Chapter 2
I don't remember falling asleep and yet, here I am opening my eyes as if I were unconscious for a concerning amount of time. At first, I didn't panic. My first instinct was to lay still on my back as I stared up at the ornate ceiling while I analyzed every part of my body for damage and even when I felt no initial pain in my body or in my neck where I would have assumed someone would have bitten me, it wasn't quite time to sigh with relief.
I did my best to ground myself, to convince myself that I was in fact alive. With a swift movement of my fingers, I felt for the fabric of the bed that I was laying in and noted that I wasn't dreaming right now because I have never been able to recall sensation in my dreams. As I sat up in the bed, two things became apparent to me. One, I was in fact, alive with breath entering and leaving my body and my heart rate slowly increasing as anxiety once again filled me because two, I am in a bedroom that is not the one of my hotel room.
The room was massive, with so much space that I would assume that someone was expected to spend a majority of their time here in isolation. Yes, the portion of the room that I was in was what looked like a bedroom but through opened double doors, I could see that there was a small living space adorned with a black couch and a matching loveseat. A few tones of a scarlet red could be made out in several areas of the room as an accent color. In the same space, an unlit fireplace was against a single wall in front of the couches and almost every other wall was covered with dark bookshelves, not a single shelf empty despite how many shelves there were.
The space was gorgeous, and the bedroom was no different, I rested on a king size canopy bed with black frames and a mattress clad in red sheets. The thought of a bed in this room made me begin to worry. Everyone knew that vampires slept in coffins, it wasn't up for debate. By this point, I knew that this was the bedroom that I would be held captive in and while I wasn't expecting some of these luxuries, I did not want to be here.
I could already see my life flashing before my eyes at this point. Me being tortured for my blood and in turn getting to live inside of this room. I'm not sure that I could even consider that a life.
"Could you stop that incessant beating?" An annoyed voice spoke causing for me to shriek and immediately stand in the center of the bed where I felt safe by having a higher ground than whoever was in the room with me despite knowing that they were much faster than me based on the few observations that I was able to make in the master's chambers.
My eyes quickly shot in the direction that the voice was coming from and landed, to my horror on the eyes of the man that had stared into my soul as he drained Bronwyn's from her body. He was horrifying to say the least, concerningly pale and red eyed but in the same ways, he was so beautiful. His only imperfections lied in what I wasn't used to seeing in other humans. "What?" I questioned, confused.
The man that watched me, seemed amused at my startled reaction to him but made no further movements besides setting down the book that he had been reading and placing it on a small, nearby table next to the chair that he was seated in.
"Your heart is beating so fast right now that it's interrupting my own thoughts. I am requesting that you stop that now." He explained but not without looking more annoyed that he had to make such an explanation in the first place.
"I can't." I sneered, in response to his ridiculous 'request.'
"Well, if you are going to be here, where vampires walk freely through the halls, craving blood for hours of the day, you are going to have to figure out how to control it." He said, his voice holding a coldness that I wasn't sure that I would ever get used to.
"That's not even remotely possible." I quip back. "Especially with the threat of death hanging over my head like this."
"Death?" He mused and for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was doing this just to taunt me. "Who is hanging death over your head?"
At his words, my eyes widened with disbelief. He was joking right? "I know that the moment that I get down from this bed you are going to attack me."
"Have I once tried to kill you since you have been here?" He asks, his face completely serious as he watched me with hard eyes. He was impossible to read but I knew that he wanted for me to answer the question with seriousness. "Has anyone as much as laid a finger on you since you have been here?"
My eyes narrowed at him as I considered his words and for a moment, I wasn't certain of what to say. No one had directly made a move to kill me specifically but that was simply because I was lucky to not be one of the first students grabbed and attacked. I was almost certain that if Marcus hadn't called for everyone to stop, the man that stood before me now wouldn't have hesitated to give me the same fate that Bronwyn had.
"I saw the way that you were looking at me when you…" I trailed off at the memory of it all coming back to me. "You would have killed me next."
"You make assumptions about something that you know nothing about." Was all that he said as he watched me. By now, the longer that I stood on my feet on the bed, I began to feel stupid, he hadn't made a single move from his seated position and here I was standing tall as if I were ready to take him in some sort of fight. As if his strength wouldn't prove to be unmatched.
"Just because you haven't done it yet doesn't mean that I can trust that you won't do it soon." I said, ignoring his remark.
In reality, even if I did end up leaving this castle alive and unharmed, I wasn't sure what would happen to me. I didn't know the directions to get back to my hotel room and that was the smallest of the problems that I would run into. More likely than not, I would have to find a police station and explain to an officer the unbelievable massacre that I lived through. I would have to explain that there were blood thirsty creatures among us that lured us into their home as a form of a meal and then I would have to face the consequences of making such irrational claims that no one in their right mind would make. More likely than not, I would make the news as the American girl who lost not only her classmates on a trip to Italy, but her mind as well.
"Well I guess that you will just have to trust me. Or not, I don't particularly care one way or another." He said nonchalantly in response to my concerns. "You are nothing but a human after all."
"So why am I alive then? If you don't care as much as you say you do." I sneered as I watched the now smug expression on his face. "F-For your pleasure?" I asked, frustrated with myself for stammering with my words over the thought. I didn't want to seem like I was afraid of him but at the end of the day, I knew what he was capable of. I knew what he would need from me to survive and I also knew that he was a man surrounded by seemingly very few women.
"If I were you, I would be counting my blessing that I was alive. You saw the fate of your friends." He commented, tapping his long and slender fingers on the arms of the chair before a scoff left him and he stood causing for me to take a step back on the mattress in response. "You think that I have intentions of having my way with you? Even as a dead man, my standards aren't as low as you may believe that they are."
As soon as the words left his mouth, I was speechless. Fury coursed through me at the thought that he believed that I was somehow the repulsive one in the equation. As if he weren't a violent leech. A monster. He seemed to take satisfaction in his words and how they seemed to appear like a slap in the face to me. My cheeks began to burn with embarrassment from even leading the conversation in this direction.
"All of you are evil. If it won't be you that hurts or kills me than it will be one of the others, I know it. I've seen what all of you are capable." I said after a moment of composing my thoughts again.
"One of the others? Something that you will soon begin to understand is that no one in this castle, in this city, or this entire country will touch you or taint what courses through your veins that is rightfully mine. You belong to me and no one else, you are mine." He said with an expression on his face that I could only interpret as being genuine. He actually thought that I belonged to him, as if I weren't my own person. "Anyone that wishes to test this theory, can deal with me themselves."
"I would like to be the one that argues this theory. I don't belong to you; I don't even know you. I want nothing to do with you. You don't just get to walk around claiming people as your own." I insisted, my fury finding me once again.
"You think that I wanted anything to do with you?" He scoffed, causing me to raise both of my brows in surprise before furrowing them with both confusion and frustration. "You think that you are the only victim in this, and you are wrong. Fate has damned us both."
And just as quickly as our conversation had begun, he was ending it. Turning abruptly to grab the book that he had set down in the chair that he once sat in and walking across the room to place it in the one missing spot in his bookshelf.
I didn't understand this man in the slightest. In one moment, he was telling me that I needed to be careful of my bodily reactions because they would inevitably have me hurt or killed and in the next, he was telling me that no one would harm me. In another, he was telling me that he was also a victim in whatever was going on here, when I was the one that had watched my peers die before my eyes.
"Well if none of you are interested in killing me or torturing me as you claim, I will happily leave." I said, finally finding my way from my standing position on the bed and standing to my feet on the floor. In the blink of an eye, he stood directly in front of me, staring down at me with those scarlet eyes setting my heart to another erratic beat.
"I think that you know you won't be leaving this building any time soon." He said sternly. I desperately wanted to look away from his intimidating stare, but I urged myself to hold his gaze as I willed my body to stop reacting to him in fear. He seemed to find joy in causing fear in me. "You are, however, free to leave this room at your own risk but I have places to be and I won't be able to save you from everyone here. Keep that in mind." He said and with that, he turned on his heel and left me.
For nearly an hour, I stayed in the room that I had woken up in. Upon further investigation and snooping through the drawers of an armoire, I realized that the room must belong to the man who was here with me not too long ago.
I had always been one to believe that you could tell a lot about a person from their bedroom but if I had come across his bedroom at another, under different circumstances, the last thing that I would have suspected was that the man would turn out to be a bloodsucking monster. For one thing, there was no coffin in the room. A part of me felt silly for imagining that there would be one but then again, hours before now, it would have seemed silly to even insist that creatures like this existed in the first place.
The only conclusions that I could make about him based on his bedroom was one, that he had an appreciation for dark colors and two, that he enjoyed reading. There were more books in this living area than I could imagine going through in years, but I soon figured that if he was an immortal, he had nothing but time to indulge in so many examples of fiction. It just seemed strange to me to think that he enjoyed such humane activities. I certainly couldn't imagine him sprawled out on his couch playing video games or playing basketball with the other members of this household that I had seen earlier.
Fear was what kept me in his bedroom, despite how annoyed I was with him and his subtle claim over my entire existence but the longer that I stayed in his room, the more that I thought about our conversation. In one moment, he was warning me of what the others were capable of in this building and in the next, he was insisting that he would never allow them to lay a finger on me. His words were confusing and concerning but his decision that I belonged to him and that he owned me, willed me to challenge him.
It took several moments for me to muster all of the courage that I had to leave the room for fear of what I would find beyond the safety of his chambers but when I pushed open the door, the hall was empty and silent. I didn't want to believe that he was stupid enough to leave me here without anyone watching me, but it seemed like he was, and I wasted no time making my way down the hall in search for a way out of here.
There was no way that I was going to stay here without a fight and based on what he had said before, no one would hurt me. I figured that the worst thing that I could do was not try.
I paced myself as I walked down the majority of the hallway but once I could see the end of it, where I would need to make a decision on whether I would be going left or right, I began to run. If I turned in the wrong direction and needed to turn back and go in the other, I would need to hurry. The man had already been gone for an hour now so I figured that I didn't have much time left to plan a spur of the moment escape but the moment that I rounded the counter, I crashed into something that was as hard and cold as a brick wall that sent me falling backwards until two hands quickly moved out to settle me on my two feet.
As an instant reaction to the cold hands on my arms, I gasped and shoved the person from me, but they made it a point to show me that they couldn't be moved by me by pausing for a moment before letting go of me. After looking up to see who I ran into, I instantly felt my stomach lurch at the sight of one of the men from earlier in the master's chambers.
"On the run, are we?" The man said with a grin on his face. I had spent all of thirty seconds in his presence and he was already smirking at me as if I were the best entertainment he had seen in years. "I love a good chase." He said, causing me to shift uncomfortably.
Like seemingly everyone else here, the man was handsome, and his eyes were just like all of the others. I noted that in comparison to the pair that I had seen earlier, his eyes were a much brighter shade of red. They weren't inviting in any form of the word, but they were easier to look into than such a dark gaze.
"I just want to leave." I said, dropping my eyes for a moment before lifting them to his again. Attempting to be reasonable with this man seemed to be my best bet when it came to getting out of here. Crashing into him like that pained me and he wasn't even doing anything so I didn't want to know what it would feel like when he was trying to.
"I'm assuming that you and Alec haven't gotten off to a great start then, hm?" He asked, clearly knowing what the answer to that question would be. I wasn't even aware that the man's name was Alec until this moment because he had never introduced himself. "He's young, the young one's never seemed to know how to treat such beautiful young ladies."
At his comment, I scoffed and shook my head feeling a blush warm my cheeks. The rush of blood to my face instantly made me nervous, would this tempt him to kill me? It didn't matter that he didn't seem to come across as frightening as Alec did, I had seen him in the chambers earlier and he did participate in the bloodbath.
"Beautiful is the last word that he would use to describe me." I said as I began to take frustration in the fact that I was even entertaining this pointless conversation. "I think repulsive would be a closer match."
At my words, he chuckled loudly, a sound that reverberated off of the walls and caused me to flinch. "You're afraid of me." He commented then, his smile slowly beginning to fade as if he were considering what his next words to me would be. "I can assure you that here, we are all loyal to one another. No one in the guard would ever cause harm to you as long as you do not deserve it. You are Alec's and you will not be harmed here by anyone who is loyal to him. We will all protect you."
"I don't belong to him or anyone. I am my own person and I don't need any of your protection because I don't want to be here." I snapped, even in knowing that I knew very little about this man or his temperament. I was surprised when he didn't snap at me in return the way that I imagined that Alec would.
"You belong to him as much as he belongs to you, there is no way around that." He said, watching me as if he were trying to discern what my reaction to his words would be. "The two of you will eventually have to learn that for yourselves."
"I don't have to learn anything because I am leaving." I insisted.
"I've already told you; I am loyal to Alec and I cannot let you leave. I could entertain the idea, let you run off and give you a head start but I would find you easily. Effortlessly." He said, giving me a sympathetic look that I turned my gaze away from. I didn't need his fake sympathy. "It was a pleasure meeting you."
His final words confused me but when I looked up, he was already looking beyond me at something over my shoulders. I didn't even need to turn my head to know exactly who it was that must have been approaching us even though I heard no footsteps from behind me.
"You've found my guest I see. Thank you, Demetri." Alec said from behind me dismissing the man that I now know to be Demetri. With a simple nod, Demetri turned on his heel and began to walk back in the direction of the hall that he had come from moments before I ran into him sparking our conversation.
"You were right." I said softly, turning around to face the dark, red-eyed stare of Alec. "He didn't hurt me…He wouldn't let me go either."
"Did you assume that I was a liar?" He asked with a curious brow raised.
"You can't keep me hostage here! I have a life back at home, a future! I have parents that will wonder what happened to me and all the other-"
"By now, it should be making American news that a bus full of students loss their lives in a tragic accident while on the way to a tourist attraction here in Volterra this morning. You may have had a future in America and your parents would have eventually worried about your whereabouts but if my assumptions are correct about the timing of the media or at the very least, the American policing system, your parents are confident by now that you have died alongside all of your peers." He said, breaking down any source of hope that I had in being able to leave here willing my fury to boil over.
A/n: Thank you so much for reading! I am hopeful that I will be able to post another chapter by at least the end of the week but I have a pretty busy schedule with my classes this week. I hope that you enjoyed the chapter and enjoyed the revisions that I have made, please leave some reviews and let me know! It will definitely help me find the motivation to write after such an intense week!