Masquerade

Selene POV:

Head throbbing. Body aching. Muscles burning.

"Fuck me" I groaned.

"I already did, but I would gladly do it again" Someone next to me mumbled. I looked up to see Aaron next to me, with no clothes on. And oh my dear sweet goddess he had nice abs!

"Selene! Aaron! Get out of bed! We need to get ready! It's 4:30 in the afternoon!" Leah yelled.

Oh my god! 4:30?! We were so screwed! "How the hell did we sleep that long?" I asked, confused.

"Hangovers do that to you" Leah said curtly, "Come on Ellie and Elena grew magical recovery fruit or some other bullshit."

I walked out to see everyone seated at the counter looking like shit. Sky got up and walked to the stairs and tried walking down them. She got half way down before she tripped and tumbled the rest of the way down. Groaning and cursing she pulled herself up and vanished into the garage, biting back a giggle, I returned my attention to the state of my friends who would have to attend a high class masquerade in a few hours. Catching my reflection in the glass, I groaned, we had a lot of work to do. Some one tossed me a fruit and I bit into it; it was a mango and I really wished we had a blender so I could make a smoothie.

"We have a lot of work to do, so finish eating and then we will start by fixing up the guys. We agreed that Derek and Damon would stay with Trinity." Ellie said.

"Wait! When did we agree to that?" I Asked.

"Last night" Elena replied.

"Where was I?"

"You were umm occupied, to put it lightly." Elena said with a giggle.

"Oh" was all I could say. I was not embarrassed, but I did feel kind of stupid for having drunk, unprotected sex.

Noticing the look on my face, Lat spoke up, "S, chill, we all did it."

"And if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you do it?" Leah asked sternly.

"It depends, how high is the bridge?" Ellie asked.

"Sure, I love to jump off things. We all know I never use the stairs, I just jump from my balcony" Lat said, grinning. Leah looked at me.

"Well, DUH! We are supernatural vampires, it's not like we could drown or get hurt. Hell, we don't even need to breathe!" I said, laughing. Leah threw up her hands and left the room.

"Okay, time to start getting ready." Sky announced and she came back up the stairs, our shopping bags that had been left in the garage during our drunken stupor floating lightly behind her. "If your name is not Aaron Dawnz, I want you to stay out of Ellie's room, which has been made into the beauty parlor and when you are done getting ready, you are to wait in Leah's room."

"Right, and when we call your name you are to come to my room immediately!" Ellie said, giving the men a threatening glare that said, "Try running and we will hunt you down."

We sent Aaron into the shower with ten different hair products and bath products.

"I feel like such a fucking pansy" he mumbled as he went into the bathroom. While he showered we got out various combs, shears and gels for his hair. We agreed that Ellie and Elena's skills were more in the fashion realm, so they would work on the tux, while Sky, Lat and I were better with hair. So we agreed that, since it was our guys that would be getting their hair done, two of us would work on the hair while the other supervised, telling us what her guy did and did not like. Aaron was first obviously, so I watched as Sky and Lat carefully cut his hair, being sure not to cut it to short. As they cut it, memories from last night of me running my hands through it popped into my head and I blushed.

Using that system, we were able to get the guys ready in three hours and had four hours left for us. We started on Ellie first and decided to spike her hair out and go lightly on the makeup. Elena was similar. Sky, Lat and I wore our makeup dark like we usually did, because the style fit us perfectly. Many people thought we were Emo, but the truth was, we could work the Goth look perfectly. Ellie and Elena spent ours on Lat's dark hair, curling it to perfection. Sky's hair was difficult but eventually we decided to pile it into a soft, messy crown on her head, which of course, looked awesome. Sometimes I envied Sky; she had the ability to look good in anything. My hair was a little difficult as well, because it was so thick it was always hard to put it up and make it look natural so we left it down lime I usually did. We straightened it, but made sure the parts that framed my face curled under a little bit and then made small curls at the bottom. Leah's hair was left part down, part up. The part that was up was curled and her side bangs were straight.

At ten thirty we left the tree house and made our way back to the mansion, all of us on edge, not knowing what we would find and hoping and begging the goddess that we would find Camille still alive. Leah was in the worst shape. Though she was an incredibly powerful vampire, more then Cam, Second only to The Incarnates, Camille was her big sister, her idol, the person she looked up to her entire life. After their parents were murdered by a demon, many years ago, Cam had raised Leah and if Cam died, it would destroy her.

We walked silently through the forest, not wanting to alert anyone of our presence. It was 11:30 when we finally came within site of the walls, none of us were tired, we were vampires after all, we did not really need sleep, but we enjoyed it. Before we crossed the empty space between the forest and the mansion walls, Sky used her gifts to make us nothing but atoms. We could literally walk though anything and be invisible. No one knew we were there. We walked swiftly through the wall and into the party. Walking through walls had to be one of the strangest sensations ever. We made our way to an empty hallway and then walked out of it completely visible and blended into the mix people, all wearing masks so we could not be identified. Naturally, Sky, Lat and I were the search party. Sky because of her ability with walking through stuff, Lat because she knew every secret the mansion had to hold and me because I was immensely powerful. Our search began at 12:27, so that we would not look suspicious. It was 11:57 now; we had 30 minutes to kill.

Aaron swept me onto the dance floor, just as Chase did to Sky and Sam did to Lat. Ellie, Elena and Leah chatted with each other inconspicuously by snack table. This may sound cheesy, but for a guy, Aaron was really graceful. We danced until it was time to go and it felt perfect to have Aaron hold me. At 12:24 I stopped dancing and headed over to the girls and we walked to the bathroom. It was empty, which was perfect for what we needed to do. I nodded at Sky and we stepped through the wall and into a dimly lit hallway.

"Alright, now the safest place for them to keep Cam would be at the end of this hallway. When we reach the end we travel down several flights of stairs and take a left, a right, another left and another right. She should be at the end of the hall and in the cell on the right" Lat said, holding her dress up moving swiftly down the hallway. "And we cannot use magic down here there is a spell that prevents vampires from wielding their magic. I do not know how it will affect The Incarnates, but be wary."

After we got down the stairs we started to make our way through the hallways, but we stopped when we heard voices coming through an open door. It was Mia.

"You guys go" I whispered, "I will stay and keep watch in case she decides to visit Cam." They nodded and hurried down the hallway. I peered around the corner of the door and then pulled back in shock. Mia was in there alright. Talking to her reflection in some typed of mirror, but the reflection was not Mia, but a twisted looking creature. Its skin was flaky and pink and its eyes were glowing lime green. It was repulsive and I had no idea what it was. She was whispering to it in a foreign language and she looked excited, like something good was happening, which for us was probably very bad. I felt a light shimmer by my hand and I saw it was alight with purple fire, Sky's signal. They had Camille and they were ready to leave. I felt another shimmer, lighter then before and I looked down to see nothing, I got up and walked past the room. As I walked by I looked at the creature in the mirror and locked eyes with it. It knew I was there. I ran as fast as I could and came across Sky and Lat quickly. Sky was holding Cam, who was unconscious.

"Her injuries are pretty bad, they tortured her and we need to leave now so that I can properly examine her and heal her" Lat whispered.

"Tell me later, there is something dark here and it knows we are here. We need to leave now! Take Cam, Lat get out of here. Sky come with me, but keep Lat invisible. We will get the guys and get out." I said frantically. Lat immediately grabbed Cam and walked through the wall, towards the gate and Sky and I hurried back to the party. I grabbed Aaron and told Ellie our escape plan and she passed it on to the others, we all went towards separate parts of the garden and then walk through the walls and meet up on the other side. All went well and we made it back to the tree house with out incident.

I told Leah about what I saw and her expression became horrified. "What you saw was a demon so evil, it was banned from the underworld. There is only one way to kill it." She explained how to kill it and finished by saying, "After it is trapped in the circle, there is one more thing that must be done, but I will only tell you when the time comes."

I noticed a look that passed between her and Aaron. This was not going to be good.

I am so sorry to every one who was waiting for this update, every time I tried writing, I got interrupted. And I had most it written and my computer shut down and I lost it and had to re-write it. Thanks for reading, Reviews are love!-

Selene