Cora and Zane's black hair matched the sky as they made their way toward the river. It was eerily quiet out here. There were no insects or nocturnal animals making their characteristic calls, no chittering of little creatures seeking their mates. The sounds of life were absent here, and Cora was struck with the realization that they had never been this far from home at night.
Ever since they moved here, they stayed close to the house without wandering unnecessarily. The obvious reason for this was their own safety, but Cora was also very protective of her mother. While her and her brother were potential vampires, their mother most certainly was not, and she feared to leave her alone.
The familiar prickle of goosebumps rose along her hairline and then skittered down the rest of her body, causing her to stop in her tracks. When her and Zane left the roof, she was focused on this desperate desire to seize the moment and try the blood once and for all. Maybe Dr. Wright was… right. Maybe it would trigger the process of them turning. But now it struck her that they had left their mother alone.
"What is it?" Zane asked quietly. He didn't whisper, because he thought it would sound too suspicious to anyone listening… not that their beating hearts weren't suspicious enough on their own.
"Nothing," she pushed the worry away. They were already halfway to the river. They would just take a drink and return home. It wouldn't take that long at all.
But the rest of the walk felt incredibly long. Had it always been this long? Wasn't their house quite close the river? It was like the darkness was yawning larger the further they walked, swallowing their steps. The trees all looked the same as well—like erect skeletons reaching toward a black abyss—and Cora began to have the unsettling feeling that they were walking in circles. But that was impossible.
Just when she was about to tell Zane that they should turn around and head back, the slurping sound of the river prompted her forward. It had to be close. The sound was unmistakable.
Zane must have heard it too, because he sped up and arrived at the bank first. The blood looked black under the moonlight—almost like a slithering creature of some kind moving slowly along the earth, tempting the creatures it was made to fulfill.
Cora's mouth watered, but it wasn't from hunger. It was from a visceral horror that seemed to pool in her mouth and make her shudder involuntarily. She didn't want to be here anymore. She was wrong. There was no way she could do it. There was no way she could drink from that black creature.
She imagined they could just arrive here, take a sip like it was water, and then quickly leave. But this was thick and black and… wrong. It would be worse to try drinking it and then end up throwing up all over the bank. That would not go unnoticed by whoever was out here tonight.
She turned away when she saw Zane kneel down and dip his hand in. Apparently he didn't have the same aversion that she did. Even though she was no longer looking to witness him raise his bloodied hand to his mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut. She could still imagine it in her mind, and there was nothing that closing her eyes would do. But it was instinct—she wanted to make the image disappear.
"Can we go?" she said to the tree in front of her, hoping Zane would hear. But he didn't respond.
She waited a few moments longer before finally turning, bracing herself to see whatever it was she was going to see of her brother. Hopefully he hadn't merged with the river and become one with its sickening movement. It wouldn't make sense for that to happen, but she imagined it nonetheless.
Instead, she saw Zane frozen staring out across the river at the other side of the bank. She took a step toward him.
"No," he said so low that at first she wasn't even sure it was his voice. He hadn't moved when he said it.
She stopped, squinting into the darkness in the direction he was staring. And then she saw them. One pair of black eyes after another were amongst the trees and trained on her and her brother. She wouldn't have even noticed them if the faintest reflection of moonlight hadn't given them away. But there they were—unmoving black eyes staring straight at them.
The vampires on the other side of the bank didn't move as they stared—not even the smallest muscle. Not even the bat of an eyelash. Cora's eyes adjusted to finally take in the rest of the bodies that belonged to those eyes, and they looked exactly like statues. Vampire statues all lined up amongst the corpse trees and all looking in the same direction. At the two across from them with the beating hearts.
If she and Zane ran, they were going to pounce. She instinctively knew it. And they couldn't break eye contact with the creatures either, because the moment they did, they were going to pounce. They were trapped in this indefinite stare off.
Cora tried not to breathe. She tried not to move or sway or shiver from the instant cold terror that had arrested her limbs. She tried to calm her frantic heart that was probably pressing those creatures to the brink of their sanity with the temptation of its warm, pulsing life. Without realizing it, she was trying to mirror the frozen state of those who were fixated on her and Zane.
And then suddenly every frozen head turned upward to the sky at exactly the same moment. Cora's eyes grew wider at the terrifying synchronicity of it—like they were all part of the same organism and obeying the same master. Her eyes rose to the sky as well, and there she saw the full moon cloaked entirely in red. The lunar eclipse was complete. There was no white left of the now bloodied moon.