Stones

Part 10

Gabe was partnered up with a girl named Erica. She was average height, with wide shoulders and big biceps. She had a pretty face, like some female-wrestler. Gabe and Erica were assigned the position of: Spies. Their job was to sneak into the underworld, and get the scoop on what Gale was up to. This was starting to seem like a bad action movie from the seventies. Mixed with a cheesy sci-fi movie. Almost instantly, Gabe and Erica hated each other. They put bugs in each other’s food, flipped each other off (a lot), and shoved each other around. On the other hand, Erica and I became fast friends. She was actually quite a nice girl, unless you made her mad. She taught me some new fight techniques, and we stayed up late watching chick flicks. When I wasn’t hanging out with Victoria, I was with Erica.
Two days before the war began, things started getting a little hectic. Danika pretty much disappeared, on some trip to visit her sister, and Victoria and I weren’t done our training. Of course, we didn’t take it seriously. How many evil guys would WANT to attack Danika’s palace? And then Israel showed up. He wouldn’t talk to me, and I didn’t blame him. He and Gabe spent hours talking and playing video games, when they should’ve been preparing for battle. The day before the war began, Israel spent ALL day training to be a soldier. But he only had one day. About 10 pm on the night before the soldiers departed for battle, Israel knocked on my door.
“Come in....” I mumbled, half awake.
“Is this a bad time?” He asked. He seemed exhausted, with sweat running down his face. “Did I wake you up?”
“No,” I lied. “I couldn’t sleep anyway. Too much excitement.” Awkward silence. Then, he wolfed up.
“Grurwul...”  He grumbled. His shoulders widened, and hair sprouted from his face and neck and chest, until he was a full werewolf. My jaw dropped. “This is what I look like when I’m mad, frustrated, or genuinely unhappy. Pretty scary, huh? You really don’t wanna see my bad side...”
“You’re- you’re furry!” I cracked up. I know, I know, totally the wrong time to have a laugh attack, but I couldn’t help it.  
“Well, yeah.” He blinked. He didn’t understand why I was laughing at him; neither did I. “Shhh!” He started giggling. “You’re gonna wake everyone up!!!”
“Sorry about that scene at the mall...” My smile faded. But I was glad to get that off my chest. His smile faded, too. But his fur disappeared, and he returned to his Israel-form.
“No,” he looked at the ground. “I’M sorry. It was my fault. I never should’ve said that girls couldn’t fight.”
I just stared at him.
“Can I have another chance? Please?” I could tell he was really sorry.
“Of course!” I said. “Now go get some rest. You have a big day tomorrow.” I kissed him goodnight, and escorted him to his room. The next morning, I slept in. I woke up at 10 am, when Victoria lurched at me and tried to kill me. I screamed and rolled out of the way, as she bared her terrifying fangs and stretched her hand toward my throat. She was moving very fast, but I moved faster. I got inside her head, making an effort to get her to stop. Stop, I thought. Don’t murder your friend. But it was no use. She wasn’t the same girl that’d wanted to save me. She was possessed by evil. She went from being my beautiful best friend to a vicious beast in seconds. So, having read all the Vampire Novels there was, I forcefully snapped off a piece of wood from the bed. A perfect stake. All I had to do was stick it into her chest. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Just as her razor-sharp canine teeth started to poke through my skin, there was a gunshot. Victoria dropped to the ground. I saw a tranquilizer dart in her back, which meant she was still alive, just unconscious. I was now standing in the corner, staring at the clean, sharp piece of wood in my hand, and at Victoria’s limp body on the carpet. Gabe was standing in the doorway, holding the tranquilizer, glaring at me and then glaring at her.
“I’m ashamed of you both.” His voice was cracking, as if he was trying not to cry. “Her for not controlling her need for blood, and you for being prepared to kill her.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “SHE tried to kill ME!!!” I finally managed to scream at him. “And I couldn’t kill her... I WOULDN’T.”
“Explain the stake.” He walked off. I looked down at the stake, and saw that my hands were shaking. This would be an interesting story to tell Erica. I walked out to the courtyard to say goodbye to Gabe and Erica. Everyone else had already left. Gabe (who wouldn’t even look at me) told me that when Victoria woke up, I needed to feed her a couple packets from her fridge. Erica shook her head at my story, and gave a suffocating goodbye hug. We both teared up. Then they were off, headed to the underworld (not sure which direction that was) to spy on Gale and his lovely wife Shelby. Shelby, who’d seemed so nice the first time I’d met her.
“My sister.” Danika put her hand on my shoulder. “Shelby is my sister. She agreed to help us. She’s infiltrating the system; they’d never expect her to turn against them.”
“How- when’d--” I shook my head, and thought, Never mind. “That’s genius! So now we have like all the vampires on our side?!”
“Not exactly.” Her expression was serious, but with a hint of amusement. “Some of them have sworn loyalty to Gale. But MOST are on our side.” After discussing Danika’s boring war-plans, I went back to my room (fully armed with three of the pouches of “liquid”) to see how Victoria was doing. She was lying face-down on the floor, so I rolled her onto her back. I poked her in the cheek a few times. Her eyes shot open, and she gave me a loud HISSS!!! So I poured the stuff in her mouth. Instantly, he fangs retracted and the crazy dissolved from her eyes. She sat up and drank the rest. Once I was sure she was back to normal, I told her what Danika (who was now visiting Shelby, AGAIN) had said, about the vampires. She said she on the right side. I figured this meant Danika’s side. We sat outside the palace for hours, but no bad-guys showed up for us to fight. So we decided to rest for a while. Turns out, that was a bad decision.
I heard Victoria scream. My eyes shot open. We were surrounded by ten, maybe fifteen men, wearing heavy metal armour, carrying everything from swords to AK47’s. I stood up, prepared to surrender. But Victoria wasn’t going down without a fight. She pulled on her black ninja mask, and so did I. I closed my eyes, and braced myself for what was to come. Then, my body took over. My mind was telling me to give up, but my arms and legs were moving on their own. Before I knew it, my eyes were open again, and I was looking at the bullet holes in my clothes... And my skin. Amazingly, all of my wounds healed almost instantly, glowing slightly purple. Victoria’s skin did, too, but it didn’t glow the way mine did. Actually, hers sealed over, as if glass was growing and slowly working its way to the center of each wound.
We decided after that, not to take any more naps for a while, just to be safe. After the days of taking turns guarding, while the other slept, we finally got company. Gabe and Erica returned with news from the Underworld. Before they even said “hi” to us, they marched into the palace and slept for 12 hours. When they woke up, they told us about their “adventure”. They’d watched Gale and taken notes on his plan, his behavior, stuff like that. Almost as if he were some science experiment in the lab. Then, Victoria left. Without a warning, or a goodbye to her friends or boyfriend, she took off. Minutes later, there was a knock on the door. A girl about our age with brown hair and brown eyes stood there, in an elegant blue gown, with 6 inch heels and loads of jewelry. She had freckles and braces, but was still quite stunning. I was immediately jealous.
“Who are YOU?!” I asked, in a very rude way. Oops.
“I’m Karen Nelson.” She shrugged off my rude stare and smiled. “Your sister.”
“My-- my what?!” I staggered back. “Did you say--”
“Your sister. Actually, your twin. Clearly not identical, though. We were seperated at birth. Mom (a.k.a Danika) just ‘kidnapped’ me from my home in Tallahassee, and brought me here. I don’t know much about why I’m here, who you are, or what’s going on... She told me something about a prophecy...”
“Yeah.” I said, remembering the book. Now that I thought about it... It DID mention two sisters fighting for peace and goodness. But one of them saves the other. “The prophecy.”
“You know,” interrupted Erica. “This is like totally BAD timing. We’re in the middle of a war. Can you like have the family reunion some OTHER time?! Meaning: NOT NOW DUMMIES!”