The dawn was still several hours away. The forest was enveloped in silence. Only here and there a nightingale's song was declaring: This part of the woods is mine!

The moon, following its usual path, sailed away to where the eyes could no longer see it. The only light in the darkness were shimmering stars, and one thin strip of light coming from beneath the door. On any other night, that line of light would be a cause for concern, but Teresa and Anastasia weren't worried when they returned to the cabin.

Teresa quietly unlocked the door, pressed the handle and opened it.

As soon as they stepped over the threshold, their gaze fell on Daniel. He was standing in the kitchen, next to the open refrigerator, with an expression on his face one might see on the face of a child caught stealing candy.

"I didn't..." he started to speak, but Teresa cut him off.

"Oh, but you did," she said in a cold voice, barely moving her lips.

Slowly, she began approaching him, making him feel as if the temperature inn the room was dropping by a couple of degrees with each of her steps. And maybe the cause for the chilling was the wide-open fridge. Hurriedly, he closed its door, shielding its content from the view.

In the meanwhile, Teresa walked up to him. "So, what did you conclude?" she asked, while her gray eyes bore into him.

Daniel forced himself to swallow despite the lump in his throat. "Conclude?" he repeated barely audibly.

Teresa's glance shifted to the refrigerator that was open just a minute ago.

Daniel's eyes followed. "That..." he stuttered, "...that is..."

"Say it!" Teresa commanded. She returned her stare to him, but with the grayness, an amber glow snuck up to her eyes.

"Blood," he said. Vocalizing that word, stopped the liquid that was flowing in his veins. He went pale, and for a second, he felt as if his legs were preparing to give out.

It was in that moment that Ana walked up to him. Taking him by the arm, she said, "Come, sit." She led him to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair, and all of his weight sank into it. She sat next to him.

"Why do you have a fridge full of blood?" he asked, looking at Ana.

The answer came from Teresa. "A person gets hungry sometimes."

She's joking, he thought. She must be joking.

Yes, a person does get hungry, but to fill a fridge with doses of blood? Who'd reach for the blood in case of hunger?

Teresa gave him another one of her looks that seemed to be able to guess exactly what he was thinking. Instead of speaking, she curled her upper lip upwards. The tip of her tongue slowly caressed the right canine. When the tongue mowed away, Daniel noticed something highly unusual. The tip of the tooth was sharp and pointy. The canine on the other side was the same. In length, they weren't much longer than the other teeth, but still, he couldn't help but notice that they were longer.

For a moment he thought of a movie he once saw. He didn't particularly like it because it was black and white movie that desperately lacked well trained action scenes he liked so much, but in that movie, one of the characters had pointy teeth and fed on blood.

Don't be ridiculous, he scolded himself. That was just a movie.

Whatever the reason there might be a fridge full of blood in this house and Teresa's teeth being pointy, it certainly wasn't because she was a vampire.

"Teresa, don't confuse him," Ana said. Daniel looked at her with a sense of gratitude.

"I'm not confusing him. I'm only helping him put two and two together. Besides, you were the one who wanted to take him with us, don't conceal the truth from him now."

Daniel looked at Ana again. The gratitude was replaced by confusion.

"Look at the way he's watching you," Teresa said. "Go on, give him a smile."

The amber flashed in Ana's eyes when she looked at Teresa. Teresa replied by smiling. It was the first time Daniel saw any of them smiling. If there weren't for the disturbing teeth, he might consider her beautiful.

He turned towards Ana. "Do you have..." The lump in his throat prevented him from finishing the question.

Ana just kept looking at him. The amber glow was slowly vanishing from her eyes, like water that subsides with the onset of ebb tide.

A blunt thud was heard when Daniel leaned both elbows on the surface of the table. He pushed his head in his palms and mumbled, "I'm dead."

"Why would you think that?" Ana asked.

"You're gonna drain me to refill your fridge," he replied. His voice was muffled because his face was still covered by his hands.

"We most certainly will not drain you to refill our refrigerator," Ana reassured him.

"She's right," Teresa concurred. "That would be too messy."

He lifted his head, looked at her with eyes as round as saucers. How did I get into this mess? he wondered.

Just a week earlier, a nagging mother was the only thing he had to deal with. How did he manage to get himself into this paranormal nightmare in such a short time?

"Why didn't you just off me with the rest of them?" he asked.

"Indeed, why didn't we?" Teresa also wanted to know.

"Like I said before, there's something different about him." Ana smiled at him. Whether she wanted him to see it or not, when her lips parted, Daniel was able to catch a glimpse of her sharp canines.

His glance found Teresa. She wasn't kidding after all. Meeting his eyes, she walked up to him, bent down so her face was right next to his ear. "What exactly makes you different?" she whispered.

Ana was sitting on one side of him, Teresa stood on the other. If he found himself between two attractive women in some bar, he would be in seventh heaven, but right now, Daniel was very much aware that the chill caused the hair on his skin to rise. He was unable to answer Teresa's question. Besides, he didn't even have an answer.

But Ana offered her explanation. "Let's just say that he attracted my attention."

"And how did he manage to do that?" Teresa's voice, so close to his ear, sent another wave of chill down his skin.

"He tried to talk some sense into his friend. Sadly, his friend was too dense to take his advice."

"How do you know what I said?" Daniel allowed himself to look at her.

"The same way I know that there's a bat helplessly flapping his wings in the talons of an owl on one of the pine trees outside."

Daniel listened, but heard nothing.

Suddenly, Teresa let out a cry. In a blink of an eye, she was in the far corner of the kitchen. A palm of her hand was pressed against her cheek. She seemed to be in pain.

Daniel looked around, but nothing was there. Just a window and a single ray of sunshine that peeked in through it. Just the one sunray that managed to find its way through the thinned canopies to reach the cabin in the woods.

Ana once again showed her incredible speed when she jumped to her feet and darted to the window. The curtains were closed within a second.

"What happened?" Daniel was confused.

"The sun is not our friend," simply said Ana. She then turned to Teresa and added, "Is everything all right?"

"Yes," Teresa replied. She moved her hand away from her face, and Daniel saw a little circle of redness on her cheek.

Once again, he thought of the black and white movie he saw. In it, the vampire was killed by the sun light. Did he just witness the devastating effect of the sun?

He wanted to ask whether it would kill her, but he feared it might cause hostility towards him.

"Don't look at me like that," Teresa said as if she could sense what thoughts were swarming inside his head. It wasn't the first time. Daniel shuddered.

In the meanwhile, Ana pulled the curtains in the living room as well. "The sun," she said once she returned to the kitchen. "The curtains in this house remain pulled at all times. We're a bit sensitive to the sun, therefore we do not let it in."

"What would it do to you?" Daniel found the courage to ask.

"It hurts. Imagine placing your palm on the hot range."

Instinctively, Daniel closed his palms. That does hurt. He knew that pain. That was the dare his big brother came up with on a rainy day. Their mother pulled Robert's ear for it, but it was Daniel's palm that hurt more.

"Ana, stop it!" Teresa warned her. "Stop exposing details he does not need to know about. Unless you've decided to send him to his friends."

Daniel felt the throbbing in the back of his head. It was all too much for him. He looked at Teresa's cheek. The circle of redness paled a bit, or at least it seemed that way to him.

Teresa glowered at him. She did not appreciate him staring at her like a guinea pig. She walked up to the light switch and pressed it. The kitchen darkened, but there was still light coming from the living room. Teresa soon made sure that that source of light died down too.

Daniel remained sitting at the kitchen table. He knew Ana was sitting next to him. When he looked in her direction, he noticed that her eyes were glowing like the eyes of nocturnal animals. Another pair of such eyes was in the living room.

How are you going to get yourself out of this? he wondered, but there was no answer.

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