Chapter 5 4.

No one came to get us for quite a while.

Most of us sat on the edges of our beds, literally twiddling our thumbs and dreading what they'd actually do when someone finally came in the room.

Some time during the three hours that had passed- the only notion of time I had was from a clock I noticed on one of the far walls--, Melanie had fallen asleep on my shoulder.

She blew soft breaths against my neck everytime she exhaled. I rested my cheek against the top of her head, unwilling to wake her.

"Maybe all the men that come here are attractive. I mean that guy from the ship was gorgeous, " said a high-pitched voice from behind me in a whisper.

"But he killed those other girls, " another voice countered in a slightly lower pitch. I could tell by the way her voice broke at the end that he had shuddered when she said that.

"They don't want to kill us. If they did, why did they make us change? Why put us in a room with beds and a bathroom? They don't want us dead. They want to give us to men that want to fuck us." The mattress creaked as she shifted on top of it. "I just hope they're attractive men."

I laughed and I knew it sounded cruel. I laughed at how stupid they sounded debating on whether or not they were whored out to an attractive man. They honestly assumed that it would matter in the end.

"Sure they'll be attractive. But that's the point. How else do you think their kind draw us in?

They understand that we let trivial things like beauty cloud our vision. We're the perfect prey." I told them without turning around.

I didn't like the way my voice sounded. It was unnaturally empty as if slowly, I was becoming numb to the entire situation.

"They're not going to kill us..." the girl with the mousy voice said again, trying to defend this absurd allusion that somehow we were an asset to these monsters.

"They already have!" I hissed back. "They killed five of us already. Or have you forgotten, because I can't. I watched Maple die last night; I watched all of them die. And I know that we're next."

There was a brief pause and the sound of chains clinking against the concrete before the girl was angrily stomping toward me; at least as angrily as a person could stomp with chains around her feet. The movement was more like shuffling.

"You don't know that!" she shouted, stabbing the air near my face with her index finger. The girl was a tall blonde, with crystal blue eyes. She was pretty; beautiful in the way that models were with her strong features scrunched up in an angry scowl.

"What do think they're going to do? We're not escorts. We're not even prostitutes to them. We have no value. They're going to sell us to people; to other vampires.

And yes, those vampires are going to sleep us. They're going to drink from us and then sooner or later, someone will loose control. Someone will get careless and they'll kill one of us.

Or all of us.

You're an idiot if you think they'll care enough about us to show any restraint."

The blonde kept shaking her head, manicly.

"You're wrong. They won't kill us. He killed those other girls on the boat because he knew that no one would want them. They weren't pretty enough. Clarice had that awkward freckle thing on that one side of her face and Lily's thighs were too wide..."

She spoke so nonchalantly about the dead girls like she would if she was choosing between outfits.

"You think that'll save you? Because you're pretty?"

It was clear to me now-- she was loosing it. She was on the verge of a mental breakdown. She could see the reality as clearly as I could but her mind wouldn't allow her to accept that.

"Maybe but I know that I won't be the first to go.

I can't say the same thing about you, however. I could see someone wanting to toy with a couple of lesbians like yourselves." She snickered, glancing down at a sleeping Melanie.

I was on my feet in a heartbeat, extremely furious with her. She was at least three inches taller than me but that didn't change the intensity of my glare; I wasn't afriad of her. It wasn't so much of me wanting to disprove her assumption of my sexuality, it was more me wanting to defend Melanie.

But that only made the grin on her face wider. "Defending your girlfriend?"

Before I could even think about what I was doing, my hands closed around her slender throat, silencing her. In fact, the way that my hands were tied in front of my body lended to this attack. The blonde's blue eyes bulged out of her head, the smug look wiped clean off her face.

"You pompous bitch, " I hissed. My chest was heaving. I couldn't remember having ever been this angry.

The blonde had been a bully in high school; I could see that. She thought her long legs and her parents' money made her better than girls like me. She picked her teeth with girls like Melanie-- girls who were too small and too innocent to stand up for themselves; girls who would never tell anybody that they were being bullied.

She wouldn't get away with that here; not with Melanie and not while I was around. My fingers tigthened around her pencil neck. I could squeeze the life out of her, right here, right now. I knew I could and a part of me, a part that was more impulsive than rationale, wanted to do it.

"Enough!"

The green eyed vampire's voice echoed through the room. He stood in the entrance to the room, his pale, left knuckle made bone-white by the force with which he was clenching his hand into a fist. There was a black bag in his right hand. The rage was radiating off of his body in waves and the room fell into an eerie silence; there wasn't even the sound of the blonde girl's breathing.

I let my hands fall away from her neck and she scurried away and back to her bed behind me. I didn't take my eyes off of him as I sat back down on my mattress. Melanie was shifting beside me and I gave her my hands. Her fingers curled around my own. If holding my hands makes her feel for comfortable, then I would allow it.

"I'm sorry, " I murmured." She must have woken up when I had moved so abruptly.

The vampire stepped into the room and he held my gaze, his eyes only flicking momentarily to Melanie beside me.

He walked further into the room and knelt right at my feet, his eyes finally level with mine and he yanked my hands away from Melanie.

One slender finger slipped under the base of the knot and he tugged upward, fractionally. The severed ropes fell to the floor from my wrists. A small key was suddenly in his hands and he used it to unlock the shackles around mine and Melanie's ankles.

He cut Melanie's restraints from her wrists before handing me a hairbrush from the bag. "You can't run, " he murmured. His eyes had melted into emerald pools and he looked visibly less angry when he looked at me. "Make yourselves presentable."

I took the brush from him and he moved around the room, taking the ropes off of the other girls' hands and the shackles from their ankles and handing them brushes.

"Can you.. Can you help me with mine, " Melanie stuttered, gesturing toward her own hair.

I smiled. "Of course."

She turned around, her back to me and I gently pulled the brush through her chestnut brown hair. It was an easy task; her hair was straight and extremely silky.

"Your hair is beautiful." I told her when I was finished.

"I can't ask you to brush mine; it wouldn't do much good."

Brushing never did much to deal with my mess of curls-- not that any hairbrush has ever survived a confrontation with my hair.

"Are you sure?" she asked, turning to face me with the brush in her hand.

"Yes, I'm sure." I combed my fingers through my hair, pulling out a few tangles and fluffing the roots. I pulled a few strands over both shoulders, letting them fall over my cleavage in an attempt to hide what the deep v of the dress had exposed.

The vampire had been standing completely still in the corner near the entrance, like a permanent fixture in the wall. His shoulders shifted slightly and he turned his head toward us when Melanie and I stood up.

"Come with me. All of you."

We followed silently behind him down the corridor at the rear of what had become our room. He took us down the dark corridor and into a room to the left.

This room was the most illuminated with six huge studio lights hanging from the the ceiling. A mirror, running from roof to ceiling and nearly the entire length of the room served as a partition. The other side of the room seemed to be accessed from a metal door on the only space of the partition wall that wasn't reflective.

The mirror reminded me immediately of the hours I spent binge-watching Law & Order S.V.U. this summer before my trip to Prague. It looked like the two-way mirror in the interrogation room at the show's precinct.

My anxiety was piqued by that.

Melanie felt me stiffen beside her and put her hand on my arm, pulling me over to the raised platform at the center of the room. If that indeed was a two way mirror, then there would be someone or rather some people waiting on the other side of the glass.

"What's wrong?" she whispered in my ear, clinging on to my arm and standing on tiptoe.

"It's a two-way mirror, " I told her.

"How do you know?"

"I don't; I mean not really. But it looks like one."

"Do you think there are people behind it?"

"Maybe." 'Vampires', I wanted to say. 'There could be vampire's behind the glass.'

"Then they're going to choose between us.." Her soft voice sounded hollow and far away. "You can't leave me... We can't be separated. We can't.."

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Her eyes were wild and unfocused. She wasn't seeing me.

"Listen to me. Of course, if someone wants you then they have to take me. I won't let you go alone. But if anyone picks me, if they only pick me, you can't come with me."

"No.." she murmured. "No! I can't. I have to come with you. Please.." Hot tears started streaming down her flaming cheeks.

I brushed them away with my thumbs. "Melanie, stop this. Stop crying."

"Don't leave me, " she pleaded. She looked so broken, like a wounded child and I wondered if this was finally the thing that would push her over the edge of sanity: the fear of being left alone.

I crushed her to my chest for a moment, holding her tightly and stroking her hair.

"You have to stay here if they only choose me. You'll be safe here."

"You don't know that. You can't be sure, " she huffed, pulling away from me.

"No, I can't be entirely sure. But out there, " I pointed toward the mirror. "There could be vampires out there and if there is any chance that you get to be further away from those creatures than I do, I want you to take it. You'll be safer back on your bed than you will be with any one of them.

Promise me you'll go back to the room if they don't choose you."

She shook her head twice, her grey eyes darkened to color of steel with anger. She was angry at me.

"Please. I made a promise to you to keep you safe, and this is me trying to keep that promise.

Promise me that you'll stay in that room."

"Promise me, Melanie, " I repeated when she didn't answer.

Finally she nodded, with a small sigh. "I promise."

There was still skepticism in her eyes and it made her look older but I was glad she had at least agreed to do as I asked even if she didn't entirely agree with the logic behind it.

I simply wouldn't be able to protect her if they sold her to some other man. If she left this room with some man- or woman- there would be too many variables that I wouldn't be able to control. I needed to be in control for this to work.

She turned and faced the glass, still somewhat upset but if she wanted an apology for making a tough decision on her behalf, I would give her one later. Her anger with me, her frustation with being helpless, her fear: none of that would matter if we didn't make it out of this room.

I faced forward, falling into line with the other girls on the platform with Melanie standing on my right side. The green-eyed vampire stood next me on my left and reached a hand down to wrap his fingers around a few strands of my hair, his palm resting on the small of my back.

He raised his left palm to his lips and spoke into what must have been a small receiver, "Commence the choosing."

Melanie reached for my hand.