by Rain Oxford
* * *
I did actually nod off a few times, but because I was in the presence of a stranger, my survival instincts caused me to wake at every sound. When I finally got a few minutes of sleep, I was awoken by a slight vibration against my cheek and sat up as best as I could.
The number displayed on the small screen wasn’t one I recognized. I rejected the call and texted instead.
I can’t talk now. Who are you?
You forgot me already?
How did you get my number, Logan?
I stole it. Where are you? I didn’t see you get out.
The counselor arrived before I got out.
I’ll be there in ten minutes.
There’s no point. I can’t go out in the sunlight.
I’ll take care of it.
What does he mean by that? A few minutes later, the fire alarm went off.
Dr. Brian rustled some papers before he opened the door and left. I tried to stand up, but the window blinds were wide open.
I heard them being closed a moment later. “You can come out now,” Logan said.
I sighed and stood. “Thanks.”
“Thank me later. Right now, we need to get out of here.”
“I have to get something first.” I went to the cabinet again and started searching for the files. “Crap. They’re gone.”
“What is?”
“The counselor had files on all of the missing kids.”
“Maybe he knew the files were touched. Either way, we don’t have time.” The words were barely out of his mouth when the alarm fell silent. I tried to search the desk, but he wrapped me in a large comforter. The last thing I saw was a letter on the counselor’s desk with his home address on it. “It looks like I’m going to have to carry you out of here like a damsel in distress.”
I didn’t argue as he picked me up and started walking out. I could go back for it, and I definitely didn’t want to be dropped outside in the sunlight. Fortunately, his hold was perfectly steady. He sat me down in his car, wrapped the seatbelt around me, shut the door, and got in.
“Don’t let the comforter slip; there is no smoking allowed in my car.”
The silence that followed was rather comfortable. No matter how suspicious he acted, there was no doubt he had just helped me. “Thanks, by the way,” I said after a few minutes. “I owe you one.”
“We’ll see,” he said ambiguously. “Tell me what happened after you realized the Foxes were still after you.”
* * *
I ran away before I could be sent back to a group home and tried to survive on the streets. I was pretty bad at it, though; I didn’t know how to steal, find shelter, or beg. One night, I was sitting outside of a grocery store, about to break in, when a man approached me. I didn’t think anything of it until he grabbed me. He was so much faster than anyone I had met and easily shoved me against the brick wall.
I was a skinny, young girl, but he shouldn’t have been able to throw me around like he did. Even at that age, I could tell there was something not human about him. He was like an angry animal, completely out of control.
“Stop!” someone shouted behind him. “Let her go.” He was suddenly jerked away from me and his grip was broken. Standing in his place was a girl no older than me. She wasn’t afraid even when the man growled at her, baring very sharp fangs. “I’m sorry he scared you,” she said soothingly, ignoring him. “He doesn’t have a lot of control over himself.”
This seemed to snap the man out of his anger.
“What are you doing out here at night?” the girl asked. “Humans your age should be home, in bed.”
“I don’t… have a home. There are some people after me. It’s too dangerous to be near me.”
There was something in her brown eyes that I recognized. Despite the blood in her long, wavy, dark brown hair, I didn’t fear her. I felt like she had been through something terrible and she needed friendship.
After a moment, she nodded. “I’ve been there. You can stay with us.”
“What?!” the man asked. “A human can’t stay with us!”
“Shut up,” she told him. “Don’t worry; I won’t let him bite you. I’m Astrid, by the way, and this is Cody.”
“I can’t go with you. You’re a paranormal, right?”
“You know about us?”
“There are paranormal hunters after me.”
She frowned, pushed me gently against the wall, leaned in, and sniffed my neck. It sent a tingle down my spine, though it wasn’t a bad sensation. “You’re human,” she said.
“I know, but they thought my dad was involved with them. Is your friend a vampire?” I asked, trying not to look at Cody.
“Yes, and so am I. Does that scare you?”
I shrugged, not really sure. I was more afraid of Joshua and Janet. “You’re not safe around me.” She put her hands on my shoulders and looked deeply into my eyes. I noticed her eyes turn purple before my thoughts became fuzzy, like I was half-asleep.
“Come with us. We’ll protect you,” she said. It didn’t occur to me to argue. She took my hand and led me down the street while the man followed at a distance. “What’s your name?” Astrid asked gently.
“Aurora.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
Her compliment made me blush and we walked the rest of the way in silence. Astrid and Cody lived in a small apartment complex. When Astrid entered, I hesitated until Cody growled at me. Startled, I ran inside and ducked behind Astrid.
The living room was small with just a couch and thick curtains over the windows. A breakfast bar divided the living room and kitchen.
She laughed. “Don’t be afraid. He’s not going to hurt you.”
“He’s a vampire. Doesn’t he want to eat me?”
Cody growled, walked around us, and went into the kitchen. “I don’t feed on children.”
“He was only turned a few months ago, and he’s not handling it well.”
“I’m handling it fine!” Cody yelled, crushing a ceramic mug in his hand and splattering blood everywhere. It took me a few seconds to realize that the mug had been full of blood, not that it had cut him. I shuddered, praying that I wasn’t next on the menu. I still didn’t understand why I had agreed to go home with two vampires in the first place.
Astrid ignored it. “I was born a vampire, so I don’t know what he’s going through. He’s okay about half the time, but he keeps getting really angry. He keeps seeing himself kill people in his dreams and thinks it’s real.”
“Was he attacked and turned in a dark alley at night?”
“No. I’m the one who turned him, and I’ll never do it to anyone again. He hates me.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“He was dying from a car accident.”
Suddenly right behind her, Cody hugged her. “I don’t hate you for saving me.” He let her go. “You can use my room; I don’t sleep much,” he said to me.
“No, I don’t want to be a burden.”
“I was a cop before my life was taken. It goes against my nature not to call CPS.”
“Human nature,” Astrid corrected. Cody growled and bared his fangs at her. Astrid rolled her eyes.
So, I spent the night. When I woke, Astrid was making bacon, eggs, and pancakes. “You can eat food?” I asked.
“I can, I just don’t need it,” she said, fixing up two plates. “I like having an excuse to make food, though. I learned to cook very recently.”
“Are your parents vampires?”
Her mood darkened slightly as she set the plates down on the breakfast bar. “I don’t have parents. I had a grandfather, but he died.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. He was a horrible man. He wasn’t a vampire. We lived in Alaska, where he kept me in silver shackles, brought me blood in bottles, and never let me leave the house. If I disobeyed, he fed me from a bloody rag. I went years without seeing another person other than my grandfather. He left every day at sunset, so one nig
ht, I got out of the shackles and went into town. I just wanted to see what the outside world was like.”
“Was it exciting?”
“Not really. I didn’t really know how to interact with people. It was okay until I ran into a fight and smelled fresh blood. I’m not really sure how I made it back, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor of my cabin. My grandfather was there, packing. He said that I exposed us and we had to leave before the humans attacked.”
“That really sucks. So, you never had a friend before?”
“Actually, we moved to a place not far from here and my next door neighbor became my first friend. I also found a wolf pup that I raised until my grandfather killed her.”
After a few days, I figured out the routine and Cody warmed up to me. Well… somewhat. It didn’t matter if I was awake in the day or night, because Astrid always left at night. I wasn’t sure why; she only told me that she had to protect someone. Cody was very friendly sometimes, but he often became violently angry or had fits of terrible guilt. He had a problem letting go of his career as a police officer and still wanted to help people, but the risk of biting someone was too great.
When she was around, Astrid helped me learn to survive on my own, and Cody taught me to cover my tracks. After a couple of months, it got to be too much for all of us. Astrid had some serious issues to work through, Cody was struggling to maintain his humanity, and I had a father to find. I used the skills Astrid taught me and spent the next three years looking for my dad.
During that time, I learned a lot about the paranormal world, since the Foxes were so certain my father was a part of it. I never found out what my father was working on when he went missing, but I did discover that he was very much involved with paranormals.
I did as much traveling as I could in order to talk to the paranormals my father worked with. The most important skill Astrid had taught me was to either use my weaknesses to my advantage, or overcome them. As a little girl on the street, I was able to get food from sympathetic strangers. In order to get information on my father, I let on that I was his daughter.
Through trial and error, I learned how to act in the paranormal community. With most wizards, I pretended to be helpless and naïve, thereby encouraging them to talk openly around me about my father and what he did for them. With vampires and shifters, I acted like I already knew everything and I belonged in the paranormal community. Although I was an outsider to them, I was treated with respect rather than pity.
My father, though human, helped all paranormals. For the wizards, he invented ways to protect powerful items, translated ancient texts, and was a genius with potions. Some wizards expected me to take over my father’s work and tried to send me to the wizard council, but I managed to avoid meeting the council members themselves. I had heard from paranormals that all of the wizards on the council were corrupt.
Pack shifters were the most welcoming, because they valued family and to them, family wasn’t just blood relatives. My father helped a number of packs using magic he got from the wizards. Although none of them were willing to tell me exactly what my father did for them, they did treat me as a valued friend because of him. They taught me a lot about shifters and were willing to work with other packs in order to find my father. Unfortunately, they didn’t get very far. As far as they could tell, my father vanished into thin air. He had a lot of trusted shifter friends, but none of them had heard from him since he disappeared.
My father had helped vampires as well, against the orders of wizards. In secret, he worked to create protection from the sunlight. When wizards created a poison that worked on vampires, my father created an antidote and then helped the vampires break into the council to destroy the poison.
I learned that he had created a synthetic blood for vampires, but wizards found out and destroyed my father’s lab. How they found out, nobody knew. This was right before our sudden relocation from California to the East Coast, which, ironically, was closer to the wizard council.
I soon became an enemy of the wizard council, for they didn’t like humans knowing about them. Furthermore, they wanted me to continue my father’s project, but they didn’t want to tell me what it was.
When I was fifteen, I was staying with a cheetah shifter named Nick in a nice little house in the woods. We argued one night because he wanted me to return to school, but we didn’t have enough money and I couldn’t use my real name. I spent many of my days in the library, reading books, so I didn’t fall behind academically. I really did like school and learning. I was my father’s daughter, after all.
The next morning, I snuck out before he woke so that I could get some books on receiving a GED. To my horror, I returned home to find Nick missing and the house destroyed. The Foxes had found me. For two weeks, I barely evaded them. Then one night, while I was starting to fall asleep on a park bench, I heard a familiar voice. “I see you’re managing well,” Astrid said.
I jumped up with surprise. Astrid was obviously doing well. Her hair was long and clean of blood, her skin was still pale, but not deathly so, and she looked like she was eating better. “Your eyes are green.”
“I got tired of brown.” She sat down, grabbed my arm, and made me sit next to her. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
I sighed and told Astrid what happened since I left. Afterwards, she told me what happened to her and Cody. I was happy to learn that she and Cody had been taken into a coven. Cody was especially benefitting from having a real coven.
“Come with us. Stephen is the coven master and he is the most powerful vampire in all of North America. I heard he was more than a thousand years old. He can protect you. Plus, he probably has enough power to help you find your father.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to bring trouble into your home.”
“Just agree; it’ll save you a lot of time.”
“Why do you want to help me so badly?”
“Because we’re alike.”
“What do you mean? I’m not a vampire.”
“You stayed away from humans because you don’t want them getting hurt. It’s dangerous for humans to be around you. I hurt the only person who really cared about me, but I can’t hurt you because you don’t have anyone you care about.”
“That’s… depressing.” I let her take me home with her for the second time, kind of like a stray puppy. Fortunately, Stephen Yocum, who I had heard quite a lot about by that point, was a kind and fair man. He didn’t even hesitate to let me stay, although it might have been because Astrid vouched for me or possibly because his daughter wanted another friend.
Stephen also knew my father, for they met soon after we moved to the East Coast. Stephen believed that my father and I moved closer to the council because they promised to protect us in exchange for my dad working on a project for them. Unfortunately, Stephen didn’t know what the project was.
So, I spent the next five years in a mansion full of vampires. I wasn’t the only human there, for some vampires had human spouses, but I was the youngest by far. Some of them wanted to kill me, some wanted to protect me. Some of them missed their families or never had one and I became the delicate, helpless little sister they needed. They taught me to fight off vampires and shifters. I was a human, so I wasn’t as strong or fast as a vampire, I didn’t have claws or fangs like shifters, and I didn’t have magic like wizards. The vampires taught me ways around that. Everyone had weaknesses.
Vampire hierarchy was more complicated than pack shifter hierarchy. Shifters had an alpha and the alpha’s mate at the top, then their children, then the alpha’s second, who was usually a blood relative, and then everyone else were just pack members. Thus, the only way a regular pack member could take over the pack was to kill the alpha and either marry the alpha’s mate or kill the alpha’s entire family. Because of this, there wasn’t much fighting for position.
Vampires didn’t have a pack mentality
or loyalty to their leader, but a lot of them lived in covens for safety and protection against the other paranormals. Thus, a vampire only retained control by being the toughest bastard in the land. Stephen, being the master of a ridiculously large coven, ran things differently than other vampire masters. His daughter, Clara, was his only known family, although he treated a number of vampires like family. Everyone in the mansion had a job.
Stephen’s most honorable group was the sentries, who were highly trained in fighting and guarded everyone who lived at the mansion. An even more elusive group was the spies, which mostly consisted of humans and children. When a human is turned into a vampire, they stop aging. When a vampire is born, they age like a human until they are physically an adult, and then they stop. Unfortunately, sometimes children were turned and became stuck. It was fairly easy for vampire children to worm their way into another coven and keep Stephen informed.
I was put in the spy group. Since I was human, I was often bait for Stephen to keep track of rogue vampires and shifters. For my first assignment, a family of six vampires moved into Stephen’s territory and started killing humans. Stephen sent me in to get caught, which I did, and they brought me back to their small nest. Little did they know, five of Stephen’s sentries were tracking me. They easily saved me and wiped out the intruders.
More than anything, this job taught me about the weaknesses of paranormals. Shifters and vampires could be burned by silver, but only with blood contact. Although vampires could be killed from exposure to sunlight, they didn’t pass out when the sun rose like some of the humans thought. Shifters had some of the strengths and weaknesses that their animal counterparts had. If I knew enough about the animal they changed into, I could use that to my advantage. If all else failed, they were completely exposed while they were shifting.
It was harder to fight wizards, and the vampires warned me not to even try to fight fae. Fortunately, fae were very peaceful as long as I didn’t threaten their tribe or territory. With wizards, I learned it was better to make very powerful friends and turn my enemies against each other.
