Ophelia

Chapter 7

I nodded, "They were black and looked like thick branches on his neck. They went down under his shirt, so there were more, but they reached upward towards his head."

Elliot turned to face me, confused. "Wait, you never told me about the markings."

Rolling my eyes, I replied. "I did. You were focused on other things."

He blushed. "Anyways. Well the markings on the girl who attacked me went all around her neck and up the sides of her head. They stopped on her temples."

Maybe it's some form of spell? The more marks they have, the longer they've been effected by it? But that still didn't make sense. I glanced across the table to the vampires and noticed the worried expression on two of their faces. Casper offered a weak smile when he noticed that I was looking. "Well, we'll do anything we can to help solve this issue."

"Yeah," Elizabeth joined. "It's pretty scary that it's only happening to our kind and we don't know what it is. I want to stop it before it happens to us."

I nodded in agreement. So do I.

"Ophelia! Nice of you to call us for once!" My uncle Frankie sassed. My entire family, my three grandparents, my mom and dad, my aunts and uncles, and my brother were all trying to fit into the screen.

I laughed, "Sorry, Uncle Frankie. I've been busy!"

"With the magic I hope?" He glared.

"She needs to focus on school too, Frankie!" My mother slapped the back of his head. "Ophelia, baby, you focus on whatever you need to."

"She needs to focus on the virus," my aunt Tori muttered, her eyes glazed and lost. "The town is in danger and she is the only one who can stop it." Her eyes cleared back up and she immediately glared at me. "And you and your mate need to get your acts together and help each other out."

My brother, Oliver, growled alongside my father. "Mate?!" My father screamed, his face getting close to the camera. "You found your mate?!"

"Oh, honey! Are you getting along? Is he an alpha? He didn't reject you, did he?" My mom rambled as she shoved her husband away from the computer.

"He better not have rejected her, or I'll rip him a new-" Oliver was cut off by my grandfather Caine, whacking him on the back of the head.

I sat silently. My family waited patiently for an answer that they weren't expecting. "He's a vampire."

My father's face went to an annoyed expression while everyone else chuckled to themselves. Especially my mother, who laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes. "That's hilarious!"

"What?" I asked, adjusting myself on my couch and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

"It's just that, when I was younger, I accidentally had two mates. One was a vampire, one was your father!"
She cracked up, poking my dad's red face. If I had a mouth full of water, I'd spit it out. "Enough about me though. Let's address something else that I could've heard wrong but doubt that I did. What's the virus?"

Suddenly, my front door slammed open and in strolled Elliot. "Your favorite son has arrived!" He jumped into the couch and shoved me out of the way. "Hello!"

Oliver groaned. He wasn't the fondest of Elliot, especially because Elliot insisted that Oliver would one day fall in love with him. He really went out of his way to get under my brother's skin. "The virus, what is the virus!"

"Oh you're telling them?" Elliot gasped. "Okay, so, vampires are turning rabid. Like, they have these strange black markings veining up their neck and they act like raccoons with rabies!" Uncle Frankie and Aunt Tori looked at each other, probably thinking about what it could be. Simultaneously, they shrugged and turned back to the camera.  

"Just be careful you two, okay?" My grandmother said, visibly squeezing her husband's hand. 

I nodded and said goodbye, waiting for Elliot to finish winking at my brother before hanging up. I needed to figure out this virus, and fast.