Would I lie to you?
It could be yours
The chain around the gates slowly unwound itself and clinked loudly and heavily on the ground in a heap. With a slow creaking the black metal gates swung open to reveal a black space behind them. I stood up, stake poised, body tense, ready to spring in any direction. Suddenly I felt a rush of cold air next to me and looked down. There was a small, boring little book there but even as faded as the title on the front was, I could still make out the letters. Dracula, the book I had found in the fields. I flipped open the cover and saw the message she'd left for me. The red of the blood had soaked into the pages and left a horrible mark through out the book. Two words, two words it took to send me reeling into a frenzy of fear and annoyance at my utter stupidity. The words read "I'm here"
I screamed in anger and hurled the book as far away from me as possible. It landed in a puff of dust and laid forlornly, its pages blowing in the late night wind. I could hear her laughing in my head, as if she was sitting above me, laughing at my mistakes. In fact, the laughter wasn't in my head, I could hear her laugh and it was above me! I looked up quickly to the balcony above and saw her, standing casually looking down on me. She smiled and took a sip from the wine glass in her hand. She took the glass from her lips slowly and seductively and slowly turned the glass over.
The red liquid came down and poured all over my head, blood, it was blood, when was the last time I had hunted, must have been days ago. It ran down the back of my neck in a warm intoxicating dribble. I took a deep breath and cleared my head of blood thoughts. With painful effort, I ignored the dripping substance on my head and looked back up to the balcony where Maya had been.
As expected she had gone. I stared at the balcony, pulling a map into my mind, what was that room…Library! It was the library. I ran inside and along the complicated maze of corridors. Left, right, left again, up those stairs, along that corridor, right, another left. I worked my way quickly to the library and threw the doors off their hinges.
Maya sat, in a slick little black dress, casually flicking through a dusty book with feigned interest. Her legs were swung over the arm of an ancient armchair but she still looked elegant and regal. She flicked through the pages slowly but too fast to have read or taken in any of the information. She didn't look up from her book as she addressed me with her silky smooth tone that dripped with pure green poison. "Fascinating, what some of these ancient people used to believe. Oh, I started that rumour, the boy I told it to worshipped the ground I walked on." She said, snapping shut the book and placing it on the table beside her.
I let out a hollow laugh which made her look up quickly and glare at me in a menacing way. "Of course he worshipped you, after you compelled him to." Maya's glare intensified as she stood up and started walking towards me. I stood my ground, Maya didn't scare me, and she never had
"Is there any harm in using my talents to my advantage?" She said in her playful innocent tone, her glare dropping into a smooth, flirtatious face. "All I'm doing is getting what I want, it's not hurting anybody" I ignored her and looked straight ahead, defying her purring voice and attempts to seduce me. She put a gentle hand on my shoulder and circled behind me. "I never had to compel you Thierry, you worshipped me like a goddess." She stopped at my side and whispered into my ear. "You loved me, with every ounce of your body."
At that moment my stiff concentration on the window straight ahead of me snapped and I whirled around and grabbed Maya by her raven hair. Maya let out an ear-splitting scream and tried to release herself from my grip. I grabbed her arm and flung her into the nearest bookcase. Dirty volumes clattered down on her in a cloud of pages and dust. She came stumbling out of the pile of books, her dress ripped down one side and one of the straps was barely holding on to the other end of it. Maya stood up straight and gave me a look of thunder.
"You bad, bad boy Thierry" She snarled, spewing out poison with every syllable. She took a huge dive towards me and missed as I dive rolled to the left. Before I could stand up and recover myself, Maya had thrown herself onto my back and ripped her teeth into my shoulder. A shot of pain went down my arm and I let out a yell. Transferring my pain into anger I swung my aching fist into Maya's face and threw her through the glass double doors to the balcony.
A waterfall of glass fell down on me as I flitted through to reach Maya. She lay in a distorted heap on the cold stone of the balcony, her hair falling in rat tails across her face. Glass shards were stuck in her body like huge splinters and were oozing with deep red blood. I tentatively took a step towards her, every movement careful so as not to alert her to attack. All of a sudden, her oddly angled leg whipped round and swung under my legs. I dodged by taking a huge diving leap towards her, stake pointing towards her icy heart.
At the last moment, Maya's arm jerked up and grabbed my stake hand, stopping it in its tracks. "Play nice Thierry" She threw the stake off the balcony and I watched in horror as my best hope of stopping her fell away. In my moment of lapse concentration, Maya took the moment to throw me against the wall with tremendous force. I slammed into the wall and heard the stone crack under the force. My head ached as I shook away my dizziness and focused on Maya. I ran at her and landed a kick in her shoulder, sending her reeling into the balcony rail.
The stone fell away as if it were only made of sand. Maya flailed her arms for something to grab onto as she fell backwards off the balcony. She let out an unearthly scream as she fell from the safety of solid ground and into the night. When the clouds of stone dust had disappeared and Maya's scream had been cut dead, I slowly edged towards the balcony. I knew Maya, something told me this wasn't over. I peered over the edge of where she'd fallen and saw…