His arms slithered around me, holding me against him. I could feel the weight of him, the warmth of him, the strength of him. Was I afraid? Yes. Was I going to run? I had nowhere to run to. This was it. This was what I got.

I woke up screaming, slick with sweat, clutching the sheets to my chest. They were something solid, something tangible, something real. Real. How could any of this be real?

Thunder clapped outside, and suddenly everything was covered with an intense white light that chased away the shadows before they came rushing back again. Rushing back to haunt me. The entire apartment was completely silent, save for the flutter of curtains in Eve's bedroom. Everyone was gone. It was just me.

Knocking, rattling, banging. I could hear someone at the door, but I was too distracted to make my way to the darkest corner in the small living space. "Jade, it's Heath. Open up. We need to talk." I said nothing, but got to my feet, proceeding to get myself a glass of water. "Don't ignore me." The door rattled again.

I contemplated leaving him out there.

But my will wasn't strong enough at three hours past midnight.

"Lynn wants to see you." Was the first thing he said when I opened the door. He was lying. Heaven knows why, but he was. "Please, Jade."

"I wasn't supposed to tell you this, but Lynn requested specifically that you stay away. She wanted to make sure you knew that, no matter what."

"I'm not going." I asserted, sitting down on the sofa, leaving him standing in the doorway. Without his chef's cap, you could really appreciate the shape of his face, the wave of his dark brown hair. Supposedly distracting... for some reason or other, he was doing this on purpose. He was trying to get a reaction from me, and I didn't like it one bit. "I don't want to see anymore of that. I can't. I can't." I muttered, shaking my head.

In truth, I wasn't really acting, not really; after all, I was a terrible actress, but I had to do whatever it took to lie, and do it well. Maybe a week ago I wouldn't have wanted to be suspicious of Heath, but now he was giving me no choice. "Ignoring it won't make it go away, Jade. I'll go with you, I'll hold your hand. You'll be safe with me."

"You'd make me go there." It wasn't a question.

"Don't you want a chance to say good bye?" I swallowed convulsively. God, how could I just sit here while Lynn was dying? It was too soon. Way too soon. Heath knew that I knew, and he was playing to my weakness. He knew that this was killing me. "I'm trying to stop you from doing something you'll regret."

Thunder clapped nearby again, the sound highlighting the silence, the almost blinding brilliance making his face appear a stony white. Heath's eyes weren't baby blue anymore… they were cold and dark. 'Deadly', that's the word.

He stepped closer, each slow footstep in time with the heavy thudding of my heart. "You sit there, so silently. I wonder what it is that you won't tell me?" His eyes flashed with the flicker of lightening somewhere in the distance. Impatience. The heavy sigh that followed made me shiver, unintentionally wrapping my arms around myself.

Was this the real Heath? Was he just pulling my leg? "You're acting strange." Something in his countenance changed; as if he were drawing back the monster that had bubbled to the surface. That habitual, heart-warming smile graced his face, making the hairs on my neck stand on end when it didn't reach his eyes. They were hollow, void of all emotion.

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"Heath…?" He was now standing in front of me, helping me to my feet. I wanted more than anything to pull away, and force him out - but there was only so much I could do when I was still injured.

Long, slender fingers caught the back of my head, holding me in place as his lips captured mine. I let out a small, feeble gasp that resembled fear more than passion when he let me go enough to breathe. "You just have to say two words and you can have your little charm back again." Pendant, actually. "It's not that difficult, is it?"

"I d-… I can't." His smile curved into a frown, again, his arms still trapping me against him. "Look at me. It wouldn't make any sense…" the last part was finished with a nervous laugh as he brushed my fringe aside, staring directly into my eyes. I froze. I couldn't see him, the Heath that I used to know. He had completely gone.

I fought back the sadness, and the fear as he ran his fingers over my back. "Hmm, I don't know. I can think of many solutions to that." The last word was breathed against the shell of my ear as one hand continued it's path upwards, leaving tingling sensations in its wake, before cupping my face. "But it's your body, in the end."

His lips moved lower, lower, towards the base of my neck, stopping just next to my jugular. "H-Heath? What the hell are you doing?" As I tried to push him away, he continued to hold me to him. Unyielding. Before, this would have been a stupid joke, and we would have laughed about it later… but now, now I was afraid that this was something else entirely.

Hesitating, barely millimetres away from my neck, he murmured softly: "You are mine, no matter how far you run."

"Why do you even care?" It was a pathetic, panicked attempt at appearing un-phased.

Watching him straighten upright, his hollow eyes meeting mine again, I didn't know what I wanted him to say. He liked me? He loved me? No. That's not what left his mouth. "Because you interest me."

What kind of reason is that?

I continued to let my eyes follow him as he released me, grazing his lips against my knuckles as if they were something more intimate. I should have said something… should have told him to give up. I should have ran away then… but I didn't. I stayed, eyes never leaving his retreating figure as he left through the door.

"You can't hide in here forever, though, Jade." Heath stood in the doorframe, turning to face me over his shoulder. "The outside world isn't that scary. Not really." With that, he was gone, and the door was closed. What did he mean by that anyway? I didn't find the outside world scary… he was probably talking for the sake of talking.

Or maybe there really was something more to it than I first assumed.

Sunlight fell through the open window, pooling on the floor inches away from my feet. I sat in the darkness, back pressed against the door. Last night, I had spent at least half of it trying to hear footsteps or voices, but nothing. Just silence. The brilliance of daylight was blinding, and acted as an echo of last night.

My hair fell in tangled tresses to my waist. It had been growing a little too long for my liking… but Heath had said it was pretty. Heath had told me to keep it, and I had. This was the very same Heath that was now shamelessly harassing me. "What the hell is going on?"

Stumbling to my feet, I went to the bathroom to inspect the red marks on my hands and face from applying too much pressure against hard surfaces, trying to stay awake and upright. It had all been for nothing. I mean… where exactly could everyone be?

"You can't hide in here forever, though, Jade." Heath stood in the doorframe, turning to face me over his shoulder. "The outside world isn't that scary. Not really."

I staggered back to the kitchen, head throbbing at combination of the memory and lack of sleep. Opening the cupboard, I could see Andrea's untouched coffee stock… Lynn's cooking ingredients, left behind… forgotten. It made my heart wrench. They couldn't be gone. It wouldn't make sense… it would be far too cruel to take them from me now. Not when I was finally getting better.

In an outburst of despair and rage, I ripped the packages from the cupboard, hacking into them with any sharp objects I could find on the work surface, and scattering the dusty remnants in clumpy piles of flower, sugar and coffee granules all over the wood panelled floor.

Don't leave me. Don't leave me. "Don't leave me!" I screamed, beating my knuckles into the worktop. I could feel the shock of the impact continuing up my arm, agitating my injuries. It felt so fucking good but I didn't try it again. I had already done enough.

Instead, I let myself slide onto my backside coated in a layer of a marble-like mixture of coffee and flour. The sugar was sticky, lumps pressing into my skin as my legs slid out in front of me, making a clean trail through the mess.

What was I doing? Wallowing in self-pity. Didn't I promise myself I wouldn't do that anymore? Well screw me, then.

The clouds were gradually rolling across the horizon, blocking out the warmth of the sun. The room suddenly felt colder, emptier. The whole building suddenly felt very empty.

Trying to piece together what little I had left of my determination, of myself, I got to my feet - still in my old, band t-shirt and pyjama shorts. That didn't matter. If my suspicions were correct, then I could run outside in my birthday suit and no one would care. No one would know. Just Heath and the thirty or so slave drivers that maintained this prison.

I rested my hand on the doorknob, pressing my head against the door. It wasn't rocket science, opening a door, but I was fighting all of my anxieties, my fears and my desperation to keep this wooden barricade shut. It didn't just keep me in, it kept the rest of the world out. And right at that moment, more than anything else, I really didn't like the rest of the world.

Not scary my ass.

So I opened the door just to prove Heath wrong.

Once the door swung fully open, the wind blew angrily across the courtyard and the heavens started to fall. The air was dense with the rain that I had started to miss. It washed away the brightness, turning everything a darker shade of it's original colour.

In all honesty, I could have stayed there, watching the storm from the apartment door for hours.

I didn't.

Each step forward was more certain than the last, pushing me past empty room upon empty room until I broke out into a run, kicking up water as I jogged through the cloister towards the main hall. It was the first place that came to mind… I mean how many places could so many girls have disappeared to?

I looked out the tinted glass at the hazy shadow that represented the forest. Maybe... no, it was a stupid idea; but the more and more empty rooms I passed, the less stupid it seemed.

"Eve? Andrea! Where are you guys?" My voice bounced back at me, dancing around me in the never ending maze of halls and corridors. "Somebody? Anybody? HELLO?" The disturbing reticence was my answer. I mean, I would be overjoyed if the vampires were gone… but why? The only reason that came to mind was something bigger, badder and scarier.

No matter how amazing it would be if they were gone, I couldn't help but fear it.

Whatever it was, at the end of the corridor, behind the double doors.

"So you finally show your face?"

It would be fair to say that my heart nearly stopped when I felt his hand on my shoulder. "Oh-my-god, Heath! Don't creep up on me like that!"

"You're scared aren't you?" It shouldn't have bothered me that I couldn't see him, but it did. It scared the fucking crap out of me. Especially when he wouldn't let me turn around to look at him. "Keep walking. Trust me."

"If you keep hiding your face from me, I don't think I'll be able to." His grip tightened, as if he had been holding back, and suddenly I felt my legs move forward of their own accord. Either that or have my shoulder permanently dislocated or ripped out.

We stopped at the entrance to the hall, and I could feel the tension building. It was just me, but my instincts were screaming at me to run away while I still had the chance. Truth was, I no longer had a choice. There was no way out. I was trapped. "Open the door, Jade."

"What if I say no?" He laughed, a deep, sensual laugh that made my skin break into goose flesh. It wasn't much above zero degrees Celsius… but I was used to the cold. No. The trigger was the man standing behind me, watching me play his game, and watching me lose. It made him happy, and you know what? I didn't even have it in me to feel cheated. All I could feel was dread as my palms pressed against the heavy iron doors.

The grating sound echoed around us, reinforcing the recurring theme of big, scary castle in the middle of a deep, dark forest. "Take all your time, but once that door has moved enough past the other to see into the room beyond, there will be no point."

"You won't rush me?"

"That depends." He was closer now, making me break out into cold sweat. "If I'm feeling nice, I'll consider letting you take your time." I didn't bother reminding him that this was happening now, just in case he decided to take it as an invitation to be mean. Right now, the thought of an even scarier Heath was worse than what was beyond the double doors.

"I don't want to play this stupid game anymore."

"What are you so afraid of, Jade? I'm here, aren't I?"

He let his guard down, so I could see his face. The face that I didn't recognise anymore. "Knowing that it could be just us left..." his expression never changed. It was too late to pretend that I trusted him. I bet it didn't even matter to him anymore. "For the first time in so many years, I finally get to see the real you. And it's you that I'm afraid of, Heath. Not them.

"You."

A/N: Ahhhhhh! This chapter took a while to write, I was trying to turn up the scare factor... but I'm not sure if I did it effectively?

I bet you're wondering who the hell Heath is and what he's trying to achieve? or maybe it's more to do with: when will wolfy be making an appearance again? - stick with me! The next chapter I am certain will not disappoint! A LOT is going to happen (I hope) + any thoughts and ideas are always welcome!

THANK YOU FOR READING! :D :D :D