Chapter 2

A Separate Species

" Would you be still? " Xander huffed impatiently, his hands are red with Amara's blood as he tried to stitch up the large gashes in her shoulder.

" I'm trying ... But it hurts! " She whined, leaning to try and look over her shoulder as the vampire worked on her wounds.

" Ugh, stop! "Xander ordered, grabbing her head and turning it back forward. " This is hard enough without you moving around, I promise you don't want to see this anyway. " He continued to pull the stitches through her skin, his eyes narrowed into slits as more and more blood flowed from the deep gashes and down her back. He'd had her take her shirt off so that he could see the extent of her injury, and already the towel that she had wrapped around her torso was thick and heavy as the blood continued to flow. Xander's breathing was shallow as he tried to ignore the heavy scent that filled the bathroom, and he paused for a moment, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Amara's eyes flickered to the reflection in the mirror in front of her, her expression nervous as she could see how tense the vampire looked.

" Wait ... " She said suddenly, blinking at the mirror in confusion . Xander looked up at her in the mirror, a questioning look on his face. " Why can I see you ...? " She said slowly, confusion in her voice.

" What do you mean? " He asked, looking back down at her wounds and slowly trying to pull the stitches through her skin again.

" I mean, you're a vampire, right? " Amara watched as he looked up at her, slowly nodding and trying to figure out what she was getting at. " Vampires don't have reflections in mirrors I thought ... "

Xander stopped what he was doing, leaning back as he looked at her with a speechless expression. " You're kidding, right? " He asked incredulously, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

Amara's face suddenly flushed red, embarrassed and confused, " Is that not true?" She said flatly, and finally Xander couldn't stop himself, laughter pouring from him as he pulled his hand up to wipe his eyes. She turned and watched as he doubled over with laughter, narrowing her eyes at him in annoyance, " Hey, I didn't even think vampires were real this morning okay!? That's a really common myth for them! "

But Xander couldn't stop himself from cracking up, "What, did you think I couldn't eat garlic as well? Were you planning on running and hiding in a church earlier so the scary vampires couldn't reach you? Were you just going to wait it out until morning, thinking we can't go out in the sunlight?"

Amara huffed at him, turning back to the mirror in embarrassment.

" Will you just focus on what you're doing? " She muttered grumpily, fidgeting with the towel wrapped around her chest.

He laughed a bit, taking in a deep breath to steady himself before pulling his hands back up towards her shoulder.

" Yeah, yeah. " He snorted, still chuckling every now and then as he thought her words over. After a few minutes, she could feel the air get tense again as Xander glared down at her injury with irritation, and as she watched in the mirror, he sighed heavily, leaning back with blood dripped all over his clothes and his arms.

"This isn't going to work." He said gruffly, narrowing his eyes at the four large grooves cut into her back. He slowly leaned down, looking closely at the wounds, while Amara looked at the mirror in front of her, watching the vampire behind her with an unnerved expression.

"What do you mean- Hey! what the ****!?" She yelped, jumping to her feet and pulling away from him as she felt the unsettling sensation of his tongue against her skin. "The **** are you doing?" She demanded, pulling the towel tighter around herself as she spun around, glaring at the vampire who looked at her impatiently, her blood smeared across his lips.

"God, you humans are so fucking touchy." He said, rolling his eyes, standing and grabbing her before she could pull away from him.

"Look," He ordered, twisting her sideways in front of the mirror so that she could somewhat see her shoulder. The movement made her wince in pain, but she did as he said, fear gripping her at how easy it was for him to just grab and move her with little resistance. But as she looked in the mirror, her expression softened slightly as she looked at the wound; already the bleeding had slowed nearly to a stop, and she couldn't help but watch in amazement as the skin healed over slightly, giving her a slightly unsettling feeling as the skin regenerated before her eyes.

"W - what did you do?" She gasped, getting more and more creeped out as she watched the injury heal over. She watched in the mirror as Xander sat back down, lifting his hand to his mouth and licking the blood from his fingers with a bored expression.

"Did you know that vampires are poisonous?" He looked up at her with amusement, watching as her face danced between confusion at his statement, and disgust at how casually he cleaned the blood from his hand. "Or rather, I guess the correct term is venomous, really. Vampires have three different types of toxins." He pointed his finger at his teeth while he spoke, "Our teeth are hollow, like snakes and our mouths are coated in whatever venom we're using at the time. So by licking your wound, it covered the injury in the venom I had at the time."

She continued to look at him with an incredulous expression, unsure if he was messing with her or not, and sensing her doubt, he continued, standing and gesturing for her to follow him. He walked into his room as he spoke, "The venom I used on you can heal surface wounds, and it also has a numbing agent in it. The bite you suffered is too deep to be healed completely, but at least the bleeding stopped finally." He stopped in front of his closet, rummaging through a couple of different shirts before finding one and tossing it to her.

"Here. There's no point in you putting your old shirt back on, it's shredded and covered in blood."

She took the shirt in hand, looking up at him with an expectant expression. He was confused at first until he realized she was waiting for him to look away so she could remove the towel from around her chest.

"Ugh, you humans are ridiculous." He said, rolling his eyes as he turned around away from her. Once his back was turned, Amara shot him a dirty look, but quickly put the shirt on, already feeling better once she was dressed again.

"What are the other two types? " She asked curiously, folding the bloodied towel up as she spoke. He gave her a look like he didn't understand her question, making her roll her eyes, "The other two types of venom. You said vampires had three? So what're the other two types?"

He laughed a bit, leaning forward to take the towel from her hands,

"Already getting curious?" He asked smugly, getting great amusement at the annoyed look she shot at him. "I'm glad you've lost some of your fear at least." He mused, turning and gesturing for her to follow him as he walked out. "The most common one is generally used when we're fighting. It's incredibly painful, even to other vampires. Imagine injecting yourself with acid. On humans, it's pretty much paralyzing if you get enough of it into them. It stops blood from clotting as well, so I imagine that's the kind you got hit with earlier. But luckily for you, the vampire who bit you was not only weak, but it had already been feeding before it attacked you, so it probably didn't have much venom left in its bite." He wiped his hands on one of the clean corners of the towel before tossing it into a basket of clothes.

"I couldn't even taste it in your blood."

She made an uncomfortable face and he put his hands up in a shrug, " What? It's the truth. Other vampires' venom tastes awful. I definitely would have tasted it, had it been there." Amara just shook her head, trying to ignore the thought,

"And the third kind?" She asked, trying to change the subject away from her blood.

"The third kind is the kind we use to change humans into vampires." He answered casually, only looking up when she remained silent after his answer. Her face was twisted in revulsion, and he just raised an eyebrow at her.

"What?" He said flatly, unsure what the problem was.

"You can turn people? " She asked fearfully, and he just nodded as if it was obvious,

"Well, yeah. Where do you think vampires come from?" Amara threw her hands up, completely done with the day's events.

"I didn't! Yesterday vampires were just myths, things that people dressed up as on Halloween, creatures that bad horror movies were written about!" Xander scoffed a bit, pulling a chair out as he watched her go through her mental breakdown,

"Speak for yourself, I would've watched vampire movies if they'd had them when I was human. " He muttered under his breath, which just elicited more distress from her.

"And now you're telling me that you used to be human too? And you're just cool with licking blood off your fingers like it's no big deal? Have you lost your mind? How did you even become a vampire?" Xander had been moderately amused at her outburst, but suddenly his eyes narrowed and his body language grew a bit tense.

"That's... a very impolite question to ask a vampire." He said harshly, finally snapping her out of her daze as she realized that she'd just been yelling at a creature that could easily end her life.

"I ... I didn't know." She said softly, finding it hard to maintain eye contact with the slitted eyes that watched her from across the room. As his body slowly relaxed back down, Amara found her voice again, trying to move past the touchy subject, "So what all is right about vampires then? What myths are true?"

Xander sighed and leaned his head on his hand, "Honestly, mostly none of them. The movies, books, they basically got the blood drinking part, and that's it. It'd probably be easier for you to just think of vampires as a separate species than for you to try to compare them to the legends of previously turned humans. Vampires aren't just stronger, tougher humans, they're.... Different. Their society, their physiology. It would take all night to go over the differences with you."

Amara walked over to the couch next to where he was sitting, taking a seat and crossing her legs. "Well, I don't exactly have a schedule to keep?" She offered, but when he gave her an annoyed look she quickly leaned back, holding her hands up and changing her suggestion,

"Can you at least tell me the important stuff? Vampires being venomous seems like a pretty big deal. They seem fast too, at least kind of ..."

She thought back to the vampires that had attacked the group she arrived with. They didn't seem to run fast, rather when they were close they could jump like a blur. Maybe they could only move like that for short distances?

"It hurts to move like that." Xander said as if reading her thoughts. She glanced up at him, and he continued, a bit impatient, but still willing to share, for now at least. "You're talking about when we move in the blink of an eye? Most vampires can't keep it up for very long, it hurts. We might not be humans anymore, but our bodies are mostly made the same way, they're not meant to move like that."

She slowly nodded, setting her hand on her chin in thought. It made sense, but she wasn't sure why he was so insistent on saying they were so different from humans. Apart from his eyes, he looked completely normal to her, and he acted pretty normally too, aside from being a bit of a blunt asshole. But somehow she doubted that was something he picked up when he was turned.

Her thoughts were cut off as he stood up, walking into a back room and returning after a few minutes with a pillow and a blanket, tossing them onto the couch next to her before turning away.

"As for the venom thing, you don't need to worry about it. The only time it matters is when a vampire bites you, and if a vampire manages to get their teeth in you," He paused for a moment, looking at her over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed and glowing dangerously,

"You're already dead, venom or not." He walked away, flicking the light off as he went into his room, and she swallowed nervously in the silence he left behind. She wasn't sure if he meant it this way, but something about his words and tone almost felt like a threat. She pulled the blanket up around herself, laying down in the dark as she felt her blood pounding in her ears. Could he hear that? Her blood racing, her breaths coming rapidly? Could he sense her fear? The thought made her chest tighten, but she did her best to force it from her mind. You are alive. You are alive, and for now, you are safe. She repeated over and over, closing her eyes tight and begging sleep to take her. But for how long? She thought mournfully as her consciousness slowly faded from her.

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