The forest was deathly quiet.

She sat at the base of her favorite tree, a few hundred meters deep into the forest's depths. Her eyes were closed, and only the steady rise and fall of her chest betrayed the fact that she was still alive. Her hand curled limply at her side, and she didn't have the strength to lift it either. Her black hair fell across her eyes messily, covering her frowning expression. The dress she wore still had remnants of the food stains from the disastrous party she attended last week.

The corpse of a human being lies at her feet.

Dino had long since given up on looking for the mysterious woman. Ever since that day at the party, she had raced off into the forest. The initial anger Dino had felt once he realized that she was the culprit behind all the killings in the small Italian town he lived in had ebbed away slowly with the passing days, and soon work overtook his mind again and he forgot about her incriminating presence in the forest. As long as she didn't touch any of his men, he was going to be fine.

"Master Dino, someone has come to see you. Would you like me to let him in immediately or..."

"Tell him to wait a moment, please. I have so many documents to sign right now that I can't afford to break my concentration. I won't be long, just around five minutes." Dino rubbed his temple with his finger, a headache forming. All morning, there had been nothing but complaints of attacks coming from other allied famiglias. The attacks reached as far as the Asian region, and he had to transfer some of them over to the Vongola to be taken care of. At least Kyoya was on the case, Dino mused. The problem will soon be resolved with Hibari hot on the criminals' case.

Dino's subordinate bowed respectively before backing out of the room. Not more than a minute has passed before he comes back in, shifting his feet nervously and flicking his gaze between Dino, the desk, the pile of papers Dino has yet to tend to and his own feet.

Dino sighed and put down his pen. "What is it?"

"He insists on seeing you now, Dino."

Dino grumbled choice words under his breath before reluctantly placing his paper to the side and lacing his fingers together. He coughed and then motioned for the man to go fetch his visitor. The man bowed once more and hurried out. Dino's gaze travelled longingly back to the paper. If he could finish this pile, he could be off for the whole day. But no, there had to be constant interruptions. And that was something that he could not put off, apparently.

"Dino-san." The man who strode in was the last person Dino had expected. He leapt to his feet.

"Tsuna! What are you doing here? I thought you had business to take care of in Japan? Not that I don't want you to visit me or anything, I just thought..." Dino trailed off uncertainly as the Vongola Don all but collapsed in the visitor's chair. Tsuna spun around, one hand on his chin, thoughtful gaze turned to the ceiling. From the way his brow was furrowed and his shoulders were tense, Dino knew that something was troubling the brunette a lot. Tsuna sighed and rolled his shoulders in effort to get some of the tension out, and Dino blinked expectantly.

"This is actually about some of the cases that you've just passed over to the Vongola. I came to Italy upon Mukuro's request, because he apparently has a really important lead that he wants both of us to follow up on." Tsuna emphasized the 'both', and for a moment, Dino was silent, admiring the confident young man that sat before him. Reborn's methods were unorthodox alright, but he sure did get the job done. Even at the young age of 19, Tsuna was more than capable of handling the biggest Mafioso family in the world, and he was getting more confident with each day that passed.

Pushing his digressions to one side of his mind, Dino tried to focus on the issue at hand. Something about Mukuro and leads and...the case that he had just passed onto the Vongola.

"Something came up that was similar in each of the victim's cases." Tsuna spoke without wavering. He handed over a manila file containing the pictures of the people who had been attacked in Japan, pictures that Dino had only seen a few days before. He was faced with familiar sights. Pale, relatively unmarked bodies. No deaths. Some of the victims sported bad bruises all along the legs, for which Dino had not been able to account for. All the victims were shaken, but they didn't really remember what had happened. Some of them even downright denied that they had been attacked, which was weird. All of them had started developing psychological problems, the bulk of which were unexplained paranoia or claustrophobia.

"We thought about leaving this case to the police, Tsuna. But this is getting a little bit out of hand. If you realize, there's a pattern where everyone is being attacked. It's all restricted to areas within the territorial regions of our allies. Do you think this is the work of some rising, jealous Famiglia? Or some old, buried one that have suddenly reformed to take back some sort of power?" Even as Dino was suggesting things, throwing them out just to think out loud, he knew that this wasn't it. It was too coordinated to be the attack of a new Famiglia, and no proud, traditional, previously-thought-to-be-annihilated Mafioso Family have stepped up to take the blame. These past weeks at the headquarters had been relatively peaceful too, with little to no skirmishes between Mafioso families, and when there was a small disagreement, it was always solved with diplomatic meetings.

"That's what I thought too, but Mukuro dismissed them without even hearing me out." Tsuna sighed, once more reliving the moments with his difficult and disobedient mist guardian. "In the end though, Mukuro presented a really weird hypothesis, but I think we should still check it out. He's traced the origins of the attacks back to Italy. In fact, right in the forests outside your window, Dino-san. Perhaps we'll find something there."

Dino felt himself going cold. It can't be her doing, can it?

It's impossible. Even though she's a self-proclaimed 'vampire', it would still take days for her to travel through continents. And besides, none of the victims have puncture wounds on their necks. But what if there are more of her? What if there are more vampires in the world?

Puncture wounds.

"Tsuna, what about the victims necks?" Dino asked anxiously. His hand came up to rub his own unconsciously. The feeling approximately one week ago of when she bit him suddenly floated up to his mind, and his fingers sought out the two little imperfections on his otherwise unblemished skin. The puncture wounds were still there, already starting to heal but there nonetheless.

Tsuna could see from the way Dino's eyes lit up that he had stumbled across something important. There was a sense of dread and anticipation coming from the older man, and it was making his hyper intuition tingle unpleasantly. When Dino asked the surprising question, Tsuna almost laughed out loud. Dino was making it sound like there was an attack from vampires or something. He had always known that the man would be more whimsical and imaginative in his way of doing things, but he had never pegged Dino as the fairytale creature type. But then again, Tsuna had never thought Gokudera would believe in UMAs either.

He cast his mind back to when he had personally checked some of the victims. The pictures in front of him helped, and he carefully scoured his eyes across the glossy prints, seeing that Dino was doing the same thing from across him. They lingered on the victim's necks.

"Nope," Dino sighed, slightly relieved. "There's nothing of the sort on their necks."

"Wait, Dino-san." Tsuna was frowning now, tapping the table with his right hand. "I do remember seeing something. I asked about it, but the paramedics have just told me that it was something to do with...with scrapes or something. That's right, I remember now. One of the victims had a cut on their necks. It was really straight, as if it had been cut with a ruler. So, no puncture wounds like vampires, Dino, but there was a mark. I wonder if it's significant though. I mean, it could've happened to anyone. Maybe the victim was someone careless anyway, someone who tripped and got a cut on their neck by accident."

"What was the victim like?" Dino picked up his pen and twirled it half-heartedly. He had never been the detective type: he preferred to stay far away from police cases. But since this affected the people in his territories and that of allied families specifically, he couldn't let this pass so easily.

"It was a man, middle aged. He worked for a banking corporation or something, and he had just gotten fired from a really high position for some sort of corruption. I'm not too clear on it myself; I didn't think background checks were important at the moment. Apparently though, he attempted suicide and tried to hang himself. But before he could complete his actions, his neighbor walked in on him trying to kick the chair out from under him and quickly saved his life, bringing him to the nearest psychiatrist. That part I read in the newspaper. His suicide attempt was one week before he got attacked. Do you think that has any significance?"

"Who knows, Tsuna? Who knows..." Dino's mind was already on something else. He should probably give Kyoya a call.

"What."

"Hey, Kyoya, it's me."

"What do you want."

It was strange to hear the silence from the other end, Hibari Kyoya thought. Usually, the idiotic herbivore would try to fill their conversation with disgustingly mundane topics. Now that the Bucking Bronco has finally decided to get serious about this topic, it felt weird. Hibari wanted to hang up.

"Well, do you remember the vampire you encountered the other day? That woman?" Dino's voice was hesitant on the other day, as if he couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his own mouth. When no immediate response came from Hibari, Dino let out a light chuckle. "You know what, never mind Kyoya. I'll go check it out myself..."

"I want to bite her to death." Hibari finally replied. Hibari mulled over the words that Dino had just presented him with.

"No, it's alright Kyoya, ahah..." There came that awkward laughter once more. Hibari could hear Dino shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

"Are you scared, Bucking Bronco?" There was a taunt in that statement, one that made Dino want to blanch with embarrassment. Because truth be told, he is scared. It's not every day that possible attacks on civilians happen to be from supernatural creatures. And it can't be a coincidence that something happens so suddenly after one is revealed to Dino. And although Dino wasn't one to believe in the supernatural creatures, he hadn't dreamt the whole ordeal because the puncture wounds were still in his neck, and when he cast his mind back, he still shudders to think that he could feel her fangs in her mouth when he 'kissed' her.

"Jyuudaime, do you mean to say that idiot Dino saw an actual UMA? Why would they show themselves to him of all people?" Tsuna sighed as he saw Gokudera pace back and forth jealously, seething with envy. If Gokudera had been an cat, his tail would be lashing from side to side, whipping anyone who came across him.

"Maa, maa, Gokudera. Dino could be mistaken. I don't really think there are things like that in the world, although if they did exist that would still be pretty cool." Yamamoto, always the pacifist, had dived headfirst into the conversation to try and keep aggression at bay. Unfortunately, his words seemed to make Gokudera lash out even more.

"THEY DO EXIST, YAKYUU-BAKA! Just because nobody has ever seen them before..." The silver-haired bomber trailed off into incoherent mutters as he clenches his fist. Tsuna sighed, not knowing whether to laugh along with Yamamoto (who obviously found this whole situation hilarious) or cry in despair for the confusion and stress he was going through right now. He could only pray that Gokudera didn't try to send dynamite through the walls again, because if his right hand did decide to do that, he would be swamped underneath paperwork and payments for another week. Which meant another week with Reborn's supervision.

"G..Gokudera-kun. You know what, why don't we go check it out with Dino-san as well? Maybe the UMA just happened to be living in Italy. You know, maybe the UMAs in Japan are too shy or something, or the other..." The Vongola Don left the part out about how they were actually in Italy at the time of the 'UMA' sighting. They just weren't at Dino's estate. That would've just made Gokudera worse, and he was now trying to placate the situation by tempting his science fiction addict of a right hand. Tsuna yelped as Gokudera whirled around with incredible energy. His eyes shone with hope. Yamamoto toppled over himself, slapping the floor and hooting with laughter, although Tsuna really didn't see the humor in this situation. He was being completely serious!

"Really, Jyuudaime? We can really go?"

"Uh..yea, I'll just leave holding the Namimori fort down to Hibari. He's probably not coming anyway." Tsuna gulped at the prospect of negotiating with Hibari, but seeing Gokudera's wide smile and hearing his enthusiastic 'I'll go pack my bags, Jyuudaime!' was all worth it.

For all of Hibari's death glares and unforgiving disciplinary actions, he really did care deep down about his 'Family members'. Or at least that's what Tsuna wanted to believe. It was probably true, because as soon as Tsuna had informed Hibari of their sudden trip to Italy, Hibari had stood and announced that he will be coming along. That had at first sent Tsuna into a stage of silent panic and hyperventilation, (just imagining Hibari stuck on a private jet with Gokudera is enough to give him a full scale asthma attack) but that was quickly cured with Hibari's cold glare of determination.

"There's someone there I want to bite to death." Hibari had told Tsuna.

Tsuna had immediately assumed that Hibari wanted to visit Dino, which meant that the raven-haired guardian did have a heart after all. That thought had given him enough hope of Hibari's 'humane side' that he had even asked Yamamoto to stay back to watch the headquarters, along with Lambo Ryohei and Reborn. Yamamoto had agreed good-naturedly, stating that he had a baseball game to attend anyway.

Oh, how wrong Tsuna was.

To Hibari, it was all a hunter's game. And as always, he was playing predator.

As soon as he had heard that the culprit of the current crimes might be hiding out in Dino's back woods, he had been considering taking a short side trip to Italy to go catch that 'vampire' woman. Of course, he didn't believe in such myths. Humans are the smartest people on this earth, and the 'vampire' could only be a really strong opponent who also knew how to act innocent. The way she moved, her speed and strength, it meant that although she had assassination potential, she wasn't trained enough to go against the Vongola or the Cavallone guardians and boss. Hibari smirked. Whoever had sent her is too foolish, probably some herbivorous boss who didn't want to get his own hands dirty.

It was only an added bonus that Reborn especially wanted Hibari to be on hand in the Cavallone estate. "There's something wrong up there." Reborn had stated quietly, before personally demanding that Hibari go to Italy to check out the situation as well as 'protect idiot Dino'.

So although he didn't really like the prospect of leaving Namimori attended, nor did the idea of having to spend two whole weeks in a non traditional Japanese setting with a crowd of herbivorous idiots and an equally herbivorous host didn't appeal to him at all, he still went. Now he only had to get through the roughly 12-hour flight, crammed on board a private jet with two other herbivores. Well, he mused, Sawada Tsunayoshi wasn't too bad to interact with.

It was just Gokudera Hayato who is the most troublesome.

It had been three days before she last fed. Her stomach rumbled angrily, and she quickly silenced it by ingesting some more of her own blood. She was becoming weaker and weaker with each passing day, and her ears had already started to go numb with the lack of blood circulation.

Vampires, contrary to the popular belief, do not need blood to survive. They need blood as an energy source. Vampires were born with only having a set amount of their own blood. Their 'hearts' and 'bone marrow' didn't create any extra cells for them to keep using. Without enough blood, they go into a state of hibernation, almost like a coma, leaving them vulnerable to the elements and to other predators. They need the blood to keep their hearts beating. They have a special function in their bodies to direct the ingested blood into their main blood circulation paths. When not enough blood is available, the vampiric body shuts down and reuses the amount of blood that is already available inside the vampire body, which means that their heart rate and body slows down significantly as limited supply is spread out over the whole body. While they can switch to a human mode of gaining energy through food, many vampires feel that this would dull their hunting senses and so refused to do so, taking only a little bit of human food into their bodies to keep living so they could keep hunting.

The situation became worse when they were injured. Vampires bleed, just as normal humans do. They needed to replenish the lost blood by hunting, so that their bodies would be able to heal themselves. Otherwise, they were left vulnerable.

But human food wasn't available to her either.

It didn't help that the weather was starting to grow colder. The days passed by in a blur, and she could hardly keep track of how long she had sat here helplessly, collapsed underneath her favorite tree. She didn't quite mind the hibernation, for it meant that she could rest. But her mind grew restless with activity, and she longed to move. Soon, she started thinking back, eyes flickering underneath her closed eyelids.

Ten days since she had last seen Dino. Ten days since she had first interacted with humans. Ten days since she had danced and ate human food and gotten over the brick wall, found her courage, spoke actual words, taken a bath, drank Dino's blood. Ten days since he broke her heart.

Her strength sapped, she had little to no fight in her. And what was there to fight for, really? He had made it clear that she was not to touch anything in the forest, so she hadn't fed. He made it clear that the forest was no longer her territory that he had taken it over on the very day she decided to leap over the red brick wall. He had made it clear that she was no longer needed here, and that she should just move on. It was almost enough to make her want to stop her own heart. But one thing kept it beating.

The fact that he might attack Dino kept the blood pumping in her veins.

Heaving herself to her feet, she rubbed her eyes. She felt vulnerable with a now human-grade sense of hearing, but that didn't stop her from quickly running in the direction of the entrance of the forest. The shadows danced alongside her, no longer ambivalent about her presence. They seemed to laugh at her, tangle into her long dark locks as if they wanted to draw her into their embrace.

All around, she could hear him whisper into her ears, whisper of her despair. If she was to step foot out of this forest, she would never be allowed back in. But she wanted out. She wanted to see Dino and protect him, even though he probably didn't need her nor want her. Even though she couldn't even protect herself from him.

"Dino, I'm coming to help you." She declared quietly to herself. Her ankle throbbed, a dull, long forgotten pain.

The forest responded with a malicious chuckle.

Dino rubbed his eyes.

It was yet another sleepless night for him. The clock ticked his insomniac minutes slowly by as he sat up and cracked open a novel, hoping that such a thing would force his eyelids to droop with sheer boredom. Even as his eyes skimmed the words, he couldn't take any information in. His brain felt dead, numbed from a day's work of sorting files, reading information, answering questions and responding to both peace treaties and declarations of war. It was back to business as usual for the Mafioso Don, with troubles far worse than that of the mysterious case. Although it helped Dino to know that help is on the way in the form of Tsuna, Gokudera and Hibari, strangely enough, he still had to keep his own family on his feet. The case didn't even bother him as much. No one was dying, which meant it was far less worrisome than the other situations he had to deal with right now.

Stretching, Dino decided that sleep had well and truly escaped his grasp right now, and that he should just give up. Standing, he slapped the despicable book down onto his bedside table and took to rubbing his head to get rid of his headache. Although he made it a point not to drink alcohol other than when he was at social functions, the dragging night was really fraying the ends of his nerves. He drifted tiredly over to his underused wine storage unit and selected a bottle, pouring himself a small glass. Tossing half of it down his throat, he sat dumbly at his table waiting for the alcohol to hit. And then he felt it.

Someone was watching him.

He cursed angrily, the alcohol pounding through his veins. It was a strong drink and although Dino was usually careful to take stronger drinks in moderate sips, this time he had unintentionally downed half a cup already. Shaking his head, his sense left him and he down the rest in another quick successions of swallows. The world started to spin around him, and his face turned red. Groaning, he slammed his forehead on the table a few times in frustrations.

"Why the fuck does it have to be me? Why couldn't the creepy vampire girl go find someone else to bother?"

The wind whistling through the trees outside his window seemed to agree with him. The trees themselves shivered in anticipation. ...In anticipation of what? Dino wondered. He stretched and stumbled his way over to the window, stubbing his toes along the way and crashing into his bedpost more than once. Even though Dino was quite careful especially when his subordinates were all underneath the same roof, it felt strangely normal to be staggering all over the place.

The cool air will help him a little, Dino reasoned. He stepped out onto his balcony and surveyed the grounds below.

"Leave me alone!" He shouted. He hoped she could hear him. After all, she must be watching him. The feeling of being watched was the same he had felt some ten days ago, when he held his birthday party. The remorse that he had felt for leaving her to slink back to her forest had slowly faded over the days. If she had lived in the forest for so many years already, what difference would a few more years make? Besides, when he had gone into the forest to look for her, she hadn't responded. Dino snorted at the memory.

The trees clawed at his arms and legs. The undergrowth of this forest was incredibly thick; over the years it had been left to grow freely and it had certainly put that opportunity to good use.

Dino cursed as he was sent sprawling over another tree root. He was frustrated, tired and overall cranky from the day's experience. Romario had rung his cell just a few minutes before. Letters had already started coming in from guests who had witnessed the woman eating at the table and causing a disturbance. Dino wondered why Hibari hadn't dragged her off at the time, simply choosing to observe her at a distance. In fact, the skylark had seemed vaguely amused at her barbaric antics, which had infuriated Dino all the more.

When he was sent sprawling a third time, Dino finally gave up. The damn forest was too unrelenting to intruders. It was no wonder people didn't like coming into this part of the forest. It made him glad that he had a brick wall built. Come to think of it, Dino wasn't even sure if the brick wall was enough to hold the creatures at bay, seeing as the woman had easily leapt over it. Granted, it was impossible for most humans to just jump it, but many Mafioso could probably do it. He gave himself a mental reminder to up the security around the brick wall perimeters.

And then a thought struck him. Was the human world unrelenting to intruders such as the woman? A fresh bout of guilt hit him and he almost turned to dive deeper into the mysterious leafy depths. But another look at the entangled bushes in the way, and he simply gave up, stalking out.

Besides, he had been hospitable enough, hadn't he?

Giving the forest another disgruntled glare, Dino decided to head back to bed. He firmly closed the balcony doors and drew the curtains before crawling underneath the safety of his covers. Even with the white sheets drawn over his bed, he couldn't shake off the feeling that he was being watched.

A/N: Thanks to all those who reviewed the previous chapter! You guys keep the plot bunnies coming :3 kimichee, xXxMentalPancakesxXx, RainyDaes and Anon (Guest). Thank you to all the favorites, alerts and follows too! It's great to know that so many people are bothering to read my work hahaha~ Love you all *virtual hugs*

Anon: You're anonymous, so I can't send you a personal PM ^.^" Thank you ever so much for your encouraging reviews and I'm really honored that you like my writing. You really give me motivation to keep writing!

So I'm starting to develop the plot...Please tell me how you think! Next chapter is already written and ready to be posted too!

OH and I need to name my OC soon. Hmm~ Suggestions, people? I have a name in mind but I'm open to other suggestions as well!