Sacrifice Helle

Chapter 21

It became black.. then I felt the air had changed. Then... it was... light? Red light... Slowly the new world surrounded us. The other humans were so frightened, but they kept quiet. I don't know how I felt, I felt so .. not sorry for them, but I felt like I should do something to save them, they were humans like me after all. But that would mean killing Vaan. And besides.. there were all the other vampires. All in all I don't think I could have done anything anyway. Just be happy it's not me there, packed up as food supply.

The red light appeared to be the sky. And the surroundings were wild and rocky, everything in a red/yellow light, and there was a warm wind blowing, sometimes wild and rough, sometimes soft and gentle. I looked at Darien, him I felt sorry for, it was my fault he had to be humiliated like this. In a leash, held by Vaan, one he hated. However, when I looked at him now it felt so natural to see him in these surroundings. Only not with a collar around his neck. He seemed to belong here. Our party started moving and I saw that we were heading for some sort of building made out of the red rocks like the ground.

Two guys came meeting us, one with black short hair and the other with dark brown hair gathered in a pony tail. Both dressed in black clothes. They bowed to Vaan. "Juan and Fredrik..", Tobias whispered to me. "Welcome sire!", they both said. "The place looks like shit, what happened here?" "Some demons allied themselves with a dragon and rampaged the castle. It looks bad on the outside only, everything is as normal inside." "Great.... What happened to them?" The other one answered this time, "In the cellar, my sire. We wait for the 7th to decide what shall become of them." Vaan snorted and mumbled something that didn't sound like nice words. Then we started moving again, down some stairs, the further down we got, the more decorated the place became, and the red light from outside was replaced with burning candles.

I got closer to Darien, he had a firm expression and looked straight forward. "How are you?", I asked him in a whisper. He closed his eyes and said nothing. We got into something that looked like a hallway, huge with many corridors and doors leading in all directions, like a maze. Vaan spoke to the brown haired one, "Fredrik, take the humans to their residence," and then to the black haired one, ”Juan, take this demon and keep it locked up. But don’t let anyone else touch him, he’s mine." Then Fredrik gathered the humans and left with them following him, Juan took the leash and Vaan turned to Tobias, "Tobias, take care of Helle for me will you? I'm going to do some inspections before dinner."

Tobias bowed slightly and grabbed my arm. We walked through one corridor, through some doors and ended up in a nice living room. Tobias closed the door behind us.

"Where are we? Where did that Juan take Darien? I want him to be with me, not locked up somewhere! And where is Asami?" "Woah, and you were so quiet on the way here... About ... Darien? You mean that demon? Probably with the other demons. He can't just wander around freely, I mean.." "Oh, like he would hurt anyone... And even though, he still is too weak to do anything, I mean, not even with Gerha and Cora and Lathien could he as much as even scratch Vaan!"

"They did manage to hurt him some, but he healed himself... Anyhow, not even half of the vampires here have Vaan’s strength, he could easily demolish them. And if he does it's gonna be Vaan who gets the blame. About our whereabouts; we are in the vampires main center in the underworld. We don't normally live here, so it's been 100 years since last time. We meet here, most of us, all vampires are invited to the 'party' today, but the only ones who live here will be the children of the 7 Sires, up to 5 generations I think. The Sires are 7 of the most powerful vampires in both worlds. You better stay in one place or close to me or Vaan, since this place is filled from top to bottom with vampires."

"Huge advent right?" "Extremely, no one bothers counting the numbers of vampires at the party, but in this house... I think... about .... Slightly above 1000." O_O "How can there be so many out of only 7?" "Vaan alone has sired 12, me, Iselin, Juan, Frederik, Catharina, Luna, Roman, Kariel..." "Okey, you don't need to tell me, I won’t remember anyway.." "And some off course your friend got rid off." I ignored this comment and continued with my questions. " So when is this party? And where is Asami?" "We have to ask Vaan about Asami, but the party will begin tonight and last for two days. After that we will go to the main celebration of our Lord."

Tobias started wandering around the room thinking out loud about clothes and what to wear. He was so lost in thoughts, I decided to sneak away and go find Darien. I snuck out the door and back into the hallway without Tobias reacting. 'The others said that the demons rampaging the castle was in the cellar... So then I keep away from the cellar...' I found some stairs leading down and immediately walked down, trying to get to the cellar while constantly thinking about flowers and dresses and Tobias talking to himself. In case someone would 'overhear' me.