Alesco:

We've been here for a week and I think we'll have to leave soon. Again. We always have to move, to run, to escape, to hide.

This house must have looked good in its day. Now it's run down, the 5 bedrooms coated in a layer of dust. The furniture is old, wooden desks and antique bookshelves. The ceilings are high and the plaster moulds hold candle chandeliers. The fireplaces look like they haven't been used in years.

It's probably lucky we can see in the dark, and are immune to the cold. We live for the cold, for the dark.

"Alesco!" My mother shouts up at me. I'm standing in the dusty hallway at the top of the immense, wooden staircase. "Come down stairs."

I live here, for now, with my mother and father and two brothers. I'm the youngest. My family is all that I have. We move too much to make friends. And there's not so many of us left now since the hunting began.

We're hiding from a predator, who hunts in daylight, who can move with speed, who could turn us. I saw it happen once, before we ran. Our village was attacked. I don't know what happened to the rest of them, but I saw my uncle turned. He changed before my eyes. My father had to carry me away.

I go downstairs, the floor creaking as I walk. I like to walk with heavier steps, to feel the reactions of the ground. Naturally we are built for stealth. We can move with the lightness of a feather and the speed of a running cheetah.

The living room has a similar appearance to upstairs, there is a blue sofa, worn and torn, thick with dust. It smells of must and age and moths. A stained and chipped coffee table takes up the center of the room. Two mismatched brown arm chairs and a rocking chair.

My father is in the rocking chair, gently swaying. My two brothers occupy the arm chairs. My entire family has black hair – the black of bats or midnight or bottomless pits. My father and brothers have red eyes, the colour of blood. My mother and I have yellow eyes, cat-like.

My mother moves towards father, carrying what seems to be a ball of orange fluff. She looks at me as she hands it to my father.

"Clemente has brought us Fox." she says. "Give him thanks."

I kneel and give thanks to the oldest of my brothers. He nods, a solemn look on his face. My other brother, Wynn, flashes me a smile, white fangs gleaming in the darkness.

The wind howls outside, rustling the trees. This house is surrounded by trees. It was built in the midst of a forest.

I take my seat on the sofa next to my mother and we wait while my father drinks. His pale face whitens and starts to glow. This is our first meal for three days. He savours every drop – who knows when the next will be.

My two brothers look like my father, long nosed, pale and thin. Their looks don't give away their strength. I'm told I look like my mother, pale face, almost the white of snow, tall, elegant, graceful. Black hair long and shining. I don't know if our faces match, I don't have a reflection. The mirror stares right through me. I often wonder what it's like to stare at yourself.

The fox is passed around, my father to my brothers, then to my mother and, finally, to me.

It's warm, a fresh kill. I feel the blood refreshing me, restoring life, brightening me. I have no blood of my own, I'm a vampire. I was born a vampire, as were my brothers. I'm 17 years old. It's around 30 when we stop ageing. My parents have lived a lot longer, hundreds of years.

It should be easy for vampires, we can reproduce for eternity. We don't die natuarally. It was easy, until the hunt began.

The hunt has been going for 100 years now. My father remembers its beginnings. He sometimes tells us tales of it.

For the first ten years of my life we lived in a village, a forest village, under the cover of trees. With others of our kind we prospered. Always cautious, always watching.

I remember when our village was attacked. When the humans came for us, when we ran, when my uncle was turned. They'd been planning it, that much was clear. My father says they feared us and our strength. That they feared our habits and lives.

Before the hunt, for as long as there is memory we walked the earth together. We were creatures of the night, they creatures of the day.

Through the ages there have been small battles, disagreements. Nothing unusual. People fight sometimes. But the hunt was different. Our population has been brought down, systematically tracked, hunted, turned. The object is extinction.

I've had my fill of the fox blood. I feel refreshed, invigorated, alive. As alive as I can be without a beating heart. I often wonder what it feels like to have a heart. To feel blood coursing through living veins.

Wynn takes the carcass of the fox from my hands and leaves the room. He moves through the house, making no sound. It only takes a moment before howls fill the night, a mournful cry to the moon. The wolves will feast on the flesh. It has always worked this way. A pact of blood, flesh and bone between wolves and vampires. A harmonious relationship.

"I smelled people, probably ten miles from here." Clemente tells Father. "On the hunt."

"Not again!" my mother says. "How is it they track us always?"

"Fear not. They have not tracked us yet." My father says. His voice is deep. The deep of power, wisdom and age.

Clemente is the hunter of the family. His stealth outmatches us all. Although he takes things very seriously. "They are heading this way. The terrain is hard for their clumsy feet. But give them two, maybe three days and they'll be here." he says. Another thing about us is our hearing. We can hear for miles. It makes it easier to track our prey.

"Don't be so sombre brother." Wynn says. Wynn always has a sense of humour, sometimes dark, sometimes light. He can always find a reason to laugh. "And we always outsmart them anyway, they're slow as an old slug." he laughs.

"Be serious Wynn. It's dangerous." My mother says, scolding him. "Have you forgotten your uncle?"

Wynn's face goes hard, silence descends upon the room like a thick fog.

"I never forget." he says, voice heavy.

I think back to that day. In the village surrounded by trees. The houses we lived in were simple structures, made from mud and hay, branches and leaves. We had a wall of sorts, rough constructions surrounding our village, made of chopped timber and twine. A population of a hundred or so. Young and old. I was young then, 10. But I remember it clearly. Hearing the sounds first. We could hear them from a distance though I didn't recognise the sound. A roaring noise, and the steady drum of footsteps.

The alarm was raised. We always had watchers in the village. In daylight they sheltered high in the branches of the trees, hiding from the sunlight. We can survive in the sunlight, but we are weaker. Not as fast, not as strong. In the moon and the darkness we thrive. We don't sleep the way people do, we rest in a meditative state during the daylight hours.

"Get ready to go, now!" my father had said. Mother was gathering posessions, my brothers were ready.

"Where's Tristram?" Mother said. Tristram was my uncle. He looked like my father, though he was the brother of my mother. His face always showed deep concentration. He looked sad.

"He was on watch." My brother said to her. He was a few years older than me. We stepped together into the daylight. Others were leaving their houses, some had already taken off into the trees.

"Tristram!" Mother called. We saw him land on the ground from a tree up ahead. The sounds of the humans was louder then, the growling of their machines, the patter of their feet, faster now.

We could hear their voices. "Just up ahead." "Almost there." and other phrases drifting through the air.

"Coming!" He said. He stopped at the entrance to the settlement, to call to another watcher in the trees. That's when we saw them, through the trees they appeared. Ghostly silhouettes, blaring lights even in the daylight. I was feeling the sun by then, felt my strength draining as we stood. My uncle had turned as the four wheeled monsters came crashing towards us. The men were running. Dressed all in black, head to foot. I knew from the stories that those suits were bite proof. See through contraptions covered their eyes. They carried something in their hands, metallic, also black, shining in the light.

They saw my uncle, he was the nearest. He'd turned towards the village again. One of the men lifted the black metal object, pointed it towards my uncle and squeezed a trigger. I heard the shot and watched my uncle fall forwards. He was writhing and screaming. A high pitched voice like I had never heard before.

"Tristram!" My mother shouted. I was transfixed, watching as he thrashed.

"We have to go!" my father shouted. "Now!"

Clemente had grabbed my mother by the arm and turned towards the trees. I couldn't move my feet. "What's happening to him?" I'd asked.

"Come" my father had picked me up and we ran into the cover of the trees. Others had been hit and were writhing on the forest floor. I don't know how many were down.

We ran for hours, we didn't stop running until night. I remember the welcome strength of the moon.

We've been running ever since. Moving from shelter to shelter, place to place.

"We should move soon, tonight, if they will come so soon." My father says. It is daylight now, mid-afternoon.

"Which direction?" Wynn asks.

"They were coming from the North, so we should head south. I don't know how many, I didn't risk looking too closely. It sounded like twenty or thirty though. Machines and all."

My father walks to the window and looks out into the trees, keeping just outside the sunlight. He reaches out and opens the window inwards, like a cupboard door. He sniffs the air.

"Yes. They're coming." He says. He sniffs again, then calls out to the trees, the sound is incomprehensible to me, it sounds like a bird, a raven. We are silent, watching.

It doesn't take long for the raven to arrive, landing lightly on the window sill, cautious,  head cocked to one side, observing my father before opening its beak and answering with a shrill call of his own.

The exchange goes on, back and forth a few times before the raven takes off again, heading North. "We'll know more soon." my father says. "Rest now."

When I come alert again dusk is settling outside, shadows are creeping through the trees, swallowing the light. There's a tapping at the window and I see the raven. My family are all here, we rest where we sit. My father is at the window, swinging it open.

The raven screeches, a shrill cry and my father responds with a lower, gurgling sound.

He turns to us. "They're coming. Now."

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