Stefan’s Diaries: The Craving Chapter 1

I picked out a heartbeat, a single life, in the near distance.The other noises of the city faded into the background as this hotshot called to me. She had wandered away from her friends and left the salubrious-worn paths.The sun had bonny set all over Central Park, where Id exiled myself since arriving in young York City fourteen long days ago. The colours in this expanse of wilderness were softening, sliding toward 1 another, shadows blurring with the things that made them. The oranges and deep blues of the sky morphed into an achromatic black, while the muddy ground dimmed to a velvety sienna.Around me, most of the world was still, paused in the breath that comes at the end of day when the guards channelize Humans and their daylight companions lock their doors and creatures of the night like myself come out to break away.With the ring Katherine gave me I nookie walk in the daylight like some(prenominal) normal, living human. But as its been since the beginning of time , its easier for vampires to hunt during the uncertain hours when day slowly becomes night. Dusk confuses those who arent supply with the eyes and ears of a nocturnal predator.The heartbeat I now pursued began to sound quieter . . . its owner was getting away. Desperate, I took gain, forcing my body to move quickly, my feet to push off from the ground. I was weak from lack of feeding, and it was affecting my world power to hunt. Added to that, these woods werent familiar to me. The plants and vines were as alien as the peck on the cobbled streets a quarter land mile away.But a hunter transplanted is still a hunter. I leaped over a twiggy, stunted supply and avoided an icy stream, devoid of the lazy catfish I used to watch as a child, until my base of operations slipped on mossy stone and I crashed done and through the underbrush, my chase growing far louder than I int finish.The mail carrier of the heart I followed heard and knew her death was c neglect. this instant that she was alone and aware of her plight, she began to run in earnest.What a spectacle I must birth made pertinacious hair askew, skin as pale as a corpse, eyes starting to redden as the vampire in me came out. Running and leaping through the woods like a wild man, attired in the finery Lexi, my friend in New Orleans, had given(p) me, the white silk shirt now torn at the sleeves.She picked up speed. But I wasnt going to lose her.My need for roue became an ache so inexpugnable that I couldnt contain myself any longer. A honeyed both(prenominal)er bloomed along my jaw and my fangs came out. The blood in my face grew hot as I underwent the change. My senses grow as my Power took over, sapping my last bit of vampiric strength.I leaped, moving at a speed beyond human and animal. With that instinct all living creatures have, the slimy thing felt death closing in and began to panic, scrambling for safety under the trees. Her heart pounded out of understand stripe thump thump thu mp thump thump.The tiny human part of me might have regretted what I was about to do, but the vampire in me needed the blood.With a final jump, I caught my flow a large, greedy squirrel whod left her pack to s hollow outnge for extra food. Time slowed as I descended, ripped her have it away aside, and sank my teeth into her flesh, draining her life into me one slip at a time.Id eaten squirrels as a human, which decrease my guilt marginally. Back home in transcendental Falls, my brother and I would hunt in the knotty woods that surrounded our estate. Though squirrels were poor have for most of the year, they were fat and tasted like nuts in the fall. Squirrel blood, however, was no such feast it was rank and unpleasant. It was nourish custodyt, nil more and barely that. I forced myself to storage area drinking. It was a tease, a reminder of the intoxicating pellucid that runs in a humans veins.But from the moment Damon ended Callies life, I had sworn off humans forever. I would never kill, never feed from, and never lamb another human. I could only bring them pain and death, even if I didnt mean to. Thats what life as a vampire meant. Thats what life with this new, vengeful Damon as my brother meant.An owl hooted in the elm that towered over my head. A chipmunk skittered former(prenominal) my feet. My shoulders slumped as I fixed the poor squirrel down on the ground. So forgetful blood remained in its body that the wound didnt leak, the animals legs already growing stiff with rigor mortis. I wiped the traces of blood and fur from my face and headed deeper into the park, alone with my thoughts while a city of just about a million people buzzed around me.Since Id sneaked off the train two weeks earlier, Id been sleeping in the middle of the park in what was fundamentally a cave. Id taken to marking a concrete slab with the passing of each day. Otherwise moments blended together, meaningless, and empty. close to the cave was a fenced-in area whe re construction men had gathered the useful remains of a colony they had razed to make Central Park, as well as the architectural bric-a-brac they intended to institute carved fountains, baseless statues, lintels, thresholds, and even gravestones.I pushed past a barren branch Novembers chill had robbed nearly every tree of its leaves and sniffed the air. It would rain soon. I knew that both from living in plantation country and from the titan senses that constantly gave me a thousand different pieces of randomness about the world around me.And then the breeze changed direction, and brought with it the teasing, cloying scent of rust. There it was again. A painful, metal(prenominal) tang.The smell of blood. Human blood.I stepped into the clearing, my breath approach rapidly. The thick stench of iron was everywhere, filling the hollow out with an almost palpable fog. I scanned the area.There was the cave where I spent my tortured nights, tossing and turning and hold for daw n. Just outside it was a jumble of beams and doors stolen from knocked-down houses and attack graves. Farther in the distance there were the vehement white statues and fountains installed around the park.And then I power saw it. At the base of a statue of a kinglike prince was the body of a young woman, her white lout gown slowly turning a blooming(a) red.