Cassian Legacy: The Vampire Prince

Something far worse than fear shot right through me. This wasn’t right.

I should’ve taken them all out when I had the chance. I pocketed my phone and ran, jumping back down to the street. I didn’t care if people saw me. It was nighttime anyway, and if they told anyone it would be the voice of a person on drugs or the mentally ill.

Finn was in deep trouble, and I was the only one who could save him.

I didn’t bother with calling him or Emery again. From the sound of the lost connection, something had destroyed the phone, I just didn’t know what. As I approached the building of where the five stood above me, I overheard a part of the conversation between them. I apparently hadn’t missed much, crossing the mile in a matter of a few seconds.

“What do you want?” Finn questioned them in a clear calm and collected voice, despite the situation. Maybe this wasn’t his first crisis.

“Your blood,” the raspy whisperer, the same voice I heard while on the phone with Finn earlier, responded.

I sucked in a breath of air. I hadn’t heard the voice correctly before because there was no structure to it through the telecommunications call. At the time it had sounded more like a whisper, but now that I was closer to their location and had listened to the subtle changes in the peak of the person’s voice I realized who it was and what exactly had happened. I couldn’t believe she had done this. She clearly had lost her mind, and now she was going to pay dearly for her twisted scheme of revenge.

“I don’t understand?” Finn’s voice reached my ears again.

“It’s quite simple really,” she sneered at him. “Your family killed my lover. And I want my vengeance.”

Someone moved in front of Finn. I heard the footsteps quicken towards the edge of the building they stood on. If I had to guess it was Emery judging from the heavy thudded footfalls.

“That was over a decade ago. The person in question was punished for harming the innocence of a human,” Finn finished. “Adrian always had problems with how he lost control of his temper.”

She laughed. “It wasn’t this Adrian that killed him, it was you.”

“No, it wasn’t, believe me, Jennifer,” he refuted.

“No!” she screamed. “I will not believe anything that comes out of your mouth ever again. Kill the other two, but save him for me.”

I reached the building and propelled myself up to the top. I landed right as the other four leapt across the gap and hurried towards my three friends.

“Ms. Ingram,” I greeted her.

She whirled around at the sound of my voice. “Abelia?” she growled. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you if you got in my way, I’d kill you. Now tell them to stop.” I had to try to reason with her. She was insane, but still technically a human.

Thalia and Emery meanwhile, fought four at a time. Finn ducked and covered, but he got in a couple of shots as well. He’d been trained to fight from his style. It was a combination of mixed martial arts and Tae Kwan Do. But as long as he was alright I couldn’t worry about him. The threat was in front of me. His threat was Ms. Ingram.

She sneered at me. “You can’t stop me. You’re not that powerful compared to me. Even if you are one of those good ones, you’ll never be strong enough.”

I wasn’t fooled by her charming taunts. I had heard those threats before. I stared into her eyes, pleading with her. A subtle change caught my attention. I noticed a difference in her eyes, a sudden dilation from her rage. Normal human eyes couldn’t do that. It was a gift, a part of the vampire curse that the created ones passed onto their creations.

I gasped and took a step back. “You didn’t…” I couldn’t even finish what I was going to say. Now that I was faced with this realization, I still didn’t want to believe that it was true, though there was evidence that she had turned. Of course now that I truly thought about it, every subtle change I saw leading up to tonight made sense. The muscle contractions in her arms, the sallow and pale skin, her unyielding adoration that she lavished upon her leader or her creator was more like it… she volunteered her life so that she could wreak havoc.

She smiled maliciously. “I did. Well, actually you helped me with that. You know I’m more powerful now than I ever was. I can actually help take out the family of vampires that killed my lover. And sweet vengeance will be mine.”

“By becoming one of them?” I asked her. “Look at what’ve you done to yourself!”

Her hand reached out and I swatted it away before she could lay her fingers on me. To willingly give your life in order to have revenge was an abomination of itself - it was sacrilegious. She definitely became one of the crazed ones by sheer will power of her own.

“You can’t harm me, Abelia! I am more powerful than the rest of this lot! How can you care about him, about them? They’re bad, Abelia. You know what they’re capable of.”

She was lost… my heart hurt for her. “They’re not bad, they never have been. They don’t harm innocent lives like you are trying to do. Why did you do this? You didn’t need to have changed just to wreak vengeance.”

“You wouldn’t let me have it. You lied about Finn! You kept me from him on purpose because you knew! You were allied to me, not him!”

I shook my head, wondering if I was crying. I was so numb inside from the horror of her decision, I couldn’t feel my face. “No,” I whispered. “I was only allied to your humanity, but you destroyed that.” I stepped back with my right foot placing myself into a fighting stance. She would attack me now that she knew we were no longer friends.

She threw her head back and laughed. “You think you can defeat me? I am more powerful than you! I have warlock blood in me, as well as the vampire blood. I may not have been a match for you at school, but I know I’m stronger than you now. I’m even more powerful than the ones who live at that nest you walked into. They asked for my help you know, once they sensed me. I am the most powerful vampire there ever was, and you will not get in my way.”

I didn’t know how to respond. What she suggested was ludicrous. Help, from a nest, in this part of town? They weren’t helping her. She only aided them in some sadistic plot that was kept hidden from her. They were using her, and she had fallen into their trap because her hatred had made her blind.

Behind her, Emery went down leaving Thalia to battle the other three on her own. Finn tried helping her, but he was flung backwards and nearly knocked off the side. My instinct to protect him burned anew and I circled around Ms. Ingram, jumping for the next roof. I landed gently and pushed the two off Thalia. She went down in the scuffle and hit her head near the temple. Her body slumped as a result, and she fell unconscious. Grabbing the nearest fallen vampire, I wrenched his neck and sunk my fangs into him. After a few seconds, I dropped him and grabbed the next one, who was doing his best at twisting off Thalia’s head, which unfortunately for him wasn’t working. I sunk my teeth into his carotid before he could do anymore damage. He screamed, but his cry didn’t last long as I drained his life force away.

Across the rooftop, Ms. Ingram’s eyes melted with fury. She bared her teeth, letting her porcelain fangs drop. I caught the glint of her new set of canines from the moonlight. Her eyes dilated and changed from the beautiful mahogany I remembered seeing to a lustful red color. I dropped the guy I drank from and let him fall to the ground. I ignored Ms. Ingram and her wrath because she wasn’t on this roof. I went after the other two quickly, because one of them had twisted Emery’s neck making him fall unconscious. He’d wake up eventually, once his vampire blood healed him, but he and Thalia weren’t getting up anytime soon. Finn twisted the head completely off of one of the vampires, killing him instantly. He went after the last guy without blinking.

It took the two of us fighting together to push the vampire completely off the building. His spine landed on the side of a dumpster and he crumpled to the ground unconscious. The vampire wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Finn breathed heavily from the exercise, but I had yet to run out of breath. Feeding from the other two vampires had given me power I had never felt before. My back tingled from the sudden surge in blood.

Just as I was turning around to face down Ms. Ingram, her foot pummeled me from behind, forcing my face into the gravel surface of the rooftop. She didn’t wait for me to recover. From the corner of my eye, I watched as she wrapped her fingers around Finn’s neck.

He struggled against her grasp, but he could not break her hold, nor could he breathe. The color drained from his face as he could no longer draw a breath. My back was really bothering me for some odd reason, but I rolled over, pushed myself up, and gained my feet despite the sudden pain. Ms. Ingram faced me with Finn in her grasp.

“It is my right to destroy him!” She yelled at me as though the power in her voice would force me back, away from her. “You cannot stop me!”

I reached out and pried her fingers away from his neck. She tried grabbing the side of my head with her free arm, but I latched onto it and twisted hard. Her eyes bulged with the pain I caused her.

Finn stumbled away, rubbing the spot where her fingers grasped him. He gulped in several deep breaths of air and coughed a few times. The color of blood flushed his perfect face once more, but I could no longer make sure he was alright. Ms. Ingram was fighting me to get to him again, and I directed all my attention to the lost woman.

I released the hold I had on her fingers and grabbed her neck with a quickness that caught her by surprise. Using her twisted arm, I pulled her body close to mine. She squirmed under my grip, but she could not break it.

“This is impossible!” she gasped. “You’re not like me! I am the more powerful one here! You’re just a regular vegan vampire.” With her screams I was sure someone would hear us and call the authorities. But I didn’t care anymore. I was in control, now.

My eyes switched their focus from her eyes and traveled down to where her porcelain ivory fangs protruded. They jutted out of her mouth like some perverted twist of nature. This was never supposed to happen to her. She was never to become like the created ones. I didn’t want this future for her. But she had given her heart over to her pain and suffering, which meant that there couldn’t be a future for her unless she repented of her evil crime of hurting Finn and his friends when they had done nothing to her.

I turned her around so that she could see Finn, who still recovered from asphyxiation. “Get a good look at him, Jennifer,” I said using her first name. We were way past the teacher/student relationship. “That’s Finn Tierney, my friend. You nearly choked the life out of him.”

She growled in her throat. “He’s a born vampire. He deserves to die. They all do.”

I bent low to her ear. “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s because of created vampires like you that cause me to hunt like I do.”

Her body went still. She sucked in a breath of air and I tilted her head back so she could see me. Her eyes were wide. “But that’s impossible! There’s no such thing!”

We were of the Fae. If anything, there always could be something new and different despite what they were taught. “You caught a glimpse of what I was that day you attacked me in class. But you never fully learned the truth. Thanks to your exploits I had hoped to keep the others away from the beast within me, but now…it’s too late.” From this distance I searched Finn’s eyes hoping he’d forgive me for what was about to happen. I swallowed. “You sentenced your fate when you allied yourself with me.” I didn’t know who I spoke to more, Finn or Jennifer.

My lips parted and I let my fangs descend into the soft tissue of her neck. My jaw clamped down, closing the area around the open wound, and I drained the life force away from her. Finn’s eyes never left mine for a second, but I shut my lids, savoring the flavor of her power laden blood.