At Night

THE IRON BIT INTO THE SENSITICVE FLESH OF MY BARE WRISTS BUT I REFUSED TO LET the pain and tortures wipe the  cruel grin from my lips. They were horrible creatures, I had been taught, ones that should be burnt to the crisp, but that was said about the Lycanthropes just as much as the Night Children. Of course, the Night Children, the vampires, were told and thought to be the more dominant creature of the two, which was all about to be upturned.

The Night Children had used captive Lycanthropes as slaves, probably to show their superiority and keeping the Lycanthropes numbers under control. While I didn’t blame the Night Children, they probably also feared the savageness and determination of the Lycans, I always thought that it was cruel to practically enslave most of a race, one that would soon be extinct because of the rough and disgusting treatments they received so cruelly. Thousands of generations ago, the first Lycan and Night Child were brothers, so, since the generations after had sprouted from the swapping of these brother’s blood with mortals, the two races were entwined with blood relations. Of course, neither of them saw it that way. In this world, it was kill or be killed, plus, quite frankly, neither of the races wanted to die out.

A Night Child grinned down at me, his needle like fangs biting into his pale lower lip. I snarled and grinned up at him, revealing my own set of dramatically lengthened canine teeth. He seemed almost startled when his electric blue eyes came to rest on my teeth. His grip around my wrist didn’t loosen, though, in fact, it got tighter. My body wanted to whimper in pain but my soul was filled with the ecstasy of their learning what I was and meant to their survival.

I lashed out with my unshackled leg, my foot colliding heavily with his sternum. I sent the pale vampire tumbling backwards and his back smashed against the far, stone wall, opposite to where he had sat me. He groaned and stood, dusting down his dark clothes, his angry eyes meeting mine. I had stood now, and was not match for such a young vampire, even shackled.

I snarled, bearing my side teeth and lunged at him, wrapping the iron chains around his neck and twisting. He howled in pain, a few Lycans which were being prodded into their next jail cell stopped to watch. No other vampire came to help and I easily broke the vampire’s neck. He wasn’t dead, Hell no he wasn’t, but rather stunned. He was out cold and I pulled the iron shackle chain from his neck and found the closest piece of wood. I drove it through his heart, just like my teachers had taught me to, pulled it out and drove it in deeper just to make sure.

The Lycans and their jailers had moved on now, sometimes glaring across at me then down at the body. They were confident that I would not escape, not in a whole castle which had been carved out of the side of a mountain and happened to be filled with some of the most powerful vampires.

Just then, when I kicked the dead corpse of the vampire, a cold hand clasped my throat and sent me tumbling across the room, my head slamming into the stone. I growled, turning on my attacker, snarling. I was angry and had the savageness of a Lycan; something the Night Children couldn’t posses, not with any amount of inbreeding.

I hissed, lunging at the blonde vampire, the chains poised at his throat, but instead of me wrapping the chains around his neck, he moved and I tumbled to the ground. I got up, twisting around and delivering a hard round-house kick to the side of the vampire’s head. He wasn’t even stunned but instead growled with more hatred. I snarled a curse at him, one that should have damned me as soon as it left my lips and delivered another blow to the side of his skull. This one hit his sensitive temple and his eyes rolled back in his head for just a moment.

Something snatched my throat and wrist and before I knew it, I had been pulled against a stone cold body, an iron blade pressed to my throat. I let out a cruel laugh, one that matched my malicious grin that I still wore. The now bleeding blonde vampire circled me, his eyes glowing with frustration and such hatred that it made the corners of my lips pull even higher.

“She needs to be dealt with,” he said, looking over my shoulder at the other vampire that had snatched me from behind. Normally, I can hear my attackers approach from behind but it seemed that iron shackles had messed with the sensitivity of my senses. “See to it that she is put in a separate cell. No food rations, none at all. Her cell should be beside that of her own kind, until the Rex can see to her.”