Chapter 78-The dark forest (2)

Chapter 78: 78-The dark forest (2)

"No..." she looked around in frantic panic. "I need to get out of here."

She stepped toward the flowers intending to head back. The instant she tried to cross the boundary, an invisible force slammed into her.

Maisa stumbled backward. "What the hell?"

She reached forward again, determined to leave and the same thing happened. It felt like walking into a solid wall that she couldn’t see.

Maisa stared at the flowers. The beautiful primroses looked even more gorgeous from that side. Then her eyes lifted at the forest she was standing in.

"Lumi?" she called out again.

When she didn’t receive a response, her heart began pounding erratically. Maybe there was another way out, she thought. Maybe she’d simply misunderstood and Lumi was deeper inside, she tried to delude herself.

She turned toward the trees. Her feet carrying her were heavy, weighed down by the unsettling feeling at the pit of her stomach.

"Fine. I’ll find her and we can leave this place together," she said.

Maisa started running deeper into the forest. At first, she expected the familiar sensation of vampire speed; the world blurring around her, the wind tearing through her hair, her feet barely touching the ground.

Instead, she felt every step. Her shoes struck the earth, her lungs began working harder and her heartbeat accelerated. Within minutes, Maisa slowed to a walk and then she stopped completely.

She was breathing heavil, gasping for air...something she hadn’t done in a long while. Sweat dampened her forehead.

She looked behind her to see how far she had run, the flower border was still visible in her sight, barely but still there which meant that she hadn’t moved far at all.

Maisa’s eyes widened. "That isn’t possible," she was filled with doubt.

She had run for several minutes and yet she had barely covered a couple of hundred meters. She looked down at herself as the realization came slowly.

Her wound from the thorn scratch hadn’t healed, she couldn’t move with supernatural speed and her hearing wasn’t reaching beyond the normal limits and now her body was tiring.

Maisa swallowed. Her mind unable to comprehend what her heart already knew. She refused to believe it immediately.

She turned toward a fallen tree lying across the path. Maisa walked over, crouched down and grabbed the trunk. "Come on," she encouraged.

She pulled at the trunk and tried to lift it. As a vampire, she had been able to lift such weight easily without any difficulty but today, nothing happened.

Maisa strained harder, still in denial. Her arms began to ache as she stubbornly insisted on lifting a weight far beyond her capabilities and the tree didn’t move one inch.

She released it and stared at her hands. Her blood ran cold. "No..." She was still in denial.

However, everything that had seemed like separate problems suddenly fit together. She discovered that place wasn’t simply old, it was suppressing her.

The forest had stripped away whatever made her a vampire and left her human again. Maisa slowly backed away from the fallen tree.

Her mind raced to how she ended up there. It went to the three vampires, Kriza, Sophia, Jane and their strange laughter. The way they had kept looking at each other during their talk and the insistence that Lumi was waiting beyond the flowers.

The way they had immediately run the moment Maisa crossed the border. When she processed all the facts, her breath caught.

"They set me up," she realized the truth, Lumi hadn’t sent them. They had planned this whole thing to trap her there.

She knew that now. Lumi was probably still with the others at the cemetery and that meant that nobody knew where she was or that she’d entered this forest.

And whatever magic existed here had deliberately separated her from the abilities that had allowed her to survive everything since becoming a vampire.

She was alone and not merely alone, she was human. For the first time since her transformation, Maisa understood exactly how vulnerable a human body could feel.

She looked toward the forest, the trees seemed taller now, the shadows deeper and every sound seemed louder because she no longer had supernatural senses to distinguish what was harmless from what wasn’t.

Since the moment she turned, she had wished she could undo the vampirism and returned home to her family, but now that it had happened, she couldn’t explain the sadness in her heart.

Her heart was reluctant about casting away the vampire world and with good reason. She had finally made friends in her life, gotten a chance to live without having to kill to prove her worth and she was gaining a circle around her that showed her what family was truly meant to be and feel like.

She couldn’t throw all that away for a life with heartless blood relatives who appreciate her when she kills a vampire and see her value decrease when she fails a mission.

"Is it bad that I want to stay a Loven for life?" She wondered out loud.

Just then, twig snapped somewhere behind her and Maisa froze. Her breathing stopped.

She slowly turned her head and saw nothing in her view. There were only trees, darkness and an eerie feeling she couldn’t shake off.

She swallowed. "Is someone there?" she asked.

The whole area grew silent. Not even her voice echoed in the space between the trees and then came another sound.

A low growl. It was unmistakable and it came from somewhere behind her.

Maisa’s entire body went rigid. She didn’t dare move and agitate the growling creature. Her pulse hammered against her throat. ’What nightmare has my naivety gotten me into?’

Another growl followed, deeper this time, close enough that she felt the vibration of it through the quiet air.

"What could that be?" She asked, as she hadn’t read up on the vampire world, she didn’t know what kind of creatures exist in strange forests like the one she was in.

She was completely in the dark about what she was up against. Whether she would survive or not was solely on her and her abilities not on supernatural powers.

Maisa slowly turned and felt something move between the trees. She couldn’t see its face, what she caught was only a pair of eyes reflecting faintly in the darkness.

Her heart dropped. For the first time since becoming a vampire, Maisa had no enhanced strength to rely on, no speed, no super healing, no heightened senses and no weapon to help her fight for survival.

There was no family standing behind her or any vampire friends to lean on. She was completely by herself in an unfamiliar place with a monster lurking in the shadows.

She took one careful step backward and the creature stepped forward. Since she had bee attacked outside the church and turned, she realized that she had changed status an was often finding herself as prey while facing a predator.

Maisa’s back nearly collided with a tree. Her fingers curled into trembling fists while her heart thundered so loudly in her chest, it was almost breaking free and running away.

The creature growled again and then it emerged from the shadows.

"Is this place to be my final resting place?"