by Neha Yazmin
She called me forward again but I shook my head. “Come on honey,” she pouted. “I haven’t fought a vampire in years. Let me have some fun. And I just want to prove to you, a vampire, and a-” she stopped and changed tack. “Don’t you want to see an ex-Slayer in action? Don’t you want to see how difficult it would be for a vampire to try and bite me whilst we fought? You’re not even a little curious?”
My curiosity got the better of me and I succumbed to her challenge.
“Now that’s a good girl,” she approved. “Remember, your main aim will be to try and bite me. Any part of my body you can sink your fangs into.”
We bowed to each other on the karate mat and then took a couple of steps back. Circling each other as though in a boxing ring, we contemplated which move to attack with first. I’d never battled another human or vampire, so I didn’t have the skills of someone who had trained to be a Slayer, hunted vampires since she was 15. But I was strong and quick, and since vampires are predators, fighting is instinctive to us.
Still, I would go easy on her.
Unbelievably, I only managed to get a couple of kicks at her sides and one punch to her gut. Damn, she was fast! And she was right; I was too busy trying not to get hit - because her hits did slow me down a little - to have any time to try and bite her. Each time I lurched forward, as quick as I could, aiming for her neck, she either moved out of the way or hit me in the gut.
She made sure to only attack me from the neck down, keeping her arms and hands a safe distance away from my teeth. Clever, because if she tried to slap me or punch me in the face, I’d have had my fangs in her skin in the same millisecond.
To human spectators, I suspect we looked like two blurs dancing around each other, going in and out of focus as we moved at incredible speeds, rather than mother and daughter in combat.
If I really asserted myself, I think I could have defeated her quite easily, but it wasn’t about winning or losing. She just wanted me to know that her blood was only secondary protection from vampires. She was equipped with everything she needed to kill them without it.
“Incredible,” I whispered as we sat ourselves down on the mat afterwards. She was panting but I wasn’t. Vampires don’t tire. “All this time I’ve been wrongly thinking that we’re invincible. That no human could end us.”
“But there’s only ever one Slayer,” she reminded me, her mood subdued. “One amongst the thousands of them, and that’s just the agents of The System. It doesn’t include the nomads, the roamers. Only one Slayer for each generation. That’s hardly enough.” She seemed so regretful of this.
In her eyes, I could see the desire to want to clone herself, or split herself into a million pieces, if only she could rid the world of my kind. I realised I had the same desire. Us vampires are killers, monsters. We feed from the innocent and don’t give it a single thought.
We shouldn’t exist.
“Back to the story,” she said a few quiet, contemplative moments later. “So I always knew I was going to be the Slayer. Gave up my childhood in preparation for it. I loved it though. The training, the planning of the missions, the tracking and luring of vampires to their death. The years didn’t pass quick enough for me. I wanted to be 18 as soon as possible and finally get all my powers. Or rather, have my existing abilities enhanced and at their optimum.
“When my 18th birthday arrived, I loved the present I received. At last, I could go patrolling by myself, battle any new vamp in town, investigate missing persons and trace it back to the monster that killed her. Each time I annihilated one, I got this amazing buzz. There’s nothing like it. It made me stronger and faster.
“I met David on one of my patrols.”
My eyes widened. Of course, she never told me this part, or disclosed the details of her relationship with him. I just assumed they’d had a fling and he left when she got pregnant with me. Thinking about it, I realised that she hadn’t actually told me anything more than his name and where he was, and that he wasn’t worth my asking about the kind of person he was.
My teenaged mind had filled in all the gaps with my assumptions and fantasies.
“I saved him from a female vampire who had picked him up at a bar and taken him back to her place,” mum informed me methodically. “I followed them inside the house and pulled her off him just as she was about to bite him. I knocked him unconscious during the process - as you’ve seen, I am quite strong - and he only came around after I’d chopped the vampire and thrown the pieces into her own fireplace.”
Mum’s face suddenly went red and my quick mind figured out why. Killing vampires gave her a buzz. A high. David was confused and wondering what happened to the beautiful woman he’d just pulled and who this other one was. But not confused enough to refuse her when she wanted to… because she got a little…
Ugh! Thinking about mum in this light was truly grotesque. Too much information! Yet, I could totally understand her reckless behaviour. I’d been just as reckless with Christian.
When you’re turned on, you’re turned on.
Hunting vampires was an aphrodisiac for her, just like my fear, combined with Christian’s scent, acted like an aphrodisiac for me.
“Of course we were careful,” mum murmured, realising that I’d figured it all out by myself. “I made it clear it was just a one night thing and he didn’t argue. We never saw each other again. But six weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. With a daughter.” There was an edge to her voice when she said daughter.
“What, you were hoping for a boy?” I joked.
“I am a descendent of a long line of female Slayers,” she said slowly.
“But you said only one Slayer per generation…”
“Yes. Only the Slayer’s first daughter inherits her mother’s powers. As soon as she is born, her mother is no longer the Slayer - the daughter is. I wasn’t my mother’s first child but I was her first daughter. And you are mine.”
I couldn’t get my head around it. I am… I am… Well, I was…
The Slayer.
Chapter 10: The Council
It all made sense and at the same time it didn’t. Well, it stops making sense at the part where a Poison Blood, the Slayer, becomes the very thing she is destined to slay: a vampire.
“It hadn’t been a year since I got my powers, and I could feel them diminishing,” my mother murmured. “We couldn’t figure out why; we’re supposed to get stronger with time, with each new kill. Then I noticed the other signs… I did a pregnancy test and it was positive.
“Whenever the Slayer decides to have children, everyone prays that her first-born is a girl. We need a Slayer as soon as possible. Every preparation is made for the potential 18 years when we won’t have a Slayer. So we can still protect as many people as possible while the next Slayer grows up. But with me-”
“I was an accident,” I’d interrupted. And a bigger, more tragic, mistake than I once thought. “I’m sorry,” I found myself saying before I could help it. “All those lives-”
“Now stop right there, Elisia!” she scolded me. “It wasn’t the first time a Slayer had an unplanned pregnancy. And it sure as hell won’t be the la-” She stopped before she completed a sentence she must have repeated many times when she found out she was pregnant with me.
Only then, she didn’t know that she would actually go on to become the last Slayer to have an unplanned pregnancy. That she would be the last Slayer to get pregnant, ever. I was the last Slayer.
The poison bloodline ended with me.
Because I’d been stupid enough to fall for the charms of a vampire.
“None of it was your fault,” she told me firmly. “And I don’t think of it as a mistake, Ellie. You were never a mistake. Please believe me?” she pleaded. She knows I have always thought of myself as her mistake. “You are so special, you know that? Why would I think it a mistake to have you? That’s why I was so protective of you.”
This reminded me. “How come The System waited so long to come after me?”
It was clear why they wanted me dead - the Slayer was their main enemy. And, Christian had lied about not working for them. Nonetheless, it would have been easier to deal with me when I was a child, right? When I was completely defenceless.
“They didn’t know you existed,” she answered. “Soon after I learned I was pregnant, I went underground. We faked my death, made it seem I’d gotten myself killed and that the poison bloodline ended with me. They searched for years, but I was well-protected, well-hidden, and eventually, The System celebrated the end of the last Slayer.
“Living in a safe-house though, I realised that was no way for a child to live. I thought back to my own upbringing and how much I’d missed out. My whole childhood was spent learning about vampires, training, hunting. It was okay in one sense - I was doing it for a good cause, to be the best Slayer I could be. But my reign ended so soon and I could never have my youth back. That’s what made me decide that I didn’t want that life for you-”
“You didn’t want me to be-”
“No, no,” she assured me, shaking her head. “I just wanted you to have a real childhood, a normal life. Go to school, have friends, learn who you are and as much about the world as possible, before you sacrificed it all for your destiny. I didn’t want you to have the same regrets I was having. I wanted you to have the best of both worlds, since it was possible now.
“In my opinion, the vamps thought I was dead and had left behind no descendent to carry my line or follow in my footsteps. If I changed my identity, moved somewhere new, we could both have 18 years of peace and normality. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to make it happen.
“I got back in contact with Jake, told him that I had a little daughter and if he still loved me and wanted to be with me, he could. On the one condition that he would never ask where I was the past few years. I was lucky. He loved me enough that he agreed.”
“Why don’t I remember any of this?”
“You were too young,” she told me hastily. I could tell she was hiding something, but not necessarily that she had been lying up until then. I let it go because I didn’t want to interrupt the story. “So you and dad got married, moved to Reading…”
“And everything went fine. We ensured that our new house was well protected, we always had the others watching us. You, most of all. Ellie, I made sure you were watched almost every second of the day. When you were at school and college, we let our guard down a little. There was no reason to suspect that anything would happen in broad daylight, with all the crowds of children.
“I know you still felt suffocated, but it was better than if we stayed underground. Better than how it was when I was a child and I knew people were watching me. Knew the people who were following me everywhere. You just thought it was me the whole time.”
I did. I always felt her eyes on me, and it would have been even more annoying if I knew there were others. “Thanks, I suppose,” I said quietly. “For being so careful with me.”
“I wasn’t careful enough,” she regretted. “The night you left home, I wanted to run after you, but Jake wouldn’t let me. He insisted I give you space to come to terms with the truth. I should have gone after you, but I knew someone would be following you as you made your way to Lucy or Carrie’s.
“But none of them were even aware that you left the house. When I spoke to them afterwards, they responded as though they’d completely forgotten about you. One of them said, rather wearily, that she wasn’t even sure you existed at that time.”
“Christian,” I surmised.
“What?” Mum looked confused.
“Yes, he can make himself non-existent to the whole world if he wants, and I guess he decided to throw his cloak over me too that night.”
“Cloak?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“That’s how I make sense of his gift. He sees it as a blind spot that he puts on your mind.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about him,” she murmured. “What exactly happened between the two of you?”
That’s none of your business, I wanted to say but I’m glad I didn’t.
“Ellie, I have told you everything, it’s time you divulge all you know about him and Lydia.”
I started at the beginning, explaining the two brief encounters near college, how he didn’t tell me his name until I was on my way to his apartment (to which she said, “Of course he couldn’t risk you mentioning his name to me!”), and then everything he told me after I was changed.
Intentionally, I left out the part where we kissed and made love. She could never know that part. That was private.
“And he didn’t give any clue as to his motivations for wanting to turn you into a vampire?”
“Like I’ve already explained, mum,” I said, exasperated, “Christian said he hadn’t planned on turning me. I didn’t know about being a Poison Blood, or that he knew it either, so I assumed he wanted to feed on me and stopped when it started to make him feel sick-”
“It would have made him a lot more than sick,” she retorted. “I hear it feels like how their venom feels to us. Burning on the inside. Only, their venom changes humans to vampires when left to spread. Our poison kills vampires.”
“He said he threw most of it up-”
“Because he knew what it would do to him.”
“So why did he bite me?”
“Plan B,” she reminded me.
Ah, yes. The System had two options for me. The first was the one they’d always had for all Slayers: kill me. It would be even easier before I got my powers, especially if they somehow deduced that I was oblivious to them myself. Or two: make a vampire out of me. Knowing what I know about this deadly organisation, I gathered that they decided to collect me. A human with the same strength and speed and advanced senses as vampires - imagine how powerful she would be when those abilities are magnified after the conversion…
Before I could ask whether they tried to recruit other Slayers before me, another thought occurred to me. “But Christian didn’t wait until I got my powers,” I blurted out. “He turned me before my birthday…” I died before I became the Slayer…
Mum shook her head. “It isn’t your age that gives you your powers, honey,” she said indulgently. “It’s more to do with the time between your birth and when you are ready to become the Slayer. Apparently it’s an 18-year process. Just because you didn’t turn 18 as a human, it doesn’t mean that the moment your powers are truly ignited in you didn’t come.”
“Did Christian not know that?”
“I should hope not. It’s one of the best-guarded secrets we have. Everyone apart from a select few thinks it’s about turning 18. So, that’s why I’m surprised he didn’t wait…”
“How did you know he didn’t wait? I mean, you seemed to know he changed me the night I left home…”
“I feel so ashamed,” she cried. Suddenly her eyes were brimming with tears. “I agreed with Jake that you needed some space. I thought you went to a friend’s,” she sobbed, “and I decided not to annoy and anger you further by calling them that night. I was under the impression that the others were watching you. If anything happened, I would find out.
“It was the next morning, when I rang all your friends’ mobiles and learned that they hadn’t seen you since college the previous day, that I realised something was wrong. After speaking to the others, it was clear you’d been abducted. We searched for you everywhere and for weeks.
“But there was no sign of you. It was like you disappeared off the face of the earth. It confirmed my hunch that Christian had you - I picked up your scent near Lucy’s house along with the scent of a vampire. One I’d never come across before.”
“You’ve never met him?” Good, I thought when she shook her head. She had stopped sobbing by then and was only hiccoughing now.
“I only heard of him. Everyone thought I was mad. But it made sense to me. He was the only one who could get around our surveillance.
“The other location I picked up your scent was in the apar
tment you said he took you to. One which magically appeared a week after you disappeared and hadn’t been there when we first searched that area. The scent told me when you’d been there.”
Wow. Christian cloaked an entire house? Well, he made all my searchers think that house wasn’t there. And double wow, my mum’s senses really are as good as mine. We vamps have little difficulty deducing how long ago someone had been at a certain place, just by the freshness and strength of the scent they leave behind.
“In that basement flat, I picked up the same vampire scent from Lucy’s street,” mum went on. “And also a second vampire. It smelled nothing like you and yet… it smelled exactly like you. I just had a feeling it was you. That he changed you. Before your 18th.
“‘If Christian had Ellie’, everyone argued, ‘why would he change her before her birthday?’ ‘Well, why has Ellie disappeared from our radar then?’ I challenged. ‘Christian has her within his shield, I know it.’ No one believed me. They thought he killed you, that’s why we couldn’t find you anywhere. And we looked everywhere.”
“You couldn’t have looked on the London Underground,” I chuckled.
“We looked all over London,” she told me. “We were there for days.”
“You probably missed me then,” I shrugged, “because that’s where I hang out.”
“Not possible, Ellie, we were very thorough.” She stopped and went quiet, thinking. “I never believed you were gone,” she said eventually, “and though I hated the idea of someone taking your life, and damning you to immortality, I was grateful that he didn’t kill you.”
“Why didn’t he kill me?” I wondered aloud. “Why didn’t he wait until I was 18? And why did he let me go afterwards?”
“I don’t know.” She was uncomfortable with not having the answers to these questions.
“Why did he tell me he didn’t work for The System, that it was just Lydia?” What was the point of that lie? He made it seem like he disapproved of his employer…