Bambi and the Duke

Vivian was left breathless by the time Leonard had pulled away from her lips. Her heart thumping in her chest as he held her in his arms.

"Did you have dinner?" she asked him to hear him hum for an answer. With the rain steadily pouring down from the sky, the sounds of thunder filled the silent room once in a while.

Seeing Leonard not move or speak a word, she wondered if he fell asleep. Just when she was about to move away from him, he pulled her back into his arms, "Stay," he murmured above her head. Were they going to sleep in the same bed? Looking at the current it seemed like that was what Leo had in his mind, thought Vivian to herself. Partly she was embarrassed but on the other side, she was glad he hadn't left her to go back to his room, especially not when he had kissed her so passionately.

The disappointment she had felt in the evening had washed away to be filled with contentedness. Remembering it she bit her lips.

"Leo?" she called him.

"Sleep, Bambi," he pulled her closer to kiss the top of her head and she did when he said, closing her eyes to let the darkness pull her for the second time.

In the morning when Vivian woke up, her head was resting on top of Leonard's chest while he slept on his back with one of his hand outstretched and the other that held her securely. She woke up as slow as she could, moving his hand away that rested on her waist. Taking a look at his fast asleep face which looked no less than a prince, she got out of bed making no noise. Her heart squeezed in her chest when she stopped by the bed after dressing herself for the day to look at a sleeping Leo.

Last night something rare had happened. They had slept in the same bed, not to forget that it was in her room. She didn't have the heart to leave his side, not knowing where he would be going once he would wake up while leaving her behind at the mansion.

Leonard's eyes opened once Vivian closed the door softly with a click of the knob.

He had been awake for sometime now, far before even Vivian had woken up. Staring at the ceiling that was cracked with his arm placed behind his head, he could hear the birds chirp outside the mansion. Though yesterday hadn't started that great, he could say it had ended well for him. More than well. When they were small she often fell asleep in the glass room. The first few weeks when they weren't well acquainted he would leave her there before Paul would find her sleeping on the cold floor with her cover but she had slowly grown on him.

His mother taught him to be good to both the humans as well as vampires but there were others who had taught him on what was better for a pureblooded vampire. His uncle Sullivan never appreciated the humans and being a young child, Leonard had looked up to his paternal uncle who liked spoiling him. Leonard couldn't say he liked or hated the humans, it was just that he hated mingling with people who were not of his concern. He wondered how Vivian had managed to grow on him.

He pushed himself up from the bed to sit at the edge as his feet touched the ground. Getting up, he headed to his own room.

After the often encounters they had and the time he spent with her when they were little, he felt guilty to leave the girl in the cold glass room. He would pick her up to put her in the bed, in this same room. There was also the time when he heard someone walking he would drop her somewhere safe before going to his room.

It was the little things, things that weren't wise. She was clumsy back then, dropping any and everything that was around her. The memories made him smile, he couldn't remember how many times he had covered up for her, to keep her away from being punished for her clumsiness.

"Good morning, master Leonard," his housekeeper wished him, who had a tray in his hand ready to serve, "Would you like to drink something?"

"No. Have breakfast prepared in half an hour and the carriage ready. I need to go visit the town where there's been an abduction."

"Another one?" the housekeeper asked surprise in his voice. It was the second time to happen in this week.

"Yes, if you could get it done to the earliest," said Leonard to get an instant yes from Jan who disappeared to get the breakfast prepared.

Most of the folks who thought it was the vampires and humans who didn't get along needed to check the relationship of the witches and humans.

It was if they were playing back and forth with each other, each killing one another by taking turns. It had come to become the weeks routine. Either a human would be taken away to a black witch's hideout or the witches which included the innocent ones that were burnt alive in the middle of the town.

A few of the human's body parts were found across the forest, some that were washed away with the rain. The humans were scared and angry at the council for not doing anything about it. It wasn't as easy as they thought it could be though. Black witches were extremely clever but there was something else that bothered him. Something else that had been weighing on his mind.

Last week when he had been on a tour to the forest to inspect the bodies, he had found something else that seemed and looked inhuman. Humans that died were always dry in a rotting process but what he found at one particular place was a slimy flesh which he was sure didn't belong to a human.

And if didn't, the question was whom or what did it belong to?