Chapter 8 - Meeting the Vampires

When we arrived at my house I told Jacen that we had to tell my family everything. He tried to refuse the idea, but I argued that my family could be in danger. I argued that none of us ever even knew that vampires were actually real, none of us know what dangers await us in this world for our kind, The most we understand of the battle between vampires and werewolves comes from movies, books, and video games. I looked him in the eye and said, "Would you be able to live with yourself if someone in my family were to die knowing that you could have done something to keep us from getting ourselves into danger?" He finally said, "No, we can tell them. But if anything was to happen, I won't be able to help them, I am a creature that was designed for defense. I have no real strength, only the ability to withstand insane amounts of punishment." With that, we entered the house and began to speak with my parents and my brother about vampires and their experiments. According to Jacen, there were many strange creations of the vampires, some good and some bad. Obviously, some of these creatures were the results of failed experiments but still posed a threat nonetheless. There were those known as Cracononians, given their name after the great mythological cracon. They were humanoid creatures that could breathe under water and grew tentacles from the underside of their head, making them look like an octopus was eating someone's head. Their strength was incredible, and they were greater swimmers than anything ever seen. They were known to use their tentacles like whips powerful enough to cut clean through a tree approximately a meter in diameter. Though the moment they begin to dry, their tentacles become practically useless, shriveling like dried worms on the sidewalk during a hot summer day. Then there were the Phoenix foxes, another variation of a defensive fox. As their peculiar name might suggest, they were able to return from the dead rising from the ashes of their dead body. They were bright red foxes that had tendrils of flames running down their backs when they transformed. Though they have no control over the fire and were built primarily for defense in the same way that the sunfox was. Even though these creatures couldn't exactly be killed, they were seen as inferior to the sunfox as decoys because they were far less durable. After all, if they were injured enough, they would burst into flames to be reborn, leaving them stuck caring for babies. There are so many more strange beings that the vampires created that I just began writing them down in what is now my monster identification book. I would write the name of the creation, a brief description of their appearance, whether they were defense oriented or offensive-oriented, and what abilities they had. I had them listed in the order that Jacen explained them, the Cracononians, Phenix foxes, Sunfoxes, Demon Dogs, Lightning sabers, werebears, slithering swamp turtles, and many more. My father sat there trying to wrap his head around the idea of vampires being real while my brother freaked out about how awesome he thought each individual creature listed was. My mother was the only one who truly seemed to be handling the information well. After Jacen stopped speaking, the room was uncomfortably quiet for a long time until my mother broke the silence. She said, "I think we should meet these vampires." Jacen tried refusing, but she simply said, "I'm not a werewolf, I am just a human mother watching out for my family. I want them to know that we have no connection with the other werewolves that they are at war with, and maybe we can form some sort of treaty with them." Jacen, not knowing what else to say just said, "Okay, I will start working on getting this to their leaders."