Debts and Dilemmas 

Count your age by lessons, not years. Count your life by achievements, not cheers.

Debts and Dilemmas

I hoped that this year, everyone had finally forgotten about the damn twenty-fourth of October. Life slapped me in the face again. At lunch, Jo handed me a large bowl of cocoa-filled pancakes. She placed a blue candle in the middle, its flame was swaying softly in the air.

"Happy Birthday!" she smiled sweetly.

In fact, it would only have been my birthday the next day, but since it was Saturday and I refused all the bullshit related to birthday parties, Jo decided that she would celebrate my birthday during lunch break on Friday.

I grinned and kissed her on the cheeks, and I could feel Coffee's extra sharp look on the back of my head. I thanked Jo and blew out the candle.

"Did you wish for something?" Jo asked excitedly.

"Yes," I lied, and she smiled unsuspectingly.

At first, I didn't like Jo, and not just because of her human nature. All in all, because she was with Coffee in the "observation" operation, I had to put up with her being around me for the sake of the vampire girl.

When she asked me about something, I mostly just grumbled or hummed something incomprehensible. If she wanted to talk to me, I gave one-word answers. Yet this stubborn human girl didn't seem to mind it at all. She smiled at me so effortlessly as if she didn't realize my rudeness, which annoyed me even more.

On one rainy afternoon, I was just standing in front of the school for couple minutes. It wasn't as if the weather discouraged me from taking one more step, I was just thinking, and somehow, I was stuck there even after I put out my cigarette. Maybe I just wanted to admire the gentle dance of raindrops for a while, undisturbed, calm. Of course, life put a spoke in my wheels.

"Shall we go together for a while?" the girl asked, showing her umbrella with a sweet smile.

I pulled my lips to a mocking half-smile. "I don't mind the rain."

With that, I left the girl behind. Yet, despite my obvious rejection, she ran after me and held her umbrella over my head. When I looked at her, she smiled again and that made me breathe a deep sigh. In the end, I didn't even thank her for waiting for the bus with me at the stop.

I continued this until Coffee called me aside once.

"Why can't you be a little kinder to her?"

It was the second time Coffee had started a conversation with me. I shrugged.

"Your friend, not mine."

Coffee's eyes flashed with a sharp light, but that only made me even more confident. I smiled.

"I just hate such hypocritical humans," I leaned closer. "They're kind to you until they see your sharp little fangs. Then friendship or not, they will put a stake in your heart."

I poked my index finger over Coffee's breasts to make my statement more meaningful. The vampire girl caught my wrist.

"Johi wouldn't turn against me even if she found out," she hissed viciously.

I raised my eyebrows mockingly.

"Why are you so sure?" I just chuckled.

Coffee pursed her well-shaped, rosy lips into a sharp line, and I thought that was the end of our conversation. I yanked my hand out of her grip and I would have just left when she spoke again.

"I know because she found it out before."

Coffee's voice was so quiet that a human would have been unable to hear it, yet her words echoed loudly in my head. I was so surprised that I stopped between two steps and only turned back to the vampire girl after a second.

"What?"

"You heard it right," she nodded. "It happened half a year ago when we went home from the cinema. Three men started following us and... well, it's clear what they wanted. When I knocked out one of them, another picked up a knife."

"They stabbed you?" I asked, now serious.

Coffee nodded. "I think maybe six times."

We both remained silent for a moment.

"Did you lose control?" I inquired warily.

Coffee nodded her head barely noticeably, like one who was terribly ashamed of herself. Still, I knew there was nothing to be ashamed of. When a monster is attacked and severely wounded, ancient instincts resurrect and take control. That's just the way it is.

"Did they see your fangs?"

The vampire girl shook her head. "Just my eyes, but that was enough. One of them ran away immediately, the other wanted to stab me again while shouting that I was a monster."

I pursed my lips. Really familiar story. It always ends the same way when humans realize who we are.

"I'm sure Johi saw it, too," the vampire princess added.

"So, what happened next?" I asked uninterested.

"Johi jumped in front of me."

My eyes widened.

"She jumped in front of me," the vampire girl continued, "and they cut her arm."

"Did you taste her?" I blurted out in shock, completely ignoring the part of the story about what happened with the attackers.

I was sure that even if they managed to escape, Coffee's father systematically hunted them down. Coffee nodded slowly as I pulled a long face.

"She offered it willingly," the vampire princess confessed almost defensively, "Don't draw the wrong conclusion."

"So, you told her that you were a vampire, and her first reaction was to donate her blood to you?" I asked in disbelief.

Her eyes bore into mine. "She was worried that I was going to die."

I grinned in amusement. "But you wouldn't have died. You didn't enlighten her about this fact because you wanted a taste, did you?"

Tut-tut, Coffee.

"I only drank the blood that flowed out of the wound freely!" she shouted with a tomato-red face.

I shrugged, but my smile remained unchanged. "If you say so."

"You see now, don't you?" she growled angrily, "Johi is different!"

"Yeah," I said unimpressed and still skeptical.

"You think I'm lying?" she demanded.

No. The icy princess never speaks so much about herself, and I didn't think she would waste so many words on a story fabricated from lies. In any case, even then, I only believed in what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears.

"You took away her memories, right?" I asked for safety's sake.

Coffee nodded. I thought so too, the human girl would certainly not torture her best friend with her food if she knew that Coffee was a vampire.

In any case, the vampire's story wasn't enough to completely change my mind about my least favorite little human. It took me many more months until I got bored of the constant bullying of the human girl.

I was just smoking a cigarette on a bench hidden behind the bushes, away from the annoying humans. At least that's what I believed until Jo sat down next to me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, though not in the friendliest tone.

"I saw you from the window," she confessed. "You looked lonely."

"I wanted to be alone," I replied hinting at the fact that her presence was unwelcomed.

"Do you always want to be alone?" she inquired, real curiosity glistening in her gaze.

I rolled my eyes. Alex was the teddy bear of the class, the conqueror of hearts, everyone's favorite, always in focus. That's why when I was tired of the idiot humans bustling around us (actually just around Alex), I disappeared from the close proximity of the classroom.

"Everyone knows I'm not good company," I shrugged.

"It doesn't matter to me what others think about you," she said, a smile lingering about the corner of her mouth. "The important thing for me is what I see when I look at you."

I was thinking for a moment. Maybe this was the same sentence that reassured Coffee that night.

I grinned grimly. "So, what do you see when you look at me?"

I expected the girl to say something similar to what other people said. Most either go into raptures about my appearance or kick up a fuss about my hideous personality.

"You're lost."

The cigarette fell out of my mouth and fell to the ground. I stared at the daring girl with widened eyes, but she just smiled teasingly at me. I snorted, pulled out another cigarette, and lit it.

"Where did you get this bullshit from?"

Jo stretched lazily.

"We are all lost in this world, and we are all looking for our place in it," she continued.

I chuckled and took a deep drag. When I looked at her again, Jo was staring at me with round eyes.

"What, intrigued by me?" I asked with a flirtatious grin.

"Not really," she replied, but her ears were red behind the cover of her light brown curls.

She drooped her eyes to the ground.

"Too bad," I said, making her look at me again.

Her green eyes widened in shock, her lips parted slightly, and her face flushed red, like a sweet, juicy strawberry. I blew the cigarette smoke wickedly into her face. When she jumped up with a quiet scream, I laughed.

(...)

Rumour had it that the White Demon had something to do with the amulet thief. Of course, no one knew exactly how the two were related to each other or whether the rumor was true at all. Many whispered that perhaps the White Demon might be the thief himself, others dismissed the idea and claimed the whole thing was just hooey. No one knew anything certain; the truth was enveloped by obscurity. However, everyone knew exactly where the whole legend came from.

As soon as the working hours were over, I closed the pub and headed for Hird. Pretty slowly, because a monster like me is never in a hurry to save anyone but does everything at his own pace.

I opened the door unhindered and entered the kitchen where the apprentice mage was lying on the floor. His phone rested next to his hand, its screen broken, but it still worked. That was the sole reason I was there at all. I crouched down next to him, and he opened his eyes just a crack. For a moment, it seemed as if he was haunted by invisible horrors, then his eyes finally regained their focus on my face.

"Do you know where he was taken at?" I asked.

The mage nodded tremblingly. He slowly sat up.

"What happened to you?" I asked, but he shook his head without an answer.

His already pale skin turned quite greenish. And I didn't force a reply because I wasn't really curious about it.

"I need a map," he said, gesturing carelessly toward their room.

I assumed that while I'd search for the map, he'd collect himself and prepare for the juggling. I entered the room, and the guy yelled after me to 'search on the shelf'. I hurried to the bookshelf, and since I couldn't find an atlas or map there, I flipped through the books.

From one of them dropped a folded sheet of paper depicting the city of Pécs. The makeshift map mainly showed the sewer system rather than the streets — I assumed it was made by the mage.

"Does this seriously lead to the Weasel?" I raised one of my eyebrows skeptically.

"Snoop magic," he replied.

After that, I had no doubt. One does not have to be a mage to know this kind of magic, which is of very dubious origin and is on the verge of black magic. The guy sighed deeply and closed his eyes. His face seemed smooth, yet tense.

He spread out the map, then began to mumble in some mystically sounding language. He might have repeated the words for minutes before he suddenly fell silent. Then he raised his right hand, and only then did I notice he was bleeding. Next to him, on the floor, a whole puddle of scarlet liquid had gathered, and in some places, he had also dyed his clothes with it. Like most dark magic, this required some kind of sacrifice as well.

His hand trembled slightly as he raised it over the map. His index finger was stretched out, and a drop of blood danced on the tip of it. He uttered one last mystical word, which was like the lash of a whip in the air, tense and commanding. He spoke in an imposing tone I could hardly associate with the always silly mage. The drop of blood began to fall slowly and landed somewhere around the middle of the map.

He was panting from exhaustion, and I thought that his blood loss had little to do with it. He didn't have to speak, honestly, I strongly doubted he would be able to speak at all. Just taking one last look, he lay down on the ground.

"All right," I sighed. "I'll bring him back to you. But from now on you are my debtor, mage."

He nodded tremblingly, then closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his breathing instead.