This World Can Kill You

"P-please Yo...ung Maaas...ster…" He slurred his words because the six feet man had his long bony fingers around his neck. His father told him about this man but he didn't expect to meet him in his lifetime.

"Where am I?" He growled and tightened his grip around the critter's neck.

Theo darted his gaze to his wife and daughter, both slumped and unconscious on the floor after this animal fed on them.

"I can't talk…" He bravely tapped the vampire's hand that was around his neck. The vampire squinted his glowing eyes on him before he loosened up his grip. Not much but he was glad that he could breathe easier. Although, his feet were still dangling in the air and his head was pressed against the cold wall and he had a feeling that this man when provoked would slam his head without much difficulty.

"Speak!" He snarled at him.

"My name is Theo. I'm the great-great-great-grandson of your butler Augustus!" He panicked, trying to remember how many generations had passed that buried this bastard. "Agghhh!" He screamed when the bastard sunk his fangs on his neck. It hurts! He wondered if his wife and daughter were fine.

"Did your great-great-great-grandfather tell you that you can't lie to me because I can hear your thoughts?" He grimaced and spat this lowlife's blood and threw him to the side like a disgusting piece of shit that he is.

He strode to the flickering photo on the wall, with people talking. He grabbed it and pulled out of the wall and growled like an animal when he didn't see anyone behind it. What kind of sorcery is it?

From what the critten named Theo said and from what he was seeing, he was now in a world vastly different from the one he was born in.

"What year are we now?" He asked, sauntering to Theo who was trying to wake up the woman that he first bit. Her blood was disgusting, so was the younger one. Not like the one in the basement. He growled in rage, grabbing the back of Theo's shirt and threw him to the couch.

"I was asking you a question!" He said in a thundering voice.

"2029," he said in a small voice, cupping his swollen shoulder that hit the corner of the console table when he threw him like he weighed nothing.

"500 years?!" His anger was replaced with incredulity. He slept for five centuries. He staggered like a drunkard when questions started to pour in his head. What happened to his father? Why Fleur was in the basement of this house…wait if five hundred years had passed, the young woman in the basement could not be Fleur!

"You! Who was the woman that woke me up?"

Theo, who realized that the vampire was asking about Iris, kept his cool. He breathed deeply and remembered the meditation technique that his father forced him to learn since he was a kid.

"She's my youngest daughter." His breathing became even despite the fear that he was feeling. "She was prepared for you, milord." He lowered his head politely, trying to remember everything that he was taught.

Those teachings that he found stupid and silly. He found it crazy that he had to learn how to serve a vampire and why he had to take care of Iris and keep her safe for his family's safety.

"Daughter?" He scoffed. "Don't try to conceal your thoughts. I could read them like an open book." He was lying but he won't let this critten know about it. "She wasn't your daughter. Better to tell me the truth with your own mouth before I rip your head off your shoulder."

He sat himself down on the couch opposite Theo. He could not hear his thoughts but he had bitten all of them and the woman who looked like Fleur had special blood. The same blood that 'killed' him.

Theo exhaled a shaky breath. He regretted not listening to his father when he told him to learn the breathing technique that had been passed to every member of their family through generations. Now, the life of his family was in his hands.

"Milord, the woman who was living in the basement is my youngest daughter…" When he saw the anger flicker in the vampire eyes, he hastily added. "She's my youngest daughter because I took her in since she was a baby! I put her in the basement to keep her safe from your kind."

"Whose child is she? And where are my kind?"

Calixto swallowed a painful lump that had been lodged at the back of his throat from the moment his eyes landed on the woman that looked like Fleur's doppelganger.

"Her name is Iris, milord. She's the daughter of an old family friend. Her family was murdered—"

"Murdered?!" His voice rose up in an octave with the thought of Fleur's family burning into ashes.

"I don't know the whole story, milord. Her family was…hidden and she was brought here by my father who sadly passed away last year." He carefully watched the body language of the vampire who appeared to be well-composed with the way he crossed his legs and folded his hands on his lap.

"Your kind was also…hidden, I believe…" He smacked his head for all the times that he wasn't listening to his father's teaching.

"They are still alive?" He said in a small voice and the embers of pain and betrayal were caressed by a small breeze of hope to obtain his revenge.

"To be honest, milord, I'm not sure anymore. This is a very different world. Uhm…your kind had been reduced to books as stories and movies to scare small children."

"To scare small children?" He arched his brow haughtily. "I can kill you easily, you should understand that by now. You, mere mortals, were nothing but annoying flies." A menacing smile curved the corner of his lips.

Theo met Calixto's eyes for the first time. "I'm sure we are, milord. But you have to understand that this new world can kill you too, like you're nothing."