Chereads / Eclipse: The Awakening / Chapter 4 - Origins(II)

Chapter 4 - Origins(II)

  1289. That was the year it all happened, in a small settlement in the prosperous region of western Scotland. It was the same all year round; slightly rough weather, good harvests, bandits, beginning of hunting season and so on. Nothing unusual occurred that year. Or at least it had been until mid-October that year. Vampires were first sighted in a town called Valhol which was a relatively peaceful town. Nicholas Dracula who worked as a wood cutter in the town claimed to be the first vampire although the first real sightings of them had been seen about two months before he claimed so. Vampires or 'Val bloods' as they were called then were people who had attained superhuman abilities seemingly caused by an alteration in their genetic structure. Nobody knows why it happened or what caused it to happen, except for Dracula. However that was one of the secrets he never revealed leaving the origins of our existence unclear. They had unnatural abilities ranging from lightning quick reflexes, boosted eyesight, an almost completely impenetrable immune system (only weak to garlic), rapid healing, extremely powerful muscles, and others. However, the bodies of these people demanded something in exchange for their newfound power; blood. The Val bloods needed human blood specifically to stay alive. Their bloodlust was excessive and most of them who couldn't control it went wild causing some people in Valhol to go missing. That was how they were eventually discovered by the Valholians. Some of the Val bloods were killed when they got caught. As it turns out, Val bloods despite their seemingly overpowered state were still 100% able to die from fatal direct punctures to the head and chest no matter what was used, whether a silver sword, wooden stake, or whatnot. The town elders held a meeting to decide how to flush out the Val bloods from the community and ended up agreeing that a public garlic eating contest should hold (this part made me laugh a little). This was after they found out that garlic was harmful to them when they tortured a captured Val blood and got him to confess (Vampires heal quickly but can still feel pain all the same as humans). Garlic would be a very good way of finding out who was or wasn't a Val blood. Dracula who unlike the rest had good control over his bloodlust came out and pleaded on behalf of all the Val bloods to the village council that they should allow him to leave the town with other Val bloods peacefully. He also alleged himself to be the first Val blood and the one who spread the genes to others. The council debated whether to execute him or allow him to take the Val bloods away. They decided to spare him because the Val bloods listened only to Dracula. That was how he and about fifty other Val bloods left the village and set out to discover the western world.

  During their journey, the Val bloods learnt to control their bloodlusts with a technique Dracula created; drinking their own blood mixed with a little amount of garlic water. This method suppressed their bloodlusts effectively for about two months and proved to be very effective in most Val bloods. However, some Val bloods went into a crazed frenzy for anything colored red after drinking the concoction. They were killed by the Val bloods themselves to prevent more trouble from happening. Dracula proved to be a successful leader, leading the Val bloods across the Atlantic to a new land (North America). The Val bloods discovered other humans residing in the newly found continent and decided to live peacefully with them. And then, they met the wizards.

  As it turns out, among the people, who were mostly Native Americans, some had gotten access to an old entity of darkness and could draw power from it. There was said to be a mutual agreement between the users and the source of the dark magic before they could use its power. The magic granted them an unbelievably huge amount of intelligence and power to explain and control natural phenomenon. These were the wizards. Dracula did not mind the wizards at all. In fact, he hoped they would accept the Val bloods into their society because compared to the humans and wizards, the Val bloods were much smaller in population. And so, the wizards accepted the Val bloods under the condition that they would work for them (since wizards were kinda like the bosses).

  As time progressed, the Val bloods began to increase rapidly in number because they were transferring their genes to other humans by biting them (strictly because of increasing their size and not for bloodlust). The wizards had no issue with this as long as they didn't overdo it. When the population of Val bloods reached five hundred, Dracula banned the biting of humans for any reason whatsoever. Val bloods were expected to begin procreating like humans to increase in size rather than biting people.

  Everything went normally, until… nothing happened (ha, I'm just kidding). The war started. Apparently, Dracula, during a tour of the Wizards' Castle discovered that the wizards were using some humans as sacrifices to their unknown source of power. That was the content of their agreement. Human life for magical power. They also carried out inhumane experiments on humans and even some Val bloods too! Dracula went mad with rage.

  Dracula had always been a peace-loving man by nature who stood up to authority whenever people were being oppressed before he became a Val blood. When he did become one, he still had a strong urge to protect human life no matter what they may have done to him. He knew better than anyone that humans usually acted based on their fears and therefore bore no grudges against them even when he got banished by his own people. Seeing his own fellow Val bloods being tortured and experimented on made him declare war on the wizards. With his extraordinary strength, which was much higher than the average Val blood, he led his army of Val bloods to completely eliminate the wizards. It was a tough and terrible war. While the wizards had magic on their side and were more in number, the Val bloods had superhuman abilities and were very hard to kill. The war dragged on for months with both sides losing fighters especially the Val bloods because of their smaller size. However, the war was decided emphatically by the 'Battle of Blood Valley', a fight between Dracula and the wizard king. It was dubbed as 'the fight between the blood lords' because Dracula had shocked everyone by using blood magic (the most powerful and forbidden aspect of dark magic) to fight the wizard king who used blood magic as well. Dracula killed him at the top of a valley which became known as 'Blood Valley'. The battle decisively ended the war and Dracula used magic to seal away the other wizards in a mini-dimensional plane of North America. That marked the ending of the wizards' tyranny and the total freedom for the humans.

  Sadly, while using blood magic, Dracula used up nearly all of his life energy and became very old. Normally, Val bloods age two times slower than the average human beginning from the age of forty. That means the average vampire lives to about one hundred and forty years. Dracula was thirty years old when he sealed the wizards away and killed the wizard king. He became one hundred and thirty-eight years after using blood magic which had drained his life since he wasn't a wizard and had used the forbidden magic.

  Dracula's plight alarmed the entire vampire race, but he didn't mind it much. He began to keep mostly to himself during his final days. He muttered and rambled about different things. Some said he had gone crazy. Before his death, he wrote two books; one was about his life and the other a journal describing mythical creatures he had supposedly made up. It was only until years later that it was discovered that some of his journal entries actually existed like the werewolves. He also shared information that the dark magic had revealed to him in order to ensure the survival of the vampires. He talked about the seven continents and the oceans in the world and how they would need to spread across the world to increase in size and protect other humans. He gave his blood to six female vampires who are now known as the 'Queens of the Night'. With his blood, they were expected to be representatives of him and take charge of every continent, overseeing the affairs of the vampires. His last wish was that they would no longer refer to themselves as 'Val bloods' but 'Vampires'. Although the entire vampire race thought what he was saying was bizarre, they obeyed him in order to fulfill his last wishes on his death bed. And so, Dracula died leaving the vampire race under the Queens of the Night. That was how the vampires began to journey to the other continents living with the humans there who had no knowledge about the vampires.

  Over the next hundreds of years, the vampires were forgotten since they learned to blend in well with the humans. With their intellectual prowess, some vampires began to learn actual trade and professions. Some world figures you might have heard about were actually vampires. By the early twentieth century, vampires (who were seen as ordinary people) began opening academies to train young vampires and gave them the opportunity to choose what path they would like to follow. They had the opportunity to either become a vampire hunter (someone who hunts rogue vampires), a teacher at the academy, a continental agent (someone who works with the continental organization) or they could give up everything relating to vampires and opt for a shot in the human professions. They would however have to be stripped of their vampire traits and lose all their memories regarding vampires (the technique for this was invented in the late twentieth century).

  That my friend is the end of vampire history as my 'mom' narrated to me. Vampires, at least to the humans, never existed and are only fictional beings. There were few written records about Dracula and the personality of vampires in America which never really dissolved completely but were seen as the imagination of the mind. Presently, only ten people know about the existence of vampires in the entire world. Two of them here in America are the President of the United States of America. Since George Washington till date, every single president has been informed about the vampires via a confidential letter which is left by the former president to his successor. I do not know who the second person is since I was never told. The rest are in other continents, so I have no business knowing who they are according to my 'dad'.

  With the history lesson finally over with, only the misconceptions remain. Most people have varying ideas about vampires. These misconceptions are very misleading. As a matter of fact, most of them could not be farther from the truth.

  There's the belief about the sun and our skin. It's generally believed that vampires can't appear during broad daylight because their skin starts to burn. And so, vampires only come out at night and avoid sunlight completely. This is bogus. While it may be true that vampires are more active at night and our senses are heightened more during the night, we've always been able to walk and operate normally during the day. However, during the intense heat of some days, we may become lightheaded and nauseous.

  If you look into the mouth of a vampire (not sure why anyone would do that though), you'll see nothing unusual. If you look closely at the set of incisors, you'll find out that they are slightly longer than normal. These are our fangs; the medium by which we transfer our genes. Vampire fangs (like mine) are not as long as depicted in most movies or books. Actually, if you don't peer closely, the difference between our incisors and human incisors may seem microscopic. A vampire's fangs can transfer our genes when a person is bitten. If a vampire happens to bite someone, there are two possible outcomes which depend on the intent of the vampire. If the bite is intended to kill, the victim's blood flows quickly into the mouth of the vampire draining the victim of all his blood. This entire situation takes approximately ten seconds to be complete. If the vampire bites a victim (anywhere, not only on the nape) and does not suck out his blood entirely, the person becomes 'dead' for about 12 hours before regaining consciousness and having the abilities of a vampire. Biting humans has long been banished and abolished, so we don't do it anymore. We have no reason to anyway and it also leads to uncontrollable bloodlust which is dangerous and risky to the safety of humans.

  Garlic is not as poisonous to vampires as you might think. Most people have the wrong idea that garlic can kill a vampire immediately. While it is true that garlic is dangerous to vampires, it is not as potent to kill as it is portrayed. When eaten in significantly large amounts, like maybe an extra-large garlic pizza or like the time I ate half a loaf of garlic bread, a vampire may experience severe stomach pains, dizziness, hypertensions, vomiting frequently and some other symptoms. But to kill is completely out of the question. Nobody really knows why we're weak to garlic. That's another unsolved mystery about the vampires.

  Our skin is not in any way pale. Like I've said before; the differences between a vampire's appearance and a human's appearance are tiny. All our physical features are the same with humans. Our hair, skin, eyes, nose, ears, mouths, and bodies are just about the same as any person's own is.

  Now, as for what we eat. Basically, the only thing which has nutritional value to vampires is blood. Right from the beginning of the age of vampires, human blood has been the only thing which a vampire needs to survive. Other foods, drinks and fruits are fundamentally useless to a vampire, and only blood from humans specifically are imperative for a vampire's growth and sustenance. During the 19th century however, one of our famous scientists (who I can't mention his name in order to prevent an international uproar) discovered a substitute for blood. As it turns out, vampires only require the hemoglobin found in blood. So, using a pomegranate which is highly nutritional in increasing blood supply, he made a serum out of it adding hemoglobin which became amplified due to the presence of highly concentrated pomegranate in it. We call this serum 'bectar' or blood nectar. If it's mixed with any type of food, vampires can get the nutrients from it. By adding a drop of bectar to, say for instance an apple pie, a vampire can get the nutrients from the pie plus the hemoglobin inside it. It was the first time in our history that vampires could eat actual food and stop feeding off their own blood mixed with garlic water. It was a huge landmark in our history, and by the start of the 20th century, the next generation of vampires were healthier than previous ones.

  In essence, whatever you've seen in Twilight, Dracula, Night Teeth, Priest, Morbius (I could go on and on for days) or any other vampire movie is phony. Yeah, I was surprised too. The misconceptions about the vampires however have helped to effectively hide our existence from humans by giving a generally misleading idea about us.

  As for why I still grew despite not taking any bectar or blood, I have no idea. Even my mentors at Crescent College don't know why that happened. My case was termed as an anomaly.

  "So now you've heard it all. You satisfied now?" 'Dad' said after two hours of history.

  "I…Th…I'm a vampire?" I stuttered still stupefied.

  "Mhm. In both flesh and blood," my 'Mom' affirmed.

  "So where is Crescent College exactly?" I managed to ask.

  "Well, to the humans who know about us, it's located in a sub-urban town in Odessa, Western Texas," 'Mum' began sounding smart, "But to us vampires, it's in the deep forest region of Ashland, Maine".

  "Why did you guys lie about that," I asked.

  "It wasn't really a lie,'' 'Dad' said. "Crescent College was originally sited in Texas".

  "When was that?"

  "About fifty years ago".

  "Fifty years!"

  "Yeah. But too many people began migrating into Texas which made hiding our existence extremely difficult, so we moved to the less populated and peaceful forest abundant region of Maine which helps us hide easier".

  "I guess that's smart," I said thoughtfully. "So, where exactly in Maine?"

  "You ever heard of the North Maine Woods before?" 'Mom asked.

  "Uh… no," I answered.

  "Seriously?" 'Dad' said sounding disappointed. "Damn, what do those nuns even teach you?"

  "FYI," I began, "I'm in grade four, not a freshman studying geography".

  "So what?" 'Dad' argued, "Vampires are way smarter than their age".

  "Right," I said pretending to understand what he just said. "By the way, you guys aren't really adopting me, right?"

  "Of course!" 'Mom' nearly screamed. "Children are so much stress and work. Besides were not even married".

  I looked at my 'Dad' who only nodded ad said, "That's true. We're only agents for the continental government. We got assigned to help C.C extradite a young vampire who happened to get himself all over the news, and almost blew up centuries of efforts made to keep vampire existence hidden''.

  "Well, it wasn't my fault," I stated. "So, I can drop this whole 'Mom' and 'Dad' thing right? 'Cause it feels weird".

  "Sure thing. I'm Agent Krischov by the way," 'Dad' said.

  "And I'm Agent DeMontera," 'Mom' said.

  "So, Agent Krischov," I said grateful to stop calling him Dad. "How much longer till we get there?"

  "We'll take a private jet from JFK Airport to Maine," he answered.

  "A private jet?!" I asked in bewilderment.

  "Yeah, we've got enough money than we could ever need. Turns out, the U.S. government pays a lot for us to deal with rogues. It's how we get our funding," Agent DeMontera informed me. 

  "Cool," I replied in amazement.

  "Three hours tops, and then we get to C.C," Agent Krischov said doing the math in his head.

  As I sunk back into my seat, I tried to fall asleep, but the thoughts of my new school filled me with anxiety making it impossible for me to sleep. Would the students there like me? Will I fit in? Could I learn to become a real vampire? Were there strawberry sundaes over there? These thoughts swarmed my head as I quietly brought out my diary to distract myself.