"Fangs" by Pia Struzzieri

Sean caught up to her. It wasn’t hard -- he could have caught her long before -- but he needed to plan the way he would approach her, how he would ask her.

“Lena,” he began, and she turned to him, green eyes narrow and thoughtful, like a cat’s. “I was wondering if-”

He was caught in those eyes, so struck that he couldn’t say another word, only stare, mesmerized, at their contracted pupils.

“Sean?” she asked softly, flirtatiously, “I need you to do something for me.”

He stared at her, at her pale creamy skin and those beautiful eyes.

“I need you to tip your head back, just a little. Can you do that for me?”

He smiled and nodded, waiting for approval. She stared at him, prompting. “Oh,” he said, and laughed awkwardly. She kept looking at him, and irritation sharpened in her eyes. He tipped his head back.

She moved closer, put one hand gently on the back of his neck. He saw with horror that her teeth were growing -- narrowing, sharpening, like little knives. He tried to jerk away from her gentle, long-fingered hand, but it tightened on the back of his neck and her nails made little pricks in his skin.

“Just hold still,” she hissed between her long needlelike teeth, then ducked her head to his neck. Her cold skin touched his, and a tiny pain shot through his body. She pulled her head back, and her saw her bloody teeth begin to retract. He realized that he was paralyzed, unable to move away. Once her teeth were normal again, she brought her head down again, her nails still digging into his neck, and began to drink. Her lips closed around the tiny cuts her teeth had made.

She drank his blood for several minutes, then released him.

Sean couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.

“Sean?” she prompted him. “You were about to ask me something?”

“Oh. Yeah. I just got tickets to the game tomorrow. You want to come?”

“Tomorrow? No, I’m sorry, I’m having dinner with my family tomorrow night.”

“Okay. Well, see you later, then,” he said, backing away.

“’Bye, Sean,” she said.

As he walked away, he saw that her pupils were so dilated her eyes were almost entirely black.

“Sean!” she shouted after him. “It’s too bad you fell. But your neck will be okay, right? That was a lot of blood.”

Suddenly he remembered. God, how embarrassing, tripping while asking a girl out. And his neck had been bleeding. A lot.

“I’ll be okay,” he called back, gratified that she’d worried about it.

“So how’d it go?” his friend asked later.

“She had other plans,” Sean told him.

“Well, that’s too-- Hey, what happened to your neck?”

“I tripped,” Sean said, and told his friend about how embarrassing it had been. “But she was really nice about it.”

“She has got to be the coolest girl on earth,” his friend agreed.

Lena licked the blood off her teeth and smiled, watching them. “Of course I am,” she told the boy, walking past him. He looked after her worshipfully, and suddenly she knew where her next meal would come from. How convenient that humans needed privacy to share their emotions. She smiled at another boy, who walked into a wall. Her options were deliciously open.