"Paul," I let out a fake whine as I jumped onto his back and latched my arms around his neck and legs around his waist.

The other boys had gone off in other broken up pairs – David with Dwayne; Jeremy with Marko. It was one of the few days of the month where Paul and I were not at any sort of odds, so we decided to take advantage of it and hunt together. Most nights we all stayed together, but on occasion we chose to go out in pairs or divide the group in half. It provided small bits of change in an otherwise fairly repetitive routine.

"Oh, what?" Paul asked as he secured his hands under my knees to hold me up.

"I'm hungry," I answered in a simple tone. It was a weeknight and pickings, while not slim, were less than on weekends. "I haven't found a thing yet."

Paul, having already fed, let out a laugh, "Well, if you weren't so picky…"

I pinched his throat lightly, "Sorry if I'm not you. I won't sink my teeth into just anything with a pulse."

"Hey!" Paul scolded playfully. "Don't make me sound so cheap."

I smirked as I rested my chin against his shoulder and his blonde hair, which he was growing back out, tickled my cheek, "You are cheap." I immediately stopped speaking and my eyes darted to our left. "Wait."

Paul felt me tense and set me back onto my feet, "Have you found someone?"

"Some… yeah," I mumbled as I inhaled a scent that was obviously not as strong to Paul as it was to me. It washed through me and I could feel my eyes fighting to yellow and teeth sharpening under my lips. "How don't you smell that?"

"I smell a lot of things," Paul stated as he took in a breath. "Just not what you do, wonder nose."

"It's so strong," I moved one hand to grab hold of Paul's wrist. I needed something to keep me steady. "I can't smell anything else."

It was vanilla. It was my favorite scent as a human.

Now, to vampires, humans don't always just smell of blood. There are times when the human smells like apples, cinnamon or anything else that the vampire may have once desired in his old life. These humans were nothing special except for having a more pure blood type. It tasted so much sweeter going down, but was not cause for any sort of ruckus.

The thing was… I hadn't smelled anything this strong ever.

Paul watched me closely before I felt a small nudge on my hip, "Lead the way."

My head felt clouded as I nodded and pulled the taller vampire along behind me. We weaved our way behind the shops on the boardwalk and I paused every so often to make sure that I was still on the right path. Once I was confident that we were close, I released my hold on Paul and worked my way forward without the physical support.

It didn't take long before I found who appeared to be the source.

There was a teenage male – he couldn't have been over 17 – sitting against a dumpster in an alley. The smell flowed my way and upon not seeing anyone anywhere close, I charged forward. I was on him in a flash and one hand covered his mouth while my teeth sunk into his throat to let his blood flow over my tongue.

I had been put in such a frenzy that it was too late by the time I realized something was wrong.

"No," I began to cough and jerked back so that my backside collided with the ground. The blood remaining in my mouth spewed back out and slid from my lips down to my cover anything it could reach. "P-Paul…"

Paul was with me in an instant, "What the hell?"

"It was… wrong," My voice was hoarse as I clawed at my throat. "He wasn't it." My foot jerked out and kicked the body. "It was… already cold."

"You drank from a corpse?" Paul nearly barked at me. "Shitshitshit."

"The smell… I would have sworn," Was all I was able to get out before I lurched forward and blood expelled from my mouth in a painful heave.

Drinking from the dead was something that vampires just did not do. It wasn't poisonous in a fatal way, unless you were alone as you did so. It was like a human eating something undercooked or expired and coming down with food poisoning. It made the vampire violently ill, weak and somewhat delirious.

If I had been alone, I surely wouldn't have made it out of the alley and I would have burned come sunrise.

"We've got to get you home," Paul hissed in concern as he lifted me so that I was cradled in his arms. We might have often clashed, but we cared for one another the way that a family was meant to. "I'll call the boys back when we get there."

"It burns," I whimpered as I rested my head against Paul's chest.

"You'll be fine, just hold on."

Neither of us had been in a state to see that we were, in fact, not alone in that alley.

We didn't see that the boy I had drunk from had a deep, fatal wound in his back.

Once we were gone, a man clad in black with dark eyes jumped down off of a ledge of a building and landed next to the corpse. He eyed it for a moment before his attention turned to where we had disappeared. His lips were pressed together in a hard line as he toyed with the stake in his right hand.

"Hello, beautiful. It looks like Santa Carla is the place to be."