"Run Alice, run, and don't look back, don't turn around. You will never tell anyone what happened tonight. NOW RUN".

My face is pressed to hers, so she can take in every word that slips from my lips. Her gasping breath tickles my nose, her eyes wide, paralysed by fear.

She slowly nods but looks terrified to move, I shove her harder than I intended to, hoping her mind will click into survival mode. She stumbles back, her eyes never leaving Liten Vampyr's icy stare, that pierces her from behind me.

I scream at her , my voice echoing in the darkness-I'm well aware her chance to escape is fleeting. "Fucking run Alice".

As if a fire had been lit under her feet, she sprinted away from us and into the darkness, disappearing into the shadows as if her life depended upon it, because it did.

Liten Vampyr strolls past me, chuckling to herself. "Do you honestly think I couldn't catch up with her?"

"But you won't ".

"Really? Enlighten me Oscar, why do you think I would take orders from you?"

I choose my next words carefully. I know one slip of the tongue could mean life or death for Alice. "I'm not ordering you, I'm asking you. I'm appealing to your human side".

She steps in front of me, closing into my personal space. She tucks her wild and untamed hair behind her ear, revealing her beautiful face that could have most men on their knees begging for her touch.
While I tower above her, her presence unnerves me and sends bolts of electricity hitting every nerve in my body.

"There is always a price to pay, Oscar." She purrs from her plump, moist lips.

I stammer, "w-w-w-what do you want ?"

"To behave human, I must feel human. I'm dead inside. You ask too much of me".

I have no idea what possessed me to do what I did next, all I know in that moment the only thought that passed through my mind was to make her feel something, anything, because the dead monster she had become is too hardened to the inflictions that humans have; the need for touch, kindness, and love.

I pulled her in closer and tilted her tiny face in my hands, leaned in and kissed her plump, cold lips. Her lips were cold as ice yet as soft as rose petals. At first she was frozen beneath my touch, maybe debating if to rip my beating heart from my chest.

But then, like an ice cube in the hot sun, I felt her melt into my touch, her lips gently kissing back. Her hands worked up my arms, pulling herself closer into me, my heart pounding like a beating drum, racing against her perked breast as I fold myself lower down into her embrace.

As if time had stopped and all sense had left me, I felt myself completely under her spell. What was a rash act to awaken some humanity in her had now alighted a fire of desire in me for her. The sweet, sensual smell of her skin danced around me, I was lost deep into her until the moment was cruelly broken by the sound of the iron gates at the entrance crashing shut by Alice's desperate exit.

While I felt relieved she had escaped, resentment that the moment had been halted bubbled away inside of me.

Slowly she retracted from my embrace, slipping through my fingers like water. The usual steely confidence was gone from her face. "Bravo, well played Oscar, you distracted me so she could escape".

"That's not what I was trying to do".

I watch her face contort in disgust by the thought that I've tricked her, her raven black mane falls down like a curtain hiding her beauty once again.

I tuck her hair behind her ear, and tilt her face up to mine so her emerald green eyes can see what I'm about to say is truthful.

"I wasn't trying to trick or distract you, your words were that you didn't feel human... so I was trying to awaken something in you but in doing so, I think I awoke something in myself, it's been awhile since .....".

"Since you've felt human, Oscar".

Her tiny hands intertwine with mine, her fingers interlinked. Her touch is gentle like crushed snow.

Not another word is said between us as we stumble through the darkness down to the iron gates to find Dad, but unlike when we entered under the shadow of night, there is now a warm glow that has circled around us and shimmers like stars with warmth that radiates and pulsates from our souls.

Brief moment of light has broken through all the darkness that's absorbed and consumed both of us for so long.