Hey guys. Ahem... Er long time no see? I'm really sorry if you guys are mad and my excuse may sound weak, but first thing I did once the holidays started, was write up this whole chapter in less than an hour. I went to save it (I use the fanfiction writing function, not word) and my internet crashed. Now this chapter may seem short, right? Its only 2580 words, but when I first wrote it out, it had what is now going to be in the next chapter. In other words, I lost over 7000 words. Seven. Thousand. Words. That is roughly 11 pages in a word document with font 'Times New Roman', Size 10. I'm so sorry, you can blame me for the next part. Now you'd think that I'd go back and write it all up again, right? But I was just so mad at my stupid computer and my stupid internet. So I didn't do anything for the next few weeks. I let Christmas pass by while I was still in a horrible mood. I didn't even want to think about the storyline and any new ideas that might've come up. After New Years passed, (Happy belated New Year everybody!) A whole bunch of family flew in. I decided that once Everyone left, I'd get cracking and promised myself I'd have at least two chapters out before the new semester starts.

Finally, I got off my butt today and wrote this half a chapter of what I remember from the one that died.

I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Cleo POV

The sound of muffled barking woke me up. For a second I wondered when our neighbours had decided to buy a dog when I remembered where we were. I flopped onto the makeshift bed and lay there for a few seconds, listening to the sound of the far away animal until I realised what the barking meant. Normally, it would just mean the beginning of nights where I couldn't sleep and mornings where I'd wake up too early, but a dog in the middle of the forest-I jolted up and sure enough, I could hear barking coming down through the two 'chimneys', but more importantly, the man's voice that accompanied it, shouting for it to quiet down.

"Emma! Guys, wake up!"

"Five more minutes, dad." Rikki slurred, turning her back on me and snuggling further into the covers. Exasperated, I grabbed my pillow and hit her on the shoulder. In turn, she snatched it blindly from me and threw it across the room. I gave up temporarily and opted to rousing Emma.

"What are you doing Cleo? Its the dead of night."

"Shh." I shushed her. "Listen." Slowly the realisation sunk in and she turned to me excitedly. Unable to express her excitement without squealing, she grabbed her pillow and smacked Rikki squarely in the face.

"Hey! What was that for?" Was he immediate reply.

"Wake up!"

"You could've just told me."

"Well, you weren't going to any time soon, so..."

Leaving the two to squabble by themselves, I opted for shaking Bella's shoulder, rousing her gently.

"I'm already awake." she grumbled, "Hard not to be when those two are in the same room." Snickering in response, I shushed her with a finger before turning to the squabbling blondes. Crawling over the bed to them, I squeezed myself in between them, placed one hand on each of their chests, and shoved them away from each other.

"Shut up and listen." Rikki opened her mouth to object. Sensing this, I snapped my head around to glare at her. Growling, she reluctantly flopped onto the bed, crossing her legs and tilting her head up in a mocking 'I'm-a-good-girl-smile' on her face. The barking, much closer now, finally reached her ears, and her expression slowly melted into an excited one, bleeding into her eyes. From behind me, Bella gasped.

"Is that-"

In the blink of an eye, Rikki had jumped off the bed and was bounding towards the only door in the room. The semi-transparent door was roughly flung open by the excited blonde.

"Rikki," Emma yelped as she tumbled ungracefully off the bed, "Wait a second-Rikki, stop!"

Paying her no heed, the fire entity scrambled up the rungs in the tunnel in frenzied excitement. Grumbling, Emma swiftly followed, beckoning for Bella and I to do the same. The ice mer climbed up deftly after Rikki, catching up to her in seconds before grabbing her foot. "We need to think this through first."

"What's there to think through? There's a dog and a man in the middle of the forest, we just have to pop up and ask for help." Rikki told her impatiently.

"Exactly. A man. In the dead of night. In the middle of the forest. Doesn't that strike you as a bit odd?"

At this, Rikki was silent for a moment. Now that I thought of it, it was a fair point. The only people, apart from the barbaric centaurs (if you could call them people), were those people with sticks that shot lights that somehow held impossible properties.

"But," Began Emma with a hint of a smile, "We can be careful."

I sighed internally with relief. If Emma didn't want us to go, most likely, we would have stayed underwater for the rest of the night undoubtedly unable to fall asleep.

With a quick, "Stay behind the vines." From Emma, we were quickly moving up the long tunnel and slipping head first into the cold water of the Moon Pool. I could see flashes of varying shades of light green on Emma and Rikki's tails reflecting their excited and hopeful emotions. I hoped this didn't go badly. I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, but I would rather stay in an unknown forest than expose our secret to a random stranger.

I shot out of the tube, followed by Bella, catching sight of Rikki and Emma waiting for us. The latter pressed a finger to her lips, the universal signal for 'quiet', before stealthily ascending to the surface. As we swam, I could hear the barks muffled by the water growing louder and more distinct. Strangely enough, the voice of the man had disappeared.

Finally breaking the water with only the top half of our faces, I peered through the vines looking for the source of the barking. Bounding towards the pool was a large black over sized boar hound. Barking happily while wagging his tail, he bounded the last few meters to the pool before coming to a screeching halt at the edge. Slowly, he leaned his nose close to the surface and seemed to be sniffing the water. Seemingly deciding it was safe, he began lapping the water in loud slurps.

I wasn't quite sure how I felt about a dog drinking the water of the pool so sacred to us, but decided to let it go.

"Can we play with him? Please?" Begged Bella, dragging out the 'please' in a hushed whisper. Emma looked like she was going to object and Rikki looked like she was about to do the opposite. Before either of them could do either, the black dog paused, it's ears perking up and twitching. He raised his head and sniffed the air before turning it's head to the sides and doing the same. Finally, he stopped and looked straight through the vines. Right at us.

He growled softly.

"Aaawww, he's scared." Bella cooed softly.

"No," Emma disagreed, "He thinks we're a threat."

"Which means he's scared." Bella being Bella, the animal lover, she disregarded the warning sounds of Emma and ducked under the water. She reappeared moments later at the edge of the Moon Pool, backing up the startled dog. Immediately, he stopped growling, instead taking on a curious demeanor, padding softly towards Bella and sniffing at her face.

He stopped sniffing her for a second then proceeded to give Bella a big fat 'dog kiss' that left a trail of slobber on the sides of her face. Rikki snickered quietly as Bella squealed and let out an "Eeeeewwwwww," before ducking down into the water to wash her face.

His new friend gone, the dog whimpered, searching the water with his eyes. "Naaawww, it's ok boy, I'm right here." Bella popped back up, reaching up to stroke his head.

"He is kinda cute..." Emma murmed almost wistfully. I couldn't help but agree. Joining Bella for a few seconds couldn't hurt, right? A silent agreement passed between the three of us before we cautiously made our way through the curtain of vines. The dog perked up as we approached and barked happily at the prospect of more people to play with.

Excited, he stuck his tail in the air, wagging it eagerly while barking. Unexpectedly, he bounded over Bella's head and landed with a splash in the Moon Pool. Receiving a face full of water, I coughed, rubbing water out of my eyes while trying to shrug off the sensation of water in my nose. I may be a mermaid, but I didn't have gills, and I definitely didn't enjoy having water up my nose.

The next few minutes consisted of splashing, barking and laughing. I was jolted out of my state of euphoria when the familiar voice of the man appeared behind us.

"I see yeh've met Fang." Almost comically, we froze, before turning slowly, the form of a gigantic man manifesting itself before our eyes. In that second, a million thoughts and possibilities flew through my mind. Was there a chance that he hadn't realised what we were? No. Bella had pushed herself up onto the shore of the pool. Her tail was as plain as day. Could we take him down? Even if we could, would we? Despite his impossibly large stature, he didn't seem to mean us any harm; if he did, he would've done so by now. Not only that, despite his wildly tangled beard and hard ridges set in his face, I could see that his black eyes were gentle as opposed to his fierce appearance.

Appearances, could however, be deceiving. He might not mean us any harm, but he had seen us. He could inform anyone of his discovery, accidentally or purposely. We could be hunted down by scientists. Again. This time, however, it would be in a place with more resources available to them than Australia's limited ones.

Even worse; what if he was related to those people? The ones with sticks that somehow contained impossible properties? We revealed our elemental forms and powers to them, clogged up their garden with hundreds of meters worth of ice and we didn't know if they held a grudge against us. They attacked us out of the blue, so we had to assume that they were enemies for the time being. No matter how I looked at it, there was no way this would end well if we allowed him to just walk away.

These thoughts flew through my mind within seconds. Finally, Bella gasped in shock, pulling me out of my short reverie. The belated reaction snapped everyone into action. With a frightened shriek, Emma turned and dived into the water, forming a perfect arch with her body as she leapt out and back into the water. Rikki followed less than a second later, her tail flicking up a wave of water as it attempted to disappear into the depths of the Moon Pool.

Poor Fang was nearly dragged under and hit by both tails in their panic. In all the confusion, I could barely hear the overgrown man shouting in the same panic that we were in.

"Wait! Don' go! I won' hurt yeh! I jus' want to talk. I'm a teacher at Hogwarts-I teach students about magical creatures like yehse-Please, don' go, I won' hurt yeh!"

Amid all the panic happening internally and externally, Bella couldn't seem to push herself off the shore and into the water fast enough. The usually effortless action had suddenly seemed to left her. I could see her hyperventilating, sweating, the air becoming denser and harder to think in as a result. Her new found powers weren't yet in control and were easily being triggered. I could see the the beginning of a storm quickly forming. Rikki. The water was already growing colder. Emma.

I needed to do something. Anything.

But what? What could I do? We couldn't simply hide, he'd still seen us.

What if I beat him up?

No I couldn't bring myself to do it. For one, he wouldn't stand a chance, another, that would probably prompt him to hunt us down again and we would be deemed dangerous. If he was friends with the castle-people, no doubt they would help him to hunt us down if we harmed him.

Would the centaurs help?

No. Despite our deal, protecting us wasn't part of it and I had little doubt that they would mind if we were taken away and chopped up into tiny little pieces in a far away lab.

I could only think of one scenario in this situation that would end with us not being harmed.

Did I really want to do it? Could I?

Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but time suddenly seemed to slow down to the point where it was almost frozen.

My heart's thundering beat slowed down and seemed to stop. My slow breath echoed around me as silence set in.

Bella's face froze in its contortion of trepidation and horror.

Emma's body froze in mid-air, eyes closed in preparation for her collision with the pool. Water droplets hung in the air around her, sparkling and half frozen with ice as they neared her body.

Rikki was centimeters behind her, small whispers of steam, paralysed in the midst of their wafting, drifted around her.

Fang had stopped mid bark.

The man had his arm out stretched, his face pleading.

In that frozen second of beguiling peace, I heard only one thing.

One word.

One command.

Sing.

So I opened my mouth and let out a single, beautiful, haunting, enchanting note. I closed my eyes as the world slowly began to move again. I heard a splash. I heard another.

"Cleo!" The word echoed around me, fading away as my note took over all other sound.

I opened my eyes, my vision going red. No, not yet. Through the corner of my eye, I could see Emma and Rikki surfacing in slow motion, faces distorted into dread.

More red covered my view, washing over their faces. I pushed it back. I couldn't fade away yet. There was something I needed to do. Something I had to sing first before I-No, I wasn't going to do that.

Bella's hand stretched towards me, her mouth open in a cry that had long since sounded.

"Quiet." I whispered. The world instantly regained the speed it originally had.

Despite it being night, not even a cricket chirped.

I looked at my target and watched as his eyes clouded over and he smiled dreamily. I let out another note. Then another and another and soon it was weaving itself into a wordless melody. A melody that spoke of forgetting and returning home. The bewitching song grew faster and faster, becoming more urgent as the red haze began to spread at an alarmingly rapid rate. I willed my victim to forget and run. Wordlessly, he seemed to know what to do.

"Go." He shook his head.

"Forget." He nodded his head, eager to please.

"Run." He hesitated.

"NOW!" The last word was a furious scream. Casting one last longing look at me, he ran, Fang whimpered at the scream and speedily followed suit.

"Cleo?" The concerned voice of Emma faded away. All I could see was red.

"Are you ok?" Rikki reverberated faintly in the recesses of my mind.

For no apparent reason, I felt my lip split, blood dripping down my chin for a second before my lip sealed itself up within seconds. It tasted sweet.

"Crap. No, Cleo, stay with me, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't happening." Rikki grabbed my shoulders. Her face, stained in red, swam into my vision. "Cleo, stay with me. Stay with me, you hear?" Her voice began to fade into a jumble of incomprehensible sounds.

I wanted to eat meat. I wanted flesh. I wanted to tear my claws, no, my fangs into the bare flesh of a juicy hunk of human. I wanted the sweet, tangy taste of man's blood running down my throat.

One word ran through my mind before my vision was completely flooded with red.

Kill.

Hopefully, for the next week or two, I'll have at least two chapters out, hopefully. I'm so sorry once again guys. I was ecstatic over receiving, not 100, but 101 reviews. Now one might not make a difference, but most authors have a mini celebration with themselves over 100. But me? Nah, I got one hundred and ONE. Ahahaha, anyway, I felt completely undeserving of it when I opened up my traffic stats today so I just want to say a really heartfelt THANKYOU to all you faithful readers. I went back and re-read all my chapters and I did notice, all of my chapters have multiple mistakes in them, be they stupid grammar mistakes or simple spelling and punctuation mistakes. Thankyou for putting up with them. Once I've completed this fanfic, I'll be going over and editing them.

Once again, thank you so much and I'm sorry about the no update. I love you all to pieces!