Chapter 4

She put her arms over her head and hunched over to protect herself from the scattered bats.

When she was sure they were gone, she straightened up and stared at the blocked entrance. She walked over to it and tried pushing it, but it wouldn't budge; she gave up on the third try, turned, and cautiously walked ahead to see if there were any other exits in that dark cave.

"I should have just stuck to going in circles," She whispered to herself as she looked around the empty cave.

"Oh my god!" She screamed when she saw a skeleton of what looked to be an animal, but she couldn't identify the animal, the skeletal structure looked so weird.

She wondered if she'd ever get to see her home again or if she was going to end up like that weird animal.

She suddenly caught sight of something on top of a stone slate.

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.

Why was everything starting to get familiar?

She shook that thought out of her head and walked towards the slate. As she neared it, she finally saw that the thing on the slate was a coffin, just like in the book she'd been reading.

Rose couldn't believe her eyes.

A thought suddenly popped into her mind. Maybe she had hit her head during the fall, and now, she was hallucinating. Yes, it had to be.

Rose slowly walked over to the coffin and slid her finger over the dusty top.

"But this feels real," She whispered.

Curiosity got the best of her as she went around the coffin, luckily, it wasn't locked. She took a deep breath before pulling it open.

"Jesus Christ!" Rose exclaimed, putting her hand over her chest as she breathed hard.

She stood frozen beside the coffin, staring at a young man with the most beautiful face she'd ever seen, lying still and comfortably inside the coffin.

Was he dead? He looked so pale like he was dead and yet so beautiful to be called dead. Talk about gothic beauty.

Rose knew she should be running for her life at that moment, but she felt something drawing her closer to the man in the coffin, she flashed her light closer to his face as she reached her hand down and placed it right under his nose to check if he was still breathing. No air; his nose bridge was cold as ice, too.

Rose was still busy staring at the man's face when she felt something very icy touch her arm, she felt her heart drop to her stomach as she slowly turned her head to look at her arm, that's when she saw the white, slim, masculine fingers wrapped tightly around her wrist.

Her soul left her, and her heart completely stopped beating before starting to beat like a parade band in her chest.

"Hail fucking Mary!" Rose whispered in a frightened tone; her lips quivered, and her eyes widened unnaturally.

She felt her legs become paralyzed from fear and unable to move or run.

She dared to fearfully turn around and look at the man's face again, just to find his blood-colored eyes, staring icily at her.

She was about to scream when the young man suddenly pulled her into his coffin with incredible speed, and the last thing she remembered was feeling how cold his body was before she felt an unnatural sleep overtake her.

***

"He's awake," Damien said, looking out from the window of the tall dark building and staring at the red moon.

"Finally, after two thousand years..." Damon replied.

Behind them, a tall dark figure materialized through a thick foggy smoke, and immediately, the two young men went down on each knee, not daring to look back at the powerful man behind them.

"Welcome, Master Levi," They said in reverence with their head bowed.

"Rise," Cassius's voice was cold, quiet, yet commanding and powerful.

Damien and Damon slowly rose and, very slowly and cautiously, turned towards Cassius. They didn't want to risk making the wrong move in front of a powerful awakened, they didn't want to see the end of their immortality just yet.

As they turned towards Cassius, they noticed the sleeping lady he carried in his arms, and without being told, they immediately knew that she was human, the scent of her fresh blood was so sweet and tempting. But they didn't dare to question him about her, rather, they knew she meant trouble, trouble for every creature in their kingdom.

"Call everyone, I need an explanation for this," Cassius said coldly, looking down emotionlessly at the girl in his arms.

"Yes, mas-" Before they could finish their reply, Cassius vanished.

"We're dead," Damon said anxiously.

"Yes, why are you stating a fact?" Damien asked.

"No, no, I mean, we're in trouble," Damon whispered, pointing upwards to where he knew Cassius would be.

"Ooh, that... Yes, we're dead," Damien sighed.

***

Rose couldn't understand how she felt or where she was; all she knew was that she was having the best sleep of her life; the velvet quilt she felt beneath her skin was so cool and soothing that she didn't want to ever wake up from this sweet slumber.

"Umm mm," She mumbled in her sleep and turned over to her side, but she suddenly felt like someone was staring at her.

Not just an ordinary stare, the type of stare that makes your skin crawl.

She wondered when Laura came into her house without her noticing, and she couldn't understand why her best friend would be staring at her like a psycho while she slept.

She decided to ignore her, but when she felt the stare getting weirder and weirder, she decided to open her eyes.

Rose slowly opened her eye to a slit, but the room was too dark for her to make anything out.

Dark?

She never did dark; her room was never dark; she made sure she had placed her bed right in front of the window so the sun streamed right in every morning and the moon by night; her room had never been this dark.

She decided to stop lazying about and get creative, maybe she had forgotten to open her windows when she returned from work yesterday.

With her eyes still closed, she rolled over to the other side of the bed, ignoring her brain telling her that the bed was unusually longer than it should be.

Still closing her eyes, she lowered her feet to the floor and instantly opened her eyes to look at her feet when she felt a soft furry carpet under her legs.

Her eyes widened instantly as she saw the dark carpet beneath her feet, something told her this wasn't her home.

She frowned and quickly brought her face up to check her current location, and that's when she saw him, sitting majestically in the shadows in a high-backed chair with his legs elegantly crossed in front of him.

His red eyes bore into her soul, sending cold shivers down her spine.

Rose opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out; fear had frozen her in place; she couldn't even bring herself to make a sound; her legs trembled and gave out, landing her hard on the floor. She had thought this was a hallucination due to the high fall from the cliff, but the fall to the floor just now was quite painful, making her realize that this, was her new reality.

Images flashed through her mind in a matter of urgent seconds; she remembered how she had been pushed down a high cliff by Penelope, how she had tried looking for a way but kept going in circles, how she freely entered a dark and dangerous cage, and lastly, how she foolishly opened a coffin of what seemed to be a sleeping vampire!

She started to think that maybe, she should have listened to her friend and not read that book again. But no, she didn't, she had gone ahead to read it over again and again, and now look where it got her!

She was panicking.

Has she drawn the dark world to herself? No way! She had to find a way to get back to her friends, she's probably just fallen into some kind of Halloween party or something.

Cassius slowly rose from his chair, approaching the little human who kept shifting away from him on the floor.

He would have killed her for daring to disrupt his sleep the moment he woke up, but he wanted to find out who had betrayed him by letting a useless human cross the sacred realms into his kingdom.

"N-no, p-please, stay away from me," Rose stammered, slowly backing away from the dark figure that was approaching her in predatory steps.

"No, oh God, no," She sniffed quietly as her back hit the bed; she stared into the red deadly eyes as she frantically used her hand to search for any handy weapon behind her.

In the blink of an eye, Cassius moved in a blur and had his cold fingers wrapped around Rose's slim neck.

"Argh!!" Rose screamed so loud as she felt herself being lifted off the floor by the cold strong fingers around her neck.

As she kept screaming, she flailed her legs, choked, and tried hitting the arm that held her, but all her efforts were like talking to a dead man, futile.

"Quiet," Cassius ordered in a very low voice, looking strangely at the human in his hand.

Rose felt a chill run down her spine from the chilling voice of the deadly man who was currently choking her by the neck and immediately shut her mouth, knowing it was for the best at that moment.

"Who let you in?" Cassius asked.

He had just woken from a two-thousand-year healing sleep, indeed, he was hungry, so hungry that it was hard for him to concentrate as he felt the agitated pulse on the tiny neck of the little human in his hand.

His patience was running thin.

"Answer me," He said menacingly, his long sharp fangs shooting out of his mouth.

"Oh," *Choke* "my," * Cough* "God!" *Choke*

At that moment, Rose knew that she had willingly woken a vampire up and offered herself up as a meal for him.