Kaila took the leisure walk home that day, letting the cool spring air wash over her face. She enjoyed the fact that with each step further away from the school, the less tension there was that was covering her skin. At times she could practically feel it crawl all over her and create goose-bumps.
“Bonjour, Kaila!”
Kaila stopped walking, then turned around. She half-wished she didn’t, finding herself seconds later pummeled to the ground with arms wrapped around her sides. She managed a “get off me” with her mouth buried between cotton fabric.
“Ah, sorry!” Came the cheerful reply, and Dahliah looked up, a sunny smile planted on her face. “I just couldn’t help myself, sensing your aura being so calm. It was funny to see the look on your face!” She laughed.
Kaila made a fake smile back, her mind muttering hundreds of irritated words. Dahliah wasn’t immortal, or half-immortal at that; she was a human that convinced herself that she had powers. She kept telling Kaila over and over again on their first encounter that she could do anything that a witch could do; create orbs of fire, read minds, sense auras, among many other supernatural actions. But no matter how many times Dahliah stated she was, Kaila peered into her aura countless times and found no trace whatsoever of anything magical. Not even Dahliah’s mind was trickling with ancient words of any sort. That just proved to Kaila more that with each passing decade, more and more teenagers have become obsessed with the fact that there is something mystical within them. Sadly, she had to regret that there were few, if any, in this school alone that possessed anything close to making a pencil levitate an inch into the air. Of course, that all changed when the vampire came in.
Ugh. Blood-sucker.
“Kaila, you alright?” Dahliah asked, breaking Kaila from her thoughts again.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a lot happened today.” She hoped that her tone made it obvious that she wasn’t in the mood to really talk.
“Oh.” Dahliah paused a moment, twirling her black hair. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Excuse me.” Jordan walked up from behind Dahliah, interrupting her. “Kaila and I really need to get back home. It’s getting pretty dark, and our mother will be worried.” He cast a dark look at Kaila, and Kaila knew that Dahliah should leave soon, if she knew what was good for her.
Dahliah, for as stupid as she was, caught on quick. “Oh, uh….yeah. Catch you later, Kaila.” Dahliah nodded once, then ran off down the road and back to the school. Jordan rolled his eyes, then fell into step with Kaila as they walked down the road again.
“How comes you weren’t ta---”
“Don’t even go there.” Jordan intercepted, turning away.
Kaila frowned, turning away. Even without her sight she could sense something in him that wasn’t there before, as if he changed within the past few hours after the encounter with the vampire. Kaila thought carefully, and with a gentle voice, asked, “what was the vampire’s name? Did you manage to get his name?”
Jordan’s lip twitched. “Yes. Paul.”
Paul. Kaila felt the name as familiar, but not familiar enough to actually feel a sense to befriend the vampire. Befriend? When did she start thinking that?
“It was Paul Renolds.” Jordan made a bitter laugh. “What an American name. Doesn’t even sound ancient, so I suppose he is new here. Makes me curious about his family, if he even has one with him. For all we know he isn’t even part of a Clave.”
“What, didn’t you get into his mind enough to learn about his past?” Kaila asked, curious. She knew Jordan as having the best mind-reading powers in the world, being able to sift through thoughts that would be as hard as steel and diamond. The fact that he couldn’t do that with a lowly vampire was astonishing.
“No, it had nothing to do with the barriers. It had to do with how quick he moved on things.” Jordan’s voice got low as they started to walk through the forest. “No matter how hard he tried concentrating on a subject, his mind always went back to the fact that you were inside that classroom with your finger bleeding. Believe me, there were numerous attempts he had in his head of getting your blood and leaving without anything being done.” He frowned. “If you didn’t come outside of the classroom, I could have died there. He was pretty strong.”
“It probably had to do with my blood being present.” Kaila muttered, jumping over a thick root that sprouted from an old tree. Sunlight peeked through branches and caressed the leaves while the two avoided the obstacles. Kaila went slower, realizing she was far ahead from where she was. Apparently he was thinking as hard as Kaila was thinking all day. “What do you think he meant when he said us being the threat here rather than him? And something about blood ties?”
“I’m not sure.” Jordan said, leaping on top of another thick root and placing his hand on the trunk. He squinted his eyes straight ahead, then sighed as Kaila felt the light prancing of feet before her. “Looks like we have company.”
Kaila waited patiently beside Jordan as Jane prowled up from a nearby tree. She made a loud stomp as she presented herself in front of them, looking up with wide eyes. “Mother was worried. She was expecting you home by now.”
“Dahliah was talking with me again.” Kaila explained.
“You need to get that girl off your shoulders. Sooner or later she really will find out, and we’ll have to move again.”
“We might have to change locations anyway.” Jordan announced firmly, leaning against the tree trunk. “We have a little blood-sucker in our view.”
Jane’s eyes grew wide. “Really? Here, in our city? Does it not know that this is the most human-populated town throughout the state?”
Kaila flinched at calling the vampire ‘it’, but no one else seemed to be fazed.
“He does. He says he wants to ‘claim his thirst’, but in a good way.” Jordan said, snickering.
“That’s a joke.” Jane snorted, and they both went into a bunch of happy laughter.
“Can we get home?” Kaila asked, a bit irritated.
“Sure. Mother was bored, so she made some blueberry pie again.” Jane lazily said, pushing back a fern as they walked together.
“Yum, my favorite.” Jordan grinned.
Kaila smiled, lightly wondering if vampires liked blueberry pie.
First period rolled by with a grueling turn; time was going by too slow for Kaila, as she skimmed her fingers over the note she got in her locker. It was a request written neatly in an elegant scrawl:
Meet me in the forest during Art academic. We’ll talk then about what you already seem oblivious to for so many years.
- P. R .
P.S. Make sure not to bring you’re brother. He’ll read enough of our conversation when you meet with him next.
Her mind flowered with different possibilities: would she get hurt being alone? What did he want to tell her? What did he mean by ‘what you already seem oblivious to for so many years’? More questions burned through her mind, and she barely took notice to Dahliah make her way across the room to sit next to her, abandoning her assigned seat.
“How are you today? Your aura looks a little quick-tempered and busy.” Dahliah commented, pulling out some notes and taking a scan over them.
Kaila bit her tongue from not retorting out anything too harsh. “Yeah.” She stated simply, crumbling the note that was in her hand and stuffing it in her pocket. Dahliah watched curiously but didn’t ask, and that may have just been the first time Kaila prayed for her friend to not do and have it work. Dahliah turned back to her notes.
“Did you see the vampire, then?”
Kaila jolted, her eye flinching a little as she slowly turned to Dahliah, astounded. “W-What?”
Dahliah frowned. “He was in Gym yesterday. Boy, could that kid pull a dunk with the basketball.”
Kaila flinched again, gripping her pencil in her hand while her head throbbed. Paul…playing basketball? Exposing himself that much? If he was trying to prevent biting anyone, why would he do something that would make human hearts flutter at the thought? Basketball, just like any professional sport out there, was something that humans obsessed over. Hearts pounding like crazy… that would make any controlled vampire go on a frenzy. “Are you sure that was Paul?”
Dahliah’s eyes went wide. “Who’s Paul?”
Kaila felt her blood skip a pulse, and she tried calming down, maintaining her face. She shrugged painfully, even though her headache was becoming a migraine. “Nevermind. I’m not thinking too clearly today…” No, she thought confidently, I’m thinking more clearly than I have been in years.
“Okay then.” Dahliah seemed uneasy for a second before she brightened again. “But you should have seen Devon just jump up there like a jaguar! I swear, he headed straight for the basket, pumped it in, then landed on the ground like it was nothing! And everyone was just so amazed…”
Kaila stopped listening then, the vampire’s name striking her; Paul. She remembered a Paul at her elementary school, back when she was in the north of the state, where she had no clue. She never had any thought about who was sitting next to her, or what danger they possessed. She was frightened when she heard that Paul was expelled only a few days after Jimmy died. She didn’t even fully know what ‘death’ was until she saw his body laying on the see-saw, sprawled out like a disfigured mannequin while his tan skin now a pearly sheen of sickly light brown.
“Hello…..?” Dahliah started to wave her hand in front of Kaila, and Kaila blinked.
“I…” Kaila started to pack up her belongings, hastily stuffing the pencils and papers into her bag. “I need to go get some air for a bit.”
“Okay.” Dahliah looked back at her work, but there was obviously some sort of longing tension in her stance, and Kaila ignored the feeling and walked out, not caring that the teacher was calling her back. She stumbled out of the school, feeling light-headed as she leaned against the brick wall, her forehead drenched with sweat even though there was no reason for the perspiration.
“Two?” Kaila thought aloud, confused. She didn’t expect two in one day to arrive at the school. Especially without Paul saying anything.
Paul wouldn’t say anything. We didn’t have lots of time to talk. Kaila argued in her head, annoyed at her own stupidity.
“Hello there.”
Kaila gasped, immediately reacting by standing up and backing up, skillfully leaping over her backpack and moving into a fighting stance, her hand held against her side where her blade infused with her aura was positioned, humming and buzzing with energy. It was a boy standing there, with bronze hair and the same set of black eyes that Paul had. His teeth were pulled back into a wide smile, clean-cut and perfect. He was leaning against edge of the wall that caved into the entrance, his hands folded into his pockets. He wasn’t fazed by her reaction.
“You might want to keep that there. You may need it later.” The vampire commented, pointing his chin at Kaila’s weapon. Kaila braced herself even more, grinding her feet into the dirt just in case she had to make a good attack. The wet mud might make her slip.
“My name’s Devon, by the way.” Devon held out his hand, but then slowly withdrew with a cunning smile on his face when he saw that Kaila wasn’t about to move. He toyed with a straw in his hand, then flung it over his shoulder so that it landed perfectly into the ground and straight up so that the one end was pointing directly at the sky. “I just got back from lunch. You should be glad I’m quite full. Sometimes I can get to be a bit of a grouch when I don’t get what I want.” He made a low laugh, watching her with gleaming eyes.
“I bet you do.” Kaila retorted, her body spinning with adrenaline. “Tell me, are you counting how long it will take people to find out your secret?”
Devon laughed, leaning his head back in emphasis before realizing that she was serious. Then he wisened up, looking at her with deadly predator eyes. “I see where this is going. What gave you the intention that I was a vampire.”
“Friends that have very intellectual minds, it seems.” Kaila looked over to her right, shocked when she saw Paul at her side, his hands fisted near his waist. “And I think for the sake of the game, you need to leave.”
Devon turned to Paul, then back at Kaila. His smile grew wide, and the teeth that would have looked charming were menacing to the opponents. “Well then, agreed. The game is finished, it seems. I had no clue.” Devon turned and walked a few feet, then turned back to them. “I’m not leaving though. Make sure you tell your Clave that. Our Clave is staying right here.” Another wicked grin before he faded out of sight.
Kaila turned to Paul, watching him lessen his tension.
“That concerns me.” Paul mumbled, his brow furrowed with confusion.
“What?” Kaila asked.
“The fact that a rogue vampire would say that he is part of a Clave."
