Prologue: Vampires

"Come this way, please," the tour guide called, as she led us down the maze of corridors. I recalled the tales of vampires that my grandma had told me. Blood-red eyes. Moon-white skin. Cold and hard as stone.

This woman, she was as pale as snow, and the way she walked was too graceful, too elegant for any human. I knew she had to be one of them, a vampire.

So what could she want with us?

To drink our blood, no doubt.

I shuddered. My adoptive mother wouldn't listen to me, she and my sister were far ahead at the front of the group, snapping pictures every few steps. Idiots, I thought. Oh well. I wouldn't miss them.

We slipped past a security guard. She nodded at me as I made my way down the hall. But her eyes were as green as grass, and her skin was tanned. She looked human to me. So what was she doing here?

Now we walked down a stone-bricked corridor, lit by blinding fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling. I shivered, it felt unusually cold in here. I hated Italy, ever since we moved here, I wanted to go back to Holland. I wanted to see my best friend, the spanish boy Cedric, and I wanted to live a full, happy life. I wanted to find the Cullens, a family of vampires that lived on animal blood, that my grandma had always wanted to meet.

So why was I still here, walking to my death with a group of witless humans?

The answer: I wasn't.

Nobody saw me as I sneaked away.