Siobhan always turned heads when she got onto the bus.
It wasn’t because she was very pretty. On the contrary, she was actually very plane. She wasn’t thin. She wasn’t fat. In fact, she was curvy, soft, but still obviously strong. Her curly brown hair reached a few inches past her shoulders, giving her face the appearance of being perpetually in shadow.
Siobhan’s blue eyes were more gray, the color of heather for the most part. Deep shadows were always under them, enhanced by her black eye-shadow and eyeliner. She looked even stranger when her hair was strait, as it gave her the appearance of an animal, causing her features to become even more angular.
Her clothes were almost always black, and today was no different as she strutted her black jeans, black boots, and black snakeskin top under a black jacket.
She walked back, aware of the several sets of eyes on her. Someone wolf-whistled, pinching her on the rear. They always did that to the odd-looking girls, because the male chauvinist pigs always thought they knew what a girl would want. All they cared about was getting a little sex from a lonely girl.
The world went red for a moment as she snapped around, a deep, inhuman growl echoing from deep in her throat. When her vision cleared, a boy was lying on the ground, groaning. He got up and backed away quickly.

Siobhan’s expression hadn’t changed for a moment.

Germaine opened one eye, and then the other. A trickle of light filtered through a hole in the ceiling. It was morning, which was odd. His stomach groaned, pain wracking his body. It had been long, too long since he had eaten.
Upon licking his lips, he found them to be as dry as the leaves of old books, and about as fragile. The skin flaked off at a touch.
His cave was cold and dark, even after he had struck a match and lit a candle. The huge, antiquated silver mirror he kept on the wall reflected him back, a withered and wizened thing. Something that might have been a smile crossed his face. He hadn’t much longer now, thank gods, and under the circumstances he was glad.
Another bout of pain wracked his body, although not from hunger his time. It was in anticipation.
Germaine’s head snapped up suddenly. Something was going to happen, and, good or ill, he was part of it.

Siobhan walked home from school. She didn’t enjoy the bus at the best of times, and now she had been forbidden to ride it for a month because of her “attack” on a fellow student. She wouldn’t tell her parent about this either. Not like it would make much difference.
She entered through the front door and nearly tripped over a stack of her parent’s newest shipment of antique literature. She picked one up, a seemingly ancient text written in seventeenth century French. “La Belle et la Bette”, it read.
Her parents had taught her how to effectively read and translate several ancient languages, including Latin, Gaelic, Ancient Greek, medieval French, German, English and Italian. This had made her, if not more intelligent, at least very well read.
Both of Siobhan’s parents were professors in ancient literature, some of the foremost experts in their fields. They both taught at the same college, but almost every day someone sent them a new shipment of books to translate and money for their time. At least, they had before her mom and dad had separated. Now she lived with her dad, and the book load had, oddly enough, doubled.
She sighed. Her parents were more interested in living in the past than in their actual lives.
A rustle just a few feet away from her caused Siobhan to jump. A tall, lean mousy man emerged from the books. His hair was nearly gone, and thick, bottle-like glasses magnified brown eyes to the point of hilarity, giving him the appearance of a tall, thin praying mantis.
“Hi, Dad.”
He smiled, showing the slightly yellowed teeth of an ex-smoker. “Hey, Si-Si.”
Siobhan attempted to wade through the books to the staircase, but she felt a hand on her shoulder. Mr. Sidhee, Siobhan’s dad, was holding out a book to her.
“Thought you might be interested in this, love. You used to ask about black magic like this all the time and… and it’s just… take it.”
Siobhan took the book, smiling weakly at her dad. He tried so hard to be good to her, it was almost sad.
“Thanks. I’ll look at it later.”
He smiled back and allowed her to navigate the maze of books towards the staircase.
When in her room, Siobhan flung herself onto her bed. All of her room was decorated in black and silver. A crescent moon of beaten silver from Italy hung above her bead, small stars she had made herself attached to her ceiling, and a black wolf mask above the headboard of her bed.
She took that moment to look at the book her father had given her. It was old, probably between one and two thundered, though probably not valuable. He never gave her valuable books for obvious reasons. One time she picked up a copy of David Copperfield. She didn’t know it was a first edition copy, largely because she was about seven at the time. She just liked the cover and thought the book looked pretty. Her mom wound up grounding her for a week and deducted her allowance for an entire year, just in case she had damaged the book. She hadn’t, and her dad explained to her why she should be more careful with the books she borrowed at their house, because so many of them were old and just “borrowed”, as he told her.

The book’s title was faded, so much so that she couldn’t tell what it was. There was no author.

She cracked open the book, the spine sounding like old leaves when trod on beneath the creeping feet of autumn. It smelled of age and… and something else that she couldn’t describe. It was the lingering scent that she always noticed on her own skin after a change.
Siobhan flipped through the stained pages. Every word had been handwritten in a small, curling script. It was beautiful. The ink changed every now and again, a different shade of black there, a bit of green here. The hand never changed.
She flipped to the table of contence, also handwritten. Her heart began to beat faster as she looked.
“On Thee Curing and Binding ofe Thee Loupe-Garou, Vampyre, and So Forthe”
Siobhan’s hands shook as she turned the pages, and her heart sank. The “Curing of the Were-Wolfe” had been damaged and watermarked. She couldn’t read a word of it. She screamed with anger and disappointment, flinging the book across the room. It landed open on a page that was relatively unmarked.
Her curiosity was piqued. “Summoning the Vampyre” was the title of the section, and she could read every word.
If she could perform this, providing the author wasn’t crazy, a “Vampyre” might be able to help her.
Siobhan rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

Germaine jerked awake, pain slicing through his gut. He knew that feeling. It wasn’t the first time he had felt something like that. He was being summoned.
Groaning he rose from the slab of stone that had served for his bed, who knew how long? He rolled the rock away from the entrance of his cave and emerged into the moonlit night.

Siobhan’s face was lit with moonlight, a kitchen knife clasped in her hand. Blood pooled from her wrist onto the pentacle drawn on the floor in chalk. She rubbed Thyme into her wound, sealing it almost instantly. It had taken her almost three months to prepare the spell. It was the first week of Summer now, air tinged with the crisp scent of life and heat.
She cleared her throat, the words choking in her mouth:
“Comme to me, oh Childer of Nyte. Bee my Servaunt, and Graunt apaun me Alle ye will. Harme me notte, and kille all Those who do Me harme, or Stoppe all whome I bid Thee. Comme to me, oh Vile creature of the Nyte.”
There was a crackle in the air and a flash of light in the middle of the circle. What appeared to be a homeless man with very, very bad teeth flickered into existence.
He sighed, obviously annoyed. He brushed himself off and shot her a look.
“Well? Whaddaya want?”
Siobhan jumped back in surprise, not expecting the person in the circle to speak or for him to sound so… young. He sounded about her age, maybe a little bit older. And the oddest thing was his eyes. They practically glowed when she looked at them. They were green, the color of bottle glass.
“Umm… uh, I…”
The creature sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
“Look, if yer not going to tell me right out, can I at least sit down?”
Siobhan nodded silently, still speechless with disbelief. She had summoned a Vampire. She, Siobhan Sidhee, had summoned a vampire.
The vampire had stepped out of the circle and slumped down onto her desk chair. She flicked on a light so she could get a better look at him, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
Her vampire looked like a mummy, its skin wrinkled at stretched tight across its bones. The clothes it wore were little more than tattered cloth, the hair hanging in long, limp strands.
She shook her self, trying not to be scared and succeeding admirably.
“Um? Excuse me? Mr. Vampire? You do have a name, don’t you?”
It nodded. “Germaine.”
“I’m Siobhan.”
Germaine nodded. It was with that slight movement that Siobhan remembered the last part of the ritual. She proffered a bottle to him, filled with red.
To her deep surprise, he refused it.
“I don’t drink blood.”
Siobhan’s temper kicked in. It didn’t trust her. This… this, thing was acting like she was a monster of some kind… well, she was, but it wasn’t her fault.
“I don’t believe you.”

Germaine had a small spark of anger flickering in him.
“Fine. I’ll show you what happens.”
He took the bottle, shaking as it touched his lips. He hadn’t had blood in… well, longer than he could remember. His stomach growled loudly, but his mind was screaming, anticipating the pain that would come from his curse.
He brought the plastic to his lips, tilting his head backward. The liquid flowed down his throat, tasting sweeter than anything. He continued to swallow, waiting for the unbearable pain to kick in. Before he could even register what was happening, the bottle was empty. He heard Siobhan gasp loudly, shocked.
Germaine looked down at himself, also surprised. It had been so long since he had drunk, he had forgotten what he actually looked like.
His body was lean and strong now, black hair hanging in his face and down his neck. If he had looked into a mirror at his eyes, he knew what he would have seen. Green, innocent looking eyes with sparks of fire in them, fire that had been kindled five hundred years ago.
He looked over at Siobhan, bewildered.
“Where… where did that blood come from?”
She shrugged, gesturing to her own wrist.
“The ritual calls for the blood of a virgin, and I was the closest one around, so… I kind of used my own. Why? And why the hell do you look like THAT now?”
Germaine trembled with anger.
“What hast thou done, wench?” he rasped, his voice a shuddering whisper.
He grabbed her shoulders, wincing slightly when he heard his reversion to his original tongue.
He shook her, screaming loudly, eyes wild.
“WHAT HAST THOU DONE?”
He dropped her, running. The window was open, and he leapt through it into the night.

Siobhan was bewildered, to say the least. Who was he? And why had he refused her blood?
Electricity still crackled through her. She could smell him running from her. The spell had obviously worked, up to a point. Siobhan shrugged and shifted. She needed to chase her quarry if she wanted answers.
The scent of him was faint, almost nonexistent. It was the leftover smell of blood that she was following. It she had tried to follow him without the blood, it would be nearly impossible. He smelled of almost nothing, or, at least, he did before he had drunk. She rolled her eyes and gave chase.

Germaine ran faster than he had in several centuries. It would have been exhilarating, save for the fact that it had been blood that had given him his strength. He hadn’t drunk for nearly one hundred years. That g-damn curse had kept him from it. Germaine rolled the stone away from his cave, throwing himself in without closing it. He sat on his rock bed, burying his head in his hands, allowing tears the color of rust to fall freely. He was so stupid, to have let himself be so arrogant. He was an idiot. Four hundred and fifty eight years he had been alive, and he still had the brains of a teenager. Something moved outside his cave, but he didn’t bother to look up. He didn’t care.

Siobhan starred in at Germaine and saw the tears rolling down his cheeks. She wasn’t sure what to do in cases like these. She hadn’t cried since she was about eleven, when her parents had separated for good, and it wasn’t as if either of them had had any time for her then, and they really didn’t now.
An instinct was telling her she should be scared right now, and probably sharpening a nice big wooden stake, but she ignored it. He was a monster, just like her.
She stepped in, rolling the rock door closed behind her, still unsure of what she was doing.
“Ummm… Germaine? Are you…. Okay?”
He looked at her from over the tops of his fingertips.
“Do I look it?”
Siobhan shrugged. “How should I know? It’s not like either of us is normal.”
That got a little, sarcastic laugh out of Germaine.
“Very true. You’re a Night Creature, aren’t you? A Were-beast?”
Siobhan nodded, preferring motions to words.
That prompted another laugh from Germaine.
“How ironic will this get? A werewolf summoning a vampire.”
Siobhan barked a laugh at that, appreciating the joke along with him. She had seen enough episodes of “Buffy” to understand that concept.
Siobhan flicked her Bic, illuminating the small space around them, suppressing a gasp.
A huge silver mirror shone from the wall, reflecting off of all the other walls, each of which was layered in hundreds of glass mirror shards. Her small lighter caused the room to glow.
She found several candles and began to light them, one by one. Germaine watched her the entire time.
Siobhan had been glancing at him every now and again, but it was only when she had lit the final candle that she really looked at him.
She had seen that tears had been running down his face when she had entered his little hideaway, but she hadn’t seen the color. Germaine’s tears were the color of rust, making semi-clear tracks down his face.
The flow had almost completely subsided now, but the streaks of red were giving him the appearance of someone who had had a nasty accident involving a piece of metal to the eye.
Siobhan and Germaine faced each other, eyes locked.
“Why did you run away?”
Germaine jerked his head up, cocking it to one side.
“Why? Because of you, my lovely. I am now you’re bound servant, forever and always.”
Siobhan’s eyes widened hugely.
“Oh… oh dear god, it’s the spell, isn’t it? Oh, god I’ll cast the counter spell right away, I’ll-“
“…No,” Germaine held his hand up for silence, “No, it’s not the spell. It’s my curse. You gave me your
blood willingly, and you’re a virgin. It’s an ancient curse of mine, and I can’t really get rid of it. But no worries, it’s not the end of the world.”
Germaine smiled sweetly at Siobhan, which, truth be told, freaked her out majorly.
“Sooo… basically… if I tell you something, you have to do it?”
He nodded. “You can even tell me to feed. If it’s an order from my Mistress or Master, I have to do it. No choice, no questions asked unless I’m allowed to.”
“And can I release you?”
Germaine shook his head. “Not unless you commit suicide, and I’m not allowed to let you do that. Curses are very good at working with loopholes.”
Siobhan nodded once again, still getting the feeling that she should be scared of this guy.
“Can you go out into the sunlight?”
Germaine smirked. “Yes. And I don’t sparkle, so don’t even think about it.”
That got a little giggle out of Siobhan. Germaine was growing on her.