MASTER SEBASTIAN

Chapter 5

Silence once again.

For a moment I wondered if I'd imagined the crash, but the thought disappeared once I heard a thud from the room at the end of the hallway. The same direction of the crash. Now I knew this was a party and there was a chance the people in there were drunk and having a good time. I might be intruding.

But that crash didn't sound like a good time.

As if evoked by my thoughts, I heard a loud thud.

My instincts screamed at me to stay back, but it was like my feet had a mind of their own. Slowly I stood and hesitantly made my way down to the room on the last row. What if someone was hurt? What if someone was getting...

The thought brought an onset of nausea. I tamped down the sick feeling by focusing my attention ahead of me. Soon I was standing before the wooden door. I placed my hand on the wood, feeling slight vibrations from the other end.

Setting my jaw, I grabbed the handle and gave a sharp twist.

The scene in the room had me paling.

A vampire had his arms clasped tight around a human female. In his state of desire, black claws had extended from his fingers and they dug into the arms of the woman. Trickles of blood snaked down.

He had his fangs buried in the side of her neck, taking greedy pulls of her blood, his pale face flooding with colour. The woman moaned in pleasure, curling her whitening fingers into his broad shoulders.

Bile rose to my throat and everything around me seemed to slow. To the silence of the hallway, I took one step back. A miniscule movement, barely louder than a whisper. But his head snapped to where I stood.

A rush of panic raced up my throat when interest flooded his eyes. His eyes. I inhaled a sharp breath. They were flooded with black. The whites of them had taken on the colour of his pupils, and now they were barely distinguishable, bottomless.

Stumbling away from the door, I turned and ran down to the main floor, my heart pounding in my ears. The music became louder with each distance I covered.

Icy fingers skittered down my spine. I needed to get the hell out of here.

Breaking into the packed dancefloor, I stopped, straining around the mass of rocking bodies. Purple strobe lights flashed around, a ray momentarily falling on me. Exhaling a sharp breath, I dove into the crowd--I literally swam through, my arms shooting out to dislodge bodies in a forceful arc.

"Hey, watch it!" A pissed male.

My reply was to shoot out my arms yet again, parting the sea of sweaty bodies.

I exhaled a relieved breath once I got to open space, then, nervous, I threw a glance over my shoulder, half-expecting the vampire to have followed me. When I brought my gaze back ahead, it was to meet an empty bar.

My nerves spiked and I scanned the wide floor, searching for Charlotte. Quickly I approached the vampire bartender. "My friend," I began without preamble, "the blonde girl I came in with. Have any idea where she went off?"

Without looking up from the drinks he was mixing, he pointed a finger across the room. Following his pale hand, the space behind a wall became visible.