It was Avice’s turn to be quiet. Out of the corner of her eyes, Yarra saw his left hand trail along his tattoo. His hand settled below the nipple where the red handle was engraved onto his skin, before sliding upwards along the visceral, grey serrated knife. His fingers then pinched at the choker as an anchor.
Yarra knew then that she was not crazy. She had not imagined the tattoo on his body. Avice too, knew of its existence. Only, there was an unknown force acting as a barrier to prevent her from speaking of it.
She turned to him, and saw the curls of his still wet hair and water glistening on his lithe body. The shirt was on the floor, still pungent with the blood of their attackers.
Avice picked it up and gave it a little whiff. He expressed disgust at the smell and expressed his desire to throw it. Yarra could only nod. She was still shaken by the incident.
By a stroke of luck, he chose not to pursue the possibility of her clairvoyant abilities.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
Avice nodded. “Gonna pack this shirt up and throw it away.”
Before he did so, he came close to Yarra and picked her right arm. Her wrist was bruised where he had gripped her a little too strongly earlier. She winced.
“I’m sorry. I…, I just lost control of myself.”
Yarra kissed him on the cheek and patted his hand over hers. “You saved both of us. That’s all that matters.”
It was the first time in their relationship that she had felt the need to distance herself from him.
Her vision was beginning to ring into fruition. An earlier perception of his characteristics had to be completely unlearnt. Avice, just like her, harbored a dark secret.
In the shower, she let the hot water wash over her fatigued body. Sounds of fumbling could be heard coming out of the bathroom, but she ignored it.
Avice let out a groan, annoyed at something, which piqued her curiosity. Still, she chose the warmth of the shower over him. Without warning, a flash of visions inundated her mind’s eye.
In it, she saw herself moving, naked and sopping wet, towards the kitchen. The trail of water in her wake was mercurial, proof of her walking.
It was vivid to catch the gleam of the light in Avice’s apartment dorm. Yarra saw the version of herself in the vision peering into the kitchen. Mimicking her doppelganger’s actions, she too leaned in to see that which had piqued her curiosity.
Avice was on the kneeling on the floor with his nose deep in the pungent shirt he had wanted to throw away. He was sniffing at the blood spatters with a euphoric expression on his face.
Slowly, his tongue flicked at the streaks of red, and his lips and teeth sucked at the spot where the blackest red spot was settled. Dissatisfied with the scarcity of the blood, he sucked harder at the threads, wanting to liquefy the already caked blood on his matted shirt.
“A… Avice?” the Yarra in her vision asked.
Avice turned to look at her with a look of shock on his face. Yarra screamed. She did not know which Yarra screamed louder, her in the vision, or her looking in as a third person. Avice had fangs, and his eyes had an unmistakable red ruby glow.
The vision and scream faded into nothingness and Yarra found herself on the floor of the shower.
“It…, it was just a vision, girl.”
She stared at the lucid door of her bathroom. Beyond it, he was doing what she had seen in the vision. The precognition ended before she could see how Avice had reacted.
All he had done was bare his fangs at her. Would he kill her for finding out his darkest secret?
No, he would not kill her today. That was due to happen in six months. That much, Yarra was sure. She had to see this. She had to see Avice in his true form. It would answer so many unfathomable questions.
Leaving the shower to run, she inched the door of her bathroom open and walked out. The smooth marble tiles masked her squelching footsteps as she tiptoed to the kitchen.
There was a fumbling sound, intermingling with a sound of an awkward sucking of one’s teeth. Gulping, she reached the kitchen entrance. Just as the Yarra in her vision had done so, Yarra leaned a head in and peered into the kitchen.
True to her vision, there he was on the floor, sucking the remnants of the blood from his soiled shirt.
“Avice?” Yarra called out.
Her voice startled him. With a panicked grimace, he looked up and bared his fangs at her. Four pointed, sharp canines capable of puncturing through metal with perfect ease if he wanted to.
It seemed to gleam at the pointy apex of his teeth. His eyes, just as she had seen it in the vision, were ruby-red, gleaming in rapturous radiance.
Yarra did not scream like the person in her future vision. Instead, she stepped into the kitchen, water dripping down from her body, alternating with a sudden inundation of nervous sweat.
Heart threatening to burst forth from her chest, she took one small step forward to gauge his reaction. He did not jump at her like he did their attackers. Instead, he snarled and cracked his knuckles.
“What… what are you?” Yarra stammered.
Yarra’s understanding of the universe she once knew had completely vanished. She learned that in so far as supernatural abilities which transcended normal human capabilities went, she was not the only one.
In fact, her power of precognition was only one of the many various forms found in others.
Avice was a vampire. When she found him sucking on the blood of the shirt on the kitchen floor that night, he had broken down in front of her.
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 believe 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.
In Love with the Enemy (A Rizer Wolfpack Series Book 4) Page 34
