MY BROTHER, MARIUS, WAS THE BLACK SHEEP of the family, the one who was brave enough to embrace the world beyond the wooden fence of our tiny village. He left home when he was sixteen, following the persistent call pounding in his chest as he flew into an opening sky, never once returning after decades of being a vagrant. He had been a news reporter, he had been a sailor, he had been a dealer. He worked as hard as he could, he flew as high as he wanted. He used to be employed in a bakery, a restaurant, and a post office. Once in a while, he would stop for adventures and money and lifetime opportunities. Or at least those were what he had claimed in his annual letters.

Truth to be told, I had never met Marius before the age of fifteen, when he went home and, strangely enough, settled down.

It was a sweltering summer day, not long after his return, that I found the miniature collection he had got from the journey lying at the end of an old drawer. There was no more than a few minute stuffs; some appeared as refined as creations of artwork, the others were scratched and scattered, like something he would incidentally take in along the way. It mounted up like a small dune, covered under layers of dust. In the bottom curled a blue ball of something appeared to be a uniform.

The air in the house smelt like a greasy mixture of dirt, putrid meat and spoiled vegetables, mingling with a whiff of animal blood from Marius' previous hunting affair. Behind the cottage, my brother was chopping wood, pieces of timber lay in absolute disorder around his feet. The anosmia of firewood rushed through my nose before smudging into the humid mid air as I reluctantly dug the cloth out. The blue fabric was crisp under my fingers, layers of caked grey dirt fluttered once I dug the blue thing out of the dark.

As I called out to him for permission to clean off his souvenirs, the first reply was a sharp clang of metal falling upon harsh ground. The mid-sized axe was flung out in a rush while my brother dashed through the doorway. The feverish heat trailed after him like a puppy followed its master, except it was not, so it dissolved and contributed to the thickness of the air.

He cried. "How did you find it?"

The floor rumbled beneath my brother's footsteps. He smelt of sweat, of the wood he had been slicing. The odours reminded me about father's, but more vague since it had been partially concealed by his signature salty sense. The salty smell was so viscous it started to replace him in my wobbled memory after a course of a lifetime.

Long after, I knew it was the smell of the ocean.

O-c-e-a-n. In my idle mind, it was the sky reflected on earth in a deeper shade of blue. It was wind and cloud muffled together, melting like ice under a sunny day until there was nothing except a vast, glittering pool of blue liquor where the continuous movements of waves made it appear volatile. But I knew, beneath this seemingly dangerous shell lay a different world. It was a peaceful kingdom of fishes and corals and octopuses and seaweeds, an absolute mystery that many seek to discover. I had always long to witness an ocean myself, for such beauty cannot be fully appreciated through means of black and white sketches in books.

Yet back into the time, in my mind eye, my brother was a more detailed and figurative image of ocean than the ocean itself. The man had always been a secretive person. He came home as a typical gentleman, calm and well-mannered, never a vulgar word, never a discourteous gesture. It got to an extend he was seemingly emotionless sometimes, like a machine kept doing whatever it was made to do without any excess sentiments.

This came with the cost of me not understanding him at all. I knew him. He was my brother. I lived with him. He raised me after the death of our father. But to understand the heart of a man was as easy as to interpret the mood of a woman. It was more than 'see' and 'know', since an undecipherable maze remained undecipherable until the guard led us to where the key laid, far from the praying eyes of mortals.

Still when he saw the blue fabric on my hand, he stiffened on spot, his tanned complexion turned pale and he stared blankly at the thing like he had never expected it to be there.

And then he splashed into the room. His mouth opened and closed, spilling words and phrases I had never heard in my entire mortal life. Rough was likely an understatement; They were horrific. Barbaric, even. The words felt like something would come from a thief, a pirate, a madman living among other wretched beings, but not from my brother. My brother.

The event could have occurred in a more subtle way, yet I figured out the blazing lights that day were so powerful it might literally invade one's mind and ignite on one's tongue like fire, a concise description of how Marius had reacted to the unintentional unearthing of his belongings. His rage came as swiftly as a forceful gale, just like that on the surface of the ocean on a stormy night.

I was frozen when he snatched the cloth off my hand. His words slapped my face and left a mark which then burned with humiliation and embarrassment. I believed I had yet done something, anything, too inappropriate to deserve those insults of his. It was beyond my youngself's endurance.

So I did nothing. An utter nothing. When I should have had as the light blue cloth was rented in twain, and there was a short pause before he rented it in another twain. In the blinding light of such noon, I thought I had seen tears trickling down his bony cheeks. He left did not return before the sun was down.

The year was 1919. It was the first time I saw a military uniform, and despite my disappointment, I was convinced that it would be my last. Us vampires worked with different mechanisms to humans, and a vampiric army demanded nothing but fear to process. While humans struggled to identify their comrades by clothes and accessories, we relied on our animalistic instinct to judge, despite some small alterations in my case as I was gifted with such smell.

I did not have the chance to witness another blue uniform until that fateful night in the forest decades after.

I had located him the very second he turned up in the forest. More accurately, I had smelled he was coming. He was riding a stallion, a very fine one with forelocks of rinsing soap and harness of newly manufactured leather. As the beast went flying through the night, fresh blood flowed under its skin like a rhythm of vitality, which was, to be honest, quite pleasing.

However, those odours were nothing in comparison to his. His smell. It struck my head like an earthquake struck a poorly constructed building, sending every part of me collapsing to the ground with its first wave. It was the presence of spring itself, a tender mixture of blue and white and life that moved me more than anything I had ever known before. It was the call of hummingbirds among flowerbeds. It was the hum of waves crashing on land. It was dusk. It was dawn. It was love.

I went rigid in the arms of Maria.

From a distance above, I heard her mellow voice. "Mi cariño, did you eat?"

The sound burbled as if it had been travelling under water. The brunette had repeated her words twice, an explicit implication of her impatience. They blasted through my eardrum a ring of an alarm bell, yet the venom bubbling in my throat had prevented me from coming up with a decent reply. I knew none of her motives to question such a thing, as she was the one who had commanded me to be in position for two weeks straight.

However, I wanted her to worry not, for I had found it. "He's there." He was the one. My perfect meal.

I spurted out of Maria's embrace just for a sudden pain to generate through my left elbow as she tugged it back. My body shot up her breast case in an awkward angle, and the force yanked my legs nearly crumpled earth. On the afterthought, I was glad she had done it, stopping me from my worst introduction ever.

Her question came in a soft hush. "He?" and she saw the eager gleams of my soul. "Oh, of course. Look at you my dear, so impatient already,"

"You are to behave yourself, mi cariño, and then I--we will see."

She looked back at the two vampires, a melodious soprano sprang free from her lovely lips.

"Right?"

The others seemed genuinely confused. Their troubled looks bounced on my nerves and pushed the amount of venom to an unendurable level. Their obliviousness to my ability screamed through the air like an animal demanded to die. As our potential allies, Maria must have at least informed them of my condition. They were wasting my time. The smell was moving this way.

I cursed under my breath.

I knew it was foolish letting the bloodlust crawl like vines and hover up my consciousness. I knew it was a mistake to dwell on this torturous hunger and lost my mind at the forefront of Maria, for she would not permit me to commit to my desire. Yes, my desire. The urge was not foreign, as she had utilised it countless times to recruit her newborns army. But dare I say it was peculiar this time, since I had yet felt such an intimidating bond in my life.

"Her nose," she snorted, still an attractive sound regardless, "has been quite helpful. She can sniff, and sometimes she sniffs out the gifted ones, remember? If their blood's compelling enough, Gãrcia would be able to point them out even if they're in a puddle of humans. Extremely gorgeous, isn't it?"

I nodded unwillingly. "It's Elle, Maria."

"Right, Gãrcia," She blinked and strained me forward, "we should find your 'baby' before they could flee away like last time, don't you think?"

Well, yes, of course.

The last person who had drawn my attention was a cranky, broken woman who had been wandering around our old mansion at night. I had no idea why she was on the street in such a presumably freezing snow shower. Perhaps the upper town's asylum had intentionally forgotten some residents for it could no longer afford their food.

Still, under layers of her cheap cologne slipped out a sweet, honeyed smell of blood, which was more delightful than the others' yet not captivating enough to be 'the seeds'. Despite her miserable appearance, I had invited her to join us for the next dinner. My initial intention was to please her appetite before introducing her to my subordinates. Surely, she would love the food, and they would love the charming girl.

However, the plan had ended in tragedy as I found her lifeless body lying bare in the dark lane six blocks from our place. She was strangled to death. Her body was bruised and swollen. Several steps forward revealed her tattered dress, which had already been discarded in the muddy water. The scene was distasteful, to say the least.

It took me a night and a half to finally plunge my teeth in the hot, wet pulses of the culprits. Revenge was an inappropriate proclamation, for I had lived an iniquitous life where I had been sentenced for the out of countless innocents' lights. The blood coated my hand had long exiled me from the naiveness of mortality; it built me a wall behind which I could hide from all blessings a normal life had once rendered me.

Nevertheless, from the perspective of a defined female, it should somehow put my soul at ease to see the existence of such delinquents were wiped out.

I did not regret.

As we proceeded through the forest, I caught myself hoping that this affair would not conclude in another heartbreak.

-----------

To support our cover, Maria insisted on stopping and walking to the boy like actual human beings. In all honesty, the concealment was so poorly crafted it surprised me when the others obliged without a blink of an eye. On my side, I believed this was not our best move, since it was already suspicious to see four exquisite, unarmed ladies strolling in a forest at night without any male escort aside. Should walking lessen a normal human's suspicious? What if he was a cautious little thing who could sense the danger, who could sense us?

Maybe I was just paranoid. Maybe I had underestimated our beauty, the core of our hunting strategy. But I could not risk it, for one single mistake might immediately scare off the meal. On the other hand, the dreary moon along with the pure, odorous smell of earth, indicating there was no human around, had assured me this hunt would be relatively safe. And safety was all I preferred for things to go swiftly and uncomplicatedly.

So why the need to hide?

For the Lord's above, we were in the middle of a forest, not a festival.

Despite my mental displeasure, my physical shell followed Maria suit. The way I had been blindly tailing her made me feel despicable sometimes, for it reminded me of the inconsequential life I had chosen to live with was sewn by nothing but my own cowardice.

It was like I had been walking upon a wooden beam in a wild night with winds howling by my ears and murky water roaring beneath my feet. Lightning strokes connected heaven and hell, building on the whirling sky a sinuous track leading the stars clashing upon the ground. And the wind had kept me moving. It whispered to me there was no way around, and darkness would swallow me whole once I stopped to look back. I knew the water was screaming to me, too, that I could just jump and free myself from this tormenting journey.

But that was the route for a hero, someone so brave and bright he would survive the consequences of the action. Not me. Not someone whose life was forever buried under the deep dark well of an presumably antagonistic world, where sunlight was viewed through a thin layer of glass, transparent yet from diamond it were made. Unbreakable.

So I kept walking, like I always did.

Soles ascended on the lone track while rows of trees went to the back of my eyesight and woven into the night. Under the moonlight which had then escaped the grasp of clouds, upon the bushes, amid the thorns, I noticed the berries came in royal purple and blue, colours deep and rich enough to blend into the night.

I tried to distract myself, imagining the blueberry melted upon the tip of my tongue like syrup. It was a stupid attempt, for I had yet tasted anything other than blood for years. There was, however, a strange yet watery sweetness formed at the back of my mouth. At first, it was like that of the blueberry pie in my memory, of which the recipe, as my brother had claimed, originated from a renowned cook in the North. Yet they were fading, those shimmering sweetening pieces, and so could no longer be sensed. Instead, slowly, methodically, something else began to surface. And it was familiar.

It was rusted, a taste which had dominated my existence for half a century.

It was foul, stank like the presence of death itself.

And then, I knew, I just knew, that its colour was red.

Red.

My chest heaved. I opened my eyes to see my left wrist was twisting in the clasp of Maria, where her palm was so cold that the sense crept like a serpent against my skin, yet had somehow managed to wake me up from the shallow hallucination.

Was I just about to clarify myself and put an end to her gesture when the three ladies stopped walking abruptly. Maria's hand separated from mine and upon her lips bloomed a charming smile enough to send any man on his knees. Behind my back, I heard Nettie and Lucy's clothes muffled as they exchanged something under their breath. Likewise, they were preparing for the hunt.

The hunt.

Slowly, I turned my head.

Behind the trees, too far for the mortal's to see but near enough for my vision to capture, there he rode, heading toward us. The dim moonlight traced the brim of his hat and sprinkled on the tips of his golden curls like fairy dust. His eyes were painted in a shade of brilliant green, which under the performance of light and shadow shifting slightly to sea-green, before I found it turned quite alike to that of my brother, a colour of deep blue sky. Underneath them came a straight, graceful Grecian nose and pursed lips which formed a stern expression.

He looked... noble. Handsomely so. And there was his outfit, a blue, well-tailored, military uniform. Along his gilt bell, a long sword dangled in its silver-plated scabbard. A five-pointed star shone brightly on his collar.

At first, I did not quite recognize his background. I could not even realise his suit was made for military purposes. Maybe it's darker blue had betrayed me, or my memory had gotten more hazy than I dare to admit. Maria, on the other hand, might have deduced it quite soon, therefore dropping her charismatic mask immediately. Her thoughts were easy to comprehend, for she had recently expressed her longing for newborns whose initial strength and skills could benefit the army. She had been seeking fierce and resilient candidates, the potential knights who could assist her in winning back her throne. To much of my dread, this military boy fit in perfectly.

Obviously, the young man was unaware of my concern as he deliberately guided the stallion to our direction. The beast twitched its ears and stumbled on its feet while moving forward. A few feet from us, it refused to obey his lead, so he dismounted himself and ducked his head like a real gentleman he was.

"Is there anything I could help you with, ma'am?" He blinked, "I--I mean, it's late, and we might agree the forest's very dangerous to travel alone."

His voice was low, but gentle. There was a genuine worry threaded with his words, which then bred a sense of irony in me. For as long as my second life progressed, no human had conveyed anything that delightful to me. There had been lust, there had been envy, there had been terror but never once it was concern. I wanted to burst into laughter at the deer which was mulling over the wolves with such aching tenderness it was seemingly alien.

When the boy did not get a reply, he moved forward and once he caught sight of our faces, he was stupefied. How unimpressed it was to see his eyes widen and his heart began thumping furiously in his chest. Maybe, I thought, I had given him more credit than I should have then. The bewilderment had caught him off-balance, which would probably contribute to his early death later. Under our gazes, he swallowed nervously.

It was Lucy who took the lead.

"He's speechless," she sang, her face glowed in childish amusement.

Adjacent to her, Nettie leaned ward with half-closed eyes, her fair locks worn loose on her shoulder as she took a deep inhale.

"Hmm," she sighed. "Lovely."

The blonde's muscles tensed under the impact of human blood. Reddish brown eyes flickered, indicating that she had not been eating for some time. Her intimation rattled like a snake setting for its conquest, which generated a sense of irritation down my veins.

Maria might have caught Nettie's intention, so she advanced and put her hand over the blonde's arm.

She spoke sharply, "Concentrate, Nettie."

At that time, the boy had escaped the immortal's bewitchment and was observing our appearance. In spite of his still-rumbling heart, his soldier instinct had slowly taken place. His eyes flickered from the blades to Maria, and then to me as if he was judging something.

"He looks right - young, strong, an officer..." she continued. She looked at the young man with such intensity that I knew was fuelled by rage and revenge. In people - army materials - like him, she saw the hope for her vengeance sparkled like lights at the end of a dark tunnel.

Maria paused, then her crimson eyes locked with mine.

"And there was something more... Do you sense it?" she asked the other two, "Gãrcia's right. He's... compelling,"

"Oh, yes," Nettie hastily agreed, leaning toward the man again.

Up until then, I had found Nettie was a very fine ally indeed. She had not been as chattering as Lucy, but deep down I saw a heart burned with ambition and determination. She could be a fox, the one you might consider as untrustworthy to befriend with but would undoubtedly come in handy on the battlefield. Her potential could have made her an indispensable asset to Maria. I knew it too well.

"Step back," I hissed, miserably accepting I had started a fight, "you don't touch him!" It was strange of me to pronounce my demand out loud.

Nettie frowned. Under the lacy eyelashes, I saw her reddish pupils dilated as their colour blackened to that of the night behind me. She looked quite taken aback by my sudden outburst, but then her angelic face heated up in anger.

Before the girl could come up with a verbal declaration of war herself, however, Maria interjected.

"Patient, mi cariño," her other hand pressed my arm while she turned to the blonde, "and you too, Nettie. It's not time to fuss around."

"Now, I want to keep him,"

The words loomed over my rage like ice on the winter river, dulling any heat remaining from my ravenous hunger. Proposing that piercing blue ice cracked into shimmering pointed fragments, the freezing water would flood out and drown me into my most daunting nightmares. Her words were all it took for my blood, supposed that any still remained, ran cold. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and backed off. For the sake of my being, I shall not defy her order. For the light of my frayed life, I shall comply with whatever she demands. Those beliefs (by the lack of better words) had been keeping me alive for a decent amount of time, which was admittedly not quite long should it be in comparison with the lifespan of Maria, but it was absolutely longer than most of the army recruits'.

As insane as my mind could go, never would I permit myself to plunge into the grip of Death so willingly, particularly for the sake of an ordinary prey like him.

Some time after, I heard Nettie retreated. She gulped loudly.

"You'd better do it, Maria," Lucy chimed in, her voice was such a cheery melody, "if he's important to you. I killed them twice as I often keep them."

"Yes, I'll do it," Maria nodded. "I really do like this one. Take Nettie and Gãrcia away, will you?" then her gaze averted to me, "Feed yourselves. I don't want to have to protect my back while I'm trying to focus."

The words were as blunt for our new allies as it were confusing for the young officer. He voiced none of his questions, but I could see the puzzlement radiating from his very much beautiful eyes. His shoulder stiffened and his fingers wiggled slightly. I dearly wished it was his heart urging him to grasp the sword hilt and ready to defend himself. Should those odd behaviours knock some sense back to him would I know he had a chance. Not that I mentioned his escape, as humans stood no earthly against our creatures, but he could have a chance to be conscious about his upcoming faith.

During the time I kept Maria company, I had witnessed so many innocents being pitched in this volatile world with nothing but sheer confusion in tow. And confusion turned to a sense of loss as it remained inside them, grasping their veins and lurking at the back of their mind, until the very moment their eyes could no longer gazing up the stars, their legs could no longer dasjing on the ground, and their lungs stopped being tortured by the constant hunger which lingered even in moments their pulses were bursting with fresh, hot blood, that the freedom found them under the form of death.

Death. Such a beautiful word it was. Would it make more sense to just dive into this void and stopped the torturous life I have been drowning in all these decades? 

The second I heard the smell of his blood, the world screamed "no".

"Let's hunt," after mere seconds of thinking, Nettie agreed enthusiastically, reaching for the taller girl's hand. I thought she had considered taking my hand as well, but she only glared at it before wheeling away. The two blondes swayed in the rising wind, their red and yellow skirts fluttering like butterflies catching the first breeze of spring while they fled into the wild. The girls looked so carefree as they danced towards the buzzling city, floral and plants wavered along their footsteps. Before their shadows went blurred behind the bushy trees, I heard Lucy whisper, "Don't we take her too?" and Nettie's grunt was all that answered.