Even when I was eleven, and Grandpa filled me with the fear of vampirism, I secretly thought that flying might be worth it. 

Flying was freedom to my juvenile mind. Freedom to fly away from all the new things I couldn't understand and my parents were fighting about.

From the d-word and a sinking feeling Mom and Dad hated each-other because of me. After all, I did somehow kill the coyote to save the neighbor's cat I used to play with, because Dad didn't let us have pets. In hindsight, given how Corazon turned out, it was for the best.

From our sudden move from bustling and lush Seattle to a tiny, suffocating place in Mississippi.

From Grandpa I never knew I had. Grandpa who was telling grim tales that became far too real as I matured. And mature I did, fast, for Grandpa's tales didn't wait on Corazon and me to have a childhood.

Under Grandpa's tutelage I understood I couldn't fly away from my nature, only fight it. I did that too, even came to be proud of it...until Freida tore down my hard-won achievements.

She did it laughing, never caring how much it hurt. I didn't think vampires gave much thought to pain after a century or two of undeath.

Like Freida's callus treatment, my boyhood wish to fly mocked me. The excitement wasn't there anymore. If I tumbled out of the sky, so what? I was already dead—Freida did the honors. But I held Zoe's life in my arms. Failing to fly was just another way I could bring her to harm. So, I had no choice but to fly.

The final collapse of Freida's mausoleum sent the biggest shockwave after us, sending me cartwheeling through the air.

Zoe screamed.

"Don't worry, I have you!" I shouted over the sound of crushing stone and pops of air and sand.

She stopped crying, smiled shakily and relaxed in my embrace, trusting the safety of the first ever flight by a freshly turned vampire. Which was far more trust than I had in myself, even though she was my feeder and my only source of sustenance in this world. Logically, I had to keep her alive to keep myself alive.

But there's no predator less logical and more insatiable on Earth than what Freida had made from me. Grandpa had a cautionary fable about it. A Fledgling with his first feeder is like a scorpion who stung a frog carrying him across the river. It only shrugged when both of them died as a result: I am a scorpion; that's what I do.

Oh, Zoe, Zoe...I clutched her tighter, smelling her shampoo, her sweat and her blood. Absorbing her heat. Listening to her heartbeat. The mortals' bodies had so much going on every second. I was so boring next to her, like a glass of still water next to a shaken can of soda.

A dune popped out of nowhere, on-rushing into my face. Okay, fine, it was there all along, and I got distracted thinking about Zoe Green.

I pivoted, lost the updraft, lost the altitude, lost my balance.

"Brace! We're going to crash!"

I flipped over, praying only that I would hit the sand first and shield Zoe from the impact. Then something glistened in the corner of my vision.

Water!

I called upon every ounce of magic and intuition to swerve toward it. My back hit the surface of the water, and I yelped, because it was harder than concrete. A fountain erupted on both sides of me, drenching Zoe, but otherwise she seemed unharmed...once we resurfaced from the deep. She was spitting and gasping for air, and I tried to keep my grip on her.

"Cruz! I can swim!"

Water splashed around her, reflecting in her enormous eyes. "Oh. Sorry. I guess with the mausoleum, and the explosions, and the flying I...ah...got used to— I mean, it wasn't a long enough time to get used to something, but...but..."

"You're still holding me."

I did the only sensible thing. I let go of her and submerged instead of sounding like a total idiot.

When my head came above water again, Zoe was swimming to the shore of our lake. I caught up to her, and it was shallow enough to stand. We waddled the rest of the way in a shower of droplets.

Her hand found mine. She glanced at the joining and averted her face. "You...you're no longer glowing blue when I touch you. Why?"

Of course, she'd notice and test it. I was tempted to say I didn't know why, but I hated to lie to her. So, I tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. "Grandpa's warding shield on me broke when ah...the ritual was completed."

Zoe plopped down on the dry sand, without releasing me. I had no choice but to sit next to her, despite the dangers.

"When you drank my blood," she said.

Again, I had no choice but to nod, because it wasn't even a question. Zoe was too smart not to figure it out.

She pressed my hand to her cheek, bound to notice the difference in temperature between her skin and mine, maybe even the lack of pulse in the tips of my fingers. "What happened to you, Cruz?"

Maybe it would be for the best if she knew. It would freak her out. She'd run away as far from me as possible, giving me a fighting chance of resisting the pangs of murderous hunger. "I...I am a hybrid, because Grandpa was a vampire. Grandma was a human. The gene skipped a generation, so my parents are both humans."

"Okay..." she whispered. "Okay."

"As a hybrid, I could and I was determined to live my life as a mortal. As a human. Even after the vampire in me woke up..." I stammered, cursing myself for bringing it up, hoping Zoe wouldn't ask.

She didn't, because she was too quick to have to ask. "Coffee..." she whispered.

Her eyes, I begged myself, focus on her eyes. Not on the racing pulse in her wrist that was so close to my mouth.

"Well, not the coffee specifically. Your proximity. Your touch." I swallowed, because there was no way to explain it but bluntly. "Bloodlust of a vampire is a form of lust."

Silence thickened between us. "And Freida?" she asked at last.

I suddenly wanted to be done with this conversation. "She turned me...killed me in a ritual, then brought me back as a vampire. Your blood christened me. If she drank it too, I'd be bound to her as a servant to a Mistress, until it suited her to release me."

"Oh Cruz! I'm so sorry!" Zoe was shivering. She wouldn't find any warmth in my body, but she hid her face in my chest.

After a second of struggle, I put my arms around her. The pounding of her heart and the throbbing of the vein in her neck echoed through me.

"It's all my fault," she sobbed. "If I wasn't so stupid, so stupid...why am I such a screwup with boys?"

I lowered my face and inhaled the scent of her hair. The urgent echo of her heart's pounding, pumping her blood, on the insides of my skull receded. The craving diminished. Before it returned, I rushed to tell her everything I wanted to tell her for so long.

"Zoe, Zoe, no. You did everything right. When they all made fun of you, I looked and thought, fools! Here's a girl who dares to like a guy. Just like that you did something I forbade myself to do out of fear. You were so much braver than me!"

She sniffled into my chest. "I needed this. Thank you."

Her sincerity emboldened me further. "I kept wishing it wasn't Dylan, it was me you liked...I'd have treated your feelings as they deserved to be treated, something rare and precious. I should have said something, but I was a coward."

"I guess, I had to live through Dylan's crap." Zoe dabbed her tears with the bottom of her t-shirt, but her eyes still looked brighter than the stars absent in Freida's world. And she was gazing directly into my eyes. "B-because it taught me to see beyond appearances. Taught me to recognize a generous heart...gentleness...kindness...and how much I valued that."

How arrogant I was in my teen boy delusions that love was useless, and I could have all these other things! I chuckled, remembering, marveling at my stupidity, and I was feeling something else too. It was growing up, I hoped, not going mad.

"Things happened to me for a reason too. I wasn't leading a human life by hiding away behind working on cars with my dad and reciting mantras whenever I saw you. I was more dead back then, than I am now."

Zoe sniffled again. "This...this is such a macabre thing to say."

"Maybe, and I don't give a damn." I cupped her face. I was already breathless, so instead of breath hitching in my throat, the entire world came to a standstill around me. "I enjoy being without the fear of actually living."

She gasped, and her lips didn't close all the way, parted ever so slightly.

"I want to kiss you so badly right now," I heard myself say over the drumming of her beautiful heart.