"What was that about?" Ashley finally asked, breaking the almost-unbearable, everlasting silence.

"I have no idea." Leon replied.

"Yeah, well…" I said. "I just can't wait until he gets back with that drug. I want to get this thing out of me as soon as I can."

They both nodded. "Don't we all."

I turned around and once again noticed the orange, rust-stained door. "Leon, what's back there?"

He turned around and began walking to it. When he slowly pushed it open, you could see a cloaked man standing in the center of the room. Just then, the thing turned his head and noticed the very handsome man standing in his doorway, and went to go tell his friends about it.

"Wait here." Leon said to Ashley and me. We nodded and stood there, awkwardly, trying to think of something to say.

"So…" I said first. "Do you think you've gotten the hang of shooting your gun?"

The blonde pulled out her gun and began examining it carefully. "I don't know. I think Leon might have to show me how to work it. If we ever get the time, that is."

Suddenly, the image of Leon with his tight, muscular arms wrapped around hers, and holding the gun in her hands flashed in my mind. "Uh… how about I show you?"

"Really?" Her face lit up in a smile.

"Sure! Look, all you have to do is-"

"Hey, I got the key to this door." Leon interrupted, holding a silver key in his hand.

"Leon!" Ashley exclaimed, running up to him. "Do you think you could show me how to work this gun properly?"

Said man chuckled. "Yeah, sure. So you hold it like this…" Just then he wrapped his arms around her and my vision came true. I was filled with envy so strong that I was almost positive my face was turning green. All I could do was stare at the two as Ashley pretended to be clueless, while really, she just wanted to spend more time wrapped in Leon's embrace. I knew what she was up to. (I was probably just over-thinking the situation at the time, but could you blame me?)

I rushed up to the two and snatched the key from Leon's hand and put it in the lock. "After you…" I said critically, looking at the tall blonde man. He seemed rather confused at my actions, but Ashley had an obvious blush on her face; she knew I had caught on to what she was doing.

When we stepped through the doors, I was literally awestruck. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. The walls were stone, but not the dirty stone like the other parts of the castle- no, this stone was diamond white, almost a marble, but not quite. The floors were a shiny marble that you could practically see your reflection in, and there was a red carpet going through the center of the room, leading to doors on the other side at least 50 feet long. About half way through the room there was an archway and a balcony facing us on it. We continued walking forward, completely speechless, until Ashley finally spoke up.

"This is… amazing!"

"Tell me about it." Leon replied.

"Who knew there could be something so beautiful in a place so—" Just then I was interrupted by the laughter of what sounded like a child doped up of caffeine. "What was that…?"

We all eyed the room cautiously before continuing forward after a few moments of silence. But just when we were halfway to the balcony, we heard it again, except louder. I looked up at the balcony to see a little boy in a blue Victorian-age suit, laughing maniacally. There were two cloaked figures beside him; one was in a black cloak, the other in red. They both had glowing red eyes, and were twice as tall as the boy.

"Ehehahahahah!" Suddenly, he didn't look much like a boy anymore, as he stepped fully out to the railing of the balcony. He actually looked pretty aged. "…I was starting to wonder when you might notice us." He said.

"Who are you?" Leon demanded, taking a slight step forward.

Without hesitation, the boy/man (I still wasn't quite sure) answered. "Me amo Ramon Salazar, the eighth castellan of this magnificent architecture." He seemed quite proud with this last statement. "I have been honored with the prodigious power from the great Lord Saddler… I've been expecting you my brethren's…"

Brethren's? I thought.

"No thanks, bro!" Our rescuer said, in quite a sarcastic tone, making Ashley giggle beside me.

"My, my, we've got a feisty one." He continued. "If you care for your own well-being, I suggest you surrender yourself and simply… become our hostage." My eyes grew wide, along with Ashley's, while Leon's took on a look of confusion. "Or Mr. Scott, you can give us the girls, because you're not worth a penny I'm afraid… You can die." He then turned around and vanished behind the blue curtains. It was one of those 'What the hell just happened?' moments.

"I'm never turning into one of them, never!" Ashley spoke up.

"Got that right," Leon turned to her. "We'll find a cure."

"But how can you be so sure?" I pondered aloud. I knew it was probably a bad idea to say it, but someone had to ask. "What if there isn't a cure?"

He thought about this for a moment, before saying, "There has to be. Whatever Luis went looking for, that must be it. He said it would stop growth of this thing."

"Yeah." Ashley said, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. "We got ourselves into this, we can get ourselves out."

I smiled and nodded and we kept walking across the room. Suddenly, when we got to the archway in the middle, a wall rose up from the floor blocking our path. There was a blue rectangle with carvings of an animal and a big hole that looked as though something had to be placed in it.

"I wonder what this is for…" I said, inspecting the oddly shaped hole.

"I don't know," Leon said. "But we obviously can't go this way now. Come on."

We spotted a door to our right and decided to go through it.

This room wasn't as big as the one we were just in, I guess you could call that a lobby. No, it was about half the size of it. Everything was the ugly stone color again, and there were two pillars in the right side of the room, and on the left wall there were large round holes cut out, serving as windows to a lower area that I couldn't see too well. There was hallway at the end of the room, and a roaring noise was coming from it.

We all began walking forward, to the entryway, but I slowly stopped and took a look at my surroundings. "This place could use some cleaning." I stated.

Leon scoffed and said "With a place this big, I can't really blame that guy for not wanting to clean everything."

"But wouldn't he have a butler or a maid or something?" I asked.

"Yeah, maybe… but whoever it is, they need to be fired."

I laughed briefly before placing my hands on my hips, and standing in a sort of 'I'm totally awesome' pose. "I'm gonna have a castle like this one day. Except, you know… without all the freaky dudes."

"Don't you have to be royalty to have a castle?" Leon questioned, obviously not taking me seriously.

"Exactly!" I exclaimed excitedly. "One day I'm going to be a queen!"

The blonde man half laughed, half snorted. "Queen? Isn't that an inherited title?"

"Well... yeah, but…" I trailed off.

He laughed. "Didn't think that one out too much, did you?" I shook my head. "Well, unless your parents were King and Queen then—…" He stopped mid-sentence, realizing what he had just said. "I-I'm sorry… I didn't mean—…"

"No, it's fine." I sighed. "I guess it's time I tell you what happened, huh?" My voice grew shaky, and suddenly the wrinkles in my shirt became oh-so interesting.

"You don't have to—…"

"No, I do… I keep bringing it up, and making excuses for it… you can't tell me you don't want to know what happened." I took his silence as a yes.

Just then, Ashley appeared from around the corner of the entryway. I hadn't even noticed she was gone.

"That way is blocked off by fire-breathing horses, but I found this key on a really big painting. I think it goes to that door." She held up a silver key. "Hey… what's wrong?" She approached the middle of the room with caution where Leon and I were standing.

"Nothing." Leon said quickly.

"It's not nothing." I argued, and when Ashley gave me a confused look I continued. "I was about to tell him what happened with my parents."

"O-oh… well, I can go if you want…"

"No. You need to hear this too."

Muahaha... cliff hangers. Gotta love 'em. But sorry folks, looks like this is all I have time for today! Tune in next time to find out what happened to Emily's parents. (Or you could just go and read the ori-) No, that's cheating! But anyways...

I got a review from Lollipop Lolli asking if I'm going to to an updated version of the sequel to this. Well? What do you guys think? It's not really up to me. I don't want to waste my time writing something that no one's going to read, you know? So tell me in that little review box down there if you want me to update 'It's Only Just Begun' and I may or may not write another story in addition to that one... who knows?

Anyways, thank you guys for reading and I'll be back tomorrow with more. See you guys later~