Within the Cards (7 page)

I knew this was going to be a strange semester. Our professor was a potential psycho mass murderer, now a vampire and a witchyre shared the same class. It was going to be hard enough because our kind despised each other. Now to share the class with a vampire mental case that demanded I was in love with him in some past life I didn’t remember. Even harder, this unbalanced idiot declared his love for me. What was wrong with this vamp? Maybe it would be a good idea if I found another class to hunt.

“NO,” I shouted.

I felt my cold body temperature increase. The heat started from the bottom of my feet and radiated up through the ends of my hair. I slammed my fist against the wall, knocking a hole through the paper-thin drywall.

“Oh well,” I laughed, “I’m glad no one was in the other room, but it’s nothing a snap of the fingers couldn’t fix.”

My thoughts focused again on the vamp. I would not back down from anyone. Hmmm, I don’t know why he interested me. He was just a mere vampire, a crazy one at that. I was a witchyre, and I was superior to his kind. So why was I worried about this vamp? I rolled over in my bed as I screamed into the pillow of black silk.

I would give him enough rope to hang his deranged self before I get rid of him. I had to remove him before he drove me insane. All of this pressure made me thirsty. Now let me see, the dark-haired male wanted to ‘hit this’. If that is what he wanted, I could make it happen. I smiled and began to laugh. Of course, it would be in his nightmares. Now where would these pieces of food hang out? It couldn’t be anywhere that would be tremendously appealing. After all, they were only food that waited for me to partake of their nourishing blood.

I looked through the pieces of paper the man at the registration office gave me when I registered for these stupid classes. Now what would humans at college do for enjoyment? Awe, yes here was what I had been looking for, Union hall. This paper stated it was a place college students could meet and socialize with other students. Hmmm, this was where I would socialize with Mr. Hit this.

Chapter Five

UNHAPPY YEARS

“Ellie” I screamed into my pillow. “Why won’t you remember me?”

My temper boiled, and my body felt as if it were on fire. I rolled onto my back and again my mind focused on her. The memory of my past life faded to almost non-recognition, but my life with Ellie was strong in my thoughts. It was one hundred and ten years ago that Ellie changed me into the undead that I am now. We sent the first ten years of my new life together; I was her pupil, her lover, and constant companion. She told me many stories of her life prior to my change. This time was what she called the ‘unhappy years’.

The history of the witchyre race wasn’t entirely clear in my mind. The only things I knew about them was what I learned from Ellie and my readings of supernatural creatures. There were no history books on our races. We were nothing more than a myth of untruths. We didn’t exist. Human beliefs were mistakes to protect their fragile minds. If they lived in a world of knowing vampires, witches, werewolves or any other mystical creatures were real, they would not feel safe at night when they closed their eyes to dream. Their nights would be full of the same insomnia as mine.

Ellie’s story was full of strange and breath-taking events. Neither she nor I were ever supposed to exist. She should not walk among the immortals. She was the unexpected myth of generations of mutation. These myths were true, and these mutations were never supposed to happen. Even within her own race of mutated immortals, she was different. Ellie was a rebel in her own right.

Eleanor Valeness born some two hundred and fifty years ago was the granddaughter of an elder vampire with psychic powers. Considered different from the normal vampires of his time, he was an outcast. His ability to see the fate of others put fear in the pure blood race. This fear was so much that they banished him from the vampire family. He had to hunt and walk the earth alone. His powers were terrifying to their clan. These differences requested indulgences that didn’t exist. The leaders of the vampires saw these differences as taboo. When a being had abilities that were out of the norm for a vampire, they were outcast or extinguished. Her grandfather was one of the lucky few; he was an outcast.

In present times, very few hybrids had these abilities. Once the hybrid rulers recognized a vampire had these abnormalities, they ordered their creator to destroy them. This was in part because of Ellie’s grandfather and her race. Her grandfather’s maker didn’t destroy him because he feared there would be a time he would need such premonitions. Every immortal knew he or she could not refuse their makers no matter how long it had been since they saw them. We were not concerned with the amount of time that pasted since we crossed our maker's path or how long we had been outcast. This proved to be a mistake for his maker. Ellie’s grandfather was the precise reason Ellie’s kind existed.

A coven of witches and wizards befriended her grandfather; they did not fear him. His abilities were normal to their kind. These witches and wizards did not fear vampires either; they were an even match for them. Each group lived in harmony with the other. Vampires were immortal and fed on the blood of humans, not witches. Witches and wizards had no desire for this meal. Although their lives lasted many hundreds of years, unlike the vampires, they would eventually die. Their existence was only for the enchanted. They were not destructive or dangerous unless provoked.

Through his time of being with his new friends, he met an exquisite witch. She was one of the most alluring witches of her time. In the vampire clan, one could have sex outside their race, but breeding outside of the vampire race was a non-allowed treat. However, Ultress no longer lived under their control and rules. He and the witch fell in love, and they married. They united to create several offspring. This was the first time a vampire and witch reproduced spores. This union produced a new race the vampires would never accept and eventually the witches and wizards would not accept them either.

Never again would Ellie’s grandfather be a part of the hybrid vampires. They would have nothing to do with him or his powers. His existence as well as all of those devised from this union risk elimination if the hybrid vampires found out about his creations. This meant Ellie, nor I would exist.

For the most part, an immortal’s creation was from the bite of a purebred or reproduced by two of the same kind. Hybrid Vampire female could not reproduce offspring because they were dead, totally immortal. This wasn’t true for a male. If he reached puberty in his mortal life, the trait of reproduction lived knowingly in his immortality. This was one of the things along with the lust for sex, which carried on and increased in the world of the walking dead. With the female sterility, it was impossible for vampires to reproduce by any other means except changing a mortal through a bite.

The purebred immortal males could reproduce with a human female, but this didn’t concern them because human females were only food. There was no attraction for a male vampire to a human female. He fed on her blood and satisfied his sexual urges that were overwhelming. However, impregnating them was not a problem because he usually killed them while drinking from them before he was finished. The witches usually stayed away from the vampires because their feeding habits repulsed them. They saw them as mongrels and nasty. The two races did not mix. Of course, this was before Ellie’s grandparents met, and the witchyres arrived.

When Ellie’s grandmother became pregnant with a half vampire, half witch child, she controlled its rapid growth and fierce rage by placing a spell on her body to expand and make her organs become hard as stone to withstand its destruction. Only a witch could withstand the monster inside of her; the monster that craved her blood and wanted to drain her vital juices from within her womb.

In the vampire world, the ancestors of a clan were only allowed to create a new vampire. This was to control the numbers of their followers and the balance of food. To change a human, they bit and sucked the blood from the human. Just before their victim as rendered dead, they open one of their veins and the human drank the venom of the vampire. This was a willing act by the human because they were under the charms of the immortal. When a human drank from a vampire, it was erotic for both the vampire and the human. However, it was a rare event. The leader of the vampire’s could only give consent for the exchange of venom. On occasion, vampire of higher-ranking got permission to use his or her venom. This meant you were several thousand years old and had your own coven. Otherwise, the younger vampires bit and sucked either leaving their victims part drained never remembering what happen to them or leaving their dead carcasses to rot. Most young vampires could only do the latter.

Ellie’s grandfather no longer lived by the vampire’s rules, and her grandmother was a witch that could tolerate the birth of a vampire child. They felt they were free to reproduce. With the procreation of the new race of half vampire, half witch, a race within these races began, and this secret society of crossbreeds grew at a rapid rate.

Ellie’s grandfather was Ultress, the purebred vampire that became the ruler of the race known to immortals as the Witchyre race. From his eviction from the vampire clan, he grew a hatred for his own kind. He passed down his hatred for the hybrids to each of his offspring. This hatred was strong and unforgiving. This emotion of hatred that witchyres didn’t know until taught would prove to be the downfall of Ultress. Ellie was different. The only thing she hated was the monster they wanted her to be. At least before, I came to her and before her family erased her memory.

As I recounted the stories of her past, her grandmother had many mystical powers. She was one of the most beautiful women among the witch family, and her name was Elizabeth. I was sure this was where Ellie got her unfathomed beauty. Elizabeth fell in love with the vampire that had been outcast by his own. She bore him several offspring. Pure witches were not true immortals. They were warm-blooded like humans, but had a life span that last for several hundred years. To humans this was an eternity and was immortality. To my kind, this was a mere short block of time that comes all too soon for the ones that cherish them.

Ultress wanted to keep the mother of his children. He loved her, and he needed her powers to maintain his control and lordship over the newly formed immortal race. He knew she was aging, and her time on earth was growing closer to an end. He persuaded her to allow him to change her, and she vowed to the changing because she loved him and wanted to spend an infinity of time with the vampire she loved.

After they had reproduced six children, she drank his venom one night as they made love. This changed her into the undead, but she retained her magical powers. She was no longer a purebred witch, but now she was a vampire with abilities that made her different, as was he. As with my changing, this was a burning that one does not forget. Although it was quick, it was extremely painful. However, for a witch that could cast a spell to decrease the misery and torment of this change, it wasn’t as excruciating as I am sure it would be for a mere human. I was lucky Ellie changed me and used her powers to decrease the pain for me. It was only with the love of one’s companion that a being could withstand the pain and agony of the change.

Ultress and Elizabeth’s offspring were the true witchyres. The males would later become known as the Lords of the Witchyres or otherwise simply known as the “Lords”. Their six children consisted of three sons and three daughters. Their names I could not remember. They were the original six of the new race, and they would carry on this evil way of thinking. They were not just bloodsuckers with eternal life. They were mystical beings. Each of these immortals had powers. Some of their powers were identical, but each witchyre possessed certain powers that differed from another witchyre. One thing that didn’t differ was the hatred for the pure blood vampires. This hatred grew fierce as these spores grew into adulthood.

The growth period for a witchyre was shorter than that of a human. The incubation period of an embryo to human form was nine months. However, for the witchyres this incubation period was less than six weeks. At the age of eighteen, a witchyre had reached their full growth, and the aging process was complete. The eighteen-year span for a witchyre was only a couple of years. Normal humans barely learned to walk and talk, but witchyres were at the point they would remain for eternity. They would never grow older than the age of eighteen. They never change in their looks or urge.

When Ultress and Elizabeth’s offspring reached their full maturity, greed and hatred, mainly from the males, backfired on the pair. The fatal defect for Ellie's grandparents in the genetic makeup of the witchyres was that this new race had no ability to feel compassion or love. Hate was the only emotion that could be taught to them or maybe it came natural. This race began to see Ultress and Elizabeth as purebreds. This made their parents different and once again outcast to this new race. To a witchyre, their parents were just entities that past them immortally. They felt nothing more or nothing less for them. There were no loyalties.

Ultress and Elizabeth’s fates were unlucky at best. Ultress, being a purebred vampire and Elizabeth being a purebred witch that Ultress changed into an immortal was not what their offspring wanted to control their race. Their son’s inability to love increased in strength as time pasted. Their greed for power caused them to turn on the two purebreds. Ultress’s physic ability had weakened; he was not able to see what his sons had in store for Elizabeth and himself.

The three sons turned Ultress and Elizabeth over to the purebred vampires with an agreement they would not be punished for their parent’s sins. Ultress’s maker destroyed both Ultress and Elizabeth because since her change, she was a product of his makers as well. The leaders of the vampires made all pure breeds witness their punishment to reinforce their commitment to stand with their own race.