A Friend in Love Page 3

  She had read off Dracula, living in a Transylvanian castle in a remote village, sleeping in a coffin, unable to be exposed to sunlight and such.

  Avice Selleck was a direct descendant of the first vampire. As far as lineages go, he was royalty.

  The common myths surrounding vampires was quashed. They could bask in the sunlight and survive without blood.

  “The early vampires could not take much sunlight. It is an evolutionary process taking thousands of years, where we adapted to make living in current times bearable, even comfortable.”

  “How many thousands of years are we talking about?”

  “My lineage started five thousand years ago,” Avice said. “I’m the 42nd generation of Selleck.”

  “How old are you actually? Like a hundred?”

  He laughed. “I wish I could lie. I am a hundred and two.”

  “So, do you drink blood from humans all the time?” Yarra asked, panicking slightly.

  “Only if they want to. It is the only life force able to sustain a vampire’s life.”

  Yarra backed away, making Avice laugh.

  “I am not that type of vampire. In fact, we are against it. When blood is out of its external source, like the ones on this shirt, it is merely a taste. And I satisfy myself with this. Nothing more.”

  Yarra learnt then that Avice’s mother was a descendant of the Selleck lineage. Instead of killing her father, she converted him to becoming a vampire too.

  It was a simple process of reverse blood-letting. Instead of puncturing her teeth into his body and sucking the blood out, she transfused her own essence into Avice’s father.

  Even amongst the Selleck lineages, there were factions. Some believed humans to be the equivalence of cattle; body bags of meat and blood to be consumed.

  Avice came from a tribe who had fought for the protection of human lives.

  “Ever since I was born, I already knew my destiny. It is to protect humans. It is to protect you from those who wish harm upon you. We are the ‘Difsa Er Zaksjio’ which translates to the ‘Keepers of the Blade.”

  “Is that why you had a blade tattooed on your chest all this time?” Yarra asked. The words slipped out effortlessly, unlike those times she had been struggling to acknowledge it. This time, it came out, the words loud on fluid.

  Avice seemed surprised by this revelation. He was even more shocked when Yarra exclaimed, “I did it! I managed to talk about your tattoo! God, for months, I could not say anything about it, as though there was a block in my tongue and brain, refusing to take part in it! I thought I was going crazy!”

  As though trying to prove a point, she reached a hand out and traced her finger along the outline of the tattoo, this time not missing a mark.

  When she made one loop, from the tip of the blade to the base of the handle, back to the pointed edge, she let out a sigh of relief.

  “It really does exist,” she said happily.

  Avice however, was beside himself with astonishment. He held Yarra’s naked shoulders and pushed her to a distance to look at her face as a whole.

  “You could see my tattoo?” His face was furrowed in worry.

  Yarra nodded. “Yeah. Ever since I met you! But I just could not bring it up. Only now that you have talked about it, as you have acknowledged your lineage and identity, it is as if that barrier has vanished.”

  Avice’s apprehension caught her by surprise. He bit at his lower lip and looked away.

  “What…, what powers do you have Yarra?” She took a deep breath, and told him.

  At first, he had reacted with quiet astonishment, before letting out a weak laugh.

  “What are the odds?” he said, shaking his head. “My girlfriend is an Oracle.”

  “A what?” Yarra asked. She had heard the term used for those who could see the future, in fantasy novels and games=. But she had never thought to use the term to refer to herself.

  “An Oracle. You have the ability of Sight. To see all that will happen in the future,” he replied. Avice rubbed his hands in excitement. “That is how you knew about those two thugs waiting at the corner.”

  Yarra nodded at this. She watched as her boyfriend sucked out the little remaining blood from the matted shirt before tossing it in the bin.

  His tongue was long and sharp when it licked along the flesh of his lower lip. Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could appreciate the pallid whiteness of his skin. Ruby red eyes, intelligent and ruminating, he scratched at the slight fuzz of hair on his chin.

  “How long have you known of your powers?”

  “All my life,” Yarra replied.

  Avice listened as Yarra explained the limitations and accuracy of her powers. He laughed when she told him of the time when she predicted that a meatball landed on her head, even though there was no food in the vicinity of the church.

  “Turns out, someone had smuggled in some food. I ignored my vision, because it seemed ludicrous to have meatballs…, Meatballs! Land on your head. But it happened in the middle of the sermon. That idiot lady let her fork slip, and it flew in an arc before landing on me.”

  “Amazingly accurate,” Avice laughed.

  “Are we normal then? All my life, I never knew there were people like me…, even people like you. Imagine, vampires!”

  She leaned in and kissed him on the lips. It felt odd to kiss him in his vampiric form. The skin was cold to the touch, like marble left out on a wintry night. Clammy and cold, she shuddered, trying to suffuse some of her warmth into his body.

  “Are there others out there just like me?” she asked when their lips parted.

  The ghost of his smile remained in his lips though his eyes were now morbidly serious. Letting out a sigh, Yarra knew the answer was not one she was going to be pleased to hear.

  Chapter-5

  4 Months Ago

  There were vampires. Amongst the vampires were those who wished a permanent end to the human race. Avice came from a clan of vampires who opposed that regime, thus beginning a thousand year war that saw the deaths of many of his kind.

  “We are at a morbid disadvantage,” Alicia Selleck, Avice’s mother, said.

  Two months after Yarra had confessed to her innate precognition, Avice could not contain his excitement. He believed that Yarra’s powers could be used to aid in the war between the ‘Keepers of the Blade’ and their enemies.

  She listened quietly as Alicia spoke. Contrary to the first time she had met the woman, Alicia was a domineering character.

  She was a hundred and twenty years old, a result of slow aging in a vampire’s metabolism; but just like any organic matter with living cells, their lives too, were temporary.

  “Our enemies, The Bloodlust Vampires, believe in the ingestion of human blood from its source. That is to say, they will drink the blood directly from the human body,” Alicia said. “It grants them the humans’ life essence, which in turn grants them longer lives.”

  “How long?” Yarra asked. She looked at Avice who was also listening to his mother intently.

  “A normal Vampire can live for two hundred to three hundred years without a diet of blood. The Bloodlust Clan are preserved twice or thrice that amount of time with a steady supply of human blood.”

  “Sometimes…,” Jared Selleck, Avice’s father, “…even we too can’t help but succumb to the temptation.”

  Avice looked meek. Memories of his sucking at the bloodied shirt after their attack two months ago filled his and Yarra’s minds.

  She tried hard to contain a smile at the memory, remembering how ravenous he had been, trying to draw the caked blood from the already soiled shirt.

  “What happens when the temptation unhinges your self-control?” Yarra asked, curious.

  “We rob a blood bank,” Jared joked. Avice laughed but was quickly quiet as Alicia stopped him with a quelling look.

  “Kale and burdock root juice,” Alicia replied without batting an eyelid.

  For a moment, Yarra did not know whether to be
lieve her. The thought of Kale and Burdock Root mixed together made her stomach queasy.

  “You’re kidding,” Yarra exclaimed.

  “Nope. It is alkaline, just like human blood. It acts as a perfect substitute, even without the benefit of the extra life force. That, we can do without,” Alicia said.

  “Plus, mom adds vodka to hers, so it makes it bearable,” Avice said again.

  They all laughed except Alicia who remained dignified. She coughed a little, and they were all silent.

  Though Alicia was petite, even a head shorter than Yarra, she radiated a strength that was almost tangible. It permeated the room, as it did when someone was a natural leader.

  Alicia chose her words carefully when they spoke. She hesitated for a moment before placing a hand on Yarra’s own. “I know this is all too much for you to take in, but, will you aid us in this war?”

  “How am I to help? I do not have powers like you do. I get hurt easily, and I am not able to fight!”

  “That is true,” Jared said, “…, but you have the ability of precognition. You are able to guide us during the war. To hit the Bloodlust clan where it hurts the most.”

  The thought of war, and to be its strategist was something Yarra could not comprehend. Heck, in all of the strategy computer games involving thinking, she sucked! She could not even beat the game at the lowest difficulty.

  “But… but I don’t want to be responsible for the Bloodlust Clan’s demise,” Yarra admitted. “They did nothing to me.”

  Alicia’s eyes widened in shock, and her lips narrowed into a thin line of anger. She turned to her son. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

  “Tell me what?” Yarra asked, looking at Avice who looked away.

  “I did not want to overwhelm her mom. And it wasn’t my story to tell. It is yours,” Avice spoke softly. Alicia shook her head in mild disbelief and turned her gaze to Yarra.

  Those soft, blue eyes of Alicia radiated shrewdness that was beyond logic. Yarra knew that Alicia, besides being a good leader, was a fantastic negotiator.

  Avice had told her stories about how Alicia had parlayed with a group of magicians, a hundred years ago, to leave their land alone in exchange for weapons and spells of the highest values.

  Only when the magicians left did they realize that the weapons and spells they had obtained were mere illusions.

  That day, a Vampire had trumped the magicians at their own game. It was the day that Alicia Selleck became the leader of the ‘Keepers of the Blade.’

  “It was two hundred years ago when the war between the ‘Keepers of the Blade’ and the ‘Bloodlust Clan’ broke out.

  It was the first civil war between vampires, and the factions were still more or less arbitrary. During that time, our then leader, Shaila Selleck, sought the help of an Oracle.”

  “A what?” Yarra’s eyes widened.

  “An Oracle. A soothsayer, a Seer, there are many names for it,” Jared Selleck responded. He poured himself a generous helping of bourbon and sat next to Alicia.

  His wife nodded, her brownish hair tinged in silver swaying. “The Oracle foretold everything that we needed to know about the war; where the Bloodlust Clan was going to attack, how strong their army was, their weak points, anything you can think of. The Oracle saw everything. Such was her power.”

  “She predicted the outcome of the first war between the vampires,” Yarra said, finally comprehending.

  “And mom thinks you are directly linked to the Oracle,” Avice piped up.

  Excited, Yarra turned to Alicia. “Where is the Oracle now? Can I meet her?”

  Alicia’s face darkened. “We won the war, temporarily at least, by crippling the Bloodlust Clan’s major forces with the Oracle’s help. But…”

  “But?” Yarra persisted. Her excitement was apparent. If there was a familial link to the Oracle, this mysterious soothsayer might be her next of kin. She knew from a young age that she had been brought up by foster parents.

  “The Bloodlust Clan was livid that the Oracle helped us to vanquish them,” Jared continued. “As revenge, they eradicated the Oracle and her kind. None were left alive.”

  Yarra’s earlier excitement evaporated at Jared’s sentence. She felt sick at the pit of her stomach. It was ironic, that the Oracle could predict the outcome of the war between the vampires but could not foresee her own demise.

  As the months progressed, so too did the magnitude of their relationship.

  She had not told him of her vision; the most important one.

  “It is a miracle that there is an Oracle still left alive in this world, Yarra. You are the last remaining member of your kind,” Alicia took Yarra’s hands in hers. “Please, we need you to end this war. The Bloodlust Clan is getting too strong for us, and only with your help can we see an end to them!”

  Yarra did not know what to say. Too overwhelmed to speak, she could only nod, much to Alicia, Jared and Avice’s relief.

  Chapter-6

  2 Months Ago

  They came for her when she was alone at home one night. She was talking to Avice on the phone, a pen nestled between the upper cleft of her right ear and head as she worked on an assignment.

  “Mr. Cavaler is going to kill me if I don’t submit this report tomorrow,” Yarra said. She scratched a finger on her half-written assignment, with five hundred words still to go.

  Avice’s voice was calm and soothing on the phone, like a hot afternoon’s hypnotic ambience. “It is kinda sad that you can’t get visions of your future reports. Imagine the amount of A’s you could obtain!”

  Yarra laughed. “Future vision doesn’t work that way, Avice. It sorta tells me when something important is going to happen to me, or to the people I am close to.”

  “Aren’t you able to control it better now?”

  Yarra considered Avice’s questions. It had been a few weeks since she had been granted protection by the ‘Keepers of the Blade.’ It involved discreet vampires patrolling around her dorm room in their invisible form to ensure her protection.

  Though she felt safer, her sense of privacy took a toll. Because her visions had been accidental before this, it was not dangerous. Deliberate tapping of precognition, however, left a ‘trace’ in the air. Vampires, werewolves, magicians, and other superhuman races could detect said ‘traces.’

  “Remember, only use your power when you need to. Mom said that the more you are able to control it, the more it sends a stronger ‘trace’ into the air.”

  Yarra remembered the training Alicia had given her. Though Alicia was not an Oracle, the principle of exerting power was still the same. It required the same amount of indefatigable accuracy and precision in one’s mental focus.

  Taking a deep breath, she imagined a small paper in her mind’s eye. Words in blue ink began solidifying on the white sheen, forming half of the written assignment.

  There’s where it got a little tricky. Occasionally, her visions would form by itself without any control, absent of a trajectory and an ending. That was like lighting a firecracker and waiting for it to careen into the sky before a brilliant explosion took place.

  What she had to do now was purposefully guide the paper in a slow, organized manner, into its abstract completion.

  Slowly but surely, extra pieces of words began forming on the paper to form the yet-to-be completed portion of her assignment. After the rest of the words were formed, a big red circle etched itself at the top of the paper with the word ‘A+’.

  Yarra opened her eyes in breathless excitement. The half-finished paper was still in front of her.

  “Yarra?” Avice’s voice echoed in the phone.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Just tested out my vision to see the assignment I am to submit tomorrow. A+ baby!”

  Avice laughed, though it was short-lived. “I want to ask you something.”

  “Hmm?” Yarra responded.

  She was momentarily distracted, writing down as much information as she remembered from the vision. Her grades
had been slipping as it coincided with the training provided by Alicia.

  Nowhere did it say that she could not utilize her abilities to secure good marks in college!

  “You said that you often had visions of people you love, didn’t you?” Avice began.

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever had a vision of me and you? Or about what our lives will be in years to come?”

  His question made the pen in Yarra’s hand poke through the paper. It pierced the thinness of the flimsy material. Her sentence ended prematurely as she thought of Avice’s question. Was it perhaps time to tell him the truth?