Ulyena woke up with a stinging sensation taking over the side of her face. Her head was pounding and her vision was blurred, but as she blinked, it began to clear. She was lying on a dirty, cold and wet concrete floor. When she reached up to touch her face, she automatically flinched away when her fingers touched seared flesh. She looked around to grasp a hold of her surroundings, but noticed that she could barely see in the pitch darkness. She could tell that the wall around her curved, so she guessed that she was in a tunnel of some sort. A small stream of light was showing in the end portion of the tunnel, and Ulyena scrunched her nose at the rotten stench that was in the air. Was she in the sewers?
Footsteps splashed towards her and her body immediately tensed at the sound. She almost asked who was in the dark, but Nomak's voice filled the silence. "My apologies, Ulyena, for your skin. I didn't expect the sun to be where it was." He stopped when he was close to her and she could see his silhouette in the dark. "I brought you here to tell you the truth of my existence and the truth about your mother."
"My… Mother?" Ulyena asked. "What do you mean? My mother went missing over fifteen years ago."
Nomak smiled. "That's what you think." His gravel-like voice seemed amused as it echoed throughout the tunnels. "Your mother was, and still is, a familiar."
"A familiar?" Ulyena's stomach dropped. She suddenly felt that he was about to say something that wasn't pleasant. "What do you mean, 'still is'?"
"A pet, if you will." He explained. "A human that is owned by a vampire and marked to show it. They are beaten, tortured, fed on, and raped on occasion if they deny their master's wishes. Your mother happens to belong to my father."
Her heart sped up. Her mother was still alive? "Who is your father?"
"Damiskinos."
"What does this have to do with me? Why did you bring this up?"
"I'm getting there." He held up a hand. "Damiskinos has been working to create the perfect breed of reaper for over a hundred years. There have been many failures. I was not the first. Every thirty years, Damiskinos picks a woman to draw DNA from to create a better species of reaper. He threatens them into becoming familiars and then takes their DNA to inject it into a fetus that has been designed. This generation of reapers belongs to your mother."
Ulyena was speechless as he explained the unthinkable, but he wasn't finished yet.
"He destroyed all but two fetuses when he realized they were failures. I was one of them." He sat on his knees next to her. "What do you remember about the entire night before your mother went missing? Think hard about what you heard."
Ulyena remembered exactly what happened that night, but she couldn't remember everything that was said. The only memory of that night that came to mind was the argument that her parents had before they left. Ulyena hadn't ever thought about what they had said to each other, but now, it all seemed to make sense.
"I can't believe you never said anything about this!" Her father yelled to her mother. "She's in danger and you never brought it up?"
"I didn't think I had to. She won't be one of them; it didn't work."
Ulyena was playing with her Barbies in the living room as they argued in the kitchen. It was a normal routine: Mommy and Daddy always yelled before she and Mommy left to go somewhere.
"What do you mean she won't be one of them? She has their DNA."
"Yes, but she looks nothing like the other one!" Her mother said. "They look totally opposite."
"That doesn't matter!" Her father raged. "They want her back, and they'll take you with her. I'm not losing you for a child that's not even mine."
"Well, I love Ulyena with all of my heart, and if you don't want her, you don't want me."
"You don't think I love her? I love her like she is mine! I call her mine! Sometimes I even believe she is! But if I lose you both because of what she is, I don't know what I would do."
"You don't have to worry about that." Her mother's voice softened. "Ulyena and I will be back in a couple of hours."
Ulyena was feeling woozy. She took a deep breath and swallowed. "Are you saying that I'm like you?"
"Chupa's bite triggered your vampiric DNA, but the reaper strain didn't affect you at all. You are a half breed, and genetically," he paused and looked her in the eyes. "You are my sister."