13 Floors in Every Direction

Chapter 14

Location: Jade and Lance's apartment in downtown New York City
"I- I don't understand. Vampires aren't real, they're fairy tales just Santa and the Easter bunny." Matyo says not wanting to believe what Jade is telling him.

"You're right they are fairy tales, but most fairy tales come from real things. Santa, for example, was St. Nicholas a real person that lived in the late 200s and early 300s. He was a bishop for the Christian people in ancient Greek. All part of Grime's fairy tales, a book written in the early 19th century. A book of all real and magical beings before we went into hiding. All the fairy tales are true, to some degree."

Matyo pulls his knees to his chest. "That just ruined my childhood. Ghost and werewolves and all that kind of stuff freaked me out. We were always getting into that shit. Paranormal ghost hunting and stuff."

"In New York?" Jade asks.

"Yeah?"

"Good luck with that," Jade says with a bit of a chuckle. "You're not going to have much luck here."

"Why there have been probably millions of people that have died in this city alone."

"True but how many of those millions were violently murdered? And I don't mean getting stabbed in an alleyway. I mean pure black magic, evil doings, the stuff you read about in fairy tales. The only way ghosts are, made for lack of a better term, is by another paranormal being. Like a vampire, werewolf, or ghost were to kill a human. Like really kill them not just hit a human with their car while they're on 3rd street."

"But still shouldn't there be a lot of ghosts around here then?"

"No, because when the first creatures came over here they were trying to get away from people so they would move west. They wouldn't stay in really heavily populated places like New York. They would move there and take up living in places they thought were safe, forests, swamps places like that. As time went on and the westward expansion started creatures would want to keep people out of their area. Making them seem hunted." Jade says sitting back.

"But you said that the creatures wanted to move away from where all the people are right?" Jade nods. "Then why are you here in the most heavily populated city in the US?"

"That's a great question that I do not have an answer to."

Matyo smiles a little, it was the first time the two had seen him smile in the hour or so they had known each other. "Ok let me get this straight, all the fairy tails ever told are real-"

"To some degree, yes."

"And all the monsters that were ever in those fairy tales are real too."

"Yes in some way, shape, or form."

"Ok and you're a vampire, and I'm a vampire, so what are you?" Matyo asks looking over at Lance.

"He's lucky, he'll die in less than 100 years," Jade says.

"Hey!" Lance exclaims offended.

"What you will." Lance stops knowing there's no point to this argument.

"What now? When do I get to go home?"

"That's the thing Matyo, you don't. You're meant to be dead." Lance says in a quiet voice.

"What? I'm not meant to be dead or I'd be dead already."

Jade shakes his head as if it's painful to share the news. "Matyo it's January 3rd of 2019. You've been dead for almost a week. New vampires can't go more than a few hours from being turned to needing to feed or they're gonna die."

"But... What if I was just turned like a few hours ago and the past week I've just been really out of it?"

"That's not how it works, once a human is turned to a vampire it takes half an hour for it to take effect then when you're around your first vampire as a vampire you will experience of your first turn and are usually freaking out. Much more than you are."