Vampire academy fanfic - on indefinite hiatus

Chapter 4 - The encounter

I couldn't find sleep that night, I was too on edge. It was like I knew something was going to happen, I was anticipating it. Again, I felt like someone was watching me, the question was, who?

I glanced at the clock, only 9pm, time was passing very slowly. Normally school classes would just be starting, but since we'd now swapped from the vampiric night time schedule to the human one it was quite late.

I thought back to the shadow wolf attack. Most shadow wolves weren't wild animals, they acted as guard dogs to prisons and other high security places, some people had them as pets. However, there were two wild packs, and none of them had territory anywhere near Portland. One of the packs were in Russia, near Siberia and the other was in Northern Canada. That meant there shouldn't have been any near Portland.... The school owned some Shadow wolves, maybe they had sent some? But Shadow wolves were very obedient, they had tried to kill me, surely the school didn't want me out of the picture that badly? The school don't even know we're here. Since the only likely thing was the school had sent the wolves, maybe they'd forgotten to tell hem not to kill me, that meant the school knew where we were, all he more reason to leave.

When I checked the time again nearly two hours had passed. Isobel was snoring quietly, I could hear the repetitive tapping of rain hitting the glass doors to the balcony. Tap, tap, tap. A very rhythmic beat. My anxiety was getting worse, a feeling of nausea came over me. 

Then I saw it.

Standing on he balcony was a Neoqui. I had no idea how i had got there, we were four floors up! None of that mattered now, my only thoughts were of getting Isobel to safety. 

"Izzy, wake up." I whispered.

"Clara, it's eleven at night, why are-" She went silent when she saw  what was on the other side of the glass.

Isobel had never seen a Neoqui before, neither had I but there was no doubt that this man was a Neoqui, the white skin and cruel red rimmed eyes were a giveaway. In school we were told that Neoqui were stronger than you could imagine but the scrawny figure that stood in front of me looked even weaker than a human. They said it took five of our very best to beat one of our worst but maybe that was an exaggeration.

We were both still dressed from earlier, good clothes for running in. Running was the obvious thing to do, even if this Neoqui looked weak I knew appearances could be deceptive, I wasn't about to put Isobel in danger.

I could feel Isobel's fear through the bond, to be honest I was a little scared too but not nearly as much as her but her feelings were mixed with mine and I felt what she did to the lesser extent but I couldn't let emotions control me, we'd trained for this. I took a deep breath, pushing my fear away into a room in the back of my mind and locked them in there. 

Slowly, the two of us crept back to the other side of the room, closer to the door, as far away from the monster as we could get. The Neoqui, moving at an equally slow pace, opened the door and stepped into the room. He had a twisted smile on his face, and his eyes were excited and wild, like a crazy person's.

I never turned away from the Neoqui until we reached the end of the room. I stood in a protective stance in front of Isobel and reached my hand behind my hand behind me to feel for the door handle. Once my hand brushed over it I grasped it firmly, ready to turn around and run. Isobel knew what I was about to do and she stood waiting.

Taking one last reassuring breath knowing as soon as I looked away from the Neoqui he would make his move. To him it's all a game. All running would do was make it a more thrilling game to play but it was the only option.

I turned around but before I even had time to turn the handle I was pulled backwards, before I even fully realized what had happened I was standing near the balcony with an arm tightly around my neck, making it hard to breathe and keeping me pinned next to the Neoqui.