DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN VAMPIRE KNIGHT, ONLY YVELTA GRIMM

He shouldn't have followed Kaname. He should have stayed in his room. He was going to be in so much trouble.

Thoughts such as these ran through Aidou Hanabusa's head as he snuck down a dank stairwell into the depths of the dungeons under Cross Academy. Until now he hadn't even known the dungeons existed. But he remained determined. Whatever had changed Kaname's behaviour was down here.

Kaname had been acting strangely of late. He had been taciturn, more prone to outbursts of temper. It had worried Hanabusa greatly. But he was not prepared for the answer.

Upon exiting the stairwell, he found himself in a wide room. It was pitch black, though this wasn't an issue with the gift of vampiric night vision. He was surprised to find the room occupied by someone. As he moved closer he could see that it was a girl. She was of average height, slim, and held against the walls with manacles on her wrists and ankles. Her hair hung over her face, obscuring it completely.

Alarm bells immediately began ringing in Hanabusa's mind. What the hell was this? Some kind of… Sex dungeon? She didn't even look of age.

'Ooh, a visitor!' A smooth, melodic voice called out. Hanabusa jumped, looking around for anybody he had missed.

'No, there isn't anybody else here. Just you and me.'

He turned to the girl. She was staring at him. Her eyes terrified him. The irises were electric purple, but the pupils… The pupils were golden. He was caught like a rabbit in headlights, incapable of moving.

A cruel smile curved on the girl's face. 'Did he send you here? No, I think not. You're too jumpy for that. He would have warned you of what to expect. No, you're here for another reason entirely… Following Kaname, perhaps? Curious about his nightly activities?' She coughed, a dry, painful sound, almost pitiful. Hanabusa's fear began to evaporate. She was, after all, manacled to a wall, and there was no evidence so far that she was a threat. He moved closer.

'Who are you?' He asked in the most commanding tone he could muster.

She smiled again, that same cruel smile. 'Someone you should keep your distance from, pretty boy. Wouldn't want to get that porcelain face damaged.'

He winced slightly. 'That doesn't answer my question.'

She snorted. 'You're not very intelligent, are you? That is all the answer you would have needed, had you the brains to see the danger you're in. Your pureblood master has to keep me chained to a wall, and you think you need to know who I am? You don't even know what I am.'

What she was? What on earth did she mean by that?

She seemed to be able to tell what he was thinking. 'I'll give you a hint. What do you smell?'

Hanabusa sniffed involuntarily, and frowned. 'Nothing… Absolutely nothing.'

'Exactly. You can't even smell my blood, can you?'

Fear shot through Hanabusa again. She was right. He couldn't. But he could see it, as he walked closer. It was seeping out of countless wounds on her body. Torture wounds, by the look of it. He felt sick.

'What… Are you?' He stammered, horrified at the person before him.

Her eyes flashed. 'An abomination.'

The room was spinning. Hanabusa fled, but the sounds of her maniacal laughter rang in his ears all the way back to the Moon Dorms.

Hanabusa forced himself to act normally in class the next day. Nobody could know about his discovery. He was sickened by what he found and by what it meant. Kaname was holding this woman there and torturing her. Why would he do such a thing? What reasons could she have? Was she a threat to the school? If so, why had he brought her here to torture?

'Aidou!' The teacher called out. 'Attention, please!'

He jumped, and began scribbling what was written on the board. He could feel Kaname's eyes burning into the back of his head.

When class was over, Kain Akatsuki approached him, hands in his pockets, nonchalant as ever.

'What's up, Hanabusa? You're acting all… Weird.'

'Nothing, just… Didn't sleep well.'

He remained distracted until he went to bed, and once again couldn't sleep. Instead he snuck out again, needing to find out more about that girl. He was smart enough to check that Kaname wasn't watching him when he left.

Upon reaching the dungeons, he checked around to make sure he wasn't being watched, and crept down the staircase. Once again he saw the girl, and once again she gave him that cruel, bitter smile.

'Back again? My, you are curious.'

She had more wounds. Blood was seeping out of her left nostril and she had a black eye and a badly split lip. She had deep gouges down her front that went to her right side, stopping at her hip. It was monstrous, but she didn't seem to be in much pain.

Hanabusa moved slightly closer to her. 'Why?'

The girl raised an eyebrow. 'Why what? Why could be the beginning to an almost infinite number of questions and you expect me to know which one of those questions you are asking? Elaborate.'

Hanabusa's anger sprung up out of nowhere. 'There's no need to be so rude! Perhaps that's why you're locked up here!'

The woman laughed. 'Oh, how naïve and immature. I assume that's what you wanted to know? Why he's keeping me here? I'm afraid it's rather a long story.'

Hanabusa sat. 'I've got some time.'

The girl gave him a piercing look. 'Alright. If you insist.'

And she began her tale.

Around 10,000 years ago, before Kaname slumbered, he had discovered the method of gene splicing. Primitive compared to the method now, but nonetheless it worked. Pure genius. There had been at that time a cult of vampire worshippers, or perhaps more aptly servants, known as blood oracles. Their numbers were carefully controlled. A single bloodline made up the cult, and only females were oracles. Every female would have one child who would also be female, continuing the line. One oracle had been unlucky enough to have twins. The stronger was kept for the cult, while the weaker was sent to be executed. However, Kaname got his hands on her first. She would be perfect for his experiments.

He named her Yvelta, as her mother had neglected to christen her, but he kept her family name of Grimm, as a reminder of what she was. And so the experiments began. Young as she was, her body was more adaptable to change, and so he spliced her genes with those of every strange species he came across, and undertaking that had consumed the first thousand years of his life. He had discovered that so-called mythical creatures were anything but, and he wanted to combine them. All but vampire genes. By the end Yvelta barely resembled a human. She contained the genes of ten different monsters: werewolf, harpy, siren, medusa, centaur, mermaid, lamia, manticore, sphinx, and even that of a Valkyrie. It was an utter miracle that she had survived. Unfortunately for the first few years of her life she was practically uncontrollable and in constant excruciating pain due to the warring genes. But eventually Kaname synthesised a cure for that pain, and a way to keep the genes at bay. She returned to human form, retaining only the best qualities of each monster hidden within her: the heightened smell of the werewolf, the flight of a harpy, with wings that could burst forth at will, the seduction of a siren, the petrifying eyes of a medusa, the enhanced sight of a centaur, hidden gills of a mermaid, the gift of prophecy of lamia, strength of a manticore, intelligence of a sphinx, and superior fighting ability of a Valkyrie. Similarly to vampires, many of these monsters had the curse of immortality. That Kaname did not intend. It was why he kept her in this dungeon now. When she was seven years old she had escaped his laboratory when he had been in the depths of despair over the death of his lover, that mysterious Hooded Woman. He hadn't noticed Yvelta's disappearance until three days later, and by then it was too late. She was long gone.

10,000 years had passed in an instant for Kaname due to his slumber, but not so for Yvelta. She had experienced every one of those years. She had taken part in more wars than she cared to count, changed the course of history with her power, but still she was not satisfied. She desired revenge for such a long time. Such a very long time. But eventually the need for revenge faded, and a need to understand why she existed replaced it. Only one person had the answers she sought. And so when he had eventually resurfaced at Cross Academy, she had followed him, only for him to take her prisoner and torture her for information about the past 10,000 years. Not that it bothered her. Honestly, the torture tickled. She contained so much more power than Kaname that it was impossible for her to be harmed by him in any permanent manner. He used all his energy giving her the cuts and bruises she now sported.

As Yvelta finished her tale of an admittedly very abridged 10,000 years, she turned to see Hanabusa's deathly pale face. He was having great difficulty taking all of this in.

'You thought vampires were the only creatures of the dark, didn't you.' Yvelta smirked.

Hanabusa nodded shakily. 'There has never been a sighting of anything else that I've heard about.'

'Well there wouldn't be. They're all extinct. Kaname made sure of that.'

Hanabusa paled even more. The Kaname he knew was a lie.

'You should go. He's coming.'