The fifth floor wasn’t any better than the sixth floor.

Once you’ve added in the rancid stench of something foul, and a swarm of flies buzzing about, it was actually a whole lot worse. It only took one step into the deserted hallway to feel the fabric of my shoes be soaked by something very thick, and very wet.

A chill went up my spine.

I did my best to ignore what splattered onto my jeans with every step inwards. I could ignore it all I want, but that wouldn’t mean it won’t keep happening. My jeans will continue to be dyed deeper by the endless puddles of blood that filled the decrepit hallway.

Where I got the courage to continue forging on despite everything I’ve witnessed so far was truly a mystery.

No empty rooms with soulless wandering people staring endlessly away this time. No empty rooms with a soul in sight.

Instead rooms brimming with the rotten, butchered corpses of animals. Crooked, wingless pigeons. Headless, tail-less, rats. Among others, stacked into heaps and mounds in almost every room.

The rancid source of the blood and smell was discovered. I fought the urge to throw up right then and there. My thoughts immediately retreated to the Matriarchs. Just what the hell were they doing with piles of dead rodents? Why so many?

Some part of me wasn’t really all that eager to know…

Just right then, I finally remembered.

“Phone.”

I’ll just call Irene. Ask her where the hell she was. Get a status update or something, anything.

So many options for salvation.

Then I felt the coarseness of shattered glass as my hand delved into my pants pocket. I pulled out what was left of my phone. A broken metal slab that wouldn’t turn on.

I didn’t even remember breaking my phone. Then again, I didn’t even remember how I got here.

Dejectedly, I placed the phone into my pocket and continued to walk.

Fourth floor was unusually normal… for an abandoned building that is. Never thought I’d be glad to see only bits of glass, dirt and trash litter a hallway for once. Yet the feeling of unease wouldn’t be abated.

I knew something bad was going to happen. It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ it happens, it was more of a ‘when’ it will happen. Something around the next hallway I encounter perhaps, or a room with unimaginable horrors held within.

Still walking… with only my heavy breaths to fill the discomforting silence, nearing a corner now… I made a turn.

I tried to make a turn.

My vision blackened. All air escaped me. And my senses were immediately assailed at all fronts by a sudden throbbing pain at the back of my head.

The next thing I knew, I was being met with the indignant expression of a woman, her slit-like blackened pupils conveying a tidal wave of anger. Lips baring fangs and a set of gritted teeth.

“Why aren’t you sedated?!” She hissed at me, her voice coated with a raspy demonic growl.

Matriarch.

I gulped.

Yet I couldn’t swallow.

She had pressed her arm against my throat, pressure increasing more and more with every passing second. The pain at the back of my head, she had pinned me against a slab of concrete at full force, pushing me from the middle of the hall, all the way to the end of it in a blink of an eye.

Such speed… strength… I couldn’t fight back. Not that could, the pain was too great, her arm was too heavy.

“You came out of that yourself? Hmm?” She said, pressing even harder. “Talk!”

I started to choke for a gasp of breath, felt drool dribbling down my chin. With one hand trying to pry her loose, I mustered all my strength to answer her.

“I don’t know… what… you’re talking about…”

“Sure you do,” she said, her voice dripping with spite. “You know Kronocia, you know us… surely you must know that nothing and I mean NOTHING can counteract a vampire’s venom, you’re supposed to be paralyzed. So how did you do it?”

Me gargling my lungs out was my only answer to her question.

“Sister… let… him go…”

Faintly, in a voice so soft, I saw Adalia emerge from out the shadows, appearing from behind her sister still with a vacant expression on her face. Yet something was off with her compared to when I’ve last seen her.

Veins protruded out of her pale skin like branches on a tree. They covered nearly every inch of her body, her face… and she looked even more frail than before. Any second she looked as if she was about to collapse.

The sister flared her nostrils.

“Adalia, I thought I told you to wait,” she said in a furious whisper.

My vision was starting to fade, my lungs felt as if they were going to burst at the seams.

“You’ll… kill him…”

Pain intensified. She squeezed harder.

“That’s the idea,” she muttered.

I felt my eyes start to bulge from their sockets.

“Please… Terestra…”

The sister clicked her tongue.

“He isn’t Terestra! And if he was…” She leaned in close. “I wouldn’t be able to do this to him.”

“Don’t… I beg you…” Adalia reached out a quivering hand. “Sister… please…”

Breathing… wasn’t. I couldn’t. Dying…

“Amelia!”

I heard my body collapse to the floor before I felt it, heard myself take in a huge gasp of breath before I realized I was breathing again. Choking, coughing… but breathing.

The sister had loosened her hold. I didn’t know why, I couldn’t question why… the sharp, stabbing sensation around my neck prevented me from talking. So I focused on breathing, watching through blurred vision sprawled out on the ground as the sister turned to face Adalia.

“You don’t want him dead?” She asked.

Adalia’s eyes briefly flickered to mine before she silently shook her head.

“Then take his blood,” said the sister, glaring. “Now.”

Another shake of the head. “Can’t… take Terestra… blood.

“For the last time, he isn’t Terestra! He’s human! Terestra isn’t. Take his blood!”

“It’s… okay… don’t need. I…. eat birds… rats… help me…”

“You know it isn’t enough anymore! You’re hours away from going into a frenzy, you’ll never be the same! Do you want that? I can’t save you…”

Then for the first time ever, I bore witness to a sense of fear and worry that softened the sister’s enraged expression.

“Please… please don’t make me kill you,” She said.

Adalia gaze confronted me again. “Not… Terestra?” She asked, her clouded misty eyes piercing through mine.

Another stare, one seething with anger, lashed down at me. Both sisters, silent, waiting with bated breath on what I had to say.

What could I say? What reply was available to me?

Death was but a inches away from me in the form of a vampire’s unrelenting bloodlust as she aggressively curled up her hands into fists. To the right of that, Adalia’s soft mellow demeanor was the only one I could appeal to.

Hazy, barely present, and quite possibly about to go insane… I had to take a gamble… Adalia was my only salvation.

Through a hoarse, scratchy voice, my reply rang out from my quivering lips. I told a lie.

“I… I am. I’m… Terestra.”