She Belongs To The Devil

"Creatures of the night?" Adeline had a bewildered expression on her face. "What do you mean by that?"

Theodore now knew why Adeline was not as scared as she should have been. "You have never heard about them before?"

"Errr… no?" Adeline didn't even know if she had heard that phrase before or not. "Are they some kind of animal?" she asked that because from the sound of the phrase, it certainly sounded like Theodore was referring to some animals that lurked around in the night time.

Theodore pursed his lips and replied, "Yes and no."

Adeline was even more confused. "What do you mean by 'yes and no'?"

Theodore walked towards the chair and sat down. He presumed that he was going to have to explain a lot of things.

He took a deep breath in and began the explanation, "Creatures of the night are just like humans but an improved form… or you can also say the cursed form depending on how you perceive them."

The first thing that came into Adeline's mind after hearing that was the werewolves. So she tried to confirm that, "You mean something like werewolves? Do they turn into some kind of animal?"

Theodore had gone to Mihir several times to vent out his anger. And he had come across those interesting creatures several times. So he answered her, "They don't turn into animals like the werewolves do, but they are the animal. They call themselves Vampires. They pride themselves on being an ace predator. And their main prey is humans."

"Vampires?" Adeline felt a chill shiver running down her spine. She had heard some bedtime stories from her maids when she was little. She remembered it vaguely but she remembered being scared by the stories about vampires.

And Theodore was telling her that the vampires were real and that they were the ones who were going to wage a war.

And that was not it. Theodore kept on explaining more about the Vampires, "They survive solely by drinking human blood. I think there are some Vampires that can stomach human food. But most of them can't swallow a morsel of human food, especially the turned ones."

All of a sudden, Adeline felt her stomach hurling and she felt like throwing up. She gagged her mouth with her palm and took a few deep breaths in.

"Adeline, are you okay? Do you need water?" Theodore looked around for the mug of water but Adeline gestured that she didn't need any.

And she asked in a surprised tone, "They drink human blood? How does that make them an improved form of humans?" She glared at Theodore and exclaimed, "They are monsters!"

"I am not saying that they are not monsters. What I was trying to say is that they are better than humans at most of the aspects." Theodore then clarified, "They can run at a great speed. They are as strong as the werewolves. They have a heightened sense of smell, sight, and hearing. And they don't die that easily. They can live on for centuries."

Adeline felt her body warming up and sweating. And the tight-fitting gown was not helping her. "That means they are pretty much invincible…" Adeline sighed and wiped the sweat from her upper lips.

"Great!" Finally, the depth of the war got into her. She grabbed her hair by both of her hands and closed her eyes.

If those vampires were as strong as werewolves then making the human soldiers fight an army of them would basically equate to sending them on a suicide mission.

"We will lose the war if it comes to that, won't we?" Adeline asked in a defeated tone.

Theodore grabbed Adeline by her chin and lifted her head up. "Adeline, there is some good news. Not everyone in Mihir is a Vampire. They only have maybe a couple of thousands of Vampire soldiers. And they are the created ones, they aren't as strong as the pure bloods."

The information was already too much for Adeline. She sighed in frustration and asked while almost whimpering, "Now what is that? What is created, what is pure?"

Theodore tried his best not to scare Adeline too much and put it simply, "The pure bloods are those who are born. And the created ones are those who were bitten by those pure bloods and turned into a lesser form of themselves."

In an attempt to gauge the strength level, Adeline asked her knowledge provider, "So the created ones are not as strong as the werewolves."

"Er…" Theodore squinted his eyes and slowly revealed, "The created ones are as strong as the werewolves. The pure bloods are as strong as the alpha."

Adeline let her hands hang loose and leaned back on her chair. She got a really bad feeling about everything already.

Even though she already felt defeated, she gathered her breath and asked, "How do we know which ones are the created and which ones are the…" she stopped abruptly and corrected her question, "How do we know which ones are the vampires and which ones are not? Do they look different from the humans?"

Theodore nodded his head. "The major difference is the eye color. All vampires have red eyes. But…" he pointed to himself and added, "But sometimes having red eyes does not mean that they are vampires. The other differences are that they look pale compared to the humans and they are really cold."

He pursed his lips and told Adeline more "However, in a war, I guess you won't have enough time to check their eye colors or their temperature. But I bet they will use their abilities to their advantage, like running at a great speed or showing insurmountable strength. So, that is how you know which ones are the vampires."

Adeline was fisting over her mouth and looked dumbfounded. Theodore thought that this was a normal reaction from her side after knowing about some other-worldly creatures. But he was wrong. That was not why she looked like she had just seen a thousand ghosts.

"Did you say they have red eyes and they are really cold?" Adeline finally whispered. "How cold? As cold as the dead?"

And from the look on her face, Theodore guessed that she was asking that from experience. "You've already met them, haven't you?"

Adeline buried her face in her palms and nodded, "Yes. I met one this morning… I think they are already making their move. The war is now inevitable."

Both of them were quiet for quite some time.

Adeline went down into the rabbit hole of what-ifs. She was trying to think of a way to win the war with such supernatural beings.

If they were as strong as Theodore had described them to be, then even the seasoned soldiers would be no match for them. And even though there were only a few thousand vampires, they could easily overwhelm the human soldiers.

Not to mention the fact that they were bringing in two divisions of soldiers, as per Edwin. Who knew how many of them would be vampires and how many humans? The soldiers of Wyverndale would still have to deal with the human soldiers apart from the vampires.

Adeline felt like her head would burst. So instead, she left this whole matter about the vampires and asked the original question that she had actually wanted to ask Theodore. "Did you find Lillian doing something to my father?"

Theodore shook his head. "No. All she had done for the past two years is plotted against Wyverndale's throne. She was planning to take down your father as grandly as she could."

He refrained from saying that she had planned to kill both father and daughter during the war. He did not want to make Adeline nervous than she already was.

A frown appeared on Adeline's face. As opposed to what she had thought, she did not find solace in hearing that Lillian had done nothing to degrade her father's health condition. Maybe she was hoping that it was because of Lillian.

She wanted to blame someone than to accept that her father was really getting old. She was not ready to accept that her father had some kind of incurable disease that was slowly eating his life away.

But suddenly her eyes lit up with a glimmer of hope. Adeline looked at Theodore with hopeful eyes and asked, "Theo, will you take my father to your fountain?"