Of Light and Darkness: The Vampire's Daughter

Charlotte looked at the other Vampire’s soft, scary smile.

“Charlotte, there is something very wrong happening. We were hoping you could perhaps help us.” She spoke carefully, as if she were speaking to a wild rabbit. “The Regime is sending their guards to different Occults across Europe, and it seems they are only seeking out our kind. Vampires. We need to understand why. Each of us escaped from a different Occult city, and as far as we know, there are very few of us left.” Andela’s eyes were just as frightened and teary as Charlotte’s.

Charlotte looked back at the group huddled by the fire, and this time she saw their faces. She saw the horrified expressions. The mortal emotions. They weren’t monsters anymore. They were people. A different kind of people. She looked back to Andela and nodded.

* * *

Soon Charlotte was cuddled up with a large wool blanket closest to the fire, nursing a canteen of soup, though she could barely hold her head up. Valek huddled tightly next to her, with the rest of the group crowding around in a large circle. They listened intently as Charlotte told them about how the Lycan guarding the Occult gates attacked her and Evangeline a few nights before, and about the list Aiden showed her. They watched the images in her head, analyzing every picture.

“Charlotte, could you imagine again the list Aiden showed you for a moment?” Jorge, the young, blond Vampire asked.

She did and they all saw it as she did, trying to clearly decipher the fuzzy pictures enough to read the names on the paper.

“So, the Regime hired that Lycan to guard the Occult?” The one called Dusana asked from her perch on a torn armrest. She and Lusian matched each other. A bit more frightening than the rest, with chopped, raven hair about an angular face, clad with metal piercings. Several tattoos snaked around Dusana’s arms from under her torn, black shirt.

“Yes,” Charlotte replied.

“But that’s odd, isn’t it?” Dusana looked at Francis. “It attacked even when she was with Danek’s boy.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Lusian, the large Vampire, interjected from a dark corner. “If the dog was trained to sniff out magic, it would have attacked Aiden, no matter who he was. Lycans have absolutely no self-control.” He spat acid to the floor.

“Continue,” Francis told Charlotte.

“And when Meredith fixed my leg on the evening I was attacked, she said some very strange things,” she continued. “Racial slurs against Valek for what he is, like she was trying to warn me.” She glanced up at Valek’s hard face. “Or to keep me.”

“You said Aiden never spoke much about his father,” Andela said.

“Every time I asked, he just told me he was working. I assumed he was just another average Elf,” Charlotte admitted, fiddling with the canteen in her hand. She yawned, her coherency waning again. The soft light in the room seemed to blur behind her heavy eyes.

“And about his mother?” Jorge asked. “What was it she said that specifically bothered you?”

“Something about Valek being dangerous. In all the years they’ve known each other, she never spoke about him that way.” Charlotte frowned. “Valek and Meredith have been friends for years. Or so I thought.”

“It’s interesting that this is starting now,” Lusian said. The group got silent.

“What are you gibbering about, Lusian?” asked Francis.

“Do you remember that one crazy bastard? You know, the Vampire who attacked Vladislov a few years ago, when the Wizard’s Regime first began instituting their stupid laws?” He shrugged off the wall and walked to the center of the group.

“Right!” Dusana jumped up. “The Vampire who set out to assassinate the Regime.” She laughed. “You really had to have been crazy to try that one. It was splashed all over Occult presses.”

“Right. How many years ago would you estimate that was?” Lusian asked.

“I don’t know. At least twenty,” she said.

He stopped pacing. “Are two decades enough time to plot an entire genocide?” His eyes flashed. “A war, even?”

“If there was going to be a war, there would have to be an opposing side.” Francis rolled his eyes. “And we all know how one-sided the Regime is.”

“No, it isn’t. What kind of magic are the Elves and the Fae? Light. They are light magic. And what are we?”

“Dark,” Dusana mused.

Lusian lifted his hands like he had successfully proven something.

“Anyway, do you really think one Vampire was enough to scare the Regime enough into killing us all?” Jorge scoffed.

“Yes. Why not? They never found him. He escaped.” Lusian moved deeper into the circle, his features made more intense by the firelight. “Why not get rid of the lot of us just to make sure justice was indeed served? And there might be more of us out there, trying to get at Vladislov’s throat. That’s what the Regime is betting on.”

“Yes, but on what grounds do they stand? It would be considered mass murder. And I don’t care what society in which you live — light or dark. That is completely unjust.” Francis dismissed the idea with a lacey wave of the hand.

“Yes, Francis! But who cares when you’re sitting at the top of the chain? Who’s going to punish them? ” Lusian’s voice was ecstatic. “Think about it. That one incident probably scared the old guy enough to conduct something this insane. The bottom line is, we are disappearing. There were many Vampires in my Occult. All were captured, except for me.”

The group thought for a moment. Charlotte was amazed as she watched them all work together as one collective brain. Their faces carried the same expression at the same time.

“‘We are the only things you will never defeat,’” Valek mused, chuckling darkly. All of them turned to look at him.

“You know those words scared Vladislov,” Lusian said.

Francis continued to argue. “Still, how would they justify this? They would lose the respect of all the Occult people for killing mercilessly. Creatures would revolt. This goes completely against the magic code, ‘Harm none, and do as you will’.”

“We kill mercilessly, don’t we? We hunt for our food.” Lusian glanced at Charlotte. They all glanced at Charlotte.

“We kill to survive. Most living things do,” Valek countered.

“But we kill mortals, Valek. Even you do. People just like her.” Lusian pointed his talon at Charlotte. “We are responsible for more human deaths than car accidents, and that’s the ground on which they stand. That is how they are justifying all of this. The thing is — we are the victims now!” Lusian walked over and crouched in front of Charlotte. “Thanks to your papa here, the hunters have become the hunted.”

“Step away from her,” Valek warned, swiftly moving between them.

“He is not my father,” Charlotte said quietly. Her flushed cheeks burned in a flurry of embarrassment and rage.

Lusian’s menacing gaze shifted to Valek. “I’m not the one who is the cause of all of this. It is your fault. We should just turn you in now!”

The rest of the coven gaped at Valek, completely and simultaneously frozen.

“You could do that,” Valek dismissed. “But do you really think this would all just go away in an instant? Vladislov rules the entire magical world, and he’s got them believing our kind is evil. My opinion is, instead of using your efforts to ‘out’ me, we focus on finishing what I started under two decades ago.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened at him. Was Valek the same Vampire who nearly killed Vladislov twenty years ago? She saw his eyes flicker toward her for a split second.

“How do you propose we do this?” Francis asked.

“We have to fight. This isn’t going to be some peaceful revolution — a simple argument. Clearly, they do not