Unknown P.O.V.

Rain poured down on the grassy plains that stretched on for miles outside the window.

Lightning flashed across the sky, followed closely by a crack of thunder.

The sound of the heavy rain pattering against the glass panels of the window competed with the cracking of logs that burned in the hearth of the large stone fireplace.

The gloomy evening did nothing to lighten the moods of those in the castle as they observed the storm.

"Where are we in implementing Plan B?" the man asked in annoyance.

As he spoke, his attention turned away from the window to the man who entered his study.

The subordinate came to stand in front of him, shaking in fear.

"The teams have been dispatched, sir. They are required to check in with us once they have reached their destinations, before they complete the task."

He drew in a deep breath.

"Have we found the plane yet?"

The young man stumbled over his words as he tried to answer the question.

"Not exactly, sir. We have the coordinates for the terminal they landed in but we haven't heard from our agent on the ground who was supposed to confirm them."

His eyes narrowed.

"Well, we better have that done soon. I have a feeling that they won't be in India for very long after tonight."

- - -

Ella's P.O.V.

Cain left the room shortly after our argument, receiving no protest from me as he did so.

I was so angry that I didn't care if I ever saw him again.

Why was he always so blunt with everything?

He wasn't just simply telling the truth plainly because he didn't feel the need to sugarcoat it.

That I could handle.

What Cain was doing was trying to intentionally drive me away with hurtful words and actions and he did so under the guise of honesty.

That's what angered me.

Frustrating me further was the fact that I was in no way prepared to face the truth.

I was asking questions that I didn't want to know the answers to. I wouldn't have liked any answer that Cain had given me.

It didn't matter that Cain couldn't communicate the truth if I couldn't accept it.

Entertaining the thoughts running through my mind that night as I laid in bed made me wonder if the concussion I had sustained had messed with my ability to reason.

I was having a harder time focusing on anything other than Cain and my mood swings made me feel like a sophomore in high school again.

Further proving my point, there I was laying in bed that night absolutely exhausted. Yet I laid there contemplating a relationship I had known was doomed since the first time Cain kissed me.

Part of me, albeit the irrational part, wanted to defy the odds. It wanted to mend the bond with Cain and do all that I could to rehabilitate it and foster it into a healthy relationship.

But that was where the psychology training in me raised the red flags.

A healthy relationship is mutually beneficial, so it should receive mutual effort and care.

The curveball life had thrown me with my grandfather's feigned death was hard enough to deal with without the addition of bearing the entire burden of a prospective relationship.

I couldn't be anyone else's conscience.

If Cain did the right thing, it wasn't going to be because I convinced him to do it.

He was a grown man and if he wanted a relationship, it was his job to go out and get it—not mine to bring it to him.

As I laid in bed, I begged for my brain to turn off for a few hours so I could get the rest I desperately needed.

Deciding I was just going to lay there as long as it took until I fell asleep, I closed my eyes to count sheep.

I did this until I felt myself slowly start to succumb to my drowsiness.

As I neared the very edge of consciousness, I heard a creaking sound that yanked me into attention so quickly I got dizzy.

I sat up on my elbows and turned my attention to the bedroom door, expecting it to be Cain walking in from the hallway.

My heart began to pound as I realized the sound wasn't coming from the door.

The sound of prolonged creaking echoed around the room again, prompting me to sit up completely.

I sat there for the longest few seconds of my life, trying to determine exactly where the sound was coming from.

The sound of blood rushing through my head made me feel like someone was screaming in my face, despite the fact that the room had been completely immersed into a dead silence.

With trembling hands I pushed back the covers silently, even though I wanted nothing more than to crawl back under them and pretend I wasn't there.

I slowly placed one foot on the floor, trying my hardest to be completely quiet.

After about twenty seconds of slow and deliberate movements, my body was completely off the bed and I began to walk over towards the other side of the room where the living suite was.

The only problem was: the room was completely dark. There were no windows because we were underground, which meant there was zero visibility when the lights were off.

I held my hands out in front of me, still unfamiliar with the room. I was guided by a very vague memory of the bedroom layout.

Suddenly, a loud sound like the slamming of a door sent me into a full dash towards where I thought the bedroom door was.

If I could just reach the light switch that was next to it...

Sharp pain began to shoot up my leg, my ankle starting to throb. It began to give out, but that didn't slow me down.

I ran across the room, keeping one hand along the wall to guide me.

As soon as my fingers touched the light switch, I flipped it.

I turned to greet the most horrifying thing I'd ever seen.

It's leathery, sagging skin was so pale and thin it was almost translucent. The visible veins and arteries added a purple hue that cast shadows on its sunken face. Protruding collarbones on its naked chest, sharp cheekbones and elbows added to the malnourished and sickly figure.

These features were nothing in comparison to the two-inch serrated fangs projecting from its mouth. I couldn't tell if the blood staining them came from its swollen gums or from someone else's body.

I stared at them in horror as it grinned.

"Frightened yet?"

The air had long since left my lungs, but my horrified expression answered its question sufficiently.

I could do nothing but stare at what I thought was the angel of death itself.

My body wouldn't move, despite my internal screaming at it to do so.

The creature, who was barely my height, reached a boney hand out to grasp my neck.

Paralyzed by terror, I stood there helplessly as it wrapped its long fingers around my neck.

It met my stare with its own pitch-black beady eyes and leaned in close until I could feel it's cold breath on my face.

With a voice that resonated in my mind like nails on a chalkboard, it whispered:

"You should be."

It lunged at me with a gaping mouth as the lights flickered off.

I let out an ear-piercing shriek and raised my hands in front of my face.

"Yes," it hissed, letting out a chuckle, "summon him for me. I want your dismembered and mangled body to be the last thing he sees."

I barely registered what it was saying as I fought to get away. Its grip around my neck only tightened as I did so.

The frailty of its sickly figure was incredibly misleading. The strength with which it choked me was astonishing.

Just as my body began to go limp, the sound of wood splintering followed by a loud crash echoed through the room.

A thunderous growl that shook the walls was the last thing I heard before the hand around my neck was ripped away.

The inch-long talons on the tips of its fingers imbedded themselves into the skin of my neck as they were torn away causing me to scream in pain.

A sound similar to the squealing of a tormented pig was heard before a sickening crack followed by the sounds of popping and shredding.
I fell to my knees and wrapped my own hands around my neck. I was shaking violently as I felt the warmth of the blood seeping between my fingers.

A stampede of footsteps echoed down the hallway through what I perceived to be a now-splintered bedroom door.

The lights were turned on and I looked up to see Daniel and Jai register the chaotic scene with wide eyes.

Daniel rushed over to me, pulling his t-shirt over his head as he did so.

He quickly knelt behind me and pulled me into his chest as he pressed the t-shirt against my wounded neck.

"It's okay," he kept repeating.

It wasn't until I could actually hear him above the sound of my ringing ears that I realized I was sobbing hysterically.

"Look," he said pulling the shirt away from my neck. "It's not bleeding that bad, you're going to be okay."

Maybe physically...

I looked around for the first time and saw blood spatter against the walls and furniture. Entrails and scraps of flesh were scattered around the living suite, accompanied by other evidences of dismemberment.

Jai was cornering something beside the bed. His hands were stretched out by his sides as he crouched low.

After what I had been through, I would have thought nothing would have surprised me. I was shocked, however, to see the mounds of black fur that peaked over Jai's shoulder.

He moved to the right, blocking it from coming towards Daniel and I, but I caught a glimpse of the creature just before he moved.

The beast closely resembled a wolf, except for the fact that it was nearly six feet tall and measured roughly three feet from shoulder to shoulder.

It's paws alone were the size of my head.

A low growl, similar to the one I heard just moments earlier, sounded across the room and Jai turned to Daniel and I.

Jai backed away slowly as I watched, still laying limp in Daniel's arms.

The wolf stepped forward, watching me closely.

As soon as I recognized those lavender eyes, my jaw went slack.

I couldn't tear my eyes away as the wolf knelt down, shaking the ground as it did so.

The wolf began to get smaller, it's fur melting into bronzed skin as it did so. It's legs melted into muscular, human limbs and the snout sunk back into its face.

Cain's transformation from wolf to human took only a few seconds and I was left stunned by the end of it.

When he picked himself off the floor, he immediately looked up at me.

He began to rush over to me, but by this time the roaring of blood in my ears was too loud and I felt my body succumb to the darkness that clouded my vision.

His hands on my face were the last thing I remembered.

- - -

Narrative P.O.V.

"I appreciate all of the physical evidence you left for us to determine who this guy was," Jai said sarcastically.

Cain looked up from where he sat, crouched next the couch where he had laid Ella down. He stood up wiping the blood on his hands onto the shorts he had just changed into.

"He was barely alive before I could even kill him," Cain said, throwing on a t-shirt.

Daniel looked at Cain incredulously as he placed his hand over his nose and mouth to mask the smell of the scattered entrails.

"So he was an old one?" Jai asked, still inspecting the larger pieces of flesh.

"Ancient," Cain said. "At least seven-hundred years old."

Daniel's eyebrows furrowed.

"So clearly they were never extinct," he noted.

Cain shook his head.

"He wasn't feeding regularly. Vampires are immortal if they remain well-nourished. He hadn't fed in at least a month," he said.

Jai looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"There's certainly ample evidence of blood in his veins," he said.

Cain ran his finger across the blood spatter that was on the wall, coating his finger in the dark red liquid.

"It's thin," he said, rubbing it between his fingers. "There's barely enough here to keep him alive."

Jai hummed.

"I'm surprised he had enough self-control to keep her alive as long as he did," he said, thinking aloud.

"He wasn't here for her," Cain said.

Daniel's eyes went wide.

"He was here for you," he said.

Jai rolled his eyes.

"Thanks for clarifying that, Captain Obvious," he said.

"How did he get in here if you're the one who broke down the door?" Daniel asked, ignoring Jai. "That's the only way in and out of here."

Cain pointed to an open trapdoor in the floorboards in the corner of the room.

"He tried to run back to it when I got ahold of him," he said.

The three men stood over the open trapdoor, staring down into a dark abyss.

"You first," Daniel said, nudging Jai.

"We don't have time," Cain said, turning to walk away.

"I didn't know we had to be back in Germany by a certain time," Jai said, following him.

"Who knew we were here?" Cain asked.

Daniel and Jai looked at each other before turning back to Cain.

"No one?" Daniel said.

"So you think this guy crawled out of this hole looking for Narnia?" Jai asked him sarcastically.

"Narnia was a wardrobe, not a trapdoor, genius," Daniel snapped.

"Someone told him we were here," Cain said, ignoring them. "There were very few people who knew we were here, so that narrows down the list."

"Nearly all of the people who knew we were here are here," Jai said.

"Which is why we have to leave," Cain said. "Tonight."

"What are you going to do with our men and women here?" Daniel asked.

"Keep them here," Cain said. "The last time someone tried to kill me, they tried to do it at the castle. That means it's likely that it's one of our men rather than someone here, considering neither Dinesh nor his men know the location of the castle."

Daniel took a deep breath.

"Do you want me to have Dinesh get the plane ready?" Jai asked.

Cain shook his head.

"No, no one can know that we've left. We have cash, I'll charter a private plane once we get out of Mumbai."

"And you plan on walking out here carrying an unconscious woman who is covered in blood out of an alleyway and just strolling until we reach the city border?" Jai asked him.

Cain narrowed his eyes.

"The SUV is still in the garage. We'll disable the GPS and microphone before we leave. We can head off towards a populated area and hire a cab to take us out of the city. We'll leave the SUV to be found," he said.

Jai nodded.

"So it's just the four of us, then?" Daniel asked.

Cain nodded and turned to look at Ella, who was sleeping on the couch.

"I don't trust anyone who isn't in this room."

- - -