The great house loomed over the others at a distance. Vampires especially originals loved to live closest to their food source. The most densely populated neighbourhood within their won territory would usually house their home.

It was no different with this family of originals. I hovered in the dark uncaring of the sun peeping over the edge. My time was running short. Daylight was fast approaching. Not that the time mattered to the undead or the originals. But it was an unwritten rule to abstein from such activities at times when the humans were mostly about.

But I was new. I was not bound by rules. Written or otherwise. I was feral in every sense and was not afraid to show it. Even so I was not so foolhardy as to march in there trying to take on a family of originals, masters of vampires like me and no doubt the countless scions they have hooked on the passion they could unleash from within.

I dropped my feral gaze to the ground and shut down the senses of sight. I would know my enemy. I would learn of my way undetected into their folds. I was certainly equipped enough to do so. I needed only to center myself and focus on a feasible plan.

Yet the place teemed with them. I could smell them as no doubt they could smell me.

My head shot up just as a vampire came landing on his agile feet before me. I eyed him indifferently. Not afraid. Not surprised. Instead my stare was almost baleful. I resented the intrusion into my personal space.... and I wasn't afraid to show it.

With a silent stealth I moved my limber limbs into an awkward fold dodging his blow before returning my own. We began the dance of warriors past only it was just one of us who was trained this purpose. I may not have had the fight skills but I more then made up for the lack with the fresh flow of the blood of an original that still powered through my veins. My blows when they landed were worth the effort. Slowly but surely I hammered into my opponent sending him plunging into the murky depths of if unconciousness.

"Wait!" I snarled at him before he gave into the creeping darkness. "Where is he? Tell me where's my Lucian?"

His head jolted up to look at me then. His bloody lips twitched in a half smirk before saying almost ineligibly," He said you would come."

Lucian! Lucian knew I would come.

But how?

"He...felt...the...change," said the nearly unconcious vamp.

I took a startled step back. This vamp knew him. Knew my Lucian intimately enough to be informed of this.

"Who? Who are you?" I asked him hoarsely feeling as if my breath just got punched out of my lungs.

"Mason. I belong to Vanessa," said the vamp before finally giving in to the inevitable.

I stared down at his slumped for watching the blood from the gnashes I delivered to his seep out. The burn in my throat flashed up and spiraled out of control drawing me into the haze of blood lust. I fell onto him like a ravaged soul. Sinking my teeth straight into his heart I drew blood from the muscle that pumped it up his veins. I drank and drank.

But then what he had said rang into my consciousness. Vanessa!

The bitch!

This vampire belonged to her. Did her bidding. She sent him after me. She knew I was here. Now I know she is here. I should have known she would have merged in with the enemy to get her way. To snatch my Lucian from me.

With renewed furore I shot to my feet and whipped up into a frenzy in my need to get to Lucian before all else. I took off at a blinding pace whipping by at unbelievable speed urged on by my driving need to get to my love. My other half. My soul..

Then the vamps came leaping out at me to intervene in my efforts to reach Lucian. I didn't stop. Leaping over, around and evading each and everyone. I anchored and leaped, cleaved and hit, dodged and struck. My every effort precise and determined.

I won't be stopped.

Not now. Not again. Not ever.