A Time To Survive (Verge of Extinction): A Magical & Monstrous / Supernatural Urban Fantasy.

by J. Axbridge

  “Ah . . . the so called great Book of Symbols, the book that just up and disappeared from the world many moons ago. That is, if such a book actually existed in the first place, most have no idea since very few claim to have seen it. . . Of course only a brave or possibly crazy Huntra would search for a rumored book like that, a book that may not even exist. . . May I ask your full name young Huntra?”

  “My name is Mayumi Gushiken; I come from a long line of Huntras from Kyoto, Japan . . . Adelaide is my best friend and I have sworn to protect her and her family as they are my family now,” Mayumi nodded assuredly towards the five of us. “I would give my dying breath to protect them, to save them . . . and this book, if real, could possibly save us all from what’s coming out there. So please, if you may answer my simple question, is it real and if it does still exist, where can I find it?”

  “Ah yes, Gushiken . . . Mayumi Gushiken,” the Elder scratched his white beard as if he’d recalled hearing her name before, while still ignoring her question. “You truly are dedicated, proud and quite loyal. The Allisters and Jax have a great ally in you Miss Gushiken and I am honored to have met you . . .

  “Now I do not claim to know what you were taught as a child and during your Huntra training. And it is true that werewolves and Huntras have had their differences and small . . . how do I put it? Altercations, over the centuries, but werewolves as a race respect Huntras as you only show yourselves and get involved with a werewolf issue if a werewolf has turned against humans. I have no query with you Miss Gushiken. A friend of the Allisters is a friend of mine. And speaking of the book you search for, I do not know where it could possibly be. Again, that’s if it’s actually a real book and not some legend made up for fools like those who chase after hidden pirate treasure.”

  Mayumi stared at the Elder Wolf before leaning over and whispering into my ear, “He knows more than he is telling us, he definitely recognized my family name, but I do not know why. Plus he dodged my legitimate question on the ‘Book of Symbols’ and he did not ask any more questions on the subject. Something is up Addie-san?”

  “What about us?” Caelyn broke the silent standoff and the Elder Werewolf turned with smiles towards her and Victoria with Mayumi’s conversation all but over. “Victoria and I, are we special?” Caelyn put her arm around her twin’s shoulder and being so close together, they were so similar it was like one of them was looking in a mirror.”

  “Yes, the twins, you two are one of a kind, truly very special indeed. You’re twins of course, but not just any twins! You my dears have the magical, ‘Power of Two.’”

  “Are we some sort of magical werewolf twins?” Victoria blurted out overly excited causing the Elder to laugh heartily for the first time, while the rest of us uneasily chuckled, grinning at Victoria’s question.

  “No, no, no. You two are not magical werewolf twins,” he laughed quietly a moment longer before his facial features returned to their soft stone like leathery quality. “Yet your linage my dears, does come from a magical race. You two girls must have known you have special powers by now; did you not figure that secret out on your own?” the Elder Wolf asked while watching the twins closely. Only seeing two identical blank faces staring back, he continued as the rest of us waited in anticipation to see what their magical powers supposedly were, glancing from the Elder to the twins and back like a tennis match.

  “Well young ladies, it’s as simple as the truth. You two, as far as I know, are the last surviving fairies, on earth . . . and as twin fairies; you two are extremely rare and extremely powerful!” The Elder emphasized with seriousness.

  “Twin fairies,” Arthur snorted, “Really, the twins are fairies?” He continued laughing and Ethan not being able to contain himself, began snickering along with his brother. I was more shocked by the Elder’s fairy claim, than I was by Arthur, Ethan and I being actual werewolves. I don’t know why but at that moment I couldn’t help but stare at my two sisters like they were aliens.

  “I would not laugh my young werewolves,” the Elder blazed walking towards Arthur and Ethan then standing behind them. “Fairies are powerful, especially twin fairies and you will need your twin sisters help if you are to wage a battle with the vampires.” He slammed his ageing hands down unbelievably hard on Arthur’s and Ethan’s shoulders causing their bodies to buckle in their chairs. Walking back to the head of the table smiling having surprised everyone with his strength, he continued his explanations of fairy magic.

  “As for werewolves like yourselves, you would have almost no chance against a full grown adult fairy in battle. Fairies have special gifts; ‘magic’ some call it, is one of them. They can convince animals to listen to their every word and that goes for weak, overconfident and arrogant minded werewolves too . . . and humans alike. If a weaker creature battled against twin fairies, the fight would be over before they knew what happened. All the fairies have to do is whisper in your ears, one on each side telling you to jump off a cliff and you won’t be able to resist their request. You’d be dead. Fairies are very powerful indeed and known to be especially cunning,” the Elder Wolf smiled widely at my sisters.

  “Umm, does that mean we’ll grow wings or something?” Victoria asked curiously.

  “Wings . . . sorry my dear, no wings at all, that is just a ‘Fairy Tale’ or something you’d see in a children’s cartoon. Real fairies do not have wings, they can fly though, with the use of magic, charms and potions. The smallest fairies actually fly on the back of winged animals. Though I must admit, I’ve never seen one, just heard the strange stories. I bet that would be a right sight,” the Elder Wolf mused.

  “WAIT . . . ,” Victoria’s emerald eyes sparkled with curiosity once more. “OK, you mean we have ‘magical powers’?” Victoria said breathlessly, looking as if she half expected sparks to shoot out her finger tips.

  “Of course you have magical powers, you’re fairies. If you had studied your fairy lineage and had proper training, your powers would be much stronger than they are today. But that can be remedied; I believe I still have a book or two on ‘Good Fairy Magic’ to help you with your skills and training around this old place somewhere.”

  “Good Fairy Magic’?” Caelyn questioned, “You mean there is bad fairy magic?”

  “Why yes . . . there are good fairies and there are evil fairies. You NEVER want to go down the path of an evil fairy. NEVER practice dark magic or evil spells; it will destroy your soul and kill your physical body. They are similar to witches in some aspects,” he said tugging gently at his beard. “For example, take fiction books and movies that have been made, where witches have green skin and a crooked nose, their appearance is actually factual. And there is a good or rather bad reason they look the way they do. You see, evil witches don’t care much about their bodies; they just want power and will take the ugliness that comes with being evil. Bad fairies are similar to bad witches in that sense, but please know that a Good Fairy can be just as strong as an evil fairy and never have to use dark magic.”

  “Really Elder Al, are we really fairies?” Caelyn looked skeptical. “I don’t feel like I’m a fairy. I mean, I feel like the same old me inside.”

  “Yes you are a fairy young lady but I must add that contrary to what humans once believed, fairies were neither angles nor demons nor gods at that; they were simply their own unique race and were usually quite shy and distant. They mostly lived in remote mountainous regions and deep within thick forested areas and that’s another reason why it was odd and not too popular when a fairy married a human male as your great grandmother had.”

  “Our great grandmother - WAS A REAL FAIRY!” Victoria and Caelyn chimed in unison.

  “Whoa, how cool is that,” Victoria added, beaming at her twin.

  “Too cool,” Caelyn replied.

  “Of course she was a ‘Real Fairy’” The Elder took the conversation back over, “and she was a caring, gentle and graceful fairy before the battles with the vampires turned her into a hardnosed warrior. . .” The
Elder looked around at all our stunned faces, “I can see by the looks on your faces that you want to know more about your great grandmother, I understand, there is a lot you need to know, but before I continue there is something I must give the two of you that may help,” the Elder Wolf nodded at the twins, turned then reached up to an old half log shelf removing a lone dusty pickle jar.

  “Pickles?” Victoria said in disgust. “I hate pickles, especially on burgers!”

  “No, not pickles. This is where I keep my really important stuff,” the Elder Werewolf winked. “Who would ever look in a pickle jar for a valuable?” He grinned twisting the top off with a loud pop then reached into the jar pulling out a single, extremely old looking, fermented pickle.

  “Gross!” Caelyn plugged her nose as the aroma of fermented pickles seeped out from the jar and into the cabin for everyone to smell.

  Carefully the Elder Werewolf took the pickle in both hands and with a swift motion cracked it open to a hollow pop, revealing two beautiful sparkling necklaces.

  “Here you go girls. These are necklaces I’ve been protecting for a very long time. They were given to me for safe keeping from your great grandmother, just before her death. I never saw a reason to give them to your grandmother or mother of course. They just didn’t believe enough. . . So please, take them . . . and wear them always for I was told they possess strong powers but only powers that a fairy can activate . . .” The twins looked from the Elder Werewolf to the sparkling necklaces wide-eyed. “I’m sorry but that’s really all I know. They’ve now been returned to their rightful family and I’m sure you’ll figure out how to use them soon enough, even without my help.”

  The twins stared in astonishment as the Elder dropped the beautifully sparkling necklaces into their hands. The silver chain of each necklace simply had a single silver charm ball hanging from them. But as soon as the necklaces fell into their hands, the necklaces lit up brightly, similar to the glow sticks they’d worn around their wrists and necks on Halloween in years past.

  Staring at the necklaces in amazement, the silver ball charms began magically melting into a cool silver liquid before reshaping into the twins’ favorite things. Victoria’s melted down and then reshaped into her cat she’d loved as a young child with pink ruby eyes. Caelyn’s swirled and melted into a beautiful rose with red ruby petals.

  “Whoa, did that burn? Did it hurt?” Ethan asked, his mouth open in awe.

  “No, it sort of tickled though,” Victoria held up her new sparkling cat necklace before placing it around her neck, Caelyn following her lead doing the same with her rose necklace.

  “So, how do you feel? Anything strange or magical happening in your body?” I asked with anticipation.

  “I feel fine, otherwise nothing different,” Victoria stared down at her necklace in amazement.

  Caelyn took longer, pausing a moment closing her eyes, “Nope, nothing different here. Just feels like a normal necklace hanging around my neck.”

  “Well . . .,” the Elder Werewolf shook his head in uncertainty. “I don’t know if anything will happen with the necklaces and there’s nothing else to tell, but I can tell you what happened to your great grandmother if you’d like.” His old facial features glanced around the room and upon confirming that our attention was diverted from the necklaces back to him, he continued.

  “You see . . . the story as I know it was that your great grandmother was thought to be the last living fairy on earth when her death came at the hands of a nasty and very powerful vampire. This vampire apparently heard of a fairy prophecy that speaks of a mixed marriage that would take place between a werewolf and fairy and that this marriage would produce offspring that could destroy the vampire empire forever.”

  “Would the offspring be us?” Ethan asked.

  “Seeing the five of you now, in person, I do believe it is you.”

  “Cool!” Ethan nodded.

  “This evil vampire assumed that if he killed off the entire fairy population then there would be no mixed marriage between the two races, thus no offspring to defeat the vampires,” the Elder Werewolf reflected . . . “It’s unfortunate you never had the chance to meet your great grandmother; she was an amazing lady and fairy.”

  “So what happened?” Ethan asked eagerly, hanging onto his every word like he did when our dad would tell us spooky stories around the campfire.

  “Thankfully, your great grandmother took the vampire too his death. Unfortunately she would also die in that fateful battle. . . Your great grandmother simply refused to leave this earth knowing he would still be out in the world killing and enslaving the innocent, fairy and human alike.”

  “OK . . . ,” The word slowly slid out of my mouth, “but the vampire did succeed in killing all the fairies before his death, right? How was that possible? Were fairies really that weak? I thought you said they were strong. . .” Pausing, realization hit me. “Wait, if our great grandmother was the last fairy left on earth, then how were the twins born as fairies?” I looked at the Elder confused while the rest of the group murmured about how it could be that the twins were fairies also.

  “Those were not the best times for fairies,” the Elder Werewolf went on. “Humans who knew of fairies, feared them! They did not understand true fairy nature or know much about them and were simply scared. That made it easy to convince humans’ to rid the world of fairies not realizing they were only being used by the vampires to do a lot of their dirty work.”

  “If fairies were so strong, how could stupid humans kill them?” Arthur asked.

  “Humans are not stupid, they figured out a few tricks to help them, one of them was to befriend fairies first, then kill them when they least expected it. The other was to wear special ear protection to keep them safe from fairy wishes, which actually worked at times.”

  “I can’t believe humans helped wipe out the fairies,” Jax sneered in disbelief. “That makes no sense!”

  “The vampires were very convincing of course and humans didn’t know any better so they helped with the eradication. And when the humans weren’t hunting and killing fairies, the vampires and witches were and wouldn’t stop until every last fairy was wiped from the face of the earth. Country after country, town after town, and valley after valley the fairies were eliminated. Of course they tried to fight back but it was too late and they were not strong enough and by then their numbers were too small to overcome the vampires’ large army . . .” The Elders eyes turned down before he looked up in seriousness, “Sadly, extinction is happening once again.”

  “What? But the fairies are gone, you just said that,” Ethan eye’s grew large. “Except for Caelyn and Victoria . . . Are the vampires coming for my sisters? You must protect them!”

  Caelyn’s and Victoria’s eyes filled with fear as they turned to the Elder Werewolf looking for a hopeful answer.

  “Are you sure we’re fairies?” Caelyn asked. “You said our great grandmother was the last fairy living, so we can’t be true fairies? Maybe you’re wrong?”

  “Thankfully for all of us, I’m not wrong, your great grandmother’s daughter, your grandmother was hidden away in a place called, ‘Pordenack’, it’s a small place in Cornwall, England. A group of coastal Pixies raised her until it was safe for her return. . .

  “And Ethan, don’t worry about your sisters, not yet anyway. It’s not the fairies the vampires are coming for this time; it’s the humans they are after since humans have lost significant numbers in the storms. Regrettably humans now make an easy target to eliminate and that would leave the vampires as the true rulers of earth. They’d of course keep some remaining humans as slaves only to reproduce children to be fed upon after coming of age.”

  “GROSS!” The twins reacted together in disgust.

  “Yes, I’m afraid if nothing is done then this earth will be in the dawn of a vampire apocalypse. And with the humans taken care of, it means that only werewolves would be left to fight the good fight . . . and I don’t think we’d be strong enough to opp
ose the growing vampire armies this time as our numbers are also not as strong as they once were. . .

  “Of course we werewolves have beaten them before, but it was long ago, and sadly with great loses. Could we beat them again . . . maybe? But this is a different age; and besides numbers, I don’t believe we have the knowledge and strength to do it,” the Elder Wolf’s steely eyes filled with sadness of remembrance.

  “Your great grandmother was part of the last group of fairies that lived in America and the world for that matter. The American Werewolves raced from all over the country to aid and protect them from extinction but it was too late, all of them had been killed before we could intervene. All of them were dead except for your great grandmother and of course your grandmother nestled away in England. . . Your great grandmother was strong and vowed to search out and kill the head vampire before her death in order to destroy the vampires for good so they couldn’t harm her daughter, humans or werewolves ever again.”

  “So great granny did it, she wiped them out,” Arthur smacked the table. “Way to go granny.” He and Ethan high fived.

  “Yes, she did it alright, but it was a fierce battle which ended in both of their deaths. The remaining vampires were confused and lost without leadership and the werewolves took that opportunity to search out and kill as many vampires as they could. Those that had escaped us disappeared into the darkest corners of the earth to die or so we had hoped. But now, after the meteoroid storms, they’re somehow back and in large numbers and apparently have a new leader who’s reigning terror on what’s left of this world.”

  “Um . . . , so our great grandmother died in a fight while our grandmother was hiding in England . . . how did we get here then? I asked, confident I finally had the story straight in my head.

  “Addie, our Mom and Dad met, got married and had us,” Arthur blurted out. “It’s pretty easy just do the math, you had health class didn’t you?”

  “But what about our father? Do you know anything about him?” Ethan asked, consumed with everything the Elder Werewolf was telling us.