Author's Notes: Amanda's going to learn some harsh lessons about the vampire world. Unfortunately, very few of them are pleasant. Although she is basically the embodiment of me, I like to punish myself... -- But! I went through and added and cut, and revised a little... And made it as presentable as possible. Slightly longer read than most chapters, mostly because I have to explain a lot... it's tiresome, but necessary.

--Amanda--

My life passed by slowly. By the time I saw my birthday go by the second time, I realized it was hopeless trying to escape my new nightmare.

My home was in Venice. They had moved the Portal, having the money to pay humans to do the work with huge machinary. It was all a very covert operation. How they did it: they pretty much destroyed most of that gorgeous cathedral and transported the entire room to a vault in Italy, close enough to where I lived to be accessible.

I lost most of my innocence to the vampire world. I was its captive; Darius was my master. Kamael seemed uninterested in my situation, though he proved only to be the reason why I was allowed to live at all. However, I valued his company whenever I could get it, and I was greatly relieved whenever I was allowed to stay in his companionship.

I soon learned that Sethys was Darius's brother. In killing Sethys, Raziel had pegged me with the responsibility of his demise. Darius blamed everything on me, which was typical - I was used to everything being my fault, even as a child. I turned seventeen and already acquired new meanings for the words 'disobedience' and 'respect'. The hatred and loathing that flowed from Darius was my shroud every time I was within earshot of him. Every once in awhile, he would force feed me his blood to make sure I was his human. The taste of it was nauseating, but the fact that it was his repulsed me even more.

Sometimes I was not indebted to Kamael for saving my life.

Kamael had borrowed me for the night. I was dressed like the vampires, for at least Darius had finally agreed with his Sire that I deserved to at least be treated as an almost-equal. Snug, black pants that hugged my bony hips. I had a high waist, but there was very little fat on me that could be pinched between two fingers. A tight black longsleeve shirt, with fish-net sleeves was my costume, and platform shoes to elevate me a little more. My hair had grown, and was now a formidable mane of dark brown locks.

Darius had me dye it an interesting brown bronze color, which in my opinion was a decided improvement over my natural color. It clung to my red highlights, which gleam golden-red in the sunlight. Too bad - Darius would have adored it himself, if he wasn't prone to smoking like a charcoal barbeque when the sun touched him.

I also wore a three-inch wide collar around my neck, made of flexible black cotton cloth. I had scars on each side of my throat from Darius's teeth. For some reason, I was loathe to even want to see Kamael look at me with the Thirst in his eyes. I could always tell by looking at a vampire whether or not he was afflicted with it. Their eyes gleamed that suspicious yellow I had seen before when Darius left in the night to find an appropriate victim.

I rarely saw any of my master's brood about. Kafele visited occasionally. I noticed gloomily that she had showed up one time without her blood-bonded kitten, which never appeared in her arms since. Its demise had already fallen, the way she seemed to restlessly move her hands about forlornly.

I was as doomed as that feline. I had already felt the workings of my mind beginning to fail on me. Not even my dreams were pleasant anymore, but were grotesque, backward mirrors of the bloodstained reality of my waking life.

Kamael and I sat near the balcony of his estate some distance from the waterfront. The moon was breath-taking, sparking off of anything that shined, including the Mediterranean Sea that sprawled out before us like an exotic lady. The fertile land was riddled with tourists, and not without its occasional evil-doer, presenting dinner to any vampire who wanted a taste of the Mediterranean

I missed Raziel. I felt his absence every day, wishing with my soul he'd come back.

I heard Raziel's voice in my thoughts as Kamael regarded me thoughtfully. It was just a whisper, but a whisper I had come to ignore. Every night now, I would hear it. It was as though something inside of me was talking to itself, and every night I tried to shut it out, reminded by the painful memory in the transport chamber.

"What is that troubles your mind so?" Kamael murmured suddenly, uncrossing his legs, if only to cross them again in the opposite direction. I still wasn't used to how tall he was. I shrank into my chair, reluctant to speak.

"Tell me," Kamael went on softly, taking on his most fatherly voice. I knew the cruelty underneath it, sensed a dark shadow of a threat.

I sighed, swallowing and playing with the cloth around my throat. "I miss... Raziel. All the time."

"It wouldn't have been this way if it weren't for your meddling, my girl," Kamael replied simply. I bit my lip, already fed up with the old argument. "There's very little you can do to about it now. He is gone; you have already fallen too deep into our world. Let him go."

"Why do you have to make so much sense... and at the same time, I feel like I should really hate you?"

"Would you rather I give up on treating you kindly?" His voice took on an edge. I didn't like it, so I quickly changed my attitude.

"Every time I look at something... that even 'remotely' seems like Raziel... I feel it. Something hurts inside like I'm in that damn room again and he's right there... and then he leaves me. Just like that. I know it's my fault. But I fixed it - well, I tried to as much as I could."

Kamael nodded. I didn't even care if he was listening. I got up, stretching slowly, feeling the kinks work themselves out of my system. I still had the power of magic. But each time Darius fed me his dark blood, my control over my powers weakened. It was one of many reasons why I hadn't attempted to flee.

I didn't want to talk anymore. I had said all I could without bursting out into a raging tirade. So I bit my lip again and looked at Kamael and made my most snide curtsey I could manage. "Permission to return to my quarters until my master returns?"

"If you insist..." Kamael nodded, waving his hand dismissively.

I left the room quietly, walking down the modern hallways of the Sire's broad estate, stopping to admire the occasional painting that caught my eye. I had to admit, all of the books about vampires seemed to make more sense. Not everything was true, per se, but it was close enough that I was familiar with them.

After I had moved to Venice with Darius and Kamael, it became clear that I was to be the one to look after the portal to Nosgoth now that it was opened. It wasn't far, and I had hoped that Darius wouldn't be angry should I ever become inclined to go check on it. After all, my responsibility to the door claimed higher priority than sitting around and waiting for him to beat me.

Suddenly my head started pounding. The pain didn't feel acutely like Darius calling me to him. Instead, it was more like a throbbing behind my eyes that faded if I turned in the direction of the portal's location.

I didn't question my instinct. I was made guardian since opening the door. Now I must obey its call, I thought bitterly. Like following the sound of a dog whistle.

Strangely, no one stopped me as I slipped through the doors of Kamael's huge mansion. Darius wouldn't come home hopefully until shortly before dawn. Kamael's vampire lackeys were all laid-back and well-mannered, and I knew I could trust them to keep Darius in ignorance concerning my whereabouts - at least for a little while.

The vault was located in yet another vampire-guarded mansion. This was the vault where the door was kept, its silent and unmoving wall still as featureless as ever, save for the magical signs that hovered around it. I still bore the tattoo in my palm that had been one of Darius's first gleeful tasks - branded there when there had to be a way of letting the vampires know what I was.

Strangely enough, it resembled a sign that could have been something from one of my spell books, but I couldn't be sure. It looked like a pair of wings, jagged lines, and a circle in the center.

There should have been vampires here to save my hand at, I thought to myself. Maybe they're on a Blood break.

Once I was inside, there were strangely no vampires. This was the point where I would have shown the tattoo on my stomach of the same sign, the circular part encasing my navel lovingly. Once again there was no one there.

Again, there was no one there. But my headache was gone. I was also strangely disappointed to not have made use of the tattooes that Darius loved to inflict upon me. He was not a gentle artist, nor did he seem to particular care if he caused me pain. I stepped into the stone room again. It was just as before, besides there being the braziers. There were rectangular bar lights from the metal ceiling, which was considerably lower than the original room had been and contrasted grotesquely with the limestone walls.

I treaded toward the wall where the portal had been. The nearer I crept, the hotter it became. The air was practically humming with arcane magic, but there was not a soul to be found. Where in the hell were Kamael's vampire guards?

Before I could touch the wall, there was another pain in my mind and there was no doubt who it was. My master's hands closed around my shirt and threw me back against the wall with unchecked force. I blacked out for seconds only, because when I came to he was just bending down to jerk me to my feet.

"Why else would you be here other than to find a way to get through the door?" Darius whispered harshly. "Luckily I know your ideas well enough to believe you would try such a thing." He smelled like blood, and his breath haunted me with its meat-like odor.

I was ready for my punishment. Even if I had the breath to try my guardian-of-the-door argument, he wouldn't have given me a chance. He was very eager to get me home and start the torture.