Salighayan; A Taboo Love Story

Chapter 23

~ Princess Mylie’s PoV

I sat in astonishment as Mike recounted his early vampire days with Victor Markham, how supposedly both his family and the Markham family were tight in relations.

Mike from his story had been an odd child even amongst the other children of other vampire families, he had been singled out because of his oddity and was usually on his own.

Then came Victor Markham a bully at the time hoping to pick on Mike, thinking his oddness and being alone made him weak.

Mike had seriously surprised Victor and his gang when he ended up beating the lot up instead of the other way round. At that time Mike had been much closer to his vampire side than the others, that was why they had initially tagged him as odd.

As a result of the Victor Markham lost face amongst the other bullies and was ejected from the bully gang, this meant he was now ripe for bullying as well.

On such a day that Victor was bring bullied, Mike happened across them and still saved Victor, and from then their friendship started.

They formed their own two man gang and stood up to the bullies in general, the two quickly rise in rank and came to be feared amongst all others even.

Then at that time, Victor’s father ventured into a risky business enterprise and lost, being the most prominent vampire family at the time, it was going to be a huge disgrace and serious fall in rank.

Victor’s father had then sought out Mike’s father Edward asking for help, and of course the way out proposed by Edward was to buy off a part of their company so that the fall would be lesser for Victor’s father.

Mike hadn’t known this at the time, not till a couple of years after when he started learning about the family business and all.

Mike’s fear was that even Victor doesn’t know the truth and also thinks it was actually Edward that ripped off his own father.

To make matters worse, Victor’s father had died just a few years after, not being able to reveal the truth to his children or any other person before dying.

Now the truth only just looked like an excuse coming from Mike’s family, so rather than try to tell the truth and be accused of lying to protect themselves, they chose to stay silent and receive the condemnation of ripping off the most prominent vampire family.

The tale made Mike’s family rise up in rank as well, because in the vampire world, being so gutsy and being able to pull off a stunt like that meant strength, meant power.

I started to understand a bit how the hierarchical structure of the supernatural world in general works. Well for vamps anyways.

Powerful families above, followed by gangs and groups, then the less powerful families. But I still didn’t get what exactly they counted as being powerful.

In the deep it was mostly by blood, the richer your blood, the more powerful you are at being able to make magic, cast spells, use mystical items and so on.

Hence being a royal god or goddess took the highest rank, followed by the normal gods and goddesses, followed by the normal royalty and then nobles.

Of course bloods mix, seeing as Selena is a pheasant but has noble blood, hence why she is up some ways by rank.

“What is power for your kind?” I asked, I just had to know lest it tear me up inside.

Mike frowned a bit, probably because of the sudden digression but then he readjusted in his seat and thought a bit before answering.

“Well power at first as I understood it was about how prominent a family was considered, up until recently I only just realized that it was the amount of turned vampires a family has that determines how prominent and powerful a family is” he answered seemingly just coming to that realization.

I squinted a bit, I had thought pure breeds were the most powerful of both types of vampires.

“I know it seems preposterous, but I am the case study for this fact” he continued after seeing my doubtful expression at his reasoning.

“I got closer and closer to being as like a turned vamp, and as I did I only grew in power, speed and strength increased, senses heightened” he stood up at that time as if he wanted to show me what ge could now do, but he didn’t though, he only walked to the glass to look at the city.

“It was then that I realized that turned vamps were more powerful than pure breeds, but pure breeds have been controlling the actual truth by controlling the turned themselves, making them work for us and under us, bringing a few up the ladder do they feel they are being represented and heard as well” he explained.

“There is a limit to turned vamp creation and also a limit to how many can work for pure breeds by individual or family prominence, the Markham family as at then had hoards of turned vamps under them, and now it is clear why” he finished and went deep in thoughts for a while.

“How do you do the turning?” I asked yet again, of course he gad told me the actual turning process, but I believe there had to be more to it, especially seeing how well structured the vampire organization is.

“Well there are the human prospects first, those that know about us one way or the other and wish to be like us, they start to work for us until it is ripe to turn them, anything can determine them being ripe from being fully committed to just being randomly selected for the next set of turning” he answered.

“There are also accidental turnings which is mainly done by other turned vamps in gangs and groups in an attempt to actually increase their ranks, last us the merciful turning, this is usually done with good reason, either to save a human from a gruesome death or fatal disease or to redeem a pledge, vow or repay a debt” Mike said.

I started to see how with the merciful turning the vampires were not too different compared to spirits of the deep (different from the ocean spirits) in that regards.

Different spirits like slyphs, naiads and creatures of the ocean, all tough in their own regards as well and well structured, they multiply by what Mike just described as merciful turning, though theirs is done to merfolk not humans.

I nodded my comprehension, and then he went on to speak about just how dangerous one prominent vampire family can be to the other, how two families are hardly ever found or regarded as friends.

My mind wasn’t fully with him though, a thought had popped into my mind and it wasn’t even about him or vampires or the surface supernatural, it wasn’t even about the surface at all.

It was about the deep, my kingdom to he specific, Mother had the inclination that there was a possible war brewing forth into our kingdom, it was surprising to hear because our thought was ‘which merfolk dares to wage war on our kingdom, a kingdom under the rule of a queen goddess’

But what if we were wrong and it wasn’t merfolk that was preparing to wage war against us (they know better). What if it was something else, like the spirits and creatures of the deep? Or even other entities.

These creatures, spirits and the others are actually multiplying unchecked, unlike the vampires up here who are putting a limit to their spreading.

What if down there, unnoticed, they had grown massive in number and are now planning to overthrow the entire merfolk population?

Cold sweat trickled down my spine as I made this realization, we would never know what hit us till it was too late, simply because we are expecting a merfolk attack and is unprepared for the actual reality.

I heard my mother’s name being called and the realized it was Mike calling me, oops, I had really zoned out for real.

“Maya, do you understand?” he asked me.

“Yeah, I understand” I said in response to a question I had heard nothing about on what he had just said, but since I had caught the beginning and known all he wanted to tell me was to be careful, I know it can’t really be out of that context, so I wasn’t bothered about that.

What was really bothering me was how to get the message across to Selena who was currently disguised as me, so she can carry it to my mother who will think its still me there with her.

‘I have to find a way’, I kept thinking about this even as I left Mike’s office and went to the secretary’s desk to pick up the schedule for the week (or rather for the rest of the week)

Going through it, my thought was 'I can’t find a way!’ but then I knew it was really important that I do find a way to warn them, so I changed my mindset to ‘I’ll find a way’.

This week though was about to get even busier.