Day Two: Chapter Five

Etta tossed the pungent, shirt out of the window and wrapped the green headwrap, around her body instead. This exposed the tattoos that spanned from her neck, to her knuckles, which wasn't ideal for Etta, as anyone with experience could read the writing and learn the conditions of the curse mark. These tattoos were the details of an unbreakable contract with the living language. Anyone who knew these details, knew her weaknesses and Etta was not keen on walking around with her weaknesses on display, even if most beings couldn't read them.

Etta sighed. It couldn't be helped. She took one last look at the girl, sleeping soundly in her bright pink pajama top, before turning to exit.

"You just get what you want out of me and leave without saying thank you or goodbye or anything?" murmured a brassy voice.

Etta paused, stunned. She hadn't expected Jada to recover so quickly. The curse had been more violent than usual as a result of her brawl with Moniasili. The voices had returned, vengeful and her tattoos had blistered and split as the spell itself became acid, decomposing her flesh. The unfortunate result of this: she needed blood not only to satisfy her curse and her natural hunger, but to replace the energy her body had used to heal itself over and again. Etta had wreaked havoc on the girl's body, to the point that she had to heal her with her own blood to keep the young human from dying. She was glad that Jada had fainted from blood loss before the beast within had taken over.

She regained her composure and responded, "Thank you, but I actually just wanted you to sign this paperwork and become a millionaire."

"Well, is that option still up, you ingrate?" asked Jada, before stretching the sleep away.

"I haven't decided yet."

Jada scooted over and slapped the seat next to her, inviting Etta to sit.

It was 6:11 am, close to sunrise, but Etta decided she could spare 2 minutes.

"So, you're a real life vampire?" Jada asked, turning to face the object of her curiosity..

Etta nodded.

"Life is funny," she said, "I never would have thought, vampires. I would've believed in big foot before vampires. Is there a bigfoot?"

Etta chuckled. "I don't know. If there is, we haven't found him either."

"No bigfoot then?" said Jada, staring off into the distance as if her mind had wandered away. After a few moments, she took a deep breathe, now looking quite nervous.

Etta thought to inquire about the sudden change, but just as she parted her lips to do so, Jada began to speak in a low, measured tone, as if she was trying to trap her words with her lips before they had a chance to leave her mouth.

"I wanted to ask you...You said something earlier about some organization that was trying to kill you?"

Etta cringed. She'd gotten way too talkative, embarassingly talkative, and it was going to bite her in the ass later.

"That stuff I was saying earlier is forbidden knowledge for regular humans, if I was in my right mind I never would've told you, and I can't tell you now."

"What if it's something I already heard of?"

"Ask the person who told you."

Etta's two minutes were up. She could see lines of blue between the blinds.

"It's time for me to go," said Etta, already at the door.

And with that, she vanished into the last hint of darkness.

..........................

She'd cut it too, close. Her face was singed, and itched terribly as her skin became smooth again. That had been a terrible risk. And for what gain? Perhaps it was a good idea to keep Jada happy. She was currently her only source of nourishment at the moment. Etta mulled it over in the shower. Yes, that was the reason she'd stayed, nothing else made sense. She needed her to stay alive.

Jada was a big girl, which meant she had more blood to share, but regardless of how plump she was, being drained of blood on a nightly basis would be detrimental to her health. Etta would have to find another. Then she wouldn't make such desperate, impulsive decisions.

But, what if she could have stayed?

Etta's thought was stopped suddenly by the sound of footsteps in the kitchen; slowly and gingerly a human walked on bare feet, probably believing they could hide their presence. Curious. She'd sent all the humans away. Well, she warned them all and they still chose to stay, she could only assume that they wanted to die. There was a theory she wanted to test anyway. If she drained a human into vessel, like a bucket, cup or blood bag, would her throat still light on fire if she tried to drink it? She believed it would not. Etta left to stalk her prey. She still hadn't had a good hunt, and an indoor chase in a mansion sounded especially invigorating.

She threw on a fresh satin gown and went to take a peek at her intruder. To her disappointment, it was the yellowed haired one, wearing fresh clothes and a book bag. Suddenly her playful mood vanished.

"Why are you here?" Etta asked, standing in the walkway.

The girl jumped, backing into the window, and held a wooden rosary in front of her which Etta promptly snatched, moving at an inhuman speed, and placed into the trashcan at the other end of the room. She could smell the adrenaline in the girls sweat.

"Did you go back home to get that?" asked Etta, allowing her onyx irises to go lavender and the whites of her eyes to flood blood red, their true color. There was no reason to make this human feel comfortable.

The human sighed. "Actually, I bought it at a magic shop," she said, sounding dejected. "It cost me fifty bucks."

"You can always come and get it back out of the trash."

"So you can kill me?"

"I can kill you from where you're standing."

"Then why don't you?"

"At first I was curious about why you had come back after I let you go free, but now I've lost interest. So now I'm going to hang you upside down, slit your throat, and drain you into pitcher."

Etta stepped towards her flashing her long, dagger-like teeth and as she was inches away from the girl's round face, the human opened the heavy duty curtains. Etta was forces to withdraw and hide behind the shadow of the kitchen island, which only made the burn slower.

After several seconds Etta was covered with a blanket, and the burning stopped.

"Look at that, I saved your life. Now you owe me a favor."

Ettas dead heart began to pound, cold blood warmed with rage.

"That is how you vampires work right?" she continued. A lighter flicked and strong scent of incense flooded her nose.

"Who told you that nonsense, the person that sold you that rosary? They sold you those incense too?"

"It's true isn't it? You all have a sense of loyalty."

"Don't confuse societal expectations with some sort of unified personality."

"Yeah, ok. Will you help or not? If you don't I'll snatch this blanket back off of you and let you burn to death."

"And if I do?"

"I'll leave and close the curtains back."

"And what makes you so sure that I wont rip the skin off of your face the moment you close the curtain?"

"Should I leave it open then? So you can burn slowly throughout the day?"

Etta frowned, "What do you want?"

"Last time, you asked me about the pendant I got from my grandmother. Tell me about it."

Etta burst into ugly laughter, "So you find out something strange about a family heirloom, and instead of doing your own independent research, you go out to hunt a vampire. Do you enjoy toying with death?"

"You already promised you wouldn't kill me."

"When?" Etta sighed, "Whatever, I'll tell you. That pendant you so brazenly wear on your neck is the symbol of the international associaition of sorcerers. IAS for short. And as harmless as that may sound, this association who's symbol you wear is is responsible for displacing millions of descendants of the three curses, capturing them and unjustly imprisoning them under the pretense of 'protection and study.'"

"So my grandmother was a witch!" shouted the girl excitedly.

"Bitch, that's what you got out of this?"

Etta sighed. How had she allowed herself to get in such a ridiculous situation?

"Hundreds of years ago, a group of, as you call them, 'witches' now known as the HCSS, decided that there were seven things that no one should ever use there magic for, or else they'd be punished, so they got together, without notifying the rest of the world, and placed curses on the spells that could be used to do these seven things. Of the seven taboo uses, the average person in the magical world only know four. 3, never force a person to fall in love, 4 never kill, 5, never try to become immortal or make a person immortal, 6, never bring back the dead.

"Once the curses were implemented, people who did these things faced horrible consequences, but, as all curses do, the curses put on these spells had unexpected consequences and those consequences were passed on to their offspring. Except for The Sixth Curse."

"Why not the Sixth Curse?"

"Because, if someone tries to raise the dead, the corpse will rise and eat the person who cast the spell. If that person somehow gets away, it will eat every person it sees until it gets it's creator."

"Kind of like a zombie. What are the other curses?"

Etta sighed.

"I have a book in the master bedroom that tells all about it. Lets just skip forward. The curses created new magical creatures besides the sorcerers, the fairies and the demons. Fairies and demons already had a peace treaty with the HCSS, but these new creatures were fair game. The sorcerers wanted to-"

"Wait, there are fairies and demons too?"

"Do you want me to explain this symbol to you or not?" Etta snapped.

"Oh, sorry."

"No, you're satisfied just knowing your grandma was a 'witch' right? Just let me go."

"No, I'll be quiet. I want to know."

Etta glowered through the sheet that covered her face, hoping the human could sense her annoyance.

"Like I was saying, the sorcerers wanted to control the cursed. Now, because of the nature of some of the cursed beings, i.e vampires needing human blood, a new school of thought called restorationalism became popular as sorcerers and humans wanted to 'restore' the world to what it was before there were the cursed and they planned to do that by eradicating us. And here is where your IAS was founded. They claimed to want to protect us, but all they did was gather us up into underground camps, starve us, experiment on us. They killed us if we resisted so that we had to go even deeper into hiding. The IAS thought they could gain power by studying us and overthrow the HCSS. In the end, the restorationalists, backed by the HCSS crushed them. With so many cursed gathered into small spaces, we were easily slaughtered.

"Now the average human thinks we were fables. Only the sorcerers know."

For a moment there was no movement and little sound, then footsteps to the other side of the room.

"I'm tying an alarm clock to the curtain. It's old fashioned so it has a little wait to it and it vibrates pretty hard. I'm setting the alarm to five minutes from now. When it goes off it should fall off the windowsill and close the blinds. If it doesn't I'm sorry, but I don't want to risk you ripping my face off."

Etta listened to the humans steps as she left the property, the blunk, blunk of chunky heeled boots. She tracked the sound with her ears, hoping to get an idea of her general direction so she knew where to search for her scent later.

The alarm went off, stinging her ears, and the curtain slid half closed, enough for her to escape from her spot behind the counter.