CHAPTER 3
Run, Eryn.
The familiar voice is all I can hear in the darkness spread before me, a sort of unending dread of something unknown starts to fill me. I have to take deep breaths to calm myself but I slowly realize that's not the reason I'm sucking in as much air as I am right now. My eyes fly open and I can suddenly feel my feet beating against the ground underneath like a drum.
Someone or rather something is chasing me and I'm trying to get away.
Do not let anyone catch you. The voice that says this sounds eerie, almost demonic like. I fear the voice more than I fear anything else right now. It feels like there's a shadow of something behind me, it's gaining its pace behind me and I'm so afraid to stop.
They know. They know you killed him. They will not let you go. Once more the voice fills my head almost doubling the fear contained in my body.
All I can see in front of me are trees and my arms reach out to push the branches and leaves away as I try to pick up my pace so I don't get caught by whatever is chasing me. The moonlight that's peeking through the leaves of the forest I'm running through serves as a light so I don't end up tripping on roots or something else.
My legs slow down as I try to catch my breath. I know I shouldn't be stopping but my body isn't listening to me.
Crack
I hear something coming from my left side. I turn to my left and see dark tendrils reaching out for me. I scream as the tendril catches hold of my left arm. I then feel my right arm being pulled back and I realize another dark tendril is wrapped on my right arm.
All my hairs rise on my arms because they feel cold to the touch.
Slowly tendrils arise from everywhere and they cover my body like a cocoon. I scream as loud as I can but the sound is being absorbed by the tendrils.
Too slow, Eryn.
* * *
My eyes snap open as I struggle to breathe but it doesn't take very long for me to get my breathing under control again. I sit up, my fingers rubbing against my temples in an attempt to ease the headache that's forming. I turn my head to the window on my right, the beauty of the setting sun puts my mind at ease for a while but my heart can't seem to stop pounding erratically inside my chest.
I look around and try to focus my attention on something else. Something that would make sure I don't go through the same unsettled emotions I went through during my dream. I hadn't had dreams as terrifying as that for a year now. What scares me the most about that dream is how painfully real it felt when the tendrils grabbed my arms and how scared I was when I couldn't move.
I intake a sharp breath trying to calm my very nervous self. I take another deep breath and look to my left, Frost is asleep right next to me. I smile a little because he looks so peaceful when asleep.
It's then that it dawns on me. I can escape right now.
I slowly turn my body towards the edge of the bed and lift my legs from under the covers. When my feet touch the ground, I turn to my back and watch Frost with my eyes, he groans and moves to the other side.
I stand up slowly, my eyes never leaving Frost's sleeping figure on the bed. I tiptoe towards the door and I reach out for the doorknob, slowly turning it. The quiet click that accompanies an unlocked door causes my heart to soar. I let the door open halfway and before I move past it, I take another look at Frost making sure he's still sleeping and his groaning confirms he is.
When I've finally made my way out of the room, I close the door slowly making sure not to make too much noise.
Before I realize it I feel my hand on my chest, my heart is beating nervously. I hope I don't get caught.
I'm standing in a hallway now. On my right the hallway splits into two sides, my eyes scan the area on my left and it's the same thing so I decide to go left, taking another left I try to walk as slowly and quietly as I can until I reach the top of a stairway.
It's strangely quiet now and I start to feel weird that I haven't seen a single vampire walking around but as soon as the thought forms in my mind I can hear the echoes of brisk footsteps coming my way. I can't find anywhere to hide so I choose to hide behind a large flower vase and when the footsteps disappear I slowly move away from the vase and towards the staircase.
Usually, I'm not this stealthy but I guess my body realizes the kind of danger I would be put in if I stay here any longer. When I'm halfway down the stairs, a question hits me.
Where would I go? How would I get back home? Do I actually want to go back?
As much as the idea of going back home is unpleasant to me I know I don't stand a chance of surviving if I stay here. Frost said he wouldn't hurt me and he wouldn't let anyone hurt me but I'm guessing not everyone shares his values. I'd be dead if I were without him and I'd rather not die right now.
I know I promised him I would stay but that is blind stupidity on my part if I believed he could protect me from getting eaten.
I don't have the chance to ponder on these questions more because when I'm at the foot of the stairs and I'm ready to look for the exit on the ground floor my face collides with a hard surface. I groan, rubbing my cheeks with my fingers. I then move back so I can inspect what I so carelessly ran into.
My eyes are staring at someone's chest and judging from the lack of breasts I deduce it's male. My heart rate speeds up because there's only one guy I've met till now with this exact chest structure.
Geez, I sound like a bloody stalker right about now.
My suspicions are confirmed when my eyes land on Frost's face. Oh, crap.
"Where do you think you're going?" He asks, his arms crossed in front of his chest. His hair is messy and I'm guessing he probably woke up when he realized I wasn't there and started looking for me.
I try my best to fake a clueless smile, "Ohh, you mean, this isn't the way to the toilet? Aww, I thought it was."
He rolls his eyes, "Cut the crap, Mary. I know you were trying to escape."
"What ever do you mean, Frost?" I feign innocence.
"Okay. You want to play that game? I'll play that game." A smug smile is etched on his face right now, "If you were not going to escape, why were you attempting to stealthily run down the stairs? or better yet, if you wanted to go to the toilet, why not wake me up so I can point you in the right direction?"
"Uhh....Because..." I rack my brain for some kind of excuse and nothing hits me so in a desperate attempt to get away from him I do what my mom always told me to do if I was ever attacked by a male. I kick him in his dick and don't stop to see if it works but judging from the loud curses I just heard it probably did.
I try running to the nearest room and my mind goes into panic mode searching for somewhere to hide.
Before long I notice a bed at the end of the room. I run and try to hide myself under it. The thumping of footsteps echoing in the quiet air around me tells me that Frost is near. My heart starts to slow down when the footsteps suddenly stop because I think he's gone somewhere else but it jumps back out of my ribcage when the door to the room I'm hiding in swings open loudly.
Frost's legs come into the line of sight and I have to try as hard as I can to not breathe too loudly. "Mary!" he shouts, his voice seething with anger. "Mary! Come out now!" His legs move towards the curtains and I see the curtains being pulled back and he sighs in frustration when he realizes I'm not there.
He ends up leaving the room and stomps away to another room looking for me. I count till a hundred and twenty in my head before I decide to move from under the bed. When I'm already standing up right, I smoothen out the creases on my shorts and start moving slowly towards the kitchen.
I know it's a kitchen because I see kitchen maids running to and fro around it. I try calming my heart rate and pretend to be one of them. "You there!" A woman shouts at me.
My heart rate sky rockets as every possible situation runs through my mind. This woman turning me in, Frost probably locking me in a dungeon cell and me dying of hunger and thirst during the next week.
I turn around slowly and see a chubby looking kitchen maid staring back at me. "You're the new kitchen maid, aren't you?" she asks.
Okay. Not what I was expecting but I'll play along. I nod slowly, "Y-yes I am. Why?" I ask.
She smiles, her fangs showing a little.
Crap. She's a vampire too.
"Could you go to the main town nearby and make sure our usual supply of blood is coming tonight? We usually have some in stock but the person who usually delivers hasn't come yet and it's better not to be low on blood supply in a castle of vampires. "
I nod, "Yes. I think I'll be able to do that."
"Good. Now hurry along before someone snacks on you." She states, smiling.
"Wait. What?"
"You're one of the human maids, aren't you? I can smell your blood, now stop procrastinating and go." She says pushing me towards the exit at the back of the kitchen.
I nod and turn my back towards her walking slowly out the back door. There seems to be a guard guarding the back gate. "Hello?" I venture cautiously towards the back gate.
The guard looks up at me, his nose flares. "Human. What do you want?"
Is the smell of my blood that strong or is this guy just bored out of his mind?
"Whether or not I'm human doesn't matter, I was sent to go out into town for some business. The castle's blood supply is low and if I don't leave now, you might be starving your king of blood he needs."
The guard cocks an eyebrow, "I cannot let you pass unless you have something that shows me you're telling me the truth."
I roll my eyes nonchalantly, "I may be new but I'm sure the king doesn't react well when you starve him of blood. So you can choose to see if I'm lying or wait till the king orders for your execution tomorrow. Your choice."
He gulps audibly, clearly afraid for his life. "Fine, you may pass but hurry along and come back before the king notices!." He warns me and opens the gates so I can pass through.
As soon as I'm past the gates, I decide against sprinting because I don't want to act suspicious. I walk and walk till I'm at the edge of the town. I see a pathway leading to god knows where. On both the left and right side of the pathway, everything is filled will trees. So, I decide against my impulse to run into said bush of tree's.
I continue walking for probably around an hour. I end up reaching a crossroad. There's is a sign board in the middle of the four pathways, each pointing into the direction of different places or countries. Something inside me screams at me to choose the one that points south which apparently leads to Rosvion.
I turn to look at the place I'm coming from. I can see the castle in the distance and for a second my mind wonders as to what this place Frost calls home is called.
Before I can back out and run back to the castle, I let my legs lead me in the direction of Rosvion.
I'm someone who's usually driven by that gut feeling inside of you instead of the logic that your brain tells you. I guess it's mostly because the brains and cold hard logic of my doctors, psychologists and therapist was never able to deduce what was happening to my mind.
All they really did was just prescribe to me medicines that would make my nightmares that plagued me more vivid and my hallucinations more frequent.
I tried talking to my parents about what the medicines did to me and they told me it was all in my head, just like my nightmares and hallucinations. They knew it wasn't in my head, I could tell that from the look they had in their eyes.
What I had was far deeper than that. If it were just only in my mind, how would I have been able to black out and start acting very strangely?
Nobody could answer that as well. Nobody could answer why I blacked out, acted like someone else and then would regain consciousness and act like nothing happened.
For a while, people at school and even my parents would think I was just pretending to have the hallucinations and the blackouts but the more I had them the more they were convinced I was crazy.
Some even said that I binge ate all those pills from my therapist, so much so, I started hallucinating from them all on my own.
I wasn't like any other teenager when bullying was concerned. I'm not trying to say I was a badass but my mind was always replaying the terrible things that I would experience during my blackouts, hallucinations and nightmares to worry about petty teenagers and their childish bullying.
Sometimes, I wonder how kids as old as eighteen or as young as thirteen would even want to make someone feel like they're useless, like nobody loves them. They don't get paid for treating kids like that, so why?
I guess the simple conclusion is, some people are made into bullies because I strongly believe bullies aren't born. Someone is not born with the idea of torturing someone, someone is pushed to do that because their own life is a mess and they want someone else to feel like shit too.
At least, that's what I think.
I've been walking for around thirty minutes under the darkening sky before I stumble upon a immobile horse with its owner feeding the horse a carrot. "Excuse me, are you headed to Rosvion?" I hear myself asking before I even realize what I'm doing.
The young looking man who's tending to the horse turns to me in surprise, "Yes, I am." His eyes scans my face and then towards the road I had come from. Something seems to register in his expression. "You were coming from Estrax?"
So it was called Estrax, huh?
"Yes."
He looks like he's in his twenties and that makes me think he's a vampire too but I don't show him my fear. His eyes aren't the color of blood like Frost's was. Instead it was black much like mine, his equally as black hair is really short with his bangs just slightly above his eyebrows.
He doesn't seem to be a fighter because his body is lanky so vampire or not I don't think he'll be able to fight off anything larger than him.
"What are you doing walking to Rosvion in such strange looking clothing? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were from the human...realm." He slows down realizing something. His eyes widen, "You're from the human realm, aren't you?"
I nod. "I am, I came here by accident and I've been trying to find a way back. Do you know how I can go back by any chance?" I ask him still wary of who he is or what he might do.
"I'm afraid I can't open a portal to the human realm, only werewolves or enchanted objects can do that and as you can see I'm neither a wolf nor do I have an enchanted object."
I raise an eyebrow at him, "What are you then?"
"I'm a boring old human like you if you can believe that." He says smiling kindly.
I stare at him in disbelief. "What is a human like you doing in a place as dangerous as this?"
"I was born and raised in The Otherworld. If you can believe it there are a lot more of us humans here than most people know."
"Is Rosvion one of those human populated places?" I ask, hopeful that he'll give me a positive answer.
He shakes his head. "Rosvion is just as vampire infested as Estrax."
"What are you doing headed to a place like that then?"
"I'm actually looking for someone but I'm really low on money so I was thinking of being a donor."
"Donor?"
He nods. "Some vampire countries get their blood from human donors and pay them money for the blood. There's a huge chance I might get killed anyway but it's better than getting killed off by hunger." There's a hint of kindness as he says this. "Would you like to come along with me? I could help you look for a witch to help you get home while we're there."
"B-but I don't have any money to pay you." I confess.
"Don't worry about it, you can always pay me back later when you can." He says smiling, "I only have one horse to travel with so I hope you don't mind sharing."
I smile back at him, "Not at all."
The stranger helps me hoist up his horse and after he's made sure I'm secure he gets on behind me. "My name is Kian by the way." He says as the horse starts making its way to Rosvion.
"I'm Mary." I say.
* * *
"Take her to the dungeons."
"The flyer said there would be a reward for her."
"Aye. Here."
The sounds of unfamiliar voices are what wakes me up from an empty darkness. I groan as my eyelids open. My head that was previously leaning on Kian's back is now straight as a man dressed in heavy armor grabs my body from the top of the horse and he throws me across his shoulder. "What the hell is happening here?" I ask a little dazed.
"I'm sorry, Mary." I can't see him because the guard holding me is facing him and all my eyes can see in this dark is the rough gravel on the ground. "I needed money and they had a bounty for you. I hope you can find a way to forgive me."
Kian just betrayed me and sold me to an enemy.
The sounds of Kian's horse riding off somewhere else is what confirms that this isn't a dream and all I can do is shout curse words as the guard brings me somewhere I don't know.
A million different scenarios run through my head. If I had a bounty that means someone wants me dead and it's only a matter of time before I'm publicly executed. Fuck.
My eyes look around and I realized I was brought into a dimly lit area filled with cells. It smells like dead bodies in here and I have to try really hard not to vomit right then and there.
The sound of a cell gate opens and my body is flung into a dark cell. "The king will decide what to do with you later. Don't make too much noise in here." He orders.
"Fuck you." I curse out at him as I try to sit up, my back hurts a whole lot from colliding with the hard ground.
Stupid vampires.
The echoes of the guard's footsteps get increasingly further and I shout in frustration. "Damned if I fucking do and damned if I fucking don't! At this rate I would really end up as vampire food."
"Mary?" a familiar voice calls out.
"Wait. Who's there and how do you know my name?" I call out to the darkness, "Have you finally come for me, Grim Reaper?" I ask, squinting my eyes trying to find a figure in the darkness behind me.
I feel someone hitting me upside the head, "You idiot! It's me! Isabelle!" She shouts, exasperated.
I stare at the darkness, wide eyed, Isabelle moves away from the shadows and stands a little closer to the light a candle is casting in our apparently shared cell.
She looks terrible, her red hair is a mess and the whites of her eyes are stained a light red. My eyes slowly drift to her wrists and I can see deep cuts on both of them. What did they do to her?
"Isabelle? What are you doing here?" I ask half out of surprise and half out of worry.
"I should be asking you that, Mary. How did you end up here?" she asks me back, her voice sounding a little hoarse.
I shrug and decide against my instinct which was to lie to her because I know there's no point in lying to half of the two closest people to me.
I scratch the back of my head, "Honestly, I don't know either. I just woke up on the streets in the middle of the night. I was caught and tied up, very much like I was a while ago and I was brought to the king. I was then told that I'm the reincarnation of his vampire bride, Maria. I told him that was ridiculous but his statement was backed up by his right hand woman, Rhea, was it? Yes. It was, I blacked out and the memory slash dream I had backed up her statement. I was also also told that some of my nightmares could be memory fragments of my life as Maria but she couldn't explain to me why I had these hallucinations."
Isabelle looks at me like I just said the most ridiculous things that could have ever entered her ears but she knows it's not as ridiculous when concerning me because I'm just the weirdest person ever to her.
"Okay. Well, how did you get here, as in this cell?"
"That's where it gets worse. I got up a while ago and ran for the friggin hills, I ended up meeting this really cool guy or so I thought because he sold me off like a cheap prostitute as soon as we got here. He told me I had a bounty on my head and he needed the money so it would have been easier to turn me in. how about you? What did they do to you?"
Her runs her hand through her hair, "I don't know. All I remember was getting home from your house and then curling up in bed. The next thing I know, my back collides with a really hard surface and when I get up, I'm sitting on broken table remains. I was so out of it and I didn't even know what was happening but apparently there was a bunch of people gathered around me pointing and whispering."
"Then who did that to your wrists?" I ask gesturing to her wrists.
She looks down at them. "It wasn't long before some guards caught me and threw me in here, I tried fighting back so they got annoyed at me and slit them. They then started feeding on me, I was so freaked out when their fangs sunk deeper into my skin that I passed out really fast."
Before I can ask her anything else, our brief encounter was cut short by the angry calls of the same guard that threw me in here with Isabelle before. "Red hair! Come with me! King Tybalt wants to see you!" he shouts.
"That's not how you talk to a lady!" Isabelle shouts at him with the same annoyance in her tone as the guard.
My heart sinks to my stomach. Where are they taking her? Are they going to feed on her?
He opens the steel bar door and grabs Isabelle's arm and forces her out, "Mary! I'll make sure we get out of this place together! I promise!" she shouts back at me as the guard locks the steel door back up.
I stand up, my fingers wrapped around the cold steel of the bars. "Don't die on me, you idiot!" I shout back at her before I hear the slamming of another door.
I sigh leaning my head against the bars letting the coldness of it calm me. Part of me is hoping for a miracle to happen, part of me wants to believe that Isabelle will be perfectly fine but my thoughts keep me continously unsettled.
Something bright illuminates the dark space in front of me and I raise my head, my buzzing thoughts temporarily silenced. Something seems to be materialising into a woman's figure and I blink back in surprise when I realize Rhea standing in front of me.
"Rhea? What are you doing here?" relief washes over me slowly.
She sighs, relieved as well. "Thank goodness you're safe. Frost was losing his mind when he realized you were here in Rosvion. Did they do anything to you?"
I shake my head. "Nothing worth mentioning but enough about that there's a friend of mine that's about to meet the king of Rosvion. Could you go save her first?"
"No." She says firmly. "My priority is to save you first." As she says this, she places her palms on the steel bars, mumbling incoherent words.
I take a few steps back and stare in awe as the metal bars under her palms start to slowly melt away like ice, creating a huge hole in the middle. "Thank you, now my friend--"
She takes my hand, "Your friend will be safe. That person won't hurt her, nobody will. I cannot say the same for you if he finds you here."
"We need to get her out of here. I don't care if he won't hurt her." I plead.
Both my hands are in hers now and we're standing outside the cell. "I promise you, we will return for her. Like I said, you will die if he finds you here so let's go."
I nod in understanding and as a bright light engulfs us, I hang onto Rhea's promise to return to save my best friend.
Please be safe, Isabelle.
~Author's note~
Chapter 3 has been rewritten! I hope you guys like the rewritten version better, I sure as hell do! I'll start on Chapter 4 tomorrow :)
Vote and comment if you liked the chapter :D