Beyond the Bloodline

“Lord Jamie, is there a problem?”

Davina questioned with an expression of concern on her face upon seeing Jamie’s face suddenly contort as if he had seen something unpleasant.

“Nothing serious. I just met with a bad-tempered person.”

The young woman’s concern became confusion, which was only expected given the fact that Jamie had been sitting on the couch for the past two hours, so she did not understand how he had ‘met with’ this ‘bad-tempered person’.

But before she could voice out that confusion, the entire plane abruptly shook like it was suddenly hit with some heavy turbulence.

Her gaze turned towards the cockpit area and she was already moving towards it when Jamie suddenly stopped her.

“Don’t worry about it, said bad-tempered person was just pissed that I called them a b-”

Jamie stopped speaking midway and tilted his head to the side, just in time to avoid the sudden warping of space where his head was a second ago.

[Tsk…]

Davina could have sworn she just heard the sound of someone clicking their tongue in that same instant that Jamie tilted his head. Her eyes narrowed as she considered the possibility of there being someone else on the plane with them but Jamie assured her that wasn’t the case before asking about their location.

“We’d be arriving in Nightingale within a few minutes.”

“I see, that explains why everywhere is so dark…”

Jamie replied as he opened the window blind and looked out of it, at the clouds that were so dark that one would normally not expect planes to fly in such weather.

“Indeed, it does.”

The two walked up to the dining room where Davina’s twin was relaxing while sipping what appeared to be a ‘bloodshake’.

“You’re gonna have stomach upsets if you keep drinking that.”

The girl commented with a sigh before turning her gaze towards the projected screen that was displaying the video footage taken from the plane’s front cameras.

In it, they could the dark clouds that spread out as far as the eye could see, without a trace of sunlight making its way through them.

Vampires were beings of the Night. They experienced a severe drop in strength under sunlight, and lower-breed vampires instantly turned into flames and burned to ashes under the sun.

Even normal Noble Vampires suffered this fate of spontaneously combusting under Sunlight, however, in their case, regardless of how long they burned under it, they would not burn to ashes.

In other words, they were to suffer the torture of burning over and over until someone pulled them out of the sun.

Purebloods like Wanete and the twins only experienced the weakness part of things.

Bottom line was that the Vampire race was not one that dealt with ‘Sunlight’ well.

However, the planet still needed the Sun to survive, so how did an entire 75+ million kilometre-square large continent of Vampires function?

The answer to that was the constant veil of darkness surrounding the entirety of the continent which did not permit the light of the sun to ever enter.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this veil that stretched across skies with patches of dark clouds all around it covered the continent of Nightingale and the surrounding ocean.

It was as if the entire continent was in a perpetual state of night, just that during actual nighttime, the ‘night’ was ‘darker’.

Light sources on the continent were half artificial, with the other half being some natural sources of light that didn’t come from the star the planet orbited.

What’s more, this ‘Darkness’ that covered the continent was a completely natural phenomenon and not the result of some Race Lord or King’s magic.

Almost as if the continent was created specifically for the Vampire race.

‘Well, Estea did put that there because of them…’

Jamie kept that thought to himself as he walked over to the dining table and picked up one of the tabs dropped on it, opening the map app and scanning the map of Nightingale for a particular location.

His thoughts then drifted towards the words Estea’s Incarnation had told him, that ‘his wife’ was responsible for releasing the details of his location to the Vampire and Werewolf Race Kings—inadvertently confirming that they were indeed the ones behind the Crimson Court sending the Vampire quintet.

Notwithstanding the fact he had never married anyone before, there was only one person in the entire Galaxy that Estea and anyone else sufficiently close to Jamie could possibly refer to as his ‘Wife’.

He remembered that pair of purple eyes that seemed to suck one in just by looking at them, and unknowingly, a smile came up to his face.

‘Just where is she right now?’

The Hybrid randomly tapped the screen as he thought that, accidentally switching the map over to a different location from the one he was checking.

He panned it back to the Vampire continent, not knowing that whether by fate or some force of nature, he had actually tapped the location that the person he was thinking of was at.

◇ ◇ ◇

Dark Haven Airstrip.

Central Region Nocturna

Nightingale

January 10th

Year 2018

The Dark Haven Airstrip was the private airport of the Vespera Vampire Clan, one of the highest-ranked Vampire Families with multiple Race Kings in their ancestry.

And today, it was filled with dozens of Vampires from various clans, all of which had representatives that held seats in the Crimson Court—the ruling council of the Vampire race on Estea.

Epic, Legendary and even Sovereign Realm existences were waiting at the arrival terminals for the aircraft which was carrying someone who was supposedly one of planet Estea’s greatest Myths.

A Hybrid.

Vesperas, Loreleis, Evangelistas, Haeras, and even the Tepes Clan which always liked to put on airs around the others had representatives present, fully dressed in their official uniforms.

Hushed voices echoed across the terminal, coming from the Noble Vampires who were all discussing amongst themselves, wondering just how much of the myths they had grown up with were true.

Eventually, they all sensed the incoming aircraft and quickly got out of the building, watching the plane’s final descent to the ground where it eventually came to a stop close to where they were.

Luxury cars with tinted windows rolled in, each one bearing the Crimson Court’s symbol in place of their plate numbers.

The stair truck drove in just as the aircraft’s door opened up, and after docking, some of the subordinate vampires who had accompanied the Vampire quintet to Brentlet Island quickly disembarked from the craft.

However, the Junior Elders/Junior High Rankers (Sovereign Realm) present did not pay them any mind and instead had their attentions fixed on the next set of people that exited the plane.

A quintet of three young men and two women stepped out, dressed in similar uniforms to those of the other Vampires who were waiting for them on the track.

The moment they appeared, all the other vampires bowed their heads, regardless of the fact that these Vampires were stronger than these five youths.

Dressed in a uniform that consisted of a pair of suit trousers, white long-sleeved shirts and long-sleeved knee-length jackets for the guys, while the girls had tailcoats that were dotted with golden buttons and similarly coloured aiguillettes.

Their shoulder epaulettes held the Crimson Court’s symbol; a stylized crimson rose with thorns, surrounded by a circular design.

Each of the three main aspects of this symbol held significant meaning, with the Crimson Colour representing ‘Blood’, which was essential for Vampires and symbolized their life force.

The Rose symbolized ‘Beauty and Elegance’, reflecting the refined and aristocratic nature of the race’s members, specifically the higher-ranked ones.

As for the thorns, they suggested ‘Danger’, signifying the fact that the Vampires, though alluring, were also very lethal.

Still on their shoulder epaulettes, right below the Crimson Court’s symbols were the insignias of their Noble Vampire Families.

“Welcome Back, Young Lords and Ladies.”

One of the Junior Elders at the forefront took up the mantle to officially welcome them back to the Vampire Continent, raising his head right after and meeting the amethyst eyes of the leader of the quintet.

From the insignia on her uniform, it could be seen that she was a member of the Vespera Family, one of the top-ranked Vampire Families holding great power both on Estea and the planet’s interstellar colonies.

Wanete nodded to acknowledge his greeting before glancing around at all the other Noble Vampires present, noting a few purebloods present and even raising her brows with slight surprise upon noticing the Tepes Clan members.

Her demeanour was vastly different from the one she had when interacting with her companions, and even the ever-playful David was also displaying a similar attitude adjustment.

After answering all of Wanete’s questions, the man finally decided to broach the subject that had everyone present curious.

“Lady Vespera, regarding the assignment given by the Court…”

Wanete understood what he was asking about, however, she didn’t answer him and simply gestured to the door of the plane.

When the man looked up, his eyes widened ever so slightly as he saw that there was now someone standing there, and said person had appeared at a time he did not realise.

Earlier, he had given into his curiosity and tried to check to see if he could sense any particularly powerful presences on the plane, but ended up with no results.

He was not the only one who did this, with 90% of the others present being guilty of the same.

Now, seeing this Silver-haired man’s sudden appearance, his initial reaction was surprise.

This was the same with some others who had been watching the plane door but in the short second that they had blinked, this man suddenly appeared without them being able to sense him.

And after surprise, came fear.