Justine woke up slowly and was slightly disoriented. It took her several minutes to remember what had happened to her and her best friend Pam. Somehow they had been turned into vampires, she didn't know by who but knew it was sometime on Thursday after they had dinner and drinks.
She lay still until the lethargy wore off and crawled off of the bed to go to the bathroom when she realized that she didn't need to, it was another question that was added to her rapidly growing list. She got into the shower staying in until the water ran cold, got out, brushed her teeth and braided her still wet hair.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror to see if there were any obvious changes in her appearance. She started with her hair and then carefully examined her face. She was blessed in that she never had skin problems but her skin looked even clearer than before. Her eyes were clear and the same color brown she noted with relief. She opened her mouth, looked at her teeth and was surprised that while they looked whiter, there weren't any fangs. "Where are they?" she asked herself as she continued her examination of her mouth. In the end she decided that the fangs only came out when needed,
She stepped back from the mirror and looked at her hands, they didn't look any different than before but like her teeth, Justine suspected that any changes would come when and if needed and wondered it she could change at will. Justine took a large breast in each hand and examined it, "thank god these didn't get any larger." she thought to herself as she looked at the rest of her body.
After she finished her self examination she threw on a pair of shorts, bra and a tee shirt. She had to find food; the hunger was just beginning and would progress quickly if she didn't take care of it soon. She once again wondered about the ease with which she was accepting the fact that she was a vampire, she was even more curious about how she knew the things that she did.
Justine grabbed a duffle bag and began to throw clothes into it; she had to leave her apartment and the sooner the better. She didn't know where she would go but if she stayed at her apartment someone would come for her. She grabbed her wallet and the petty cash that totaled over three hundred dollars and change and put them in her duffle bag. The last thing that she put in her bag was her cell phone and charger and at the last minute pictures of her family and Pam.
She put on a sweat suit and left her apartment for the last time. She hadn't gone very far before she realized that she had left just in time, someone was in her apartment.
*******
Pam woke up to find Malcolm staring at her with undisguised lust.
"Good evening Pam." he greeted pleasantly, "are you hungry?"
"No." she lied.
"Are you certain? The hunger pains should be beginning soon if they haven't already." he said with a teasing note in his voice.
"Why am I here?" she asked.
"Are you sure that I can't tempt you with breakfast?" Malcolm asked ignoring the question and biting into his wrist just enough that the blood oozed out.
Pam's stomach rumbled as the scent of the blood assailed her nose. She licked her lips and shook her head no as she closed her eyes. She went to move off of the bed and was surprised to find that she couldn't move, during the night she had been restrained.
"Why am I tied up?" she demanded.
"We can't have you trying to escape now can we?" Malcolm asked as he moved closer to her, "You are going to feed whether you want to or not." he added.
"NO!"
"Yes and then your training will begin."
Restrained as she was, Pam couldn't fight Malcolm off. He pressed his wrist against her mouth and waited for the hunger to take over. It wasn't long before Pam was greedily drinking from him and making sounds of enjoyment as his blood hit her tongue and trickled down her throat. As she drank, Malcolm wondered just how much he should tell her about her new life, if he told her too much she would at the very least try to escape or at the worst try to kill herself and that just wouldn't do.
He wondered about Justine. "Where is the bitch?" he asked himself and hoped that she was lying dead somewhere because she didn't know how to survive as a vampire. He had to admit that she made him nervous and always had, that was the reason for the dislike that over the months had turned to hatred. He tried to tell his uncle not to hire her but he wouldn't listen.
He thought back to the morning of the meeting, the way that Justine stared at him had unnerved him and increased his hatred of her. He hated anything that had the potential to scare him and Justine fit that criteria. The final blow had been when she looked up at them, waved and then smiled at them. Silently he swore at his uncle for hiring her although he understood why he did.
Justine Graves was intriguing and definitely easy in the eyes but there was something very different about her, something dangerous..... She was the kind of woman that his uncle Jeremiah Mathers was drawn to.
"Stop!" he hissed when he felt Pam's teeth bite into him. He had let her drink too much and now she would want to go back to sleep like a baby did once it was fed. It really didn't matter he decided, while she slept he would go to Justine's apartment and take care of business.
Pam was already almost asleep when he left the bed. By the time he was dressed; she was out cold and would be for a while.
*******
He had just missed her; he knew this because her scent was still strong. The question was where would she have gone? But a more important question was how had she gotten through the night without feeding? There had been no suspicious human deaths reported, he checked before he left the house.
Malcolm walked through the apartment which was immaculate except for the kitchen. It was a disaster area with food thrown all over the floor in Justine's attempt to calm her hunger. He caught sight of the porterhouse steak bone that was cleaned of every piece of meat that was on it and felt a sense of disquiet.
"Just who in the hell are you?" he asked quietly. For her to have figured out that she could obtain nourishment from raw red meat was remarkable. The feeling that Justine was much more than she appeared crossed his mind. "You're overreacting like an old woman!" he told himself, "It was just luck and nothing more." he added as he walked to her bedroom.
She left in a hurry he realized as he looked around the room. The dresser drawers were left open, the bed was unmade and most of her clothes were still there. He wondered if she had sensed his approach and once again disregarded any idea that she would have such skills. "She's one lucky bitch." he muttered as he went back to the kitchen and vanished from there to the street.
He looked in every direction trying to pick up her scent and becoming angry when he couldn't. "Who in the fuck is she?" he asked himself again as he looked around again.
*******
Justine found herself in South Philadelphia not far from the Italian market. The odors nauseated her making her rethink her decision about finding an abandoned house in the area to stay in until she figured out her next move. The first of the hunger pains hit her as she walked toward the subway station. Since it was a Saturday night and the streets were busy, that left out going down to the subway to catch rats but then she had an idea and headed toward China town.
As she walked she kept an eye out for potential places to hide out for the day. She had gone maybe eight blocks when she knew that she was being followed. Whoever they were she knew that they were human and that they didn't have good intentions. She kept walking acting as if she wasn't aware of their presence hoping that they would lose interest and go away.
After several minutes it became obvious that the group of men weren't going to go away. Justine walked faster as she had no desire to tangle with these men. She was already hungry and if one of them bled she wasn't sure that she could stop herself from drinking from him and possibly killing him.
"Hey you!" one of them called out to her, "stop!"
Justine kept walking and eased into a jog. It occurred to her that she had never jogged a day in her life and here she was jogging and not even becoming winded.
"I said stop bitch!" the voice shouted at her.
Justine picked up the pace and kept running but the group of men kept after her. She glanced behind her to see where they were and was angry to see that they were catching up to her. She sped up even more now aware that she was having no trouble seeing in the dark and that she was running on ice without difficulty.
She could hear the men falling behind and cursing because she got away but there was another issue. She was wracked with pain, she needed to eat, and she had expended too much energy trying to get away from the men. There was no other option, she looked around and ran into the closest abandoned house she saw. She did a quick check for other people before setting her bag on the dirty floor and calling to whatever animals lived in the house.
"Come out, I promise not to kill you." she said softly and then she waited.
A few seconds ticked by before a cat came out and walked up to her.
"I thank you for your assistance." she told the cat as she picked it up and bit into its neck. Tears of relief ran down her face as the cat's blood trickled down her throat and the pain began to ease. When she was finished with the cat she put it on the floor and stroked its head before calling for the next animal. By the time she was comfortable but not sated, Justine had taken from six cats and a dog.
Feeling much better she looked around the house and wondered if it would meet her needs. She picked up her bag and went to a door that she assumed led to a basement but found that it was a closet. She continued her search of the house while listening for signs of anyone coming. Eventually she found the basement and went down the stairs. There was one window to the front of the house but the back of the basement was so dark that no one would see her even if they were looking right at her.
"This will do." she murmured as she walked to the back of the basement. A few minutes later she had cleared a space for herself in one of the corners. The blood from the animals was already wearing off so she had to get moving. She called an animal to her, fed from it and then left the house looking around before she left.
*******
Quinn was restless. He had been indoors all day and was getting a touch of 'cabin fever'. He looked out of the window and then at the clock. He normally didn't go out at night but he was bored, he had spent the day on the internet searching for things in general; cost of living in various states and cities. He was more than ready to leave the "City of Brotherly Love" he had no real ties here and he had more than enough money to get settled somewhere else, the question was where.
Unable to settle down, Quinn decided to go out for a walk. It was early enough to get to China Town, eat a meal and order more for lunch and dinner for the next day or two. As he dressed to go out, he wondered if he should take his camera. He didn't have many nighttime pictures and it was one of the things that the guy who wanted to show his work commented on.
