by CC Solomon
“What is this something?” Erik asked, eyes now opened.
“My images of the future shift to different possibilities. Some good, some bad. I don’t know what the outcomes will be, based on certain actions you take. What I know is that another shift will come about. It is already happening.”
“What’s the new shift?” I questioned.
Mae looked to me with fearful eyes. “Humans as we know them will no longer exist. Only the gifted. But war and new sickness and division will come to the gifted. Certain groups will die out on a massive scale, much like the ungifted humans. Other groups will become their more primitive selves.”
“What does that mean? Like a werewolf would stay in wolf form or, no, still look like humans but just walk around on all fours like an animal, hunting and eating people?” Felix joked.
Mae gave him all too serious eyes. “Yes, and yes. I’ve seen very similar things in my visions. Think of the worst aspect of all of your groups.”
“Too much of a good thing,” Faith murmured.
“Exactly, my dear,” Mae said, pointing to her. “Balance is what we need. And before you ask, I don’t know when or how this will happen. Or even how you can stop it. I just know that you six are key to preventing our world from falling apart. Everyone is important, even humans without magic.”
“Shit,” Faith cursed. “Like we need another damn thing to add to our list of to-dos. If Charles doesn’t come back and we can’t find Lisa, are we screwed?”
Mae shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. I always dreamed of the six of you. I don’t know what happens if you aren’t all together.”
Part of me wished she’d kept her premonition to herself. She’d basically stated that we were in big trouble as it stood now.
5 p.m. hit. We canceled the funeral for anyone planning to attend. There were questions but we kept the real situation a secret for now.
7 p.m. came. It was getting darker outside the last time I’d taken a stretch break but not yet dark enough. This was the 24-hour mark. Still nothing.
By 9 p.m. I was slowly giving up hope and believed that his composure, which had not changed, was some supernatural post-death rigor mortis, despite what Bill said.
At 10 p.m. I looked over to Charles’ body. His pose looked painful but Bill was adamant that we not touch or move him. Bill assured me that since Charles would be the undead, unlike the humans turned to vampires from the initial magic hit, he wouldn’t be harmed by the stiff pose. Charles’ body would no longer work like a regular human.
“What if Charles doesn’t come back, Erik? I mean, it’s already after ten,” I whispered.
“Night’s not over and we have tomor—” Erik’s stopped, mid-response.
The sudden sound of movement came from the table where my brother lay.
Charles was now flat on his back, legs down, hands at his side, and his chest was moving up and down at a rapid pace. His eyes were blinking.
He was alive.
Chapter 5
“Charles!” I shouted and jumped up, rushing to him.
“No!” I heard Bill shout behind me. “Wait, Amina, don’t touch him. He’s not fully aware yet and he could hurt you.”
I paused, already a few feet from the table. “What do I do?”
“Wait,” Bill replied. He walked over to me with a syringe full of dark-red liquid in his hand.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A special kind of sedative. He won’t go to sleep but it will calm him.” He injected the liquid into Charles’ right arm.
“Why does he need that?”
“So, he won’t bite you.”
I looked back to Charles. His breathing was off. His chest rose and fell at a startling fast rate, as if he were hyperventilating. His red eyes were still staring up at the ceiling.
“Speak to him, Amina. He needs to hear a voice he knows,” Bill stated, remaining by my side. I felt Erik come up to my other side and the movement of the others behind me.
“Why is he breathing like that?” I asked.
“He is breathing only because that is what he remembers to do. He doesn’t need to but his mind is not all the way back. He doesn’t recall the regular way to breathe. Speak directly to him. It’ll help give him clarity,” Bill explained.
“Charles?” He didn’t look at me. “Charles, it’s your sister, Amina.” Nothing. I looked to Bill. “Can I touch him now?”
Bill nodded. I could hear the others around me stir as they watched me.
I looked back down to Charles and reached out to touch his hand nearest me. I braced myself for him to do something. Attack me. I didn’t know. He stayed the same. I placed both my hands around his hand. He didn’t look up at me, just up at the ceiling, a pained expression on his face.
“Charles, remember when we were kids? I think I was ten, so you were nine. You wanted a puppy and Mom and Dad weren’t having it. So, I prepared a case for us to get a dog. I had note cards and pictures. I put you on the stand, which was just a dining room chair, and Mom was the other side. Dad was the judge. Remember, I had the stuffed animals to the side as the jury. It was so silly. But I won the case! I got the bug for being a lawyer after that. I don’t know if I was really good enough to win the case for a dog or if Mom and Dad already changed their minds and just wanted to make us work for it. But I remember you smiling and looking at me like I was your hero. I tried my best to always be there for you and have your back. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you this time.” Tears flooded my eyes and I tried to blink them away to no avail.
Charles’ breathing slowed down, and he looked over at me with those scary red eyes.
“Mina? Mina,” he croaked out, his voice hoarse. I nodded my head swiftly and his face scrunched up. He closed his eyes and began to weep silently. Watery, red liquid dripped from his eyes down his cheeks.
I looked over to Bill, alarmed.
“Vampire’s tears are mixed with blood,” he explained in a calming voice.
I turned back to Charles, bent over, and hugged him tightly. He slowly wrapped his arms back around me. He felt shockingly cold but I didn’t care.
“Mina, I saw them. I saw them,” Charles cried. “I see what they’re doing.”
I heard Mae gasp behind me.
I pulled away slightly. “Saw who?”
“They’re strong. I don’t know what they are. People bow to them like they’re gods. They turn people into monsters.”
“My premonition,” Mae whispered.
Charles heard her and strained his neck to find her. Mae walked over to Charles and touched his other hand.
“They were looking for us but now they’ve found us,” Charles said, his voice cracking. “They’re waiting to get stronger but when they do, we’re all going to die.”
“Who is looking for us?” Erik asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I could barely see them.”
“Where were you?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t look familiar. It was like here but it wasn’t. It was dark and there was destruction everywhere at first. Buildings were on fire; bodies were on the ground. There were beasts and they were crying out. Then things changed. The world looked different. It was sunny, clean, and beautiful. People had smiles on their faces but they weren’t really happy. I didn’t understand it.”
“It’s the beginning of it all,” Mae whispered. “My visions. Charles, where are they now?”
“I don’t know,” my brother said with a tinge of frustration. “They have people everywhere though.”
“Let’s give him some time to adjust. We can ask more questions later,” I stated. I looked to Charles with a frown. Now that he was a vampire, who would probably live longer than any of us, we had all the time in the world.
Charles looked around the room. “Where’s Lisa?” he asked.
“She thought you were dead. She couldn’t handle it and…left,” I explained. “She didn’t know that there was a possibility for you to come
back. We all only learned that today.”
Charles looked up at the ceiling. “She left me?”
“We’ll get her back, don’t worry.”
“What’s wrong with me? My stomach hurts,” he said, wincing in pain as he clawed at his shirt.
I looked to Bill. “Why does his stomach hurt?”
Bill, who I hadn’t notice move away earlier, came back to the table with a mug. “He needs blood,” he explained. “I was able to secure some.”
Charles sat up, Erik helping to lift him upright. “What am I supposed to do with that? I feel like I could eat a house,” Charles asked.
“This will help,” Bill said, handing him the blood.
Charles took the mug and looked down at it, his face twisted in disgust. He looked up at us, then looked around the room once more. “Why are we in a morgue? Why did Lisa think I was dead…” He paused and soon full awareness entered his eerie red eyes. “That fucker stabbed me. Did you—”
“I killed him. He won’t be coming back.” At least I hoped. I made David explode, so I didn’t think he could put himself back together again.
“Was I in a coma all this time? How long have I been out?”
“Six days. And, no, you weren’t in a coma. You were, you were—”
“Transitioning,” Bill cut in.
Charles frowned. “Into what?” he asked. He looked down at the mug again. “Into someone who drinks blood. Shit, I’m a fuckin’ vampire?”
Bill nodded. Charles looked to me with angry eyes. “You let them turn me into a bloodsucker?”
“I didn’t know they gave you blood but I also didn’t want you to die when I found out. Don’t look at me like that. You would do the same if the roles were reversed. I love you, get over it.”
“I can’t drink fucking bl—”
“All right, vampire or no vampire, that is enough cursing, young man,” Mae shouted. “Now, this situation may not be ideal but no one here was going to let you die. You are loved and way too important. I am sorry we tricked you. However, you will find that your life as a vampire won’t be so bad. You will still have your tech powers, so you’ll be stronger. Everything’s going to be okay. Now drink the blood so your stomach will stop hurting.”
Charles froze and looked at her for a beat and then proceeded to gulp down the red liquid from the cup. I grimaced and looked away, then sighed as he asked for another cup.
My brother was a vampire, I didn’t think this is what my mother had in mind when she’d told me to look out for him.
Chapter 6
“Alex, if you pull Briana’s hair again, you’ll get detention,” I said sternly to the ten-year-old boy in my classroom.
Alex was an elf with brown hair and large, blue eyes that made him look innocent and cute but he was sneaky. He loved to pick on Briana, a human girl with a head full of tightly-coiled hair. Alex pouted and then looked over to Briana with sad love-sick puppy eyes. She stuck her tongue out at him and rolled her eyes. She pretended to be annoyed with him but I had overheard her tell her friends she thought he was cute during recess one day.
They both lost parents at different times during the supernatural change. Briana’s parents died of the Sickness and Alex’s mother died during his birth in the Pre-world. His father was killed two years ago by an ogre during a scavenging and hunt. Most of the children and teenagers at the school in New Hagerstown were orphans.
It amazed me to think that these children would only know this life. They’d hear about the Pre-world and watch the old movies and shows in amazement. Alex would only know life as an elf and Briana would know a world full of all types of magical humans. In a community like ours, divisions of race and nationality would seem silly when you shared space with vampires and were-creatures.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the day, and I dismissed the class, reminding them of the paper due Monday on their favorite person in history. I stayed later to run the drama club. The arts weren’t on everyone’s mind nowadays but we could not survive and thrive on just the basics. Sure, now arts were all after-school subjects, but at least we got to have them. We had an art club, band, and chorus. We also had sports.
The town was growing larger every month, growing to well past two thousand in population, and that meant our school was expanding. Right now, we were doing a production of a Broadway show I had tickets to see with my mother before the supernatural had taken over and turned society into a nightmare. I still carried some bitterness about never getting to see that musical but I’d found the lyrics and script from the play and decided to live out my dreams through a bunch of thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds.
It felt good to be normal for a bit. No fighting, no human locking me up and draining me of blood, no one mind controlling a town. Sure, some of these problems still existed but I needed this down time. I deserved this time.
I worked, joined a jogging group, met friends for happy hour, and searched for Lisa… She was still missing.
It had been almost a month since my brother had returned to the land of the living. I’d tried every location spell in the book to find Lisa. I even reached out in secret to some of Phillip’s people to help, but no such luck. It was as if Lisa had been wiped off the face of the earth. There was simply no trace of her on the planet. It had kept me up many nights. I didn’t know if she had willingly hidden herself or if she’d been taken by someone who’d hidden her location by magic.
In the meantime, I honed my magic, which consisted of me meditating, meeting with a witch group, playing with my powers, and reading and searching through even more supernatural books and websites than I had before. If I were stronger I could find Lisa, find David’s ally, and fight Phillip. Although he hadn’t sent anyone to come for Felix or myself, I wasn’t naive enough to think that meant we were in the clear. I was going to be ready to kick his ass. Nice girl Amina was a thing of the past.
According to Erik and Faith, Silver Spring had become even more big brother-ish. Townspeople were doing everything short of praying to Phillip, which included bowing and kneeling when he was around and addressing him as ‘Master.’ I knew better than to think that after trying to help my brother live and letting me go, Phillip would have turned over a new leaf. Seeing that my power matched his had probably made him paranoid.
Also, I still wasn’t certain that he knew Charles was alive again. We certainly had not spread the word. Better Phillip and his cronies think we were defeated. If they believed that Charles was still alive, Seth would come around seeking retribution for the pack member Felix killed.
Thinking of my brother drew a deep sigh from me. I hadn’t seen much of him. He was a new vampire—albeit a strong one, since he was a technology mage—and he still needed his daylight beauty rest. It worked out for him, since tech work wasn’t a job that was relegated to just day time.
However, beyond his need for rest, he was not the old Charles I loved. It wasn’t just the becoming a blood-sucking undead that changed him, but also what he saw when he was in the state of returning to life. He believed that whatever evil we were going to face was already on earth and roaming the planet growing followers. And those followers wanted Charles to join them. It had scared him and he continued to have nightmares about it. His lack of sleep and depression over Lisa’s absence, coupled with coping with his new self, left me with a very different Charles.
That Friday evening, after school, I went home to get ready to meet the others at the town pub. This had become our regular routine on Fridays. Dinner, then sometimes going back to one of our apartments in Hagerstown plotting our revenge and building our Power of Six connection, sans Lisa. It wasn’t always the five of us. Sometimes Chelsea Samuels, our friend from the paranormal prison, and Henry Butler, the head of the Hagerstown vampires and close friend to Felix, came.
Chelsea despised Phillip for killing her human boyfriend and Henry had an interest in supporting his pal Felix in the fight. In the meantime, Henry and Chelsea mentored Charles in the vampire way.
As for Phillip, I knew he wasn’t going to let me live my life as I pleased for long. Phillip knew we were soulmates and he’d expressed clearly to me that he had no plans to ignore our connection. He was still making appearances in my dreams, trying to communicate with me, and I tried my best to fight him and wake up but I couldn’t. Most dream communication rotated between him trying to convince me to join him and just plain taunting me. I’d wake up exhausted, searching unsuccessfully for dream protection spells. I had no doubt he was zapping my powers from our dream connections. He’d done so while I was locked in the prison, although he claimed it was by mistake.
Phillip didn’t visit me every night, but it was sporadic enough to make me feel as if sleeping were a risking endeavor. Even when I napped during the day, he found me. Then he would also talk to me telepathically. It had been comforting when I was escaping David, but it was annoying now.
There were only a few people I told about my Phillip hauntings. I told Felix because, as an amnesiac, he didn’t remember much of what you said and therefore could keep a secret. I also told a nurse named Joanie who worked at the hospital because she’d become a wise friend.
She’d used to be a nurse in our prison hospital but I didn’t blame her and made sure she was protected when she’d joined the Hagerstown community. Without her at the prison, we’d have probably been treated even worse. I might have died. She hadn’t had the power to help us escape but she’d had the power to keep us alive.
I also told my magic mentor, Shayla Winans, witch and partner to Henry. She worked tirelessly to get me strong enough to repel Phillip.
I did not tell anyone else, including Charles, who had enough on his plate. With the others I was embarrassed that I was so weak and vulnerable. I feared they wouldn’t trust me if they knew I still had a link to Phillip. I told them that Phillip being my soulmate wasn’t going to compromise me but then I’d see something in their eyes, uncertainty or suspicion, that led me to believe they weren’t buying what I was selling. So, no, I wouldn’t tell them about my nighttime Phillip visits.