No matter how much I regretted almost killing a teenager, I couldn't help but feel like I wanted more. The blood created a need in me, a need that I couldn't fight back. Every time I felt regret, it was instantly shadowed by the ever wanting need. I remembered the texture, the feel, the taste of the blood and I had to hold the bottom of my chair to keep me sitting there.
Russell had begun with a few comments, telling me the few clues there were as to why it was a vampire, and why they were from his own kingdom. He explained that two vampires have gone missing.
"They were fine men, Mrs. Stackhouse, and I don't say that about many vampires." He told me, leaning forward and staring at me seriously, something I hadn't seen from him yet. "They were loyal, completely willing to do any of my biddings. They would rather be staked then trade their loyalty to another kingdom, or until I was staked myself." He explained to me. I raised my eyebrows and opened my mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, deciding the answer to whatever I was going to ask would be too confusing. Already it seemed a little dramatic, but he seemed completely serious at the moment.
"These men where each over half a millennia old. They had been trained un-relentlessly throughout their lifetime to do exactly what they do now, which is to protect me whenever I leave my own home. My security staff is broken up into many different parties, each one trained to specify with one form of security. The two vampires that have been taken worked specifically in ensuring the protection in the areas I will be traveling to in the near future. For instance, they would have known that I would be staying here for the week, and they would have spent the entire week finding out if there are any vampires in the area that need to be watched, or if the FOS is stationed anywhere near here. They make sure that they know every entrance to this house, and make sure that they are all covered before I even leave to go there." He told me, sighing unnecessarily and leaning back in his chair.
"This is all very interesting, and I have to say that I didn't know this until now, but why is it that I need to know this?" I asked. He groaned quietly, as if he was annoyed. I held my tongue, refraining from saying anything that would get my throat ripped out.
"Because I'm giving you information to search for in the minds of the vampires and humans on my staff." He explained to me slowly as if he was talking to a five year old. I balled my fists at my side, but continued to stay silent as he continued.
"They were taken two nights ago. I explained earlier that they are loyal, and since you are a new vampire, you must have no idea of what loyalty to your king or queen can mean." He told me, and my knuckles turned whiter than the skin already was as my finger nails dug into my palm. "So with that said, I know that they didn't leave of their own accord. And I would have figured it out anyways." He said, a little smug, actually.
"I know it was a vampire because no one human could have overpowered them at any point. They have been too well prepared, their senses stretched and used to the point where they are exceptionally accurate and better than most." He sighed, reminiscing about something. It annoyed me that he only thought in a different language, while the other voice of vampires throughout the mansion where buzzing in my head.
The girl I almost killed was dead. She had been drained, and the vampire that had done it was busy hiring someone to bury the body and erase any form of her existence. The vision of her body growing colder and colder, her skin becoming transparent and her eyes drooping shut, the screams finally ending, rang through his head, therefore running through my own head. I heard the vampires circling around the house. They only thought about the fact that the snap of the twig was only dear, and that that whistles was only the wind. They were only thinking about security, and it was boring as hell. But all of it added together made it difficult to focus on Russell. I could block them out to the point where it was only a buzz, but that wasn't much better.
"How do you know it wasn't a group of people from this FOS thingy?" I asked. I had no idea what the FOS was or what it even stood for, but I wasn't going to ask him what it was because he would then know I couldn't remember anything.
"Because if the vampires taken aren't sleeping, then they are wherever I am. And a group of people from the fellowship of the sun wouldn't be able to kidnap a vampire with so many other vampires around. I don't have enough human staff here for them to be able to group together to have enough people to overpower the vampires either." He finished, smiling at me kindly as if saying 'Got anything else?'
"So… do I just sit here and you bring in vampires so I can listen to them or something?" I asked, not really sure what I was supposed to do now.
"Well, no. I was going to have my best man, Ron, take you around the mansion on a tour as our guest, making sure you pass all of the vampires I have on staff. I want them to not expect you to be listening in on their thoughts. If you try to escape, and on some miracle you do succeed, then we will murder your boyfriend slowly, and excruciatingly painfully. Then we will hunt down your brother, Mrs. Stackhouse, and he will suffer the same consequence. Your friends, you relatives, if any are living after your brother is killed, they will all die. You have no way out of this, and still ensure that no one is hurt. So just do as we say, and everything will work out." He said with a creepy smile that made me shudder involuntarily, only making his smile wider.
"Ron." He called out, and the door opened. The vampire who tackled me to the ground and held me down in the clearing the other night walked in, standing still in the door frame with his hands clasped behind his back. His hair was jet black and slicked back and his eyes were a dark, dark brown. His lips were thin and his cheeks hollow, and he looked like he hadn't slept in, well, a few hundred years. "You know what you're doing." The king said, waving a hand dismissively to both me and Ron before looking over the papers scattered on his desk once again.
I stood up uncertainly and walked over to Ron who turned his back and walked out. I could only assume that I was supposed to follow him, so I did. The moment we were out of the room, and he had led me through a door on the opposite wall into a giant kitchen two times the size of the wine cellar, he turned around abruptly and I almost walked into his rock hard chest.
"Let us get one thing straight, miss. If you so much as attempt to escape, I will rip you apart, and then let you heal long enough so you can watch your boyfriend be staked, before you have the same fate." He said curtly. I wanted to punch this ass hole in the face. I had had enough with the threats of Eric being staked and killed, and GOD DAMN IT! He wasn't my boyfriend! I nodded instead.
"Why does a vampire's house need a massive kitchen?" I asked, letting out a sigh through my words. As far as I could tell, we only drank blood, so why was there such a massive, and beautiful kitchen in the middle of the house. He gave me one last long glare before leading me to the opposite side of the kitchen and through a swinging door and into a dining area. It was a small room with a table and dried flowers as the center piece. I could hear two vampires in the room beyond, and so could Ron because he began talking.
"This is the main dining area that the king would eat in if he ever found himself with guests." Ron explained. "I'll give you a moment to look around." He told me, and then went to stand in the shadows. It was kind of creepy actually. I began to move around since the vampires in the other room were expecting me to move.
Wow, it's not enough that he moves all of the way out into a different territory, other than his own, and makes his entire staff work non -stop without any leeway at all whatsoever. Now he gives a tour to a fucking baby. The first mental voice belonged to a man named… either Jared or Jacqui.
The more I dug through his thoughts, the more interesting it became. It was like he had two forms of thought, one he knew was there, and that he was basically talking to himself in his own mind. But the other was, well, different I guess. The things he thought brought up different trains of thoughts in his mind. Like when he thought baby, meaning me as a new vampire, he remembered his first child, and when he made her, and then when she died. But it didn't seem as if he was consciously aware of it. I took a minute, riffling through his thoughts. They were all pretty nasty and disrespectful, but I knew he didn't do any of the kidnappings.
God damn it, I can't believe they were taken. I'm just glad I don't have to be outside, there would be no way I could have eyes in every direction, and I'd be taken in half a second. There's no way I'm going to be strapped to a table and forced to meet the sun. It was obvious that this guy wasn't it because he was even afraid he would be next. I couldn't believe the king would hire someone one as cowardly as this guy, but hey, it wasn't like I was in any danger of being kidnapped so who was I to talk?
I shook my head and Ron stepped out of his little corner and led me through the doors. It was a long night, endless minds and endless snobby, whining voices. Every vampire sneered at me as I passed as if I was a bug that needed to be squashed. I didn't understand it, but I only assumed it was because I was a new vampire or a baby as they put it. I only really wanted to get back to Eric. I tried finding his mind in the mess, and only got whispers of his accent floating around. All he was doing was straining his ears to try and hear me. He was opening our bond to the point where it breached painful for both of us in order to ensure I was okay.
He showed me the inside of the entire inside of the house, every bathroom, hallway, bedroom, everything. It was insanely boring and tiring. And by the end of the night I was mentally scared by all of the horrific imagines running through some of their minds of the most recent meal, or their most recent kill. Some killed just for fun, and those were the more hideous imagines as they tended to keep the human alive for as long as possible before they actually drained them.
I couldn't feel dawn approaching, but I knew it had to be close because I had been at this for endless hours. Ron demanded to know my results, and I recited them to him. I thought I was going to be brought back to the king to recite the information again, since after all he was the one who wanted to know, but instead Ron led me directly back down to the dungeon. I didn't even fight this time. There were two vampires following behind us just in case though. When the opened the door, I walked in myself, and waited patiently while Ron put on gloves and opened the silver doors. I even walked in by myself.
The moment I walked into the wine cellar, I felt Eric's awareness and saw through his mind as he stood up. I didn't know when could feel my poking through his thoughts that I found held nothing but agitation, but suddenly he cut me out again, something I hated with a fiery passion. He stood standing, his face millimeters away from the silver until I walked in. At that point he fixed me with a steel gaze. I felt like he was peeling me back, layer by layer until I was bare and open to the world, just by that look.
I slid down against the far wall once they left the room, not before locking my cell behind them, and we were left alone. Eric stood silently, and after a few minutes that really seemed like hours, he slowly sat down on the ground himself.
"Eric…" I sighed, knowing he wanted me to say something. His gaze softened slightly at the sound of my voice, and I was able to look at him for longer than a few seconds now. I trailed off not sure what I was supposed to say. "God, I'm so screwed." I whispered, dropping my head in my hands and fighting back the tears. "No one is thinking about it, no one is guilty. If I can't find out who this guy is, then they are obviously going to kill you." I trailed off, feeling the tickle of the thick, bloody tear rolling down my cheek. Eric stayed silent, and I was grateful. There was nothing he could say that would have comforted me at the moment.
"I almost killed a girl." I whispered, and that got a reaction out of Eric. Hi eyes sharpened slightly, and I looked away, shamed. "They were giving me something to drink, because I was dying and I could barely concentrate on voices. I'd never drunken from a human before, Eric. I asked them how to stop, but they only smiled at me, like they wanted me to kill her. And I almost did. It just tasted too good…" again I trialed off, feeling my fangs come forward from the memory. I covered my face in my hands again, embarrassed that I could feel hungry at the memory of almost killing someone.
"They said I have a brother." I said finally, controlling the stream of tears rolling down my pale cheeks. I looked up at Eric then, wanting to see his reaction. His face stayed the same, except for a small smile.
"Oh yes, you have a brother." He said with a small chuckle. This sounded like exactly the thing I needed to distract me.
"Tell me about him." I asked, although it sounded more like I was begging. Eric's smiled softened, and as he began to talk, I got up and sat down next to the silver bars, and Eric did the same. It was aggravating that we were separated by only these silver bars, something we couldn't break.
"He is what you humans call a ladies' man." Eric began, and I was brought to a safe and comforting world just by the sound of his voice. It wrapped around me, comforting me in my never ending pain that I was suffering now. It lifted me up, and carried me away, far, far from where I was. And I felt slightly desperate as I scrambled to hold onto this feeling, the sound of his voice. I needed him more than anything, and the fact that he was going to get out alive lifted me higher than I already was. But I was brought back down with a loud thud as I realized he wouldn't make it out alive if I didn't figure out who the traitor was.
The fact that I was going to die slowly and painfully in a few days hadn't struck me yet. Instead I was drifting along lazily, Eric on the front of my mind, his safety at the top of my list. I'm sure when the moment came that I was chained down and Lorena stood above me with a bloody knife, it would sink in that I was going to die, but right now I just focused on one thing at a time.
I could feel dawn approaching like you could feel a sneeze coming on. It was itchy and annoying and made me want to curl my fingers' into a fist. I felt myself yawn as Eric continued to talk, and I heard high laughter that sounded like wind chimes, only later realizing that it was me who was laughing, something that seemed oddly out of place in my situation. Without realizing it, my thin wrist had creeped through the silver, careful not to touch it, and my finger curled around Eric's hand.
I felt his hesitation, unsure of what do, how to react. I could only guess he wasn't so used to reassuring and comforting people. But in the next second his own fingers curled around mine in an unbreakable knot, and I felt a surge of happiness, surprising both me and Eric. I fell asleep wondering if it was my own happiness or Eric's.