CHAPTER FOUR
My sixth period class was World History. I had caught up to where the rest of the class was after a week and by the time the unit test arrived I was well prepared for what I needed to know. It was still a major test that weighed heavily on my grade, though, and the first major test I took at the new school, so I was nervous - nervous enough that I almost jumped out of my seat in surprise when Jack suddenly shot up from his desk and told the teacher that he had to leave, disturbing everyone from their intense concentration. The teacher told him he had to sit and finish his test, but Jack just grabbed his paper quickly, rushed up to the teachers desk, explained that it was already done and that it was really, really important that he leave. As he walked out the door he gave me one very significant look, then shut the door firmly behind him.
I was too disturbed by that look to finish the test well. I was two thirds of the way through it, so I knew that I was at least going to get a passing grade, but whether it was “A” material was up to dumb luck and fate. What was that look he gave me? Pity? Apology? Fear? It was certainly different than the anger he had previously looked at me with. I turned my incomplete paper in ten minutes after the bell rang. Mr. Moore was a generous teacher, letting me stay late with the (false) excuse I gave him that there was curriculum on the test I hadn’t learned in my old school, but he was only willing to give me so much grace.
The dance club officially met on Mondays and Wednesdays, though the school was willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that they unofficially met on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well. The dance club didn’t need any school funding beyond renting outfits for their twice-yearly performances (which the club raised most of the money for themselves through fundraisers anyway), and didn’t need resources beyond a couple stereos and a place to practice (which was easy because a dance studio had been built in the gym area, and had once been used for a dance class that was offered as an alternative to gym) , so as long as we didn’t stay more than an hour and a half after the final bell rang, the school was fine with our extra practices. Even the adult supervision was pretty lax – it pretty much extended to the gym teacher unlocking the studio for us, then going back to her office to work on her paperwork and the occasional grading she had to do.
Since Thursdays weren’t crucial to learning any routines, I took my time getting my stuff from my locker and going down to the bike rack, opting to go home instead. By the time I got there the busses had already left and the school felt pretty empty, which was unfortunate because no one else was around to be weirded out by the fact that Jack was standing at the bike rack, waiting for me.
I tried my best to ignore him, but he was standing right in front of the lock. Without looking directly at him I said, in the most polite way I could muster, “I would appreciate it if you could get your angsty butt away from my bike, thanks.”
“Angsty?”
“Yeah. You’re always dressing in dark clothes and you never talk to anyone and, until today, the only way you could address me or even look at me was with anger. You called me a thing.”
“I did not call you a thing.”
“You asked what I was, not who I was, which would lead me to assume that you see me as a thing, not a person.”
“I apologize, that was not my intent. It was a ‘what’ as is ‘what type of being would you classify yourself as’, not ‘what kind of thing are you’.”
“That really doesn’t help, as it still suggests that I’m not human. Which I am. You’re still in front of my bike.”
He stepped to the side, but was still close enough that he was hovering over me as I undid the lock. “I do want to formally apologize to you. For my past actions. You deserve a great deal of respect and I failed to show it to you. I would like to explain myself to you and make amends.”
I stood up and looked straight into his eyes. He seemed to be genuine, but my temper was already fired up and I was not going to try to rein it in, not this time. I kicked him in the shin.
He jumped back a little bit and yelped in surprise, though he didn’t appear to be hurt. “What was that for?”
“You make me angry. In fact, because of you I’ve been letting worry and fear build up for the last couple of weeks and I am sick and tired of it. Taking it out on you makes me feel better.” I yanked my bike out of the rack and jumped on it, ready to take off as fast as I could.
I pedaled a couple of times, but he was already running to get in front of my bike to try and stop me. I tried to maneuver my way around him, but he caught the front of my handlebars to stop the bike. He underestimated how much power there already was behind the bicycle’s movement, probably not expecting me to keep it set on the highest gear, and I lurched out of my seat. He caught me around my waist and pulled me towards him so I wouldn’t fly over the handlebars. We fell to the ground and rolled a couple of times. He tried his hardest to shield me from the fall, so I was just fine, but if anything the fact that he successfully stopped me from leaving made me more pissed. I elbowed him hard in the ribs. He loosened his grasp on me and I jumped up as quickly as I could.
“You’re a creep! It is SO not normal to treat people like this! You can’t be angry, then apologetic, then… what, want to kidnap me? I will talk to you when I feel like talking to you! Which is probably never! Forget it! Leave me alone! I was just fine pretending that everything was okay and that there were no such things as monsters! I wish I could give back what I saw, but I can’t, and I’m sorry that you apparently can’t make me forget. I’ll just have to live with being angry at you for the rest of my life.” I was talking pretty loudly at this point, but there was no one around to hear.
Jack was still on the ground, looking at me in mild shock. He only started to get up as I ran towards my bike and got ready to hop back on.
“They were vampires.” He casually commented. Though I was already on my seat, I stopped. “Please, if you let me take you home, I’ll explain what you saw and why I was so angry with you. Again, you didn’t deserve it and I apologize.”
I stood with both feet on the ground, though still straddling my bike. “If you are yanking my chain, I’m not afraid to make your life miserable.” I warned.
“I believe it,” he replied with a hint of amusement in his voice, “would you like to throw your bike in my car?”
“No.” I was going to be defiant and pay him back for all the misery he had put me through. “You can walk me home. I need my bike, though, so you can carry it with you.”
He looked at me oddly and agreed, “I will do it. How far away do you live? Are you sure you can walk all that way?”
“Two and a half miles. It’s no big deal. The question is, can you carry my bike all that way, or are you going to wuss out and walk it along side you?” I knew he would have to walk it with us, but I was intent on waging as much psychological warfare on him as possible.
He walked over, picked up my bike, and propped it on his shoulder. “No big deal. Now, let’s get going so you are not out too late.”
Hmph. Trying to act like a big man, carrying my bike like that. I was certain he’d make it no more than a half mile before he had to set it down and give his shoulder a break.
We walked down the hill from the school in silence. I wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, so as soon as we made it to the bottom I cleared my throat. “So… vampires, huh? I was always under the impression that vampires were supposed to be all… I dunno. Beautiful and graceful and stuff. Those monsters you were fighting looked more like zombies, with the rotting flesh and one of them missing half his face.”
“They were vampires. It is a common myth that vampires are supposed to be beautiful and powerful. If I had realized the implications of Mr. Stokers’ novel on the vampire myth, I would have stopped its publication.”
“Dracula? That’s one of my favorite classic novels! What’s wrong with it?”
“It began the cultural
movement that romanticized vampires. You called them zombies, which is a more accurate, though modern, word to describe what vampires are. The fact is they are human beings that died and were brought back to a lifelike state through the power of evil spirits. They are dead, don’t you ever forget that. It disgusts me that so many modern authors took Mr. Stokers’ ideas and elaborated on them, turning vampires into creatures to envy for their beauty, strength, and immortality. A dead being cannot become beautiful. It does not age, nor heal. Long ago vampires were monsters to be feared. Villages mutilated bodies before burying them to prevent them from becoming vampires. Vampires were beings that stalked the living for their life force. Depending on where you lived, people suspected different body parts were the target of vampires. Most common was blood, though the heart and liver were also common targets until vampires realized they could take just enough blood to keep from killing their victims, raising less suspicion than, say, corpses turning up with missing organs. Because of the modern picture of vampires, a truly mythical being has been created and true vampires have been demoted to the status of ‘zombies’, mindless beings that wander around, hoping to stumble upon some sort of weak sap that is willing to offer their brain up without putting up a fight.”
“So… I should forget everything I think I know about vampires, then?”
“I do not know what you think you know about vampires.”
“Well… one common myth is that vampires can turn into bats. Is that false?”
“You would be correct.”
“Do they disintegrate or burn in the sunlight?”
“No, though they rarely go out during the day due to risk of rapid decomposition and discovery. Though most ignorant people would dismiss vampires as homeless people, the smell of rotting flesh is distinct, and if the flesh is falling off the bone no sane person would ignore the fact that they are looking at an unhealthy being.”
“Does garlic ward them off?”
“No, though garlic and lemons placed around a corpse help ward off the evil spirits that create vampires.”
“How do you slay them?”
“It depends on how old the vampire is. Staking young vampires in the heart with oak will take care of them pretty quick, and while fire can kill them, it's not the most effective way to do so - not enough dry skin and bones, you see. But older vampires fear fire more than anything else, while the heart is so shriveled that one would have to remove the organ from the chest and crush it before the vampire even notices that you are trying to kill it. Beheading is the most reliable and works well for all vampires, regardless of what stage it’s at, though it can be difficult. One has to have a knife made of iron with holy symbols etched into it to cause real harm to a vampire, and the vampire has to be incapacitated before taking the head off. Are… you okay with me talking about this? I realize this may seem… gruesome.”
I shrugged. “I watched you stake and behead two vampires. Describing it to me isn’t going to cause any more mental scarring than I already have. Do vampires eventually ‘die’ once they reach a certain stage of decomposition?”
He was silent for a few minutes. “No.” His tone was bitter, and I could tell he was trying to think of how to explain this to me.
“There are very old vampires in this world. A corpse is made a vampire when another old vampire drinks the blood of a recently deceased person and replaces it with some of the evil and malicious spirit the vampire harbors within his or her self, cultivating the evil in the corpse that is required for it to become its own, sentient monster.”
“You keep saying ‘evil and malicious spirit.’ What does that mean? It sounds like there’s some sort of magical ceremony required.”
“I’m not clear on what the vampires do to transfer and cultivate these spirits. I do know that the older the vampire, the more evil the spirit is, and the evil is more pure. It is easier for older vampires to create new vampires, and it is easier to create vampires out of people that carried a lot of hate or malice throughout their lives. The more hate and evil and malice there is between the two beings, the faster the corpse becomes a vampire. If the vampire is still young and inexperienced, or the corpse was a good person in life, it can take as long as three weeks for a corpse to become a vampire, which is why the vampires you saw that night looked like they were decomposing.”
“But vampires do decompose, right? So they all eventually have to come to some sort of end, right?”
“I wish it were so. The oldest vampire I am aware of is over eight hundred years old, and I have heard tales that it is able to walk out in daylight without raising suspicion from humans. It requires much life force from living humans and creating many powerful vampires, but through those rituals it is possible to slow decomposition to a near stop.”
“Wait, so they do drink blood from living humans? How is this not something everyone is aware of? Do the humans ever die?”
“They do drink the blood from living beings; however one cannot continue to exist in a state like that without immersing themselves in magic. It is common for vampires to be able to wipe the minds of the humans they drink from. It is also common to find blood donation centers that are run by vampires or their thralls. They would not risk putting themselves in a position that would arouse suspicion from humans, though there are cases where they will completely drain the blood from a person to kill them and turn them into a vampire.”
“So they do have magical powers, then.”
“Yes. Are you familiar with the Darwin effect? Those that could not wipe minds were quickly slain, while those that could passed their ability on to the vampires they created. Another common ability is hypnotism, which is basically a mind wipe but is performed at the beginning of the blood drinking ritual instead of the end.”
He stopped talking. It was odd talking to him, I found. He didn’t have any mannerisms that indicated when he was going to begin or end talking.
“So… is there anything else that you felt you needed to tell me?” I asked awkwardly.
“Yes. Mina, the woman that pesters me in our history class, is a vampire. I am a half-vampire.”
I stopped, then started walking backwards. I was suddenly very, very scared.
“You need to explain right now before I run and tell the police. I don’t even have to tell them that you’re a half vampire, I know they won’t believe me, but I’m not afraid to tell them that you assaulted me.”
“I apologize. I have no desire to harm you. I will walk six feet away from you if that would make you more comfortable.” He had a very humble look on his face and took a step back, as though to show he was sincere in his offer.
I was hesitant, but we were still out in the open and I made the hopeful decision that he wouldn’t make a threatening move in public. I walked closer to him, but not too close. We continued on our way.
“It is possible for a young male vampire to impregnate a female human, though it rarely happens. The result is a half-vampire, which is a being of great power, though very cursed.”
“So… is that why you seemed to not be bothered by my attacks? And why you’ve managed to carry my bike on your shoulder for over a mile now without getting tired?” He nodded. “Is that also why I was supposed to forget what I saw that night? Do you have the ability to wipe minds?” He nodded again. We continued on in silence for a few minutes, this time to allow me to comprehend what he had just told me.
“So… does it make you half dead?” I didn’t want to know the answer to this question, not really, but it had to be asked.
He gave a sad smile and shook his head. “No, but I do carry a curse. I am very much alive, though I have been alive for quite some time and possibly for quite a while longer.”
“How old are you?”
“Somewhere between a hundred and seventy and two hundred years old.”
“Ha. No, really. How old are you?”
He didn’t answer that.
br /> “But… why… how… you don’t even look that old! You only look… um…”
“I know it is difficult to discern my age. It is part of the curse. I can pass as a 16 year old or as a 26 year old, depending on the clothes I wear and the length of my hair. I keep my hair longer, like this, when I want to pass as a teenager. I am fortunate that the modern trends allow my hair discoloration to pass as a statement, rather than an abnormality to raise suspicion.”
“Wow… so… how long do you expect to live?”
“I am not entirely sure. It is the mission of half vampires to slay as many vampires as possible. There are few of us, and we eventually die in the line of duty. The rumors are that the oldest one of us lived to be five hundred years old, though he was starting to show significant signs of aging before he died. I would guess that if I were to live to die of old age, I would live to approximately five hundred and fifty to six hundred years old.”
“Wow… just… wow.” I slowed down considerably, as my house was only about ten minutes away now. I had a lot to comprehend. Just as I was about to process everything, I realized I ignored a kind of big piece of information.
“Mina is a VAMPIRE?! “
“Yes.”
“What is she doing at a high school? Why on earth would she spend time there?”
“She is… taunting me. I arrived here due to increased paranormal activity, discovered that the youth were the main targets, and enrolled in the local high school. She eventually revealed herself to me as a key player in this… scheme, and shows up every day to taunt me. I can never find her outside of the school building, but I find signs of the havoc she regularly causes. She was the one to turn those men into vampires. They were good men. She finds pleasure in turning good people into the monsters you saw that night.”
“Does she try to create more powerful vampires?”
“She does. She targets teens as much as she can. Teens don’t have as much time to develop hate. Many teens think they feel true despair, but few do. She tries to spend time with them at school to implant as many doubts and hatred in those that show the potential to… successfully turn. She enjoys a ‘challenge.’”
We were now on the street my house was on. I was disappointed, actually. I felt a lot better now that I knew the truth, though it was still pretty scary.
“So why the sudden change of heart? Yesterday you were ignoring me, and now you’re telling me all this stuff that, by the way, COMPLETELY changes my whole world, for… what reason?”
“You are the offspring of wardcarvers. It’s why I was not able to wipe your mind – you were protected by wards. I assume that is why you were offended by my question – I originally thought you were not of human origin. Non-humans are immune to the mind wipe. You are human, but you carry a great deal of magic with you.”
“Ward… carvers? What are you talking about? My father is a woodcarver, but I don’t know what a wardcarver is.”
He was uncomfortably silent as we continued walking toward my house. “I assumed you knew. I apologize.”
I was overwhelmingly confused. “Tell me. What is a wardcarver? I carry magic with me? What’s going on?” He stayed silent and didn’t meet my gaze, no matter how hard I tried to catch his attention. “You need to tell me. You started this, you need to finish this. You said so yourself, you owe me.”
“You’re right. I must warn you, though, this was information you would have been told long ago if it was important for you to know. You will not like it.
“I noticed while we were taking the test that you have a nervous habit. You have a necklace that you hide under your shirt. You took it out and were rubbing the beads on it. I could sense a great deal of magic coming from each bead as you rubbed it. I couldn’t believe it at first – I have not seen wards in a long time. There are few in the world that still practices wardcarving. I left class early to find out who your parents are. Your mother works at a library, and your father works as a woodcarver. I came here to see if your house is warded. It is. It was a logical conclusion that your mother researches and draws up the wards, and your father carves them. Wardcarvers have a very rare talent, and for a team to do it together is even rarer. They produce the best wards, but it is very rare for two people to work well enough with each other to build wards together successfully. I have only heard of one other successful team in my lifetime, and they died over a hundred years ago. Wardcarvers command a great deal of respect, which is why I had to apologize to you. I thought you had inherited their talents.
“And now I have to apologize again. I’m sure your parents had reason for not informing you of their talents. I fear I may cause a rift in the relationship between you and your parents.”
We arrived at my doorstep and I stood there, not saying anything. I wasn’t sure if I was going to have another temper tantrum or if I was going to cry. I nodded slowly, showing I heard everything. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. Um. I’m sorry I made you walk all this way. You can take my bike, if you want. Leave it at the school. I’ll take the bus tomorrow.”
He looked straight at me. “I cannot apologize enough. I feel I am responsible for giving a great burden of knowledge to you. One you did not need to have. I will walk back to the school; it is not a far distance. I hope you can forgive me.” He turned around and left.
Before he reached the sidewalk I called out, “I have one more question for you. Are ghosts real?”
He turned around and gave me a look that said, ‘well, duh.’ “Of course.”
I paused, then decided to go for broke.
“Werewolves?”
“Yes.”
“Leprechauns?”
“Indeed.”
“Unicorns?”
“I’ve seen a skull, it seemed authentic enough.”
“Dragons?”
“Extinct, though their kin live on.”
“Is there anything that doesn’t exist?”
“Perhaps. But I figured early on to assume that if there have been tales or myths about it, it probably exists.”
“Am I just that blind to the world, that I haven’t seen any of this before?” This time I really was close to tears, frustrated that my world was crashing down around me.
He walked back up to me, this time getting standing closer to me than he had before dared. He tentatively put his hand on my shoulder – a friendly gesture used to comfort friends, but that sent not altogether unpleasant chills down my back. He was a couple inches taller than I was, and as I stared up into his eyes and he said, in the most genuine, gentle voices I had heard from him yet, “Most people on this planet don’t see the truth, because it is too heavy a burden to bear. It is much easier to ignore the things you don’t want to believe in, the things that make life complicated or dangerous. I cannot apologize enough that I brought this burden on you, but you are a strong person. Most girls are not so sure of themselves as to kick someone in the shin just because someone makes them angry. You’ll be fine.” He smiled, and I couldn’t help but smile back.
He turned around and left without another word. I sat down on the front steps and watched as he walked away. I wanted to hate him so very much, but I couldn’t hold on to that hatred. It’s irrational to hate someone for telling you the truth. I needed to move forward. I needed to see for myself my parents’ handiwork.
I went into the house and listened to see if anyone had come home yet. I didn’t hear anything, which was good. I walked from room to room, studying each decoration, each piece of furniture. My father had always done detailed work on his highest quality furniture, but it wasn’t until I started looking for patterns that I noticed there were certain designs that showed up frequently. On every table next to a door there were designs that looked like stylized crosses, stars, and trees. On the kitchen table, coffee table, and entertainment center there were lots of suns and masks torn in two. On my desk there were m
ore suns, as well as feathers and scrolls. I noticed that everything had designs on them, from the handles on the kitchen knives to the frames on the wall. Some of the designs had familiar shapes to them, while most of the designs looked like letters from an exotic language – certainly nothing I could identify. I checked my window, and saw little beads sewn into the hem of the curtains. The ones going from top to bottom had designs etched into them that looked like raindrops, and the ones on the bottom looked like ripples in a pond. While I never paid that much attention to my curtains, I was willing to bet that they only appeared after I had mentioned to my parents I was hearing things at night.
I sat at my desk, wondering what spells I was activating by sitting there. I pulled my necklace out of my shirt and studied it. It was a long chain, at least 25 inches, with a fixed pendant in the very middle: a small silver piece about the size of a dime. It had a lot of swirls on it, but as I studied it (knowing I was probably looking for a design), the swirls started to look like flames. Then I studied the loose beads. There were eight larger beads – about the size of peas – with designs on them, and eight plain, smaller beads used as spacers. There were five beads with designs on them, and three with the odd letters on them. I remembered that there was also a bead fixed onto the end of the chain, next to the clasp. I turned my necklace around to look at it. It was a very peculiar design, one that looked neither like something familiar nor like a letter from the strange language which was found on everything else. It looked like two half circles with the curved sides facing each other and overlapping a bit, but one of the half circles was missing the corners, so it was more like an ark crossing over the curve of a half circle and a line hovering hear that curve. This design was surrounded by a circle that was broken three times, with little, complete circles filling the gaps.
I turned my necklace back around and held it for a moment. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have it on, but I was so upset at my parents for keeping all of this from me that I wanted to take it off. What would happen if I did? Obviously these beads were wards – what kind of “spells” had I been living with?
I was mad at my parents, and I had never been the type to put up with stuff that made me angry. I took my necklace off and stuffed it in my desk drawer. My neck suddenly felt bare, but it felt satisfying, feeling like I was somehow getting back at my parents. I didn’t stop there, either – I had two picture frames on my walls that had designs carved into them, so I took them down and put them on the top shelf in my closet. It took a few minutes to get the curtain rod down, but I took my curtains off, too, and stuffed them in my closet. I moved my night table next to my desk, so there was nothing with wards on the same side of my room as my bed. It didn’t get rid of them, I knew that, but I felt better knowing I could put a small distance between me and the offending objects.
My mind was at ease now, and I turned to my schoolwork for the day.
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