Chapter 1 - Orlando, 1993

It had been one hundred and eighteen years since Kevin was born into the vampire world. He finally bought into the whole idea that he needed to feed off of people’s psyches. It was easy for their type to feed off of just about anyone without causing extreme trauma to their victims. A few days of fatigue and fevers were the most their victims ever suffered. Kevin only fed when it was absolutely necessary. This became easier every time, especially with women.
Once Kevin had sexual intercourse with attractive woman, although when he saw what happened to her he vowed never to do it again. It was the first time he had fed off of anyone, and as the young lady got up to leave his apartment, his victim collapsed and Kevin felt terrible, he settled her in a spare bedroom and sat by the bedside for seven days and nursed her back to health from her bad fever and exhaustion. It was a terrible first experience for him, and that’s how he learned that it would take these women longer to recover from the fatigue. This continued, he would stop by and see his victims from time to time after he had just fed off of them, until they got back to normal.
With Tereth’s guidance, Kevin had become one of the most respected psychic vampires of their time. Kevin was now part of a large underground world. Millions of psychic vampires roamed the earth, for the most part leading normal lives. He would never be able to forgive Althea for condemning him to a life of depression, fatigue, headaches and moodiness, and was grateful that she wasn’t a threat to him anymore. He kept hearing stories about sick vampires who bit, and managed to evade their watchers, until Halther had to be called in to stop them. Therefore he could never bring himself to take any into their world.
For several years, Kevin found himself comforting the young who were brought into the world as he had been. He would take them under his wing and teach them, just like Reina and more recently Tereth did with him. Except, he would always teach and stress to his young students never to force unsuspecting victims into the world of the vampire. He elaborated on the gruesome way he had seen Althea killed by the young vampire who saved him. After sometime he would always set them free, but he always kept track of their whereabouts.
Kevin had lost touch with Reina over the years; in fact, he forgot what she looked like exactly. All the vampires had lost touch with Reina; she hadn’t been seen by anyone anywhere since she Kevin had started caring for himself. She was the only young vampire that he never had the heart to let go though; he always carried the memory of Reina in his heart. He wished that he knew who she was, all of the vampires were dark, like him, some were red, or light brunette, but none of them were blonde, and that is the only thing that he remembered about her, blonde hair and pale skin.
Kevin had been assigned to watch over a nasty young vampire, named Thored, who everybody, including Kevin, loathed. Thored saw a young lady one day and decided he wanted her as his own.
Thored was still young himself and had heard the warning about what would happen to him if he took the blood of an unsuspecting victim. But, deciding that it was well worth the risk, he approached the young lady’s neck, from behind and moved her beautiful blonde hair out of the way. Kevin sensed that Thored would have to be killed sooner or later, so just as Thored was about to bite the girl, Kevin called out.
“Thored, stop,” he said as he rushed onto the scene, with Tereth. It was too late he had bitten her. The girl fell to the ground instantly; none of the three vampires saw that there was neither blood nor bite marks on her neck. “Oh no,” Kevin said when he saw the girl. “Now you will die,” he told Thored.
“But I barely touched her,” Thored argued.
Tereth picked the young lady up, and said that he was going back to his place and that Kevin should meet him there when he was able to. Kevin nodded and as Tereth took the girl into his arms and blinked off.
Vampires could blink in and out of places and scenes, but refrained from doing so, because it would look odd to a human who saw such a thing occur. There was a strict rule in place about when blinking was acceptable. It could only be done, when there were no humans around either the place they blinked out of or into.
Kevin killed the one he had been told to watch. He met Tereth, and Tereth said something Kevin hoped he would never ever have to hear come out of the mouth of any vampire.
"Where's Halther?" Tereth asked.
"Tereth, you can't be thinking about going to him? He could, would and will kill both of us," Kevin said.
Halther was the oldest vampire that everyone knew for a fact was still alive. He was a lot more violent than most of the psychic vampires and could easily kill both Kevin and Tereth.
"But we all shared a hatred for Thored. And I don’t want this girl to die, or become a vampire,” Tereth said. He recognized the young lady who was seemingly dead at the moment.
“You can’t have it both ways," Kevin said.
“He can save humans and return them to being humans, don’t you know that?” Tereth asked his friend.
"The last I heard, he was in Australia." Kevin said.
"There must be a way to contact him,” Tereth said.
“Okay, fine, let’s at least try, I seem to remember this girl, like she is a dream of mine or something like that,” Kevin said. They reached Halther and he told them to meet him in a sacred cave in Greece. It was where Reina and her twin were conceived, carried and born, and only he knew that. He took one look at her and laughed heartily.
“You young vampires don’t have a clue,” he said.
“This is kind of serious,” Tereth said.
“Yes, this calls for someone older than me to take care of,” he said, still stifling his laughter.
“Older than you?” they both asked, their eyes huge with surprise. Everyone assumed that Halther was oldest vampire.
“Yes, a vampire who is nearly two thousand years old, she is over twice my age,” he said, turning dramatically serious. The two were stunned silent.
“Who is this vampire, and how can we reach them?” Kevin asked.
“Why she’s right here,” Halther said. “And you can speak to her for yourselves; Reina, wake up, it’s all right now.”
“Halther, dear friend!” she said. “What are you doing here? Wait, what am I doing here? Come to think of it, where on earth are we?”
“Don’t you recognize this cave?” Halther asked her.
“Yes, of course I do now, I was a little unsure for a moment though,” she said. Then she stood up and looked at Kevin and Tereth. “You two did an excellent job; thank you for your help.”
“Huh?” Tereth asked.
“I don’t get it,” Kevin said.
“Oh for goodness sake!” she erupted at them; they knew that vexing her had been a bad idea. She sensed their fear and calmed down greatly. “Come back to my house, all three of you and we’ll sort things out there.”
They all got back together, but Halther didn’t come with them. He said that he had a few more things to finish up somewhere else.
“Why are you blonde?” Tereth asked her.
“I have no blood in my veins,” she said.
“But, you saved my life, and you fed me with your blood,” Kevin said.
Thankfully, Reina was patient with Kevin as he was still rather young himself, “Okay, when I saved you, I had Althea’s blood in me and I had your own blood that she had taken from you. The blood of a human naturally repels a vampire’s blood in my body. Her blood was diseased, when any vampire is killed by their watcher for breaking the code of conduct their blood goes into my body, and is purified, the vampire who bit the victim had a disease in their blood which caused them to bite in the first place. When the blood is cycled through my body the disease is killed off and it is used to revitalize the victim. Or, if I so choose, I can give them their own blood back, and they will go on living as a human,” she said.
“So the victim instantly becomes a vampire?” Tereth asked.
“No, only if I want them to become one, or if the evil vampire takes too much blood and kills the victim. I am always present when blood is drained from the body of an ignorant or unwilling human. When blood is taken from a victim then I can choose to give them their blood back, and give them amnesia about what happened. It is also a good idea to give people that you have fed off of the amnesia too, all vampires should, especially if their victim is aware that they have been fed off of, or if you feed off of a person more than once. Now, back to the killing, the watcher vampire never bites the evil vampire to kill them; they use a knife. If they get the contaminated blood into their system, then they too will turn evil; it only takes one drop.
“Okay, so why didn’t you turn me into a human and let me continue living?” Kevin asked.
“I looked at you, I knew how much you would suffer if I didn’t. I have saved you from the aches and pains of old age, you will never age in appearance or in any other manner for your life,” Reina said. “You will only grow wiser, and smarter, and you will hone your skills to perfection.”
“I understand,” Kevin said.
“Is there anything that can bring you down?” Tereth asked.
“Ask Halther the next time you see him,” Reina said.
“Did I hear my name?” Halther asked.
“Yes, you did,” Reina said as she stood to great her guest. “I thought that you weren’t going to come back with us.”
“Oh, I just had some business to take care of,” he said.
“Forgive me, but I am going to lie down,” Reina said aloud. ‘I think these two would like to ask you some questions, don’t mislead them,’ she said telepathically, on a closed network right to his mind.
“So, you two have something to ask me have you?” Halther asked the now terrified vampires who sat before him. “Out with it.”
“Is there anything that can harm Reina?” Tereth asked timidly.
The whole story about her brother, Raynard, how she came to be, and the death of her father and the crystal came out. Reina felt badly that she had let her father die, but she was barely ten when it happened, it was every vampire’s duty to be on the lookout for Raynard and report back to Reina when they saw him.
A few short days later, Kevin was presented with an offer that he could not turn away from. He had heard that a local group was looking for another member. Psychic vampires had the ability to master any skill necessary. Because of Kevin's age, he was able to quickly acquire singing and dancing skills. Kevin went for auditions and the three original members of the group and their manager had decided on Kevin without any persuasion on Kevin's part. Kevin just assumed it was meant to be.

Read the next chapters:
Prologue / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Epilogue

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