The Relict (Book 1): Drawing Blood by Richard Finney, Franklin Guerrero

darkness.
    “Matt…”
    It was not a whisper, nor was the voice something he heard in his head. Something in between.
    “I’m coming for you Matty…”
    The next noise came from above, and he looked up in enough time to see a dark shadow descending toward him. Rather than moving away, Matt felt compelled to raise his right arm. He stretched his fingers as if they were trying to touch the sky.
    “Got you…!”
    Suddenly his feet were off the ground… and Matt was floating toward the night sky. The stars and the moon were getting closer and closer, then the freezing hand released him and he fell a short distance to the gravel covering the rooftop of the barracks building.
    It took him a few seconds to orientate himself, though there was a part of Matt that was convinced what was happening was just the continuation of his earlier dream.
    “Matty…”
    The shadowy cloud that had caused him to rise from the ground to the roof was gone. But the nighttime sky was all around him, along with the stars and the moon. And there was something else, he could feel it.
    “Is that you…? Answer me… Ian…?”
    A hand covered his mouth.
    “Shh…”
    It was the same frost-cold hand that had held his wrist. His lips immediately turned numb and a freezing burn radiated all across his face.
    “No one can know about this…”
    Just as he was about to scream in pain, he was released.
    The blood rushed back to his skin as he touched his lips and the rest of his face. The feeling of frostbite was either imaginary or transitory.
    “It’s me, Matty…”
    He turned toward the voice. A figure stood in the shadows near the rooftop entrance. Matt shook his head… one last attempt to wake himself, if indeed what was happening was part of a dream.
    “Ian? It can’t be you… you’re…”
    “… dead.”
    There was a dim light shining above the rooftop exit door, which cast an umbrella of soft light. Ian stepped out of the shadows so his brother could see for the first time what he had become.
    “I know, Matty, not a pretty sight.”
    It was clearly Ian’s voice, even though the words were coming from something that resembled a corpse.
    “But isn’t your reaction to my appearance shocking only because it’s in conflict with your past memory of what I once looked like?”
    “No, my reaction is because you’re dead.”
    The content, the immediacy, and the decisiveness of his brother’s answer drove Ian back into the rooftop shadows.
    “Mom… Dad… we all thought… because you had simply disappeared, that you had been taken by a serial killer.”
    “Matt, that’s not too far from the truth.”
    Now his voice seemed to come from a different part of the roof. Matt narrowed his eyes and realized that the figure standing in the shadows was no longer standing there.
    “If you want to classify the vampire that turned you... a serial killer,” said Matt, “I certainly won’t disagree with you. But it’s not the fate any of us imagined for you.”
    “Yes, of course. Forgive me. I’m sorry to be so disconnected with what you went through. You must understand, the ten years since my disappearance feels like another lifetime ago.”
    Matt still couldn’t see Ian, and his brother’s slight, wispy voice seemed to be floating all around him in the air. He decided to simply stare into the dark space in front of him and speak.
    “Well, perhaps it’s been another life for you, but I was involved in the one you had with Mom and Dad. You should know that both of them went to their graves believing the worst about how you had died.”
    Ian was suddenly standing right next to him.
    “You really need to lower your voice…”
    He was so close, Matt could smell his breath. It smelled like zinc.
    “Does what Mom and Dad went through mean anything to you?”
    “Yes, of course. But don’t you think it was better they saw my face on a milk carton and wept for me... rather than learn the truth – that I was one of those responsible for