The sun had long set by the time they were on the road. Within Autumn’s car, it was dark, with the only light being the faint hue of the dashboard, and the occasional street lamp they passed beneath.

Holly was uncharacteristically quiet for the drive back, her chin resting on her hand as she stared out the passenger window. Autumn’s eyes were locked on the near-empty road, but her mind was elsewhere.

The scene from before replayed in her head like a broken record. The alluring tone of Summer’s voice, Holly’s glassy eyes, the euphoric abandon that she spoke with, and of course the bite...

Autumn stole a glance at her friend. Was it just the darkness, or was she paler? Blood loss, or the beginning of something else? She’d been bitten on her left side, which Autumn could see clearly from the driver’s seat; there didn’t seem to be any further bleeding.

Was she just going crazy? Had this somehow been some insane, sleep-deprived dream?

She scowled, her knuckles tightening on the steering wheel.

No, she wasn’t going to start doubting herself now.

She considered again if she should say something to Holly. Her friend seemed oblivious to what had happened to her. Summer had instructed her to not remember it, and it seemed impossible to Autumn that such a thing could just work like that. Did she remember, on some level at least? Was she so quiet right now because she was fighting a silent battle to keep those memories from slipping away?

What if she truly had forgotten it all? Should Autumn say anything? What if she did? Would Holly believe her if she told her what she’d seen? Would she tell Summer? What would happen then?

An image assaulted Autumn: of Summer cornering her somewhere, after a long shift at work when she was tired and couldn’t fight back. Summer forcing Autumn to stare into her dark eyes as her voice stole away her free will...

Her heart was racing. A cornered animal; that what she would be. Prey.

They had arrived at Holly’s parents’ home without her realizing it. Autumn parked the car wordlessly, waiting for Holly to say her goodbyes or leave. But the smaller girl hesitated.

After an awkward moment, Autumn asked, “What is it?”

Holly turned around in the seat, but was unable to meet her gaze. “There’s um... something I need to tell you. Something that happened today.”

Autumn perked up. “Yeah?”

“You’ve been a good friend to me,” Holly said, fidgeting with her hands. “The thing is, I well... um...”

She was struggling to find the words. She hesitated for a moment, and then her eyes grew cloudy and unfocused, as though she were for a moment somewhere else. And then she snapped back to attention and looked Autumn right in the eyes.

“I haven’t been the best friend to you,” Holly said, more certainly. “When we first met, I was going through some heavy personal stuff. I had a warped idea of what friendship was, or what I deserved from others; and I was pushy with you because of that. You didn’t seem to want to be friends, and I felt like that was exactly what I deserved.”

“Holly...” It wasn’t what Autumn had been hoping to hear, but it still hit hard.

“You turned out to be a better friend than I expected, and I’m so grateful for that,” Holly continued. Her lip trembled a bit. “I’m glad I got to know you, even if it wasn’t really in a way that either of us deserved.”

Autumn didn’t know what to say. This was something she’d never expected to hear from Holly, of all people. On some level, she’d known all this already, but Holly was never the type to be so forthcoming with her feelings.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Holly said. “If you don’t want to be friends any more, I understand.”

“Holly, no,” Autumn said quickly. “You’re a good friend. I care about you. I don’t care about how we met, I’m just glad to know you now.”

Holly smiled. “Hug?”

They exchanged a hug and then Holly excused herself, gathering up her things and stepping out of the car.

“Hey,” Autumn said, “quick question: what’s up with the chocker?”

Holly blinked, her hand unconsciously touching her neck. She chuckled. “Oh this thing? It’s nothing, I just felt like trying something a little different.”

Autumn didn’t say anything more. Something was telling her she shouldn’t ask too much more.

As she drove back to her apartment, a slow-burning anger overtook her. That Holly had said these things to her, not of her own free will, but from someone else compelling her to... Holly hadn’t figured these things out about herself, Summer had come to conclusions about her and then told her what to think, what to feel.

Holly had never told her what the previous manager had done, but Autumn knew she loved her job dearly. Whatever it was, for her to nearly leave, must have been bad. And then this new person had come in, and on their very first day working together, had taken advantage of her.

Autumn flicked the single light switch of her apartment, stepping in and shutting the door behind her. It was, to put it modestly, a modest apartment. On market, two bedroom one bathroom; in reality it was more like one regular room and a closet that could very generously be called another room, and a bathroom that worked sometimes. It wasn’t much space, and the neighbourhood was rough, but it was enough that a college drop-out with a barista’s salary could afford it.

A paper envelope containing rent (in cash, of course) sat at the edge of her counter, which she was supposed to have taken to the landlord two days ago. The kitchen was a small corner of the living room, and her bed was a mattress in another corner beside her computer. Unwashed bowls and wrappings of eaten snacks lay in small piles here and there. Her ancient-but-still-working CRT TV sat in the middle of the room atop an old Amazon box, with a Nintendo Gamecube hooked up, the controller sitting on an only-slightly stained couch that she’d nicked off the street at some point ages ago. In another corner, sat a set of stacked boxes full of things she had brought from her former life, and never bothered to unpack or find a place for.

It wasn’t much, but it was home.

Autumn sighed and set her keys and phone down beside the envelope on the counter. She went right to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face.

She looked at her reflection in the dingy mirror. It was still her.

“You’re not crazy,” she told herself. “You know what you saw. It was real.”

That made her feel a little better.

She stepped out of the bathroom and let out a tired sigh. She was exhausted, and wanted to crawl onto her bed and sleep like a dead woman, but she knew that wasn’t happening any time soon. Not until her mind settled.

She went to the kitchen corner and set up her small coffee maker to brew a cup. As it began to make it’s churns and groans, she went over and sat down on her couch.

She needed to think about what she’d seen. She needed a plan, because this wasn’t just something that happened that she’d remember and tell stories about later. That was a life-changing moment, and she couldn’t just ignore this.

Summer, Holly’s new manager at Hot Topic, was a vampire.

The sentence was absurd to even think. It sounded like something out of someone’s perverted fantasy. But it was her reality now, and thinking it was impossible wouldn’t make it any less real.

Was vampire the right word for her? Autumn hadn’t seen much of her, but it seemed to fit. Pale skin, drinking blood, and some sort of mind control powers. Autumn didn’t know much about those, but they must be strong if they got Holly, who was as straight as an arrow, to let another woman suck her neck the first day they met.

Holly was cute, sure. Autumn would have to be blind to not see that. And it wasn’t as thought the thought the two of them hadn’t crossed her mind. But it didn’t take knowing Holly long to see just how laser-focused on the opposite sex she was.

Autumn frowned. Why was this what she was thinking about? Focus, dumbass.

Holly was her friend. She couldn’t abandon her to that... woman. Nor that other employee, Bonita.

She didn’t know much about Summer, but it was a safe bet that they weren’t her first victims, nor would they be the last. Power corrupts, and she would doubtlessly keep going until...

Wait.

A memory sprung to Autumn’s mind.

“No way,” she muttered.

She got up from the couch and went to the stack of boxes in the corner. She shuffled them around for a bit, eventually coming across the one with ‘Mementos’ scribbled on in sharpie. She grabbed that, and dragged it back over to the couch.

Digging through the old family photos and cards that she never wanted to see but couldn’t bring herself to destroy, she eventually came across the one she was looking for.

A framed picture of her grandmother, Eve.

The memory was faint, but she could remember two things very well: snow and noise. The snow was a comfort, but for some reason, she wasn’t allowed to go outside and play in it. Perhaps because of the family they were there to visit? It was a stupid reason anyway. She was a kid and she wanted to go outside and play in the snow, not stand around as adults talked about boring stuff. The latter was the source of the noise. They’d had a few drinks by now, and there might have been a sports game on?

It didn’t matter. No one was paying attention to her anyway, so she wandered away to explore the house.

Most of the rooms were empty, but there was nothing interesting in them. She moved on from one to another, until she found one that wasn’t empty.

“Ah, were you looking for a place to hide, too?” Grandma asked.

She closed the door behind her, and the noise of the party was far away. Now it was just her and Grandma, the snow outside, and the interesting black and white photos she was looking through.

They were old memories, relatives Autumn had never known, places she’d never been. Grandma as a young woman, coming to America in the sixties with her husband, Autumn’s now-dead grandfather. Each photo came with a story, and Grandma told them in such a soft voice that the noise in Autumn’s head was soothed into a soft wave, like the ocean shore.

Then, at one picture, she frowned. An image of the sun rising over a small town, taken from a far-off hill.

Autumn had noticed her pause, and asked what that one was.

“The place I grew up in,” Grandma said. “I left when I was young. It doesn’t exist any more.”

She asked why.

“Evil came to us. The townspeople lost their humanity, they gave up their souls to an agent of the devil, and the town destroyed itself from within. Without their faith, they could not survive. I was the only one who got away.”

Grandma brushed her thumb against the cross necklace she wore across her neck.

“This saved me. I never lost my faith in God. In moments when I was scared, I remembered him because of this, and I prayed. It protected me.”

Autumn did not say anything. She didn’t believe in God. She’d been told again and again as a child that God did not make mistakes. How could that be true when she existed the way she was?

“I saw evil in those eyes,” Grandma continued. “The demon who came to steal our souls. Those eyes stared into mine, and they whispered evil, wicked things to me. I’d never felt such temptation in my life. But I defied them, and escaped.”

Autumn didn’t believe the story. She couldn’t. And Grandma seemed to know that.

“The specific details don’t matter,” Grandma told her. “What’s important is that you remember who you are, and stay true to yourself, no matter what the world tries to force you to be. You know what your truth is, and they can never take that from you.”

If it could only be true.

“I love you. I can’t wait to see the person you grow up to be...”

Enough.

That was the last time she’d seen Grandma Eve. Fast forward a few months later, and Autumn was... occupied and unable to visit as she was sick in the hospital. Her family hadn’t even told her, not until she was back home and Grandma Eve had already passed.

Whether the story was real, or something Eve had imagined, it didn’t matter now. She couldn’t ask her, and even if the rest of her family knew anything or not, they wanted nothing to do with her.

She blinked, and realized she was crying.

She set the photo down and went to get her coffee. That would make her feel better; it always did.

Autumn sipped her coffee, and her soul felt a little calmer.

She was here now because of Grandma Eve. She would never have survived so many years otherwise.

She’d fought to be the person she was, on her terms, and not someone else’s. She wasn’t about to let someone take that freedom from her, or anyone else if she could help it.

If she was going to do this, she needed to be careful. She had the advantage right now, in that she knew what Summer was. As far as Summer knew, she was Holly’s friend who made coffee. If she wasn’t careful, she would lose that advantage. She had to plan every move she made, or she’d end up a mindless servant of Summer’s.

She eyed her computer in the corner. Time to research!

A few hours and a few cups of coffee later, Autumn had made little, if any, progress.

She had dozens of tabs open, with every article about vampires she could find. She’d ran every web search variant of ‘are vampires real’ that she could come up with, but all she could find were Yahoo Questions from teenage girls who’d just seen Twilight, and very dedicated goth cosplayers.

She scoured wikipedia articles about the origins of vampire folklore, but found nothing that seemed to point to their definite existence. Besides hysteric outbreaks centuries ago where villagers dug up and staked bodies, which were ultimately dismissed as examples of ignorance regarding the process of bodies decomposing.

If vampires were real after all, how had they stayed secret so long? Did the government know about them? Was the government run by them?

Grandma Eve’s story occupied her thoughts. Was that a vampire she had met in her doomed village, or just a very charismatic charlatan? She wished she had more details, but she couldn’t even remember the name of the place, if Eve had even mentioned it.

She drank some more coffee, deliberately ignoring the time, and started to cross search vampires with small towns in Europe that didn’t exist any more. As expected, she found little.

And then one sight caught her eye. A timeline of reported vampire sightings. She clicked it, and immediately was assaulted by a garish relic of another time in internet culture.

“REAL VAMPIRIC SIGHTINGS,” it read at the top. “A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF REAL VAMPIRE SIGHTINGS THROUGH HISTORY- UPDATED FREQUENTLY”.

The supposed sightings stopped at 1999, but the ones that were there reached all the way back into the 1800’s.

Autumn read through the list intently, looking for something that matched the timeline she was thinking of.

She passed a few in the 1940’s and 50’s, and then:

1961 - Uitat, Romania

Several reported sightings, little information remaining

The next examples were in the seventies, which was too late to be Eve. Autumn knew she moved to America in the mid-sixties.

She did a search for a place called Uitat in Romania and found nothing on current maps. There were a few old archived books that mentioned a small town, but there seemed to be nothing notable about it.

“This has to be it,” Autumn said quietly.

She tabbed back to the sightings website, and looked for more information, but there was nothing beyond that single line of text. She noticed an ‘about me’ section at the bottom, so she scrolled down to read it.

The website owner described herself, using far more words than necessary, and far more references to Jesus than anyone needed. But it was the part at the end that got Autumn’s attention. She described an encounter with a vampire that she herself survived, how the vampire had drawn near her and gone for her neck, only to be driven away by the cross on her neck.

“Huh,” Autumn said. “I see a pattern here.”

She got up and went back to the box of mementos. Among the things Grandma Eve had left here, there was the cross necklace, the very same she’d worn that day as they talked in that room.

“Can’t hurt,” she said to herself, tying it around her neck. She tucked the cross within her shirt, out of sight. She didn’t want to broadcast that, lest someone think wrongly of her, but if things went badly and she was cornered, it could be the difference between life or death.

Not that she planned to let it get to that point in the first place. If all went well, she could observe Summer from afar, figure out how her powers worked, and catch her in a trap before she figured out anything.

Feeling better that she was making some progress, Autumn returned to her computer to search for more information on the town.