Blood of Eternity

Blood Bond

"I thought we're supposed to hone our main power in level two," I say to Charles as we walk in the outdoor gardens. A spicy scent emanates from the yellow night gladiolus that bloom in the bright moonlight.

"Normally, yes but powers that can tell the future can't be trained. They come and go when needed. So you technically get to rise to level three but you have to wait for the rest of the fledglings to catch up," he replies but he sounds distracted.

"Then what are you doing here with me? Go fix whatever you're worried about, I'll be fine," I prompt.

"Alright. You won't find much to do with your new found free time though," Charles says with a smile before taking off back towards the mansion. He was right, there wasn't much of anything to do in the mansion except drinking or council meetings for guardians. So I wander out of the gardens and into the forest.

My eyes adjust to the blanketed dark under the lob lolly trees. Red flashes across my vision from small deer, rabbits, and birds moving in the forest. I can hear their hearts' quiet thumps.

A sudden screech runs through the forest, the pitch higher than I've ever heard. My hands fly to my ears to attempt to block it out while my teeth lengthen in preparation for a fight. As suddenly as it started, the noise stops. Static rings in my ears and my vision is tripled.

I lay perfectly still on the hard ground. When I finally feel back to normal, I sit up. Listening into the silence more cautiously, I wait to hear the source of the noise. I zero in on a strange beat. It's not a heart but it has the same beat. Whoosh. Whoosh. It sounds like...the beating of leathery wings.

I speed through the forest towards the noise. Dirt flies through the air when I skid to a stop outside the trees. A few feet away, the ground rolls downward for ten feet before evening out next to a river; the mouth of a cave opens to the sky next it. Here I can hear hundreds of wings beating. Looking up, my mouth drops open. Hundreds of small, black bats swoop through the air as if choreographed. The screams that hurt my ears only moments ago I now recognize as echo-location. The figure standing below the colony of bats surprises me the most.

Taran stands calmly under the sea of flying bodies that block out the brightness of the moon. With a twist of his hand, they swoop and dive with his motions. This must be one of his gifts, albeit a rather strange one.

When I start to walk towards him, my hands and head start to tingle. I blink, a very human motion, to bring the world back into focus; the leathery flapping noise coincides with my blink. Shaking my hand doesn't stop the feeling, but some of the bats circle closer around me, breaking of from the colony above.

"Taran!" I shout. He doesn't turn or show any sign he heard me although I'm sure if he didn't smell me, he heard me. I duck to avoid the stray bats on my way towards him.

"They recognize one or their own," Taran says, not bothering to help me avoid the flying projectiles.

"One of their own?" I ask, swatting a pup who tried to land on my head. It still wobbles in the air on unsteady wings.

"A creature who belongs to the night," he explains. "In the beginning, when there were very few of us, we hid in caves where darkness was always present. But food sources in caves were scarce so we followed the bats. Only the vampire bats though; they were named after us because they would find a food source - a farm - and ours would be nearby - in the farm house."

I almost shiver at the thought. Humans with only primitive tools and weapons inside tiny huts when it darkens outside. They would wonder at the amount of bats flying through their fields and climb into bed, hoping they would have enough food tomorrow. And be woken in the night able to do nothing as the life was sucked out of them or as they were turned into one of us.