Song=Dark Side: Trevor Moran

"And these are the bathrooms."  

When she would look at me to see if I was paying attention I would nod my head. 

My mind was somewhere else. I felt freedom for once, I wasn't locked in a truck, I wasn't stuck inside a castle. I was in the woods. I might only be able to stay in a selected area, but it was the best I ever got. And I was going to enjoy it for as long as I could. 

I never had been camping so I already had asked Jen if I could sleep outside. She agreed to it and even decided she was going to get two sleeping bags and join me. I don't know how long this would last, but I wanted to make the best of it.  

Cutting off Jen's rant on how the bathroom were made I asked, "How many days before I'm sent back?" 

"A week. Now have you been paying attention?" I answered "yes" too quickly that she gave me a skeptical eye, but continued on with what she was talking about before. 

"Lastly, this is the dining hall." A bigger cabin then Jen's was standing proudly in front of us. It had huge windows on it that could let you clearly see all the people inside. There was a lot more than I expected. 

It was already late at night. Probably around the usual time people had dinner, but when we were touring around everywhere there where kids playing on a small playground. There were house lights on that showed there was at least one person inside. This place looked to hold at least double all of the people I saw today. 

"You can shut your mouth now. That is only one level of the house. There are three," She said proudly as she opened one of the grand doors for me to enter. 

All the commotion at once hurt me sensitive ears, but thinking less about it the noise started to go down. Not to silence, but more bearable.  

She walked to a table where Kyle was sitting. Smiling at people that we walked by who gave a friendly smile back. No one gave nasty looks our way like most people would do when a vampire walked by, most likely after they walked past them, but when I looked behind me there were no nasty looks. 

"These people are really nice." 

Jen laughed. "You seem shocked by that." She pulled out a chair and sat down as I did the same. 

"We are vampires. I'm surprised they are not afraid of us." 

She laughed again. "There are only nice vampires here, and we make sure of that. They have to go through a whole process before they are aloud here. Isn't that right Kyle?" 

He nodded his head. "Took me a year to be accepted here." 

"That long?" I asked. 

Jen cut in. "We have to be very careful, but after he told us about his story of turning into a vampire. We knew that he was serious about joining. 

He never told me how he became a vampire? 

Kyle must have seen I looked disappointed and piped in, "Would you like to know how I became a vampire? It seems appropriate to tell you now, because I have already told Jen the story." 

"Yes please." 

He nodded his head before starting. "So, there was this one girl I fell hard for, maybe even literally." He had a humorless chuckle. "I went to go to propose to her. I hung up some lights at a park. Right when she got out of her car I bent on one knee and held out the ring." His words were now almost getting quieter. "I didn't get the chance to ask her the whole question before I felt a stab in the back. I remember her having tears in her eyes as she ran to me. My eyes were so blurry by then." I could see blood drop from the corner of his eyes. "The stranger lifted her up off the ground while she said something about saving me. The next thing I remember is fangs being on my neck and then blood in my mouth. I fell unconscious after that, and woke up with the want of blood. After that I swore I would find her and help get rid of bloodsuckers." 

"And that is how we allowed him to come here." Jen said.  

A lady with a black apron around her waist walked up to the table and gave Jen and Kyle a glass of what looked like red wine, but the smell alone indicated it was blood. "Here are your usuals." She then turned to me. "What would you like to drink?" My gums started to ache with the want of the red liquid. "I'll have what they're having," pointing to the two people at the table with me. "Okay, I will be right back." 

Shacking out of the bloodlust, I turned back to Jen. "How are you getting this blood?" I was shaking. 

"Don't worry we don't hurt anyone, we don't steal either. We have a blood bank." My shoulders slightly relaxed. "It's not ran by vampires though, but by humans. All voluntary, we get enough people that want to do it that we don't need to force people." 

The glass of blood was delivered to our table with three plates of chicken and french-fries. 

"Excuse me, but are you allergic to anything?" The lady from before asked me. I shook my head no. "Okay, we just have to make sure." She then left in the direction I'm assuming was the kitchen. 

Taking a bite of the fry it tasted so good. I saw Jen dipping it into her drink and decided to try it, the taste was even better. Humans would most likely be looking at us in disgust, I would too if I didn't have fangs, but it was too addicting to stop. It reminded me of when I dipped fries in my smoothies. 

"Where do you get this food from?" I asked, dipping another fry and plopping it into my mouth. 

"We get the foods by huge gardens that we have here. They grow fruits and vegetables and other types of things, but the stuff we can't grow we have people go to the village to grab some stuff. We don't have money so we do a lot of trades. That's also how we get furniture and clothing." 

I nodded my head in understanding. This place was like a little village that not many people knew about. 

Kyle and I ate in silence after that, and Jen went to go talk to the cooks about breakfast.  

Finishing up we took our plates to huge bins of dirty dishes. I was told that it was different people every night that would do the dishes. It kept everything in order, and kept everything fair for everyone. Everyone was treated the same. 

Jen and I both said goodbye to Kyle as he went a separate direction. He probably had a cabin of his own where he wanted to go sleep. 

Jen led me to a small opening near her cabin. "Stay right hear I'll quickly grab two sleeping bags." 

In a flash she was gone and then in front of me, but instead of just two sleeping bags there was a box of gram crackers, a bag of marshmallows and two bars of chocolate. 

"Just because I am a vampire now doesn't mean that I'm going to stop eating my favorite dessert. And it's still delicious." She laid the sleeping bags down and picked up two sticks from the ground handing one to me and keeping the other for her. 

"Where did you get the food?" I asked curiously as she started a small fire. 

"When you weren't looking I asked one of the cooks to run some specific food to my cabin. He agreed since I told him it was for you and to make you feel welcomed." She gave me a smile as she started to open the gram cracker box. 

"That was nice of him." I stared at the fire that just started to make the semi-cold air seem warmer. This made me think of another question to ask her. 

"How do vampires not see this place? It's full of light; wouldn't this look suspicious to vampires? They might not be able to smell something wrong, but they must clearly see something is off."  

Jen shook her head as if about to respond to a small kid. "From far away and close up this place is surrounded by so many trees that this place looks surrounded by fireflies. It is a very popular firefly populated area. Lucas and I thought of everything." She smiled fondly at her cabin and the area around us. "I wish he could see this place, it was just being built when I went to gather people." The bag of marshmallows she was about to open were squeezed so tight in her hand that it popped open sending marshmallows to fly everywhere, only some being left in the bag. "Oops, sorry. That Uncle Greg of his just always infuriates me. Glad he's dead." I forget how she learned that information, but realized I told her when we first met. That felt like so long ago. 

I knew never to bring up Greg around her; he would just piss her off. I hated to talk about him too, so we were in agreement. 

Both of us plopped a marshmallow on a stick and heated it over the fire. 

"Do you remember when we first met and you said that not all of your family was stuck in the cells?" 

She nodded her head as she placed the marshmallow between a piece of chocolate and two gram cracker pieces. "I remember, and when you go to kill Trent you will also get my parents out of the Cells, right?"  

"Of course!" She has done so much for me that this was the least I could do for her, besides killing Trent. The thought had the mark on my wrist pulsing. This pain constantly had me second think about what I agreed to. It had to be done it was to help all humans be safe, but did I have to be the one to do it? Vampires here are nice, why can't we change all vampires that way? Maybe not all vampires could change. Death was the only answer, including the prince. 

"Will I ever get to meet your sister?" I finished up my s'more and took a bite. 

"You can meet her tomorrow. I would have introduced you to her at dinner, but she was eating at her cabin with her husband. She was the one that watched after this place while I was gone, and she might be older than me, but she is a lot more energetic. So you have been warned." She winked at me before taking a bite of her s'more. 

I laughed. "She's probably not-" 

Rustling in the trees was heard before a figure appeared near Jen. I got up ready to attack, before she put her hands up making me stop. 

Who was this? 

The boy leaned down and whispered something in Jen's ear that not even my vampire hearing could pick up on. 

I watched Jen's eyes get bigger as she nodded her head and whispered something back in his ear before taking off back into the trees. 

"What was that about? And who--"  

"That was just a messenger, and he was just telling me something very important, involving you. It seems to be that Trent has already gone in a rage trying to find you. We had expected him to be angry, but not this bad. He has already killed eight of his guards that were on guard when we took you. He sent for guards to look for you, and if they aren't he kills them on the spot. You need to go back earlier than expected." 

I gulped. "How much earlier?" 

"Tomorrow morning."

And a Cliff Hanger... 

This is probably my second fastest update! I like to write on days without school...

Thank you so much for 180k reads!!

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