He died saving her.
For nineteen years, entombed within a dark mausoleum, Demetri's spirit tossed and turned.
He had died to save her.
The vampires had formed out of the very shadows of the night. In a frenzy of flashing fangs and tearing claws, the monsters surrounded them.
He had loved her more than life.
He could not find peace while memories of his sacrifice haunted his soul. So, for nineteen years, his sorrow and rage grew in the silence of his tomb until they became enough to give him a form.
Demetri arose from his tomb on the anniversary of the very night he had been lowered into it.
Even as a ghost, the years had aged him: Though his chiselled features and defined body had remained the same, the corners of his eyes and mouth were now slightly wrinkled. His hair, too, had changed: Instead of framing his face in jet-black waves, it glowed in cascades of silver. Demetri's whole figure was now cast in a subtle icy glow that made the steely blue of his eyes all the more piercing.
Demetri breathed out of the mausoleum and up into the night.
The city had changed. It was bigger and faster and louder and darker. Even though the entire cityscape was blanketed by a hazy neon glow, it was much darker than he remembered it to be.
But it did not take him long to find her.
It was almost as if he could smell her spirit. It was jasmine and vanilla... it was happiness.
She was happy?
How could she be happy when his soul had tossed and turned for nineteen years in a tempest of longing and heartache?
How could Serafina be happy?
People whirled out of Demetri's way as he stalked down the street. His booted feet hardly touched the ground as he followed Serafina's scent through the city.
He stopped at the base of a towering apartment building. He took a leap straight up and flew upwards until he reached the penthouse apartment. That was where she was. He phased into the apartment and stopped in mid-air.
"Serafina?!" He howled.
The vampiress stirred slightly and opened her dark eyes. She took in the ghostly apparition and scrambled awake, shaking the vampire that lay beside her into consciousness.
"D-Demetri?" Serafina stammered. There was no mistaking those piercing eyes - not even death could blunt his gaze. He was wearing the same leather jacket she had watched him die in.
"How could you?" the phantom snarled at her. Demetri's eyes glowed with unbelievable anger as he started towards the couple.
Serafina's vampire husband hissed at the spectre and bared his fangs, but the ghost paid him no mind.
"I died saving you from these monsters!" Demetri roared. "And you became one? You married one?"
He lunged at the couple and grabbed the vampire by his throat, wrenching him up into the air.
"Jasper!" Serafina cried, reaching in vain for her husband.
Demetri glared at the vampire twisting fiercely in his grasp and growled contemptuously: "I will kill you."
+++++++
Tonight was Ember's eighteenth birthday.
The young girl's charisma was irresistible and undeniable: Her mischievous fanged half-smile was contagious and her amber eyes crackled with a constant fire. Every night was an adventure, and every day an opportunity to learn something new - that was why, even though she looked nothing like her parents, she was most certainly their daughter.
Ember's mother only became a vampire after she was born. That was why, instead of having pale skin, long fangs, an aversion to sunlight and heat, and hair the colour of moon-less midnight, Ember's fangs were short and delicate, she was unaffected by heat or sun, her skin was warm and tinged burnt sienna, her dark hair was streaked with flames, and she hated the taste of blood.
It was almost dawn and Ember was finding her way home slowly. It had been a fantastic night and she did not want it to end just yet. She swept through the city, smiling as heads turned and eyes lingered on her. She was dressed as any respectable vampire would: to kill. She wore thigh-high black boots, a tight black skirt, a red corset and a long, black coat. Her hair whirled about her face like a hellish halo and her eyes burned like cognac ambers.
She reached the gleaming grey monolith that her family called home far too soon. She raced up the stairs with inhuman speed, all the way to the twenty-third floor.
Ember turned her key in the door and stepped into the apartment. She hardly had the chance to shrug her coat off when she heard her mother's frantic cries.
+++++++
Serafina wailed hysterically as she watched her husband struggle and twist in the deathly grip of her ghostly ex-lover.
Suddenly there was pounding at the door.
"Mom?! Dad?! Are you okay?!" A muffled voice came through the door. "Answer me!"
"Ember! Darling, run!" Serafina cried out, stumbling out of bed and towards the door.
"You had a
child
with this creature?!" Demetri roared angrily. He whirled around and flung Jasper across the room. The vampire crashed through a glass table and lay gasping on the floor, impaled by long slivers of glass.
Serafina dashed towards her husband and knelt amongst the shards of glass, cradling him in her arms. She roared angrily at Demetri and bared her fangs at him.
"I never loved you!" Serafina screamed. "Never!"
Demetri choked out a wretched groan and then gasped: "After I died... how long did you wait?"
"I didn't," Serafina spat, trembling with anger.
Demetri roared furiously.
"Mom! Dad! Who the hell is in there?! Open the door!" Ember shouted, pushing against the heavy mahogany door with all her might.
Demetri swooped down and pulled the door open. Ember fell into the room and the wraith immediately grabbed a fistful of her hair and hurled her away from him. Ember slammed into the wall and fell, semiconscious, to the floor.
"Ember!" Serafina cried.
Demetri looked at the vampiress and then at her child. He scooped the girl up into his arms and strode across the room to the window.
"No!" Serafina sobbed. "Don't take my baby!"
"You already have your
baby
," Demetri purred mockingly, glancing almost idly over his shoulder at the teary eyed vampiress. "You will have him forever. Death will never separate you. Isn't that enough?"
"Besides," he said, as he and Ember began to dematerialise, "your child should have been mine."
And with that, they disappeared.
Serafina moaned piteously and buried her head in her unconscious husband's chest.
+++++++
Ember gasped in a breath of cold air as she awoke. Consciousness coursed through her veins and she shivered as she regained her senses.
Her wrists were shackled to the wall above her head. She tugged at her bonds in vain for a few moments before she gave up.
The room she was in was round, old, and made of stone. It looked like a tower room of an ancient castle. The windows had never seen glass and frosty breezes swept through the chamber every few moments.
How cliché: the ghost takes his prisoner to a medieval castle,
Ember snorted to herself as she shivered.
Ember tried to digest the absurd, but very real and dangerous, situation she now found herself in.
"I was abducted from my parents by a ghost..."
Even when Ember said that sentence aloud and heard it echo back to her, it still sounded ridiculous. And yet, it was true.
She had been able to hear almost every word through the door. It seemed that this ghost had loved her mother, had died, and had an extreme dislike for vampires and her father.
Your child should have been mine... Did the ghost say that?
Ember renewed her efforts to escape. She struggled so desperately to twist her wrists free that she did not notice when Demetri faded into the room.
"You have an unusual name," he said, "for a bloodsucker."
The young girl started and glared at the apparition striding towards her. Even in the darkness, his blue eyes glimmered like the sea under a midnight moon.
"I suppose you think I'm evil," he mused.
"Or," Ember interjected hotly, "maybe I think you're pathetic."
Demetri raised a silver eyebrow and he knelt down to be at eye-level with his prisoner.
"You are just a child," he said, his fierce eyes inches from hers. "You don't know what it's like to be in love."
"Not yet," Ember retorted, "or do you plan to make sure I never get the chance?"
"I haven't made up my mind yet," Demetri said menacingly. He leaned so close that his lips brushed against hers when he spoke. "Maybe I will keep you here and do to you everything I never got the chance to do to your mother."
Ember shuddered as the ghost leered at her.
"And then," Demetri continued, "once I am sick of you, I will send your body back to your parents. I could send just your head... But I think they will want to see the whole thing."
"Do your worst," Ember hissed at him.
Demetri recoiled and a sneering smile began to tug at his lips.
