Prologue
There was a deep stirring within her, a fluttering telling her to awake. She was being summoned, having been put into a death-like sleep, needing air nor food for centuries because of something she had done. As the other prisoners in her cell went about their own business, she fluttered her eyes, slowly awakening, immediately causing a panic form those same cell-mates. For, surely, they thought, if she was awake she would be drinking their blood next. Yes, they knew that she was a vampire. It was no secret among the prisoners. As soon as the first shout was voiced, guards came into the cell and took off the tough leather straps that were bolted into the wall and floor that kept her from attacking anyone in the cell and dragged her up the stapes. At the third step, the vampiress was fully awake, and bit the guards, leaving them to die from venom overdose. Free, she ran into the castle, unstoppable.
Chapter One
This was so frustrating, I thought. I had been allowed a few days out of the castle to get myself reacquainted with the streets of the town. I had secretly been looking for the person who had really Awakened me, following the feeling inside me. It's hard to explain to one who hasn't been Awakened, but I'll try to explain. It's like this: when I get closer to the person who Awakened me, this…throbbing is the closest I can describe it. This throbbing starts in my gut, and it grows stronger as I get closer to the person, until it becomes a solid feeling, like being excited to go to your best friend's house or something. Except here, I get to that feeling, but I can't get close enough to anyone because they're in their private house, and I can't go in uninvited. It would be too rude. I can go into other people's houses uninvited and feed on them, but to go into that house of the person who had awakened you, well, that was bad manners. I was out late one night, on a corner near a tavern trying to get some sleep, when that excited feeling came over me suddenly. The instant I felt it, a baritone voice rang out: "Where are you?"
It was weird, sung like that. The voice repeated it: "Where are you?"
Without thinking, I answered back: "Where am I?"
He asked again: "Where are you?"
I said: "Where am I? I am here. Why do you ask?"
He said: "I have been looking for you. Why don't you come show me your face?"
I said: "I have been trying to find you, but you were always hiding inside your home."
A hand touched me, hesitantly. A shock made me jerk back with a shriek. Reflexively, I spun out of my sit into an attack position. Even while I did that, we sang together: "Where am I? Where are you? Who is to say who we are and what we do? We are as free as spirits in the Dead Land with no one to tell us how to behave. We haunt the living, not quite here and not quite gone."
The blue-haired man was odd, to say the least. He was the king of the kingdom next door, which is called Izen. I could tell that he was trained as an assassin, the same as me. As soon as we finished our little song, I moved away from him and started back toward the palace. The blue-haired man, known as Gackt, was a vampire, and I wasn't really comfortable with talking with my own kind. Gackt moved to tug me back, but I pulled out from his grasp before he could even get me. I knew that he had Awakened me so that he could use me to find out the Princess' secrets.
I ended sleeping on the floor of a tavern inside the smallest space I could find. As soon as the dawn came, I was out in my robe-my special ones with the long sleeves that went over my hands and cast my entire face in shadow, no matter where the sun was-and made it back to the palace without meeting Gackt again, though I had the feeling he was following me. As my duty as one of the two vampires who were employed to be the Princess' bodyguards, I was required to be with her pretty much all the time, except for when she dismissed me. I slipped into place behind her chair as she herself settled into her beside her father, Kozi. Both of them are vampires, and are only two of the long line of vampire royalty that I have served under in the centuries that I had been turned by Kozi's however-great grandparents. I knew what to do when there was an attack or an assassin loose in the palace.
There were many servants in the palace, over one thousand. Most cleaned, cooked, and did other things of that sort. There were some personal advisors and servants who calculated the taxes, and so on. There were also a lot of off-duty guards there, flirting with the servants that were also off-duty. I watched over them all, making sure that all I could see didn't act inappropriately.