Page 58 of BLOOD LUST | YANDERE VAMPIRES
Standing before them, a vision of effortless elegance amidst the chaotic dance floor, was a figure they hadn't seen in far too long.
Her signature blonde, almost impossibly smooth hair cascaded over one shoulder, and her eyes, glittering with teasing amusement that contradicted her youthful appearance, held a mischievous glint.
"Mind if me and my ghastly companions disrupt your delightful revelry and perhaps join in?" Cressida's voice, velvety smooth and effortlessly cutting through the bass, was exactly as they remembered it—laced with a hint of dramatic flair.
A stunned beat of silence hung in the air, then a collective gasp of pure, unadulterated joy. "Cress!!!!" Julia's voice, a high-pitched shriek of delight, was swallowed by the music, but her actions spoke volumes.
With a wide, incredulous grin, she practically launched herself forward, arms flung wide, enveloping Cressida in a fierce, long-overdue hug that instantly made the years and distance between them vanish.
Then it happened.
A scream, sharp and piercing, a sound utterly out of place, tore through the elegant swell of the waltz. It was followed by the sickening shatter of glass, somewhere near the grand entrance.
Y/N froze, every muscle locking, a chill crawling up her spine like a spider.
The refined crowd around them, moments ago a picture of grace, erupted into a horrifying symphony of confusion and dawning panic. More screams followed, a crescendo of raw terror that made the polished floor beneath her seem to tilt and sway, threatening to give way.
Bodies surged forward, a tidal wave of humanity, people trampling over one another in blind desperation to escape.
Chairs overturned with a crash, their gilded legs scraping against the marble. Exquisite masks were ripped from faces, gowns tangled and tore in the chaos, a cacophony of fear and destruction.
The air, moments ago fragrant with perfume and fresh flowers, grew thick with the acrid smell of smoke and the metallic tang of fear.
Y/N's heart hammered a frantic drumbeat against her ribs as she tried to move with the surging, panicked crowd, but the wave of hysteria threatened to swallow her whole, to crush her beneath its terrifying momentum.
Someone screamed her name—a voice, she was certain, somewhere familiar, yet impossibly distant, lost in the deafening roar of the stampede—but she couldn't make out who it was, couldn't locate its source.
She twisted, desperate, searching through the sea of terrified, masked faces, her hands flailing wildly for any familiar figure, for Julia, for Aisha, for anyone.
A hand reached out from amongst the sea and pulled her out before she could drown. She yelped as she collided into his chest, holding her close and shielding her from the impact of the surge.
"Y/N L/N! Get a hold of yourself. We have to go!" the voice yelled.
The oppressive gloom clung to her like a shroud, making it impossible to truly discern anything beyond the immediate, suffocating chaos.
She still couldn't see much, only phantom figures that dissolved as quickly as they appeared in the ragged flashes of light. More critically, she couldn't see who had caught her in this maelstrom, couldn't find the familiar silhouette, and couldn't see him.
A frantic despair began to gnaw at her.
Her head didn't just blur; it spun, a dizzying maelstrom of sensory overload. The thrumming bass from the abandoned speakers, a deafening, industrial pulse, vibrated through the very floor beneath her feet, through her bones, rattling her soul.
It wasn't music anymore but a physical assault, a relentless, booming cacophony that drowned out coherent thought.
Harsh, unfeeling bursts of coloured light—sickly greens, aggressive reds, disorienting blues—strobed and shivered across the space, highlighting grotesque shadows, turning real people into monstrous, fleeting caricatures, and leaving her momentarily blind in their wake.
And piercing through it all, jagged and sharp, were the blood-curdling screams of pure, unadulterated horror.
They weren't just cries of fear; they were guttural wails, choked gasps, and piercing shrieks of discovery from those who had just found out or, worse, seen the unholy reason for this nightmare situation.
Each shriek was a fresh stab of ice in her chest, a brutal reminder of the unseen terror lurking in the strobe-lit chaos.
His hand, strong and unyielding, seized hers with an urgency that sent a jolting current of both profound fear and an inexplicable, primal trust through her chest. "Follow me!" he barked, his voice a low, guttural command that somehow cut through the deafening panic, clear and sharp.
? ★ ?
Before Y/N could protest, before her mind could even process a coherent thought, he pulled her along, weaving through the screaming, stumbling students with an almost impossible speed and efficiency.
He dragged her out of the ballroom entirely, past the scattered, shattered marble and overturned, splintered furniture, through corridors now teeming with fresh waves of screaming and chaos.
Students scattered like frightened deer at their approach, teachers who themselves lacked knowledge in the situation trying and desperately failing to restore any semblance of order.
Then, mercifully, the heavy, ornate doors to the academy's southern grounds burst open, spilling them out into the cold, crisp night air.
The wind hit her hard, waking her like a slap across the face. She began to clear her vision and balance, her eyes focusing on the figure who dragged her away from the mess, like the other students who seemed to scatter in all directions.
"M-Marcus—what's happening?!" she shouted, her voice raw, almost lost in the overwhelming sonic assault of the chaos.
"Doesn't matter!" he snapped back, his jaw tight, etched with grim resolve. His eyes, startlingly pale even in the dimming light, darted with a dangerous, calculating assessment of their path. "Keep up!"
Something in the lethal precision with which Marcus moved, the raw power in his grip, and the sheer, undeniable certainty in his every action made her heart clench with a potent mixture of dread and relief. Somehow, he knew exactly where to go.
Marcus didn't slow, not for a second.
He pulled her relentlessly through the deep shadows of the SOUTH WOODS, the ancient, gnarled canopy of twisted branches immediately swallowing the last vestiges of light from the blazing, screaming academy behind them.
The sounds of the massacre, the horrific crescendo of human fear and breaking glass, faded with astonishing speed, replaced by the eerie rustle of unseen leaves underfoot and the faint, chilling hoot of an unseen owl.
Y/N stumbled, gasping, her lungs burning, trying desperately to catch her breath. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird, adrenaline crashing through her in overwhelming waves.
"Slow down! What're we running from?!"
She finally looked up at him, expecting cruelty, or perhaps a flicker of arrogant triumph—but Marcus's face was unreadable, pale and sharp, almost ghostly in the stark moonlight, his eyes fixed with a chilling intensity on the deeper shadows ahead.
"I'm here.. You're safe, Y/N." he said finally, his voice almost too quiet for the roaring blood in her ears, barely a whisper against the vast silence of the woods.
The words were simple, stark, and utterly devoid of inflection, yet something in the tone—dark, undeniably possessive, and unyielding in its certainty—made her pulse thrum in a way that neither raw terror nor fleeting relief could fully explain.
"For now.."
A strange, cold shiver traced a path down her spine.
And somewhere deep in her chest, amidst the fading echoes of horror and the chilling silence of the woods, she realised with a profound, terrifying certainty: the calm before the storm had not just ended. It had been brutally, irrevocably shattered.
And the storm had, now, begun.