UVN - Chapter 3

[Escape]



   The stale air burned my lungs as I propelled myself up yet another flight of stairs, passing several more doors. I continued running, pushing myself, afraid to open any of them for fear that I would run into more of whatever those creatures were. The primal scream echoed through the stairwell as I ran faster, chest screaming for fresh air, muscles begging for rest as I tried to put as much space between myself and whatever was behind me.

   A few more minutes and the stair case ended in another small landing. The only way out was a large wooden door similar to the ones in the rest of the house, but made from a darker, heavier wood. I struggled to pull it open, my bruised arms screaming in protest, raw hands burning as they touched the iron handle. I mustered the last of my strength and gave one last pull.

  The door swung open with a groan and I ran outside, another animalistic scream echoing in the night around me. I stopped running, something was wrong. I stood in the center of the area and surveyed my surroundings, disbelief flooding my mind as I looked at the night sky around me, drawing in deep breaths of the fresh air.

   I was on a large, flat balcony suspended high up on a tower. It seemed almost medieval in design, and pieces of the stone walls surrounding the edges had cracked and broken away in their old age. Around me the sky was the brightest dark I had ever seen.. No moon floated in the sky, but the stars were so bright that it illuminated the hazy trees around me.

   I didn't get the chance to look very long, I turned to face the door as footsteps sounded in the stairwell there. Someone, something, was coming calmly up the stairs, small echoes enhanced by the stone corridor bouncing around in the empty night. It was the blonde haired Vampire from the dungeon that emerged from the darkness. I gasped as the starlight illuminated her body, making her glow with a preternatural beauty that seemed impossible. Her green eyes were filled with hatred and anger as she stood there, the breeze blowing her golden hair around her, softly catching the folds of her dress and wrapping it around her almost shapeless finger.

   I stumbled back a bit, tripping on a piece of old stone as I did so. She laughed, a maniacal but childish sound that infiltrated my ears and made my head feel as if it were about to explode as I sat there, bloody, broken and bruised, hands covering my ears, praying to God for someone to save me as the woman I had come to know as Brenna approached me slowly.

"So pathetic you little creatures are..."
Her voice was soft and smooth, mocking me.

"You killed my mate..."
She smiled at me, leaning over my knees, her angelic face only inches away from mine, words filled with hatred and anger, yet remaining sing-song and childish like her outward body. She grabbed my throat, wrapping her small hand around it's circumference and squeezing, cutting off my air supply. I struggled for air, taking in slow, strangled breaths, my hands clawing at hers as I struggled. No child should ever be this strong. This knowledge made me panic more as Brenna laughed again, squeezing my windpipe harder, and raised me from the ground.
"You killed... My Damien!"
She screamed at my face when she had suspended me, with a single hand, high above her head, as far as her small arms could reach. Brenna gripped my neck even harder for a moment. I could hear the small crack of bnes crunching before a shocking pain shot through my body and I was propelled into the wall near the door we had both exited.

  I felt the impact resonate through my bones, shaking my entire body. The pain of several other bones snapping filled my mind and my vision faded out. I heard myself crying from what seemed like a millennium away, and my scream when I felt the small hand grip my hair, pulling me to my feet sharply.


   I coughed wildly in pain, my body trying to breath even though she had broken my windpipe. I tried to scream as the child put her face to mine, but all that came from my lips was a copious amount of blood and a cat-like gurgling noise.
"You. Will. Pay"
She whispered in my ear before slowly moving her face down to the nape of my neck, licking the skin there. I felt her breath on my neck, cold and unnatural as the breeze picked up again, whipping our hair and clothes around us.  Two sharp fangs brush against my flesh and i shuddered involuntarily, my mind fading in and out of consciousness.

   The fangs sunk slowly in, turning the scream that was building in my chest into another strangled bubble of a cry. It was the most painful sensation I had ever experienced in my life. The pain rocketed through my body in static waves like an electrical current, dragging me back to reality with each drag I felt her take, and propelling me back into the hazing state of mind every time she swallowed the blood she greedily pulled from my veins.

   I heard myself gurgle in pain again from a distance. My body began to relax involuntarily and slowly the pain from my broken bones faded out though the pain from the feeding grew more intense. The pain wasn't in my neck, but in my veins and my being, a feeling of my veins being dry and on fire, as if someone was tearing my soul from my body. I could see it in my mind, emanating around me in translucent waves, time seeming to slow around me in tune with the fading pulse that echoed in my ears, drowning out the world around me. My vision faded again, phasing in and out as my body finally went completely limp in her arms. She slipped one hand around my waist and the other behind my neck, pushing me harder against the stone wall to keep a firm grip on me.  Slowly, and groggily, I accepted my fate, allowing myself to surrender to death, but just as suddenly as she had appeared in the room after Damien's murder, she was gone.

   I crumpled to the ground, my body screaming with a pain that rocketed my body into full awareness, Brenna's spell broken. I wanted to yell, to get up and run away, but nothing in my body would cooperate. As I lay there in a broken heap my mind would not form a coherent thought, the hyper awareness fading to a dull feeling of detachment, as if I was no longer in my own body. I could feel the tears running down my cheeks as I prepared to surrender to the oblivion for the second time.

   Someone was beside me then, speaking in low whispers. Two voices argued between each other in a language I couldn't recognize. I heard a shuffling as one of the voices crouched down and wrapped me in his arms, picking me up from the ground tenderly. I bounced between detachment and full awareness and pain as the figure did so, but my body would not respond in any way other than a gurgling moan resulting in the feeling of blood running down my face from my mouth. Whoever was with the person that picked me up took it as his duty to pry my eyelids open, one at a time, and shine a hallogen flashlight into my eyes. When the light cleared from my vision I found myself staring into a familiar pair of Honey colored eyes. I managed a small smile for the first time since my capture before rocketing off into blackness for the last time.