Waking feels wrong.
Not the gentle surfacing from sleep, but an abrupt switch—off to on, dark to aware. No grogginess. No transition. Just instant, complete consciousness that slams into me like I've been electrocuted.
The first thing I notice is silence.
Not the quiet of a still room, but the absence of sound I've carried my entire life. No heartbeat drums in my ears. No breath whistles through my nose. No blood rushes through veins. I exist in a void of biological function, and the wrongness of it makes panic flutter in my chest—except even the panic feels different. Sharper. Colder.
The second thing I notice is James.
He's beside me, propped on one elbow, watching. His skin against mine has the same temperature, same stillness, same fundamental wrongness that's somehow right. We match now. Two corpses pretending at life, bound by whatever dark miracle turns death into immortality.
"You came back," he says quietly, and I hear the relief beneath the words.
I try to respond, but the world chooses that moment to detonate.
Colors first. The bedroom shouldn't be this bright—it's still dark outside, maybe midnight, maybe later—but everything glows with impossible vividness. The sheets are white, except they're not just white. I see threads of silver and cream and pearl, each fiber distinct, weaving patterns my human eyes would have called blank. The walls are gray, except they're also blue and purple and green, shadows layering in shades I have no names for.
I turn my head toward the window, and the city beyond makes me gasp.
Streetlights don't just glow yellow—they bleed chartreuse into the air, halos of color that taste like electricity on my tongue. Neon signs miles away pulse with such intensity I could read them if I focused. And above it all, impossible in a city this bright, stars. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Each one a pinpoint of ancient light so distinct and brilliant I could count them individually if I had infinite patience.
"Overwhelming?" James asks.
I can't answer because sound hits next.
The rustle of sheets as I move sounds like thunder. My own voice echoes in my skull like I'm trapped inside a cathedral. And beneath it, heartbeats. Dozens of them. Hundreds. The couple in the apartment below, rhythm slightly out of sync, one faster than the other. Someone three floors down with an irregular beat that stutters every fourth pulse. Traffic on the street—not just engines but the individual heartbeats of drivers, passengers, pedestrians.
The world is alive in a way I never perceived. Humanity hums around me like electricity through power lines, and I can hear every single current.
"Make it stop," I whisper, but my voice comes out at normal volume, and I realize I've lost the ability to judge sound at all.
"You'll learn to filter," James says, his voice cutting through the chaos with strange clarity. "Right now, everything's new. Give it time."
Then scent arrives, and I understand why vampires hunt.
The air isn't just air. It's layers of information so dense I'm drowning in data. I smell the laundry detergent on the sheets—floral with chemical undertones, each molecule distinct. I smell the city—exhaust fumes breaking down into carbon and sulfur, garbage decomposing with sickly-sweet intensity, flowers blooming somewhere blocks away, their perfume so strong I could follow it like a map.
And underneath everything, overwhelming everything: blood.
Not James's—his is static, unchanging, the scent of preservation rather than life. But beyond these walls, in the apartments above and below, in the street outside, in every direction I could possibly turn: living blood. Warm. Moving. Calling to something inside me that wasn't there yesterday.
The hunger hits like a fist to the stomach.
Not want. Not craving. Need. Hollow and aching and so intense my hands shake with it. My mouth floods with saliva that tastes wrong—thicker, sharper. Something in my jaw aches, and when I press my tongue to my teeth, I feel them: fangs. Not extended, just present. Waiting.
"I'm starving," I manage, and the admission feels like confession.
"I know." James's expression mingles sympathy with something darker. His pupils are dilated, and I realize he's struggling too. "You smell different. Vampire blood has its own... appeal."
The implication sends heat through me that has nothing to do with body temperature. He wants to feed from me. Wants to taste what I've become. The thought should repel me—hadn't he just drunk from me just now?—but instead it makes the hunger sharpen into something more complex.
I need to move. Need to think. Need to see myself and confirm this is real.
Standing takes effort—my body moves differently now. Faster. More efficient. I cross to the mirror hanging above his dresser in three steps that should have been six, and the reflection stops me cold.
Nothing.
The mirror shows the room behind me, but where I should be, there's just absence. A gap in reality shaped like me. I wave my hand, and the empty space waves back, but seeing nothing where I know something exists makes vertigo slam through me.
"Mirrors," James explains quietly. "Digital cameras can capture us—security footage, phones, all of that still works. But mirrors... we don't exist there."
If silence could hurt, I would most definitely die right here.
"It takes getting used to," James says from behind me. "The absence becomes normal eventually."
"Normal," I repeat, and the word tastes like a lie.
My legs weaken. The hunger, the sensory overload, the fundamental wrongness of non-existence—it all crashes down at once. I stumble, and James is there before I can fall, moving with that inhuman speed, hands catching my arms. His grip trembles.
"You're adjusting," he says, but his voice is rough, strained. "It gets easier."
"When?" The question comes out desperate.
"Soon." He steadies me, then releases me like touching hurts. "But you need to feed first. The hunger will only get worse."
As if summoned by the word, my stomach clenches. The hollow ache spreads through my chest, my throat, demanding to be filled. I can smell blood from the apartment below—two people, healthy, close enough to reach in seconds—and part of me calculates how fast I could get there, how easily I could take what I need.
"I want your first time to be special," James says, watching my face with an intensity that suggests he knows exactly what I'm thinking. "I know a place."
I nod, and the hunger howls louder, but underneath it, something else stirs—curiosity about what I'm capable of, excitement about testing these new limits, the dark thrill of knowing I'm dangerous now.