VIDEO: Teen vampire fans come out for midnight party

Jimi Miller is an avid reader, often carrying around dozens of books in his backpack at any time. But he doesn't don fake fangs and stay up until all hours of the night for just any book.

"It's so exciting," he said. "I'll probably stay up all night reading now, too."

Miller and about 70 teens, preteens, and parents were camped out at Black Cat Books in Manitou Springs, eagerly awaiting this morning's 12:01 release of "Breaking Dawn," the latest and final book in Stephenie Meyer's best-selling "Twilight" series. The books, which chronicle the love saga between seventeen-year-old Isabella "Bella" Swan and her vampire sometimes-boyfriend, Edward Cullen, have been translated into 20 languages, with 8 million copies printed worldwide. A movie version of the first book, "Twilight," starring Kristen Stewart ("Into the Wild") and Robert Pattinson ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire") comes out on Dec. 12 of this year. For the moment, however, partygoers were talking about one thing: what would happen to Bella in this final book? Would she leave the world of the living and become a vampire? Or would she leave Edward for the werewolf, Jacob, who she also loves?

"I just want her to enjoy her life and be friends with both of them," said Riley Bratzler. "If she doesn't choose Edward, I'll be mad, but I'll be ok with it, as long as she's happy."

As for predictions, no one was quite sure what to expect.

Even Natalie Johnson, who owns Black Cat Books and has had "Breaking Dawn" in her possession since the boxes arrived at 10:30am on Friday says she doesn't know what happens at the end.

"I never peek," Johnson said. "It's fun for me, too." Unlike her teenage customers, Johnson said she won't be staying up all night to finish "Breaking Dawn," but has been enjoying the "Twilight" series, along with many adults. "I re-read the first three books this past week," she said. "They're really quite fun." The problem was planning the party.

"There's no real theme I could grab onto, not like Harry Potter," she said. "I mean, will she get married? Will she turn 19? We have no idea what's going to happen."

The solution was a combination of wedding decorations, like a bouquet of white roses, with streamers, birthday hats, and a full sheet cake reading "Happy 19th Birthday Bella."

As parents sipped wine and chatted upstairs, teens and kids gathered in the decorated basement of the shop for trivia. Questions ranged from the obvious, like "What state do Renee and Phil live in?" (Jacksonville, Florida) to the obscure, "Who designed Bella's wedding dress?"

"Chanel!" someone said. (Wrong).

Appropriate for a party celebrating a vampire book, the darker it got outside, the more excited the partygoers became.

Around 11:30pm, they flooded the sidewalk on Manitou Avenue for a vampires versus werewolves roshambo tournament, as startled Manitou Springsians wandered by.

Parents looked on as the werewolves took the lead. Laurie Wood, a teacher for 20 years, said she found the scene amazing.

"I really am almost speechless," said Wood who though she has some issues with the books, picked "Twilight" for her adult book club. "That a book can get that amount of children talking about literature, because that's really what they've been doing all night, is just amazing. People say books are dead, but they're not."

Kolleen Johnson, also a teacher, said she was a little jealous. "Here you have a whole generation of children who have these books in common, this thing that connects them from a literary standpoint," she said. "There's nothing like that in my generation."

At nine minutes to release time, the crowd started to form around the check-out desk, where 80 copies of "Breaking Dawn" sat in unopened boxes. With one minute left, the countdown started, the cheers and noisemakers picked up, and when the clock struck 12:01am, the floor shook from the noise before the store became suddenly quiet as kids' names were called to pick up their copies. To sighs of "oh, thank god," partygoers, one by one, grabbed their books and scurried out the door towards home, bust most likely, not to sleep.