“Yes!  School is finally out!” shouted a hyper-active blonde.  “I swear, this will be the best summer ever!  Why?  Because it will be the first summer after high school graduation!”
              “Will you stop jumping around?  You’re starting to make a scene,” said a boy with spike, raven hair.  Both were eighteen going on nineteen, walking out of Konoha High School for the very last time—as students, that is.
             “Oh, can’t you enjoy something for once in your life, Sasuke?” Naruto asked teasingly.  They climbed into Sasuke’s black convortable.  He had bought with the family fortune his parents had left.  They had died in a car accident and his older brother, Itachi, moved out when Sasuke turned eighteen.  Naruto never knew his parents, but was raised by Iruka, a friend of the family.  As they were driving down the road, the unexpected happened.  Sasuke let out a loud:
             “YES!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Naruto stared in shock.  “No more rabid fangirls, fifty year old pedophile teachers, no more tests, nothing!  We just have to get threw a little bit of college and we’ll be done!”  Naruto smiled.
             “I personally can’t wait for college.  That’s when we get to have REAL parties—like on MTV spring break!” he said, grinning.  Sasuke smirked, turning back to the road.
             “Naruto, this is the first day of the rest of our lives!”
             As they drove along Naruto's cell phone rang.  “Talk to me,” he said after flipping it open.  After a moment he said, “Cool, we’ll be there!” and closed it.  Sasuke glanced at his friend suspiciously.
             “We’ll be where, dobe?”
             “Hyuga’s; he’s holding an end of the year party tonight at his house.”  Sasuke turned his attention back to the road, heading for his house.  
             “So things are cool between you and Neji?” he asked in monotone.  The last time he heard, Neji still hated Naruto.
             “Are you kidding?  The only reason why he is letting me come is because Hinata forced him to invite me. He’ll always hate me!” he said, laughing.
             “Sometimes I wonder if the tension between you two has more to it than Hinata.”
             “Please; she’s his cousin, and I’m her boyfriend.  What more could there possibly be?”  As they pulled into Sasuke’s driveway, Naruto's cell phone rang again.  He answered it while they got out of the car.  “Hello?  Oh, hey Iruka!  What’s up?..... I’m at Sasuke’s, why?......Oh, I see.  Well, hey, you don’t mind if I go to a party with him tonight, do you?.....Hyuga’s….parental supervision?  Uh, nooooo…..”  By this time they were in Sasuke’s kitchen.  He smirked at the parental supervision comment.  “Oh, c’mon!  Like we need to be supervised!.......I don’t , midnight, maybe?—Nine!  No fair, eleven—11:30—fine, eleven.  Bye.”  Sasuke gave Naruto a glass of Coke.  
             “Iruka gave you a curfew, huh?”
             “Yep.”  They went in the living room and started watching afternoon sports while reminiscing their high school years and talking about how glad they were that it was all over.  “So, are you going to that party tonight, or what?” Naruto asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes.  Sasuke gave him a slight glare before sighing in defeat.
             “Fine, I’ll go.  But the moment any girl gets all touchy-feely with me, I’m out.
             “Yeah, whatever!”


LATER THAT NIGHT…


                              The two boys were walking up the steps of the Hyuga mansion.  Naruto was clad in tan khakis and an orange shirt with a large white swirl on the back, his blonde hair gelled.  Sasuke had on black, slightly baggy, jeans and a white flannel shirt, two buttons undone; his hair looked like it always did.  Naruto knocked twice on the large double doors.  It was answered by Lee.  He was wearing one of his creepy green muscle shirts.   
             ”Hey, you two; come in and make yourself comfortable!” he welcomed, stepping aside to let the two teenagers inside.  Sasuke had to admit, considering they were standing inside the home of the always-formal Neji Hyuga, the placed looked like an actual night club.  There were different colored lights going everywhere in the dark room, music that will turn you deaf for a few days if you stand too close to the speakers, which were in the corners of the room, and there were bodies grinding to the beat of the music, in sync with the thrilling atmosphere around them.  Sasuke noticed Naruto walking away at a fast pace.
             “Ditching me, are you?” he screamed over the noise.  Naruto turned his head back to the Uchiha.
             “I just saw some guy hitting on Hinata!” he screamed back, a whining tone in his voice.
              “Fine, go!”  He sighed inaudible; he knew his best friend well enough to know how overprotective Naruto was of his girlfriend.  She really meant a lot to him; Sasuke guessed it was probably because of the fact that Hinata was one of the few people who was there for him when Iruka was in the hospital.  Sasuke walked over to the far end of the large room and leaned against the wall in a relaxed position.  He wasn’t really in the mood to throw himself out in a crowd of sweaty people—most of whom he’d never seen before in his life.
            “You know, the point of coming here was to mingle with other people,” a deep, familiar voice stated.  Sasuke glanced towards its source.
             “Then explain why you are here, Gaara.” The red-head shrugged lazily.
             “Temari and Kunkuro dragged me hear.  Temari wanted to take Nara back from Yamanaka and Kunkuro just likes to be around a lot of crazy women,” he said, coming over to lean against the wall, next to Sasuke.
             “I’m only here because Naruto somehow convinced me to come.  And I can’t exactly leave whenever I want to because I am his ride home, and he and Hinata might take a while until they feel they’ll live without seeing each other until tomorrow.”  Gaara nodded.
             “I know what you mean; I’ve seen how he is around her.  That girl has really changed him since when I met him.  He used to be all gangster before she showed up in his life—getting hooked on all of the latest drugs without Iruka knowing.  I’ll see you around, Uchiha; I’ve got to go find my brother before he gets some innocent girl laid.”  And with that, Gaara walked off, disappearing in the sea of people.  For the next fifteen minutes, Sasuke made some small talk with some of the other guys from his class.  So far, none of the girls had started flirting with him.
             “Hey, cutie! You wanna dance?” a girl asked seductively, latching herself onto his arm.  

   So much for that thought.

                             Sasuke gently but firmly shrugged the girl off of his and went to find Naruto.  He quickly found the blonde in a large chair with Hinata in his lap.  He walked straight up to them.
             “Hey, I’m heading home; call when you need a ride.”  Naruto watched him walk off.  Once Sasuke was out of the large house, he nuzzled his face in Hinata’s neck.  She giggled when he planted light, feathery kisses from her neck to her shoulder.  After this little display, he took in her addictive scent—but he also caught a whiff of something else.  Gently lifting Hinata off of him, he stood up and sniffed the air again—this time, much more slowly and cautiously.  There it was again, but this time, stronger.
              “You smell one, don’t you?” she asked softly.  Naruto turned to her.
              “I’m sorry to cut the night short, but I have to go.  I promise I’ll make it up to you,” he said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek.  
                              “Go; find out who is in our town.”
                             He turned around and walked swiftly through the crowd.


             Sasuke, finding the silence peaceful, walked down the street, looking for his car.  He was guessing it was about a quarter of a block away.


             “Sasukeeeeeee!”  


                            He froze.  Suddenly the dead silence was no longer peaceful; it was now unusually eerie.


                          “Oh, Sasukeeeeee!”


                          There it was again!  Sasuke spotted his car in the distance and, finding his legs, took off at a faster pace.  When he got to the car door, he fumbled with his keys and dropped them; his hands were shaking, something that never happened.  He looked down at the ground:  no keys.  He got down on his hands and knees, bending down even more to see them somehow under his car, a few feet in.  Slowly, he reached under the car and stretched for his keys, grabbed them, and then came back up, brushing himself off.  As he was about to unlock the car door he was sharply whipped around by the shoulders with his back being roughly shoved against his car.
          “Hello, Sasuke!” the newcomer hissed.  It was too dark for the teen to see who it was, so Sasuke shoved him off and ran for it as fast as his legs would take him, but the other man was much faster.  Before Sasuke had even taken five steps he was taken down to the ground, being spun around in the process, with his wrists pinned down above his head; this was when he got a better look at his attacker.  The man sitting on his lower torso looked like he was around 50 years old.  He had long, greasy black hair with chalk-white skin.  There was purple eye-makeup going from around his eyes and down the sides of his pointed nose.  His face was unhealthily boney.  He also had yellow, cat-like eyes that were slowly turning into a blood red.
               What really caught Sasuke's attention, though, was how strong this man seemed to be for his age.  All he was doing was sitting on Sasuke’s stomach while pinning his hands by the sides of his head (which was freaking the teen out to a whole new level), yet Sasuke couldn’t move at all.  Through his panic, he managed to find his voice.
             “Get the hell off of me, you child molester!” he yelled, his voice coming out strong.  The man let out a dark chuckle.
             “Oh, that is far from what I am, dear boy!  A pedophile, maybe, but never a child molester!  And yes, there is a difference,” he said.  He bent down and took a long sniff at the side of Sasuke’s neck.  “You’re a ripe one, aren’t you?” he whispered.  Sasuke could feel his slimy tongue running over a small area on his neck.  “I hope you scream; it makes the experience much more interesting for me!”  
             Before Sasuke’s mind could register what was going on, the old man had bitten into Sasuke’s neck—hard—and started to drink the blood that was oozing out of the wound, sucking on his neck to get more to come out.


                             It was the most painful thing Sasuke had ever experienced.


                           The spot that the man had his mouth on felt as if it were on fire.  And each time the man sucked on the wound, the fire would spread further throughout all of his body.  Sasuke finally let out a blood-curdling scream; one that just had to have loud enough for people at the Hyuga’s to hear over the pounding music.  Sasuke tried again and again to get the old man off of his body, but each attempt became more futile than the last.  His throat hurt from the screaming, and he couldn’t scream anymore.  Each breath he took was a major struggle, and his body was searing in pain.  Sasuke could feel himself falling deeper and deeper into his final, and eternal, rest; and no one would ever know what had happened to him.  He didn’t even know what was happening  to him!  All he knew what that he wanted death to come so the unearthly pain would be gone.  Before losing consciousness, all he could make out was all of the weight being forced off of him, and someone, it seemed like they were far away, was calling out to him.  Over and over again.