Blood Descendants (St. Clair Vampires Book 1) (9 page)

What I saw was a
familiar face and extraordinary blue eyes from my past, and she had
her finger to her lips in a plea to silence my forthcoming scream.

I opened my eyes
screaming! No longer sitting on the forest floor in the arms of a
monster, instead I was sitting in a plush chair in front of an altar
of strangers. My clothes were wet with sweat and I felt like I would
never breathe again. Even though I was awake and simply recalling the
dream, it still felt as if I was experiencing the events myself. Once
I was able to gain an ounce of composure, I looked toward the dais.

Efia and the rest of
the panel were looking at me with sympathy. I was certain that they
thought I was insane and would have to be admitted into psychiatric
care, but each of them smiled in turn and made me feel encouraged.
Instinctively, I reached out my hand and was rewarded with Tabitha’s
firm grip and confident smile. She had become my constant comfort
and, regardless of the current circumstances, I welcomed her
presence.

“
Well,”
Efia said, “I recall it exactly the same way.”

“
But
how? What's wrong with me?”

This question earned me
soft laughs from the panel. But, before I could feel offended, they
all smiled benevolently.

“
Cheyenne,
from time to time, some of my descendants will relive my life in
their dreams. Unfortunately, my child, you were given some of the
unpleasant parts.”

“
But,
I don’t understand.”

“
And
it may take you years to gain that understanding, but we do not have
that luxury. Time is not, as they say, on our side. You will be 18 in
three months and must decide what you are going to do for the rest of
your life. What you are going to be.”

I knew that turning 18
was a big deal, but Efia sounded as cryptic as a conspiracy theorist.
I looked around for confirmation that she was a little bit crazy and
received none. Everyone in the room was in agreement with whatever
Efia was talking about.

“
So,
what now? Who am I suppose to be?”

“
There
is no easy way to say this, so let me start with some introductions.
You know Tabitha, of course, and you’ve met Solomon on a few
occasions,” Efia paused as if waiting to see if I were prepared
for the rest.

“
To
my left,” she continued and held up her left hand, “are
Abraham, Israel and Providence. And to my right are Pleasant, Rachel
and Eliza.”

I stared at them,
noting their names as some that appeared on the family tree. I
searched my memory for the dates to match and decided that I must
have read something wrong. I couldn't remember all of the dates, but
there were two that really stood out to me. Since I was born in 1994,
I remembered that the other date of birth was that of Pleasant. And
the only reason I remembered it was because I loved that name; its
originality. The Pleasant on the family tree was born in 1793.

As soon as I thought
it, Pleasant turned her eyes toward me and held my gaze. She seemed
to be searching for understanding and comprehension but I knew she
would get none. I had no idea what was going on.

Just then, the doors to
the room slammed open and Jordan walked in with another man at his
side. The second man looked like Jordan but was slightly smaller and
a bit darker. Both men nodded in my direction and continued to the
dais. They bowed as the shorter man spoke.

“
Excuse
the interruption, Efia. The Oleanders are closing ranks. We must
decide our next course of action.”

“
Thank
you, Zander,” Efia said. “Cheyenne, I had hoped the next
set of events would happen differently, but we are out of time.”

She paused, less for
effect than for my benefit. The next thing out of her mouth was going
to be big.

“
Zander
and Jordan are your brothers and you have a younger sister around
here somewhere. We are all family, in fact, in one way or another.”

“
But
how…,”

“
There
will be time for that later,” she continued. “For now,
know this: I am a Vampire, as are most of the others in this room.
Tabitha was sent as a scout to protect you while our elders confirmed
that you are indeed my blood descendant.”

As if to drive the
point home, a man I hadn’t seen appeared from the shadows and
walked toward her. He knelt directly in front of her taking off his
suede choker and exposing his neck as he went. Efia leaned toward
him, never breaking eye contact with me. She appeared ready to kiss
him until her lips pulled back to reveal slightly elongated canines.
The man jerked slightly when she penetrated his skin and started to
suck softly from his neck, but then relaxed against the leg of the
chair.

I sat there in a daze,
as if she had not just bitten someone right in front of me. Tabitha,
who was standing sentry behind me, gently rubbed my shoulder. I was
waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and say I was Punk’d,
but nothing happened. I would have thought this was an April Fool’s
prank if not for the fact that it was the end of September. I closed
my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew that once they were open I
would find myself back in my 3rd period math class that I must have
fallen asleep in. I took another deep breath and opened my eyes.
Damn!

Every eye on the dais
was trained on me. Efia was wiping tiny drops of blood from her mouth
with a white handkerchief and the man she had been bitten was sitting
quietly at the foot of her chair. I stared at him for a minute before
I leaned forward and threw up all over the floor. I fell down in
front of my chair and continued to heave up everything that I had
recently eaten and stayed on all fours until my stomach was empty and
my body stopped shaking.

Zander and Jordan
gently lifted me back into the chair while Tabitha wiped my face with
a wet cloth. They were acting as if this was an everyday occurrence
for them. A man dressed in red came and cleaned up my mess while I
regained what little composure I could. Efia and the others on the
dais sat quietly. I waited for them to crack a smile and tell me that
it was all a joke, but when I looked at Tabitha, I knew that they
weren’t.

Chapter 4

I bolted straight up
as if I had been zapped with a taser. By looking at my surroundings I
realized that I was in the suite of rooms where I had taken my bath.
I was covered with a soft comforter while laying on a chaise lounge
near the fireplace. On the rug in front of me lay Artemis and Apollo.
They had raised their heads when I sat up and were looking right at
me. They were not, however, the only beings in the room with me.
Sitting on a chaise lounge opposite the sprawling dogs was Tabitha.
She was wearing a black militant suit, a small smile on her face and
worry in her eyes.

“
I’m
sorry about that. The feeding”, she actually sounded
remorseful. “Do you think you’re ready to talk?”

“
I’m
not ready to say anything, but I am ready for an explanation,”
I said, pulling my shoulders back as if I had some sort of control
over anything that had happened to me in the last few days.

Tabitha smiled at my
feigned confidence but allowed me to retain my dignity, however false
it was. I was not looking forward to finding out what role I played
in all of this, but didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. I
sat cross legged waiting for her to explain this craziness away. But
something had changed between us. Tabitha was looking at me with a
kind of reverence that I wasn’t use to.

“
Cheyenne,
I really need you to have an open mind right now. There are forces at
work that are stronger than the two of us and you need to become
aware of them.” She sat there for a moment, all Yoda-like,
letting her statement sink in.

She walked over to a
table and opened a very large very old book. When I followed her I
found that the book was titled “Historia Lamia”, “The
History of Vampires”. I sat down, hard, and began to read.

Everything that I
thought I knew about Vampires was wrong. First off, wrapping my brain
around the fact that they actually existed would take some time. Next
came the illogical nature of their existence. I wasn't sure if I
wanted them to be reanimated corpses or people afflicted with
hemophilia. It turned out that both of those were wrong.

The brain seemed to be
the key to the genetic differences between Vampires and humans. It
had been proven time and time again by world renowned scientists that
humans only used 10% of their brain. I had always thought it was a
waste and wondered how we could tap into the remaining 90%. Vampires,
I read, not only had a completely different cerebral make-up but they
enjoyed life with 100% brain function. With the brain working at full
capacity, vampires were more feral than humans. They had not evolved
in the same way that the Homo-Sapien had, rather they had gone a
route closer to that of the Lion. In the beginning, as the
Homo-Sapien foraged for fruits and vegetables, the Vampire hunted for
flesh. It wasn't known when the Vampire went from chewing to
drinking, but their historians wrote that the nutrients from blood
were more quickly adsorbed and utilized by the body. In fact, most
Vampires had never ingested flesh at all, choosing instead to live
off of a diet of fruits, vegetables and human blood.

Through time, some
Vampires observed a type of hibernation to conserve their energy.
Originally it was easy since there were fewer dangers and Vampires
were able to sleep their days away in any available cave. The dangers
from animal threats were small due to the fact that Vampires seemed
to smell like predators themselves, keeping other predators away. And
the so-called caveman was too busy hunting and staying alive to cause
the Vampire any trouble. As a matter of fact, many cavemen became
food when they stumbled into the cave of a sleeping Vampire. Lions
and tigers and bears…and Vampires? Oh, my!

So, if I was to believe
this tale of Vampires being real, I would have to accept that the
long held myths about them were false. The list of possible clues
that my best friend and her family were Vampires dwindled to nothing
if I used today’s explanation. Sunlight, religious items,
garlic; my time with Tabitha allowed me to cross all of them off of
my list. Tabitha had spent many days with me in the sun even though
her skin never seemed to burn or tan. She also ate regular food
although she very rarely ate meat. When she ate my spaghetti, she
used more sauce than meat and the strong smell of the garlic bread
always made her nose twitch. We had attended church and shopped for
silver crosses for my mother. Tabitha had held each and every one
with no burns or other aversions so that shot down two myths at once.
But, I never saw her wear any jewelry, not even earrings, and that
was strange for someone so fashionable.

With my limited Vampire
myths obliterated I researched more of them. Tabitha was definitely
faster and stronger than humans and possessed keener hearing and
eyesight. They could bleed and even die, but they were not as fragile
as humans. The regeneration of their cells was so fast that the only
surefire way to kill one was to remove his or her head. Their
hyper-functioning brain was the key to life for the Vampire. Not even
a stake in the heart would kill them; they would simply lie in a form
of paralysis until it was removed, although it was not documented how
long they could remain that way. I ran through the list of myths and
found all of them lacking except one: the need to be invited into
someone’s home. I couldn’t prove or disprove this one
since it was simply good home training that had me invite Tabitha
into my home when we first met. I didn’t know of many people
who simply walked into someone else’s house without permission,
so that one had to stay on the ‘maybe’ list. But one
thing was certain, Vampires had supernatural attributes.

Continued research
could not help me confirm nor deny their existence, which I was sure
was the point of the myths in the first place. The myth of ghouls, or
Renfield’s from the Bram Stocker novel, was actually true. As
humanity invented tools for protection against threats, animal and
Vampire alike, the need for daytime protection grew. It was most
likely that a female Vampire took a human mate and accidentally
produced the first Stewards. This man was an ancestor of the Spartans
and was more resilient than other humans; the combination of genomes
made the offspring perfect for the job. The Stewards grew stronger
and lived longer than humans but did have the need to drink blood. As
the population of Stewards grew, early leaders sought to breed them
with Vampires to reduce the need for blood or hibernation. These
offspring simply created stronger and longer lived Stewards, but did
not fix the Vampire problem. For many years the Stewards simply
captured humans in order to feed their Vampire patrons. Entire
villages, living in fear of their mysterious neighbors, began to form
lynch mobs and killed several hundred Vampires. Humans outnumbered
Vampires and Stewards, so an all out war was out of the question. And
the idea of treating humans like cattle was not appealing. As time
went by the mysterious nature of Vampires drew the attention of
admirers. Men and women alike flocked to the edges of villages and
townships for a chance encounter with the mythical creatures.

Many Vampires lived on
the blood of these admirers and began to keep regular human hours. As
the years went by and Vampires began to thrive and prosper,
differences in attributes caused divisions. The most powerful
Vampires separated the population into five different clans and led
them as their sovereign monarchs. These Royals had set up a governing
body called the Council that was granted the power to create,
implement and enforce laws. This new governing body sought out the
brightest of the Vampires and set them to work on biological issues
within the species. These Vampire scientists had worked tirelessly
for solutions to the problem of feeding without the fear of
discovery.