Crimson

18

Still disoriented, I looked up and tried to make out the face of my assailant with my vision zooming in and out of focus. Long and dark hair framed the female's face. She had sharp features and high cheekbones with perfectly sculpted eyebrows. Her nearly black eyes with honey brown flecks flicked to me and I had to stifle a gasp. I almost felt frozen under her sharp and murderous gaze, the feeling consuming me as her knee pressed harder into my chest. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her, even when she looked back at Kai.

"Cleo," he growled.

My assumption was correct. I swallowed the ever growing lump in my throat. The moment I looked at her, I knew who she was, even though I had never seen her in my life. Her and Kai looked so much alike, it was a dead giveaway.

Suddenly, all of the things that Kai had told me just the night before came flashing through my mind. Anger flared up inside of me for what she had done to her family but was extinguished the moment her eyes turned back to me. They held a cold and menacing depth, similar to Kai's but seemingly darker, more dead. She appeared almost as if she were a being molded completely out of a swirling darkness.

"A human," she hummed in a sickeningly sweet voice.

Something ascertained me that this situation was more dangerous than I had initially thought. Her voice dripped honey but her eyes screamed of death. This woman scared me and every cell in my body was screaming for me to get out of this situation as quickly as possible.

"Don't touch her!" He snarled as he advanced on our position.

"Not so close, dear brother," she chided as she traced a long and sharp fingernail along the curve of my jaw. I whipped my head away from her just as she drew her hand upwards, her nail digging into my skin to draw blood. It was almost like she knew I was going to turn away from her. "Oops, sorry."

I glared up at Cleo and the now smirk she held on her face. "Now now, don't look at me with such distaste, it was only an accident."

"Liar," I spat.

"Oh? I said I was sorry."

"It doesn't mean anything if you don't mean it," I replied lowly.

"Why are you here?" Kai asked with no emotion in his voice. I glanced over at him to see him as cold and brooding as ever, in his eyes an ever brewing storm.

"I thought that was obvious, I just wanted to see my little brother," she said smoothly as she turned back to him. Her voice was so entrancing, so alluring. So innocent.

"Stop lying to me. That's all you've been doing since we were young and I'm sick of it," he said as he crossed his arms across his chest.

Cleo simply hummed in response as if the comment had went unheard. Her eyes landed on me once again. "I guess you could say I was curious."

He glared down at his sister. "You knew."

She let out a short, cold laugh, her head rearing back. "Of course I did, I knew the moment you walked in that door. You smelled exactly like her and it didn't take me long to track her down. The fact that you're here now is just a bonus."

"What do you mean?"

A sickening and crazed smile spread across her face. "I'm going to kill her and enjoy watching you squirm because there was nothing you could do to save your poor little pet," her eyes flashed crimson for a mere second before disappearing into near black with honey speckles. Her head swiveled back to me and I laid under her, petrified and stiff. "Yes, I'll enjoy this."

A sinking feeling spread throughout my body as panic rose. I tried twisting out of her grasp but her knee just wedged harder into my chest. I let out a yelp and went limp against the floor again. It was getting increasingly harder to breathe.