by brett hicks
Seraphina bit her lip lightly and she studied the giant Atlas.
“Are you telling me that there was another species higher up the food-chain? That whatever Thea—that is Atlantis’ name by the way—is, was not created by the Alchemists? That she is derived from something even more ancient?”
He nodded and I frowned.
“I thought you just said that my parents were from the Ancient Blood Clan that we knew as the Alchemists.”
The giant man made a deep rumbling sound of frustration.
“I was attempting to give you a much-abbreviated explanation, so you wouldn’t smite me, my Lady. The answer is, they were, but they weren’t. The ones you people call “Alchemists” are replicated artificially from strands of Morrigan’s DNA. They were a sub-species of the Ancient Blood Clan, but they were technically considered more than the inhuman races birthed right after them. The Alchemist species was charged with Loki’s research and guarding his investments.”
“Loki?! You mean like Loki the trickster Norse God?! Let me guess, Pandora didn’t really have a box either, but she did release all the daemons onto the earth?!”
He waved me off with a massive hand in dismissal.
“Nonsense, that was Persephone in her bid to flee Hades and in so doing, sundered the veil between worlds.”
I ran my fingers through my head and ruffled my hair while growling in frustration.
“This is all so crazy it belongs in its own special ward of a sanitarium!”
Vivian spoke up for the first time since entering.
“Princess, many mortals were locked away for saying they saw faeries. Clearly, we do exist, unless you’re going to try to will me out of existence?”
Liam sarcastically murmured, “Don’t give her any dodgy ideas Vivi.”
Bix snorted and blandly put in, “He’s just scared she’ll accidentally obliterate is manhood in the process.”
“Hey, you make it sound as though my dangly bits are of no concern of yours!”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. I looked over my shoulder and narrowed my eyes to slits.
“I will be the first one to jump into this and help you chap Liam’s ass after we finish discussing my apparently long-dead family!”
Bix and Vivi had the grace to look slightly flushed with embarrassment. Liam just smiled like the bloody devil he was!
“You sure yer kin is ok with you playing with me arse lassie?”
My narrowed eyes glowed with my power and Liam raised his palms in surrender.
“Ok, too far, sorry Thea, shite woman!”
I turned back to look at Atlas and I heard the “uff” and what must have been the sound of Bix elbowing Liam in one of his very few soft spots. Any other day, any other time, I would have jumped in head first and relished in the inhuman shenanigans. I was just not in much of a reveling mood right now.
“So, you were saying…”
I waved Atlas on in what I hoped was an encouraging manner. Atlas cleared his throat with a loud noise.
“Loki betrayed your mother and in so doing, he fled with a lot of her alchemical experiments. By the time she caught up with him, the war was upon us and the Draugr was at our literal doorstep. Her final act was to bury the city and lock her new-born daughter into stasis with Nox’s most loyal and faithful servant—me.”
I blinked several times and my mind was in a very distant land.
“How did they…”
He shook his head and shrugged his huge shoulders.
“I do not know my Lady, only that they are in fact dead now. Your father, Nox, would never have lost his metaphysical tether to me unless he was destroyed completely. The fact that my bond has shifted to you, his child, is proof that you are now the ruler of all the Ancient Blood Clan and the rightful heir to the throne of this entire planet. The throne the Draugr stole from your family.”
My eyes flicked to my girlfriend, who was doing a very good impression of a rock. She was impassive and unmoving. Her posture was poised and her expression gave nothing away.
“Um, Seri, do you have anything you care to share with the class? Is any of this true?”
She looked me in the eyes and I saw the endless pit of her confusion.
“I’m only three-hundred years old sweetheart, I have no idea what happened before the rise of the inhuman kind. I have long suspected that my father was not the benevolent savior he has painted himself to be. That is because I know him. I know what he is capable of and none of this truly shocks me. It bothers me, yes, but none of this sounds false. We should dig and see how much of this account tracks with the records we pieced together our vast histories. And then we can see where that leads us.”
Moods were dark and heavy in my apartment. Liam was drinking like a fish and the rest of us seemed to be playing catch-up now. We were interrupted by a crashing sound in one of my guest rooms.
Skylar!
Three:
He woke in a fit of thirst as if he had been left in the desert for days without water and survived!
The world spun into colors so bright and vivid that he found himself tumbling and his head smacked against an overturned wooden table next to the bed he had been on sleeping.
Where am I? Why the hell am I even alive?!
He thought to himself and he studied his surroundings. Skylar could smell heady deep scents with multiple layers all around him. His ears split with a dull throb of the cacophony of sounds around him and his head smarted from the table.
“Sky!”
He heard the unmistakable voice of his sort-of partner. Amber eyes beheld him with steep worry and no shortage of guilt. He felt her, her magic and the tempest of powers that had been completely hidden to him until now. She was like a force of nature in a slim and slender figure. Thea Salvo was kneeling down next to him and she touched his left cheek gingerly.
“How are you feeling?”
Her question sounded odd to him somehow. He looked up at her and frowned, forgetting his thirst for just a moment. Something inside him seemed to pull him toward her, but it was not a sexual attraction. He felt drawn as if she possessed a magnetic quality.
“Th…thirsty.”
He managed to croak out through the sand-paper-like throat. Thea’s eyes held deep comprehension.
“Liam, can you fetch the blood?”
She looked behind her to a figure leaning against the door-frame. The figure was gone as if a vapor of a fleeting memory. Skylar blinked and his gaze turned back to Thea. He felt his right hand traveling down his chest and his stomach. He was wearing a shirt that smelled like it had just come from a department store.
He felt under the shirt and nothing but a slight devoted spot in his gut remained. All the damage he very vividly recalled taking was gone. Skylar was no rocket scientist, but he could do the math. She had taken him to what seemed to be her home; a home he knew was off-limits to all humans. Not to mention his thirst, he knew that Thea had to have doe soothing to him, had to have changed him.
“Water…”
She nodded and whispered to him.
“Soon, you need to drink first.”
As if her words had conjured the man with the sandy-blonde hair, Liam, he appeared at Thea’s side. He handed her a plastic bottle that had the label of the blood company Hemo-Type on it.
“This better be the real stuff Liam, it’s his first time.”
Liam chuckled lightly and said, “You make that sound so dirty lassie.”
Thea spared him a narrow-eyed glance and her look told that she was not amused.
“Relax little princess, this is type-A. Your favorite, if I recall correctly.”
“Like you forget anything, you stupid silly man!”
She snarked back at Liam and he shrugged casually as if unwilling to deny the validity of her statement. Their exchange would have been much more amusing to Skylar if he was not so damn thirsty!
“Here, drink this and just try not to think about it too much. Trust me Sky, you need this.”
Thea’s eyes held a depth of sincerity and Skylar took the bottle from her and he began to unscrew the cap with trembling hands. Thea touched her hand to his to help steady him.
“Easy, be still and just take everything slowly Sky.”
Her tone was like a maternal blanket of warmth to his addled mind. He felt soothed and comforted to his very soul with her words.
“Drink.”
She repeated one more time, softer still.
Skylar put the bottle to his mouth and he almost gagged, knowing very well what the deeply crimson fluid was. His lips touched the first of the red liquid and it was like fire and flavor shot through that one drop and surged through him.
He turned the bottle p and he began to gulp it greedily. Fire and warmth saturated him and he felt his gut heat in a very pleasant manner.
“Well, it seems like he likes it. Your first time is like liquid sex, right kid?”
“Liam you will not be perverting and corrupting my first sired vampire!”
Liam chortled in amusement and sniffed in mock-insult at the accusation.
“He’s technically not a vampire, he’s a Dhampire. For some odd reason, your body likes making day walkers. Hell, even your damn revenant walks in the sun!”
“Yeah, I know, she was pretty stoked about that, considering how just about every other revenant ever has to avoid the sun as much as possible.”
Thea turned her attention back to Skylar and her concerned eyes landed on his.
“So, I died?”
He heard himself asking in a nearly hoarse tone. Thea shook her head and waggled her hand back and forth.
“Almost but not quite. My blood sustained you and you managed to heal, but I had to change you to keep your body alive long enough to regenerate the fatal damage.”
Skylar frowned and he snapped up quickly, still struggling with the rush of the blood he had just drunk. His body flooded with worry and dread.
“Where are my dad and my mom? They must be livid!”
Thea nipped at her lip absently for a moment and she huffed out a calming breath.
“I think you can call them and I can take you down to the café on the first floor. However, I am not letting you outside amongst the general populace for a few days. Trust me; I know how the blood cravings slam into you at first. You will view most mortals as meals on wheels.”
Mortals
The way she spoke about the species he had been born to was still alien to him. Thea herself had been raised a human, not knowing of the great powers hidden inside her. Even still, she was hardly ever human, her mind and point of view had always been detached from the perspective of a “normal” person’s.
“That sounds good to me. I have to see my mom and make sure she’s ok.”
Skylar looked at Thea’s thoughtful expression and he noticed her doubts, worries, and her sadness. There was something she was holding back from him, but his mind was still too fuzzy to latch on to anything potentially confrontational.
Liam hung close by and Skylar was not naïve enough to mistake his watchfulness for concern. Liam was more concerned with Skylar himself like he was a bomb waiting to explode. Skylar new next to nothing about the process of becoming a vampire, or whatever Thea had turned him into.
His mind was a garbled mess and his thoughts were still much unfocused. He was not used to feeling so mentally impaired nor did he particularly like the experience. Skylar never drank more than a few drinks in a single night for this same principle. He loathed being out of control of his own body and he had been raised to keep a tight grip on his mind and emotions.
“I’m going to go see to our guest Liam; can you please stay with Sky while I’m gone? Also, your cell phone is on the other table across from the bed Sky. I’m sure you’re going to want to call your mom.”
Thea said and he nodded almost absently to her. His thoughts were still muddled and he could barely seem to keep focused like he was doped up after some small medical procedure.
He vividly felt Thea’s retreat this time, as though the extra blanket of warmth around him was pulled free. He shivered and wrapped his hands around himself. Liam walked over and seated himself on the other end of the bed and he tossed Skylar’s black iPhone to him.
“Now, now lad, you’ll feel right as rain in a few days. This is just the whiplash-effect of going from mortal, to immortal in nearly no time at all.”
“Why do I feel so cold?”
His words were weaker than he would have imagined possible.
“Because your core body temperature has been in flux during the transition. Since there is no president on a human changing to a Dhampire, we can only guess with your case.”
Skylar’s heart thumped faster at this pronouncement.
“You mean this is not normal?!”
Liam heard the raw edge of panic in the other man’s tone and he slapped a friendly hand on his shoulder.
“Easy there lad, I’m just saying that Dhampires are typically born, not made. But, our girl Thea is not exactly your average Necrovamp.”
Skylar furrowed his brows and nodded in agreement.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that much. What’s so different about my transition? Liam, please just tell me.”
Liam sighed and said, “Your mistress, Thea, is the daughter of a being we all knew as a Night God. So, she has all the similar powers of darkness and death as any vampire and necromancer, but she is more, lad. I would not be afraid of this son. She is powerful and her blood—a lot of it—runs through your veins. I would dare say you are the bloody closest thing to a Night Demigod anyone has seen in over three-thousand years. That might, however, make for a more… interesting transition for you.”
Skylar slunk back and tucked his legs up to his knees.
“Shit, I get shot and it seems like the whole world turns upside-down.”
Liam snorted derisively and grunted.
“Aye, just you wait until we catch you up on all the other comings and goings of the day, lad.”
Skylar looked at Liam and the other man held up his hands and shook his head animatedly.
“Oh, bloody hell; no I am not going to be the one to tell you everything! I’ll leave that your yer mistress.”
Skylar frowned deeply at Liam.
“Why do you keep calling her my mistress?”
Liam snorted again and plainly put in, ‘Because she is like your vampire mummy, she is! You think you have it rough with your mortal parents looking over your shoulder, well now ye have an immortal one who will always be connected to you. I am sure you felt the bond with her boy; I saw how you acted with her. Didn’t know if ye wanted suckle of her tit or to cuddle in her lap, did ye?”
Liam chuckled, even as a hiss sounded from the door and Skylar looked over to see amber eyes burning twin holes in Liam’s head. Lasers were less painful to stare into than those multi-tone red eyes of Thea’s.
“If you’re filling my first fledgling’s head full of shit Liam, I am going to beat the piss out of you and then give you over to Bix.”
Liam’s eyes widened and he sniffed in indignation.
“Just clobber me then, no need to get bloody grotesque lassie! That woman might truly string me up by my bloody sack, then beat me fer not getting hard at the sight of her!”
Skylar didn’t know what to do with that graphic picture painted into his head. Thea made a low growling sound and she pointed to the door and Liam soon vanished in a blur of movement.
“Call your mom. I promised her I would have you call home the second you were able to do so. This has been a rough couple of days for everyone and I will catch you up once she has seen you. I might not agree with your family on many things, but I will not keep you from them, Sky.”
With that, Skylar was left to wonder about what was eating at his Necrovamp friend and sire.
Four:
Wild horses would have been more fun than hosting a Johnson family powwow in my apartment building.
The Magical Beans coffee shop was run by a pair of very hyper nixies, like five-five female fairies who have large pixie wings, the distant and larger cosines to the small pixie fairies. Each has multi-tone purple and blue long hair in matching patterns—yes naturally. They are a pair of twins and now they have taken the role of keeping our denizens caffeinated to the high heavens. Apparently, inhumans are as addicted to their caffeine beverages as any mortal ever has been. Heaven knows that nothing could ever go awry with caffeine and fairies, nope nothing!
Unlike your typical Starbucks, our coffee shop looked like pixies exploded all over the place. Glitter, streamers and even a few stray birthday signs littered the ceiling. The carpet was a mind-bending tie-dye. So, maybe pixies obsessed with birthdays and the sixties exploded?
There were sofas, armchairs, and standard wooden tables and chairs. Much to the dismay of my lovely redheaded princess, this shop was deemed off-limits to her decorating tastes. My nixies had loved me ever since I agreed to let them have their creative interpretation of what they thought a modern café was supposed to look like.
“It’s like someone warped time and sown a seeded dimension of the sixties into the side of the apartment first floor.”
I snorted and I grinned brightly at Skylar’s comment. I could feel Seri’s dismay and Liam’s silent humor at her abject horror. Bix was a fae, so she didn’t mind the décor.
“Never let it be said that I am a conformist.”
I snarked and my girlfriend huffed her objections. She was like a compulsive decorator when she had nothing better to do. Seri was very much the girlish half of our duo. I stroked my hand down her back and I leaned into her sweet fragrant skin.
“Go get a seat; I’ll bring our beverages with me. Do you want something to eat?”
