Upon Waking (Youngling Series)

“She’s hot…even if…dead.”  The man’s voice was hard and brutal. His words came in and out of focus, the girl unable to clearly hear everything he said. It was like someone kept hitting the mute button over and over. 

Mute, unmute, mute, unmute.

Not only did it seem like her hearing was going, but she wasn’t able to see anything either. The room was shrouded in darkness, like she had gone blind. The loss of these sensations only heightened her sense of touch, her skin pimpling with gooseflesh under the stranger’s rough and callused hands.  

‘Ok, just focus on one thing at a time.’
She could sense her fingertips, knew where they were, but she couldn’t seem to make them move.  The feel of the man’s hand roaming higher on her body, heading for her stomach, kept breaking her concentration making it almost impossible for her to do what she knew had to be done.

“Man, hurry…get…done. This place…creeps…”

The change was almost unnoticeable, but the girl on the metal table felt a strange kind of warmth slowly
spiraling out from her core; tendrils of heat and strength moving from her gut out to the tips of her fingers and toes, igniting even the strands of her hair. But still she couldn’t move. He was now fondling her chest, touching her in places that she somehow knew had never been touched before. A feeling of rage and a surge of strength shot through her once more and suddenly she knew, if she tried once more, she would be able to move.

With the slightest thought, her arm shot up, her delicate fingers wrapping cruelly around the man’s thick throat, instantly crushing his windpipe. His eyes widened in shock and fear, his hands trying unsuccessfully to pull hers from his throat. He gave one last wheezing breath before collapsing to the floor, his lips having turned a delicate shade of blue.

Slowly she opened her eyes and took her first look around the room.  It reminded her of a morgue like off of her favorite cop shows. The walls were painted a dull and boring cadet gray with a matching floor. There were several stainless steel tables and metal doors in the wall for storing dead bodies, drains in the floor and big bright lights on revolving stands.

“Where-,” Her voice cracked, parched as though she’d been left out in the desert for days with no water. She pressed a frigid hand to her cool forehead as she tried to remember how she had ended up in a morgue, naked and laying on an examination table.  The girl hadn’t even spared a second glance for the dead man or for his partner who was still backed into a corner where he had retreated in fear, staring at her like he was seeing a ghost. There was a deep pulsing ache in her head, like she had a hangover and she was thirsty…
so
thirsty. The desire for something to drink seemed to be slowly filling her throat and mouth, moving south, until she felt as though she would burst. Every inch of her ached and throbbed, her veins feeling as though they had collapsed beneath her skin. Her skin felt dry like sandpaper and tissue thin, as though it would tear right off.

She had to force her mind past the gnawing thirst in her throat to look over at the silent man, narrowing her eyes and wondering at the strangely sharp image before her. He seemed almost to be backlit in a glowing red light that seemed to almost pulse around him. Just looking at the frightened man seemed to aggravate her thirst further. She gave a slight shake of her head, silvery blonde hair floating around her shoulders like a cloud of spun sugar.

“Where…am I?” she croaked, rubbing her fingers tentatively down her throat to try and ease the pain.  The grown man squeaked then started to cry, a dark stain slowly spreading across the front of his pants.

“I-I don’t know…Please, I have no clue. You…you’re supposed to be-“ His sobbing choked off the rest of his words and then he seemed to lose all feeling in his legs as the man slid silently to the floor, out cold for the moment. He seemed to be out cold, his body giving a little jerk or two as if he were dreaming.

Taking a deep breath, the girl sat up and slowly swung her legs over the edge of the cold metal table beneath her; the white cloth that must have at one point been covering her slipped to the floor to lie in a puddle below her long legs. As she lifted herself down, the table rolled several feet away from her and she stumbled forward, catching herself on one of the numerous metal doors. As she steadied herself, she glanced down at the desk beside her, a photo clipped to a file catching her eye.

Something about the young woman was disturbingly familiar and even though she didn’t know who she was…she
knew
the girl in the photo was in fact her. There was no doubt in her mind. Everything from the long flowing hair to the dark, nearly black eyes was
her.
“Name…there has to be a name…” Finally able to stand on her own, the girl snatched up the file and ripped it open; her eyes searching the cover page for the name she knew would be on there.

There it was. It was such a simple thing, a name, but it was the only thing that felt solid and real to her at that point.

Name: Tessa Gwendolyn Rake

Age: 22

Cause of Death: Animal Attack

‘Wait a minute…cause of DEATH?’
Tessa, because that was who she was, didn’t even notice as the folder and photo slipped from her grasp. That hadn’t been nearly everything in the report but they were the only three lines that had caught her attention. But…cause of death? That would mean that she was…dead. Her legs went weak once more and she had to steady herself against the deck.

“No…no way.” Her head whipped around, searching for a mirror. There, above a small wash sink, was a piece of small reflective glass that would confirm that it was all a mistake. That she, Tessa Rake, was in fact
not
dead but just…well, anything but dead. She ran to the sink, stopping herself with a hand to the mirror, covering her reflection. Taking a deep breath, Tessa slowly looked up at the same time that she lowered her hand.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. In many ways, she was still the young woman in the photo. Her hair was a strange silvery gold, like moonlit sunflowers, if you could imagine such a thing. But her eyes were the exact opposite, an obsidian black in color with bright purple flecks laced through the dark. Or at least, that was what they looked like in the photo. It was hard at the moment to see any color in the dead, glazed over eyes that looked back at Tessa in the mirror; it was something straight out of a zombie movie. Luckily nothing else was very zombie-ish about her. Just pale white, flawless skin and long dark eyelashes. Her lips, normally a very healthy pink, were now just a lifeless washed out version of their normal color. And, to top it off, she was very naked and had two perfect puncture wounds in the side of her long graceful neck.

Animal attack

Bull shit.

A small groan from behind her brought Tessa back from the edge of absolute panic; her head turning slowly to find the source of the pathetic sound. The man was slowly coming to, cradling his head and whispering about a dead girl. Again, that raging thirst seemed to swell in Tessa’s throat, making it extremely difficult to breath or to even think clearly. The red glow was still present, now more clearly defined that he was awake. It seemed to swell and edge with every breath he took, with every beat of his heart.

Before she knew what she was doing, Tessa had taken a few steps towards him, slowly closing the distance, her bare feet making no noise on the cement floor. Suddenly, she could smell him, a coppery sweet smell that seemed to take over every other sense she had at her disposal.  She took two more steps and suddenly he was right before her. He had finally looked up and was crying but she couldn’t focus on any of the words coming out of his mouth. They just sounded like gibberish to her and she found herself completely disinterested. All she could think about was the red glow about him and the painful thirst she was experiencing. It hadn’t even occurred to her to get a drink from the sink. The thought of water was almost…disgusting. Tessa slowly knelt and reached out, grabbing the man’s wrist and jerking him forward till he was pressed against her. His crying and sobbing become louder and more obnoxious as he feebly tried to pull from her steely grasp.

“Are you scared?” Tessa's voice was soft and sweet with a slight edge to it. He was nodding vigorously, still trying to pull away. “I was scared too. Can you imagine waking up in a place like this? Waking up to what your friend was doing to me? Try to imagine that for me, just for a moment.”

“I-I’m sorry! So sorry! He-he was a freak! But he paid me good money! Besides, you were…you were-“

Tessa felt a small smile slip into place, the corners of it dented as something sharp seemed to fill her mouth.

‘Strange…’

“Dead?” the man gulped loudly, nodding once. “Well, I guess you and your buddy were wrong, weren’t you?”

“Yes! Wrong, we were very, very wrong!” She leaned forward, burrowing her face in his neck and breathing in his scent deeply. Tessa wasn’t sure exactly what it was she was doing but she knew it was what she wanted. There was something in her screaming that the life blood coursing through his body was the only thing that would quench the horrible thirst that threatened to consume her. The voice was screaming at her to drink, to drink till she was full and to not stop till the man’s heart stopped.

To do it before it was
too late.

Tessa knew that she should be repulsed by the thought of drinking blood but she wasn’t. She was
excited
by it.

Tessa laid a light kiss on the man’s neck and he sobbed once more before she sank her fangs into the soft flesh of his neck. Because she now knew that was what those sharp things in her mouth were.

Fangs.

They were hypodermic needle thin, the tips sliding easily through skin and muscle to reach the throbbing vein bursting with blood. As soon as they pierced that vein, the man’s blood flowed rich and thick into Tessa’s mouth, the taste more exquisite than anything she had ever tasted before in her life.  She nearly sighed in relief but didn’t since that would have required her to stop. The more blood she drank the less painful her thirst became until it was almost gone. Soon, the flow of blood started to ebb as the man’s heart started to slow until finally it stopped and Tessa pulled away as the voice in her head screamed at her to do. The dead man dropped from her arms and she stood, every inch of her body imbued with strength that seemed almost inhuman. All her senses were heightened frighteningly so. Everything sparkled with brilliance, including colors she had never even seen before. She could hear cars out on the street three floors above her and everything in between. Tessa even felt a miniscule breeze that had found its way down to the subterranean floor. It tickled its way across her flesh, raising goose bumps in its wake.