Erick and Alina’s Great Escape

ALINA
“I am so done with this!” I slammed the humongous book shut and would’ve thrown it across the room if I had the strength to lift the damn thing.
Emiel pushed his spectacles down his nose to witness my tantrum before burying his nose back into another book. He didn’t really need the spectacles, vampires being unable to have any diseases unless they were magically induced, but Emiel apparently likes to look nerdy.
“Is something the matter, highness?” A maid poked her head from another isle. By now, it seems everyone was accustomed to my tantrums.
“Where on Earth is Erick?” I snapped at her, needing an outlet for my frustration.
“His Highness is having a meeting with the Nobles.” The maid answered, head bowed.
“Argh!” I grunted and stomped out of the library and headed straight for our room.
It’s been two months since we got married and it feels like the sky itself has fallen on top of my head. Lessons after lessons after bloody lessons. That’s all I do from morning to night. Who knew being the Queen could be this tiresome? Right now I feel I would rather drown myself in boiling holy water than become Queen.
Several of the maids stopped in their tracks and bowed their heads in respect as I stormed past them. I should be used to this by now but I still want to breeze past them so they wouldn’t have to bow down every time I walk by, but unfortunately, one of the first things I’ve learnt after being a vampire is that vampire speed eats up all your energy and as a turned vamp, I still don’t have that kind of energy. Trust me when I say this, I’ve learned it by trial and error. The first time I’ve tried it, I’d ended up sleeping for two days straight. But that hadn’t stopped me from trying again. But I had to stop when Erick had teleported me to a dungeon with humongous rats and threatened to leave me there.
Today I sped up the stairs and flung open the door to our room and slammed it shut behind me, causing the chandelier overhead to rattle at the force. Then I changed out of the lacy white floor-length gown and put on a knee-length floral sundress. Another thing I hated about being Royalty were the designer floor length gowns that always swallow me up whenever I wore one, which seemed to be almost always. If this keeps up, I’d gladly be walking around nude the rest of the time off, which I’m sure Erick would support.
Speaking of which… I closed my eyes and reached with my mind through the mating bond to connect with Erick, but then I came up against a solid wall halfway through, which meant that Erick was too busy to have me distract him. Groaning, I went to the balcony attached to our room and sat down on one of the recliner chairs that were placed on the balcony.
It was around 11 in the morning and the sun was high in the sky, but thankfully the temperature wasn’t scalding. I used my telekinesis to bring forth an umbrella and placed it over my head so that the sun wouldn’t fall on my face. With the umbrella securely overhead and the Constantium in view, I dozed off into a dreamless sleep with nothing better to do.
What felt like only five minutes later, I was being shaken awake forcefully from my peaceful slumber.
“Alina! Alina, wake up!”
“Go away!” I groaned, swatting away the hand on my shoulder, but the shaking continued.
“Wake up or I’ll teleport you to the Sahara’s and leave you there to roast!”
The warning finally registered, and I jumped into a sitting position, groggily looking up at Erick’s smiling face. “What the Hell, Erick!”
“Wanna get out of here?” he asked, holding out his hand.
“Huh?”
“Come on,” he waved his hand impatiently. “Let’s get out of this castle. I’m tired of all these stupid meetings and we haven’t gone out in ages.”
So tempting, but… “Erick, what did you do?” his voice held an urgency that told me he’d definitely caused some trouble and wanted to get out before anyone caught up to him.
“If you know I did something, then you better take me hand fast or else my father would barge in through that door any instant and then we’d both be grounded for the rest of our lives.” Erick’s tone was sickly sweet, and no sooner had he finished his sentence than I heard footsteps coming closer to our door.
“Let’s get out of here!” I placed my hand in his and blackness swarmed my vision.

* * *

“Where are we?” I asked, looking around at the crowded street. Now that I’m a vampire, teleportation only causes a few seconds of temporary blindness, as opposed to a few minutes when I’d been human.
Erick walked out of the alley with me, dressed in a red t-shirt and black jeans and instantly drew thirty pair of female eyes. “Marche Bastille, Paris.” Erick told me, motioning towards where the crowd on the street was headed.
“Oh my God!” I gasped as the Eiffel tower came into view on the horizon. “I’ve always wanted to see the Eiffel tower, thank you for bringing me here, Erick!”
“You’re welcome,” he wrapped an arm around my waist. “Now, let’s go have lunch, I’m starving.”
“Wait, we can’t feed from people here!” Was he seriously thinking about drinking from people?
“No, honey, I didn’t mean blood, I meant actual food, like the ones they’re selling here? We’re literally having lunch.” Why did it feel like he was mocking me with that endearment?
“Okay.”
We walked towards the rows of stalls sprawled all over the Boulevard: Richard Lenoir, colorful vegetables, cheeses and roasted or grilled meat and fish. There was variety everywhere you look, and they were making my mouth water. “Where should we go first?” I clapped my hands together in excitement.
“Let’s try those grilled chicken legs, over there.” Erick pointed towards a stall with grilled meats of all variety and we walked towards the stall to get our first snack for this afternoon.
“Wait,” I stopped him in his tracks just before we reached and dropped my voice so only he could hear me. “Do you have your wallet on you? Because I have nothing on me.”
“Hah! Of course I―” Erick’s face turned from smug to serious as soon as he put his hands inside his pocket and then he began frantically searching all his pockets. “It was supposed to be right here!” he sounded panicked.
“Excuse me? Are you telling me we came all the way to Paris without a single penny in our pockets?” I deadpanned.
“Umm… yeah.” Erick scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.
“Well, then go back and get!”
“I can’t.” He looked defeated.
“Why?” I asked, frowning. “Erick, what did you do?”
“Well, you see…” he hesitated for a few seconds before spilling the beans. “I threw a glass of blood at one nobleman.”
“You did what?!” I gaped at him.
“It’s not my fault, okay!” He defended. “The bastard kept going on and on about how you used to be a human and that you’ll dilute the Royal bloodline and a bunch of other crap.”
“So you threw a glass of blood at him?” I asked incredulously. “And what if you lost their support?”
“I don’t care, okay! No one insults my wife and gets away with it.” Erick said angrily, and my heart was suddenly skipping a beat.
“Awww! That’s so sweet of you.” I leaned up on my tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. In the middle of a buzzing market. “But that doesn’t mean what you did was right though.” I broke away to tell him before resuming the kiss.
Erick wrapped his arms around me, smiling into the kiss as someone hooted and others whistled. We broke apart laughing and went towards the grill shop we wanted to go earlier, Erick’s hand wrapped around my shoulder.
“How are we going to do this?” I asked Erick.
“Just wait and watch.” Erick spoke to the shopkeeper. A second later, I saw the shopkeeper’s eyes go dull and his face changed from cheerful to drowsy. Like a zombie, he walked towards the grill machine and take out two chicken legs and wrap them up in foil and present it to Erick, who took it with a smile and came back towards me.
“See? That went well.” Erick handed over one leg to me while he bit into his share.
“Let’s get out of here before someone notices you just compelled the shopkeeper.” I told him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We walked towards a different direction and enjoyed the view of the market while enjoying our chicken. We were lucky enough to get a cup each of red wine at a free sampling store. The cups were bite sized and hardly held over one gulp of wine, but we enjoyed it anyway. Half an hour later, Erick and I entered an isolated alley and from there Erick teleported us to a yacht that belonged to his family, that sailed from Luxor to Aswan on the Nile and gave a tour of all the famous monuments.
We were welcomed with warm smiles and deep courtesies by the staff, and they even served us wine and Kushari, which is considered being the national dish of Egypt. We stayed and enjoyed the ride for about an hour, watching the sun set beyond the horizon and the blue waters were stained orange by the rays of the sun.
The next time my vision cleared after a teleport, I stared ahead at the monument in front of me… and kept staring.
“Umm… Alina? I hate to spoil the fun, but I think we’ll need your levitating abilities… right about now.”
“Huh?” I looked at Erick, puzzled at the strain in his voice, and then looked down when he pointed towards our feet. “Holy shit!”
I immediately took over from Erick and helped us levitate in the air and dropped us off safely on the bank. Erick seemed to have mistakenly teleported us over a fountain.
“So? What do you think?” Erick asked with a flourish once our feet were firmly on the ground and not hanging two feet over a water body.
“The Taj Mahal! I’m amazed. You sure you didn’t snoop around when I was writing my bucket list?” I asked him. I was very surprised with Erick’s choice of places today. Since leaving the castle around noon, he has only taken me to places I’d always wanted to go to.
“Nope. Just kept listening to the little things you do.” He said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder.
“Thank you.” We walked towards the end of the fountain and sat on a bench which is popularly known as the Diana Bench, after Lady Diana, Prince Charles’s ex-wife sat on it to take pictures.
It was already dark in this part of the world, around 8 or 9 pm, but the Taj Mahal was lit up with the light of the full moon. The entire place was quiet and peaceful, and it seemed to be closed for tourists. The Taj Mahal looked absolutely gorgeous, and I felt content visiting this symbol of love with Erick by my side.
“Hey! Who’s there? Hey! Trespassers!”
Startled, we looked at a watch guard running towards us with a torch in hand and instantly, Erick grabbed a hold of my hand and we teleported out from the Taj Mahal grounds.
We were currently sitting on two large boulders on a deserted beach in Surigao del Sur Britania group of Islands, Philippines, gazing at a star filled night sky and sipping on chilled blood bags that Erick had teleported in from one of his many blood banks.
“Oh! Cold!” I squealed as a chip of frozen blood hit my fang.
“This feels like a bloody popsicle.” Erick said from beside me, hair blown back by the cool sea breeze. It was a good thing it’s still summer, otherwise we would have frozen to death by now.
“So, how was your day, Mrs. Stayton?” Erick asked, folding the blood bag into a packet so we can dispose of it later on.
“Well, it was quite amazing Mr. Stayton, I enjoyed it very much.” I told him. “We had loads of fun considering us not having any money on us.”
“And still we had grilled chicken for lunch in Paris, went on a yacht ride over the Nile, visited the Taj Mahal in India, and now we’re having dinner in a deserted beach in Philippines. We should do this more often.” He concluded.
“Agreed, but please bring your wallet the next time. I hate stealing, it’s illegal and we could’ve been caught.” I told him.
“Okay, okay. How about I go over the next day the shopkeeper opens his shop and pay him for the meal we had today, with interest?” He asked.
“That’ll be great. Thank you.”
“For what?” He asked, frowning.
“For taking me on this… great escape, and for loving me enough to throw a glass of blood at a Mr. Simone.” I told him, snuggling closer and placing my head on his shoulders.
“Always.” Erick wrapped his arm around my waist. “I love you, Mrs. Stayton”
“I love you too, Mr. Stayton.” I removed my head from his shoulder. “But as much as I love you, we can’t escape your dad forever. I think it’s time to head home.”
“Already?” Erick asked, defeated. “Can’t we wait five more minutes?”
“We have to face him someday, be it today or tomorrow. Why not do it now and get this over with?”
He sighed. “You’re right. Let’s get this over with.” He held out his hand for me to take. “Ready?”
I placed my hand firmly in his. “Whenever you are.”
And then we were standing in the throne room in the next instant, my vision clear because I actually remembered to close my eyes this time.
“So you two finally decide to show up.”
Startled, we looked up at the throne and found Kenna sitting on her throne along with Valroy. Both of them had stern looks on their faces, and I could already tell that we were both knee deep in horse shit.
“Father, about this morning―”
“First,” Kenna interrupted Erick. “Alina, you’ve been absent from all of your lessons today. We’re already behind schedule and you’ve already missed out on your language lesson, your dance lesson, your sewing lesson, your etiquette lesson and your history lesson! Would you mind telling me why you left your classes in the first place?”
Wait, you take sewing lessons? What the hell are those for? Erick’s voice came through my mind and he did not hide his laughter.
Shut up! This is all your fault! I know I was to blame for agreeing to go with Erick, but standing in front of Kenna and Valroy was making me feel like I was back in kindergarten and was being punished by the Principal for pushing a classmate off the swing.
“And you Erick,” Kenna turned to Erick who visibly paled. “You disrespected a Noble in front of everyone, threw a glass of blood at him and then instead of apologizing, you vanish for the entire day and leave us to clean your mess! What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”
“Umm…” Erick and I looked at each other like the partners in crime we were and bowed our head in shame. It was indeed a foolish thing to do, just up and leave my lessons in the middle of the day, especially when our coronation was in a few months and Erick should also have dealt with the situation politely rather than behaving like a teenager.
We were startled to look up at the throne the next moment as King Valroy burst out laughing, his booming voice echoing through the empty throne room. Kenna, who had been sitting beside him with a ‘now you’re about to die’ face, cracked up too and joined the King in his laughter, while Erick and I looked at each other wide eyed and confused.
“My goodness! You two should’ve seen the look on your faces,” King Valroy commented, still chuckling.
“I have to agree, dear, I haven’t had this much fun in a long while. Reminds me of when we used to vanish for entire weeks on road trips and your parents would fume by the time we got back,” Kenna laughed at the memory.
“Wait… so, we’re not in trouble?” I dared ask.
“Absolutely not!” King Valroy spoke up before Kenna could. “Gregory Simone was completely out of place for trying to insult you. I believe Erick could’ve handled the situation in a more sophisticated manner, but insulting the future Queen means insulting the entire Royal family and I made sure that Gregory understood the point well enough.”
“And as for you, Alina,” Kenna said. “I know the past two months have been incredibly hard for you. You’ve become accustomed to our customs and language quite well in these two months, and you’ve worked very hard for it. I had been thinking about giving you too some time off so you could relax a bit, all there was left was to inform you.”
“So, what do you say we give them another day off to relax before they plunge back into work?” King Valroy asked Kenna.
“I think it’s an excellent idea, dear!” Kenna exclaimed, clapping her hands together.
“Then it’s settled.” King Valroy told us. “You have tomorrow off as well. Go have some fun because you both will be working twice as hard from the day after.”
Bowing before the King and queen, Erick and I left the room, not quite believing that we got off the hook so easily. Emiel was standing outside the throne room when we stepped out the door, a big, fat smile plastered to his face.
“Hey guys, how did it go in there?” He asked, still smiling.
“You knew we would get pranked?” I asked him.
“Not really, but mom and dad came up with that completely on their own.” Somehow, the way he said it made me suspicious.
“You!” Erick pointed a finger at a smug-looking Emiel. “This was your idea, wasn’t it? I knew it!”
Instead of confirming the accusation, Emiel took off running in the opposite direction, his laughter echoing in the hallway, and Erick took off at vampire speed behind him. I don’t know what happened next, but I’m glad that Erick is opening up to Emiel little by little. They still have a long way to go before they start acting like brothers, though.
With that thought, I went off in the direction opposite to where Emiel and Erick had gone off to, going back to our room to get some shut eye.

* * *

Breaking News!
A plastic bag containing several blood bags has been discovered on a deserted beach in Surigao del Sur Britania group of Islands, Philippines. Is this a prank? Who do these bags belong to? Did anyone suffering from Leukemia, Thalassemia or any other similar disorder visit the islands? Did any medical facility use this island for any research purposes? Or worse, could Aliens have conducted weird experiments on poor, innocent humans here? Too many questions and no answers. Kindly contact us if anyone has any suggestions.
Erick: Oh crap!
Alina: Damnit Erick! How could you have forgotten to bring those bags back with you?!
Emiel: That was you two?
Valroy and Kenna: ERICK! ALINA!



The End