Departure

The next morning, I woke early, apparently not quite adjusted from New York time, and again had an ache in my jaw that I decided I shouldn't ignore. Though, I was, blessedly, free of a hangover, as that's the last thing I needed.

I crawled out of bed and headed over to the bathroom, where I looked at myself in the mirror. Having not bothered to dress after the previous night's shower, I stood before it naked. I wasn't displeased by the sight; I still had the sleek figure of my youth, though now it was maintained by countless hours on the stationary bike, rather than the miracle of adolescent metabolism; my breasts were perky and substantially larger than their juvenile petiteness; my face was smooth and unwrinkled; and my skin… it was still far too pale, but at least the line separating the old skin on my back with the fresh skin up front was fading.

Finally, I leaned close to the mirror and gave a full teeth-bared smile, afraid of what I'd see. The result was what I expected, even if I didn't understand it. Along with the usual human teeth, were four elongated fangs. The top two were thicker and more prominent, but all four were distinctly inhuman and sharp enough to pierce with ease.

With a sigh, I washed my face, got dressed, and used my phone to open The Asshole's email account, which I wasn't supposed to have access to after the {if husband==true}divorce{else}breakup{endif}, but did, because he only used two passwords for everything.

I scrolled back through his emails to find what I was looking for. Before, we had talked about having a baby and, Derrick being the control freak he was, wanted to make sure we wouldn't pass it any "bad genes". By which, I'm sure he meant that he didn't want a child that was short, fat, or dumb. Anyway, we both sent a DNA sample to a company and I had never seen the results, though I knew he was angry about it.

Nucleotide4U was a stupid name, but the reports they gave were incredibly thorough. Not being able to help myself, I checked The Asshole's first. Apparently, my ex was destined to be fat and bald in the near future, which gave me a sort of twisted satisfaction. I, on the other hand, had more ominous notes. Of the approximately twelve million pairs that distinguished one person from another, two thousand and six of mine had a big orange warning symbol next to them. Now, Nucleotide4U didn't say what these genes did, but they did have a very clear note at the end:

"{if husband==true}Mrs. Alexandra Montgomery{else}Ms. Alexandra Douglas{endif} possesses a statistically significant number of base pairings that are not found in the human genome. The exact nature of these is not identified by Nucleotide4U, but it is sufficiently unlikely to be natural variation that it has been determined that she is non-human or the descendant of a non-human."

So, there it was. I was "non-human", or at least descended from one. Given the appearance of my new fangs, I'd say Nucleotide4U had hit the mark. I… didn't know how to deal with the news. I mean, obviously I was still the same me as always, mostly. I just… I had fangs and skin that needed extra sunscreen and a recent need to drink blood that was so strong that merely the thought of it sent my mind wandering to where I might get today's supply.

"Well, shit, Alex, you're turning into a vampire. What are you going to do about it?" I asked myself aloud.

And, it seemed to help. Firstly, I decided to ignore the fangs, as I couldn't do anything about them without the help of a dentist, or possibly a dental surgeon. Next, I checked to make sure I had the sunscreen I bought yesterday packed for the trip to Mexico. And, finally, I decided that I needed to do something about my newfound blood addiction. Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone locally to ask for help, so I resorted to calling the team member who probably had the most experience with addicts.