Inside the Vault

The Vault wasn't as much of a vampire tomb as Misa had expected it to be. It was as much a panic room as any she'd seen back in her world. Except, it was certainly three times bigger.

Misa was beginning to learn that these vampires weren't just extravagant creatures--they were EXTRA, extra, extra. When Ida waved her hand with a lazy flick of the wrist, torches lining the walls on all sides lit up in succession, illuminating the room in pieces as if to showcase each part of the room like something being put up as a prize on a famous game show. Misa noticed that this Vault stretched the length of at least three living and dining rooms consecutively combined. Its floors were carpeted with the finest woven fabrics, the colors an assortment of gold, red, and black.

Across the center of the floor were two elegant and expansive solid black seating arrangements with golden pearls circling the arms. It was furniture that looked like something stolen from a model home. Too expensive to sit in, just pieces of decoration to marvel at. The paintings that adorned the walls were tragic works fit for a museum. Misa noticed the hopeless hands reaching out of the frame just to grab nothing, and the longing gazes of the beautiful women and men on other frames, lost and lonely but hauntingly alluring.

"Make yourself at home, M'lady." Ida's voice reached Misa from a place a bit far away. Misa turned to find her at the extreme right side of the room standing before a magnificent showcase of bookshelves. They stretched from wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling and were filled to the brink with books old enough to have seen the world's inception. "I suspect that we will be down here a while." Ida finished.

But Misa wasn't interested in anything she had left to say. Books...! She thought. Overwhelmed to the point of tears welling up in her eyes, Misa practically flew to the bookcases behind Ida. Literally.

"Aah!!" She cried, "Whoa, whoa. Whoa!" Before she could even make sense of what was happening, Misa had traveled over thirty steps faster than she could breathe, her body even lifting itself slightly off the floor and leaving only a couple of her toes touching solid ground. When her toes seemed to stop touching the floor and her body seemed to levitate higher, "No!" Misa shouted and, at once, she slammed back-first onto the stone floor.

Oh, my GOD that freaking hurt! Misa cried internally, her eyes bulging from their sockets as the pain took its course through her body.

"Hard to control your body, M'lady?" Ida asked. The hint of humor in her voice made Misa want to flip her the bird, but her fingers ached too much to move.

"Should I be hurting this much?" Misa asked to the ceiling, directing her words at Ida. "Shouldn't my body be less responsive to pain?"

"Yes, that is usually how it works," Ida said, "when someone turns into a vampire."

"Yeah, well I'm hurting like nobody's business over here." Misa remarked, grimacing. Finally, she peeled her left arm off of the ground and held her hand out to Ida. "Help?"

Misa couldn't see, but Ida obliged by coming over and yanking the holy hell out of her arm and pulling her up from the ground like a doll that had no use for arms in the first place--like arms were there for decoration! "The thing is, you have not been turned, M'lady. You are as much a human as you are a vampire in that body. The vampire you are right now is something like a mask, able to be put on and able to be removed. We, on the other hand, are damned for eternity."

Misa, standing face to face with Ida (as best she could with the elderly child's short stature), swallowed at the vampire's words. She heard the implication behind them even without Ida's saying them.

You are not one of us.

Something--a beautiful, rose-like, calming scent--was tickling Misa's nose. Interest aroused, she scrunched up her eyebrows and sniffed. Then, she smiled, picturing her mom's delicious rose bundt cake coming straight out of the oven. Her mom had liked to surprise Misa from time to time with tasty treats when Misa would come home from school with good reports from teachers and good grades to match.

Smiling wider now at the memory, Misa sniffed again and then called out, "Mom," as soft as a song, knowing in her heart that her mom wouldn't be there. It was still nice to dream.

But then, "I am not your mother, human."

Misa flinched hard, flinging her eyes open and flying up to a sitting position. The ancient, dusty book she had fallen asleep reading tumbled to the golden carpet with a loud plop. The man before her followed the dropped object with his eyes. "Prince Ran!" Misa exclaimed, her surprised heart beating a mile a minute.

The prince stood to the right of the chaise's arm in which Misa lounged. She noticed now that the man was very tall and slender. This time, his midnight-colored hair fell down in elegant strands over his face and shoulders as he peered down at her, the ponytail he'd had earlier now undone. His face was as hard and unfriendly as before, but seemed slightly more pale and tired. His previously immaculate clothing a bit wrinkled or weathered. Somewhere in between.

What's happened to him? It made Misa think. She remembered his brother outside and the story Ida had told her.

With some sort of misplaced bravery, Misa looked up into his eyes and found that his yellowish irises were fixed on her with the sort of gaze a wolf would fix on a sheep if one crossed its path in the wolf's own territory. In this case, like a vampire looked at a human who had just fallen asleep, unguarded, under his roof.

No matter the painful transformation she had undergone, Misa felt unremarkably like a vampire and almost entirely human. Her bones knew she was no match for Prince Ran-- no match for a vampire.

She sank back, away from his glare.

"Human." Prince Ran said, but it wasn't in acknowledgement of her saying his name before. It was reprimanding, displeased.

"I-I--" Misa began. The prince cut her off.

"You lay in my bed and now my sheets stink of you and need to be washed tonight. I ought to throw them out. Perhaps the stench won't fade enough..." He said in sort of a 'stream of consciousness' sort of way, like his mouth wouldn't stop vomiting his thoughts.

"But I--"

"And now, I come here instead to find peace in my most relaxing private chamber, only to find you again soiling the fabrics of my furniture with your human stench."

"I have a name, you know??" Misa was finally able to get out. She looked at Prince Ran a little straighter. "Plus, Miss Ida gave me some foul potion to cover up my smell--"

"Your stench." The prince corrected.

Misa rolled her eyes, growing bolder and more annoyed with these uppity vampires. "Whatever. The point is, I shouldn't even smell 'human' anymore, Your Highness. If you think so, maybe your oh-so-glorious sense of smell is just as lousy as your--"

Prince Ran moved so suddenly, Misa almost missed it, but she caught the movement as it happened and sank as low as she possibly could into the cushions beneath her. It didn't stop the prince from pinning her shoulders down with both of his hands and leaning his weight against her on the chaise. 

Misa couldn't move and made no attempts to, feeling a little bit frozen in fear. Prince Ran was so close, his warm breath tickled her neck as he waited for her to speak.

When she remained silent, the prince said, "I could do it, you know," in a voice so low it reverberated in Misa's ear. To prove his point, Prince Ran touched his fangs to Misa's neck so she could feel the pinch of death against her skin.

Still, Misa swallowed but refused to move. With more bravado than she really felt within her, she said, "You're bluffing. Do it then, vampire prince."