I came to slowly, feeling first before I opened my eyes. I was somewhere cold and slightly damp. It was almost like the caves I had been to as a child. It smelled like wet rock and I had to stop from scrunching my nose at the smell of iron.

I opened my eyes and my heart stopped. It wasn't iron at all. It was blood. It wasn't just anyone's blood, either. It was my mother's. It was all over her mouth and down her chin and neck and there was so much of it that I couldn't see where the wound originated. "Mum!" I cried and tried to get to her. Metal bit into my wrists and ankles and I looked down to see manacles attached to them, running to an anchor in the floor.

I pushed myself into a sitting position and surveyed the rest of the room. My father and my two sisters were on the right hand wall, also manacled. My mother and I were across from each other, on the north and south walls. The left hand side was all metal bars. The rest of my family was already awake, except my mother.

"What did they do to her?" my voice was scratchy. I hadn't had a drink since the night they had kidnapped us at dinner, before I had gone to bed. Who knows how long it had been since they had taken us.

"They forced her to drink blood from a cup." my dad's voice broke. He was trying so hard to keep it together, so that we wouldn't be as scared. Too bad he couldn't shield us from what we were old enough to figure out for ourselves.

"Are they some kind of vampire loving cult or something?" I tried not to puke as I looked at the blood on my mother's face and around her neck again. The thought of being forced to drink someone's blood was absolutely repulsive.

My dad shook his head. "They claim to be Nephilim, protectors of humans."

I snorted. "Too bad they don't protect humans from themselves."

"We are helping you." a voice said, coming from outside the cell and down the hall a little. It was dimly lit, so it was hard to see anything farther than a foot away from the barred wall.

"I'm sure Hitler said that too before he killed the jews in the concentration camps." I replied icily. "It didn't make it true then, and it isn't true now."

A man strode out of the shadows and scowled at me. "Watch your mouth, mundane, or I will see to it that you will never forget this experience and the power that we have over you." He was medium height and rather unremarkable. The only thing that really made him stand out was the way that his eyes were constantly moving. He was always looking around for potential threats, or at least I assume that's what he was doing. Truthfully he had rather nice eyes but that was not something I wanted to think about one of my captors. His hair was a dirty brown but his eyes were a deep golden brown, almost as if his evil hadn't quite reached every part of him yet.

"Who do you think you are?" I snapped. He came and talked about hurting me, and brushed off hurting my mother and potentially the rest of my family. That wasn't okay.

"I am Hawk, Eris' right hand man." he smiled, and that was when I could see the crazy in him. His once nice eyes lit up with an eery light and his smile was all teeth. He was obviously very proud of himself.

"That was rhetorical. What I was really asking was: how do you justify kidnapping people and torturing them?" I was almost crying I was so angry and scared. Joss and Amy were crying silently, holding hands. My two strong little sisters.

"We are not torturing you. We are helping you. We are giving you something to make you stronger, and if you are not strong in the first place then you will not survive. We are doing this for the greater good." I could see that he really believed that, too. He probably didn't care who he hurt or what he did as long as he got to Eris' end goal.

"The whole 'greater good' thing is absolute bullshit. The greater good doesn't exist. Everyone needs something different!" I could feel tears start to stream down my face. I couldn't even see anything around them. The world was just a dark grey and black blur.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

"What the many needs is to survive!" I cried.

"But the many wont need to do this if you few do." he replied cooly. He acted as if he was totally unaffected by my tears. He probably saw them all the time before killing people.

I didn't dignify that with a response. I turned away and looked into the eyes of my sisters. "We're going to survive this." I grabbed Amy's hand, who was closer to me. She was the youngest of us all and she was handling this better than most girls would have at her age, and Joss was doing pretty well too. "We're stronger than they are."

"Whatever you need to tell yourself, do, because we need you to get through this." he flashed his teeth at us in what I thought was supposed to be a smile, and then turned and receded into the shadows.

"Ah!" My mother cried and started writhing on the floor. She began screaming bloody murder, but her eyes hadn't opened yet. I could only imagine that this was from the blood they had force fed her while I'd still been sedated.

"Mum!" I cried at the same time as my dad and my sisters cried out for her. We all struggled against our chains to try and get to her but all we ended up with was bleeding wrists and sore arms.

She continued to scream and writhe and slowly the screams became yells, the yells became moans and then she was silent. I looked at her chest what felt like hours later and wished I could get close enough to see if she was still breathing.

"Stella?" my dad croaked. He had tear streaks down his face from seeing her in so much pain and I almost couldn't bear looking at him. "Can you hear me?"

There was no response. After awhile we all just settled back against the walls, curling into ourselves, wishing that the world hadn't so suddenly changed for us. In only a few days the world went from being happy and mostly safe to dark and unrelenting. Nobody really cares about anyone in this world but themself, and maybe a few other people that they call family. The world we were now living in had no compassion or love.

All this is is a warped version of hell.

So that is chapter two! I hope you guys liked it! Please review it makes my day! :) Also, if you have time please feel free to check out my other stories as well and REVIEW I love you all! Goodnight and goodbye for now.