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Isabel came back to reality as he pulled his fangs from her neck, and she felt his tongue slowly run along the sensitive new wound. She jolted reflexively as she became aware of herself again. One of her hands was gripping his vest and shirt, while the other.. was tangled in his hair at the base of his neck. Isabel found herself holding onto him - clinging to him like a raft in an ocean.

There was the purring noise again. It was a deep rumble in his chest that made her shiver. His tongue ran along the wound on her neck again and that was enough for her. She let go and pulled her hand away from his neck. He let out a noise that could be mistaken for one of disappointment, and lifted his head from her neck.

"Every time I think that, perhaps, that I have control over you… you turn me about-face, and pry deeper into my mind," he half-complained into her ear.

It took her a moment to find her voice, and finally when she did, she sounded small and far away. She desperately wished everything would just slow down. "I didn't mean to…"

It was a half-apology for his half-complaint, and he pulled back further from her to look down at her face, and his lips were curled in a mild smile.

Isabel's hand untangled itself from his vest as he sat back, still straddling her but balancing his weight as to not crush her legs. She pushed herself up - well, she tried to push herself up once, and finally succeeded on the second try. Shakily she ran a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face and tucking it behind her ear. Her hand touched the wound on her neck, and she winced - it was tender, and stung when her fingers grazed it.

She felt weak, kind of dizzy… not shocking, considering what had just happened. Isabel was honestly surprised she was conscious - but she had no sense of time, no idea how much blood he taken from her or how quickly he had done it.

He seemed content to kneel there, watching her - looming again.

Opening her mouth to speak, she realized… she had nothing to say. No idea where to start. No clue what to ask, what to yell, what to plead. What exactly had he seen? She could understand the memories that he showed her from inside her mind, and Tex's. But the other… when she pushed them back inside his mind. She simply shut her mouth again, and shook her head. Confused and overwhelmed, she had nowhere to begin.

There is no need to fret.

Isabel pulled in a hiss through her teeth and put her hand to her head. The voice she heard wasn't hers. It was his. He was still inside her mind, even though the physical link between them had been broken.

But it wasn't broken, was it?

He had her blood.

Oh no.

A crash of emotions, of thoughts and memories cascaded over her, and it was like being in grade school all over again. It was like the roar of a crowd at a football game. "Shit- fuck-" she swore as she pressed her hands over her eyes, trying to drown him out.

Images flashed through her mind faster than she could make sense of them. Every emotion on the spectrum rammed through her at once like a battering ram - hate, greed, hunger, grief, lust, love. Isabel forced herself to breathe as she felt overheated. Forced cool air into her lungs, and focused her mind on that. One breath at a time.

Let it move through you. Draw a line in the sand. Know where you stand. Know the boundaries of your mind. Don't fight it, let it pass. You can't stop the tide. Learn. Witness. Mantras she learned to protect herself at a young age. Breathe. Let it flow through you. A rock in a river.

Flashing images of a burning field in front of her. Bodies on giant, fifteen foot, sharpened posts - the smell of roasting flesh.

Isabel felt his mind close to hers, felt him with her. Felt his amusement, his curious and eager watching of her as she suffered with the loudness inside her mind. Isabel could feel his mind as if it were her own, feel his sated hunger and the hunger that lay below that. No - she was not him. His emotions were his. Not hers. She drew the line in the sand. She kept hold of her own mind. But god, it was hard. "Fuck…" she grumbled again.

She pictured herself sitting on a rock in the center of a stream, forced herself to visualize herself there as if it were real. The birds, the breeze, the babble of the water as it flowed around her. Sitting on the rock in the center of the stream, her legs in the water - and focused on the feeling of the water rushing by her legs. She was no more part of that river than she was the overwhelming rush of of him that was flowing through her.

Slowly, bit by bit, she managed to finally separate his feelings from hers. They were still there, buzzing away beneath the surface. Curiosity. Lust. Hunger. Anger. Desire. Boredom. Amusement. How he wanted to touch her hair again. When he reached out his hand, she couldn't see him move - her hands still pressed over her face. But she could feel his desire to touch her. "Don't. Please. Give me a minute. This hurts enough."

Dracula withdrew, sitting back on his heel, and Isabel knew he was fascinated by watching her turmoil.

"I don't know what you've done…" Isabel finally spoke, and lowered her hands. She looked down at her palms - her palms. Not his. Hers.

"Many years ago… when I met one of your kind, I did the same. It drove him into a spiraling madness within minutes. He lept from the castle walls." It was all matter-of-fact. Cold. The man who had died did not interest Dracula in the slightest. "Do you intend to do the same?" Are you a waste of my time?

Isabel heard the subtext like he was still speaking, and she looked up at him, at his red eyes and cold features. "If you're asking if I'm going to go fucking nuts-" she started, her anger returning. Good. An emotion of her own. Stick to that. "I don't think so. No thanks to you."

Dracula smirked and leaned into her, and for a moment she wondered if he was going to bite her again. Isabel froze and tried to retreat, but she was still sitting with her legs pinned underneath him - she had nowhere to go.

Instead, his lips found hers, and he kissed her - slowly, this time. One of his hands was gripping the arm of the chaise lounge beside her. The other found her shoulder, and slid up to cup her jaw. Isabel could taste her own blood on his lips, coppery and metallic. His kiss was insistent, inarguable, firm. It felt as though he were reclaiming some kind of territory that she had robbed from him in his mind. Isabel was in no state of mind to fight it. Too off-kilter and too overwhelmed, she couldn't resist as the vampire turned his head to the side and deepened the kiss.

When he finally broke the contact between them, she was out of breath and her pulse was thumping loudly in her ears. She knew her face must be bright red. He chuckled softly at her, and placed a kiss against her forehead as he leaned back again to watch her.

"Have you ever been kissed?" he asked.

"Once, and.. You know what happened. And it wasn't like that," she admitted the truth to him despite her embarrassment. What the point of fake dignity now? "I have a lot - and I mean a lot - of memories of being kissed - and uh. Other things. But none of them are mine." She paused. "Can you please get off of me?!" The series of statements were as jumbled as she felt.

Dracula laughed, and obeyed. He let her slide her legs out from under him and withdrew to sit on the other side of the lounge from her. Isabel slung her legs over the side to sit normally, and try and get some more distance from him. The vampire was now a foot or two away from her… but it didn't help the feeling of his presence in her mind.

"Do you know what it's like..?" she started, looking over at the fire still flickering away in the fireplace, although much lower now than it had been when she last saw it. "Most of what a person is, is what they remember. Their experiences. Their context. Having all these other people jumbled up in your head - I always have to fight to remember what's mine and what isn't. Who I am, and who I'm not. And now I can feel you there and I can't tune you out. I can't-" Isabel broke off, anxious and unable to put words to what she felt.

Be still.

It was a command, a simple one straight to her soul, and she felt the deep need to obey. To calm down. To follow his orders - to bend to his will. To submit. It was like he had touched a livewire inside her. It felt like lightning and she was the grounding rod. And god, she wanted to listen.

Fuck that.

Isabel stood up, forced the world to stay still and not teeter-totter underneath her, and took two quick steps to the table where the dagger that Adrian gave her still lay. She went to pick it up, with every intention of slitting her own throat. Or stabbing it into her gut.

Her fingers had barely touched the hilt before she found her back against the wall. He had grabbed her and half-thrown her against the hard surface, his hands now digging painfully into her shoulders as he pinned her there. She winced as the pain of the impact caught up with the speed of the blow. But her mind was too fuzzy - from the blood loss, the trip down 'memory lane,' the wine, whatever - to really worry about getting smacked into the wall.

"You would be so foolish?!" Dracula snarled down at her.

Isabel couldn't help it. Everything was just too much. He was just too much. So she did whatever she did in moments where things got so out of control, that there was nothing to be done. She started laughing. It was actually funny, when you thought about how fucked up it all was - how ridiculous.

Dracula narrowed his eyes at her, and she knew that he was pondering whether or not she had actually lost her mind. "I'm not crazy," she said as she stopped laughing. She pushed him back from her, and he let her set him back a step. Isabel stayed leaning up against the wall, though - needing it to stay standing, to be honest.

"I fail to see the humor."

"Let me take you through it, then. First off, you killed my friend. But fine, you're a vampire, and you were starving. I'm upset, but you're a wolf eating a sheep. I'll forgive that and won't count it." Isabel felt a rant coming on. "So - one:" she held up a finger. "You take the other two hostage." Another finger. "Two: You destroy half of Boston and kill hundreds, if not thousands of people. Three: You send your goons to hunt me down. Four: I find out I'm trapped in some hamster ball mind-fuck of a semi-sentient castle. Five: Clearly you don't want to just kill me, or screw with me, you want to do both." She was on two hands, now. "Six, you want me to sell off my soul to you to save my friends. Seven, I find out that you're not just Dracula, you're some several thousands of years old, making me somehow more screwed than I was before." She was half-shouting now, finding great relief in her anger. "Eight - you drank my blood and now you won't get out of my head. And now, nine - I can't even kill myself."

Isabel and Dracula stood in silence, staring at each other, her fuming, and him with a single eyebrow arched as he looked down at her. "I still fail to see the humor."

"I'm laughing because I've lost… in such a spectacular fashion, it's fucking hysterical."

His lips turned in a cruel smile that made her blood run cold. "You have not even begun to understand what I will do to you. You upheld your end of the bargain. Perhaps it is now time I took you to see your friends."

The viciousness in his voice scared her - and she felt the cruelty and the joy of causing pain echoed in her mind as his will still remained so close to her own. Suddenly, she wasn't sure she wanted to know what he was about to reveal to her. Maybe she was happier ignorant of whatever he had done. But she didn't have time to argue.

His hand snapped around her wrist, and she felt herself yanked forward. Her stomach had the 'sudden falling feeling' - and she let out a scream as the world suddenly melted away around her as they room disappeared in a jet of fire that rushed around them.

When they reappeared, Isabel staggered and fell to her knees from the momentum. He had… transported them somehow - using some weird swirl of fire that had appeared around them from nothingness. Her mind was reeling along with her stomach.

"Izzy?"

Hope flooded her for a brief second as she heard a familiar voice. She looked up from where she had fallen, and… he hope fled her as quickly as it had come. What remained was an empty horror instead.

"Oh god… Eric…"

She stood up, slowly pushing herself up from her bruised knees, and looked at what was before her, that was once her friend.

It seemed that the castle had adapted to new technology. The room they were in was gigantic - cavernous - and filled with room-sized ticking gears, wires, lights and screens. There was a resounding click of giant machinery that made a tell-tale if slow and protracted tick-tock noise. The ceiling was so high she couldn't see it through the darkness. A clock tower. But one updated for the modern era.

A giant trunk of wires, cables, and flashing fiber optics ran down from somewhere above them in the darkness and to what looked like some kind of… patch station. Criss-crossing pieces of machinery buzzed and flickered away like some kind of nightmare from a bad sci-fi flick.

Eric was sitting on some kind of ledge attached to the machinery - and it was like the metal, equipment and wires had come forward like slow moving lava and… was consuming him. Like a tree consuming a fence over decades - or vines overgrowing a building. The inorganic structures of the chips, hardware and wires had become intricately grown over his skin until it had swallowed his arms, his legs - leaving his torso and his head exposed.

Wires ran from the system into his skin, running visibly close under the surface, leaving bumps and traces as it ran to… god knows where. His organs? His brain? Both?

Tubing ran into his neck and his chest like an IV - and the tubing twitched as a viscous, thick black liquid that resembled motor oil was pumped in and out of his body. His skin was no longer a normal hue but blueish-white, like a corpse. His lips were stained black like the liquid pumping in and out of him. The tubing twitched with a beat - not of his heart - but of the tick-tock of the machinery around him.

"It's so good to see you," he said with a bright smile on black lips, madness flickering in his eyes. "The Master didn't tell me you were here, but he didn't need to… The castle knew, and so did I."

Her hands covered her mouth as she tried not to burst into tears. She took a step towards him, and tried to reach out to help him, but stopped. What was she going to do? Yank the cables out of him? Pull him from the machine? He'd die in the process. And… Dracula had taken her gloves.

The cruelty of that action was now made clear to her. He stripped her of the only thing she had that let her interact with the world around her at all. She couldn't touch her friend. Couldn't open a goddamn door without it's memories flooding her mind. He had fully isolated her.

"Ooh, Izzy - why're you sad? Hey, hey- don't be sad. Look at me! Isn't this amazing? I wanted this. I asked for this."

"You're- you don't know what you're saying," she wanted so badly to reach out to touch him. Wanted to shake him and break Dracula's spell.

"I do though! I do. I've seen it all, now. I could have been anything - become anything. He gave me that choice. And this is what I picked. I've seen the truth of what this place is… what he is. Do you know how fuckin' old he is?"

"Yeah…"

"Then you know why, when he gave me the choice to become part of this place… to help bring it to the 21st century, I hadda say yes. I hadda do my part. We're gunna have wifi baby!" Eric was still smiling. "It doesn't hurt at all."

"Eric, you're not okay. You're not yourself, I promise you. Please, please snap out of it-" she begged, and felt tears roll down her cheeks.

"Izzy, please don't cry… I'm okay, I really am. I won't ever die, now. I won't ever be alone. I won't ever be afraid like I was the night we found the Master. The night he killed Tex, and when I thought he had killed you, too. I can become a part of this place, and be eternal. Like him. I'd uh, hug you, but we couldn't anyway, you don't have your hoodie and hey, I don't really have arms right now," Eric snickered. "I'll get them back soon, once it's done fixing me."

Isabel whirled to face Dracula, who was looking at her with an empty expression. She knew he felt no remorse, no pleasure, no guilt or joy from the scene that played out before him. Her pain was nothing to him - and Eric was nothing new. He had seen countless men enter these walls and decide to join it, lest they be consumed.

"Let him go."

"He wants to be here," Dracula replied, with a dismissive shrug. "I suggested he remain as a servant, but this was his idea."

"You're lying!" she yelled, angrily.

"I do no such thing," Dracula responded as passively as he had before. "And you know quite I speak the truth."

"God damn you," she hissed, and stepped forward, and slammed her fist into his chest. He sighed, as if dealing with a petulant child, and caught her wrist in his hand.

"He already has."

"I'm okay. It's okay. Really it is," Eric chimed from behind her. She turned to face him, even with the hand like cool steel clamped around her wrist. "You have no idea how much I know now. How much I've learned. How much I'm teaching it. This is amazing."

"I'll fix this," she promised her friend. "I don't know how. But I'll fix this."

Eric only smiled sadly at her in response. "I don't think you'll get the chance. But I'll see you soon Izzy-girl. The Master's got plans for you."

"We have one more to see, do we not?" Dracula asked her, the cruelty returning to his voice. Looking up at him, she could feel the sick joy he allowed himself with this game he played with her. "Let us visit the other one."

"No, p-"

Isabel never got the chance to finish as the world around them exploded into flames again. Her stomach lurched badly as they reappeared, and she would have been sick if there was anything in her stomach to give up.

This time, at least, she managed to stay on her feet - mostly because Dracula still had her wrist clamped in his hand.

This time, they weren't in some giant, cavernous tower - they were in what looked like some Louis the XVI era parlor. It was large, far larger than it had any business being. The decor was cast in stark reds, blacks, and golds. Lavish furniture dotted the room, with fur blankets and velvet contrasting the glittering gold inlay and leafing work on the intricate furniture. It was a kind of excess of style that she didn't really care for, even if she did have to admit it was impressive.

"My lord," Isabel heard a female voice say from nearby. "Ooh my… Is this your new pet?"

Turning to face the voice, her eyes went wide. Never had a single person ever screamed 'I'm evil' quite like the woman who approached. She was drop-dead gorgeous, and by the looks of things, she knew it. Dressed in an outfit that would make Elvira blush, the woman was coyly smiling at them with crimson lips.

Isabel had a sudden reminder of how awful she must look - in her casual clothes and her lack of makeup and the fact that she had just been crying. She tried to back away from the woman, to move to stand behind Dracula - but he was having none of it.

Dracula pulled her wrist forward, and forced her in front of him. Her shyness and her shame was clear to him, and he found it deeply amusing to watch her squirm. "Carmilla," he said in a simple greeting to the lady vampire.

Carmilla walked up to her, looking very much like a snake debating on what angle would be best to start eating its prey. Her red eyes flicked to the wound on her neck, and Isabel resisted the urge to cover it. The embarrassment must have been clear on her face, as the lady vampire let out a quiet laugh. "Oh, how much I would love to taste you," the vampiress purred. "But our lord has been very clear that you are not to be touched. And he says he means it quite literally."

"Yeah, don't touch me. I don't want to go fishing around in your head," Isabel muttered.

"Well, it seems since there is no fun to be had with you-" The woman turned to walk away from them, and smiled over her shoulder at them as she walked. "So I suppose I will have to console myself with your friend."

Dracula began to walk after Carmilla, and she could feel from him all of their history together. The stupid link between them was just as strong as before, and his emotions regarding the female vampire were pulled to the surface. The lust, the betrayal - she had tried to kill him many times. But he put up with it - partially as his servants attempting to kill him was nothing out of the ordinary, and partially out of some strange amusement.

"I think I figured it out," she said quietly to the vampire.

"Oh?" Dracula asked.

"You only do anything if it entertains you. And you'll do some pretty extreme shit to amuse yourself."

Dracula paused for a long time, and she watched as his brow furrowed slightly. Perhaps their link was more troublesome to him than he had expected. "Eternity is dull."

Isabel wanted to pry into that a little further - but it would have to wait. Walking into another room, the figure of a man lay prone on a large circular coffee table in front of them - shirt pulled open, eyes shut, neck and chest stained red with fresh blood. The man seemed alive, for now. Another figure was on his knees on the floor by the first, head bent to the man's neck - feeding.

For a moment, she was sure the man on the table was Adam. But… she didn't recognize the face. That meant that the figure feeding… Isabel couldn't decide if that made the situation better, or worse.

"Adam, darling," Carmilla cooed as she walked up to the feeding vampire with his back to them. "You have guests."

Adam stood - and the vampiress took his face in her hands, and kissed him - making a show of it. Carmilla sat down in a chair next to the dying man on the coffee table with a sadistic and inarguably sexual smile.

Isabel prayed for a hard long minute that it wasn't actually Adam. That it was a trick. But as he friend turned around, she felt her heart crack in two for the second time in a half an hour. His eyes were now a sharp, crisp green.

Adam smiled a hopeful, bright smile and stepped forward towards her before really realizing who she was with. His eyes went up to the taller vampire, and he lowered his head quickly. "Forgive me, my lord. May I speak to my friend?"

"You may." Dracula put his hand on her back and pushed her forward. Isabel stared at the center of Adam's chest, not wanting to look up into his new eyes.

"Hey," Adam said quietly to her, and reached out to hug her - and pulled up short. Sighing, he lowered his arms. "Sorry."

Isabel shrugged, trying to play off how much not having sleeves - or her gloves - bothered her. She rubbed a hand up and down her arm, wishing she could hide. She tried to hide how much it hurt to be denied touching her friends, but knew that the street that Dracula had opened by feeding from her - this connection of theirs - likely ran both ways. Looking up at the sharp eyes of her friend, she fought down tears again.

"Are you okay?" Adam asked, his voice still low.

Isabel laughed quietly, and shook her head. "Of course I'm not okay- and neither are you. And neither is - is Eric," she stammered, trying not to let the horror of what had been done to her friend come back to her mind. "I came here to save you two - I threw myself into this place to try and rescue you two and I find out that you're a fucking vampire now, and he's- he's-"

"Happy." Adam finished for her.

"Not the word I was going to use," she retorted. "Have you seen him?! He's-"

"You were supposed to run," Adam sighed. "You were supposed to leave us here."

Isabel wanted to shake him - or punch him - or both. "You know I couldn't just leave you two here. You know I couldn't just abandon you."

"So you came here instead? To what, fight him? To fight this place? You didn't stand a chance, Iz," Adam insisted.

"I know that!" she forced herself to take a breath and calm down. It wasn't his fault. "I know that. I thought - I don't know what I thought. That if he was willing to cut a deal before, maybe he'd cut one now. I was wrong."

"Oh this is just delightful!" Carmilla interjected from where she sat. "My lord, I know now why you delight in such mortal… drama. It is quite fun to watch."

"You shut the fuck up and keep out of this," Isabel snapped at the other woman. Her patience was gone and she wasn't going to deal with another person making fun of her. Dracula was bad enough. "Maybe instead of opening your fat mouth, you should go back to sucking cock at the Silver Mare for a single heller back in Austria like you used to."

Isabel wasn't sure where she wound up with that little factoid about Carmilla's life - but she had already fired off that gun, and she was going to stick to it.

Carmilla's was in shock - agog - and staring at her wide eyed, her mouth open.

Dracula laughed and she felt his hand fall on her shoulder - pointedly showing Carmilla that she was still under his protection, insults or no. "Yes, Carmilla, I must agree. This is delightful."

Isabel shoved his hand off of her and turned, taking a few steps away from the three of them. She couldn't look at them - this was too much. She put her hands over her face, and sighed. Everything was just a deluge. "What did I ever do to you?" she quietly asked Dracula, not expecting a reply.

And then, all at once, a lightbulb went off in her head.

She wasn't sure if the thought hit her on her own accord, or if it was due to the lingering connection to Dracula. But pieces in her head that hadn't made sense suddenly fell into place. She lowered her hands, and looked aimlessly out the window at the night sky. "So, that's how you found me."

Silence. Which meant she was on to something. So, she continued, not turning back around. "The vampire Maverick said you told a bunch of your people a couple of places where I might turn up. The cathedral was one of them. Nobody knew about the contact we had there - nobody knew about the priest who worked there who specialized in hunting monsters. Nobody… except Adam."

"I didn't have a choice - not really. I had to, I didn't think you'd ever be dumb enough to try and rescue us. I thought it was useless intel. I'm sorry-" Adam started.

Isabel wasn't even really fully aware of when exactly she had grabbed the large crystal ashtray from the table next to her - she only really knew she had it after she lobbed it and bounced it directly off of Adam's head.

Adam collapsed to the ground with a groan, holding his head where the ashtray had hit him. There was blood, but - she knew that he'd be fine, now - being a vampire and all. Isabel was shaking in anger, anxiety, grief - god only knew what the jumble of emotions roaring around inside should be named.

Dracula roared in laughter.

"It's not funny," she growled at him.

"Ah, I beg to differ. In this, I see the humor," the vampire king disappeared, and Isabel let out a small cry as he reappeared behind her, a hand on the back of her neck, forcing her to walk forwards until she stood over where Adam was getting back to his feet. "He sold you for his own eternal life."

"I didn't- I mean-" Adam stammered, then gave up, his shoulders slumping. The wound on his head was already healing itself shut. "I'm sorry, Iz..."

"You would not be here, if not for his betrayal," Dracula purred into her ear, mocking her, enjoying rubbing salt into the wound.

"Here's the thing you don't get, fangface," Isabel replied. "Here's what you don't understand about people. Something you'll never grasp in your thousands of years so-called life."

"Oh? What is that, exactly?" He sounded so superior… so pleased with his game. He wanted to watch her crumble at his feet. Isabel just had to 'throw the board' back into his face.

"He's my friend," Isabel turned her head to glare into his red eyes. "I forgive him. Even if you had him kill me now. Or had Eric do it. Doesn't matter. I'd forgive them."

His red eyes narrowed at that, and he bristled at the insult. But she had found a button, and she smiled at his glowering expression, enjoying jabbing him in return for what he had done. "Hrm. We shall see." He straightened back up to his full height, and the grip on the back of her neck tightened slightly. She'd pay for her comments later, she knew. Didn't know how, but knew he was the type to hold a grudge.

"My lord, about what she said-" Carmilla interjected. "I think I am owed-"

"Her words were truth, and even if they were not, the sentiment would remain so. You are owed nothing," Dracula hissed coldly at the lady vampire, who all but recoiled into the cushions of the chair she sat on. "Entertain yourself with your new fledgling."

"Isabel-" Adam started, but couldn't finish whatever he was going to say as the world erupted in fire.

Carpet met her hands as she fell from the tornado of fire that brought them somewhere new. Isabel groaned, feeling her stomach lurch in time with her head. "Stop… doing that, please."

"Best become accustomed to it," the vampire replied as he stood over her. She ran a shaking hand through her hair and looked up from where she knelt, and saw that they had appeared in some strange chamber with solid stone walls. Torches burned in sconces in the walls, and there was no furniture other than a carpet (that she was now kneeling on) in the center of the room, and a… coffin on a dias.

There was not a single door or window in the room. Just solid stone. This is where he sleeps - she realized. Cut off from everyone and everything - safe in an unreachable location.

"I have business to which I must attend. I do not trust you to be alone in the castle, so you will remain here until I return."

"Wait-" Isabel pushed herself up to standing. "You're going to leave me, here, with nothing-"

A burst of fire and she jumped back, shielding her eyes. He was gone.

It was impossible to tell the time when there was nothing to use as reference. Even the torches seemed somehow to burn forever with no renewed fuel. Stupid castle at work again, she figured.

All Isabel knew for certain was that she was incredibly bored and incredibly tired. The former fed the later, and she decided to try and get some sleep. As there was nothing else to do in a room with literally nothing but four torches, a carpet and a pedestal with an ornate coffin.

So started the great internal debate of the hour. Or hours, or twenty minutes, she had no clue. Sleep on the carpet - uncomfortable and kind of cold. Sleep in the coffin - creepy as shit, and it was his, and she didn't want anything to do with that. And it'd probably anger him anyway, finding her in there without any kind of permission. Sleep on the floor but steal his pillow, and he'd probably lose his temper at that, too. But what did she care if he was 'angry' at her? He had mutilated her friends and was probably just going to kill her anyway.

So, she settled on stealing his pillow. Lying on the carpet, she shoved it under her head, and stared up at the stone ceiling. It smelled like him - vaguely of roses, and she tried to push it from her mind. It was better than the bare carpet.

Isabel idly wondered if she'd eventually suffocate in a room with no doors or windows - hopefully it wasn't perfectly airtight. Then again - what did she care if it was? Hope was a funny thing. Even through everything that had happened her today, part of her wondered if there was some way they'd all get out of this alive. Sighing, she finally let the weight of the day hit her. Especially now that she was alone.

She felt tears form again as she thought back to seeing Eric and Adam - and what had happened to her two friends. The only people she could call anything close to family. What had they become? Were they too far gone? The image of Eric as part of the machine would haunt her for the rest of her (very likely few remaining) days.

And then there was what she saw inside Dracula's mind when he fed from her - when she was bitten by a vampire. God, she hadn't even really registered what had happened. What did Dracula really want from her? What was his plan? Even seeing inside his mind and feeling his emotions, she had no idea. Being touched for the first time in over a decade - her first actual kiss that wasn't someone else's stolen memory.

Isabel felt off-balance, always trying to catch her footing as he jerked her from one emotional extreme to the other. Perhaps that was his game - but why? To 'break' her? And again, why her?

They were all prisoners of a man who was ancient enough to be considered basically a demigod. A demigod who deeply enjoyed watching her struggle and suffer through what he levied against her. What possible hope could there be?

Isabel slammed her fist into the floor, wanting the pain to help stop her from crying. It worked, and she pulled in a wavering breath. Thankfully, thoughts began to fade as sleep claimed her exhausted mind.