A Bride Contested By Vampire And Angel

Chapter 5

Be it extremely unusual or just blatantly annoying, to my horror, Daryl, the blonde man who had climbed through the window of my second story bedroom appeared right by the door a mere minute after Mary disappeared. I do not use the word 'appear' lightly because he did not even make a single sound before I was compelled to look over at the door and see him leaning against the doorframe as he peered inside the kitchen.

"This place is so dull. I guess I should thank them for bringing you here. You'll be my entertainment from now on," he commented while I sat on in the chair by the table. I had nothing to do and he was standing by the doorway, meaning that I could not just get up and leave the room like I desperately wanted to. I did not want to speak to him, but he stood there with an expecting expression on his face; he was expecting me to respond to his words. Well. I figured that the only way to get rid of him quickly was to reply instead of having him insisting that I do persistently. It was 'satisfy him enough to leave for good' over 'leave him dissatisfied and run a risk of him returning for more entertainment'.

"Unfortunately, I wasn't brought here to entertain you. I have work to do that doesn't involve babysitting a child," I stated before the immediate thought to retract my words ran through my head. Actually, part of my job was to take care of children who had not yet arrived, but I did not want to correct myself to avoid giving Daryl any ideas of bothering the children in future. Unlike me, they actually had to be kept away from the vampires as they could not fend for themselves. I was raised in a different orphanage from them. I had learned some basic self defense maneuvers, unfortunately none of which were to help me fight against vampires. So I was anxious the entire time I sat in the same room with one.

"I didn't think you were this mean and cold hearted. Well, you wouldn't be the ice queen in this place," he said as his eyes darted to the side, indicating the door and thus the other room down the hallway. He was making mention of the mistress of the house. I narrowed my eyebrows. It seemed that the only way I would learn about my parents was through Daryl, which was terrible for me since I had to avoid him.

"This probably doesn't involve me... but what is your relationship with the masters?" I asked, sitting on the edge of my seat. My curiosity had been so piqued that I wasn't even bothered by him stepping into the room and pulling out the chair opposite to me at the table.

"'Masters'," he said as a scoff, "...It does involve you, actually, except that you aren't ready to learn of it yet so I won't tell you." Whatever he had discussed with the masters in the last hour must have been very important. He was equally as curios as I was when he appeared in my room but know he seemed to know so much that he was keeping me in the dark about it, which was very unfair to me. I was about to ask him to elaborate, but figured that he would have told me already if he was interested. He was supposed to be a rebel after all, and rebels did whatever they wanted even if they were told to do the opposite.

We sat in the kitchen in silence with him glancing around the room from time to time with his hand rested on the table; the hand that I had bit. Thinking back, I bit down on his palm hard enough to draw blood, yet his hand showed no indication of an injury. There were no other stains on the carpet when I was cleaning, leaving me to think that he really was not human since his wound had healed so quickly in such a short amount of time. He was so calm and collected, which made him seem human, but he was not and that alone made me uneasy. I needed to leave the room and get away from him. So, I stood up, but the moment I did, he did the same as though he had read my mind. I waited for a moment as he walked out of the room before I did.

"Are you leaving?" I called out to him as I approached the doorway as well. He turned to look at me from the corner of his eye and flashed a wide grin in my direction. That was not to assure me that he really was leaving. It gave me a vague sense that a mischievous child was about to do something bad and I could not let that happen. He walked through the doorway and I ran after him to stop him from causing trouble, but he was gone by the time I had reached the hallway. The nearest door down the hallway was about a ten second walk from the kitchen and I would have heard him running if he did. He was enveloped with a lot of mystery that made it even more irritating to have him around.

He did not behave as a guest should have and the fact that Mary and the masters allowed him to do whatever he wanted in the house was baffling. Was he really guest? It seemed to me that he knew his way around the place and that he would be frequently around in future. I searched the entire mansion for him, knowing fully well that it was pointless. The only places I didn't search were the masters' quarters, Mary's room, two locked doors on the first and second floor respectively, and the garden in the backyard which I had just seen for the first time since my arrival. Its appearance was contradictory to the front garden's. The front had luscious leaves on bushes where red roses grew and all the other plants that indicated healthy soil in a garden, but the backyard was the complete opposite. It sent violent shivers down my spine.

The soil was as dark as coal, and it might have been literal coal too considering that half of the yard was ravaged by the fire. There was evidence of a hedge that used to surround the entire backyard, but all that remained was burnt branches and ashes of leaves on the ground, some of which had been blown around by the wind and covered the backside of the mansion in black dust. There were remains of burnt lawn furniture including chairs and tables, and far off there were piles of burnt metal railings that had belonged to the large umbrellas that were perched around the yard. It was the only reminder that the mansion used to be a lovely place that was warm and welcoming before it was almost completely torn down. The yard was large but not large enough that I could not scan everything from the doorway. Daryl was nowhere in sight and that was good enough for me to quickly head back inside the house.

I had witnessed too many weird things for the day and I decided it was better if I waited in my room until I felt sleepy.

But midnight quickly arrived with me still awake and laying on the bed with a book I had been reading all the while on the bedside table. I was struggling to fall asleep, which would not bode well for me considering all the preparations and assistance I had to provide to Mary for the event that would be held later in the day. I decided to get a mug of hot water to help me fall asleep and I went down to the kitchen. I turned on the gas stove and poured some water into a metal pot which I placed over the heated plate and sat down in the chair to wait. Now, one of the windows that was on the wall that faced the backyard of the garden gave a full view of the outside when the curtain was drawn, and that rarely ever happened.

It had only been about a minute since I sat down and I was already up and moving towards said window. I raised my hand and tugged on the inner edge of one of the double curtains, listening closely at the muffled sound that was coming from behind the window. I didn't think it wise to peak outside in the dead of the night out of the fear that I might discover or witness something that would make my skin go pale, but I was more curious than afraid when I reached the window.

I separated the curtains only a little bit and my face came close to the window which was covered in droplets of water from the humidity in the kitchen and the cold air from the outside. It was still winter after all. I tugged on the edge of my arm's sleeve and used it to wipe away the distortion that was created on the window by the mist, giving myself a clear view past the window of the backyard I had seen earlier that day.

As if the backyard was not eerie enough during the day, it was far worse under the darkness of the night. It resembled a graveyard with it's dead plants and the black dust that had settled on the ground and the outer ledge of the window. I was certain my fingers would be stained black if I brushed them against the ledge a bit. I know it was not my duty nor was it an instruction to do so, but I would try to clear up some of the mess in the backyard later that day.

For now, I was concerned with something else; something that made me hold in my breath when I suddenly noticed it in the distance by the burnt hedges. It was a tall figure, perhaps the trunk of a tree that had been burnt down by the fire, it's branches and leaves having fallen off. But it was strange because I had not seen any trees in the backyard during the daytime. The figure's girth was too thick for it to have been one of the metal poles of the umbrellas that were laid down in a pile in the distance.

I did not want to admit it but the figure resembled a human more than any other object. Then it bent over and I saw that it had something in its hand. There were no lights illuminating the backyard but I could make out a shovel in its hands. The muffled sound I heard was the shovel being lodged into the ground to dig up a hole by the hedges. I did not know what to think of what I was witnessing. There was someone in the backyard digging for something. Digging for what exactly?

I turned around and moved away from the window. The curtains flowed down to their original positions as I walked past the gas stove to the drawers where the utensils where placed. I pulled out a long and sharp knife. It was not my place to maintain the security in the mansion and I did not have to check it out either, but the second before I moved away from the window, I caught a glimpse of the side of the figure's face and the person looked familiar; very familiar.

I had in mind to head to Mary's room first, but I did not want to disturb her nor did I want to disturb my 'parents', I thought, reciting in my head the word in the exact same tone Darryl had used when he said it earlier. Mary would be leaving soon, meaning that I would no longer need to rely on her. The other's would be relying on me and it was about time I started acting out on my own without having to need someone's approval.