By the time the sun stopped hurting us, the word monster had already gone out of fashion.
It happened slowly; first resistance, then tolerance, then immunity. Generations of vampires born with skin that no longer blistered, eyes that adjusted instead of burned. Daylight cities rose where nocturnal ruins once stood. Humans called it adaptation. Vampires called it inheritance.
And when vampires began to outnumber humans three to one, history revised itself.
I was born long after the revision.
To me, human blood was never forbidden. It was never whispered about behind closed doors. It came bottled, regulated, advertised in pale red holograms above clinics and slaughterhouses. Sustainably sourced, they said. Ethically harvested, they promised. Though no one could ever explain what "ethical" meant once the screams were moved indoors.
I didn't drink it.
Instead, I waited behind processing plants with others like me, collecting what drained from butchered animals: thick, metallic, already dead in spirit. Animal blood tasted like runoff and rust, like rain that had passed through too many pipes. Nutritionally complete, the doctors said. Socially embarrassing, everyone else implied.
"You're still on that stuff?" Mara asked once, wrinkling her nose as I poured from a dented steel flask.
"Still alive," I said.
She laughed and slung an arm around my shoulders, her mouth still faintly red. "Barely living, maybe."
Mara had been my friend since childhood. So had Elliot and Corven and the rest. We grew up together in the daylight, played in open streets our ancestors had once feared, learned history from textbooks that framed our kind as the inevitable conclusion of evolution. Humans were included in those books too like footnotes, mostly. A dwindling resource. A protected class. A necessary sacrifice.
My friends hunted because that was what vampires did now. Not because they were cruel, at least not intentionally. They were kind to each other. Loyal. They remembered my birthday, saved me a place at the table, never mocked me to my face for my choice.
They also drained humans dry.
I went with them sometimes. That was the worst part.
I told myself I went to make sure things didn't get ugly. To step in if someone went too far. To be present. But presence didn't stop the way humans shook when they were cornered, or the way their eyes went glassy with relief and despair all at once when it was over. Presence didn't stop Mara from wiping her mouth and sighing like she'd just eaten a good meal.
"All done," she'd say.
The humans never looked at me afterward. Maybe they knew. Maybe they smelled the animal blood on me, stale and sour. Maybe they saw what I refused to see in myself.
That I stayed.
"You could stop coming," Elliot said one night, almost gently. He was older than the rest of us, born closer to the transition period, when drinking human blood had still been controversial. "We don't need an audience."
"I'm not judging," I said too quickly.
He studied me. "That's the problem, isn't it?"
I didn't answer.
Back home, I scrubbed my hands even though they weren't stained. The water ran clear, then pink in my imagination. I thought about the humans' faces—how sorrow had become a quiet thing over the years, refined into something efficient. No more begging. No more outrage. Just resignation polished smooth by survival.
It made me sick.
Not sick enough to leave.
I told myself my friends needed me. That if everyone who felt wrong walked away, nothing would ever change. But the truth was smaller and uglier: I was afraid. Afraid that if I spoke, really spoke, they would look at me the way society looked at me, with confusion, then pity, then dismissal.
Weird, they'd say. Outdated.
Mara found me one morning drinking from my flask in the sunlit kitchen.
"You ever think about trying it?" she asked casually. "Human blood, I mean. Just once."
I looked at her closely. At the familiarity. The warmth. The ease with which she existed in this world.
"Every day," I said.
She nodded, satisfied, as if that was enough.
Here's a scene that slots in directly after the kitchen moment, keeping the quiet cruelty and social pressure front and center
Later that evening–
We were gathered in Corven's apartment, windows open to the late sun, music low and lazy. Someone had dimmed the lights even though it wasn't necessary anymore. It was an affectation, nostalgia masquerading as taste. On the counter sat a narrow bottle of human blood, sealed and chilled, its label minimalist and tasteful. No warning symbols. No dates. Just a brand name and a percentage.
"Look what we got," Mara said, lifting it by the neck. She gave it a little shake, like a bartender showing off a new liquor. "Fresh batch. Clinic-grade."
"I'm good," I said immediately.
I hadn't even been offered yet.
Corven laughed. "Relax. No one's making you do anything."
The bottle made its way around the room anyway, glasses clinking, small appreciative noises following each sip. Someone commented on the texture. Someone else on the aftertaste. It was exactly like listening to people talk about wine, if wine had once begged.
When the bottle reached me, Mara didn't set it down. She held it out, expectant.
"Just try it," she said. "You don't have to finish it."
"I said I'm not interested."
"Oh come on," another voice chimed in. "You've built this whole thing up in your head."
"Yeah," Corven added. "You act like it's poison."
I shrugged. "I just don't want it."
That should have been enough.
Mara tilted her head, studying me. "You ever wonder if you're just scared?"
A few chuckles rippled through the room.
"Scared of what?" I asked.
"Of being like the rest of us."
There it was.
"I am like you," I said, more sharply than I meant to. "I just…make different choices."
"Different choices," Corven echoed, grinning. "That's one way to put it."
Another friend leaned back on the couch, arms crossed. "You know how it looks, right? Like you think you're better."
"I don't."
"Then prove it."
The bottle was pressed closer to my chest now. I could smell it, warm, clean, nothing like the animal blood I drank. My throat tightened traitorously.
"I don't need to prove anything," I said.
Mara sighed, exaggerated. "You're really still doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Being difficult."
The teasing shifted then, sharpening at the edges.
Someone mimed gagging. Someone else joked about me bringing my "rust juice" next time so we could all pretend to suffer together. Laughter bloomed, a little too loud, a little too eager. I felt myself shrinking under it, heat crawling up my neck.
"I don't drink human blood," I said again. Quieter now. Firmer.
Corven rolled his eyes. "We know. You've made that very clear."
"God," Mara muttered, finally pulling the bottle back. "You're exhausting."
The word landed heavier than anything else she'd said.
Silence followed, awkward, uncomfortable, the kind that begged to be filled with something cruel or dismissive. I could feel their disappointment pressing in, not because I'd done something wrong, but because I hadn't done what they wanted.
Elliot spoke then.
"That's enough."
The room stilled. Elliot hadn't been drinking. He rarely did more than the minimum, even now. He stood near the doorway, arms loose at his sides, voice calm in a way that made everyone else seem suddenly childish.
"He said no," Elliot continued. "That's the end of it."
Mara scoffed. "We're just messing around."
"No," Elliot said gently. "You're not."
Corven opened his mouth, then closed it again. Someone else looked away.
Elliot turned to me. "You don't owe anyone an explanation."
I nodded, unable to trust my voice.
The mood never fully recovered after that. Conversations restarted, but they slid around me instead of through me. The bottle disappeared back into the fridge. No one apologized. No one needed to. The damage had already settled.
When I left, Mara hugged me out of habit. It was quick, distracted.
"You know we love you," she said, like reassurance, like a dismissal.
Walking home, the ache set in, hot and unwelcome.
I felt guilty. For ruining the evening. For making things uncomfortable. For needing Elliot to step in at all. I replayed their faces, their disappointment, and wondered if refusing had been selfish after all.
I knew that was wrong.
And still, the feeling lingered.
That was the worst part, not the pressure, not the mockery, but how easily their disapproval made me want to apologize for having a conscience.
That night, when they went out to hunt, I didn't follow.
I stayed behind the processing plant instead, the air thick with iron and decay, filling my flask while trucks roared past carrying bodies I wouldn't see. The blood tasted just as awful as ever. Polluted. Lifeless.
But as I drank, I realized something that made my chest ache.
This wasn't moral purity. It wasn't bravery.
It was refusal.
And refusal, in a world that had normalized cruelty, was the loneliest thing a vampire could do.
I didn't know yet whether I would confront my friends, or leave them, or keep living in this narrow space between complicity and conscience.
I only knew that staying silent had a cost.
And for the first time, it was starting to taste worse than the blood.