Deadly Beginnings
What worried Jade the most was that she didn’t see it coming. It wasn’t exactly something that happened to a 17 year old every day. It had all began that morning…
It had started out as a normal Saturday, going shopping with her best friend Caz. She bought the usual things; clothes, CD and some other odds and ends. The way home was where the incident happened. Jade was walking down an alleyway, that was a shortcut, when someone attacked her from behind. This made her mad these things always happen to her. She landed heavily on the floor. Painfully she got up and turned to face her attacker. He was tall and wearing all black and a ski mask. Jade saw red, and she flew at the attacker. There was a brief struggle that ended up with Jade pinning the man to the wall. Her hang gripping his throat, slowly strangling him. Just then her nails dug into his neck and drew blood. For some reason it captured her attention. So rich and dark. So thick and wonderful. The very essence of life. With those thoughts running wildly through her head she changed. Her canines extended and had delicately sharp points. Her eyes turned a pure and bright green, and her pupils became like that of a cat’s, oval. All her features became more delicate. Some people would say she became more beautiful. Others would say she turned into a monster.
With the transformation complete she moved with inhuman speed to the mans neck, where his vein was pumping life sustaining blood around his body. She eagerly bit into his neck. This seemed so natural to her, and she knew just what to do. By this time the mans eyes were wide with terror, and he was making a pathetic whimpering noise.
Jade closed her eyes and forced the memories away. ‘How could that happen?’ Was it even possible? Or was I just imagining things?’ she was madly thinking. Jade was sat there staring at her reflection in the mirror. She looked human now, but she was still staring at herself intently. She was a pretty girl, not tall but not short either. She had wavy auburn hair, about shoulder length. Her eyes were green with just a hint of silver in them. She was thinking again ‘Can I cope with this? What will happen with my life? Are there others like me?’…
Jade’s daydream was broken by the front door opening and slamming shut again. Her sister, Natasha. Jade slowly made her way downstairs to check it was her sister. It was. Natasha’s head turned round as she heard jade creep into the lounge. "Ey up chuck" was her greeting. Jades shaky reply was "Um, er, hi" Nat beckoned her sister to her "Hey, what’s up?" she questioned. Something inside Jade snapped and she broke down into tears. Nat moved speedily to Jade. Up this close Nat could she faint traces of blood on her sisters face, and she knew exactly what the matter was. Half an hour later Jade had sobbed out her story. All the time with Nat holding her comfortingly and waiting patiently when things got too much for Jade. After awhile Nat sat back and said "You know this happened to me too. Why do you think I ran away when I was 17? I thought I could get away from it, but you can’t. It’s always there inside of you. You just have to learn to deal with it."
Jade turned a pair of now angry eyes on her sister. "So you mean to tell me you knew this would happen to me? How could you not tell me? I’m your sister!"
Natasha looked sadly at her sister. "That’s the way it’s always been with us. You don’t always turn, some stay human for the rest of their lives."
"How is that possible?"
"No-one knows. Not even the witches, who are the most spiritual. It’s just the law of the powers."
Jade managed to choke out the word "Witches?!"
"I know this has been hard for you, but you have to understand that us vampires aren’t alone. There are witches, shapeshifters, and werewolves, which are really only shape-shifters. There are also mixtures such as witch ‘shifters. So far though there aren’t any ‘shifting vampires. But I think there will be soon."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, I’ll tell you later."
"OK. So I’m not alone?! Are there like organisations and stuff?"
"Well sort of. There are the ambassadors for each race who are in a council and we follow them. Other than that, not really. There are local groups, you know, like friends."
A disappointed "oh" came from Jade. She had expected more interesting things.
"You know our family is special. We’re not just vampires, we’re witches as well."
At hearing this Jade perked up and was more interested in what her sister had to say. "So do we like have powers?"
"Well yeah. We can cast spells and read emotions, that’s the witchy side. Our vampire side lets us be immortal, by drinking blood, we are faster and stronger than any human, and we can read minds, but we can also block people from reading our minds. So it’s a two way thing. There are other powers that you can learn."
"Oooooooo, what are they?"
"Well there’s blinking" Nat gave a practical demonstration of that, she moved across he room in the blink of an eye, and she was sat back down the next instant "there’s also moving objects, freezing time, flying, turning back time, which is very difficult to master. There are also things like being telepathic, which comes naturally, as well as power blasts, oh, and premonitions. But I’ll tell you about hem later. Dad’s home now."
"Right" Jade said, and hurriedly went upstairs to wash her face and put a clean pair of clothes on. She had learnt so much in 2 hours, and she didn’t know if she could cope with it all. Especially the drinking blood part, but she didn’t want to focus on that right now. So instead she went downstairs to talk to her father, and to see if he had noticed the change.
It was now late night and Jade was sat on her bed thinking. Her dad hadn’t noticed anything, which didn’t suprise her, he never noticed anything anymore. He’d stopped noticing when her mother had walked out 5 years ago. She had said that she only stayed with her father because of them, so that she knew they would have a happy childhood. Didn’t she realise how much more pain she would cause by leaving when they were old enough to understand. Since then Jade and Natasha had learnt to look after themselves. She couldn’t cope with the whole vampire thing. Just now Jade felt like she needed her mother. She needed to talk to her and be comforted by her. She could go to Nat for these things, but it just didn’t feel the same.
Jade had learnt a lot since that afternoon, maybe too much. She had begun to recall things, that at the time seemed unimportant, but now were very helpful to her. They were telling her how to recognise the cursed ones, she didn’t know what else to call them. Like how her sister walked; fluidly with grace and ease of that of a lion. She had seen other people who walked like that, she had noticed herself walk like that. These people were vampires, people who knew what she was going through. She started to wonder what the other races walked like. She was guessing that shape-shifters walked something like vampires, like predators, which in reality they were. Her mind wondered over to witches. Did they have a special walk? Or were they just like ordinary people? Well, humans.
Before she fell asleep Jade decided that in the morning she would go out and try to find others like herself. With that thought complete Jade fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
By the time Jade woke up it was late morning. She felt peaceful and quite refreshed. But there was a hunger. It was somehow strange, alien, not at all like her normal morning hunger. And then she remembered everything from yesterday and understood what the hunger was.
Half an hour later she had her coat on and was walking down the street, hoping that the fresh air would help her. It didn’t. she had an inner turmoil, too many conflicting thoughts and emotions. And that ever present hunger.
Before she knew it Jade was back in that alleyway. The memories…but she suppressed them. She didn’t need that right now.
Jade heard footsteps coming down the alley, and she quickly melted into to the shadows, something that came naturally to her as a predator. Without realising it she was moving into a crouch, getting ready to pounce. The person came into range for Jade to pounce. Jade only just managed to restrain herself, telling herself it was wrong and she couldn’t. she needed to get out of there. She needed to talk to Natasha. When Jade got home her sister wasn’t there. She had left a note on the fridge saying she had gone to a friends house and would be back in a couple of hours. "Great," Jade said to herself, "this is all I need." She began walking round the house wondering what she could do. She decided to tidy her room. It was in desperate need of a clean out and it should take a couple of hours, she should be finished when Nat got back. And with that Jade started on her room.
The door slammed and Jade emerged from her trance. Nat was home. Jade went downstairs to see if she could talk to her sister. One look at Nat told Jade to stay away. She looked like she was in a really bad mood, but upon closer inspection Jade could see that her sister had been crying. Boyfriend trouble. Best to leave her alone. But it was too late, Natasha had seen Jade lurking around. Nat hastily wiped her eyes and went over to Jade, but before Jade could say anything Nat said "We finally broke up." Meaning her and Nate had finally given up on their relationship after 2 years.
"Why?" was all Jade could think of.
"Oh, another girl, to make things worse it was one of my ‘friends’." Jade knew by the way Nat had said it she didn’t want to discuss the matter.
"Are you hungry?" Nat said changing the subject. "No I’m fine thanks, I had a sandwich not long ago." Came Jades rather puzzled reply.
"No, I meant are you hungry?" Natasha said with a meaningful look at her younger sister.
Jade looked down scared and mumbled quietly "Yes" Nat understood how Jade was feeling, she had been there. "It’s not the bad you know. You don’t have to kill, you can even make it painless and fix it so that they never remember and don’t even realise at the time." "Oh, so it’s not like on Buffy?"
"No! It’s much more…scare free for the humans."
"Oh, well I suppose that’s better."
"I could show you how to do this if you’ like."
"Um, oh, I’m not sure."
"Look, the humans are fine with it, some are even willing donors. Come on, I can help you."
"Well OK."
Nat grabbed her coat and went out the door closely followed by Jade.
Half an hour later Nat had sweet-talked their ‘donor’ and had lured him into a deserted spot of town. Nat told Jade all the secrets of a pain-free feed, and Jade began. She was much happier knowing she wasn’t hurting the man…..Jamie his name was.
His blood was so warm and rich….she kept drinking. Nat tried to stop her but Jade just wouldn’t leave the man. Jade snapped out of her feeding frenzy. Only to realise the man in her arms was dead. His eyes staring lifelessly at Nat, who in turn was staring at Jade. Jade’s mind was everywhere at once. ‘It’s so easy to kill’…’He tasted so nice’…’Would this happen again?’…’Had this happened to others?’…’Would the human part of her ever cope with the death she had just caused?…
The human Jade fled. She didn’t know where. She just had to get away. Nat stared at her sister running away. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew it was bad.
Jade stopped running. She was too out of breath to carry on. She didn’t know where she was or what she was going to do. She didn’t even want to think about what had just happened. But she wanted answers, she wanted to know why it had happened.
Witches! They would give her an answer. But she didn’t know any. Jade would have to ask Nat. What did her sister now think of her> A crazed killer? That’s really what she was. Or should it be is?
It took Jade about an hour to find her way back home. But when she was there, stood at the door her mind was split with two thoughts: run, and go in.
She wanted to run because she was scared what Nat would think of her now, and what she would say about it. She wanted to go into the house to find a solution to the problem; find some witches and talk to them, to get a cure.
Jade was sat on the door step trying to make her mind up when a rather sad and lonely Nat opened the door. Jade froze, too scared to move.
But Nat did the opposite of what Jade expected, Nat hugged her younger sister hard "I was worried about you, you know!"
The words began to rush from Jade’s lips "Look, I’m sorry I ran off. I was scared. I didn’t know what had just happened or why. I was even more scared of what you would say"
"Ssshhh, it’s OK now. I’m not mad with you! I’ve actually heard of this before. You are new to this. I still find it hard to know when to stop. Next time I’ll try harder to help."
Jade hadn’t expected this from her sister, but she found it strangely comforting. This time Jade hugged Nat.
"Thanks" she said simply, but Nat knew exactly what her younger sister meant. They had a special bond that nothing could break.
