The first time Miku saw a vampire and knew it was when she was six years old. She had been walking with her father and mother down the street to the old fashioned sweet shop down the corner to buy some sweets - brightly colored candy bars and colorful hard gobstoppers - Miku had been a good girl that day. She had brought home an A+ on her report card on her very first semester of school, so her parents were rewarding her, and Miku tripped down the sidewalk holding onto the warm hands of her father and mother, until she heard a commotion to her left.

Curious, she turned her head, and although her parents moved to cover her eyes and ears, she saw it and heard it, a quick glimpse that was terrifying, a shock to her innocent senses.

What she had seen were men dressed in crisp government navy blue vests, surrounding a man, a frail, weak, yet beautiful man who was sobbing quietly, and that sob turned into screaming, howling, a loud wail as the sunlight hit his bare flesh. Miku had begun to see his skin crumble to blackness, dust and ash in the sunbeams, had begun to see his face split apart, and then her parents carried her up and whisked her home.

The sight of it always stayed in her mind, however. Miku's parents quietly explained to her that what she had seen was a vampire.

"They are very bad people," said her mother to Miku, sternly, and Miku, too terrified by the memory of the beautiful face crumbling apart, nodded and took her mother's following words to heart: "Never, ever talk to them. Never, ever let them get near you."

Miku never got her candy that day, although the event had chased all thoughts of sweets and sunshine out of her mind. However, the years passed and she began to forget; vampires became a thing taught in schools, something distant and separate from her own life. There was something about being taught such things in school that lent it an academic, uninteresting air. The warning signs of vampires put up on the walls of the school, the private lesson given to the girls of the school by a female teacher about resisting the lure that the girls were beginning to understand on the fringes of their thoughts, resisting the cold beauty and delicate faces, the lovely manners and angelic voices that vampires possessed, the news reports that cropped up every so often about the government Seraphims taking into custody a vampire with ambitions of spreading the taint...none of it permeated fully into Miku's mind. She was ignorant despite being learned.

So Miku read vampire romance novels like everyone else, because there was a sort of forbidden allure to it (despite vampire romances being very popular, a whole genre by itself, not forbidden at all). She of course kept a good line between fantasy and reality, the facts drummed into her by school and parents - vampires were bloodsuckers, dangerous ones who preyed upon humanity. Everyone carried a small government-issued cross, enchanted by magically-inclined government Seraphims, that could repel vampires. Everyone knew the basic rules - never invite vampires into your home, if one were to meet a friendly vampire, direct him or her to the government blood providers, to the supermarket, or even to the blood whores; basically just get the vampire away from you as fast as possible.

Of course, schools also taught students how to defend themselves against other supernaturals such as werewolves and fairies and ghosts and demons and other such things, so the supernatural became the mundane in that way.

The years passed like so, the memory of the fearsome, disintegrating man in sunlight fading like an old photograph, and then high school rolled around, bringing along with it new friends, more homework, and more worries.

However, one particular day marked the beginning of a whole new set of worries for Miku.

It was at night, and Miku was walking quickly down a street in the city back from the old theater, carrying her backpack. She had been sick the day of the original field trip there, and had to make up the assignment over the weekend. Thankfully, the theater had still been showing the play, some operatic drama about a deformed girl from a freakshow, and Miku had paid attention and taken notes accordingly, even though personally, she wasn't too big a fan of the ending.

The streetlamps cast long shadows on the street, and it was completely quiet, Miku's footsteps loud and echoing on the clean pavement. Then, slightly to her left, she saw her.

A beautiful woman was standing, alone, in one of the more shadowed sides of the streets, her hair hiding her eyes, her skin so pale it seemed almost alabaster in the moonlight, her figure well-proportioned, her clothes expensive and well-made. Despite herself, Miku felt the breath knocked out of her body; the woman was just that beautiful.

"Ah..." Miku said, before she could stop herself, and the woman raised her eyes and stared at Miku.

Miku was immediately struck by the woman's face, perfectly sculpted as though it had come from a master, doll-like in beauty. Despite all that however, Miku's eyes focused on the tiny glint of fangs.

Her eyes widened and she took a step back, and before she could run, before she could scream, the vampire was on her. She no longer resembled an angel, as her face was contorted in hunger, and no angels had fangs.

"Don't!" Miku gasped, fingers scrabbling in her pocket for a cross as she desperately tried to fight the woman back. She prayed for a Seraphim to come by, or even an Ishim, unreliable as they may be. Why couldn't she find the cross? Even though everyone with sense carried crosses with them on their neck, Miku was stupid, kept it in her pocket, which seemed altogether too big now, her fingers clumsy; she never thought that she of all people would be attacked.

The vampire paused right before impact. "Do...you know...where the blood whores are? I was trying to ask you earlier but you were screaming and you couldn't hear me."

Eh? Miku paused and stared at the vampire askance. She had been taught that to look straight at a vampire was a recipe for disaster: if they don't render you useless and stammering with their inhuman beauty, they leave you open to their brainwashing. Miku's class had shown her videos of the results of these brainwashings, and they were not pretty.

"The blood whores," repeated the vampire.

"Th-the government blood providers are over in Broome," Miku recited numbly. "You can also find them in various supermarkets...barring that...you can get steaks and that could stave off your hunger for a-"

"I can't go to the government," said the vampire, agitated. "I'm too hungry for steaks. Please, I have to get a blood whore, where are they?"

Miku had no idea where the blood whores were and the vampire's barely restrained, hungry voice was frightening, intense; Miku could tell that it was just barely trying to hold back its hunger. "I don't know!" Miku said, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes.

The vampire hissed and mumbled something annoyed and unintelligible. Miku noticed that its eyes were red and a shiver of fear ran down her spine; vampiric eyes change color from the vampire's natural-born eye color to red when they were especially hungry. Miku felt the full danger of her situation crash down upon her. She had to escape, she had to run, run back to her house, but she can't turn her back and run - the vampire could easily outrun her, overpower her, take her blood, kill her or worse, make Miku its thrall, its slave.

"I'm sorry! I don't know," Miku took a trembling step backwards. "I ne-never got taught where and none of my friends know..."

The vampire turned its head before looking straight up at Miku and then looking away again. It was shaking, trembling - about to attack.

Miku gasped and started running away before she even realized she was. Her shoes echoed down the pavement, the maddened vampire running after her. Miku was screaming, but no one heard; how could the city be so deserted? Miku realized the hopelessness of her situation when the vampire easily caught up to her a few seconds after she started running, tackling her from behind. Miku fell on the ground and immediately started squirming and struggling, her hands pushing the vampire's cold face away from her. The vampire's mouth was open, fangs exposed, and in the struggle, the fang drew blood from Miku's hand.

Everything seemed to stop for that one moment as Miku stared at the small cut in her hand - at first innocuous, a small whitish cut, before it began to fill, turning red with blood, and then a single drop of it fell onto the pavement. The vampire's eyes traced its path and it took a deep breath before plunging its fangs into Miku's neck.

Miku froze. The violation seemed unbearable. She was taught that in this situation, it was best to stay still - thrashing about may cause the fangs to stray, to cut your artery, resulting in death. She felt her body relaxing, a small sense of elevation coming over her mind. In time the bite actually felt good; Miku recognized this as an effect of the drug that vampires produced from their fangs to make their victims stop struggling, which made the feeding process easier.

"Do not feel ashamed by thinking that the sensation is...pleasurable," said their teacher, carefully. "It's natural, a result of the venom. It is not your fault."

The classroom erupted in immature giggles. There was inevitable innuendo to be derived from vampire bites - they were so sexually charged.

Sexually charged indeed. Miku couldn't help but to squirm a little. No wonder vampires were the subjects of so many romances, she thought addledly. If they could make people feel this excited from a bite.

The vampire pulled its fangs out roughly, eliciting a sharp gasp from Miku. Its eyes turned a cold blue and all at once the fear rushed back into Miku's mind. She didn't want to look at her own neck - the dull red blood on the vampire's fangs told enough. The vampire got off of Miku before, after some time, pulling her up. Miku's knees were weak and her mind was a little fuzzy; apparently the vampire took a lot. She leaned against the wall and tried to rest, but she couldn't; the vampire was still there, after all.

"I...am sorry," said the vampire after some time.

Miku wiped at her eyes a little and said nothing; what could she say? She had just gotten her blood sucked. She suddenly felt a deep shame invade her mind - she couldn't tell anyone this. Getting blood sucked...Miku touched her neck anxiously and felt a quick, sharp feeling of pain when her fingers found the puncture marks on the side of her neck. She had just gotten her blood sucked. Miku, ordinary student, had just had this horrifying...thing happen to her.

The vampire glanced up at Miku and then away. "It's..not like me to act this way," it said. "I was...very hungry."

"I told you where the government blood suppliers were," Miku mumbled. "W-why couldn't you have just gone to them? I..." She felt tears well up in her eyes and she rubbed at them ineffectually.

"I can't go to the government," said the vampire. "It's hard to explain, they won't let me drink from the suppliers anymore."

Hard to explain? As if. There were only a few ways a vampire would get barred from the blood suppliers, and the most common way was...Miku felt another burst of horror within her. The vampire before her had killed someone by drinking too much blood. She could just imagine it - the ravenous monster before her sucking and sucking away at the blood of the government blood suppliers, driven too insane by bloodlust to be restrained by the Seraphims, too strengthened by the blood for the crosses and magic to be effectual. A vampire who had drunk a lot of blood was nigh invulnerable to anything, so after a certain point had been reached, it would be unstoppable.

Miku trembled and tried to take another step back, but as she was leaning against the wall, she couldn't. "...oh."

"Yes," said the vampire. "S-so you do understand now, right?" The vampire turned a pleading gaze back at Miku, and Miku looked away. "I couldn't...I couldn't help myself. I was too hungry. I'm sorry."

Apparently this vampire was still quite new if it was apologizing to humans for its hunger. Miku felt a little, a tiny little, of her anger soften - in the vampire simulations in class, where a Seraphim would come in and temporarily magick a person in the class to 'think' and 'feel' like a vampire (the purpose of this being that if the unthinkable happened one day, people would be better educated, more prepared if they ever became infected by the taint), the bloodlust that took over Miku was overwhelming. "Oh."

"So...sorry," the vampire mumbled, sounding hideously guilty.

Miku felt hot anger bubble up in her chest - what right did the vampire have to sound so miserable? Miku was the one who just got blood sucked against her will.

"What's your name?" she demanded. With a vampire's name, Miku could look it up on the internet. The government kept profiles on each vampire and one could report offenses on the site, which Miku had every intent of doing. With one death of a government blood supplier already on the vampire's rap list, this new bloodsucking attack might push the vampire over to 'dangerous' territory, needing to be put down by the Seraphim and Ishim.

The vampire gave a guilty start and looked up. "Luka Megurine. Of House Karnstein."

"Luka," Miku rolled the name around in her mouth for a few moments before nodding. "I see. Well, I'll be reporting this to the-"

"No!" Luka's eyes shot open. "Don't!"

"You attacked me!" Miku said. "Why shouldn't I?"

"I don't want to become a criminal," Luka pleaded. "I'll do anything. Don't turn me in."

Miku scoffed. "Who trusts a Karnstein?" House Karnstein was a rather duplicitous group of backstabbers and liars, Miku knew - to trust one was tantamount to signing a suicide pact.

"W-well, I'm still a fledgling anyway," Luka mumbled. "So I'm not really vampire-like yet. But I don't want to die yet. Please," she looked up at Miku, who was still studiously not looking at her, "I'll do anything. Come on. Just don't turn me in."

"...anything?" Miku asked.

Luka nodded eagerly, her hands clasped together. "Yes! Anything you want! I'll be your bodyguard, a spy, a cook, I'll even do your homework for you, just don't turn me in."

Miku stared past her. Luka seemed quite desperate...how odd considering how vampires are prideful creatures. Perhaps what had happened with the government blood suppliers had been worse than what Miku thought. She sighed, heavily. Miku didn't especially want to become involved with a vampire, but she couldn't let this whole getting her blood sucked thing go either. The puncture marks would heal, but Miku still remembered the animal terror that had gripped her, the fear, how frightening and powerful Luka had been.

"...I don't know," Miku said. "Look...I have to go home. Don't follow me."

"You won't turn me in, right?" asked Luka, looking quite terrified. "Please. I told you I'll do anything."

"I won't turn you in," Miku sighed. "If anything comes up, I'll...look for you I guess. Where...are you usually?"

"Ah," Luka blinked. "I just moved in so I'm...wherever. But if you need me, just...look around in the blood covens, I...should be in there." She paused, seeming to think over that. "Or not."

"I can't go to a blood coven," said Miku, scandalized. "I'm human. I'll get my blood sucked out!"

Luka frowned. "W-well, where do you live?"

"Why do you want to know?" Miku asked.

"It's not like I can get in without an invite," Luka said. "It's just so that if you need me I can be there."

There was something perverse about this. Miku, not quite ready to give her address to a Karnstein vampire who attacked her, turned away. "I'm sure your nose can find me."

Couldn't resist, new story XDDD For those wondering, the name Karnstein is from the vampire book Carmilla :D