A Final Game Read online

  Avice was a completely different person with the beanie on his head, that was failing to cover his long, rusty hair.

  Holding on to his hand, she let him lead her to the lower floor of the airport, away from the departure lane. An odd sensation rose within her. How were they to travel to England without plane tickets and passports? As they moved with a smaller crowd, Yarra could see a couple of eyes looking in their direction.

  “Shit, they have Scent Sensors in this part of the airport,” he said, still keeping themselves adhered to a group of twenty or so people who were part of a tour. None of them seemed to neither mind or care that two strangers were following their group. By the sound of their accents, they seemed to be from Eastern Europe, though he could not say for sure.

  Yarra looked up. Leaning against the metal railing one floor above them, was a vampire who she knew was third-in-command to Alicia, a young woman by the name of Tess. She too, had pale skin, though for her, it made her look more haunting than it did deathly. Her cheeks were lightly rouged, and her lips were delicately painted with a subtle tinge of red. She looked unassuming. Which was the point.

  Twice, she felt Tess’ eyes wash upon her, paired with a raising of one fine eyebrow. She prayed that her scent would be masked within the group.

  “Avice,” Yarra mouthed as they continued walking. “I think the lady above suspects something.”

  Her love gave the slightest of nods and went straight into action. Reaching into the luggage bag, he pulled out one of Yarra’s old college shirts, along with a pair of his briefs – he had prepared for such an event. They retained a scent of its owner, having been worn countless times. Without anyone noticing but his mate, he wedged the articles of clothing in a stranger’s luggage.

  The man was too busy pointing out something to his friends to notice what Avice had done. With a quick maneuver, he grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her apart from the group, walking into another group of people who were gabbing away excitedly in Chinese as they passed at the right time. The ruse worked. Tess continued to pay the group of Eastern Europeans more attention, and had not noticed that Avice and Yarra had somehow slipped away.

  “That was close,” Yarra sighed with relief.

  “It will not last long. Our scent on the clothes will wear out within minutes.”

  As they continued walking in the airport, Avice secretly placed more of their clothing on other passengers’ trolleys to allow their scents to be diluted in various parts of the airport. It achieved the desired effect, for she looked back to where Alicia was standing. She could see Avice’s mother having a frustrated look on her face as Tess spoke up, perhaps admitting that she had tracked the clothes but with no success to show for it.

  “How are we going to get tickets?” Yarra asked. She did not remember him packing any money. If he used his credit card, there was a chance it would rouse Alicia’s suspicion even further, as well as leaving an obvious paper trail. For all of those sent after them earlier having carried swords, the vampires were not above using technology when it was convenient.

  “Tickets?” Avice raised his eyebrows and smiled in spite of the situation that they were in. “You are going to learn how we vampires travel in style without paying.”

  To her amazement, Avice led them down into the place where the bags were being pushed by the conveyor belt into an adjoining space out of the building. A security guard was quick to stop them with a curious, but also annoyed look on his face.

  “Get out of here,” he said in a gruff voice, patting the gun on his holster.

  Avice did not budge, but instead snapped his finger at the six-foot-four man. She watched as the security personnel’s eyes slide out of focus as though he had a lazy eye, before orienting itself back to normal. To her surprise, the man’s scowl vanished, and was replaced instead with a warm smile nestled within his thick beard.

  “Right this way,” he said in a tone of voice that was far too sweet for his built and demeanor to be entirely natural. Without pausing, he pressed his access card against the panel, and the door slid open.

  “What…?” Yarra wanted to ask.

  “Charm,” Avice explained. “Kind of like hypnosis. It renders them susceptible to be commanded to do our bidding.”

  “Did you do that to make me fall in love with you?” Yarra asked jokingly as the security guard escorted them through a noisy lane underneath all of the conveyor belts.

  “Baby, no amount of hypnosis can make you fall in love with me. I had to work hard for that,” he grinned.

  None of the other airport personnel seemed to care that a man was ushering two strange looking people around, probably assuming that a small tour of the place was being conducted for one reason or another. Either way, his badge and presence seemed enough to stave off any questions. The guard led them out of the airport building into the tarmac area where the planes were waiting, parked in a line. Noisy and windy as it was, Yarra found herself focused on the task at hand.

  “Which plane?”

  Her mind burst into a flurry of ideas and visions. She saw them in all her visions, stepping into each plane, flying to all parts of the world. Some flew to Turkey, others to Hong Kong, one to Japan, another to Washington D.C., another to California, and one blue plane with yellow wingtips heading straight for England. The visions folded in and out of one another, and Yarra knew then which plane to choose.

  When she returned to the tarmac – in mind, as well as in body-, she pointed out to the plane the second furthest away from where they stood.

  “That one,” she said. He nodded. The security guard who had chaperoned them now stood with a dazed look on his face, clearly not paying attention to what the couple was saying. With another snap of his finger, Avice whispered something in a language that Yarra did not quite understand or hear clearly.

  The man nodded and proceeded to bring them to said aircraft, where a few workers were hauling luggage up into the belly of the plane. With another snap of his finger, Avice ordered the guard away, to which he proceeded to walk off with a slight waddle. The plane was scheduled to fly in the next half an hour, according to the notice on the nearby screen. Flight attendants greeted the passengers as they entered.

  Knowing full well that they had skipped the line for passport checks and such, Yarra and Avice were not worried, for the flight attendants would not check their tickets any longer. All they had to do was go into the plane and sit at any unoccupied seats.

  “Excuse me sir,” a flight attendant came up to them with a paper in her hand. From the corner of Yarra’s eyes, she could see the lady holding a piece of flight document, showing which seats would be occupied. “Is this your seat?” she asked politely.

  “Yes,” Avice replied confidently.

  “But, according to our charts, these seats are to be vacant,” she protested mildly. “May I see your tickets?”

  Avice reached into his pocket and pulled out a blank piece of paper. As he did so, he snapped his fingers again and whispered. Just like how the security guard’s eyes had vibrated in a spot and slid out of focus for a second, so did hers too. She looked at the blank piece of paper, smiled and bowed slightly.

  “I am so sorry, Mr. Avice Selleck, and Miss Yarra Davis,” she apologized profusely. “Clearly we were not updated about the last minute changes.”

  “No problem,” Avice beamed. “These things happen.”

  The flight attendant smiled graciously at Avice’s easy manner. She walked away, but not before promising to come back with two glasses of wine as a means for saying sorry.

  “Nifty trick,” Yarra said as the flight attendant walked off. “Do you always hypnotize everyone?”

  Avice shook his head. “It is something that mum always said separated us from humans. Though she believed in not killing them, she always had no qualms in manipulating them. It was one of the first abilities she passed on to me.”

  “How come you never told me?” Yarra asked, genuinely curious. Such ability would make Avice po
werful in the eyes of many humans. He would be able to manipulate anyone, even the President if he had such a whim.

  “It isn’t a power I’m proud of, baby. I don’t believe that humans should be put into a hypnotic stupor just for our own pleasure,” he admitted. “Even doing so with the security guard and the flight attendant makes me feel guilty. But it was necessary.”

  Yarra nodded. The conversation came to a stop as the plane began easing off its parking spot, and heading into the tarmac for takeoff. For now, they had escaped Alicia and her clan, if only barely. When the clan mother realized this, they would be high up in the air, heading for England.

  She smiled and eased her head to rest against Avice’s shoulder. At least they would not be attacked for the next ten hours or so.

  *

  The slight turbulence of the plane woke her up. She found Avice staring out of the window. He had left his tray of food untouched, a sign that he was too deep in thought. Avice was usually a voracious eater, able to eat even the most disgusting of foods. The bland chicken meal laid out in front of him remained in pristine condition, with its foil still wrapped.

  Yarra stretched in her seat. In front of them were a couple travelling with their kids, who could not keep their voices down. Disgruntled, she turned to him.

  “You couldn’t have asked the attendants to give us first class seats?”

  Avice sighed heavily. “It isn’t a power to suit our convenience,” he reminded her. “We only use it when the situation calls for it.”

  Yarra leaned back against her seat and tried to tune out the voices of the children. She found it difficult to concentrate whenever there were erroneous sounds contributing to the din around her. The kids’ constant yelps and shouts coupled with the background roar of the plane’s engines made it almost impossible to focus on her visions.

  “Any interesting dreams?” Avice leaned in to kiss her on the cheek.

  It was somewhat cute way of his trying to ask whether she had had a vision of some sort while sleeping. Shaking her head, she playfully nudged him on the arms.

  “Dreams only come true when we are in first class, Avice,” she said, making him snicker. But her hands rested on her flat belly every time he asked that question now. Her dreams showed nothing but the two of them in a small home in the countryside somewhere, with kids running around. A sort of eternal happiness. Yarra wondered to herself if what had just transpired was a vision – a flash of clairvoyance, or if it was a dream – a random projection of her subconscious.

  Putting herself too much into precognitive state made her confused. It blurred the line between fantasy and reality. What if the images she saw in her mind, of them being together forever, was just a mere fantastical extrapolation of her deepest wishes? Would it come true just because she saw it happening in her mind?

  Her inner monologue was put to rest when the head of the kid in front of them came peeking from over the seat. Avice and Yarra could hear his tired mother chastising the boy for the umpteenth time. Instead, the boy ignored her and proceeded to wave at them both.

  Though Yarra was annoyed by the child, she could not help but wave back. The child giggled as though he was playing a game of hide-and-seek with them and vanished by going beyond their line of vision. His mother gave out another groan as the seat shook.

  “Quite a handful,” Avice said silently. “Imagine us having a little monster like that one day.”

  It was a question that was prodding in Yarra’s head since they had made love the night before. She knew, from her vision, that they had definitely conceived a child from that union.

  “If we did have a child, would it take after you? In more ways than one?” she smiled, referring to his vampire traits.

  Avice considered the question with a bite of his lower lip. “The gene is extremely dominant, so yeah, it definitely will,” he answered, gazing lovingly into her eyes. Suddenly, he placed his hand atop of hers which was rested on her belly and rubbed at it. “I can’t wait for us to have a kid one day.”

  Yarra smiled inwardly. “I can’t wait too.” She loved Avice, but knew that this needed to be kept a secret. For now, at least. If she revealed that she could possibly be pregnant – even if she herself was certain-, then he might put a stop to their entire trip to the Oracle’s hometown.

  But the urge to tell him about her vision of their child was so great, and Yarra could not trust her own will. Instead, she decided to change the topic to save blurting it out.

  “I hope we find what we are looking for in Great Yarmouth,” she said.

  Avice’s warm hand was still covering hers, rough and calloused from all the weapons he wielded. No one would have guessed that someone as youthful and naïve looking as him could handle swords easily. Then again, no one would have guessed that he was a hundred-years old too.

  “I remember Great Yarmouth being an early settlement for vampires. The Keepers of the Blades was an organization born in London though.”

  Yarra shifted in her seat, and held on to Avice’s hand which was now resting on her lap. She had come to rely on his warmth in the coldness of the cabin. It was somewhat ironic how he could be both warm and cold blooded at a whim. During the times he was human, the color of his skin had a certain tan to it, his lips redder and fuller than it was when he became a vampire.

  “So Alicia might have her clan members waiting for us in London when we land?” Yarra asked, slightly worried.

  “She probably does. If she was at the airport looking for us, she would have known that we are flying off somewhere. There may be only fifty of us in the whole clan, but we are known for our hunting skills,” Avice said grimly. His eyes flashed at the times they had had to pursue their targets from different countries, even different continents. No one escaped from them easily.

  Something about his mother being in the airport made him uncomfortable. It had all been too easy. Alicia Selleck was a formidable Scent Sensor. And Tess was known to be able to pick a scent from a mile away.

  They should have been detected by one of them. Avice knew that diluting their scent by disseminating their clothes to various points of the airport would have helped, but still, it seemed too easy, as though Alicia had wanted them to escape.

  Or did she?

  “What if she knows that we are heading for the Oracle’s hometown?” Yarra asked. “Is it possible that your mother will be able to predict that?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Avice replied, biting at his knuckles thoughtfully.

  As he did so, Yarra noticed his fangs becoming slightly sharper as it dug underneath his skin. As the white hardness of his teeth pierced the skin, no blood came out. Without realizing it, Avice had transformed into a vampire.

  For most humans with poorly discerning eyes, they would assume a transformed vampire was just someone who was pale looking, almost sickly and ill. But Yarra could easily pick out the slight nuances that others couldn’t. She saw the way his canines became sharper, thought quite unlike a sabertooth’s, it could still easily pierce. Their skin, though white, actually glowed more than a tanned person’s standing under the sun. Avice himself looked more alive as a vampire than he did in his human form.

  There was also the faded ruby glow in his pupils. The further his transformation intensified, the redder his eyes went.

  She nudged him on the arm again. “Don’t do that!” she admonished him with a smile.

  Avice gave a start and look at the puncture on his skin. “Oh shit,” he murmured. A quick transition caused the pale skin to fade into something a little human like, and the sharp canines become blunter, resembling Yarra’s.

  “I don’t realize it sometimes,” he admitted, looking at the skin slowly healing where he had bitten it.

  “Must be fun being a vampire,” Yarra whispered. “I wish I could be one too.”

  Her sentence made them both fall silent. Yarra knew that Avice too was thinking of a particular memory. It had happened a month before Alicia ordered Avice to kill Ya
rra.

  *

  Chapter-3

  The Conversion

  One Month Ago…

  “But she can be a member, can’t she?” Avice argued. Yarra sat next to him, trying to stay out of the conversation as much as she could. It was proving difficult since it was just the two of them; Alicia and Jared in their home. Dinner had started with Kale juice and beetroot, a particular favorite of Alicia to substitute the alkaline taste of human blood. Yarra looked at the murky cup with distaste.

  Alicia, however, had finished sipping hers with enjoyment. Putting the glass on the table, she turned to Avice. “Keepers of the Blade clan members are made up of only vampires,” she said with a softness that still managed to radiate authority.