The surf competition finals night always ignited Norchester Bay. The official heats merely served as an overture. The real spectacle erupted after the sun bled out below the horizon.

  The entire town descended upon the beach, drawn to a massive bonfire party. A huge pyramid of driftwood and shipping pallets, assembled throughout the day by eager hands, roared to life in a column of fire. It punched a fist of light and cinders into the star-dusted sky, painting the churning waves in strokes of orange and gold. The beach transformed into a flickering, chaotic sea of dancing silhouettes. Music thumped from a dozen different portable speakers, each blasting a different anthem, a joyous and jarring cacophony that vibrated through the sand. The air hung thick, a potent cocktail of wood smoke, spilled beer, and the cloying sweetness of melting marshmallows.

  It represented everything a normal teenager should crave.

  For Frankie, it became a personal, sensory hell.

  She perched on the edge of the chaos, a ghost haunting her own victory party. She had conquered the competition finals earlier that day, her unnatural speed and strength granting her an easy, if deeply unsettling, victory. The trophy, a cheap plastic surfer on a fake marble base, sat abandoned in the sand beside her, a gaudy monument to a life she no longer claimed.

  The bonfire, a living inferno, seared her sensitive eyes, even from fifty yards away. The thumping, mismatched bass lines assaulted her eardrums, each beat a hammer blow against her skull. The joyful shouts and unrestrained laughter of the crowd scraped like sandpaper across her raw, over-stimulated nerves.

  Utter, complete alienation crushed her. A predator sitting in the middle of a herd of blissfully unaware prey, the isolation pressed down on her chest, a physical weight threatening to suffocate her. Dee Dee and Ted tried their best to include her, to keep her anchored to their little island of normalcy, but their efforts only highlighted the chasm that now separated them. They celebrated a surfing victory. Frankie mourned the death of her humanity.

  “I… I need some air,” she finally mumbled, the words catching in her throat. An urgent need for escape surged through her, a primal instinct warning her to flee before the monster inside her screamed.

  She stood, a phantom slipping from the main party, away from the oppressive heat and noise of the fire. She walked along the quieter stretch of beach where the waves gently lapped the shore and the moonlight fought back against the bonfire’s aggressive glare. The cool, damp sand yielded under her bare feet, a soothing balm. The rhythmic shush of the waves caressed her frayed senses, and the clean, salty air tasted like freedom after the greasy smoke of the bonfire.

  Here, she could almost pretend. Here, she could almost inhabit the skin of the old Frankie. The girl who belonged on this beach, whose greatest worry involved a missed wave.

  “Figured I might find you out here.”

  The low, quiet voice failed to startle her. Her new senses registered his approach from a hundred feet away, the soft crunch of his footsteps on the sand a distinct, solitary sound against the ceaseless roar of the surf.

  She turned. Damon Rudd stood there, a solid shape against the pale wash of the moon.

  He offered no smile, no empty platitudes. He came not to offer congratulations or make small talk. He just fell into step beside her, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his board shorts. His quiet, self-contained intensity provided a stark contrast to the boisterous energy of the party raging behind them.

  The silence that settled between them held no awkwardness. Comfort defined it, a companionable quiet that rendered words unnecessary.

  “You okay?” he asked finally, his voice a low rumble that resonated within her without scraping her nerves. The simple question differed from the frantic, worried inquiries of her friends, which dripped with a pity she couldn't stand. A genuine inquiry.

  And it cracked through her defenses.

  “Not really,” she confessed, the truth a quiet, painful admission whispered into the dark.

  He nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the dark, endless line of the horizon. He did not press. He did not ask for details. He just accepted her answer, granting her a space to breathe.

  “Some pretty impressive surfing today,” he said after a moment. Not a compliment. An observation. A statement of fact.

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “Never seen anyone move that fast,” he continued, his gaze shifting from the ocean to her. In the soft, pale moonlight, his eyes deepened into serious pools. “It almost didn't look real.”

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  Ice flooded Frankie’s veins. He had seen. Not just a good surfer. He recognized something wrong. Something… other. She braced for the inevitable questions, for the accusations, for the same look of confused suspicion from the other surfers.

  But the accusation never came.

  “Must be a lot of pressure,” he said instead, his voice dropping even lower. “Everyone expecting you to win. To be perfect.”

  He gave her an out. A normal, human explanation for her strange, inhuman performance. He offered a life raft, and she clung to it with the desperation of a drowning woman.

  “Yeah,” she breathed, her voice thick with a relief so profound it made her dizzy. “The pressure. It’s… a lot.”

  In the quiet darkness, away from the prying eyes of the crowd and the suffocating concern of her friends, the words tumbled out. Not the whole truth, of course. She could never offer that. But a version, dressed in more palatable clothes. She spoke of the strange, disconnected state she inhabited, of an outsider’s place in her own skin, her body a foreign vessel. She disguised her supernatural horror in the mundane language of teenage anxiety, and he listened.

  He listened with a quiet, focused intensity that, for the first time in weeks, truly saw her.

  He talked, too. He spoke of his own gilded cage, his reputation as the town’s golden boy of surfing, the crushing pressure to constantly live up to it, the loneliness that festered at the top. In a low, quiet voice, he even admitted his own ignorance on how to end his empty, superficial relationship with Tasia without causing a firestorm he lacked the energy to fight.

  An unspoken understanding bloomed between them, a shared melancholy that forged a powerful, unexpected connection. For a few precious, fragile moments, Frankie existed not as a fledgling vampire teetering on the edge of losing control. She existed as just a girl on a beach, sharing a quiet, vulnerable moment with a boy who looked past the mask, past the monster, to the frightened person hiding underneath.

  The romantic spark, a tiny, flickering ember between them, deepened and caught flame. It warmed her, creating a fragile bubble of peace in the center of her chaotic new world.

  He reached out, his movements slow and deliberate. His gentle touch brushed a stray strand of salt-stiffened hair from her face. His fingers lingered for a half-second on her cheek, a small point of contact that sent a jolt through her entire body. His skin radiated an incredible, vibrant, human heat. Alive.

  The warmth shocked her preternaturally cool skin. A profound heat bloomed from that single point of contact, spreading through her veins like a welcome fever. He didn't pull away. Instead, his thumb stroked her cheekbone, a soft, mesmerizing rhythm. His gaze locked onto hers, and something shifted in his expression. His eyes, dark pools in the moonlight, lost their focus on her face and sank deeper, as if a current caught him, pulling him into the depths of her own gaze.

  The look defied understanding. Intense, unguarded, a raw vulnerability stripped from his cool, confident public persona. His pupils dilated, swallowing the dark brown of his irises. A strange, intoxicating power washed over her, a sensation beyond any name. His breath hitched.

  As his mind drifted, her senses sharpened to a razor’s edge. A new, dominant rhythm replaced the gentle shush of the waves, which faded to a distant murmur. A deep, steady thump-thump. His heartbeat. It echoed in her own silent chest, a powerful, magnetic drum calling to her. His scent flooded her—salt from the sea, a faint trace of coconut wax from his board, and something else, something warm, metallic, and intoxicatingly vital. The scent of life itself.

  Her gaze dropped from his mesmerized eyes, tracing the firm line of his jaw down to his neck. A vein pulsed there, a delicate blue river just beneath the sun-kissed skin. It throbbed in time with the heartbeat that now consumed her hearing, a visual metronome for the life coursing through him.

  A profound, searing ache ignited deep within her, a craving so powerful it blurred the lines between desire and hunger, between a kiss and a bite. Lust for the boy and lust for his blood fused into a single, undeniable imperative. A primal hunger clawed at her throat and coiled hot and heavy in her stomach.

  He leaned forward, his lips parting slightly, his eyes still lost in hers, caught in a trance he couldn't explain. She mirrored his movement, drawn by an invisible string of pure, predatory instinct. The need to close the distance, to connect, overwhelmed her.

  A sharp, tingling ache bloomed along her gum line. Pressure built, a slow, inexorable lengthening of her canines, a familiar horror she had no power to stop. The points sharpened, pressing against the inside of her lower lip.

  His mouth hovered inches away. The scent of his breath, warm and human, washed over her. Mint and salt air. But her target shifted. A subtle, animalistic tilt of her head, a movement so slight he would never register it. Her own lips parted, but her focus abandoned his. Her gaze locked on the pulse in his throat, the spot where the skin lay thinnest, where the heat concentrated.

  The cool shadow of her intent fell over him, unnoticed. His eyes fluttered closed, a gesture of surrender, anticipating a kiss.

  The monster inside her purred in triumph. She leaned closer, the sharp points of her fangs just grazing her own lip, ready to break the skin. His skin. The ache in her jaw promised an exquisite prelude to a pleasure she could barely comprehend. One more inch. One more second.

  “There you are!”

  The voice, a shard of glass, shattered the night. Sharp, angry, and dripping with venom.

  Tasia Moreno marched toward them, her silhouette a stiff, furious line against the orange glow of the bonfire.

  The bubble of peace, of trance, of hunger—it popped. Damon flinched back as if waking from a dream, his eyes clearing with confusion. Frankie recoiled, a gasp catching in her throat as a searing pain shot through her gums. Her fangs retracted, a brutal, grinding process, a violation against her own flesh. The monster inside her snarled, a low growl of territorial anger rumbling in her chest, the urge to meet aggression with overwhelming force a sudden, hot spike in her blood.

  The quiet vanished. And the night, once again, belonged to the monsters.

  However, the question remains: Did Tasia see everything?