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Chapter 9 - Knowing Your Purpose

After getting kidnapped, girl finds herself in world where the supernatural exist and to find that she's not human, but a sorceress
I don't have a title for my story yet
Be harsh on the comments y'all cos i'm thinking of getting this published
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Chapter 9 - Knowing Your Purpose

Chapter 9 - Knowing Your Purpose
“What the hell are you doing?” Kerri asked him, as he held her head down. “You’re kind of freaking me out here.”

“I need to Mark you.”

“What the…Mark me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Every trainee has to have the Mark of their trainer. Now shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kerri saw a green light glow in Arik’s palm as he pressed it fingertips lightly to her neck.

Heat, warmth and cold coursed through her and focused onto her neck and for a moment white light surged up and out and lit up the entire room, nearly blinding her. She felt something hot—almost too hot—swirl on the back of her neck, and then suddenly, a blast of cold, as if to seal it over, and then it was gone.

Arik let go of her head, and Kerri spun around and slapped him.

“What the—” Arik staggered backwards. “What was that for?”

“You could have killed me!” she shrieked.

“No, I couldn’t have,” he said calmly.

“But you said you were lying when you said I was immortal!” she was still screaming.

“You can only die with a wooden stake driven into your heart, because you’re now a vampire.”

Kerri stared at him in horror. “shoot!” she panicked. This couldn’t possibly be happening. “I’m a vampire, I’m a vampire! Do I have fangs? Do I drink blood? Can I still see myself in the mirror?”

Arik dissolved into laughter. “I just had to see your reaction,” he managed to say. “You’re not a vampire.”

A few seconds later, he was no longer laughing and was clutching at his happy place—at least, that’s what Kerri called it—and rolling around on the floor.

“The next time, you won’t even have that to grab at,” she hissed.

Arik struggled to stand up. “Okay, okay. But I have to tell you something, you’re actually sort of immortal. There’s two ways to kill immortals.”

Kerri narrowed her eyes. “If this even remotely vampire-related…”

“The first way is that to have your heart ripped out of your body. You’ll slowly start to lose your energy and your sanity—I don’t know why, since the existence of your sanity depends on the brain, but anyway—and about five hours later, when those drop to a zero, you…fade away. That’s the slow way.”

Kerri frowned. “Why would someone want to die the slow way?”

“No one does, but people use this as torture, so that they can get answers.”

“…Oh.”

“The quick way is to just cut off your head.”

“Lovely,” Kerri muttered, feeling slightly nauseous.

“What’s so bad about being a vampire anyway?” Arik wanted to know.

Kerri made a face. “I don’t know…the idea of drinking blood for the rest of your life just doesn’t sound very appealing.”

“It’s not so bad. Carter’s a vampire, and according to him, everybody has their own unique…uh, taste.”

Kerri frowned. “No wonder the creep kept sniffing my neck last night. Oh, you still have to tell me what I’m doing here.”

“Right. Thanks for reminding me. Uh, basically, this company, well it’s more like…an institute, and it’s for people who have powers. They train here and live here.”

“And then they leave? So it’s like boarding school?”

“Well, not exactly. Most people work for us after they’ve finished their training. And some people leave, but those who leave have a bigger chance of dying, or getting killed.”

“…why?”

Arik’s face darkened. “You’ll know later on.”

“Oh. So everybody here’s…something? Like, either a vampire, or a dragon or a ghost…or something like that?”

Arik grinned. “Pretty much. There are no ghosts, by the way. There are spirits, but no ghosts.”

Kerri stared at him blankly. “To me, they’re the same thing. So, Carter’s a vampire, and I’m guessing Drake’s a dragon, right?”

Arik nodded. “Drake’s a fairly dragon-y name, so that’s an easy one to guess”

Kerri frowned. “What am I? Am I human?”

“No, you’re...you have all the qualities of a human, but you don’t get old and you don’t die…you’re like a human plus.”

“So…am I…weird?” Kerri gestured to herself. “Like, being human plus, am I abnormal?”

“No, you’re…rare. You’re a sorcerer. Well, a sorceress. Human pluses, as we call them, are dying out, so they are well protected by this company. That’s why the boss needs me to be around you twenty-four-seven. You need to be protected.”

“Huh. I’m an endangered species.”

Arik grinned. “That’s one way of saying it.”

“So…what’s Joshua? Is he like a werewolf?”

Arik’s face darkened again. “No. We don’t mix with werewolves. At all. Joshua’s just…human.”

“Then what the hell is he doing here?”

“Sometimes, the company needs humans to help them do their work. Joshua was an orphan when we first met—we were like nine or something, I think—and my mother and I had just joined the company. The company looked after him, nursed him back to health, taught him well, and to thank us, he now works for us.”

“So…what exactly is there to teach him? I mean, if he doesn’t have any magic powers, what is there to teach?”

Arik grinned. “When we found Joshua, he was an orphan and dangerously ill. Now, he’s an expert in martial arts—karate, taekwondo, name it and he’ll know it—and he’s a trained assassin.”

Kerri’s eyes widened. “He’s an assassin?”

“Well, he only kills off the people who intentionally try to harm the company. He works to protect the company.”

“Who would want to harm the company?”

Arik glowered. “Other companies.”

Kerri confused. “Exactly how many…companies are there?”

“I don’t know…probably about fifty or something, but the two main ones are this one and our rival company.”

Kerri snorted. “So what, you guys compete over uh, customers?”

Arik shook his head. “You don’t understand. Other companies use these people instead of helping them, and the people are untrained and are very dangerous because they cannot control their power. It’s not like that in our company. We help people, and then train them. After we train them, they have a choice. They can choose whether they want to work for us. Most people do, of course, but they can always choose to leave. In other companies—especially our rival company—people are forced to do things and are blackmailed. You should feel grateful we found you before they did.”

Kerri did feel grateful. In a way. “So…you’re trying to save these dragons and whatsits while the other companies…try to enslave them.”

“Yes.”

“And what about the werewolves? You said you don’t mix with them. So…who uh, trains them?”

Arik narrowed his eyes. “Werewolves are wild and tend to not like being trained. Even after they are trained, they tend to betray those who help them. We used to train werewolves, but they all ran off afterwards to our rival company, so we stopped. The problem is, we’re all immortal, so when our rival companies attack, they tend to send in the werewolves—especially the ones we trained—because they do the most damage.”

Kerri frowned. “But…if werewolves betray people, then why would our rival company still want to use them?”

Arik looked at her in disdain. “You don’t pay much attention, do you? Do you recall how other companies get people with powers to work for them?”

“Oh…so they blackmail them?”

“Yes. Everybody has a secret, or more than one secret that cannot be known to others, and somehow, our rival company always manages to find out those secrets.”

“So in a way, our company and their company, we…take in different…uh, species.”

“Well, not really. We take in dragons, vampires, fairies, sorcerers, spirits and demons, which are, by the way, actually extremely loyal. Our rival company takes what we don’t take, for example werewolves, witches and goblins and people like that, but they also take in people that we take in, and they’re especially interested in sorceresses since they found out that you guys are dying out.”

“Oh. So…does our company have a name?”

“The Sterling Silver.”

Kerri made a face. “Seriously? ‘The Sterling Silver’?”

“Well, the name has to blend in to other companies in this world. We can’t exactly have a company that says ‘Institute for supernatural beings’ in the human world while other companies have names like ‘paperclip making’ or ‘gold mining’ or shoot like that, now can we?”

“Human world? So you mean there’s another world?”

“Yes. You’ll see for yourself when we start out training. Training is usually done in our world—the inhuman world, or whatever you would like to call it—because it’s safer, and no human would find out. But the inhuman world itself is much more dangerous.”

“So what do you guys call this inhuman world?”

“The O.R., short for the Other Realm.”

“Oh. And what’s the name of our rival company? The ‘Landfill and Waste’?”

Arik laughed. A short laugh, but it was still a laugh, and Kerri was momentarily dazed by it. “Actually, you might know this one. It’s called ‘The Chocolate Express’.”

Kerri’s mouth dropped. “No. I cannot believe this. My favourite chocolate bar is the product of our rival company? Does that mean I won’t be able to eat them anymore?”

Arik grinned. “Well, you can still eat them, but I doubt you will ever want to after you see what they can do.” His face darkened again.

“So when…our rival company—sorry, I can’t call it ‘The Chocolate Express’ just yet—attacks, they’re trying…to take our people?”

“Yes. As much as they can find. Doesn’t matter what they are. Unless they’re human, then they just kill them off. That’s why our humans here are so incredibly well trained. Of course, now, sorcerers—and sorceresses—are top of their priority list.” He sneaked a look at her. “Which is why we’re expecting an attack sometime soon.”

Kerri gaped at him. “So you guys are…going to war because of me?”

Arik rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, but yeah, sort of. You have no idea how incredibly uh, ‘rare’ you are. And just how powerful you can be.”

“Wow. Okay, one question.”

“Shoot.”

“If you’re a dragon…and I’m a sorceress—at least, that’s what I’ll be—how can you train me? I mean, doesn’t it take people—well, not people, but you know what I mean—of the same kind to train them?”

“Well, for one thing, there are no expertly trained sorcerers or sorceresses just yet,” Arik said dryly. “All our recently found sorcerers have disappeared in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, never to be seen again. Obviously the work of your chocolate bar.” He smirked at her, and she batted him on the arm. “Besides, the way we use our powers are more or less the same. The dragon and the sorcerers are the most well associated, and their ways of magic are the most similar, which is why I’m stuck with you.”

Kerri stuck her tongue out at him. “Are there any other sorceresses here I can meet? I don’t want to feel like I’m the only sorceress going through this.”

Arik bit his lip. “The thing is, you may just be the only sorceress going through this. Alive. Rival company—and all other companies, actually—included.”

Kerri stared at him. “Please laugh now and say you’re joking and had to see my reaction. Please.”

Arik shook his head.

“Aw, crap,” Kerri whimpered.

“You’re the first sorceress we’ve seen—or anybody’s seen—since the nineteenth century. All the sorceresses were killed because they were mistaken for witches,” he said. “The witches, of course, got away with it,” he added bitterly.

“This is not good. For me, that is. I’m sure it’s doing the company who hell lot of good and I’m sorry if I’m not bathing in glory or something, but this doesn’t sound good for me.”

Arik smiled grimly. “You’re right. It isn’t that good for you. You’re going to have to work extra hard to protect yourself, and you’re going to have to live up to the hopes and expectations people have pinned on you when you first arrived at the company.”

Whoa. What? “Hopes and expectations? What hope and expectations?”

“Well,” Arik said slowly. “Rumours are that sorceresses can take down a company—and sorceresses only, not even sorcerers are powerful to do this, because apparently, it’s the hormones.” Arik smirked. “And well…need I say what expectations people in our company—especially our boss has fixed on you?”

Kerri buried her head in her hands and muttered a series of incoherent dire threats to the people who had hopes and expectations for her.

“Don’t worry,” Arik reassured her. “It’ll be years till you finish your training yet. Then you still have to do field work and all that other stuff. By the time you’re powerful enough, you’ll have the confidence.”

“Oh, and one more question,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

“Yes?”

Kerri hesitated. “What’s Mandy?”

Arik raised an eyebrow. “She’s half fairy, half demon.”

“A lethal combination,” Kerri muttered. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Arik hide his grin. “So let me guess, it’s the father who is the demon, right?”

“Did you not know that our boss is a demon?”

Kerri’s eyes widened. “She’s the daughter of the boss?”

“Yeah.”

“Aw, crap.” Things are just looking way, way down for her. Mandy had probably told daddy what a horrible girly Kerri was and how mean she was to his daddy’s little girl.

Arik, as if sensing her worry, said “don’t worry, though. She hasn’t spoken to him in years. They had this stupid fight, and they’ve both forgiven each other, but their pride gets in the way.”

“Oh.” That’s okay, then.

Arik looked down at his watch. “I was going to move my things over here by myself, but I think I’m going to have to use magic now.”

“Why do you do everything yourself when you can use magic?”

“Well, for one, whenever you use magic, you lose a bit of your energy. Of course, manual labour does that to you as well, but it drains energy from you physically. After using a lot of magic, you feel tired mentally, which of course also affects you physically. Oh, and when you’re tired physically, you can’t do magic either. It’s like it’s all connected, somehow. And for another, doing everything by myself keeps me fit.” He smirked at her, and she rolled her eyes, but she was forced to agree with it. Mentally, of course.

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KokoroTsuki24 on May 4, 2009, 1:55:47 PM

KokoroTsuki24 on
KokoroTsuki24um... just so u know... apologized is spelled with a z. my frend said to tell u. gosh sry if im getting annoying

xxnataxx on May 4, 2009, 8:03:00 PM

xxnataxx on
xxnataxxlol i'm not british, btw. i just go to a british boarding school so they like kill me when i use z instead of s so it's kinda become a habit

KokoroTsuki24 on May 5, 2009, 3:50:18 PM

KokoroTsuki24 on
KokoroTsuki24oh lol. sry then! ^.^

xxnataxx on May 5, 2009, 10:30:53 PM

xxnataxx on
xxnataxxlol s'ok

xxnataxx on May 4, 2009, 6:29:04 PM

xxnataxx on
xxnataxxthere are two spellings for apologise. to spell it with a z is american, to spell it with an s is british lol
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