Chapter 1

What in the hell was I thinking? I mean really! It’s bad enough my family and hers has such a long history, but to actually take her to bed? Damn, the shit was going to hit the fan for sure, I could see it now. Well, might as well tell you what’s going on. It started, oh I’d say ‘bout 400 years ago. I was ... me? Oh, I’m Johnathon Timmins, Mage at your service. Huh? You don’t believe me, well that’s okay, not many norms really know about us any way. So, to continue on, it started a hundred years ago. My family has a curious ability, sure we have the normal powers and such, but you might say we have been blessed (or in my case) cursed with an ability no other mage has.

Everyone in my family was a mage of one type or another, At that time we were living in Europe, not too far from Germany. We were well protected, but we still had a problem with the local clan of vampires. Don’t get me wrong, yes, we didn’t like them nor them us, but for quite a while we kept away from each other ‘til one fateful day, my father met up with the leader of their clan. Now 2 strange things happened when they were only a hundred yards from each other. 1, All of my fathers powers vanished, just poof! Nothing and 2, the heart of the vampire leader started beating. As my father told it later on, they both were scared shitless!

Both being extremely intelligent men, they proposed a compromise, a way that this strange occurrence could benefit both clans. They both talked ‘til sunrise, the leader of the vampires remarking that he hadn’t seen the sun for over 1000 years now, leave it to say, he was crying and wished to see more. This in turn led to the second part of the compromise, if they were both normal, then perhaps they could have children. Enter me and the vampire leader’s real daughter, Lana and our betrothal. I was a mere 100 years old at the time, just fully coming into my powers. She, on the other hand, was roughly the same age physically, but had me by about 500 years. Problem was, centuries of mistrust and hatred was so in grained in us, that there was no real compromise between me and her.

It seemed she loved being one of the undead, from the first time she felt her heart beat, when I drew near her, she hated me. I can’t say I was exactly thrilled over the idea of being close to (as I called them) a leech. As you can guess, this didn’t go over too well with our fathers, and you could say led to some major insulting, a lot of it basically about family lines and morals. Then separation of the families occurred again, shit took months to get up, years to plan and she and I screwed that in just a few minutes. As Father said, I didn’t play around, it either happened now or it just didn’t happen. Any way, suffice it to say the groups split again for another hundred years and of course there were no children.

In the mean time I honed my skills as a mage, always careful to avoid the vampires and the ‘norms’ as we called them. It was the start of the 1800’s when a lot of my family wanted a change and went to the new land of America. It seemed that for a while at least, they were doing well. It was decided then that I was to go and oversee the families holdings in this new country. Not long after arriving, I noticed that the conditions here were really primitive, something I could easily deal with. Though they had only a few problems, I was able to take care of everything with minimal exposure or interaction. Every thing was fine ‘til the day she showed up, yeah showed up and completely screwed everything up again! I was checking on a delivery of silk that had just come in, when I felt rather than saw her, stepping off the train. Moments later, Lana stepped off the train and started looking around, finding me at the other end of the platform, she threw looks of pure hatred my way.

I was in shock enough, but to see HER again not a good day. Moments later, she walked closer, then stopped in front of me, “Mr. Timmings, I hope to see as little of you as possible while I am here,” she hissed.

“I expect the same courtesy from you,” I spat back, both of us passing sinister, threatening looks at each other.

She started to move past me, then stopped and leaned closer whispering, “I despise you, lowly creature, I will not hesitate to kill you given the chance.”

“I hope you also realize, that I, will also not hesitate to end your pitiful existence, you leeching filth,” I answered.

If looks were weapons, then everyone around us would have been dead many times over. Many were backing away, seeing the looks of pure hatred we were fixing upon each other.

“Damn boss,” my human assistant said, “that was one heated moment.”

“You don’t know the half of it, and no, don’t ask just suffice it to say, hers and my families have a very long history,” I replied.

“Well hell, boss, she’s beautiful! You saying you have a problem with her?” My assistant asked, surprised.

“It’s not just a problem with her, but her whole damn family.” I spit back at him.

“Okay, sorry boss, my bad,” with that he was quiet as we finished with inventory.

I had to feel for the man, he didn’t know of the centuries of disagreements between us, nor the near feud she and I had started.

“Sorry Dan,” I started, “We’ve never really liked each other, plus we’ve known each other a long time.”