“But, doesn’t it hurt?” I protest weakly. This is something I’d rather not deal with right now. Or ever.
“It’s just a little bit of pain in exchange for eternal life!” my overzealous classmate, Savannah, rebuts. “It’s stupid easy. Look, Arri," she says, grabbing my hand, "I get to recommend an addition to our clan this month, and I really want it to be you. I know you don’t usually stand out much, but you’re actually pretty attractive, and I know you've got excellent grades! I’m surprised you haven’t turned already! You're just the type we need! So what do you think?” She smiles at me from underneath her hooded jacket. Blonde corkscrew hair sticks out at odd angles. Sunglasses mask her eyes, but I can tell that she’s being genuine. I’ve always thought kindly of Savannah. I wish it hadn’t come to this.
Things are hardly as simple as she makes it seem. Turning means sustaining your existence on a diet of human blood for all of eternity. Damn it. Why did this idiot have to confront me directly like this? I’m running out of excuses.
“Hmm. Well, I’m interested. I’d like to meet some of the other members though before I make my decision. I wonder, would that would be okay?” I ask smiling politely.
She agrees and we arrange for me to meet her at 10 outside of the Lonnely Mansion on the edge of town. I sigh to myself. You should not have invited me. I head home for now.
It’s been a little over a year since the world of the supernatural made itself known to humans. It all started with a pro sports star getting outed as a werewolf by the media. Since then, all sorts of groups have been declaring their presence. Vampires, werewolves, and witches are all accepted beings. In the midst of the government panicking and attempting to create legislation to control this new world, it’s becoming common practice for the various supernatural groups to get as much recruitment in as possible before restrictions are put in place.
Aside from the big three, there are other supernatural races that have decided to maintain their secrecy and continue to keep to themselves. There are very few recorded encounters with these types. Most of the time their reasons for maintaining secrecy have to do with numbers. They don’t have the ability to defend themselves like vampires and werewolves, so they are able to obtain a higher level of security through this obscurity.
You see, not everybody has been welcoming of these new species. Plenty of people have begun taking up arms against these ‘abominations’ and ‘intruders’. Several ‘organizations’ have even started up to deal with the menace. It’s not unfounded either. Vampires require human blood once every month, and not just a little. An entire person needs to be sacrificed per vampire. Werewolves aren’t any better. Typically they’ll eat whatever meat they can get their hands on, but when they lose control, that meat is often human. Although not as severe, even witches require human sacrifices for many of their rituals. There are plenty of reasons to fear the supernatural, but they all have their weaknesses and these ‘hunters’ plan to find them and kill whatever they can get their hands on.
Conversely, this fear has driven many people to convert to one of the ‘stronger’ races before they die at their hands. Recently the numbers of supernatural races have been exponentially rising. Werewolves will accept anybody who can promise undying loyalty to the clan. Vampires are a little pickier about who they’ll accept. They prize beauty and intelligence above all. Although you practically have to beg a coven to accept you, witches have been known to put their recruits through cruel hazing to keep only those with especially strong willpower or natural talent for magic.
Vampires and werewolves have long held animosity for each other, but in light of their recent exposure to the outside world, they have decided to temporarily put their differences aside. The only bad blood that remains is between individual clans and packs with especially poor relations. The witches, for the most part have been just as secretive as ever and have been keeping to themselves, even in the midst of this turmoil.
In this city, Kangee, there are three vampire clans, two werewolf packs, and four witch covens. It’s a fairly large city, but even so, it has an exceptionally large supernatural presence. Judging by the location of our meeting place, I’ve just been invited to join the Waverly Vampire Clan. The Lonnely Manor is one of their buildings used to house lower ranked members. It's about a ten minute walk from my house. Waverly has been in this town for centuries. They were the first supernatural presence in this town back in the day and still consider themselves to be the rightful owners of this territory. They are exceptionally proud and deep-rooted. It is an honor to be selected to join them. It’s also kind of a miracle that Savannah was accepted by them. She’s lovely, but she’s not particularly exceptional in any aspect. It just goes to show how out of control this ‘recruitment’ has gotten.
When I walk through my front door, my little sister is sitting in front of the TV working on homework. She’s a freshman in high school this year. I’m a junior. She’s ten times more extroverted than I am and has a far easier time making friends than I. She’s also extremely talented at sports. We’ve always gotten along well and she’s one of my best friends. I chat with her about school for a bit before heading to my room.
I head to my closet and pull a long wooden box out of an unfinished section up in the corner. I used to be terrified of that unfinished hole when I was a kid, but now it’s a convenient place for hiding things. I rummage through the box as I think to myself.
Vampires. Beautiful and intelligent. Perfect predators. They have enhanced strength, vision, and reflexes. They do not age, although their hair does grow and change colors. Elder vampires all have long, silver hair. They can quickly regenerate after taking physical damage. The speed of regeneration is dependent on the time elapsed since their last meal. All of them possess the ability to control their own blood, though the method varies. Some possess a degree of clairvoyance and it differs for each one. Leaders are able to communicate telepathically with their subordinates. They are extraordinarily dangerous in group fights. They are also sneaky and prefer strategic attacks to straightforward.
They also have a large number of weaknesses. Their communication structure is shattered if you manage to take out the leader. They become snow-blind when exposed to any level of light above your average indoor lighting. They have a severe silver allergy that can prevent regeneration and cause them to be disfigured by large, red welts. There is no such thing as holy water, but certain liquid compounds containing silver can produce the same results as solid silver. Wood grown from trees exposed to these compounds or imbued with them after being cut can also have the same effect. One thing that most people don’t know is that Vampires have an unhealthy obsession with circular geometric patterns. If they see a pattern complex enough, it can transfix them for hours and just about nothing can snap them out of it. Something like a rose window in Gothic architecture can take them out for a good day. Though it isn’t really useful in a fight, any kind of human food will make make them sick to the point of vomiting too.
Most important is the core. Each supernatural race has a core that contains their energy and spirit. If you can either cut off the flow of energy to this region or destroy it completely, you can kill them. Vampires’ cores are in their heads. If you don’t want to deal with the obnoxious regeneration, it’s better to just take out their heads.
Each race can be identified by their unique eye color. Werewolves are gold. Witches are dark violet. Vampires are crimson. I glance in the floor-length mirror to my side. My long reddish dirty blond hair is pulled back into a messy knot behind my head. My shaggy bangs frame a pair of sharp greyish eyes that look almost black in this lighting. My other facial features are soft and feminine, providing a contrast of sorts. I brush my hair back and briefly imagine my grey eyes as crimson. Nope. It just feels wrong. I like my silver eyes too much. I made the right choice. I grab a pair of gloves and something that looks a bit like a retainer from the box and set them near the edge of my bed.
I spend the next few hours messing around with some homework to kill time. When my parents come home after work I talk to them for a bit and imply that I’ll be shutting myself in my room to study for the rest of the night. At about seven I pull on an oversized black hooded jacket, black leggings, and black combat boots, and reach for the gloves. Each one extends up past my forearm to wrap around the top of my elbow. They are made of thin black leather and are covered in spiked silver plates linked together. Each of the fingers ends in a silver claw. These are the best tools for combat. I pull them on and cover them both with the sleeves of the jacket. I expect to be shaking hands so I stick my hand out a hole near the wrist and flip the right hand up so that it rests flat against the gauntlet inside the sleeve. I leave the left glove as is and stick it in a pocket. I stick the retainer in my right pocket. Pulling up my hood, I hop out the window.
The night air is cool. Perfect sweater weather. I love Autumn. After a while I come to the gate outside the gate outside of the opulent, old, Lonnely Manor. I push the call button and a voice comes through the intercom asking me to state my business. Shyly, I tell them that I had a meeting with Savannah and they let me through. Quickening my pace, I head towards the elegant wooden front door, which opens as I approach.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Savannah smiles warmly as she invites me inside. I feel sorry for her, but I do my best not to let it show. I shake hands with a number of vampires whose names I don’t bother to remember. A tall one with shaggy dark brown hair is the leader. I can see the veins of red energy reaching from his core to the others. Looking around, I can sense 23 core signals throughout the house, including those in front of me. There is one other subleader. Everyone in the house seems to belong to one of the two. The ones in front of me make an attempt at conversation, but my mind is elsewhere. As soon as pleasantries are over, I cut to the chase.
“Unfortunately, I must admit that I haven’t come to join you today,” I announce. Their expressions are becoming confused, especially Savannah. I look at the leader in front of me as I continue. “I’m here today on the behalf of the Wraiths to remind you of the existing recruitment restrictions on your species. Going public hasn’t changed anything. Your rate of growth is not sustainable. Your elders should know better than to forget about our agreement. Your recent actions demand punishment.”
Confusion and caution floods their expressions, but it's too late. My left hand is already lodged in their leader's head through the eye socket. Changing my blade hand into a fist, I grasp something hard and pull out. The leader falls dead to the floor. The vampires are angry now. Savannah has fallen to the floor and started crying. I glance absent-mindedly at the rough crimson gem in my hand. Pushing up my sleeves and adjusting my right glove, I begin.
Hands reach for me from every direction, I can hear feet pounding down the grand staircase as the others upstairs race to join their comrades. Several of them bend their blood to create weapons. Weaving through the crowd, I avoid the blows aimed for me and place my own where I can. This is going to be a rather long fight so I do my best to whittle down their numbers without tiring myself out. Most of my punches leave cuts and swollen blisters, but others leave holes in stomachs and heads.
One fist strikes out from a blind spot. I can feel it enter back of my head, but it does no damage. It simply passes through me like smoke. That’s one of the main advantages of my race. We can make ourselves or parts of ourselves intangible. It took me a considerable amount of effort to gain the control over it that I have today, but I’m currently able to make it so that during a fight, my body parts only become solid at the exact point of contact with another person and only when I intend for the contact to happen. My punches and kicks are just as powerful as normal, but an enemy’s attacks will pass right through me. It’s a convenient skill to say the least.
As more and more of them retreat to regenerate their wounds, I start getting more serious. Deflect their blow. Grab their core. Dodge their blow. Grab their core. Trip. Throw. Kick. Claw. Whatever it takes to get them off balance so that I can hit them where it really hurts. One vampire scatters his blood over me with a scary expression on his face. I assume it’s supposed to have some kind of a corrosive effect, but it passes straight through me without even staining my clothes. His energy is nice, so I rip his heart out and leave him to recover. Sure enough, the exposed bits of leather on my glove start to smoke a bit. There’s no effect on the silver though. I’ll take care of this one later.
After a while, there aren’t any more blows heading my way. Everyone is either dead, or doing their best to heal. I empty a handful of red stones that I had acquired during the fight into my jacket pocket. There are eight that are left recovering with their cores intact. The other leader and the one with the nice energy are among them. Five of them have had their cores shattered and their energy is rushing out into their bodies without control.
I decide to deal with ones with the broken cores first before they bite the dust. I pull the retainer out of my pocket and press it into my teeth as I walk over to the nearest one and grab her from behind. I open my mouth, where a wire now connects a set of silver fangs to my top and bottom canines and I bite into her neck and suck. It’s a fitting end for a vampire, but it’s not blood that I’m after. I’m tapping into a major energy channel in her throat. Vivid crimson energy rushes into my mouth as it leaks out of her broken core. The energy is always richer, closer to the core.
As the foreign red energy enters my body, it turns silver and joins the rest of my energy. As far as I know, our race is the only one that can convert any foreign energy consumed to our own. It’s one of the thing that keeps us higher than the other races in the food chain. Although I do eat like normal, I could survive on pure energy like this if I wanted to. Many of us do.
As I absorb the last of this vampire’s blood, she dies and I continue on to the next broken core. Every once in awhile one of the vampires with a complete core recovers enough to attack me, but every time I just cripple them again and get back to work.
After finishing off all of the ones with the shattered cores, I return to the ones I’ve been saving. I decide to start with the other leader. First I pull out my mobile phone. I pull up a photo from my gallery and show it to him. It’s the rose window at Notre Dame. As his eyes rest on the image they glaze over. I watch as the red energy that’s been tending to his wounds rushes back up to the core in his head to help him process the energy. Once the energy is almost completely returned to the core, I stick my hand through his eye and remove the rough red stone that is now shining brightly with energy. I set this stone aside and repeat the process with the other seven.
I put most of the cores into my pocket with the duller ones that I collected during the fight, but I also set aside the core from the vampire with the nice energy. Most of these cores will be sold. The six that are filled with energy are almost priceless to witches. The other two are for me. I take one of them and press it against the hollow beneath my left clavicle with my index finger. Channeling my energy through the stone, the color changes from red to black. The energy collected previously still shines through it though, giving it a smoky sheen.
I change the flow of energy and as I push harder, both the core and my index finger sink into my shoulder. I pull out my index finger, leaving the core in place. My energy instantly reroutes itself to connect the new core. I do the same thing to my right shoulder with the other core. This makes thirty one cores. Just like we can make other races’ energy our own, we can also steal their cores. I’m pretty picky about the cores that I assimilate, but some of my kind have cores that number in the hundreds. I’m the type that prefers quality to quantity.
I look around and am momentarily gripped by shame. It’s been a long time since I killed this many. This was the reason why I had originally abandoned the supernatural realm, although I was fifteen and squeamish at the time. I didn’t want to kill a classmate either. Savannah had fallen quickly in the fight. Quickly though, the shame becomes satisfaction. The energy I received from their blood was substantial, and my two new cores have harmonized nicely with the others. My body warms as an incredibly comfortable sensation envelops it. I sigh to myself. It’s been too long. The killing wasn’t so bad.
Having considerable advantages over the other races, our race and organization, the Wraiths have historically taken responsibility for policing the supernatural realm, despite our small numbers. Although I wasn’t a part of it, we had originally tried to silence the other races from revealing themselves, but the operation had ended in failure. Since then, we’ve been trying to figure out how to handle the change of circumstances. We’ve been too lenient lately. This ‘recruitment’ is getting ridiculous. I can’t afford to nitpick over morals anymore. If we let this go too far, humanity is going to die out.
Pulling my sleeves back down over my bloodstained gloves, I write a quick message like we always did back in the days when we were properly feared and sign it with my old field name. Stepping over corpses, I pull my hood back up and walk out the elaborate wooden door and into the brisk autumn night.
I sigh to myself. Fionn is going to kill me.
~~~
AN: RIP Savannah and friends. This is my first fiction on here, so let me know what you think. This chapter felt pretty rushed but I hate exposition and wanted to get it out of the way. I feel bad about skimming over most of the dialogue in this chapter, but I promise I'm doing it for a reason. Hopefully it's not too off-putting. I'll make up for it next chapter and hopefully then it will start making more sense. If you spot any errors, let me know. It's 4am here and I have no editor, so fingers crossed that this even resembles English.