Vampires Realm Prophecy 01 - Child of Light

the words. His eyes drifted back to the mansion and the window but he forced them to the opposite side of the street where dense trees and bushes covered a slope. “I thought I sensed something.”
    He could see that Kalinor was waiting for more explanation.
    “I wish... grant me leave to see what it was that I felt, to ensure your safety. It is possible the hunter may have tracked us.” He held his lord’s gaze and stood in silence, waiting. He was pushing his luck. In all his life as a hunter, he had never appeared so shaken to his lord as he had done tonight, and now he was bowing out of an important mission, one that his lord had placed great honour in him receiving.
    Valentine’s eyes desired to roam back to the window. His senses begged him to reach out to her once more and feel her where she waited for him.
    Waited for him?
    He resisted the temptation to shake his head to clear it of such an idea.
    It was just her blood calling him. He had been foolish to drink from her. She had strong blood, more powerful than he’d ever tasted, and it seemed to have a hold over him still. Even his sire’s blood hadn’t kept him under its thrall for so long. His sire’s blood had never shown him things like hers.
    “Go, but return to the mansion before dawn. We will bring the child of the prophecy there and deal with her.” Kalinor’s voice roused him from his thoughts and he nodded in acceptance of the command.
    Valentine watched his lord walking up the road to the mansion gates. When the group reached them, he looked up at the wall to his left.
    “I must be insane. It’s the only answer.”
    He crouched low, jumped with ease to the top of the fifteen-foot wall, and then slipped down into the darkness on the other side before any of the Caelestis guards could see him. He waited in the shadows as he pricked his head up, listening to the distant conversation between his family and hers. When an argument broke out, he ran silently across the damp grass to the wall of the mansion, using the inevitable scuffle as cover. He pressed his back flush against the wall and peered around it, watching his lord and the guardsmen as they walked the gravel path that led to the mansion.
    He didn’t have much time.
    Turning away, he slipped from shadow to shadow, moving towards the rear of the house. He scanned his surroundings as he approached the servant entrance of the old building and then peered inside to make sure he wasn’t going to alert anyone to his presence. When he didn’t pick up anything on his senses, he stepped inside. He closed his eyes and sniffed, trying to catch a sign of her in the scent-laden air.
    His eyes moved to rest on a small stone spiral staircase that was heading upwards. The room he’d seen was on the second floor. Kalinor would draw the attention of the whole house when he asked for an audience with their master and if luck were with him tonight then the female vampire would remain safely in her room.
    Sneaking up the stone steps, he sharpened his senses, attuning them to her blood so he could find her in amongst the other vampire signatures within the house. He paused briefly at the entrance to the first floor, reaching out with his senses to check if she was there and then moving on when he didn’t find a sign of her. Rounding the top step and walking out onto the second floor, he ducked inside a dark doorway as someone crossed the end of the hall in front of him. It was a wide corridor. The dull grey stone walls made it seem cold and the large wooden doors were grand in their style. They were evenly spaced with a wide enough distance between them to tell him that the rooms on this level were vast. It was clearly the level on which the elders and those of higher standing within the family slept.
    Was she of high standing?
    He closed his eyes and sniffed at the air, searching for a sign of her.
    When he picked up her sweet scent, he began following it. The sound of rushing feet told him that Kalinor had made it into the mansion and that he had been correct. Everyone wanted to see why his family were here.
    A voice at the back of his mind reminded him that he should be there also. He should be standing at his lord’s side, ready to execute any order given to him, rather than skulking through the shadows of his enemy’s home searching for one of them. It was wrong of him to be here. It was wrong of him to want to assist her.
    Assist her of all things.
    He stopped dead and turned around to