Smiling, overcoming my little emotional crisis, I looked one last time at the celestial vault, which from now on I could enjoy every night, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would look like at dawn, and if I could see that ocean of colors with my own eyes. Maybe I would have to go to a movie theater to enjoy the sunlight. Or maybe, if I continued to distract myself with every new thing I experienced in my new skin, I could find out if the sun transformed me into a living pyre, and then reduce me to a pile of smoldering ashes. Maybe it would even make my skin shine...

Denying my foolish joke, I sank my feet into the loose earth of the forest, full of moss, small stones, and even some bugs that I could feel vividly, like tickles that rose from my feet, and all over my spine, reaching my brain. A chill came to me when I was conscious of the sensation, finding a slight pleasure in it. Then, pushing forward, I began to run, this time seriously, experiencing how much speed I could achieve. To my surprise, it wasn’t like teleporting exactly. I could see the forest running beside me as I went. It was like going on a roller coaster, except there was no device, everything was on my feet. I also found that it wasn’t the most comfortable thing to do; despite the fact that speed alone confused my brain (still inexperienced in many things) and made me dizzy, releasing adrenaline in my blood; the physics on the earth were the same, vampire and not vampire, so the air hit me in the face, producing an uncomfortable sensation, leaving me without breathing, although clearly it wasn’t necessary. Besides, the mosquitoes that fluttered didn’t had time to get out of my way freely, and more than once I noticed them against my face, like a truck on the road, with the windshield decorated with bugs. As for what I felt, leaving aside the physical, I wondered while enjoying the feeling, how my body, apparently lifeless, released adrenaline in my blood, and how it was able to reach my entire body. My heart wasn’t beating, I was sure, but then, how could I experience those chemical reactions, so human, so normal?

I stopped again, more to stop feeling that I was swallowing a hundred mosquitoes per second, than to get philosophical about what it meant to be a vampire, and if that really had killed me. Would it be a virus, a bacterium, a... something? Settling into a reflective pose, I came to the conclusion that if I could survive long enough, I would engage in extensive research to know what a vampire really was. However, for that I had to miss some time, because at that time my goal was to return to the crime scene and from there to sniff to the local police station, where they would have my missing papers: my belongings, my ID, a research file was also probable. If I wanted to start in this new life in the right way, I had to eliminate all traces of my death, disappear from the face of the earth. I also had to go back to the hostel and collect my things, which I would also disappear in some way. All that would go later, now I had to identify Caroline's scent, if it was close. I inhaled deeply, concentrating on the sweet fragrance of my deceased friend, to be able to find her among all the greenery that surrounded me.

Little by little and concentrating more and more, being accompanied only by the natural noise of the forest (because, running, I had left the hospital completely behind and I couldn’t even hear the shots), I closed my eyes, letting my nose trace an almost exact map of my surroundings. I could see somehow, through my second primary sense, a great extension of the grove, knowing the aroma of the variety of conifers, and the animals that inhabited them, without even knowing that I was observing them without seeing them, while they ran freely through the roots of the trees, which stuck out like veins from the ground. I inhaled more, frowning as I managed to capture a soft touch that nothing else in the forest had. Yes! Caroline's perfume, and although light and ephemeral, knew now where it was, and making quick counts, it must be a little over a kilometer ahead and to the right. I would arrive in a minute, less even. Then I ran again, going a little less quickly, but not feeling that I couldn’t enjoy the circus of odors left behind while passing, and of course, without ending with a sheet of mosquitoes on the teeth.

Arriving wasn’t difficult, because second by second her scent was increasing, now clearly evidencing its nature worn out by time, how much? I still couldn’t decipher it. I could also catch the scent of spilled blood, her blood, the blood of my best friend... Like mine and my creator’s. Everything was marred by the different perfume of different people, and I could identify in the same way, something hairy that I thought should be a police dog. When I arrived, I could observe precisely that the whole floor was covered by small papers with numbers, cataloging each evidence. There was one where the pale man had been standing, more in the trunk where Caroline had ceased to exist, and more where I had died. Everything seemed very normal, however, as I walked through the evidence, the leaf litter creaking under my weight, I began to discover the traces of the agents who had seen almost what I saw, and where his dog had smelled almost what I smelled... They hadn’t been able to see the slight humidity of the ground, in another part that wasn’t where the subject had jumped, they hadn’t been able to see the clear flooded footsteps, under which the earth had been soaked, which they carried to the place of my favorite blonde’s death. They had never guessed that the pale man had retraced his steps to take Caroline with him, probably when I was still there. Why had he charged with her and not with me? Did he already know that I would become one of them?

I sighed, covering my face with one hand, without letting go my cocoon with the other. The answer seemed obvious. Yes, he knew that I had swallowed his blood mixed with mine, a popular method to transform another into a vampire, and he knew that she was dead of course, cold, without hope. That hurt me, because the little hope I could have had, over him turning her too, vanished, but it also left me a powerful teaching, or at least confirmed one of my previous theories: in extreme situations, we could perfectly feed on dead blood, which many authors explicitly said couldn’t be done.

- Caroline, I'll find your body. I’ll take you home - I swore to the moon, pleading that, if her soul had transcended, she would be able to listen to me.