Playing With Fire (8 page)

The
vampire’s white skin glowed blue in the faint light. I followed the leech for
about five steps when questions popped into my head.

“Hey,”
I said trying to get his attention. He cocked his head back to look at me but
didn’t stop walking. “If you’re a vampire, why are you showing me the way into
your queen’s castle?”

“Because
I’m hoping you’ll kill her,” he answered casually. I was even more confused
then.

“Um,”
I started, dumbfounded. “Why exactly?”

“Because
she’s an evil hag,” he said while looking at me again. If I had to guess, then
I would have guessed that I had a very confused face on at that point. “You
wouldn’t understand. I’ve been waiting for a chance like this for nearly a
thousand years.”

“But
she’s your queen, shouldn’t you be all about protecting her?” I asked. I would
assume people would want to protect their rulers, unless they were like me and
they didn’t really care what happened to them as long as it didn’t effect what
they
did
care about.

“None
of us chose her, especially not me,” he said darkly. “She took my entire family
and anyone else in the castle and turned them into vampires. None of us wanted
to be vampires, but she didn’t give any of us the choice. She attacked us one
by one and changed us into monsters. She locked my family away because we were
rebellious. We would not drink blood from the humans she lured, because they
were always good people, and never people who deserved to die. We chose to go
and hunt bandits or murderers instead, sometimes even sickly people who were
about to die anyway only to end their suffering. Everyone else was too afraid
of the queen to join us, but no one is serving her by choice. When she locked
my family away, I was out feeding, and when I returned I was attacked and
almost forced to the same fate as my family. As we speak they are being starved
to death, and if the queen isn’t killed soon, they
will
be dead.”

“How
do I know that when you free your family, they won’t be so hungry that they’ll
eat me and my brothers?” I asked. Don’t get me wrong, I was sympathetic to him
and his situation, but I was more concerned about my own family than his.

“Because,
dear Scarlet,” he began happily, “at that point, we will no longer be vampires.
No one inside the castle is a true vampire except for the queen. If she is
killed, we will all turn back into humans.”

“Wow,”
I said in disbelief. “Is it really that easy?”

“Well…
no,” he said. “Since none of us are true vampires, we only have immortality, no
super strength or speed, and when we bite people and don’t kill them they do
not become vampires. We can bleed too. But the biggest advantage we have is that
we can withstand the sun, while the queen cannot. I’m not asking you to kill
her on the spot, but the to just keep her busy until morning, and when the sun
comes through the windows of the throne room, she will turn to dust and we will
be free. But I’m also telling you it will most likely be just the two of us
fighting a queen whose strength matches up to one thousand.”

I
didn’t ask any more questions. It was a lot of information to process in the
first place and if I didn’t think my head would explode from too much
information, I’d ask about a million more questions, but I didn’t want to risk
it.

I
followed Gabriel for about an hour before we stopped. The greyish tunnel walls
with the little blue stones scattered randomly around were slowly leaving, and
the tunnel started to get darker. Though I could hardly see at all, Gabriel
seemed just fine. The tunnel continued in front of us and was completely
lightless. The vampire motioned for me to wait as he advanced into the
darkness. The sound of metal scraping against metal tortured my ears as golden
light flooded the tunnel.

The
sudden light stung my eyes and I threw my arms up to shield them until they
adjusted. When I dropped my arms, I saw Gabriel standing in front of a doorway
of golden light, waiting for me to follow. I took a deep breath before going
after him. From this point on it would be like entering the lion’s den, like my
brothers did. However in their case, they didn’t do it by choice. I was really
starting to rethink the whole thing, but Gabriel didn’t give me the chance to
come to a conclusion. A look of alarm flashed across his face, and he snatched
my arm and dragged me in to the golden lit room.

Gabriel
threw me behind himself as he flipped around and shut the door. It sealed
easily enough, and when I looked for it I couldn’t find it again. It looked
exactly like the stone wall that surrounded it. A faint line in the expertly
cut stone was all that signified the door. No one could simply stumble upon it
by accident; they would have to be searching specifically for it, and even then
it would be a one in a million chance that they would actually find it.

As
soon as the door had sealed, Gabriel snatched my arm and before I knew it we
were running out of the golden room into a gloomy hallway. The whole layout did
scream vampire. The walls were originally grey, but black cloth was draped onto
them and arranged in a way that blocked out most of the windows. The rugs were
blood red with intricate black, curvy designs. I even thought I saw one of
Velkire’s symbols, which was unnerving to me. Chandeliers of gold hung from the
ceilings, but they gave off very little light, making the hallways seem sad and
lonely but dangerous at the same time. It felt like something could grab you
from a corner and eat you. It was a possibility. I hadn’t seen any other
vampires besides Gabriel, but I knew there were more. I could feel it in my
very soul: there was evil in that castle.

We
passed a few wooden doors and a couple of smaller hallways that branched off
from the one we were taking. There were a lot of decorations such as suits of
armor and large paintings of past kings, queens, princes, and princesses. A
particular painting caught my eye. I only got a fleeting glance of it, and
wasn’t able to see too clearly, but what I did see raised more questions in my
mind. A king with white hair stood with a warm smile in the painting. His arms
were around a fair queen with black hair and green eyes, and a young boy with
pale white skin like his father and hair like raven feathers. He had his
mother’s eyes. The boy was smiling and his eyes were alive with laughter, as if
someone had just said something funny while the picture was being painted. The
mother had her arms around a small baby girl with brown eyes, like her father,
and white hair as well. What stood out to me the most besides the fact that
this was the last painting in the entire hallway was how the boy looked a bit
like Gabriel. The boy’s skin was just a tad darker, but then again, Gabriel was
a vampire, and all vampires’ were as pale as snow unless they had skin as dark
as night.

Before
I could ask questions, a huge double door entryway loomed before us. The doors
were narrow, but the tops of the immense doors disappeared into the darkness of
the very top of the ceiling. I was about to walk towards them when Gabriel
grabbed my arm again.

“Not
that way,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

With
that he led me back to a small door on the side of the hallway. It was worn
down, beaten up, and an all-around boring door. I couldn’t help but feel a tad
disappointed. When Gabriel opened it, it let out a pained moan and dust flew
off the hinges. He winced and glanced around to see if anyone had heard. A
second later he dragged me in and shut the door quickly. It whined in protest
but obeyed him. A twisting staircase loomed in front of us. I cocked my head up
to find the top, but it disappeared into the darkness. The only light came from
narrow windows in the walls, but only allowed a sliver every fifty feet or so.

“Hold
on,” Gabriel said as he saw me trying to advance on the stair case. “If we
continue on in this light, we might fall off the edge.”

Gabriel’s
white hands searched along the wall. Suddenly, he stopped, and pulled an unlit
torch from the darkness. He handed it to me and began to search his pockets.

“I
just need to find my flint,” he said, half to himself and half to me. I looked
at the top of the torch and it burst into flames.

“Here,”
I said, handing the torch back to him. The second he took it, pain raced
through me like I was being ripped apart by brute force. It jolted through my
entire body, and stopped at my stomach. I toppled with my arms in a death grip
across my waist, but the second I hit the ground the pain was gone. Gabriel put
the flaming torch back in its holster on the wall and quickly helped me up.

“What
happened?” he asked. “And how did you do that?”

“There
was an ember still burning in the torch,” I lied. “I just blew on it a little,
and don’t worry. I only pulled something.”

Gabriel
didn’t question, which was good. I still didn’t entirely trust the leech, and
if it turned out that he was lying I didn’t want my only advantage to be known
until it was too late for him. But the pain was new, and I was clueless myself.
For all I knew, I really
had
just pulled a muscle. I tried to convince myself
that that was the case, but deep down I wouldn’t accept it. Pulling a muscle
never hurt that bad.

I
decided to let it go and followed Gabriel up through the staircase. The steps
were ancient and looked like they could crumble to dust beneath our feet, so I
chose to stop looking down every time we climbed ten feet higher. As we passed
a slit of a window, a black dot whizzed in and out of sight. My eyes shot
outside instinctively, but there was nothing to be seen. Gabriel continued on without
noticing that I stopped, leaving me with only the silvery light of the moon to
see by. Not wanting to be alone in a castle full of man-eaters, I ran to catch
up to Gabriel. While trying my best to not fall off the rail-less stairs, I
caught up to Gabriel by almost running into him.

He
had stopped in front of a decrepit wooden door that didn’t fit well with the
castle. All the other doors were nicer than this, though they had all looked
ancient. Gabriel handed me the torch and told me to step back. I did what I was
told for once. After taking a step back, Gabriel rammed into the door with his
shoulder. I had expected it to collapse, but his efforts had no effect what-so-ever.
He tried again three times, but each had the same result as the first.

“Gabriel!”
a small girl’s voice called from the other side of the door. Relief and
happiness flooded Gabriel’s face as he put his ear to it.

“Jezebel!”
he called back. “Are you alright?”

“I’m
fine, but they took mother and father. The guard said something about some
people they caught. They want them to eat them. And he threw a weird boy in
here with wings! They told me to kill him, but I wouldn’t, and they left him here.
He broke out of the spell quickly, but then he left. You have to stop that boy,
he’s going to try and save his friends. I tried to tell him he would die, but
he wouldn’t listen! He said something about a girl, but the guards said all the
prisoners were male. He’s going to die.”

“No
one is going to die except for that queen,” I said, filled with a new sense of
determination. “Jezebel, where did they say they were taking the boy’s friends?”

“Gabriel,
who is that?” the little girl asked.

“Help,”
he answered plainly. “Now I need you to tell me where they said they were taking
mother and father.”

“Th-the
throne room,” Jezebel stuttered. “You’re not going to go there, are you?” Gabriel
didn’t reply. I could hear the little girl’s breathing begin to choke.

“Gabriel!”
she sobbed. “Don’t go! We’re the only thing we have left in this world!”

I
felt horrible for Jezebel. She was just a little girl, and her parents had just
been taken away from her. Despite the fact that she was most likely a vampire
as well, she was still just a child. I couldn’t understand her pain at the time,
because I had never had a true family. However, I knew what it felt like to
lose someone close, even though I didn’t lose them permanently yet. I wanted to
make sure Jezebel didn’t lose anyone either.

“Don’t
worry Jezebel,” I said as soothingly as possible. “I’ll bring Gabriel back to
you, I promise.”

She
didn’t say anything for a moment. The only sound was her small sobs. Just when
I was about to turn away from the door, the little girl’s voice said, “
You’re
the girl everyone is talking about. When you think you have triumphed, you will
fail
.” The little girl’s voice was completely different. It was still a
sweet little girl’s voice, but it was completely emotionless. Her words rang
around inside my head, as if they were bouncing back and forth within my skull.

“I’ll
be back for you Jezebel,” Gabriel said as he led me away from the door.

“You
didn’t hear that?” I asked, thinking I might have finally snapped.

“Hear
what?” he asked curiously. “I only heard you say something to Jezebel, and she
stopped crying.”

“Oh,”
my voice trailed off.

“What
was it?” he asked again.

“Nothing,”
I lied. “It was just my imagination.” I still didn’t trust him, and now, I was
starting to not trust myself.

We
raced down the stairs, no longer trying to be cautious. We had no idea how much
time we had left, but if I had to guess, I would’ve said not very much. We
placed the torch back in its holster and bolted out the door, and found ourselves
in the eerie hallway once again. Gabriel and I rushed to the giant double doors
and pushed with all our might, but they didn’t even budge.