Her Darkest Salvation (COMPLETE)

The air hung heavy, thick with a damp, clinging fog that made the world feel strangely muffled. It wasn't freezing, just… gross. Perfect sweater weather, if you asked me, though my mood was anything but cozy. My dorm, a cramped box shared with three other girls, offered little solace.

One, a biomedical engineer, was perpetually buried in textbooks, a silent, studious presence I dared not disturb. The other two, inseparable best friends, were typically lost in a haze of drugs and party planning, kind enough but existing in their own insular world. I was the outsider, the girl from Utah, perpetually a stranger in a town where everyone seemed to have grown up together.

Utah. The word itself conjured images of suffocating religion, of pristine white dresses and my dark hair pulled back from my pale face, all to appear 'presentable for God.' My family was a picture-perfect facade: a businessman father, a professionally manicured mother, both more concerned with appearances than actual faith. They liked the praise, the public image. I never fit their mold. 'Too odd,' my mother would sigh. Too conservative, yet too showy. Too girlish, yet too womanly. Too pale, hair too dark, eyes too black.

I needed out. And I’d heard Virginia was good for vampires.

I was just curious, not suicidal. Still, the local library seemed the best place to start. Vampires, wolves… I’d read it all. The notion that 'dead vampires usually have larger tombstones' stuck with me. A morbid curiosity, perhaps. So, I checked out the book, tucked it into my tote bag, and headed back to the dorm to change. Black sweater, jeans, hair pulled back, curtain bangs framing my face. I got in my car, drawn by an impulse I couldn't ignore.