A/N: Hey, everyone, I have a question. Do you think I should actually invest in ? I was thinking about getting it, but I don't think I'll bother if there aren't any people interested in bribing me to continue writing. ^_^ *hint, hint*

"Hey, Rose," Diana began. "Truth or dare?"

"Oh come on!" Rose groaned. The girls were sitting at a table, the rest of the patrons having been shoved into tables near them. The four men were at the bar and were chatting lightly.

"This is not the time, Diana."

"Hey, I'm trying to lighten the mood. Truth or dare?"

Rose growled. "Truth."

"Is Kain a vampire?"

Rose fell out of her seat with a thump and swore softly. One of the men glanced over her way and narrowed his eyes, but he chose to ignore her as she slid back up into her seat.

"A vampire?!" she hissed quietly. "Where did you get that idea?!"

Kairan grinned. "Actually, we followed him out on one of his feedings. We already know the answer, but we thought we'd let you know that we were aware of it."

"Why were you guys following him?"

"It was during our fangirl days," Metowaka answered.

"You were part of that?"

"For a while, yeah. But then we found out he was your uncle, and it just seemed weird to us to stalk the uncle of our friend."

"Uh . . . thanks, I think," Rose sighed.

"Although," Becca commented as she raised her drink, "this does answer our question on whether or not you're related to him. You certainly can't be related to a vampire, right?"

"Well, that depends on how you mean related . . ." Rose responded hesitantly.

"So, how did he become your uncle?" Diana inquired.

"He . . . knew my father, and so was voted into the position of uncle."

"Hey, quiet you five!" one of the men snapped at the girls. They quickly fell silent under the glare.

The doors opened as Magnus walked calmly into the bar. He glanced around at the place, eyebrows knit together before one of the men in leather aimed the pistol at him and indicated for him to take a seat with the other bar-goers. He slid into the booth next to Rose.

"This is a rather crimp in your road trip idea, isn't it, Rose?" he chuckled. She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Yes, I am aware of that."

"It seems anytime you go out, you attract this kind of attention, don't you?"

"Oh shut-up," she sighed.

"Back to talking about Kain," Metowaka broke in.

"Ask him yourself," Rose answered, pointing to Magnus. She met his annoyed gaze and shrugged.

"They figured out what you are."

"Oh did they?" He chuckled in amusement and looked at the girls. "Well, as long as you don't tell anyone under penalty of death, I won't have to kill you. Agreed?"

The girls were staring at him with wide eyes, but nodded silently. Rose laughed at their expressions and "Magnus" looked around the room. He leaned toward Rose to speak quietly to her.

"You start getting the humans out of here. I'm going to go keep those particularly stupid mortals busy while you do that."

He shifted slightly in his seat, making sure none of the ordinary mortals were watching before shifting back to teacher Kain. Rose heard muffled gasps of surprise from her friends and watched Kain give them a cruel smirk. Rose waved a hand at them.

"Get used to that. He does it a lot."

"Rose."

"Gotcha." She waited till he had stood and slid passed him toward the other patrons of the bar. Kain stalked up to the men who were leaning against the bar. The lead man looked up at him and his eyes narrowed in anger.

Rose, on the other hand, had begun to whisper to people to quietly move out the back way. As she whispered her plans to the people, and all-out rush for the backdoor had almost exploded, but Rose had been able to maintain control with a very angry glare in the direction of the people in the back. Under the crossbreed's strange yellow-green eyes, the humans had shuffled quietly and settled back down. Becca and Kairan had currently disappeared, taking a small group of people out. Metowaka and Diana waited impatiently at the edge of the crowd for the two to get back so they could take their charges. They had gotten a third of the patrons out before the situation near the bar exploded.

"What the hell are you doing up here?" the tallest man demanded of Kain as the vampire walked toward them slowly. "And when the hell did you get here?"

"I've been here for some time," he answered, a small cruel smile on his lips.

"Get back to the rest of them," the leather-wearing man growled, waving the pistol threateningly. Kain's smile softened into a quite, malevolent 'I know something you don't.'

"I rather think I won't."

"What?" The man turned to him, eyebrows knitting together. Before, this white-haired annoyance had been merely a small pain; now he was becoming far too obnoxious for his own good. The man moved to stand in front of Kain.

"What do you mean, you don't think you will?"

"Exactly what I said," Kain answered, that same smile still on his face. "I simply don't like you. And I refuse to listen to orders of creatures inferior to me."

The tall thug pulled the hammer back on the pistol and brought it up in front of Kain's face.

"Why are you being such a dipshit?" the man sighed, but there was a growl in the tone of his voice to indicate his growing anger. "I'm the one with the pistol, I'm the one with the back-up, and you are just a pretty boy without any means of standing up to me. So what the hell is this? Some kind of 'dramatic hero' bullshit? It won't do you any fuckin' good at all, you know. You are not a hero, and you are not getting out, so go back, sit down, and shut the fuck up."

Kain's expression had started as quietly amused at the boy's rant, but as the human had continued, the master vampire's expression had slowly bled from amused to a strong disgust and contempt. He had decided he'd taken enough of the boy when the thug shoved the pistol underneath his nose demanding, "I have a pistol and can kill you. Does that mean a thing to you?!"

Kain glanced over to the side of the room out of the corner of his eye and saw that the girls had filed everyone out. He felt a millisecond of annoyance as he spotted all five girls peeking around a booth watching, but decided it didn't really matter. He looked down at the human and snorted.

"You foolish, ignorant human," he growled deeply. He reached up, grabbed the pistol, and crushed it, letting the chunk of metal fall through the human's surprised fingers. The thug backed up a step in surprise as Kain stalked toward him, filing every step the human took back.

"You think you are the highest thing on the food chain, don't you?" Kain's golden eyes narrowed as he grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him up, continuing, "But guess what, little mortal? You are no longer."

The master vampire's form warped and shifted, growing taller, the shoulders broader, until the master vampire Kain, ruler of Nosgoth, held the mortal in an iron grip, smiling menacingly.

Rose's eyes widened, seeing him resume his old vampiric form, and quickly pulled her friends away.

"Come on," she whispered fiercely. "You don't want to see this."

A scream resonated from the bar and Diana nodded while Kairan gulped audibly. Rose dragged them out the back quickly and walked out toward the hotel. Her friends caught up with her.

"Don't you think we should call the police?" Diana asked.

"And do what?" Rose answered with a helpless shrug. "Tell them that we were held hostages and escaped when a vampire killed them? By tomorrow, there will be nothing left to indicate that those guys were here."

Metowaka looked back at the bar.

"How can you deal with him, Rose?"

Rose sighed. "He's not usually that violent. Or, rather, not that violent around other people. He was just really in a bad mood. Keep this in mind: now that he is aware you know what he is, he's going to expect you to treat him as a ruler. You need to deal with him like he's a predator, because that's what he is. He's not the nice but eccentric teacher all the other students think he is." Rose looked at her friends a moment. "Just be careful, okay? Being around him, or friends with me is a dangerous lot in this life, and if you want to bail out now, you're free to."

The girls shared a long look before Becca chuckled. "Rose, we were just assured twenty minutes ago that vampires are real. That means a lot of things that we've also thought of as stories might be real, too. Sure, it'll probably be dangerous, but we're all ready to go if it means we'll learn something that we didn't know. Right?" She looked back at the other humans. The three girls grinned and nodded.

"And besides," Metowaka added, putting an arm around Rose's shoulder. "You're our friend. What happens to you is no longer just your problem. It's all of ours."

"You have no idea what you're getting into," Rose sighed, but she smiled at them.

"Let it come," Kairan responded and Diana put up her fists into a fighting stance.

"We'll deal with it all, vampires, demons, you name it!" She paused and looked at her compatriots before adding, "As long as I have my ice cream." She pulled out of the group and ran down the street laughing.

"HEY!" The other girls raced after her.

Rose felt the engine turn over and the car start up.

"So, where to this morning?" a voice greeted. The five girls looked over to see the young Kain climb into the car and settle into the only open seat.

"Who invited you?" Rose demanded.

"Look at is this way, Rose," he sighed, "your father sent me to keep an eye on you. We all have seen what kind of trouble follows you around. And besides, how do you think he would react if he could get a hold of me and not you? Better that he not be able to contact either of us."

Rose laughed. "True."

The trip continued on to a full week and a half, and one of the small towns the girls stopped in they had specifically picked because it held a supposedly haunted house. The girls were willing to see if the rumors were true, and with a vampire with them who was willing to help them out should they get into too much trouble, they felt they were well-covered.

Darkness had come and fallen completely by the time they had come to a stop in front of the house. Kain had left them earlier to go feed and told them he would meet up with them later. The girls found the house to be a large three-story mansion that looked broken apart, unkempt, and exactly like every other cliché haunted mansion in movies.

"All ready my hopes are going downhill," Becca commented after agreeing with Diana's statement about it looking cliché.

"Well, we won't know anything till we get inside and stay the night, right?" Kairan pointed out. The girls picked up their stuff and very stealthily slid into the house.

"Where shall we start looking?" Rose inquired.

"The top story," Metowaka answered assuredly. "Then we'll work our way down."

Finding no one had any better ideas or any complaints, the girls tiptoed their way up the stairs. They found the inside of the house was in amazingly good condition for it being supposedly abandoned.

After checking each floor, the girls finally ended on the ground floor.

"Okay, nothing. No ghosts, no ghouls, nada," Kairan sighed.

"Wait," Metowaka protested. "There has to be a basement. There always is."

Diana sighed. "Fine. We'll look for a door to the basement, though I doubt there is one."

Diana's pessimism turned out to be unfounded, as after a half an hour search they finally found what they were looking for. They slid the door open and managed to make out a flight of stairs before they vanished into the darkness. The girls all exchanged a look.

"You first, Becca," Diana finally stated.

"Me? Why don't you go?"

"I didn't even want to look for the basement," she protested. "How about Kairan?"

"No way!"

"Fine," Rose snarled. "I'll go." She grabbed the flashlight and began to slowly creep down the stairs. The rest of her friends followed. Every little squeak and noise was beginning to grate on Rose's nerves, but that was because she was quite scared. The suspense had wedged itself into her mind, and she had a habit of getting grumpy and angry when she was scared. She didn't like to be scared.

Suddenly, the stairs ended on hard ground and her light informed her it was a large storage room of some kind. Something floated across the stale air to her nose and she quickly flipped the light off.

"What are you doing?" Becca hissed. Rose took her hand.

"Take hold of everyone else, but be quiet. There's something down here. Look over there. You can see a light."

The girls looked to the far right, and around what must have been a corner, a bit of light flickered.

"Follow me, and don't worry. I won't run you into anything."

Rose carefully stepped silently toward the light and after a few moments of heart beating silence, finally touched the cold wall. She led the girls to it, and then cautiously peeked around the wall. The other girls quickly arranged themselves so they could see as well.

In the large room beyond a huge fire flickered, its light creating shadows that moved about on the walls. Several robed figures danced or stood gazing at the fire as if mesmerized by it. One of the robed figures—this one in black instead of red or brown—walked toward the fire, intoning something in a strange, sharp language and threw what looked like twigs into the fire. He lifted his head and his words carried to the girls.

"Jurai sona, casita Baal, vith Lucifer, quia diemonya Satan."

The fire burst into a violent green, and the black-robe's face jerked up to stare straight into the girls' eyes.

"They are here!" he shouted to the other robed figures. The beings stood, several pulling out long, ritualistic knives. "Get them! But keep them alive! They are the sacrifices that we were told to collect!"

"Bugger," Rose sighed.

"Rose!" the other four girls shouted.

"This isn't my fault!"