Bambi and the Duke

Vivian didn’t look at either of them. She was scared for her life. The little glimpses she had come to see made her worry about what was going to happen to her. One man had killed and another was being suspicious which she hadn’t realized before.

They had come too deep into the forest to point out what was going on but what use would it be but dig ones grave if she opened her mouth about what she knew. Where was Everest, Vivian thought to herself. This was the first time she had hoped for the ghoul’s assistance but the ghoul wasn’t hers. Nicholas had told he would gift her the ghoul but he must have been joking as a ghoul wasn’t something one would give or receive as a gift.

She tried to rethink what was going on again as her head began to spin with the overload of information she had discovered by coming here. There were two major things to worry about. One was the ghost and the other was the pureblooded vampire who had killed the other examinees.

”Lady Vivian, shall we head back?” Ezekiel walked up to where she was, his boots sinking softly on the iced floor one after another, ”Did you find anything?” the look on his face came to tell her that he knew a woman of her calibre who was a simple human female, didn’t have the ability and knack to find things and that she was only wasting her time.

Jamien at that time turned in a certain direction as if trying to hear something as he had a look of concentration on his face, ”Hmm, I hear something. Let me go find out, both of you can go back to the mansion.”

Ezekiel looked at the pureblooded vampire before giving him a nod, ”Let’s go,” he said to Vivian. Staying here was not going to help her with anything and it was better to go back to the mansion than roam in a forest she was unfamiliar with.

When both the humans went back on their way to the mansion, Jamien looked ahead of him. He hadn’t lied when he had said that he had heard something in the forest. The men he had drunk blood from were killed to the point there was no recovering the bodies as they were hidden ice down deep. Was it an animal in the forest that he couldn’t catch hold of? Having dealt with creatures before, Jamien was quite courageous in stepping further into the forest.

He heard the sound of a woman crying. It was a meek one which stood stark compared to the sounds of nature which was previously being heard.

Narrowing his eyes, he went in search of the voice. The councilman who had died was a lowly vampire therefore whoever had killed him must have been an easy person. Jamien was the only pureblooded vampire here. Though he hadn’t told it to anyone before by keeping the colours of his eyes bright and making it appear as if he were a low vampire too, he now searched in the dark for the sound of the crying. Suddenly a crow cawed, startling the man.

The bodies he had drunk blood from, they were far away from where he stood where no one could find. As if someone passed behind him, he turned around to see nothing but trees at the back which made it difficult to look at the mansion. But the man didn’t get to stray too far as what was following him had stuck close by after having him isolated.

A voice whispered in the air, ”I know what you did,” it was a woman’s voice, where one could call it to be seductive.

Jamien’s neck snapped around front and back, left and right but the failed to look up where the woman stood with her white flowing dress. Spots of black were covered on her clothes. She stood there looking at him, a face that was decayed in the years of time that had come to pass by.

”For a ghost, you aren’t very clever,” Jamien spoke arrogance holding his voice for the ghost to let out a ring of laughter that echoed through the trees before it fell into silence.

”I know what you did...” came the voice again, ”I know...you killed people. Women and men. Your heart is truly corrupted just like he was,” the voice turned angry before coming to stand right in front of him which made him stagger back a few steps away, ”Abaonded lonely child who wants to get back to what his family did. You want to avenge the entire kind. Killing people one by one, angry at your mother for leaving you. I shall help you rinse your sins,” the ghost spoke as if she were under a spell, not looking at him but her eyes hollow and empty.

For the first time Jamien looked scared, his eyes wide as he moved back, scrambling himself on the ground.

”Get away from me!” he pulled out the pistol from his pocket and pulled the trigger for the gunshot to resonate across the land but nothing happened to the ghost. As solid as it looked the ghost was unaffected by it.

Coming close to him, it whispered, ”I know what you did...Jamien.”

Vivian and Ezekiel who had reached the end of the forest where they could clearly see the mansion, they heard the sound of gunshot come from the forest which made them look back. Did the pureblood vampire carry a gun with him? ”Do you think he is in trouble?” she asked the man who had his eyes trained in the path they had just come.

”We cannot say anything right now. Were we allowed to carry guns?” he didn’t ask her in particular which came more of a generalized question, ”Stay here, Lady Vivian. Let me go find the vampire,” he said leaving her in front of the mansion. Vivian clutched the lantern with both her hands, the light had come to diminish slowly as it had been burning for quite some time now.

Scared to step back inside the mansion, Vivian walked back and forth for a while before the frosting bite of air bit into her skin which she could hardly withstand. Time passed but there was no news of Ezekiel nor Jamien. She waited for a little more time before she saw the moon that had been up now had changed to move to the side indicating the time of midnight which had started.

’I know what you did’

The writing on the wall felt as if it was written for all of them. Every one of them had hidden secrets but how could she know about it? Even if she was the witch who had helped the second Lord of Bonelake, the question was how would she know everything about them.

She thought about the balcony which she had been to with Leonard that had disappeared in thin air every time she tried searching for it. All the time she had tried to find it was only at the time of day and she wondered why she never searched for it at the time of night. It was too dark to search and open in the night which made it plausible to find it during the time of the day.

As Vivian thought about it, a thought came to fall upon her mind. The council wasn’t a simple one and with the mix kind of creatures in she doubted one would set a simple exam without a foul play. It was told that every year there was at least one examinee who died. What if...what if there was never a body, she asked herself. They had given only two days of the councilmen which would mean they expected it to be over in two days. The isolated mansion which was far off from the other towns, one wouldn’t step out at the thought of wasting time. And then they had some vampires and one pureblooded vampire who could feed on the humans or kill them.

What if that was the bodies? asked Vivian to herself. After all, there were nine of them and every one of them had searched the mansion for every possible clue to find nothing in here.

Vampires couldn’t hold on to their thirst, not too long at least and needed to consume blood, there should have been at least who started it and there was Jamien himself who had killed a human and maybe more than one. Wanting to find Ezekiel, Vivian headed back into the forest than get inside the mansion. Her footsteps on the snow were as quiet as a cat without a single sound but when she neared the human ready to call, she saw the blood that was splattered across his face under the moonlight.

Hiding behind a tree quickly she covered her mouth so that her breathing in this cold weather didn’t alert the man. Thankfully the lantern had lost it light which didn’t bring her to his notice. Peeking slowly, she saw him drag one of the examinees by his legs so that he could push him into the little ditch and cover it with snow. Unfortunately for Vivian at the same time, her nose itched, tickling and tingling her that she tried to hold it back but to her dismay, it came snubbed which was enough for the man to pick up.

”Lady Vivian?”

Ezekiel called for her but Vivian didn’t answer him. Not moving and having her back stuck against the back of the tree she held her breath not wanting to sneeze again. She couldn’t believe that she had been stuck to a group of murders for the exam. No, not just murders but also a ghost in the mansion. Unsure what to worry about the most right now, she closed her eyes as her feet moved to the other side when she heard him call this time informally,

”Vivian. I know you are here. Come out,” he said which made her hide further and if it were possible she would have merged herself with the bark of the tree. Seeing him walk in the other direction, Vivian sprinted from there in the opposite direction, her feet carrying herself quickly before she came to hear footsteps behind. Not far she saw the man running towards her with his blood-smeared face.

When it came to running, Vivian wasn’t bad but compared to the man it was quite less, that the man was almost a few steps away when she entered the mansion and locked the doors as quick as she could for it be crashed with a loud sound. Stepping away from it, she saw the door thunderously being pushed. It rattled loudly as the man who was outside tried opening it after a few seconds it stopped. Going closer to the door, she tried to hear for any possible sound but she heard nothing. Going to peek through the window, a frown fell on her face to see him not there.

Vivian looked around before realizing that there was another door from behind and maybe if she went there to close it now, she would only end up meeting him which she wasn’t wrong as the footsteps from behind could be heard approaching in the direction she was in. As she went up the stairs she fell down as the man had stopped her by going further and had pulled her leg making her stumble down. Her body passed through the steps with bumps and she fell sprawled across the floor.

”Where are you running to?” Ezekiel asked her, walking up to her he stared down at her. Her forehead hurt where blood had begun to ooze out due to the fall, touching it with her hand she saw blood on her hand, ”You have a pretty face that it makes me feel bad to put a scar in there but soon it won’t matter. I thought to let you live but now that you have seen me with them,” he meant the dead bodies, ”I cannot let that happen can I?”

”Why?”

”Why I killed them?” he asked her, ”Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet, oh no, you figured it now,” he tched, ”I understood it on day one that what bodies were being spoken of. Cruel don’t you think? To turn the examines into one of the bodies. Sadly, when I took out one of them another one caught on to it where it ended up in a trail of death. I was going to frame it on the pureblooded vampire but then the councilman died changing everything thanks to the bitch in this house. I should be careful,” he whispered.

Yet Vivian didn’t understand who had killed whom. She saw him playing the little knife which was covered in blood. Jamien had killed a few of them, and Ezekiel claimed to have killed more than one. But then there was also the man named Fitot who was neither killed by Jamien nor Ezekiel as she had seen him being strangled to death by the ghost.

The man being too confident turned around, ”Once I am done with you I will be the only standing candidate to be recruited to the council. Do you know how important it is for me to get into the council? It is a dream which not everyone gets into,” he turned back to see empty space as Vivian had run from there.