The Only Blood

Chapter 30 - Something like War

The dungeon was huge, very dark and for the lack of a better word, densely populated.

As I looked around, hesitantly, I wasn't even sure who the creature were, captured and kept in a cell. They looked like vampires; they should have been vampires, but they smelt and felt...different. 

These were not the vampires I knew all along.

There were so many of them, in cramped small cells, and I was sure they were living in horrible conditions - it was quite evident with the stench that was making me dizzy. Along with that stench, though, I could smell so many other scents that I couldn't count how many they were - but I knew they had to be almost twice of the entire vampire kingdom's population - the ones outside the dungeon.

Yes. The number was huge and the scene was horrifying. I almost couldn't take in the scene and wanted to run away from here and never come back here again

But my gut instinct told me to here, and that I deserved to know what the hell this was and why I was here.

I deserved the truth.

The underlying smell of fresh blood confused me - the vampires I had known all along smelt more...rotten - like, period blood, maybe? And while Aiden had always smelt wonderful to me, being my mate, it had taken me some time to get used to the scent of others. If these people were vampires, why didn't they have the underlying scent of stale blood? Why were these so different?

What exactly was this place?

I took in a deep breath, and then almost wanted to vomit. This was worse than I had imagined, I knew none of them deserved to live in such terrible conditions. They were not prisoners, and that was definite. None of the people in the cells looked like they had ever committed murder, except for maybe killing in war.

There were children here, for Goddess's sake!

"So you finally did come here."

I jumped slightly.

The voice that just echoed in my head didn't resemble my dream's voice at all, but it was familiar. It was so familiar that I had almost stopped breathing when I turned my head around. My eyes popped out of their sockets when I found that middle-aged woman - who I had thought was dead - in a small cell at my right.

The woman who had warned me all that time ago, and was said to be killed the next day. 

I had known even then that there was something fishy there.

She looked dirty, and not like the woman whom I had met that day. But this time, I noticed that there was a different air around her, almost making me feel like she was royalty. She fit in here - not in the dungeon - but among the people here. Her eyes were full of fire, and not tired as she was looking on the outside. She was holding a man's hand, whose eyes were barely open. He looked weaker than her, and barely conscious.

I gulped, looking away from the couple.

Most important of all, I knew she was happy to see me here - I could see it in the way hope lit up in her eyes as she took in my sight. At the same time, I knew that she had known I was going to come here someday.

To me, it felt like everyone knew everything except for me.

But then, she was not the one to call me here.

How did you end up here? And how are you mind-linking me? I asked her, slightly afraid of what I was going to learn.

My life has been a werewolf-vampire novella, full of drama and was an amazing learning experience. It wouldn't hurt to learn more, right?