Dream
Emma saw him again, for a brief moment a hand poked out of the crowd and waved. She followed. Their he was again, a short flash of the stranger's beauty. She followed again, not knowing why. She just did, it was impulsive no reason to it. Emma looked around, He had gone. A finger tapped his shoulder, he turned to see him. Incredibly hot, tall, muscular, and smiling at her. The only thing that was wrong was with the smile was....what? She examined him teeth, and that's what it was. Her blood ran cold; the teeth were sharp, like little needles...Razor sharp needles. The smile turned menacing, still a smile but scary. He opened the beautiful, deadly mouth. The needles went towards her throat. Emma looked around, the carnival was full a minute ago, now it was empty, nobody was there. The carnival was now something of a nightmare. The teeth were only a small distance from her neck now, she was going to die. The thought was scary; there was so much she hadn't done. The teeth neared closer, closer...Emma screamed as she saw white, nothing but white light. She was dead for sure, there was so much light there was no way she had survived. She must have died and gone to heaven; but a second later the white went away, she was still in the nightmarish carnival ground, but it was fading.....
A second later Emma Hailles woke up in her bed, shivering and covered in sweat. It was about the fifth time that week she had the dream. She had read somewhere that if you had a dream more than three times it would mean something, it probably wasn't true, but it gave her something to occupy her mind with. She wondered what the dream could mean. She didn't like any of the answers she came up with, it either meant stay away from attractive men or don't go to carnivals. She looked at her alarm clock, it was 3:00 a.m., she swore and got up. There wouldn't be sleep for a while, that nightmare always left her sleepless, but usually had the decency to wake her up in cold sweat at 6:00. She decided to get a drink, but it was hard to walk. She was shaking like a shrub in a hurricane, it was something about the nightmare that did this to her. Truth be told, vampires hadn't always been so scary to her, if she had this nightmare a year ago she would have claimed she had seen scary sesame street shows. Now just the word 'vampire' made her shiver in fear. She had no explanation for this new fear, only that since the five days she had lived here she had woken up with the nightmare still fresh in her head, names buzzing around like pissed off hornets. The names were confusing too, she hadn't ever heard of an Ellit Bassak, or a Gillan Anseay, or any of the other names shooting off like rockets. She would have said it was totally random, except for that every time she woke up, the same names were bouncing off her skull. Zedikai Ellis, Amanda Kaise, Ellit Bassak, Andrew Smither, Gillan Anseay, and Jimmy Curtlas. The names were unfamiliar and unchanging. That was the scariest part. She bent down to get a cup from one of the cardboard boxes that everything seemed to be in. She picked the cup up. Something sloshed inside of it, Emma looked around. It took a while for it to dawn on her, but when she realized what it was, but she screamed as she recognized the deep red material in the cup. She screamed and dropped the cup. Blood splashed across the floor. A light flicked on in her parents room, and a moment later the kitchen light flicked on and her dad appeared in the room.
"What happened Em-Oh my gosh!" He yelled as he saw crimson spattered against the fridge, floor, ceiling, and walls.
"Dad, I got up to get a drink and the cup was full of blood!" Emma stuttered.
Emma's dad shook his head, "not blood Emma, Koolaid...go back to sleep, please."
Emma looked around, Koolaid....she smelled it, and it was cherry. She looked at her dad, "Sorry."
"It's fine Emm, but please. You have your first day of school tomorrow; I have my first day of work...we both need our sleep."
Emma paused; he did have his first day of school tomorrow. He groaned inwardly, she wouldn't get any sleep now that that sudden realization had hit him. What would school be like in New Mexico? Would the people be nice there? Would she have any friends? She walked to bed annoyed at the questions buzzing around inside her head.
Arret
(Fourteen years earlier) Jeffery woke up. He had no idea where he was, or, even at that time that his name was Jeffery. All he knew was that he felt good, which was strange, because feeling good for some reason didn't feel right. Like he usually felt bad. He didn't know why. He didn't know much else either though. He saw he was lying in an alleyway though, he knew that much. There was also a man with a knife lying down. He couldn't hear breathing from the man, which was scary because everything else seemed about one-hundred times louder than it should have been...or he felt it should have been. The man looked strange. His chest had a hole in it. It was a large hole and glowed around the edges, and without having any proof, Jeffery knew that he was the cause of this glowing hole in the man's chest. He heard footsteps...well, he heard a lot of footsteps actually, but these were different. Stone crunching underfoot. He looked down; the alleyway had no cement, only tiny pebbles. Someone was coming. For him this realization was a slow one, but to a human it was faster than a computer. Jeffery looked down at the man one last time, before he ran, and when he ran, he ran fast. Not just fast though, he ran so fast he made supersonic jets seem like they were crawling on broken legs through the sky. He had never run so fast in his life, and the speed scared him. When he stopped running he had no clue where he was. Only that it was cold, and instead of there being rocks or road, there was snow and...More snow. He looked down at the snow and saw something else that startled him. His chest was glowing, lantern like. He was confused, he didn't know what was happening, but had a feeling that whatever was happening wasn't supposed to.
Then the strangest feeling came over him. Most emotions at that time felt new, but he felt happy all of the sudden. This emotion felt strange for two reasons. One, he wasn't used to feeling happy. To him it was like when a baby gets his first piece of candy and discovers he likes it. The second reason was because previously he had been afraid. He hadn't known why though. He looked around; he needed a place to think. He found one, the top of a very tall mountain. He hiked up to the top in about 5 seconds and just sat, looking at the countryside. It was a funny countryside. Oriental, and very small. Then he realized that it wasn't small but he was very very high up. At that moment a hand tapped his shoulder. He turned around to see a boy. The boy made eye contact with him, and then, almost immediately changed to an old man.
"Are you lost boy?"
Jeffery nodded.
"That's ok, I know the feeling. You're head will clear in a moment and all sorts of knowledge will flood in! That was my favorite part of the change, I do think you will need a home though boy, if I am not mistaken."
Jeffery nodded again.
The old man just stared for a second. "Can you talk boy?"
"Yes," Jeffery said. His voice was different, it was beautiful and melodic, but deep and mature.
"Excellent, I was thinking I would be getting bored of just sitting around talking to you without anything being said back. Now, let me explain a little about us to you. Do you know what an Arret is?"
"Um...no." Jeffery said.
"Vampire?"
Just the word made Jeffery's heart miss a beat. He shuddered, he felt fear and hatred at the mere mention of the word. He nodded.
"Good, the first thing I will teach you if this, they are our enemies to the death, the reason for all that is wrong in the world. They are Satan's helpers on earth, hell's angels you might say. Vicious and blood thirsty, and it is our duty to protect all humans from them. I will teach you how."
Jeffery nodded.
"Good, now come on. Second lesson is running, it takes a while to master going that fast. I live in Alaska, but currently we are in the Himalayas."
Jeffery nodded again, shocked. He was in china? Weird. The old man started running and Jeffery took off after him. He would have worried except for that the second he thought of something to worry about they had stopped running. He was in a desert in Arabia, and later Jeffery learned they had taken the long way around the planet because that way is easier. He shrugged, this was weird but strangely fun, and he couldn't wait to see what he would learn next. He walked inside the house of the old man. Meanwhile, in a small town in Colorado, Emma Hailles had just been born.
School
Emma woke up. Her alarm clock was buzzing and she made the slow realization that she had been able to fall back asleep after the nightmare. She rolled out of bed, tired. Some cloths had been thrown out of a box onto the floor. She drowsily picked up a shirt. It was green with a purple butterfly died into it. She put it on and began looking around for a pair of jeans. She found a pair of faded jeans underneath an old backpack. She picked up the backpack as well. It would be nice to have. She changed into the cloths and went through the backpack. There was a binder as well as a notebook and two folders. If she needed anything else she would get it later. She looked in the mirror, she looked tired. Her hair was all messy and crazy, like she had just been on the wrong end of a static electricity experiment. She needed a comb, and very luckily, found one laying next to the little mirror in her room. Untangling the web of hair was somewhat difficult, but she go0t it done and straightened. She liked her hair straight, it looked better she thought. She also didn't like makeup, which was strange for girls her age but she didn't care. She wore what was comfortable, dressed how she felt like, did what she wanted, and found she was usually accepted in one or two groups of people she usually liked.
She stumbled around boxes and walked into the kitchen, still incredibly tired. Her dad was already there and had eggs, toast, and water out in front of him. Emma's dad considered that specific breakfast to be his lucky breakfast, so he only ate it ion days when he needed luck, like today, the first day of his job. Emma grabbed a box of cereal off the counter and poured it into a bowl. She looked around for milk, before she remembered they didn't have any. She sighed and started eating the dry cereal. Her dad noticed and laughed. He obviously wasn't tired.
"You want something to put on that Emma? We have water, or probably even some orange juice..."
"Ugh, that sick dad. No."
Emma's dad laughed again, and then returned to eating his breakfast.
Emma knew where the school was, she had to know since she'd be walking to school every day. Her dad had shown it to her and given her a little piece of paper with all the streets written on it. She picked it up off the counter and grabbed her backpack.
"I'm off to school dad, love you!"
Her dad nodded and waved. "Love you too Emma, have a great time."
Emma walked out the door. Her heart was beating nervously. She ignored it, school would go fine. For the past five times her and her dad had moved it had gone well enough.
The walk to school seemed to take forever. Emma made it onto the campus just as a bell rung. She groaned. She was late to her first day of school. She had to find the office to get her class schedule as well. She walked around looking for it. When she finally found it, she was ten minutes late for her class. She pushed the door open. The first face to look up was the principal's secretary. Emma could tell she was a secretary just by her look. The pinched strict face gave her away.
"Can I help you?" The old woman asked.
"Um, yes. I'm new here and need my class schedule. My dad told me it would be up here. Is it?"
"Yes dear, you must be Emma. Welcome to Jameson Junior High dear. Please, you have to sign something first. And we have some things for you to take."
Emma walked to the large front desk. A piece of paper lay in front of her. She read through it, it mostly said she would follow the rules. Listen to her teachers. The generic stuff that she did anyway. She signed it and took her schedule. First hour was Spanish. She groaned, she had taken Spanish for three years now and was sure this wouldn't be any different from the 'de nada' or 'gracias' crap she learned in Georgia. Second hour was math. She shuddered, she hated math. Third hour was English 1. That was good, she liked English. The next class was Social Studies, which was a class as good as the teacher. She took the schedule and walked out the door to her next class. The classrooms were numbered weirdly here. B34...where the heck was that? It took her another four minutes just to find her first hour classroom. She pulled the door open, and it seemed as though the class stopped. Everyone stared.
"Come in please, you must be the new student." The teacher said. Somebody laughed quietly. The teacher didn't hear. Emma did and turned pink.
"Yea, that's me."
"Excellent, welcome to this school, I don't believe I know your name..."
Emma stuttered, "Its Emma."
"Emma, what a lovely name, come in, you can sit next to Ellit."
Emma looked where the teacher pointed. Her heart jumped. Sitting next to the only empty seat in the class sat the scariest looking boy she had ever seen. He was paler than should be healthy, and looked like a skeleton. His eyes were sunken back into his head and the color was the same as his hair, which was a messy brown. The veins on his eyes stood out in an unhealthy manner and his cheek had a two-inch long scar down it. His hair covered one side of his face; the other side was not visible except for the eye, which was a different shade of brown that reminded Emma of camping latrines. She shuddered and Ellit grinned, revealing two sets of grey teeth. The strange thing about the teeth was that not all were grey. His canine teeth were as white as pearls and looked healthy and clean. She took her backpack and sat down next to the frightening boy in the front row. This was a bad start to her day of school. She groaned inwardly, she was sure this would be the worst day of school she had ever experienced.
Year one
Jeffery Spun the Claw around and struck. The tree stood for a second, a glowing line burned bright like a crack in a lantern that had been covered completely by steel. A second later, it shifted downwards. Jeffery grabbed the three-hundred pound shaft of trunk and lifted it into the air, and tossed it aside. His master nodded.
"Good, good. Your getting better at controlling the blade and predicting its arc. You may be able to start hunting soon.'
Jeffery swelled with joy. He would soon be able to help his master go and save the humans from Vampires. The idea had always been one he liked. He had only ever had one encounter with a vampire. He had been hiking looking for Asteroids that had fallen in the meteor shower the previous day when he bumped into it. It was wounded and leaking acidic blood into the sand. It looked up and growled at him. To this day Jeffery cursed his stupidity of leaving behind his Angels Claw. It was a sword really, not a claw and was the native form of defensive weaponry used by Arrets. They wouldn't have used them period except for that besides strong attack forces; they couldn't kill vampires without them. The sword itself had a seven to thirteen inch long handle wrapped in a silken material that came naturally with it. The first blade came out from the top of the handle, you could always tell where the top was because it had an intricate design carved into it. It usually went up about two feet before coming back down. The blade usually was wavy near the base and would cut through anything. The bottom blade came straight out of the bottom. Unlike the first blade, which almost always had a single sharpened edge, the bottom blade was double-sided and a third of the top-blades length. It was incredibly balanced and easy to swing. What most mortal people didn't know about it was that the top blade alone weighed about fifteen times as much as your average airplane. The bottom blade was about twice a fully loaded semi-truck. The metal it was made of was incredibly dense. A cubic centimeter of it weighed a quarter of your average car, so it was incredibly heavy. The blades weren't crafted either, they just 'came with the package' as Jeffery described it. He managed to subdue the Vampire By blasting it with a light spark and sent it away, more hurt than before. He returned immediately to his master and told him. His master was up all night waited for the Vampire to return with its hunting pack. The group never came back and Jeffery's Master said he had found the black charred stain that it left on the ground, which meant it had died.
Jeffery loved being an Arret. It meant great responsibility, and technically the fate of human lives and even humankind itself. That in and of itself made Jeffery feel important. But there was knowledge and skills that came with it. You were stronger than anything alive, fast as light, and smarter than anybody on earth, and you didn't have to even try. Vampires outnumbered Arrets though by about five to one and could camouflage themselves in the daytime. The strength of a vampire matched the Arrets and they were more cunning and deceitful. The fight was pretty much evenly matched.
"Jeffery come here a moment will you?"
Jeffery snapped out of the daydream. "Oh, yes sir, of course."
As soon as Jeffery neared his master, he was smacked.
"Don't call me sir, this isn't the Human military, come, look at these tracks though."
Jeffery looked down. The tracks were about six inches into the hard earth of the Alaskan forest, which was used as a training ground by Jeffery. The footprints were pointed slightly as well, but that all didn't matter. Next to it, human blood sat staining the earth and snow around them. Jeffery shuddered.
"Vampire?"
His master nodded grimly, "A pack just wandered through here. I can still smell the sourness of their breath. Come on, we should go."
Jeffery about-faced. Something gray-skinned and ugly stared at him.
Until that point in his life Jeffery had never seen a Vampire after it had been feeding, or even heard the tales. Its skin was grey underneath, but deathly white on top, which resulted in a revolting grey color. The eyes veins stood out like red worms and the pupils were a crimson red. The surrounding eye was the same grey pallor of the skin. The hair was black and all over, like wire after a hurricane. The teeth were shiny and white, and the canine teeth were like little razor-edged needles. Jeffery stared at the Vampire for a moment.
"Tgiss-kal anstqerr" the Vampire spoke. The voice was like cats being beaten on a wall. He shuddered. He understood it, it was close enough to Arittian to be able to understand it clearly. The translation was "die young one."
Jeffery acted faster than he ever had before. Before the vampire knew what had even happened the Angels Claw was in its chest. It screamed loudly, and jumped back. Ripping itself free of the blade. Black-purple blood sped down its chest like water spilled from a cooler. Jeffery raised his hand.
"Fir-sascil dentarri." A flash of white light sent the Abomination through a tree. It got up, a little unsteadily, but Jeffery already sent his second force, or spell.
"Dasceterq-ali-shai!' He shouted in Arittian. A jet of blinding white light exploded from his palm and struck the Vampire in the chest, just above the stab wound. The chest glowed bright and the Vampire let loose a gurgled cry before collapsing onto the ground. A second later it seemingly melted away. Leaving only a black burn mark where it had last been.
A familiar voice spoke out now, "Very good Jeffery. I got the others."
Jeffery looked up, feeling immense pride. He had just killed a Vampire, all by himself, for the very first time!
He smiled ecstatically at his master. Who nodded back, smiling.
"You did well my boy, very well. But I still have much to teach you. Come, we shall celebrate and continue learning tomorrow!"
Jeffery nodded again, still grinning, as he followed his master home.