The kidnappings are always weird.

Let me explain.

In the great teenage vampire epics of our day, there is a dear young lady who spends wasted minutes explaining her life story, and promptly finds her rant timely interrupted by some so-called grown vampire that invents a reason to cut into the monologue. Well, I'll agree with that. I've read too many of those cutesy, repetitive things to give them any more credit.

But the kidnappings are weird, because real vampires aren't messy enough to be seen. Or so I tell myself.

My name is Clairemont Iverson, and I believe I've been mistaken for a teenage girl.

Not that that's bad. I've been a teenager myself. I grew out of it. . . .

Sorry, I'm a bit distracted right now. I never used to believe vampires exist. Now I'm running for my life.

Ten minutes ago, I'd entered a nightclub for the first time in my (clearly very boring) life in response to a female friend's drunken call for a ride home and a restraining order, not necessarily in that order. I'd found her easily enough. She was the one throwing up in the bathroom . . . the only place, luckily, with consistent lighting and vague soundproofing. I left the bathroom to look for a back exit—the music, noise, and smell here?—and ducked into a doorway decorated by a tasteful fire exit sign. There was a curtain in the way.

The comparative silence of the new hallway screamed for my presence, so after a cursory glance that revealed a wonderful farther exit sign, I returned to the bathroom, helped my friend redo her hair, and hauled her toward the exit.

During that brief pause for introspection, I'd decided that the back rooms of a nightclub were definitely not something I'd want to touch with a ten-foot pole, so I kept my friend's arm over my shoulders and aimed for that outside door.

She did not get the memo.

"Claiiiire, I don't—"

I halted immediately. Her arm slid off of me as she attempted to hug her stomach, but stumbled sideways instead. I jumped forward to catch her and resigned myself to potential jacket-staining vomit.

Then I registered that she'd bumped a door open, and inside that door were two girls and a young man. One girl lay across the floor in a presumable dead faint. The second was entwined with the young man against a wall, profile view to me. She had opted to forgo a wad of sparkly cloth on the floor. Gross. Didn't doors here have locks?! They stored alcohol, didn't they? 

Then again, no one would store anything in a room as unhygienic as this.

The young man's head lifted to lock eyes with me, startled. He went through the same thought process a moment later (sans storage rant). I had the privilege of watching anger flicker across his face before he turned back to the girl. She was unconscious now, the same as her friend on the floor.

I just couldn't take my eyes off the smear of blood on her neck, dripping down, down. . . .

My friend hurled the remains of her alcoholic splurge onto the floor. I flinched and glanced back at her. If the guy she'd said was hounding her had caught her, this could be her in the back room slumped against the wall.

I risked glancing back at the young man just in case he met the "built like a troll" description I'd been graced with during the drunk call. 

No, he wasn't the troll. He was slender, tall, and coordinated enough to lower his companion to the ratty couch behind them. He didn't try to cover her up, poor girl. I glared at him—yes, he deserved it—there was a girl on the floor!—and looked the girl over in case she had any other injuries I might need to report. 

Tonight just kept getting better and better.