Travis nodded. “I was telling Constantine earlier, we’d had an interesting rise in the vampire population during the summer. He was the first one to help us figure out how we can help them. I think many of them will be at the Academy as well, so we’ll probably see how they’ve been doing since they came here.”

I can tell Mila wanted to know more about the vampires. “Are vampires from other cities coming to go to the Academy?”

“Well,” Travis shrugged. “Not really? A very good majority of the vampires—if not, all of them—that we came across during the summer were newly turned like Constantine—but we’re still not 100% sure what type of vampire he is—and they had no idea how they even came here in the first place. It rarely happened in earlier years, but this year there couldn’t have been more than 80 that came here out of nowhere.”

“That’s… really weird.”

“Yeah. Constantine’s case was different though. With the others, we don’t have anyone who witnessed or heard any vampire attacks. And the vampires that live here in the first place are perfectly human friendly, too. These new ones seem to be a new subspecies of a sort if I think about this right.”

“A ‘subspecies’? Of vampires?” I felt the words leave my mouth, and both Travis and Mila looked at me. It had been a good minute since I spoke a word.

I watched Travis nod. “That’s why I checked your fangs. I was trying to see if you were one of them.”

“But isn’t there like one type of vampire or whatever?” Mila seemed just as confused as I was.

“There used to be.” Travis seemed to be recalling from memory, as if they had learned about vampires a long time ago. They probably did, seeing how they’re not afraid of being close to one.

“They kept playing with the pen in their hand as they were remembering. “There was this group of cultists, from like several hundred or thousands of years ago, that served the only known vampires in the world. They were a very rich and well known family, though I don’t exactly remember their names or where they lived—but I know it was nowhere near Transylvania. Anyways, these cultists were also very active practitioners of black magic and were also followers of Dreyke.

“Dreyke is known to be the original creator of black magic itself. For some reason, a lot of people seem to believe that he pulled the magic out of his ass and just made it exist. However, that’s actually not the case.” I could tell in Travis’ tone that they had done much research on this particular part.

“Dreyke actually used what was originally normal magic. Back in that time, magic that is now considerably dangerous was not seen as such. It was never really used for malicious or ill-willed intentions, despite the fact that someone could burn anyone alive or turn them inside-out if they weren’t too careful with how they pronounce certain incantations.

“But Dreyke did things that were so vile and inhumane with this magic that they were literally erased from history books and the internet itself. A lot of people in the past who learned of what he did would literally become traumatized or straight up die from shock. It was really bad. It’s very much illegal to practice black magic now, because of its history and the things that Dreyke and his followers have done with said magic.”

Listening to Travis made me wonder if the Academy taught students about the origins of vampires. And werewolves. And non-black magic altogether. And if the Academy did have these sorts of classes, then Travis had probably taken them all. It also made me wonder if my dad had ever heard of these classes when he got his job offer.

“But, back to the main thing.” Travis did that thing with their hands again where they were trying to push a topic away in order to get back to the original topic. It seems to help. “The family of vampires appreciated the loyalty of these cultists and the benefits they had brought to their family, so after some time and deliberation they had agreed to share their ‘blessing’ of vampirism with these cultists. Most of the cultists took to it and were turned, but only a small few declined and stated that being of their service was already the greatest blessing they ever got, or something of the sort.

“But really what was going on was that these specific cultists were using black magic to create their own forms of vampirism. And they wanted to test it out on themselves for some stupid reason. Personally, I would’ve tested it on someone else, not myself. But I guess people never considered that back then?

The cultists tried to keep it very low-key but the family ended up finding out while things were going down. They probably wanted to see them fail, because why would anyone try to use magic meant to harm beings in order to create a whole new species? But in the end, they ended up themselves successfully, and the family was not happy with this at all. At first.”

Travis paused, almost as if trying not to spoil anything. Or they were trying to stop talking.

Mila and I were already invested in the story and we wanted to know what happened next. We just sat there, watching Travis as they started debating on saying anything else.

“Did they think the new species would benefit them somehow?” Mila asked Travis. They seemed surprised when hearing her question.

Travis caved and continued talking. “Yes, actually,” they told Mila. If we had stayed quiet a second longer, Travis might’ve exploded.

“The family didn’t like the idea, because they believed that the cultists would run about and turn every civilian of the village they supply themselves with, and then they would have to relocate to another village to find people to feed off of or starve to death at home. I think it was the daughter who suggested that the different breeds would help them hide their tracks, so they would be able to feed more without the villagers attacking them.