Chapter Twenty: The Vampire Lord

"Would you stop looking at me like that?" I said, annoyed and slightly frightened about the way she was just staring emptingly at me. My cell seemed to shrink as the time passed, and with Casey as my only company, it wasn't getting better.

"You know I'm so serious that I'm not afraid to beat the shit out of you if you don't stop staring at me like that!" I screeched. All she did was smile and stare, I was seriously considering that she had totally lost her mind, "Hello, has vampirism rotted your mind?" I called, getting no answer.

"Apparently so," I muttered. I would have been perfectly content having just me in this cell, in fact I probably would have been fine with it, almost. But with Casey here, acting like a one person freak show, she might as well be dead, dead and sitting in a chair. I had seen those kind of movies; the person is just smiling and sitting down. But then when the heroine goes up to shake the person awake, the person falls over, a bloody knife stabbed into their back, and screams echo across the movie screen. Yeah, you know that, it was kinda like that.

The jingling of keys brought my eyes soaring up, to the two figures unlocking the door. My hopes were slightly dashed when I didn't see Chris's silhouette, but at least that might mean either me or Casey was getting out of here. As they walked to me, I knew that I was the one leaving, yes, I silently rejoiced. They roughly pulled me to my feet, "Hey, hey, watch it. You haven't been the one sitting on a stone floor hours on end, my rear is numb," I protested. As I finally stood up, I could feel the familiar tingling going all over my body as my body woke itself up. They pulled me to the doorway, and I was ticked off when I saw Casey silently get up off the chair, acting as if the past three hours hadn't just happened. My thoughts travelled back to the village and the pack, and most of all Jake and Chris. Now that I think about it, those were the only two people besides Lucy that I could really trust, and even Lucy was kinda on the brinks. That's really sad that you know that you only have two people in the whole world that actually care about your well-being.

We walked down halls, that I wouldn't have remembered, because the first and only time I had been in them I had kinda been unconscious. Casey kept close behind me, her hand barely brushing my tied together ones as she walked. Her calm cool collection that I had always known her for having was back, minus the laughter and joy. I kept my face the solid emotionless palette, as if I was an operative in a secret mission for the FBI, that is just what I looked like, my feelings were off the wall.

Luckily, even if I was bad at lying, I was good at appearing that I was, my voice might give everything away, but my face would show no clues. This, this Vampire Lord, if he thought I was going to let him kill me easily, then he had another thing coming. I was pretty sure no prophecy could have predicted this, and that it had been messed up by the simple and ugly presence of a beast name Ambrosia. Sugar coated crap, that was pretty much what she consisted of, crap.

"Think you could make the halls a little brighter down here, some of your guests might not be as well equipped to the dark as you?" I chipped in with my usual sarcasm, trying to lighten the dampened mood of my soon-to-be-killers, how nice.

"No," one of the guards responded, his tone emotionless and flat.

"Do you like tacos?" I asked randomly, desperate for a person to converse with.

"No,"

"How about ice cream?"

"No,"

"How can you not like ice cream? Unless of course you are lactose intolerant, are you lactose intolerant?"

"No,"

"Do you know any other words besides 'No'?" I asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

"Yes," Silent Victory dance, one for Kenz, zero Vampire creeps.

You ask why I was enjoying myself at a time like this, the reply is simple. Some people like to mourn death and such things by crying and sobbing and going all silent on the inside and out. Well me, I have gone through my fair share, and a couple others, of death, and have learned that laughter is one of the best ways to heal a broken heart, and I hadn't been using that tool lately.

"Shut up," Casey growled in my ear, and if you expected me to listen to that no-brained slut then you have another thing coming. "What happened to you? Did you disappear into the world known as your empty mind? Because I've heard that you can wonder around for days in a field of nothingness," I taunted, it was weak, but sometimes weak humor could be the best.

Her teeth ground together, and she had been walking so close that I heard every crunch. The hall stretched endlessly, the same things repeated over and over again, even the same dim lighting known as torches, flickering the same way. "You guys really got that whole vampire in a dungeon thing down," I mused.

Shakes of heads and soft chuckles came from my two identical guards; I had broken the seal on their flat lips. Finally we came to a halt in front of a giant wooden door, its large brass handle hung limply. I had just noticed that my bindings had been clipped off, and reached to use the knocker to knock on the door. It didn't budge a millimeter, no matter how much strength I put into the lifting of the handle. A vampire's hand swatted mine away, and lifted it with ease, knocking the door with a dull thud. "I loosened it up," why I said that I have no idea, I mean it wasn't even something you could loosen even. But fear started settling in, if vampires could do that and I couldn't even lift the frickin door knob, I was in deep crap.

"Come in," a quiet voice said, but we al l heard the distinct power hidden in its crevices. The doors opened as if by magic, opening to reveal a grand room, marble flooring curving upward in steps up to a chair. It wasn't a particularly special chair; it more resembled a fancier version of a dining room chair, but only by a tad. A figure stood up from the chair, a smile on his face, "Why, Kenzie it is such a treat to meet your acquaintance again," His blonde hair fell away from his eyes, revealing the same ones from a previous vision. When I had been kidnapped, there had been a woman and a man, but the woman had clearly been in charge, that much had been sure. But it was the man that now stood before me; his fangs glinted in the flickering torch-light. Hauntingly familiar memories came back to me, feeing on my fear for the man. Then out of the shadows came another familiar figure, the wolf, all black in all its glory, its silver eyes boring into mine. Fazing into a human, fully clothed stood a man, a seemingly identical to the vampire. "I see you've already met Lucas, or more commonly known to the people of your pack, Curtis," both of them smiled eerily alike.

The fears compiling on top of each other, was almost too hard to bear. My knees were locked as to not topple over to come crashing into the floor. But my face showed none of what I truly felt, a gift I had always cherished, I would not give them my vulnerability.

"What happened to your master?" I questioned steadily.

The man's eyebrows raised, surprised I had spoken, "No one has ever been the master of me, I like to think of things like that of being my own personal puppet show." His smile scared me out of my wits. "But I am the master of thousands, and soon to be two populations, the vampires and that pitiful excuse for a werewolf pack. They will never stand a chance against the army I have arranged."

"You will never be the master of me," I whispered.

He stepped towards me, and I took one step back. He took that opportunity to blur forward, gripping my chin lightly and focusing my face on his, "I will, your life is in my hands now," he growled.