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The animal was male, tall and very handsome. It looked terrified, tied up like the prey it was.
“Happy anniversary, Wylan!” Jesper excitedly said to him.
“We got you a cake!” Nina said, caressing the animal’s head.
“Thanks, guys.” Wylan said, smiling widely. He hadn't had a celebration about him since he was a young child, except for his birthday part a few months ago. He kneeled down next to the animal and laid a hand on its sweaty neck. It stared at him with wide eyes, muffled yelling came from under it’s gag. Wylan leaned in and sunk his fangs into the neck. He drained it to the point of unconsciousness, not death.
“Take him back to our room, will you, Jes?” He said, hovering over the unconscious animal.
“And we’ll have some fun with him later?” Jesper smiled at him. Wylan nodded, his face heating up. Unfortunately, dying did not hinder Wylan from blushing like a teenage girl every time he saw Jesper.After one year of being a vampire, Wylan could definitely say that he loved it. He loved the his coven, and the adventures they got up to. He especially loved his boyfriend. Despite his reservations, he couldn’t help but fall head over heels in love with him.
He fit into the group well. He adapted to their fashions styles and started wearing eyeliner. They introduced him to a lot of cool music. Jesper showed him all the goth music he had loved as a human teenager in the 80s. Yes, the 1980s. One of things he was shocked to discover was just how young his fellow coven members were. Having been born in 1971, Jesper was only the second oldest. Kaz refused to say how old he was, but Jesper thought he couldn’t be much older than him.
Becoming a vampire had certainly changed his body for the better, but it hadn’t fixed his brain. Written text was still incomprehensible to him. He had cried when he realised that. Maybe that was a dramatic reaction, but being a vampire had been so wonderful so far, he had foolish hope.
The vampire transformation process was curious. It seemed to heal very recent injuries, like Wylan’s stab wounds, and older scars. It hadn’t healed whatever happened to Kaz’s leg. Wylan wanted to study it, but he didn’t dare bring it up to Kaz.
Wylan had been very, very curious to find out whether vampires could have sex. He certainly still had the desire to have sex and he didn’t know if he could stand being around Jesper if he couldn’t take him to bed. On the morning after their first night sleeping in a coffin together, Wylan discovered he could still become erect. Soon after, he discovered that vampires ejaculated blood. Interestingly, it seemed like every fluid in his body had been replaced by blood. He cried blood, his saliva was blood. And, according to Jesper, female vampires self-lubricated with blood.
Another thing Wylan was very curious about was why vampires burned in the sun. Related, he was curious what material he was made of. His skin was cold and firm, and he couldn’t cut it with any of the knives he tried. He had accidently touched a silver ring on an animal’s hand and it had given him a minor burn.
It was uncomfortable to be awake during the day. Even with blackout curtains covering every window in the apartment. Wylan had a sense that the sun was out, and could easily kill him. The thought of sunlight prickled at his skin and made him want to run to his coffin.
He waited until the middle of the day, when Jesper was fast asleep in his coffin. He quietly opened his coffin and snuck out into the living room. He was wearing an Evanescence t-shirt and put on a pair of wool gloves, both of which he took from Jesper. He unpinned one of the curtains and slowly peeled back the heavy black fabric. The sunlight was blindingly bright. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed his left arm into the light.
Wylan was good at not screaming when he was in pain, but this was a challenge for him. It felt like his arm was being burned by a white-hot iron. It was one of the most extreme pains Wylan had ever experienced. He couldn’t help but cry silently, bloody tears streaming down his face.
Just as he was going to pull his arm back, someone showed him away from the window. “What the fuck are you doing!?” Jesper’s voice asked him. Wylan looked down at his arm. It certainly looked burnt, severely burnt. His formerly pale skin was bright red with black burnt flakes. Contrary to his expectations, it didn’t smell like burning flesh. Or anything. His mind was whirring thinking about the what material his flesh was now made from. The light disappeared from the room as Jesper re secured the curtain.
“I was just studying.” Wylan replied.
“Studying what!? Hurting yourself?”
“No, I just want to figure how this whole vampire thing works. Why did my skin burn? What exactly is it made of?”
Jesper stared at his with a concerned look, as if his explanation made no sense. He then dragged him to Nina so she could heal him. The vampire magic was another thing that surprised Wylan. For reasons nobody knew, some vampires had magical control over certain things. Jesper had the magic as well, which he mostly used to make and alter jewellery. Once, Wylan had stolen a cool studded belt from one of his victims. It was just a bit too big for his waist so Jesper put in another hole for the buckle. He watched as Jesper cut the leather with metal and then fastened the grommet on while barely touching it.
It seemed incredible to him. He didn’t understand why Jesper only ever used his power for frivolous things, he must’ve had so much untapped magical potential. Jesper got annoyed when he said that. “It’s a bad idea to mess around too much with supernatural things you don’t understand.” He told Wylan, and he refused to bring up the topic again since.
For his next experiment, he waited until Jesper went on a trip with Kaz. When vampires didn’t drink blood their skin got progressively paler and grey-toned. After three days of no blood, Wylan’s skin looked completely white. It looked awful. He could see every grey vein through his skin, which made him hungry. The hunger was an animal gnawing at his stomach. He got just a glimpse of an animal Nina brought up into their apartment and had to bite his own arm to stop himself from just jumping it.
He thought he’d be able to handle it better. He wasn’t unfamiliar with hunger, his father liked to punish it with it. But this didn’t feel like anything he had felt before. He felt himself losing grip over himself, he felt like an animal. After eighty-two hours of fasting, he gave in and completely drained a human. Afterwards, he had more colour in his skin, but he still looked dead.
Wylan no longer had any desire to eat anything other than blood. He had once tried a caramel candy he found in an animal’s pocket. He remembered liking caramel, but when he put the candy in his mouth he tasted nothing. He tried to chew it, but it just felt like a useless weight on his tongue. After swallowing, he felt it travel down his oesophagus into his stomach…and stay there. He was incapable of digesting it. He let it sit there for two days, just in case, and then vomited it back up.
Jesper liked smoking cigarettes. Purely for the aesthetic, the nicotine had no effect on a vampire. Jesper spent a lot of his nights bartending in the club. He loved conversing and flirting with the customers. He made up bizarre drinks. And, for their fellow vampires, they made drinks with human blood in them. Wylan had tried one once, he didn’t get it. He’d never had alcohol in his human life, and as a vampire it tasted like nothing and had no affect on him. And, of course, he had to throw it back up later.
Jesper, and sometimes Wylan, also liked to sleep with their human customers. It wasn’t cheating. Humans aren’t people, not in the same way vampires are. They are weak, unintelligent creatures. Fucking one is like fucking a sex doll, or an animal. It’s just a bit of fun. Jesper claimed that drinking blood was more satisfying during sex. Wylan thought that was only true when he was with Jesper. But Jesper’s blood was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. Well, was it really his blood? Wylan guessed it was just a mixture of all the humans he had drunk from recently. But it didn’t taste human, it tasted like Jesper.
One thing he really wanted to test was immortality, but he couldn’t since forever hadn’t happened yet.