"The world? You're starting to sound like my Father. Baby steps Dragos. First, we must re-establish the Raksashas." She sat down on the bed, picking the dried blood from her claw-like nails. "Rebuilding the Coven will take a lot of work, Dragos. After we've taken over the Antinori and the Augustin covens, we should focus on that before we try anything else."
Serus shrugged, "No one will know about her. She'll just be another one of those kidnapped cases." She raised her wrist, tracing the mark. "What do you know about...witches?" After a moment of silence, she continued without his answer. "About 480 years ago, vampires were a bit more..uncivilized than they are now. Much like the humans had the Africans as their slaves, vampires had witches.
"Due to the brutality of the vampires, most of us tried to go into hiding; crafting cloaking spells and changing our appearances. Sometimes, it just wasn't enough and the vampires could still sense us. In order to make it easier on the vampires, they began branding us to make them easier to identify."
Serus pulled her watch from the nightstand, showing Seth the cover. Lightly etched into it's surface was a marking very similar to her tattoo, a few extra details and swirls here and there with an 'A' smack dab in the middle of it all. She placed her wrist next to the watch, "It was Keiara Antinori's idea to mark us. With her being the oldest known vampire, her power was nearly limitless, allowing her to pick out a witch with ease, no matter what we did."
She let out a sigh, replacing the watch on the table, "When I was five, Keiara found me while I was helping Mother tend the garden. We were pulling weeds from the tomato garden. My mother had been marked before I was born, which is why it took her awhile to finally find me." She chewed on her lip for a moment until it started to bleed, then heal.
"She grabbed onto my arm and pulled me close, lifting up my wrist for her lapdog to brand. His name was Nicolai Raksasha, the first of his clan. I remember his hand suddenly bursting into this bright red flame as he held the brander over it. I was so scared, I had no idea what they were doing, or why, my mother never told me since I was too young to understand. Next thing I know, the hot iron was pressed onto my wrist, burning the mark permanently into my flesh through scaring."
She ran her fingers over the mark, still able to feel some of the deformities in her skin from the scar, "My mother was able to close my wound before an infection could set in, but it still scared due to the vampires' magic. I was able to hide my mark fairly easily throughout the years, but I knew it wouldn't last.
"When I was 19, I crossed paths with Keiara again. Her coven, along with the Raksasha’s had become so incredibly powerful in that short span of time, no one could match them. Unfortunately for her, the Raksasha’s were a lot stronger, their elemental prowess gave them an incredible boost. When she found me, they were at war with each other and the Antinori’s were losing.
“I was asleep when she had found me again. I awoke in the middle of the night to a strange sensation in my arm, where I was branded. By that time, I had already mastered my seeing technique. I had used my familiar, a cat named Haji. When our eyes focused, I saw she was drinking my blood, quite quickly. Seconds later, everything had gone black, and then…nothing. I awoke again to something new, a warm coppery liquid flowing over my taste buds. I couldn’t recognize what it was, and it took me days to figure it out.”
She closed her eyes and continued, “The next thing I knew, there was pain..pain all over. It was so intense, the few days after it started are a complete blur to me. I was later told that it was the process of me becoming a vampire. I could hardly comprehend what was going on. Why had Keiara turned me? How did she even know it was possible? No one has ever heard of a human, yet alone a witch, being turned into a vampire.
“After that, my life was pretty much like yours. Keiara trained me to the point of such exhaustion, I would often pass out. Every day though, I could feel myself getting stronger, my psychic abilities much stronger than any other vampire…even Keiara. The war had reached its peak by then, hundreds of each clan murdered by the other…both families slowly dwindling down.
“That’s when she put her plan into action. She pulled back all her forces and told me I had a very important job to do now. She pointed me in the direction of the Raksasha army and told me to ‘have fun with it’. I was stumped at first. I had never been against so many enemies, not to mention, ones I thought to be stronger than myself. But when the first Raksasha attacked, something inside me…broke so to say. It was a big, bloody mess. Bodies and body parts scattered across miles, leading up to the Raksasha Manor.”
She yawned a bit, trying to recall the few days in time she was telling him about, “Day turned to night, night to day, and so on and so forth as I made my way through the coven. Of course, I would need nourishment every now and then. I quickly discovered that it was very helpful to drink another vampire’s blood. It was much stronger than a human’s and provided me with extra strength.
“Then I came upon Nicolai and his heir, Layla and her partner, Dragos. At the time, they were about 300 years older than me, possibly more. I never learned Layla’s age. Our fight was..epic to say t he least, but eventually, it was just me and Nicolai. That didn’t take me too long, and I returned to the Antinori Mansion with his head, throwing it in my master’s lap.” She shrugged, not that he really needed to know the downfall of the Raksasha’s, but it was part of her life; her history. She decided to wait for his reaction, her head tilted curiously to the side. “Too much?”