Chapter 3 2.

It felt like we had stepped into a void.

I expected to hear his boots crunch against fallen tree branches and dead leaves; things you might find in a normal, lush forest but there was nothing. I could still feel his body moving but his feet seemed to glide across air itself. I felt neither heat nor a gentle breeze against my skin. My ear could not pick up on any noises in the background; not the sound of birds in the trees or the scurrying of small animals across the forest floor as they hurried to get out of our path. I couldn't even hear my own breathing for a moment. It was like we had stepped into a vaccuum; a place of utterly, unsettling stillness.

And then, as suddenly as we had stepped into it, we seemed to step out of it. After a second of me realizing how empty our environment was, my ears were assaulted with sounds. It jolted me for a moment.

The silence was replaced by the sound of car engines and horns blaring right in front of us as if we were standing nearly a foot away from a freeway. My captor stopped moving and I heard the squealing of tires as what sounded like a car came to a stop in front of us.

He shifted me in his hold, transferring my torso from one forearm to the other and stepped forward. It sounded as though he opened the car door and stepped inside, sitting me on his lap once he was seated. The door closed softly, blocking out the sounds of traffic.

I reached down and once I felt that leather seat to my right was empty and, I immediately began struggling in his hold. I didn't want to be seated on his lap like this if it weren't necessary.

His grip on my waist tightened a little. "No, " he breathed, his cool breath wafting against my earlobe. The metallic scent of blood lingered on his lips and I shrunk away from him, still trying but failing to put some distance between us.

Choosing not to speak again, he simply pressed his fingers sharply in the flesh at my waist, showing me that he was more than capable of keeping me here. I stopped struggling and the man barked an order in some foreign language, to who I assumed was the driver at the front of the car.

The vehicle began to move and I tried to listened to what was going on around me. If I couldn't see where I was, I would try to pick up on specific sounds that would tell me where I might be and how to get back here. I could clearly hear the tolling of large bell; like in the tower of a church or a clocktower. That was something to note. It seemed close by.

Aside from that, there was just the sound of a busy interstate. No sirens, just the sound of cars zipping by with the occasional sound of a car horn. The radio wasn't even playing in the car. For about 20 or so odd minutes, I became one with the silence, closing my eyes and allowing it center my thoughts again.

There was no way I was going to get out of this on my own. I had taken a self defense class after school hours before I graduated several months back but my abductors were vampires. Their strength out matched my own several hundred times over. I would never manage to sneak up on one of them and even if I did, what part of the body would I hit? Would a stake to the heart be sufficient or was decapitation the safer and more effective choice? Did they fear silver?

There were simply too many unanswered questions for me to even begin formulating an escape plan. There was too much about them that I did not know.

When the car came to a stop, I was sure of two things:

1) I had to stay alive. Monsters like these had probably grown accustomed to be at the top of the food chain with all lesser beings submitting to their will. I refuse to go quietly. Survival was essential.

2) I would keep my virtue. I'm not a whore and I hadn't been 'deflowered' yet- for lack of a better word. I knew that they brought me here to be someone or several men's sexual play-thing but I refused to give up virtue. If I couldn't manage to accomplish the first of my resolutions, then at least I would go out with my dignity.

The vampire exited the car with me in tow and threw me over his forearm, carrying me in the same manner as he had done before. I heard the sound of heavy metal scrapping against the ground and then after a few paces, he set me back on my feet, untying the cloth from around my head.

I had to blink twice to refocus my vision, my eyes adjusting from the total darkness behind the blindfold to the bright blinding light of an overhead lamp in the room. I was standing on what looked like a heavily illuminated stage, complete with black, satin curtains behind me. Beyond the reach of the white light, stood about a dozen black, round tabletops and matching chairs; like the kind you might see in a bar or a strip club.

He had placed me to stand in a line across the length of the stage with the other girls, each of us standing shoulder to shoulder with each other. As luck would have it, I was standing next to the same chestnut haired girl again and for some unknown reason, she leaned into me again. It was like she trusted me; like she felt safer standing near me. I didn't try to pull away; the fear in her grey eyes was too genuine to ignore.

The other girls had wide eyes and very confused expressions but none of them looked nearly as frightened as the girl next to me did. Again I was reminded of how incredibly young she looked and I pitied her. She, more than anyone of us here on this stage, didnt deserve this. She shouldn't be exposed to this. She should be given the chance to grow up and experience life. She would never be able to do that if she was trapped in a place like this.

Looking down at her tiny body, shaking under my arm, I made another promise to myself: I would protect this tiny, fragile girl.

" Alright, " a male voice echoed throughout the room from an invisible P.A. system. "Let's get started."

Then from behind the black curtains, a squat, pale skinned man emerged. He was the shortest of all the vampires thus far: about 5 foot 4 with thin, sandy blonde hair. He looked emaciated, his grey eyes sunken into his skeletal face. There was a red tailor's measuring tape draped across his gaunt shoulders.

The green eyed man who had carried me here followed close behind the smaller hand, holding what look like sack cloth in his arms.

The tiny man walked to the farthest end of the line of frightened teenage girls and began measuring. He darted around the first girl's body, asking her to bend several times so that he could wrap the measuring tape around her bust and hips and run it down the length of her body. He seemed to be recording the measurements in his mind. Then he gestured for the man with the cloth to come forward. The tiny man grabbed a handful of cloth and stretched the separate articles out.

At full length, I could see what they were. They were dresses. Pieces of sack cloth had been stitched together, quite neatly might I add, especially for the material being used. At the front of the dress, a deep 'v' was cut out for the neckline, plunging nearly half way down the length of the garment and holes where strips of leather cord where stringed through, were placed on both sides of the v-shape. From the looks of it, the cords were meant to be tied in a zigzag pattern in the same way that some corsets were tied in the back; probably meant to cinch in the cleavage while exposing as much of it as possible. Like a very inexpensive and degrading version of a Playboy's bunny outfit.

The little man searched through the dresses until he was satisfied that he had found one that met the girl's measurements and then he handed it to her. He continued this with the other girls to my right, working quickly and in complete silence. When he came to the smaller girl standing closer to me, the vampire with the green eyes seized the opportunity to get as close to me as possible. He stood directly behind my body as the short tailor worked on the girl beside me, bending his taller frame over mine and I felt him sniff at the hair at the crown of my head.

When it was my turn to be measured, he stepped back a bit and though it wasn't much, I was grateful for that inch. Having him stand that close to me made me anxious.

As was the case with the tiny girl who was still trying to cling onto me, the pale-skinned tailor didn't need to ask me to bend for him to do his work; he wasn't that much shorter than I was. He wrapped the tape around my hips, his icy fingers making me shiver when they brushed against me even through the dress I was wearing.

His skin was much, much colder than the vampire's. How could that be? What creature's skin could be colder than a man who wasn't truly alive?

He pulled the tape away from my body and scowled at the number he had marked off with his thumb. His scowl deepened when he read the number from the measurement of my bust line.

"This one is too big, " he growled. His voice was low and raspy, like he had a history of respiratory problems or had spent half of his lifetime smoking. Combined with his diminutive stature and his sunken face and beady grey eyes, the term goblin began to take root in my mind as a means to describe him.

"I don't know if the largest dress I have would fit her." He began combing through the last few dresses he had left.

I couldn't totally disagree with him about my size though. I wasn't fat by any standards but I wasn't skinny either. I was that shade of plump that people never really found a word to categorize and that boys rarely gravitated toward- at least not the boys at my previous high school. I was good enough to gawk at but not to date. They liked the tall, thin girls with beautiful, long legs. I was short and not plump, but thick.

My hips were a bit wider than the other girls; my breasts much fuller too and I couldn't help feeling self conscious. I was surrounded by girls who would all pass themselves off as models and this tiny little monster was standing here, pointing out all my flaws and insecurities. Everything the little goblin had in his arms looked like a size six; I was more of a size eight.

"I think she's fine, " the man purred behind me. "I've never liked my girls too thin." His fingers were curling around the ends of a few strands of my hair. "Or too pale."

Reflexively, I glanced down as his skin at his last comment. My skin is olive toned; not the kind of color that people hope to get from bottled, spray tans but the sun kissed glow, courtesy of my birth mother's Middle Eastern heritage. I'd been told that my complexion was pretty from the perspective of certain individuals.

The tiny man kissed his teeth, dismissing the vampire's comment and handed me a dress. "You'll just have to make do with that." I took it from him with my hands that were still bound in front of my body, gave him a little nod of appreciation and watched him wobble away to exit through the heavy metal door at the front of the club where we'd entered.

"This way, " the vampire piped up and I turned around to see him standing near the satin curtains, pulling them aside to reveal the corridor to a very dimly lit room.

I put my hands on the tiny girl with flowing chestnut brown hair, ever mindful of the promise I had made to myself to keep her safe. I pulled her body in front of me, walking close behind her and resting the palms of my bound hands on one of her shoulders as we stepped forward.