We fled. With a newborn son, no possessions whatsoever, and nothing at all to our names, we fled.

Across the country. We took a boat for several days. We stole a wagon and a horse.

They were very long days and nights.

Our son grew ill and recovered. We had no choice but to steal the food we needed. We snuck into places to escape the light of day.

We were much more diligent in being careful when we needed to feed.

But we never felt safe. So we kept moving.

But winter arrived, and with no home, surely our son would die.

He cried. He’d been crying for hours and neither of us could provide the warmth to warm him enough.

We crested the small hill, and before us stretched a lake. Partially frozen over, but glittering and beautiful in the sunlight.

Beyond it, the shape of a village rose. But it was dark. Crumbled. Piles of rubble and ash.

And there, rising high above the abandoned village, great stone spires rose from the side of the mountain.

It was silent. So quiet. So still.

“There,” Cyrus said, pointing to the long forgotten castle. “We will go there.”

With a shiver, I tucked our son more tightly into my cloak, and we stepped forward.

I felt it then.

Peace. A sense of safety.

Home.

I felt it.

We were finally home.

---

We were happy.

Me. Cyrus. Our son.

In the beginning, it was so much work. The castle had half been burned from the inside out. In some places, all that remained were the stone walls. But we lived in the parts that were still intact. We built fires. We created a kitchen, though I very nearly starved us over the years with my inability to cook. We had our bedroom. Our son had his own room.

I came to forgive Cyrus for what he had done. In the end, I would always hate what he had done to the both of us. But he was still the same man who loved me more than anything. He was still the same man with the charming smile. Still the same man who worked harder than anyone I’d known. Still the same man with the incredible drive to become something great.

Roter Himmel. It’s what we named our utopia. Our home. It may have only been the three of us, but we were happy in our Red Heaven.

A family of two vampires and a human son.

He never seemed to crave blood. He ate a normal diet. He played and ran around and was too loud and energetic. Just like any other boy.

He was human.

He grew.

For years we were happy. We were almost normal.

But our son… In the beginning we tried to ignore it, pretend it would go away. But his behavior was strange. And grew more concerning as he grew older.

The way he would crush his toys when he grew angry.

How he liked to play ruler over the army of pinecones he gathered as soldiers.

When he struck the poor cub he had taken in, killing it, when it grew impatient with his ceaseless teasing.

Cyrus and I looked at each other, concern in our eyes. We would sit down with him, talk to him about his behavior.

It should have been more alarming that he never showed remorse.

We thought we could love him into being good and kind. We thought we could teach him right from wrong.

Maybe we were just too distracted.

Cyrus returned to his studies. He continued to learn. He gathered every scroll and tablet he could. On history. On war. On politics.

His desire for new knowledge did not ebb, but Cyrus had learned his lesson.

Our curse taught him where the line was to be drawn.

“Do you believe it, now?” Cyrus said one night as he crawled into bed beside me. Our son had just gone to sleep, now seven years old. “Do you feel it? The time slipping past us, as if we were invisible?”

I had to confess: it was obvious now.

Whenever I saw my reflection, I knew I had not aged since that night Cyrus turned me. “I feel it,” I say. “We haven’t changed. But what if…” I trailed off for a moment, gathering my thoughts. “What if we just aren’t physically ageing? What if our time just suddenly runs out, and we die of old age, looking like we do now?”

Cyrus shook his head. “I feel it though. The sense of perfection. I feel incredible. This… I created this to be the cure for death. I know it worked.”

I rolled toward him, pulling myself into his chest. I breathed him in.

I knew it, too. I didn’t want to accept it, but I could feel it.

Cyrus had done it. He had beaten death.