Eternal Darkness - Book One ✔

Chapter Seven

I was dreaming, but the dream was incoherent. Flashes of blue light flickered across my vision of sight and there were odd shapes in front of me, moving around, but I couldn't make out who or what they were. Suddenly a big bump caused my head to connect with something hard and it jolted me from my sleep. I opened my eyes and was immediately on full alert.

How could I have gone to sleep in a van full of vampires? Jeez Emily, I thought as I blinked rapidly to wake up. It was still dark, but on the horizon, the sky was tethering with the pale pink approach of dawn.
Out of my peripheral vision I saw Chin was watching me, way too intensely and I shuddered. He was just so creepy.

I had no idea how long we had been driving for, but I felt the familiar clench of my stomach as hunger slowly filled up the empty space inside of me. It would take a lot more than the few cans of food from last night to satisfy it for long. At least I had been able to drink some water which had hydrated me a fair bit.
Dehydration was a bitch that came with searing headaches and a feeling of tiredness.

"Ahh right on time," Nox suddenly chimed from the front and when I turned my head I swear my jaw almost dropped. In the distance, a city came into view, several large towers rose high from the ground and into the sky. I gaped at the sight before me.

"What is this place?" I asked with my frail voice full of astonishment.

"This, my little witch, is Los Angeles, city of Angels, or in this case, the city of Fangs," he chuckled at the last bit and realization struck me; I was being taken into a vampire city. I had only heard about these kinds of places, where vampires ruled and had humans trapped so they could feed whenever they pleased. Fear ran through my body faster than I could think of and I was suddenly chilled to the very bone.

Surely, if they wanted to eat me they would have done so already, wouldn't they?

We went past a tattered faded sign that read, 'Welcome to Los Angeles', but someone clever had spray painted a red F in front of Angeles. Such great humor I thought sarcastically to myself, but of course Nox had been listening in and gave a chuckle from up front. I scowled and thought a heavy stream of rude words in his general direction, but it merely caused him to laugh even louder.

We cruised down the street, venturing further and further into the quiet city, and I watched with awe as we started passing one tall building after the other. The houses were placed right next to each other, leaving no space in between. People here must have been living right up and down their neighbor. It baffled me how so many could have once lived in the same place, under such close proximity of each other.

Just then the van turned a corner and came to an abrupt halt, making my heartbeat flutter.

What was going to happen now?

Chin growled at me as he got up and opened the sliding door, stepping aside and waited for me to get out. For a fleeting moment I thought about running, but seeing as both Nox and the other vampire were waiting right when I got out, I dismissed the thought and instead looked around, my eyes nearly bulging.

We were in the biggest city I had ever seen. I had seen how the old cities had looked from pictures in various books and such, but nothing beat the real thing.

Buildings loomed high above my head, reaching far into the sky where they disappeared from sight. I could see that most of the ground level buildings had once been shops and stores, but now all the windows had been boarded up and everything looked abandoned.

There weren't many people walking around outside this early in the morning, and those few who where, I couldn't tell whether they were human or vampires, or maybe something completely different.