Author's note: This is an excerpt from one of the books of The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters young adult urban fantasy series (including the prequel books and stories of Eversfield Academy: Vampire Origins). I don't want to tell you which one because spoilers! This is the story of one vampire's transformation. All potential spoilers have been removed.

Happy reading!

Betsy

A Vampire's Nightmare

an urban fantasy short

and an excerpt from The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters + Eversfield Academy: Vampire Origins series

by Betsy Flak

The brand-new vampire's guts knotted. Two nights ago, she’d awoken from the nightmares of turning with that horrible, all-consuming thirst. All she could think of was how her throat burned.

And how that burn might be quenched.

An instant and an eternity later, her fellow vampires brought in the criminal straining at his zip ties.

In her head, she shouted at her new supernatural, immortal body to leave this human alone, no matter how terrible the other vampires claimed their catch to be.

Her body didn’t listen.

The vampire leapt upon her prey. She knocked him out of the other vampire's hands. With her fingers locked on the criminal’s biceps, she plunged her swollen fangs into his neck.

Blood spurted over her tongue, sweet and sour like her favorite candy melted into a hot, heady syrup.

Her mind screamed at, then begged her body to stop, to push the man away, to reject taking this life.

Her hold on the man didn’t loosen, not her hands and not her mouth and jaws and lips.

Blood pooled in her stomach and warmed her veins. Pleasant tingles rippled over her skin. This was where she was meant to be and what she was meant to do.

The burn, the thirst remained.

The brand-new vampire drank more and more. Her muscles vibrated, alternating between strengthening and relaxing in time with her gulps. Her nerves fired together in a heavenly chorus that sang throughout her whole body and echoed in her bones.

She’d never felt so alive.

But she wasn’t alive.

The memory shocked her brain, and she tried to stop, tried to pull herself away from that life force.

The life force that she needed to survive.

She failed.

Too soon, the man’s blood thinned, slowed.

The burn remained.

Frantic, the vampire pulled on the artery harder. She gulped down two, three, four mouthfuls, each smaller than the last. Her prey’s blood was running out.

Those delightful tingles dissipated, and this time, her muscles stayed relaxed. She grew no stronger. That heavenly song faded away. Only the noise of her panicked sucks shattered the silence.

The burn remained.

It scorched her throat. Would the thirst never leave? Was this what it was to be a vampire? How could any of them stand it? How did they not kill and kill and kill if only to ease the pain for a moment?

In her arms, the man twitched.

An exquisite rush exploded within her. It was a rainbow of fireworks in the inky night sky, a roller coaster zipping and zooming, a mug of hot chocolate in front of a crackling fire on a cold winter’s night. It was Thanksgiving Day dinner, pie and birthday cake and ice cream, eggs and cheese and bacon and chocolate chip pancakes all rolled into one.

It left her full and pulsing with energy, the burn forgotten.

It was addictive, like nothing she’d ever experienced.

It was the moment the man’s body and soul separated, the moment she killed him.