Lethal Lineage

Look A Little Closer

A lot of humans would be alcoholics if they knew about a magic pill that completely takes away hangovers.  In about five minutes I felt like I'd never drank at all.

Soon I was freshly showered and headache free, dying to get to the dining hall for breakfast. Or lunch. It was almost noon when Nora had woken me up. I left Tink in my room where she was happily basking in the sunlight coming through the window.

It was getting easier to eat in the dining hall, even with the stares and whispers. Nora and I sat near her vamp friends. They all seemed just as nice as her to my relief.

"Uh," a familiar vampire came to stand behind us. It was the guy who bit me last night and Nora immediately tenses in her seat.

"I want to apologize about last night.." he hesitates and I say,

"Nathara. My name is Nathara."

"Right. I'm sorry, Nathara. I got too drunk and then with the train..." The poor guy looks like he was apologizing at gunpoint.

He glanced at Nora several times and I noticed nail scratches along his neck and a dark bruise developing around his left eye.

"Bite me again and I will rip out your fangs." I warn him, unsure if I actually meant it or not. Either way, I wasn't going to let that happen ever again.

His head bobs up and down before he quickly walks away. I sag a little.

"Damn, I like your feisty side." Nora grins at me.

I shrug. "New name, new me."

•

I knock on Madam Celeste's office door.

"Come in, Nathara."

My eyebrows furrow as I slip inside. How did she know it was me?

Madam Celeste sits behind a large, dark oak desk, looking at peace with her hands folding on top of some papers. Scrolls were set aside, books of all sorts on shelves around the room. A stained glass window depicting a dragon glowed with sunlight behind her.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," I say, noticing Damien, her little red dragon, sitting on a high book shelf. "Hi, Damien." I smile.

The dragon launches itself from the shelf, flying over to land on my head. I face Madam Celeste.

"No need to apologize, dear. I was about to send Damien for you. I figured you would want to know more about your lineage soon, so I've been doing some research." Celeste smiles as Damien flies from my head to her desk.

I pause, a little creeped out. How did she know that's why I came to her office? Was she a psychic?

"Um, yeah, that's why I came here." I nod.

"Well, there's definitely been some developments." Madam Celeste stands and motions me closer to her desk, sliding a book and open scroll to face me.

It was mostly in a weird language, but I recognized the ancestry tree she had shown me when I first arrived.

"I noticed a few missing pieces between old journals and what was officially written down," she explains. "Supernatural beings often live for quite a long time, so some dates could have been written wrong."

I try to follow along between the foreign book and scroll. Was she saying I wasn't Medusa's descendant?

"Okay..."

Madam Celeste seems to take a steady breath before continuing. "When trying to blend into society some change their name, move locations, create false pasts."