In My Own Little World

Maurus stopped pacing and took a deep breath. It was some time before he said anything at all and it was killing me.

"What is in there," he finally whispered, "Is the reason why you are here."

To put it lightly I was stunned. Maurus was the reason my friends and I had been thrown into this nightmare? I closed the space between us very quickly and slapped him across the face. Clearly he was just as surprised at my actions as I was, because he didn't block it. As soon as my palm had connected with his face I gasped and put that same hand to my mouth, horrified that I had just bitch slapped a vampire of all things.

He put his own hand to his face to feel the angry welt that was starting to rise and glared at me.

"What was that for?!" he demanded.

"For screwing my life up you jerk! Everything was just fine in my life until last night when you did SOMETHING and I ended up here. I don't know why, or how you did it, but I want some answers and I want them now."

I stalked away from him without waiting for a response and sat down in one of the armchairs in a huff. Maurus followed and sat down across from me. I set my stony gaze upon him and I happened to notice that the welt was gone, as if it had never been. I guess vampires could heal themselves faster than humans. I kept my angry glare trained on him, waiting for all to be revealed, but he just sat there looking awkward.

"Well?" I snapped. "I'm waiting."

He sighed again and ran a hand through his hair.

"Look. This isn't going to be easy for me to explain, and it will probably take a while. Are you sure you don't need anything to eat? You haven't eaten since you've arrived. I could go catch a rabbit or something."

I cringed inwardly at the thought of eating a bunny, but my stomach betrayed me and a large rumble echoed around the small cave.

"I'll take that as a yes." He smirked at me and stood up.

"Wait! Are you just going to leave me here?! How will I get out?"

"You won't." He stated bluntly.

"That's ridiculous! What if you get captured or killed? I may be human but I'm not stupid and you must be hiding from somebody too. Why else would you live by yourself in the woods where no one else can find you in a magical cave? If you don't come back I'll be screwed. I'm going with you."

"No."

"Yes." I hissed, "If you leave me here alone I'll take what's in the cupboard."

I could tell he was frightened at this prospect but he covered it quickly with a snort.

"And where would you put it?" he asked. "There is no place you could put it that I wouldn't find."

Crap. He had me there. But I had one last ace in the hole.

"If you leave me here I'll destroy it."

His eyes grew to the size of saucers. "Then you would be stuck here forever." he said in disbelief.

Now that idea frightened me, but I had already begun to expect that. I was going to be involved in something huge in this world, and it was all his fault.

"I don't care. I'll destroy it and whatever you have planned will go straight down the crapper."

"The crapper?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"Nevermind! I mean your plan will be destroyed too."

There was a stiff silence as he considered my proposal. Honestly I don't think I could destroy the object, whatever it was knowing that it was my ticket back home. I was bluffing, and I'm good at bluffing.

"Fine. You can come with me, but don't speak, don't freak out, and if I leave you for a moment in the chase don't be alarmed, just stay put and I'll come back to you. I promise. You are much more important than I am at this point."

I was dying to know why I was so important to his goal, but I would have to wait. He threw me a coat that was long and black and would conceal me in the dark rather nicely. Together we went back the way we came down the tunnel and when we reached the tunnels end he pressed his hand to the wall and the crack opened once again.

"How does that work?" I asked him, truly interested.

"I'll tell you later. Now please, silence is very important."

It was really irritating to have my questions constantly brushed off, but I managed to curb my curiousity and followed him into the dark. Once we were outside Maurus put a finger to his lips and listened.

And listened.

And listened.

I was just about to say something when he stood up to his full height, every muscle tensed. He shot me a look and suddenly I could hear him, but at the same time I knew he hadn't spoken because his lips didn't move.

"There is a rabbit warren about 100 yards to the left. One of them has just left the burrow to relieve itself. I'm going to get it for you, so just stay here, no matter what you hear."

His voice echoed around in my head and made my ears itch, if that makes any sense. I nodded in response since I couldn't use that neat little trick and he was gone. The only indication that he had moved was the bush to my left, still swishing back and forth.

I stood still and waited, but waiting by yourself is way too boring. I tried to count the stars overhead to pass the time, but most of them were obscured by the trees. I hummed quietly for a minute before I remembered I was supposed to be silent. So I hummed in my head until I could bear the silence no longer and decided to follow Maurus, wherever that guy managed to slink off to. He said the warren was about 100 yards to the left, so I started off in that general direction. I followed the cliff face, keeping it to my left so I wouldn't get lost. After about 50 yards I heard a squeal and a snap, followed by another one. The noises got louder as I approached.

"How many rabbits does he think I need?" I wondered.

I tripped over a root and landed ungracefully on my stomach in the clearing, knocking the wind out of me. When I looked up after gasping for air I saw Maurus standing over a hole. He had something held up to his face and I realized with horror that he was feeding from the rabbit. I looked at the ground around us and dead rabbits were strewn about. His back was to me and he must have been caught up in the hunt because he hadn't even acknowledged my presence.

"Maurus?"

He whirled around with inhuman speed and his eyes travelled instantly to my throat. The now dead rabbit dropped from his hands, forgotten. He started to advance on me and his eyes glowed as usual but there was a reddish tinge that I had yet to see.

"Maurus?" I squeaked.

He didn't respond to my call, and was getting dangerously close. I tried to get up off the ground but Maurus lifted me up before I had a chance. He looked possessed, and to put it lightly I was terrified. It was very difficult to keep your cool when a vampire is eyeing you like a piece of meat.

"Maurus, your making me nervous..." I stated in a loud voice, like I was talking to a three year old. "Will you let go of my arm now? I'm sorry I followed you, but I was bored and-"

I stopped short when he slid his hand around behind my head and gently blew on my face, the way a mother blows on a child's boo boo. I inhaled sharply and that one whiff was enough to make everything okay. Nothing had changed, I was still being held with Maurus' firm grip and he was still way to close for comfort but it was like "who cares?" I just sat there placidly as Maurus stroked my hair, preparing his meal.

"Just a taste. . ." he murmured as he pushed my hair over the back of my shoulder. By brain was screaming at me on the inside, "Run run run!" But my legs would not obey. I just stood there like an idiot, grinning up at him. His fangs extended and he opened his mouth wide to plunge them downwards into my neck, and that's when the spell was broken.

I screamed in his face at the top of my lungs and I could watch the redness fade out of his eyes and his fangs shrank up into his jaw in an instant. I slapped him across the face for the second time tonight and he staggered away from me.

I started to run back the way I had come but his hand shot out and I was rooted to the spot, again.

"Evelyn? Wha.... I thought I told you to wait by the entrance." He looked around the clearing like he couldn't remember how he got there. His eyes fell on the various rabbit corpses and he gave me the once over, making sure he hadn't done what I'm sure he was about to do, drain me dry.

"You interrupted me while I was feeding didn't you?" He asked.

I was still so shaken that I couldn't even think of a snide comment and instead I just nodded.

He heaved an enormous sigh and walked over to me. I would have flinched away from him but he still held me in place.

"Interrupting a vampire while he is feeding can be extremely dangerous. Once the blood starts flowing, it's almost like dreaming. I could see you, and I knew what I was doing but I couldn't stop it you know? Good thing you shocked me with that screech of yours. How did you overcome my power of influence?"

"What do you mean?"

"When a vampire wants to calm it's prey, we let off a chemical that sedates the victim, it's different for every vampire. Did I breathe on you?"

I thought back to the peculiar feeling I had to shake off once he blew in my face.

"Yes. I started to speak to you and you cut me off by blowing on my face. That shut me up pretty quick."

Maurus chuckled and shook his head. "That was it. How did you overcome the urge to stay?"

"I really don't know. It was like my body wouldn't listen to me. I kept thinking run, run away Evelyn! But my feet just stayed there. Only after your fangs popped out and you were going to bite me could I snap out of it."

"You must be a very strong willed human. Or maybe I'm just out of practice. But that scream may have attracted enemies." He looked around the clearing again to make sure we were still alone.

"Can I let you off now? You aren't going to run away from me right?"

I shook my head, he let go of me and I could move freely again.

"Does it always happen like that? The bloodlust?" I asked. Maurus shook his head.

"I can usually control myself. I think it's the fact that I just fed from Miles and my recent exposure to human blood. Humans are our natural food source, but once Gareth sealed the gate it cut off our food supply. Feeding from magical beings is a crime so we were forced to downgrade to lesser mammals. And there is that..." he pointed to my arm.

Where I had broken my fall was a deep scratch that I hadn't even noticed. Blood seeped out and down my arm and I understood why that may have pushed him over the edge, especially if he wasn't used to the sight or smell of human blood.

Maurus tossed me a cloth from his pocket to cover the wound, and I briefly wondered how many cloths he had in those pockets. He always seemed to have one. He ignored me as best he could and busied himself with collecting the rabbit corpses and piling them up.

"I take it you don't want a bloodless rabbit right? Humans are omnivores, so you probably like the taste of blood. It's what gives meat it's flavor you know."

"I probably could have gone my whole life without knowing that." I cringed.

Maurus laughed and approached the rabbit hole again. Instead of catching a rabbit the way I thought he would, he held up his hand and a stream of water formed in his palm and trickled into the hole. Soon enough the first little whiskery nose popped out and he snatched it out of its hole and snapped it's neck with a simple twist.

I frowned at the dead rabbit and Maurus noticed my displeasure.

"I did it that way because the rabbit would feel nothing. He didn't even know what happened."

"That doesn't exactly make me feel any better." I admitted.

"It will once you've had fire roasted rabbit for dinner."

Our trip back to the hideout passed without incident, but both of us were on the lookout for danger. Only once the stone slid into place behind us did we let out a mutual sigh of relief. Maurus led the way and I sat down on the loveseat and watched him prepare the rabbit.

First he skinned it with a sharp knife he dug out of the end table drawer, and then he stuck it on a spit that looked like it had never been used.

"Why do you have a spit for cooking when you don't cook your food?" I asked innocently. Something told me that Maurus knew more about how we got to this place than he was letting on.

Maurus frowned at me but didn't say anything.

"Oh come on! You're really not going to tell me why I'm here? Why you seem to be the mastermind behind this whole deal? Who Lord Gareth is and why he's looking for me?"

"After dinner! I need to think..." he said, and a flame erupted out of his palm just like the water that he had used to flood the rabbit hole.

"And how do you do that?!" I murmured, fascinated.

"Now that is a question I can answer for you. All vampires have different powers as they age. The older the vampire, the stronger the vampire is typically. Control over the elements is one of my powers. There are many others. Some can teleport large distances, as long as they know where they are going. Others can speak to animals, use telepathy, heal at accelerated rates, or see visions." He tipped his hand over the firepit and the flames fell from his hand like drops of liquid.

I knew that Maurus had several of these powers. I had seen how quickly the swelling in his face had disappeared, and he teleported behind Miles and I in the woods. And then there was the control over the elements, and he had used telepathy to speak into my head outside the hideout entrance. I looked closely at his face but could not imagine him being any older than I. He said the stronger the vampire, the older he is? He must be very old, or come from a powerful family.

"How old are you?" I blurted out.

He grinned at me, eyes twinkling.

"How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know, Fifty?"

He laughed out loud at my guess, and once again I noticed how deep his voice was.

"Eighty? A Hundred?" Every guess I made just made him laugh even harder. After that I fell silent, but it was some time before he stopped chuckling and wiped his eyes.

"I'm sorry, it's just..." he starting laughing again but managed to stop himself, "I forgot how short the humans' life span is. I'm two hundred and eight Evelyn, don't I look good for my age?" At this he started laughing again in earnest.

"But you look like you're my age! How is this possible?"

"Vampires are the undead remember? I don't look a day over 20, because that's the age when fledglings become adults, and we stop aging after that."

It was hard to imagine looking the same as the day you became an adult when it could have been decades, even centuries ago. By this time the fire was crackling in the pit and Maurus busied himself with cooking the rabbit.

The rabbit was surprisingly good for someone who never cooks for themself. He didn't have any utensils, so I was forced to pull the meat straight off the bones with my bare hands. Several burnt fingers afterwards I was fed, full and content.

"Have you had time to think about what you are going to say?" I asked him after a particularly long bout of silence.

"I have. Are you ready?"

"For the last time, yes!"

"Okay. Well Lord Gareth has conquered this entire realm, and made the lives of millions utterly miserable. As I told you before. He sealed the gateway between our worlds to keep humans from coming across and overthrowing his power. This also weakened his greatest rival, the vampire nation, Kendaleigha. That is my home country."

"Then why don't you live there? Why are you in the woods all by yourself? Wait a minute! You said the woods were your territory, you lied to me!"

"I had to. I wasn't sure who you were at first, and unlike your friend I don't just blurt out my plans to strangers. May I continue?"

I fell silent again and he continued.

"Lord Gareth will obviously be looking for you and he is definitely looking for me."

"Why?" I asked.

"I am the only vampire who openly opposes Lord Gareths rule. My father would love to overthrow him, but he knows we just don't have the stength alone. We need the help of the other nations."

"There are other nations?"

"Of course. You have separate nations on Earth don't you? Well maybe not, no one has been there from this side for hundreds of years."

"We do. I was just surprised how similar your world is to ours, besides the magic of course."

"Well anyway, I protested openly about Gareths taxes in Kendaleigha and I was banished. Since then I've been a thorn in the Empire's side, and now that my plan has gotten this far I can already see his empire crumbling."

"What do you mean?" I felt so ignorant, and I wanted to get in the know.

Maurus walked over to the cabinet he forbade me to open and pulled out of it a single, boring looking stone.

"This stone is from the gateway itself. Lord Gareths seal only works if the entire gateway is intact. I took this stone from the cottage porch, and believe me it took a lot of magic and training to do it. I timed it perfectly so that at the precise moment I removed it the nearest humans to the gate would be pulled through. It just happened to be you and your friends. Now that I have the stone, you won't be able to go back until the gateway is complete again. I'm sorry."

"Well what am I supposed to do now?" I asked him.

"That's why I brought you here. You are going to help me unite the different countries and provinces, and together we will demolish Lord Gareth's regime and I will let you go home. Don't you see that something as inspirational as defying Gareth and managing to get somebody through the gate is just the thing we need to convince the other provinces that there is still hope!? Please help me."

I knew it was going to be something big like this, and dammit I hated being important. I was content to stay in the background, but the way Maurus was talking, he needed me to parade around like a prophet or something. But this was also my only ticket home, unless I could steal the stone from him after I gained his trust. i would have to think about it.

"Will you help me?" He begged, eyes pleading.

"On one condition."

"Anything to stop this madness."

"I want some weapons. I can't be galavanting around in a magical world like this without protection. And I want you to help me find my friends like you promised. Then, and ONLY then will I help you."

I was expecting him to refuse, but he accepted without question.

"Done. I agree with you when it comes to defending yourself. I can't be with you all the time. And besides, the more humans, the more hope right? It will help our cause to have the others."

I had one other request that I was dying to ask, but I wasn't sure if it was even possible. Maurus could tell I was holding something back.

"If you want anything else, please ask. It's the least I can do for. . . what did you say again? "For screwing my life up you jerk?""

"Can you teach me to use magic?" I asked.

He seemed surprised that I would ask him that. I watched his face go from surprised to consideration, and then from consideration to a frown.

"I'm not sure if I can or not. Humans who came through the portal a long time ago could be taught with help from the elves. Maybe we'll run into some during our search for the others."

So it wasn't exactly a no, but it didn't sound likely. I tried not to show my disappointment.

"That's okay. I've always thought it would be cool though, to have magic powers."

"It may be possible. I am young by vampire standards, so I've never seen it performed. I have heard of it being done though. I'll try my best. But it is almost sunrise. I need to sleep. You should try to get some sleep too."

I agreed once I realized how tired I was. He disappeared into his private room and pulled the curtain down while I curled up on the loveseat and dug myself into the cushions. Hopefully he wouldn't go back on his word, and once I have my friends back we can gang up on him and take the stone, and then we can all get out of this mess. I felt kind of bad for planning to doublecross him, but this isn't my fight, and besides, he could be lying through his teeth.

"I guess I'll have to just wait and see. . ."