Caroline, not without some effort, swallowed the hare’s wretched blood.

Coming from those men it had tasted so, oh, so much better.

She’d been wandering the woods for hours, wearing her father’s borrowed heavy clothes and his slightly too big boots, feverish with hunger, and she feared she wouldn’t find refuge from the sunlight on time.

Caroline had used the time alone in the woods to try and piece together the events of the past nights. She remembered the town dance –she’d danced, happy, and she’d accepted the request of one, two, three, maybe more of the boys in the town square. They had presumed, later. She remembers the feeling of her skull cracking against the pavement, a memory she’s sure nobody should be able to recall.

After that, everything was a blur until she awoke with their blood burning down her throat, spilled over her face and her hands, and staining her dress.

She ran away, her neighbors chasing her with all but pitchforks.

There had always been talk around the town, about a nearby recluse. A wise woman; a witch, who dealt in the otherworldly, who had a cure for everything.

Caroline remembered the boys and wasn’t sure it was a cure she wanted. Answers, that would have to be the first step.

She could’ve wept of sheer relief when she found the tower, the sky ominously clearer by the second. She could’ve wept of fury when she found she couldn’t see a door anywhere near the perimeter.

There was only a window, at the very top. Dried vines, golden and red due to the season, climbed around the tower, and Caroline dragged her tired body up with more ease than she anticipated.

She pushed against the windows, jumping inside the room as silently as she could. She’d been about to call out for someone with her best timid voice when her ears picked up a low, deep growl on her left.

That was all the warning she received before a wolf, illuminated by the moonlight that filtered through the open window, jumped over her. She screamed, at the top of her lungs, and fought it off with her new strength, but it seemed as adamant to eat her as she’d been him if she’d found it in the woods. Its teeth looked as big as her forearm, as deadly as the sharpest blade she encountered, and she could swear it was twice as big as any wolf she heard of.

Caroline managed to fight it off, walking –running– away from it with all but a few scratch marks. Her back hit a nearby chair in her escape, and she threw it against the wolf’s head, buying a few seconds. A sturdy closet sat unassumingly against the opposite wall, and she lunged at it, thanking the gods when it opened and let her in.

The wolf collapsed against it mere seconds after she closed the doors, holding them together from the inside. It kept trying and trying for what felt to her like hours until a blessed, charged silence graced the room.

She waited several minutes even after the noise calmed down, her heartbeat still accelerated, before she carefully opened the closet again. The sun now shyly entered the room, barely a few inches, far enough that she felt safe. In the middle of the room, crowed by tables and bookcases, instead of the wolf Caroline expected, she saw an unconscious nude man.

Someone like her, she thought. Not exactly. Akin to her, maybe.

With a sympathy she hadn’t expected, she grabbed a piece of cloth from the closet, and walked towards him to cover him from the morning cold. But when she got to close his hand clasped around her wrist, hard and painful, and unnatural eyes stared at her.

She could pull free, she thought, if only she pulled hard enough. But as if she was pinned in place by the stare of a wild animal, which in a way she was, she carefully raised her other hand, palms open, and said, “I mean you no harm.”

He released, not moving his eyes away from her, and stood up disregarding the cloth. He blatantly sniffed her, and Caroline didn’t know if it was out of place to feel vaguely offended by that fact.

“Vampyre,” he whispered.

Caroline wasn’t stupid. She’d heard the stories; she could add two plus two in her head. She just hadn’t thought –maybe hadn’t wanted to– about the one specific word.

“Yes. It’s very new,” she said, aiming for cheerful. Failing.

“Why are you here?”

“I’d heard someone here could help me. A woman. I don’t think you’re her.”

Had he come here for the same reasons? To get help? If he had, it didn’t seem to be a success.

He hummed. Since he’d woken up, his eyes hadn’t left hers, and it unnerved her beyond what she could explain. She wondered if he was still thinking about eating her; two could play that game.

“How new?”

“Just a few days.”

He repeated that irritating hum. “I know a thing or two about your kind. Maybe I could help.”

The offered seemed sincere enough, yet she felt like she was walking into a beautifully arranged trap.

“What else can hurt me?” she asked, remembering the itching burn of the sun.

“There is a plant,” he said, pointing at one of the bottles stored in the bookcase, “that will burn you just like the sun. Humans can consume it to protect themselves from you.”

She watched with suspicious as he walked away from the bookcase.

“And as for the sun, well. There’s a spell that can render you invulnerable to it. Any witch worth their while would know it.”

That was reassuring, she guessed.

"I don't know how it happened," she admitted, begrudgingly.

"You died, clearly. After drinking from one of them."

"I think I would remember if I had drunk blood before."

"Not necessarily. They have their tricks; they can manipulate minds, make you forget. You could do it too, to any human."

And wasn't that a terrifying thought; that she was missing even more memories.

At once, she realized the man was walking around the room as naked as when he’d first attacked, and she asked him, amused, “Are you thinking of dressing up any time soon?”

He tilted his head to the side as if confused about the inquiry. As if he’d just realized walking around with his manhood dangling around was a breach of manners. His stare was just as penetrating –did he blink at all?

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“Not particularly,” she shrugged it off.

He walked two long, quick steps towards her, invading her personal space. His eyes roamed her face, her body, with a new type of hunger. She hadn’t gotten the opportunity to properly bathe in days; her locks must have looked like an unkempt nest, her clothes did her no favors and she was pretty sure there was still blood on her somewhere. She had to look feral. Two beasts.

Because that’s what he was. He reminded Caroline of those stories about enticing, handsome monsters that lured young women to the woods, never to be seen again. Some of those stories were told as warnings; others were whispered among girls with inappropriate and fearful glee, and Caroline had always been adamant that they did not resonate with her.

She raised her hands to his face, holding it between them. Caroline could feel his breath on her tongue. “You didn’t tell me your name”, she whispered.

“Klaus,” he replied, each letter felt over her lips, “yours?”

“Caroline.”

She counted three seconds, and when it seemed he wouldn’t make any move, she made it for him.

The kiss started slow, but that lasted less than a dozen heartbeats. Klaus pressed her against the table, and when she felt his hands over her clothes, she rushed to take them all off herself before he could tear them away.

He pushed her down until her back laid bare against the wood, and pressed open-mouthed, bruising kisses down her body till he finally arrived between her legs. He didn’t pause to think much, licking into her folds immediately.

Caroline pushed herself up with her arms, to have a better look at the action. He was completely focused on the task, lips, tongue, and fingers committed to bringing her pleasure. She couldn’t stop thinking about his fangs, about the claws whose mark had already healed from her forearm. She wondered if any minute now, they would both sprout again and he’d use them to devour her; that thought, that primal fear, somehow only gave her a rush and precipitated her rapture.

When she could feel the end coming, she possessively threaded her fingers in his hair, pushing his face closer, and let out a scream, blissed out. He raised and kissed her open mouth, his tongue tasting of her.

She pushed him down on the floor, willing to return the favor, and swallowed what she could of his member and fondled the rest with her hands. Caroline had never cared much for the taste, so she knew how to make it quick, and she used that there. When Klaus was brought to release with a low groan, she suppressed a gag and swallowed it all –better than having it spill on her face or her hair. A few drops fell down the corner of her lips, and she quickly cleaned them off with the back of her hand.

Caroline laid down next to him, taking a look at his face: relaxed, eyes closed for the first time. It was with the taste of his spill still heavy on the back of her throat that he said, “She will kill you.”

She froze in place. “What?”

“She hates monsters.”

Driven by instinct, she grabbed her clothes, whatever she could, and approached the window, willing to jump down. Only a few steps away from the sunlight she realized why Klaus hadn’t tried to stop her.

“Even if it was nighttime, you wouldn’t be able to leave.” He walked around her and tried to press his hand past the window. An invisible wall seemed to stop him, and a noise like a clear church bell resounded around them. “Creatures of the night can get in, but not out.”

She let the clothes drop to the floor, repressing a tremble. “Why would she want to kill me?”

“She heard about what happened downtown. The bloodbath.”

“They had it coming,” she rushed to say, furious.

“So did the man I killed before she locked me up; she even agreed. It did not matter.” He seemed amused, gleeful even, as he told her. “Either way, she went down there to help, yesterday; it’s a miracle you didn’t cross paths. But by now she must have felt you breach her barriers and will be coming back. You might have a few hours before she comes to end you.”

“And yet you’re here. Alive. Acting as her attack dog.” Caroline snapped at him; she felt victorious when she saw real fury in his eyes.

“Because I am her son.”

He looked as if he’d made a dramatic reveal, but Caroline didn’t have it in her to feel surprised. She could now imagine, as she wouldn’t have been before, how a mother could lock up her son; she could understand why she’d still make an exception. She tried as hard as possible not to think of her terrified parents, who had wanted her as far away as possible, yet had heard her pleads and welcomed her into the house to take off her bloodied dress and gather what she could to escape –including a sharp blade she’d only registered later, might not be necessary any longer, for she now was the weapon. She’d promised not to harm them, promised not to seek them ever again. They’d let her in, despite how bad an idea it could turn out to be. Despite how bad an idea it was.

She swallowed the knot in her throat and felt annoyance when she tasted him again. “Is there any way to break her spell?”

“A witch’s spells end when she dies.”

“You’re trapped here too. Why don’t you kill her?” She couldn’t imagine someone like him feeling loyalty to a mother who’d turned him into a prisoner.

“Besting her isn’t easy.” he replied. “That is not the only spell over the tower. Some of them are on me, too.”

“How many,” it suddenly occurred to her, “how many like us came here, finding their deaths? While you did nothing to help them?”

“Some. Some didn’t believe my warnings.” Caroline didn’t want to believe them either, but she could tell, down the pit of her stomach, they were true. “Some did. Some of those hesitated even then. All of them died, which I knew would happen. I don’t bet on losing horses.”

She could tell he expected her to ask if he’d laid with any of them as he’d done with her. That enough would’ve been reason enough not to raise the question, but in truth, she didn’t see how the answer would make any difference to her.

“I haven’t lost a day in my life,” she spat.

“You died.”

“And I ate the six men it took to kill me,” she yelled, attempting to look imposing.

A big, unhinged grin grew from the middle of his face. Feral.

When the witch arrived, she walked on a straight line to where her son waited and grabbed his chin with a possessive, gentle hand before lovingly whispering his name.

She could understand why others had doubted Klaus's claims. She looked matriarchal, powerful; mother nature incarnated into a blonde, soft-faced woman.

But it was how Klaus acted that felt jarring in the picture. Passive to her touch, dead-eyed, with an undercurrent on tension visible in every muscle.

Or maybe he just was uncomfortable with his clothes on.

Whatever the case, better to be cautious, in Caroline’s opinion. The witch hadn’t thought of keeping monsters out, to protect herself, her son, and their home; her spell was designed to lure them in and trap them inside, and there were only two possible outcomes: imprisonment or murder. Neither was acceptable.

And so, Klaus words didn’t fall on deaf ears –she didn’t hesitate; she didn’t bite her, mindful of that herb he’d mention. She lunged at her, trying to catch her unawares; she’d gone for the neck, intending to twist it, something quick and simple. The witch reacted on time, but Caroline’s push managed to make her hit her head against the bookcase, spilling various bottles over the floor.

The witch’s face didn’t show any other emotion other than drive and determination when she faced against Caroline. She raised her hand and shouted gibberish, making Caroline’s head feel on fire, feel as if she was dying all over again. She could feel blood coming out of her ears and taste it right behind her teeth.

Caroline dropped down the floor and took out the small knife she’d brought with her from her childhood home. With a quick draw, she slashed her ankles, interrupting her focus and making her drop down.

Before she could gather herself and stab her to death, a wild, screaming Klaus jumped above his own mother. He hit her repeatedly over the head –it took Caroline a second to recognize the object as a candelabra, finding it incongruent and confusing amidst the scene—, over and over. The sick sound of the metal against the skull continued after the woman’s eyes were empty, her blood mixing on her hair, red, grey and yellow. Despite her newfound taste for it, Caroline felt no desire to drink it.

Klaus let a half pained, half triumphant scream leave his body, sounding as if it came from deep inside his lungs. His breath was heavy, and his shoulders were dropped in defeat as his face looked blissful.

He stepped over his mother's corpse and walked towards her. For a second, Caroline knew he was going to kill her, and tightened her hand around the blade. Instead, he extended his forearm, placing it in front of her mouth. Confused by the dissonance, she bit into it still expecting the blow that never came.

His blood tasted richer than anything she’d ever tried, and it was a miracle she managed to stop.

They climbed down the vines after the last sun-ray hid behind the horizon.

Caroline had asked him if he knew how to reach any other witches, ones willing to give her the spell that would protect her from the sun. He’d willingly extended the information, and though she couldn’t see what he could possibly gain from deceiving her, she planned on maintaining a healthy level of distrust. On top of that, she couldn’t deny she felt some resentment, at the fact that she still depended on his help.

“I don’t expect you’ll allow some company,” he said, not appearing to be entirely joking.

“Tell me,” she demanded, “was I just your ticket out of the tower? Or were you just that lonely?”

“I told you. I do not bet on losing horses,” he replied, cryptic. He had an unnerving smirk on his face, his eyes even more unnatural now that the moon let her see them under more light.

Somehow, with clothes still on, he reminded her even more of those old stories. He looked exactly like you’d imagine one of those demonic monsters of legends, disguising themselves with the flesh of handsome gentlemen to trap innocent souls.

Caroline was not an innocent soul. She was a killer. And she, too, looked exactly like one of those legends.

She nodded goodbye and turned away, tightening around the heavy cloak she’d lifted from the witch. Klaus chuckled behind her, and she could picture him with that maddening, feral grin.

“Until we meet again, Caroline.”

Was that a promise, or a threat?