The Stone of the Eklektos

by Britney Jackson

  Rose stared blankly at Audrey, suppressing a smile. “Are you finished?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Audrey said as she took another bite of her burger.

  Rose glanced around the restaurant at the couples and families sitting in the tables and booths. “You do realize there are other people here, right?”

  “Yeah, so?” Audrey said as she scarfed down a few fries. “I’ll make a deal with you. You can have my boy-boobs, and I’ll take your melon-boobs.”

  Rose blushed as an older couple in the booth beside them glanced at them. She leaned forward, toward Audrey. “Okay, can you just stop saying boobs, please?” she whispered. “And I don’t know…maybe act your age?”

  “Act my age,” Audrey scoffed. “See? That’s why you need me. You’re all-work-no-play. I’m all-play-no-work. That’s why we’re the perfect match.”

  Rose laughed and shook her head at her silly friend. As she took a bite of her salad, she noticed something in Audrey’s eyes that made her worry. Despite the fact that Audrey was being her usual fun-loving, obnoxious self, something seemed off about her. Rose could always tell when something was bothering her friends. “Are you okay, Audrey?” she asked after she swallowed the bite.

  A hint of fear flashed in Audrey’s amber eyes, but she hid it quickly. She smiled. “I’m fine,” she lied. “I’m just ready to hear about your trip.”

  Rose nodded as she set down her fork and pushed aside her half-eaten salad. The noise of conversation and chatter, clanging forks and plates, scuffing chairs, and bustle resounded loudly enough through the busy restaurant that Rose doubted anyone would hear their conversation as long as she spoke quietly. She leaned forward, resting her arms on the dark wooden table as she spoke. “Okay, so, while we were touring one of the ancient temples in Athens, this strange man pulled me aside. I’ve never seen him before in my life, but he talked like he knew me,” Rose explained, shaking her head. “And I don’t know how to explain it, but there was something…creepy…about him. His voice, I think. Most voices fluctuate and change with emotions, but his didn’t. It was like he felt nothing.”

  Audrey frowned. “Okay. Slow down. What did Creepy-Man say?”

  Rose took a deep breath, trying to still her racing mind and stay on topic. “He said that he’d been waiting for me, and then, he gave me this ancient box that he said belonged to me, whatever that means. I tried to tell him I didn’t know who he was or what he meant, but he disappeared before I could say anything. I glanced down at the box, and then, when I looked up, he was gone.”

  “He disappeared?” she asked, her brows knitting with worry.

  Rose shrugged. “Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but…”

  “No, no, not crazy,” Audrey assured her. “Not to me.”

  Rose frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “Just… Never mind. What was in the box?”

  Rose stared at her friend for a moment, more sure than ever that there was something off about the way she was acting. She sighed and picked up her cup of coffee. “A few scrolls and this…um…necklace, I think,” she said as she sipped the coffee. “The stone on the necklace is strange. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s as red as blood, and sometimes, Audrey, I swear it glows.”

  “Weird,” Audrey muttered. She leaned back against the cushioned red bench, twirling a strand of her messy, brown hair around her finger, as she frowned thoughtfully. “I need a mental picture. Describe the man to me.”

  Rose squinted as she tried to recall the man’s appearance. “Well, he looked young. In his twenties, maybe? He had long hair, and when I say long, I mean down-to-his-waist long. Pale blonde hair. Pale blue eyes. Tall. Slender. And well, how do I say this? His features were perfect, really. Too perfect.”

  Audrey smiled. “So you did meet a sexy foreign man.”

  Rose sighed, “Is that all you got out of that story?”

  “No,” Audrey assured her as she took a bite of the chocolate cake. “I also heard that he gave you a gift. Please tell me you asked for his number. When an attractive man gives you jewelry, you’re supposed to get his number.”

  Rose stared at her friend blankly. “It’s not jewelry. It’s an ancient artifact, or at least I think it is,” she muttered. “And I don’t think that men give women that they’ve never met ancient artifacts when they want to date them.”

  “Maybe he’s just weird like you,” Audrey suggested.

  “Yes, I totally pull people aside and give them scrolls and necklaces that are possibly thousands of years old when I’m attracted to them,” Rose muttered.

  “No, you’re right. You just blush from afar and then screw everything up with your smart mouth once you’re around them,” Audrey agreed.

  “Wow,” Rose muttered dryly. “Thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Audrey said. “So, what did the scrolls say?”

  Rose sighed, “I’m still working on that. From what I can tell, they’re written in Ancient Greek. I’ve been trying to translate them for several days.”

  Audrey frowned. “But aren’t you an expert in Greek?”

  “Expert? Hardly,” Rose scoffed. “I’m fluent, technically, but I’m far from an expert. Besides, there’s a difference in Modern Greek and Ancient Greek. If the scrolls were written in Modern Greek, I could’ve translated them within hours, but they’re not. I have never even heard of most of these words.”

  “Ancient Greek?” Audrey repeated. “How old are those scrolls?”

  Rose picked at her salad with her fork. “I don’t know for sure,” she sighed. “It seems unlikely that they’re very old. If they weren’t properly preserved, they should’ve fallen apart by now, I think, and I can’t see any reason that anyone would just hand over ancient documents to some random woman. And yet, some of those words haven’t been used in hundreds of years.”

  “Isn’t there someone who can help you with it?” Audrey asked.

  Rose nodded. “I should have immediately taken it to a museum when he handed it to me. If it is ancient, it belongs in a museum, not in the hands of some college student. At the very least, I should’ve asked Dr. Parker about it.”

  “So, why didn’t you?” Audrey asked.

  Rose sighed, “I keep remembering this warning he gave me before he disappeared. He told me not to tell anyone about the Stone and to guard it with my life. He said that people would die if it landed in the wrong hands. He said that the Stone is dangerous and that it is, and I quote, the key to the destruction or the salvation of humanity.” She laughed. “And all of that sounds completely insane, and yet, I can’t shake the feeling that I should listen to his warning.”

  “But you told me,” Audrey reminded her.

  “Well, I trust you to not kill a bunch of people, Audrey,” Rose muttered.

  Audrey grinned. “But you never know. I could be a secret serial killer.”

  “I’ve considered that possibility, actually,” Rose said with a smile.

  Audrey laughed. “So, you didn’t manage to translate any of it?”

  “I translated a few words here and there, but it’s hard to piece together with what I have so far,” Rose sighed, shrugging. “I originally thought the scrolls might be a diary, but now, I am thinking that it must be a fictional story.”

  “Why do you think that?” Audrey asked.

  Rose shrugged. “It’s either that, or I’m translating it wrong. Based on what I’ve translated, the scrolls are about a man named Theron that drank the writer’s blood.” She laughed at the absurdity. “The scrolls are about a vampire.”

  Audrey froze, her amber eyes widening. “Vampire?”

  Rose’s brows furrowed at Audrey’s reaction. “It seems that way. Granted, I haven’t translated much of it yet, but from what I can tell, this Theron character only comes out at night. He’s immortal. And he drinks human blood.”

  Audrey swallowed uneasily as she stared down at the table. “But it was written so long ago. Did they e
ven have stories of vampires back then?”

  “Uh, well, yeah, actually,” Rose answered. “Almost every culture throughout history had myths and stories of some kind of vampire-like creature. The term vampire wasn’t used until the 1700s, but the myths predate the term by thousands of years. Ancient Hebrew cultures had myths about Lilith, a demon that drank blood, and Ancient Babylon and Assyria had a similar myth about Lilitu. Jewish folklore also had stories about Estries, which were female bloodthirsty vampires that preyed on men sexually. The Ancient Greeks and Romans had myths about blood-drinking creatures, such as the Lamia, the Empusae, and the striges. Eventually, the Greeks used the term vrykolakas to describe undead creatures that some people equate with the modern-day vampire myth. And then, of course, you have the well-known Slavic vampire mythology. And really, that doesn’t even scratch the surface. Until a recent point in history, almost every culture believed in some kind of vampire myth.”

  Audrey scowled at her. “You’re like a human textbook.”

  “You asked,” Rose muttered.

  “So, then, if all of these cultures had stories about vampires, why don’t we believe in them?” Audrey asked, her hands fidgeting nervously on the table.

  “Because we know more now,” Rose laughed. “We’re not as superstitious as they were. We have science to guide our thinking. The idea of a vampire is illogical. Everyone dies. You can’t defy death. Immortality is impossible. Drinking blood is just insane and, well, disgusting. Magic doesn’t exist. People don’t have fangs, and no one bursts into flames because of a few UV rays, not even pale, freckled redheads like me. Vampires are just myths.”

  “I seem to remember a professor once saying that all fiction originates from fact,” Audrey said suddenly. Then, she grimaced and added, “I don’t know why I remember that because I could have sworn that I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Rose laughed. “That would be one of our literature professors. We took that class together. And yes, he did say that,” she acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean that all stories are true. It just means there is truth in every story.”

  “That sounded like the same thing to me,” Audrey complained.

  Rose sighed. “For example, the fictional story about Count Dracula is likely based on the true story of Vlad the Impaler. Vlad Dracula did exist, but he was human. He was bloodthirsty in the figurative sense of the word, and some even say that he put the blood of his victims in a goblet and dipped his bread in it. The point is that there was truth in the story, but it wasn’t the vampire part.”

  Audrey didn’t seem convinced. “But it can’t be a coincidence that so many cultures believed in vampires, can it? What if the vampire part is true?”

  Rose laughed, “Audrey, please tell me you don’t actually think vampires could exist. They’re mythical creatures from horror stories. They’re not real.”

  Audrey didn’t answer. She just continued picking absently at her cake.

  Rose reached across the table and took Audrey’s hand into hers. “Please talk to me. I can see that something’s bothering you,” she whispered.

  Audrey squeezed Rose’s hand, and when she looked up, Rose was stunned to see that Audrey’s golden eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Can we get out of here?” she asked suddenly. “I need air, and…we need to talk.”

  Rose nodded. “Go on. I’ll meet you out there after I pay the bill.”

  —

  When Rose left the restaurant, she found Audrey sitting on a bench further down the street under a palm tree, the leafy shadows dancing along her tanned skin. Audrey leaned her head back against the back of the wooden bench with her eyes closed, breathing deeply as she tried to calm her racing heart.

  Rose set her backpack on the sidewalk and sat down next to Audrey.

  “I had one of my dreams,” Audrey whispered, her eyes still closed.

  Rose nodded in understanding. “The bad kind?”

  Audrey nodded, and Rose noticed a tear sliding down Audrey’s cheek. Audrey’s hands trembled as she tried to calm herself so that she could speak.

  Audrey’s dreams had this tendency of coming true. She discovered this condition of hers, as she liked to call it, when she was a child. For weeks, she dreamed a recurring, vivid nightmare that her parents would die in a car crash, but she was only five years old, and the doctors blamed her particularly vivid and disturbing dreams on a worse-than-average case of night terrors. Unfortunately, the doctors were wrong. Despite the fact that Audrey had begged them not to leave that night, her parents left her with a babysitter one night while they attended a wedding. On their way home, a tractor-trailer slammed into their small car. Her parents died exactly as they had died in Audrey’s dream.

  After that, the doctors just blamed her stories of these dreams on post-traumatic stress disorder, and eventually, after people at her school began to call her crazy, she stopped talking about the dreams. The only person who ever believed her was Rose, which was strange, since Rose usually refused to believe such things on principle. But, illogical or not, Rose had seen Audrey’s dreams accurately predict deaths and disasters, and she couldn’t deny what she saw with her own eyes. Besides, Audrey was her best friend. Of course she believed her.

  “Okay,” Rose said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Oh, Rose, it was horrible,” Audrey cried softly.

  Rose moved closer to Audrey and put her arm around her, drawing Audrey’s head to her shoulder. It was only when Audrey began to sob against Rose’s shoulder that Rose realized just how upset Audrey had been over this dream and how much effort it must’ve taken for her to hide it this long.

  Rose held Audrey for a few moments as she continued to cry, her tears soaking into Rose’s thin, black hoodie. “Hey, listen, everything will be fine. We’ll get through whatever is going to happen. We’ll figure it out,” Rose said as she smoothed her hand across Audrey’s disheveled hair, trying to calm her.

  “No, we won’t,” Audrey sobbed. “That’s the problem.”

  Rose frowned at that. “What do you mean?”

  Audrey pulled away suddenly, tears flowing down her face, causing her makeup to run down her cheeks. “Rose, in my dream, you died.”

  Rose nearly fell off the side of the bench as Audrey latched onto her again as she started sobbing again. Her hand absently returned to soothing her friend as she stared off at a few trees across the street, watching the bird fly from one tree to another, as her mind wrestled with what Audrey had said.

  “It was just a dream,” Rose heard herself say.

  Audrey jerked back, glaring at Rose through the tears. “You know that’s not true. You’ve seen it happen. I dream that something terrible happens, and then, it does. I know the difference between normal dreams and the bad kind of dreams. This was not just a dream, Rose. You have to believe me.”

  Rose had seen it happen, more times than she wanted to remember, and there had never been anything that they could do to stop it. That was exactly why Rose didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t just accept that she would die. “It doesn’t even make sense. How could a dream predict the future?”

  Audrey narrowed her eyes at Rose. “Don’t do this, Rose. Don’t be like everyone else that ignored me. You have always believed me.”

  Rose stared at Audrey warily. She knew that Audrey was telling the truth, and she trusted her friend to know the difference between normal dreams and precognitive dreams. It was just so much harder to accept that Audrey’s dream might have predicted her death. It was easier when it was someone else. She’d never realized how much more she wanted to do with her life until she started thinking about the possibility of dying. Rose didn’t want to die.

  “I believe you,” Rose said. “I just don’t want to.”

  “You have to stop it from happening somehow,” Audrey pleaded.

  Rose doubted that was even possible. They’d tried to stop other events from happening after Audrey dreamed about them, but they had never succeeded. But Rose didn’t voi
ce that doubt because she didn’t want to upset Audrey. So, instead, she said, “Okay. Well, first, I need to know how it will happen.”

  Audrey shifted uneasily, as if she’d hoped Rose wouldn’t ask that question. “Promise me that you’ll believe me, no matter how crazy it sounds.”

  Rose frowned, wondering what could possibly kill her that she would find so unbelievable. “I promise,” she assured Audrey.

  Audrey suddenly blurted, “A man bit you and drank all of your blood.”

  Rose frowned, thinking she couldn’t have heard that right. “Uh, what?”

  “He bit you and drank all of your blood,” Audrey repeated slowly.

  Rose laughed in disbelief. “Who bit me?”

  “The murderer,” Audrey answered completely seriously.

  “You’re joking, right?” Rose laughed.

  Audrey glared at her. “No, I’m not joking! Rose, you promised.”

  “I know. I know,” Rose said quickly. She felt horrible for laughing, but how could she believe something like that? Vampires didn’t exist, but then, what else could Audrey have seen in the dream? “Just start from the beginning. Tell me what happened. I need to understand how this biting is going to take place.”

  Audrey narrowed her eyes at Rose as she heard that dryness that often colored Rose’s voice when she found something unbelievable. Audrey still didn’t feel like Rose was taking this seriously. “It was late at night, and you were outside,” she explained slowly. “You were walking down a dark, deserted alleyway. You felt nervous. I think that you must have known that something wasn’t quite right. Then, just as you were about to step out of the alley and onto a main road, this extremely attractive man attacked you.”