Vampires: An EPI Universe Anthology

Jack White And The Vampiric Polaroid (500-Words)

The year was Two Thousand and Sixteen, two weeks before my fated assault of Atlantic, and I had just spent the last six hours in a cramped plane; waiting for an imaginary drop zone. This was the day that my perspective changed. The day that my sister returned and her fate was revealed. The day that I finally saw the flaws in their Better World...

My day had been rather quiet if I'm honest. The intense constant combat training that usually ate away at my time had ended, and I finally got some time to bask in the peace of a content world. For the first time in years, everything felt normal again... Then a distress call emanated from my wristwatch.

The glyph was definitely familiar, from what I could see of it, but parts of it seemed degraded. Like it had been corrupted, or its caster was long dead.

Without even thinking about it, I teleported directly to it, ignoring the demands of the flight crew and leaving them behind to finish the recon. This was a glyph I knew. One that I had seen time and time again. One of intense power that shook me to my core.

When the magic dispersed and I could finally see the location of the broken, screaming, glyph. I knew that I was right. Standing in the boiler room of my almost forgotten primary school I knew where the glyph originated from. Which was impossible-it had to be! Athena watched her die, stood helplessly as her body disintegrated and as the building collapsed around them. But here she stood, my sister. My definitely dead sister, somehow not dead, sister. Smiling. Standing between me and the exit. Trapping me in this concrete prison watching as her unmoving corpse watched me watching her.

I could barely think, barely breathe, as I tried to come to terms with what I was seeing. Then the impossible somehow became far more terrifying as her un-breathing, un-blinking, souless corpse took a step forward, opened its maw and spoke.

"Hey, Brother. I think we have a lot we need to talk about."

Now it was my turn to act. With a flick of a wrist, and an incantation only ever uttered in my mind, a gilded silver blade appeared in my hand as I took my step forward and plunged it into her heart up to its hilt.

Her once kind face shifted and broke. An anger unlike one I had ever seen on her alive and breathing body lit up her sorrow-filled and sunken eyes. With all the remaining might left in her withered undead husk, she threw me away from her and into the wall.

I didn't dare to rise, or to speak, or to think, but fortunately, I didn't need to.

The anger dissipated, replaced only by sadness and the sister I once knew spoke once more. "You've been lied to. I see that now."

Before handing me a charred polaroid, and disappearing once more.