It had been nearly a month since any one had last seen her.
Victoria, where did you go? He silently asked the question that had been swimming round his mind for what felt like forever.
She had last been spotted leaving the barons ball with a tall, handsome stranger, who had been in town for less then two days and managed to get an invite to the ball. The whispers said he had a major influence on the baron; some sort of ancient, shared relative was the latest guess.
The young man that stood on the balcony of the luxurious town house, staring at the barons castle on the horizon, was surprisingly sensible looking. Quite tall, but elegant rather than lanky, with long, brown hair that fell in locks around his head, framing his face, and eyes of deep brown, that had a startling sparkle in their depths. His bearing was that of a man who had good life, but was no stranger to physical exertion. His name was Dracord Helsing, Draco to his associates. Heir to his family's duties against the evils that stalked the land at night, he appeared as nothing more than the son of a minor noble, or a rich merchant. He also appeared to be worried about something.
You know the creed, why would you go off with a stranger without saying where you were going? Draco stopped that line of thought before it fully formed, Victoria was still human, after all, and humans made mistakes, even Helsings. No matter how hard he tried, he could not follow Victoria's movements after she left the gates of the castle the night she disappeared, nor could he unearth any information on this mysterious stranger, save for the name he had rented a house under. Felix Hernstraag.
Suddenly a panting servant flung the door to his bedchamber open. "Sire! Come quick, its urgent!" Draco followed the man out of the door, and down the corridor. As the descended the marble steps to the main atrium, Draco heard a ruckus coming from the kitchen. As the burst through the double doors into the kitchens, Draco was met with a sight that made even his strong stomach lurch. On the table lay a wasted corpse, the skin wrinkled and bruised so much that age was impossible to determine. The scarred, twisted face could have been no older than twenty, or no younger than sixty. The dress was tattered, torn, soiled and stained with blood. Then his eyes fell on the necklace around the corpses throat, and the blood froze in his veins. The design, the shield with the blooded stake on it, was so familiar. Tentatively, hoping it was a fake, he reached out and opened the locket. As he read the inscription, his heart stopped, his world fell away.
He had known deep down it was true, but knowing his sister was dead, and seeing her beaten, ravaged corpse was different. As the locket slipped from his fingers he noticed the wound in his sisters' throat, just above the jagged knife wound across her windpipe, below her left ear, the skin was scarred in a strange, yet horrifyingly familiar way. Grabbing a wet cloth from the side he started to scrub the wound. After he had cleaned it, he stood back, a dark hatred growing in the depths of his heart.
Under the grime and blood were two, small puncture wounds, the right distance apart for a human mouth. The truth settled in his stomach like cold lead.
Felix Hernstraag was a vampire.