Life Long Prisoner

Chapter 4

Aria

I woke up to a sharp pain in my arm. I opened my eyes to see blurred lines. I could see the outline of the trees, but where they met the sky and ground, it all blended together. I tried to focus my eyes and when I finally did, I could see a vampire feeding on my arm. I looked around and saw all sorts of vampires crowded around the forest, laughing and acting stupid. Some had bottles in their hands similar to the one I had drunk earlier, and some had glasses in their hands of deep red and purple liquid.

The space we were in was kind of a circular opening in the forest, the trees surrounding the opening had a human stationed at each of them, tied to a chair like I was.

I flinched at a bite into my neck. I was slowly becoming light headed from blood loss, but that was a feeling I was used to. I looked around me and noticed a crowd of vampires around me, and as I looked around to the other humans, I noticed maybe a few had a vampire feeding on them, but some had none around them at all.

This will be an awful night for me.

As my vision was starting to blur from blood loss, all the vampires let go of me and the King stepped in front of me and shoved his wrist into my mouth. His blood tasted awful, nothing like Braydon's did. Why was that? Was it because he didn't drink human blood? It had to be, because I had been fed blood from many vampires, but Braydon's was the only one that tasted as good as it did.

"No one touch her for at least twenty minutes." The King ordered.

"Yes, King Blackwell." One of the vampires replied obediently. They still stood around me though, and for some reason the King didn't like that.

"Leave." The King commanded sharply. He fixed his gaze on me and bent down to my height. "How are you feeling?" He asked, his blue eyes looking at me intensely. I didn't reply. If I did, I would get punished for talking. I really wasn't even supposed to make eye contact, so I dropped my eyes to my boney knees. He chuckled lowly and walked away from me.

I looked up when I heard the rustling of grass coming towards me to see the girl who came to my room wanting to escape, named Anna. She sat down her tray with glasses of alcohol on them and took a napkin out of the pocket of her apron and wiped at my mouth, cleaning the leftover blood from my lips.

"Are you ready to get out of here?" She asked me with determination in her eyes.

"What do you think?" I gave her a small smile, even though I knew we wouldn't go through with it. I was too important to the King, there was no way I could go unnoticed.

"Good!" She glanced around us. "So I'm thinking we'll wait a few more hours to when they're really drunk and then we'll slip away."

"Anna.. maybe you should go by yourself."

Her face fell and she asked,"Why?"

"I'm the King's daughter. He watches me closer than any of the other humans around here. My blood is the best around so honestly I don't know if I ever won't have a vampire feeding on me. The only time I won't is when I have to gain more strength, when they give me time to produce more blood. You could get out easily though, they wont be watching you. You could just run. But are you sure you want to? With all the rogue vampires out there and werewolves, you could end up in a position that makes this kingdom look like paradise." That's a scary thought.

She had her eyebrows drawn together and then her eyes shifted into a determined look. "We will get out of here tonight, and I'm not leaving you here. We'll find a safe place. There has to be humans out there somewhere that are safe and will take us in. There has to be. If there isn't, wouldn't you rather be dead?"