Silly Little Games

Chapter Twenty Four

I didn’t expect it to be this bad. I thought the war would last a few days and then be over, but after being cooped up in this room for a little over a week I knew that it would go on for years. I stumbled across the room, the sunlight bathing my now frail body as I stood in front of the window. The window was covered in dust and the occasional bullet hole and blood. I ran my hand over the hole in the glass and looked down. Everyone was living in peace until this happened, and everyone has a right to be safe in their own world.

I looked down at the ragged clothes I was wearing that were ripped and had blood on. I didn’t feel that cold because it was summer, and the heat was extraordinary. Such perfect weather and I was locked up in a room and left to die. I guess he thought he would be protecting me, but instead he just sealed my fate. I sat down on the end of the bed, resting my head in my hands. I was going to die in here.

I heard footsteps outside my door and hid under the bed. I hid every time I heard footsteps because they’d either make me fight or kill me. The ominous clicks stopped as they reached the door. The screech of nails made me shiver as the figure scratched the window. I heard a key in the lock and the door was kicked open, followed by the light of a torch, searching every inch of the four walls for any sign of life.

“She’s not here, just give up Damien” Elliot sighed, turning his flashlight off. I tried to scream but after not speaking for a week, I found that my voice was just a weak whisper. No matter how hard I screamed in my head. Damien shook his head from what I could see through the hole in the bottom of the bed. “You can sense her, can’t you?” Elliot asked, a slight inquisitive tone laced in the question.

“She’s here, I promise you that. I can smell her blood. It’s like she’s angry or scared, it’s pulsing through her veins at a fast pace” he replied, still looking around the room. Elliot dropped his gun just in front of the bed frame, and directly in front of me, so I hid back from the edge of the bed. I hid my head between my knees and gripped my hair. He bent down and grabbed the gun, looking under the bed. I froze as he looked straight at me and pushed his glasses up, I could see the glass reflect the light.

“Trust me, she’s here” he looked up at Damien. The vampire knelt down by his brother-in-law and smirked when he saw me curled up, his fangs glinting in the little light that flooded in through cracks in the walls.

“Now then Leila, we’ve been looking for you. See, you’ll come in very useful when it comes to bribing the humans into surrendering. We can make an example of you. We will keep you alive just long enough until we wipe out your precious human race, then we’ll kill you. Sound ok?” Damien laughed, dragging me out from under the bed by my wrists which snapped under the pressure. My screams never sounded because of the silence that escaped my mouth. Elliot flinched with the sound of cracking bone.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been fighting on the vampire’s side” Elliot sighed, looking up at me from behind his glasses. I looked away disappointed and hurt. Damien smiled and pulled an arm around him which smashed my heart into a thousand pieces. It burnt every piece of glass into a charred lump, and then blew them away like tiny particles of sand. Smiling, Damien kicked my back and I fell face first into the side of the bed, knocking myself out in the process. A purple bruise started to form over my left eye.

“I think Carter would like to speak to Leila, after all, she did kill the King” Damien smirked as he picked me up, my frail body hanging over his arms.

“So it was Leila then?” Elliot asked, picking up a few medical supplies from the cupboards. “I thought they never found out who it was?”

“Nope, they only told immediate family. She killed my father but nobody knows who killed my mother. The court ruled it as suicide but I think it has a link with my dad’s death. That’s just my opinion though” Damien sighed as the bruise over my eye swelled up and sealed the eyelids shut.

“Drella told me that she thought one of the sovereign’s leaders killed her. Either that or Snow, your uncle. He didn’t exactly get on well with her, did he?” Elliot sighed, packing the assortment of bandages and medicines into his bag. He pulled a piece of wood from the doorframe and sharpened it into a stake shape, and Damien looked at him confused, making Elliot laugh. “Stakes can kill humans too”

“Sometimes I am actually proud to call you my brother in law” Damien smiled, patting Elliot’s back.

“Yeah, well, same here” he replied, a slight shake to his voice that quivered with his words. Unsure as to what he was saying but he made it through with a smile. His opinions were against every action he was doing and he knew, wherever everyone was, they would kill him for betraying them.

“What are we going to do about the plan we drew up? It takes too long to turn people normally, maybe we’ll have to see if there’s any way we can make our venom stronger so it turns instantly” Damien mumbled to himself, searching the cupboards, and shelves, for any books that may hold an answer.

“You could always increase the concentration of your venom by drinking a lot more blood. The venom would have to become stronger in order to break it all down” Elliot read from the large dusty book that usually sat in the corner. “I studied this years ago. I thought all of the vampires knew how to make their venom more powerful. I guess not”

“You’re cleverer than you look” Damien chuckled. He had never known someone who actually knew about things and the world around them. Other than the fact that Damien always had servants around him to wait on him every second of every day.

“I hope that’s a good thing”

“For a clever guy, Elliot, I’ll teach you to have some common sense” Damien smiled, walking out of the room with me in his arms. I could only hope that they would abandon me somewhere.  With that though, they must’ve heard my thoughts, because I felt a thump as I was dropped and then nothing.

“Hello?” I asked, looking around desperately for anyone that could help. From what I could tell I was thrown into the middle of what appeared to be the training grounds, only now, they were desolate and empty and void of movement. I covered my nose just as the stench of death hit it, making me choke as it hit the back of my throat. I forgot how humans decomposed differently to vampires and that meant rotting corpses. Rotting corpses equalled smell.

I turned to see a body directly behind me. Its eyes were blank and lifeless; its hair covered in blood and its skin a frail grey. Blood was dry on their clothes and their eyes stared blankly upwards. The neck, or what was left of it, was the worst sight on the dead body. A vampire had killed her, that I was 100% sure of. I shut her eyes for her and wiped the remnants of crimson on my jeans. I touched the bruise on my eyes to find that – whilst extremely tender – it was swollen.

“Those who dwell with the dead must have no reason to live” Ridley smirked from behind me.