Playing With Fire by Jordan Mendez Page B

and even then
it would be a one in a million chance that they would actually find it.
    As
soon as the door had sealed, Gabriel snatched my arm and before I knew it we
were running out of the golden room into a gloomy hallway. The whole layout did
scream vampire. The walls were originally grey, but black cloth was draped onto
them and arranged in a way that blocked out most of the windows. The rugs were
blood red with intricate black, curvy designs. I even thought I saw one of
Velkire’s symbols, which was unnerving to me. Chandeliers of gold hung from the
ceilings, but they gave off very little light, making the hallways seem sad and
lonely but dangerous at the same time. It felt like something could grab you
from a corner and eat you. It was a possibility. I hadn’t seen any other
vampires besides Gabriel, but I knew there were more. I could feel it in my
very soul: there was evil in that castle.
    We
passed a few wooden doors and a couple of smaller hallways that branched off
from the one we were taking. There were a lot of decorations such as suits of
armor and large paintings of past kings, queens, princes, and princesses. A
particular painting caught my eye. I only got a fleeting glance of it, and
wasn’t able to see too clearly, but what I did see raised more questions in my
mind. A king with white hair stood with a warm smile in the painting. His arms
were around a fair queen with black hair and green eyes, and a young boy with
pale white skin like his father and hair like raven feathers. He had his
mother’s eyes. The boy was smiling and his eyes were alive with laughter, as if
someone had just said something funny while the picture was being painted. The
mother had her arms around a small baby girl with brown eyes, like her father,
and white hair as well. What stood out to me the most besides the fact that
this was the last painting in the entire hallway was how the boy looked a bit
like Gabriel. The boy’s skin was just a tad darker, but then again, Gabriel was
a vampire, and all vampires’ were as pale as snow unless they had skin as dark
as night.
    Before
I could ask questions, a huge double door entryway loomed before us. The doors
were narrow, but the tops of the immense doors disappeared into the darkness of
the very top of the ceiling. I was about to walk towards them when Gabriel
grabbed my arm again.
    “Not
that way,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
    With
that he led me back to a small door on the side of the hallway. It was worn
down, beaten up, and an all-around boring door. I couldn’t help but feel a tad
disappointed. When Gabriel opened it, it let out a pained moan and dust flew
off the hinges. He winced and glanced around to see if anyone had heard. A
second later he dragged me in and shut the door quickly. It whined in protest
but obeyed him. A twisting staircase loomed in front of us. I cocked my head up
to find the top, but it disappeared into the darkness. The only light came from
narrow windows in the walls, but only allowed a sliver every fifty feet or so.
    “Hold
on,” Gabriel said as he saw me trying to advance on the stair case. “If we
continue on in this light, we might fall off the edge.”
    Gabriel’s
white hands searched along the wall. Suddenly, he stopped, and pulled an unlit
torch from the darkness. He handed it to me and began to search his pockets.
    “I
just need to find my flint,” he said, half to himself and half to me. I looked
at the top of the torch and it burst into flames.
    “Here,”
I said, handing the torch back to him. The second he took it, pain raced
through me like I was being ripped apart by brute force. It jolted through my
entire body, and stopped at my stomach. I toppled with my arms in a death grip
across my waist, but the second I hit the ground the pain was gone. Gabriel put
the flaming torch back in its holster on the wall and quickly helped me up.
    “What
happened?” he asked. “And how did you do that?”
    “There
was an ember still burning in