his challenge of proving that I was the weaker species. The villain’s retinas swirled in disrespect for all those he had devoured before him, the blackness and their blood combined dripping from his pupils into his veins, rushing via the creases on his face in a similar fashion to the way fresh water pours through the worn out paths of ancient rivers on the planet’s surface. He was attempting to scare me, his bravado only served to amuse me instead, ever so slightly.

Nothing but a babe, he chuckled threateningly.

I have already slaughtered your parents, perhaps the last few of your kind, he bellowed in declaration, drawing his clammy ice cold index finger under my chin, directing my shrouded chocolate eyes to his.

No one can deny your magnificence, can they? he pondered as he rose effortlessly, his body encircling me, gliding over the earth’s surface without ever touching it. And I am not one to be so wicked as to deprive you of your existence at such a tender age.

I felt a surge of fury swallow my sense and reason, roaring in anticipation at clasping his brittle neck between my razor sharp teeth. I moved backwards, ready to pounce on him when he held his hand steadfastly in front of me, the wind of the world following his every command, pushing against all of me as if repulsed with my intent to eradicate the vile monster he was.

I could hear the waft of wind as it sketched its journey around my body, the cold draft echoing in my ears.

Do not worry he spoke aloud without yelling once, proclaiming my destiny the way he foresaw it, I will have your being, just not now. You my son, are the last of your kind, and I will have your life, of this you can be certain. Dracula, the only true noble king will not be outdone by nothing more than a wretched fiend.

I bellowed at him in my naïve youthful exuberance, ready to make his species extinct, when he wrapped his cloak around him the way superheroes do in comics, vanishing before my eyes. I was in a frenzy, panicking at how I had let him slip through my clutches when I heard him.

Levi, the voice whispered with its last breath. My rage dissipated, replaced with tender love and affection as I rushed to my father’s side. I peered down at him as he traced his fingers through the snow covering the grass, searching the floor to hold my mother’s hand as he died, twisting his fingers with hers. His free hand stroked the side of my large face, brushing his fingers across my nose.

He brought my face close to his, forcing my gaze into his eyes. As I peered into my father, I saw his eyes darken, drowning his pupils in the colour of mud, just like mine.

Look into your father’s eyes my child, he murmured, and see your true self.

At first I could see nothing, and then I reeled backwards in shocking terror, for I could see myself, but my face was not what I was accustomed to, not what I had grown up with. What I saw staring back was unmistakably animal, unquestionably wolf...in fact it was werewolf.

Chapter Three:

Following my little outburst, I had felt completely devoid of all the energy I had contained in my body before my vision. I was exhausted, winded and faint all at once, not to mention the fact that I looked like a total idiot when I was finally able to come up from where I had fallen on my knees in the middle of an oval full of university students making their way to boring lecture halls.

For us pupils, anything remotely interesting is blown out of proportion; we don’t have much to contend with, and Harvard’s number one American jock falling to his knees at the touch of a girl’s shoulder was going to be making the internet rounds very soon. Who was I kidding? As I stood up and regained my posture and the little remaining self-respect I still harboured, I was fully aware that I was probably on the homepage of the Harvard hussies’ online site right now. I hoped they had gotten my good side.

But then again, in my self-defence the girl I had touched was no ordinary mortal female, in fact she wasn’t a girl at all. Not that I could use that excuse without opening an entire truckload of worms, let alone a can. She was clearly vampire, and with her touch came the realisation that I did really hate the undead, at least I could check that in the column of the How to Guide of being a reliable werewolf.

I was now entirely positive that the girl I had falsely thought was Mallika wasn’t, and what enraged me the most was how I could think she ever was in the first place. My Mallika could never summon the emotions of despair and agony that the girl at Harvard did. I deserved everything I had gotten just for thinking so, no matter how desperately I wanted to see, smell and touch Mallika, I should have been more careful. Some werewolf.

I needed to see Mallika now more than ever, and as I raced to the Medical Centre, I scoured my backpack for my cell phone, my fingers grabbing used up wrappers and other bits and pieces that hadn’t seen the light of day for the last year or so. I was truly happy for the first time in a long while since Mallika had left I acknowledged, as my hand touched the cold hard metal surface of my phone. I had given the vampire queen all the time in the world just like she had asked, and I could never deny her anything she wanted from me.

But, the stakes had changed now. Seeing her had become a question of survival not just for me, but for her kind and mine. I knew intuitively though, that she wouldn’t see it my way, so I’d have to find a way to lure her to her favourite place without asking her directly.

I tapped the numbers on my cell, endeavouring to locate my redeemer.

Akua, I quipped quickly, brushing his niceties away with my hand as if the guy stood right in front of me. Yeah, it’s Levi. Listen, I need a favour, and you’re just the guy I’m looking for, I said smilingly.

***

I was prepared for a few rounds of fire when I got to the hospital; it was Akua I felt sorry for. I knew Mallika’s bark was worse than her bite, but not by far. I could hold my own against her though, especially with what I had just discovered about my lineage, but Akua was nothing but a measly mortal, of this I was sure.

As I turned the corner, stepping onto the ramp that led to the sliding doors of my girlfriend’s beloved place, I was already aware of Akua’s presence, I had seen him earlier. Surveying my surroundings now, I wondered how I had glimpsed him when he was engulfed in a concrete barrier from all corners, but his infectious grin was hard to ignore, and I chalked the new asset of seeing through walls to my changing body.

Akua is Mallika’s best friend, in fact, in the few weeks I have known her, I seriously believe he is her only one. A vampire and mortal as clubbin’ buddies, I tried to tell her it was tempting fate, but she just shrugged, informing me that you didn’t choose who made an impact in your life. I was always stumped for comebacks to her philosophy, but her wisdom on the real things that mattered in life was just one of the many reasons I was so drawn to her in the first place, and continue to be so.

Hey, Akua beamed.

The guy was pathologically chirpy, I guessed his obliviousness on what happens out there with regards to Mallika and my kind gave him some sense of misplaced hope. All things said though, it was impossible not to feel cheerful around the blossoming surgeon.

Hi, I replied, probing the corners for Mallika. I hadn’t seen the girl in a few weeks, and as corny as it sounded, and I was fully aware that it did, I needed a fix.

So, is she here yet? I asked quietly, leaning into Akua, as if the walls and trees that enveloped us had ears.

Akua disapprovingly glared at me, like I’d just enquired about the most obvious question on the planet, um, yeah she’s here. What do you think I am? I told you I’d get her here right?

I winced in adequate admission of guilt, shoving him playfully into the hospital. The cool draft of the air conditioner was nice, I had worked up quite a sweat on the way over, it was a long journey completed in five minutes, and apparently even a werewolf had perspiration issues.

Do you have some cologne on you? I asked Akua as I followed him into Mallika’s favourite hangout spot at the Medical centre.

You want some cologne … now? Akua queried incredulously.

I punched Akua in the arm. I knew I was being paranoid, acting more like a schoolgirl with a crush on Zac Efron than the jock I was supposed to be, but the one thing I knew I did not want to hear from Mallika as I entered her room was that I stunk like a skunk.

C’mon man, give me a break, I urged Akua impatiently, you know how it is?

Akua grinned at me, visibly enjoying my discomfort, sure, I know how it is. You want to get all dressed up, you never know right. You may get lucky.

Shut up, I sniped spraying myself adequately, returning the guy’s aftershave. Now wish me good luck.

As I inhaled deeply, preparing myself for her ambush, I felt Akua’s hand on my back, nudging me along. Having her best friend in joint conspiracy with me made this a little easier; basically it felt comforting knowing that I wasn’t the only one that was going to be burnt by her undeniable rage at my decision to sneak up on her at feeding time. Her moods always got worst when she was hungry.

I swung the doors to the morgue open, the freezing conditions a little discomforting to my skin, but Mallika seemed to be oblivious to the temperature. The girl looked absolutely mouth-watering in her short top, and I found it hard to tear my eyes away from all the bare leg she was showing in her shorts.

I knew I had missed her, but till that very moment, I hadn’t been completely conscious of how much. Mallika was chugging back an ice cold glass of what looked like red cordial, but I knew better. I realised I had it bad when I felt a twinge of jealousy for the dude who’s blood she was drinking.

As the doors shut behind me, enclosing the two of us in the small cavity where the dead remained till they were buried or burned, I had never felt so alive. I wanted to take in everything I could about the moment, every move she made, every expression she had.

Mallika turned her body around on where she sat on the cold autopsy table, peering at me suspiciously, irking me a little. If I could just find out what was going through her mind when she looked at me.

So, aren’t you going to say something? I asked hoarsely, like my windpipes were just an added appendage that refused to work when around her.

Mallika arched her eyebrow in response, jumping off the table, approaching me cautiously. With every step she took towards me, my heart quickened ever so slightly, and by the time she was next to me, our bodies almost touching, it was threatening to break free from my chest.

It took all my resolve to not wrap my fingers in her hair, drawing her as close to me as possible, our bodies welding together, and beg for her to be with me, and as she closed her eyes, lifting her face towards my neck, her breath lightly brushing my skin, I had to hold a moan of pleasure back in my lungs. After inhaling me in deeply, she finally set me free, speaking with the voice I had been aching to here.

So you have a death wish do you? she asked me, opening her eyes with a sad expression on her face.

I peered down at her, looking into her gripping eyes, a confused expression on my face.

Noticing my perplexed look, she sighed, clarifying, I would have known it was you but I wasn’t expecting to smell a vampyress on your skin. Mallika looked annoyed, you know, a scent that isn’t mine.

She turned to walk away, and I grabbed her arm before I could refrain myself, pulling her towards me. Mallika’s body bumped into mine, and I moved my arm around her waist, holding her besides me, nuzzling my face in her hair, inhaling her fragrance greedily, pleased at her dissolving resolve.

I moved my lips to her ear, whispering my words to her, the only person who was allowed to hear what I had to say, you know I could never love anyone else, mortal or not. I made a vow to you a long time ago Mallika, I said, shutting my eyes firmly, lost in her completely. You’re the one who broke that promise.

I felt her body go limp in my arms, as if she’d lost a will of some sort, and her defeat pained me like nothing ever had before. Mallika moved back, my fingers intertwined behind her waist securing her closer to me more tightly than before, my arms, along with my soul afraid of letting her go.

How did you know I’d be here? she murmured.

Geez Mallika, I stalled, it’s not like you have many dinner options left if you know what I mean. I was trying to save Akua, instead I noticed the irritated look in her eye, and braced myself for a war.

Akua, she growled while still in my arms.

I smiled at her expression of feigned disgust; she couldn’t hate Akua even if she tried. "Well