2. Forced wedding

I walk downstairs, where every vampire is looking at me. I ignore them and walk past them following my guide outside, who is going to bring me to the wedding. It's already crowded in his landscape and outside all the vampires are talking, looking at me. I look so different from the rest of the people, it's almost as if he did choose this dress on purpose. Everyone at this wedding has dressed in black or gray. As I look further, I see Xandros standing with a woman talking about who knows.

Not knowing what I have to do now, I wait at the point the guide put me to. It was one of the vampires of Xandros, the grey-toned vampire with his skinny body. He looks kind of funny if we were in a funny situation, what we are not.

Then I see him sign at me to come to him and some kind of vampire priest. Which is very scary. They have here a vampire priest, serious? What does he do? People turning into Satan lovers. Who am I kidding? I am forced to do this wedding, and I am still humble and listen to what they say!

"Cleo, you can't do a thing with a garden full of vampires," I speak to myself, convincing myself to be quiet and to listen. They give me a sign and I walk towards Xandros and the priest who is standing at the end of the red carpet that is laying on the grass. As I walk further, I feel all the eyes of the vampires on me.

Here I stand with Xandros. And I am shocked to see we are on a cliff! Why is there a cliff here, and then I think of the ride we had taken to this castle? Why did I not know we were on a hill? I must be far away from my thoughts.

We stand there and I hear him ask Xandros if he wants to marry me, and he agreed. Then he turned to me with his black robe on and his red scarf around his neck. He wanted me to ask something, but then everybody starts to laugh and are applauding for the newlywed couple. The priest didn't even ask if I wanted to marry him.

"It's not if you have a choice," Xandros whispered in my ear, what made me so angry. Then the priest told one last thing before the ceremony ends. "Till death, or hers, do you part." Wow, how deep and thoughtfully, he can't die and when I'm dead he can marry another human. How many humans had he married already, and did they wear the same dress as I am in.

Then the crowd is shouting "jump".

What jump? This wedding is starting weird, but gets weirder with the minute it goes on.

The weirdo priest takes my arms and took me to the edge of the cliff. Are they mad? Do they really want me to jump? And where is Xandros? Before I can think or even look for him, I hear them screaming and shouting even more. And then the final push.

I look underneath me and I see rock and water, and my throat is already sore from screaming. I see the rocks coming closer to me. Feels like I'm falling in slow motion, and it keeps on going before I finally will fall and this will be all over.

Someone is taking me in his arms and embracing me till I feel the water and try to hold my breath.

I feel that same arms pulling me to the surface. Where I spit all the water out of my lungs.

"I'm still alive," I laugh as I speak, still in shock from what happened. Next to me is laying Xandros in his boxer and without a shirt, which showed all of his abs and his six-pack or is it an eight. Who cares, I'm angry at him, I start slapping him on his arm.

"Are you crazy! You almost killed me!"

He is only silent looking at me and I start to know why he looks at me. My dress is all see-through from the water and is showing my breasts underneath.

I walk into the woods that lie next to the stream of water, angry with the heavy dress skirt holding me into my arms. All wet with my hair in front of my face I almost hit a tree, but Xandros, my abductor, saved me before the hit.

"Come follow me." He walks in front of me, but I don't want to follow him. I want to go home to my husband that is waiting for me. Cleo, what are you even thinking, he knows the vampires took you, and they would never bring you back.

I didn't listen to Xandros and I go my own way. What was a stupid idea to do this on my own in a wood where I have never been? All night have I walked and wandered in the woods until It turned light what you could call light, it's like a red sun up in the sky. That has something to do with them being walking in the daylight, this sun lets them go outside in the day. Never had I seen it, and at night it is a dark blue moon that gives a little light, but not so bright as the moon will do or what I heard of it. And here am I in this moonlight that is so dark I couldn't see even where I was walking to. Then I heard a voice behind me.

"How long are you going to walk?" Xandros asked me, leaning at a tree next to me. I see his eyes lighting up in green color, and It's creepy but a little beautiful, just a little. But this man I hate, why did he choose me and how?

"Forever, I don't want to go back to that place. I want to go home, to my husband!" I scream at him, but he let me jump up when I feel him touching me.

"I am your husband now, and I want you to come with me," He gets annoyed by my behavior, and I like it when I am annoying him. If he thought to get it easy with me as his human wife, he is definitely wrong.

I still keep on standing in the place where I am, and he takes me again in his arms, throwing me over his shoulder. Furious, I am slapping him on his back as he keeps walking through the woods.

He doesn't feel me even hitting him on the back, he keeps on walking and taking me back to that awful castle where he is going to put me again in that room. I look at him when he puts me on the ground, back before the door of the castle. He is wearing a light white t-shirt and black pants. He looks more youthful in these clothes, as in the suits I had seen him in before.

He took me back to my room, slamming the door and leaving me alone in this room, what felt like a prison. I ripped off the dress from my body that now had dried up. It was so dirty of the woods where I had been at all night. As I finally got that dress off my body, I step into the bathroom and go into the shower, where I let the hot water flush all the dirt off me. When I am going to bed, I am still wondering what he is going to do with me. There were a lot of rumors in my city about them and their humans, but I don't know what I would believe. All the rumors were bad and even cruel to hear, and I don't want them to be true. Xandros is not coming back, Which makes me more relaxing than him looking at me with his yellowy, green eyes. Then I can finally sleep, tired of being in that woods for a whole night.

The next morning, after an entire day and night of sleep. I wake up in this room again. Angry because it was all a dream to be back with my husband. The same vampire is standing at my door asking me to go for breakfast. What I thought is weird because vampires don't eat. When I am downstairs in the dining room, I look at the table. Where I see Xandros sitting with food before him on his plate. Is he eating? I thought they couldn't eat.

"Bon appétit," he said to me, what I think does mean to enjoy my meal. What could it be else?

I look at him eating his toast and drinking from a mug. He feels that I am looking at him.

"Is there a problem?" He asks me and drinks from his mug.

"You are eating," I said to him, shocked that he is eating. I know so little about vampires, and they behave, but this I knew.

"I had learned myself to eat, I am 500 years old, I had time enough." He said if it was normal. He is 500 years old? I thought, almost dropping my chin on the table. I don't want to know how many wives he had already killed. Or do I?

"How many times have you been married?" Asking him directly, maybe a little scared to know the answer.

"You are my first."