Most vampires simply can't stand the noise. It's not just the everyday sounds—the rumble of cars, the distant chatter of human voices, the blare of music. No, it's something deeper, something that drills into their very being; the constant, messy hum of human thoughts.
This is why nearly all of them choose to live in places where humans aren't. They burrow underground, seek refuge offshore on isolated islands, or vanish off-grid into forgotten wildernesses. Anywhere the chaotic symphony of mortal minds can't reach them.
Because the mind of a mortal, a human being, is a loud, sloppy, leaking thing. It's an uncontrolled cascade of thoughts, spilling out in every direction like water from a burst pipe. Guilt over forgotten tasks. Lust for fleeting pleasures. Endless shopping lists for groceries. A nagging, primal fear. Petty, meaningless opinions about everything and nothing. And the worst of it all; a constant, clumsy narration of their every action, their every feeling, their every breath. It's an unbearable cacophony.
This is also why, when they must feed, they choose the deep, hushed silence of forest trails, where the only minds are those of simple animals, their thoughts a quiet, undemanding rhythm.
Micha, hears them all the time. He can't escape it. That's why he twitches sometimes, a sudden jerk of a hand or a shoulder, for no obvious reason. It's why he bites his nails down to the quick, a nervous habit he can't break. And it's why he never smiles at crowds, his face a mask of strained discomfort, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of minds around him.
I hear them too. All of them. But I possess a rare ability, a strange, beautiful gift. I can shut them off. I can pull a switch in my mind, and the overwhelming tide of human thought simply... ceases. It's rare, even among our kind, for a vampire to have psychic ears, to be able to hear minds, but also to possess a mute switch. I don't know why I can do it. I just can. It is simply a part of me.
Micha, in his moments of frustration, calls it cheating.
"Your head must be made of steel," he had once said, his voice laced with a raw envy I understood completely. "I'd kill for five minutes of silence." His eyes, usually sharp, were unfocused then, lost in the torment of a thousand unspoken thoughts.
"I live in silence," I told him, the words simple, a truth he could barely grasp. I felt a strange pang of guilt, knowing the constant torment he lived with.
We were crouched low in the dense woods just outside Winter Bulls, the air sharp with the scent of pine and damp earth. Our bodies were still, perfectly blended with the shadows, as we stalked a herd of deer.
Micha's sharp eyes meticulously scanned the tree line, his senses working overtime. He could smell them, hear the faint rustle of their movements, even feel the simple, rhythmic beat of their dumb little minds: food, cold, movement, threat. Just the basics.
I could hear them too, the deer thoughts, a soft, repetitive hum. But I didn't care. Their thoughts were like background noise to me, almost a quiet, gentle music that I could easily ignore.
Micha was tense beside me, a coiled spring ready to snap. His jaw kept shifting, grinding, as if he were trying to bite down a particularly difficult thought, to silence it before it could overwhelm him. I knew exactly what it was. The town, just beyond the tree line, was particularly loud today.
"Let's just feed," he muttered, his voice low and tight. "Then leave. This town's louder than usual."
He didn't have to say "louder than usual for humans." I knew what he meant. The minds, the sheer volume of them.
I nodded, a silent agreement. We hadn't fed in two days, and the hunger was a dull ache.
Animal blood only. It was cleaner that way, less complicated. We had made strict rules for ourselves a long time ago, unbreakable promises whispered in the dark.
Because the first time I drank human blood…
I almost killed him. Micha.
I didn't mean to. It was an accident, a moment of desperate hunger, of being too young, too raw to this existence. He was just there. Just Micha. Some dumb kid from a forgotten farm road in Kentucky, too loud, too careless.
He'd been running his mouth in a gas station, spouting silly stories about vampires, laughing as if we were just fairy tales. I had been too hungry, my new senses screaming, and he was simply… easy.
I didn't even fully realize I'd sunk my teeth in until he collapsed, his eyes wide and shocked, the life draining from him too quickly.
He would have died. He was fading, fast. If Freda hadn't saved him.
Freda is the woman who had raised me, who had found me when I was lost after I was discarded by people whom I used to think I meant something to. Freda wasn't my mother, not in any human sense. When I had met her, she seemed to be very old for the way she looked. I got to find out she was like me but the older version of my Being.
Someone cooler with abilities I learned later on.
She didn't save Micha because she cared about him, not really. She didn't feel human emotions like that.
She saved him because she knew. She knew that if I, her new family, killed someone, I would fall apart. My soul, gravely twisted, would shatter.
So she turned him. Changed his body, forever binding him to this dark, eternal existence. And in doing so, she saved my soul, or what was left of it.
And now, here we were.
Two monsters in the quiet woods, pretending we were still good. Pretending we weren't hungry. Pretending we were still just two boys from the human world.
That's when I heard her.
Not Micha. Not the deer, their simple thoughts a distant whisper.
Her.
"This is the part where they both come."
The voice hit me like a physical slap, a sudden, sharp impact in the very center of my mind. It was a voice—not spoken aloud, not even from someone nearby in the physical world—but in my head. Inside my head.
It was clear. Focused. And bright with a strange, dark amusement.
I froze, every muscle in my body locking. My breath caught in my throat.
"Smile for the camera, Devon."
Micha, sensing my sudden stillness, turned his head slowly toward me, his brow furrowed in a deep frown. "You hear that?" he whispered, his voice low, filled with a raw confusion.
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
I was trying to shut her out. Trying to activate the mute switch, to pull that familiar curtain of silence around my mind. I pulled on the silence, desperately, grasping at it like a drowning man claws at the edge of a boat, hoping to pull himself to safety.
Nothing.
She was still there. Her thoughts, clear as a bell, vibrant and chillingly present.
Playful. Vengeful. Thinking thoughts like tiny, sharp arrows dipped in sugar, sweet on the surface but with a bitter, dangerous sting beneath.
I'd never heard a mind like that before. Never one that could bypass my gift. Never one so vivid, so focused, so utterly unyielding to my power.
And worse?
I liked the way it sounded inside me. It was terrifying. And strangely, exhilarating.