Somewhere in Europe.

Inside a dimly lit room, the smell of blood and death reeked in the air. There was a messy trail of blood all over the floor.

A man was sitting regally in a large ebony chair in the middle of that blood splattered room. He was wearing an expensive looking dark-coloured suit. His sinfully handsome mien showed no emotions as he stared at the man kneeling on the floor a few steps away before him.

"Speak," his deep voice echoed menacingly in the heavy atmosphere.

But the man who was already soaked in blood just smirked at him. His eyes bloody red as well. "You will get nothing from me Ezekiel, f*ck all of you stupid royals! If you think only few vampires are against your stupid vampire law, then you’re wrong. Our numbers are far greater than you think, and you will never find out why we are this hard to be detected." He laughed hysterically. "So go to hell you... you ancient old vampire! We refuse to abide with your idiotic laws. We will drink human blood as we want, whenever we want. Because that’s our nature and we refuse to be deprived from our natural needs just because you bloody forbid it!" The man screamed out maniacally. His eyes looking deranged.

"Are you done?" Zeke’s expression was bored, and tone was bland as it did not even change as if he had heard nothing at all.

The man gritted his teeth and moved to throw himself at Ezekiel, but a dark-haired young man stepped on him mercilessly before he could do anything.

Stepping on the man’s head, as if it was a piece of wood, he glanced at Zeke. He did not say a word, but his eyes looked to Zeke, as though he was asking for permission if he could smash the vampire’s head now.

"Not yet Kyle. You know we don’t give someone like him an easy death." Zeke said and Kyle looked disappointed as he eased his step on the man’s head.

"Put him in the torture room, it’s not time for him to die. Not just yet." Zeke said and as other men came to picked the bloody vampire up, the vampire cursed and screamed, asking them to just kill him.

Zeke then lifted his eyes to look at his younger brother. His observant gaze fell on the patch of blood stain on Kyle’s collar. "He managed to wound you?" Zeke asked as he leaned back, one of his brows lifting.

"He’s not alone. Like the previous cases, I didn’t detect any vampires at all until I caught the smell of human blood. He was already draining the poor girl dry when I had found him." Kyle explained in a flat voice, as if he was reporting something so mundane. However, his furrowed brows gave away his annoyance on the matter. "When I caught the rogue, two others suddenly appeared out of nowhere it seems. I was careless." Kyle simply explained the reason to the blood stain on his shirt.

Since a few months ago, Zeke had investigated the case of the increasing deaths of the humans in the West. He had found out that the deaths were all linked to vampires and Zeke was forced to clean up the mess by disposing of the bodies just so that it would not alert the humans and give them hints about the presence of the vampires. But they all knew that just disposing of the bodies will never work in the long run. They must end the killings. However, they had also discovered a greater problem behind it.

A group of rogue vampires had found a way to make themselves undetected. Zeke himself was the first to discover their presence and since then he was hunting these vampires who could actually blend in in the midst of humans. The only way for the vampires to detect their own kind when they were not using their abilities was through their heartbeats. But strangely, these vampires’ heartbeats had exactly imitated the human’s heartbeat. Zeke had dissected a number of them and found nothing unusual in their organs and that was why he had eliminated the theory that these vampires had made some changes within their organs.

Staring at his brother, Kyle brought out his handkerchief and wiped off the blood that was on his hand. "He said that there are many of them. If that’s true, this problem might be much more serious than we had expected." He stated.

Zeke rose from his chair and walked over to stand by the window. He took the glass of blood a vampire had brought to him, and he twirled the glass around thoughtfully before taking a mouthful and gulping it down as he looked up at the full moon.

"It is. But this hunt will end soon."

Kyle narrowed his eyes. "Did you already find something?!"

Before Zeke could respond, Lucas piped in. "Uhm, Your... boss," Lucas said. It had been months, but he was still unable to get used to calling Ezekiel boss instead of Your Highness! "I think you would want to see this."

Lucas showed him a message and Zeke’s eyes twitched.

Then a call came. Zeke gulped down his drink as if slightly ticked and grabbed the phone from Lucas’ hand.

"Geez, you finally answered!" Kai’s voice immediately rang out loudly that Zeke had to move the phone away from his ear. "Alex wants you here tonight. Pronto! And If I were you, you better get your royal self here. And do make haste."

"Tell me what happened." Zeke asked, though his expression was unfathomable, the air around him immediately changed and became heavy. He had men monitoring the city where Alex was residing in. If trouble happened, which was highly unlikely, he would definitely have received a report as fast as lightning – or even faster. And therefore, this call just intrigued him as to what was the matter.

"Stop asking and just come over, Zeke. Quick!" And Kai ended the call.

____

A/N:

P.s. please use your GoldenTickets to vote spellbound instead of this book. Spellbound is my entry for this year’s spirity contest so I’d really appreciate it if you can support me by reading and voting for Spellbound. ^^

Thank you so much in advance <3