She held onto Sehun until finally the darkness consumed her.

There was no going back now.

It was too bright. Far too bright.

Hye Jin shut her eyes again and cringed when it caused a sharp pain near her right brow. Her eyes flew open by instinct and then it was too bright again and she shut them again. The pain recurred. She followed the same cycle a few more times before a voice finally spoke.

‘I’ll close the curtains.’

‘Kai!!’ Hye Jin forced her eyes open, ‘what happened? Sehun…?’ she croaked out painfully.

Kai didn’t answer right away. He slowly walked over to offer a glass of water as if buying time to think of something to say. Hye Jin struggled to sit up, and in the end had to lean awkwardly on Kai’s forearm for help.

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news first?’

Hye Jin’s heart raced, ‘Good. Please be good.’

‘He’s alive.’

Hye Jin felt the tension release from her body, daring to hope that those words would be said but not quite believing it. She couldn’t quite remember the last few moments of the confrontation with Ri-ah, but there was some vague recollection about holding Sehun’s dying body in her arms.

But he didn’t die.

‘You mentioned bad news,’ Hye Jin suddenly remembered, ‘it’s not…’ her face lost colour as she thought of the Boss and her other hunter colleagues.

‘No, they were a lot worse for wear – but we didn't have any casualties.’

Once again another moment of relief, and Hye Jin was glad. But at the same time, her pessimistic side warned her to be cautious. Surely her luck would run out soon… ‘I don't want to have to guess. Just tell me, Kai.’

She stared at him while he looked at his fidgeting hands. She didn’t remember him to be a fidgety person. While she waited for him to compose himself, she looked around the room – currently her curtains casting a late afternoon golden glow into the room. She noted that the chair Kai had propped up next to her bed had a pillow and some blankets strewn over it – it looked like he had practically lived in that spot – but while she was touched by his friendship, that also meant that Sehun wasn’t occupying that spot…

‘They got him.’

What a time to finally decide to speak, ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.

‘When you bit him, it should have been the end of it – we’re sure you were successful in binding him to you,’ Kai explained, speaking of the process of the Third Mark.

The vampire responsible for giving the Third Mark earned the initial loyalty of the human turned vampire. It was a process called “binding” which recognised the new vampire and their ‘master’. It wasn’t a master/slave relationship, but came from a term used back when the master race was still strong and not just any vampire could give a Third Mark without permission. It allowed you to trace your loyalty to one of the three master vampires.

‘But they did the next best thing,’ Kai continued, ‘they took him. And they’ve had him now for two weeks.’

‘Two weeks? I’ve been out of it for two weeks?’ Hye Jin asked in surprise. As a vampire with fast healing powers, that was practically unheard of.

‘They  think it’s because it was your first time turning someone into a vampire. It must have sapped the energy out of you and that meant that your injuries couldn’t heal as quickly.’

Hye Jin was stunned. She didn’t have to address the elephant in the room. Two weeks was a long time to have left Sehun to Superior.

‘And you haven’t tried to collect him?’

She was trying to keep the accusation out of her voice, but honestly, she didn’t think she was doing a good job about it at all. She was also trying to keep the hysteria away from the forefront of her mind, but she couldn’t do that either.

‘You just left him there?!? You let that crazy take him??? Why? Why? Why? Why???’ The first few ‘why’s’ were to herself, but the next few were to Kai. A part of her knew that she was shooting the messenger, but he was here and a convenient person to direct her anger to.

Kai’s eyes remained sad but he showed no other emotion.

‘How can you sit there and look like that?’ she demanded, ‘Tell me!! Please, I can’t even – show some ing emotion for once!!’ she lunged at him and connected with his face, leaving a red mark on his cheekbone.

And then when she thoroughly felt sorry about what she’d done, the tears began to flow.

Despite beginning to lose her grip on sanity, she somehow recalled Kai’s surprisingly strong arms wrap around her, holding her firmly. That made her cry even harder, and she kept going until she was thoroughly exhausted and fell asleep again.

+++

The first few days, he was nothing more than an animal.

Locked in a cage for everyone’s safety – including his own – a new vampire was supposed to only feed from their ‘master’. In this case, because his ‘master’ was not around, Ri-ah was being battered and bruised whenever she forced him to feed from her.

Unfortunately, if she wanted him to be of use to her, he needed to consume something. However, after the nth time he’d flung her across the cage with his uncontrolled strength, causing her to slam her head against the cold steel bars, she couldn’t care less if he lived or died.

But grandfather had asked her to persist – although maybe "ask" wasn’t the right word – it was much stronger than that.

After the first five days, Sehun began to retain his sanity – which was on its own a different kind of hell – he started whispering that vampire hunter’s name.

Hye Jin-ah…. Hye Jin…

It made Ri-ah sick, but at least when he threw her across the cage – it didn’t hurt quite as much. Even in that state, he seemed to have controlled himself somewhat and vaguely recognised that she was a girl.

Instead, he resisted feeding from her by turning his head and pushing her away, or holding her at arms’ length. He was obviously trying to keep a grip on his humanity, despite it being all in vain. In a way that was worse, because he was trying to suppress his craving for blood. He would only take a few sips when he finally could not resist and that broke him even more.

Day nine, he got his fight back.

He hated Ri-ah, but amazingly – he hated Hye Jin even more. He hated a lot of things, including being alive. He tried multiple times to kill himself (by this time transferred into a secure, four-walled room) but his fast healing powers refused to allow him.

It made him even angrier.

It was perfect.

It meant that when they attempted behavioural therapy on him, they didn’t have to try very hard at all (not that she didn’t amp up the torture anyway, in retaliation for the injuries she sustained over the first few days). In short, they wanted to make him hate Hye Jin (which he’d already done on his own anyway) but also pledge his loyalty to Superior.

To him, it was the League’s fault that he had turned into a vampire while Superior did not want humans to become vampires (conveniently omitting the message where they wanted to enslave them instead).

And by day fifteen, he was ready. His loyalty was firmly in Superior’s favour.

On the surface he was completely recovered, almost completely a functioning “human” again. Today they would let him go out in public, of course with some ‘minders’ to watch over him. But he was no longer Sehun, and Ri-ah thought it was a real shame that she wouldn’t be there when Hye Jin met him face-to-face.

It would take barely a second to see the deep-seated hatred in his eyes.

How wonderful!

++++

Hye Jin was back in school and she hated it.

All she’d wanted to do was to look for Sehun-- who the hell cared about studies at this point? She honestly couldn’t even remember what her major was. But Boss had sided with Kai and vetoed that idea. Superior had taken him so far underground that it would be a waste of time to try and find him now – they believed he would re-appear before they even made even a little bit of progress.

They were so sure that he would show up that Hye Jin was awed at such confidence - How did they know??

But then, after a few mindless days he did appear.

‘Sehun!!’

The moment she recognised the familiar figure who had just turned away from Suho-sunbae, she began to run, ‘are you alright? Sehun, I was so worried…’

One moment she had finally touched his jacket and the next she was flat on the ground and could hear the sniggering from students around her.

‘Don’t ing touch me.’

The hostility ripped the breath out of Hye Jin throat. Her mind couldn’t compute. She just sat there blinking up at him, conflicted between the sheer joy of seeing him and the devastation of how he’d just spoken to her.

‘Sehun…’

‘Get out of my face,’ he finished it off with an insult she couldn’t repeat, ‘if you dare touch me again, I’ll make it bad for you. Worse than what it was.’

And just for good measure, he deliberately stepped on her ankle – amazingly wearing the same white Chuck Taylors that’s still had the stain from their last real altercation – and walked away.

However, as she rubbed her ankle, trying to assess the damage, she heard him speak.

‘Thanks for ruining my life.’

A/N: Hi everyone, thanks for reading! In the second half we are running through the colours in reverse order! Btw... this story is for a competition and they have a reader's choice award. I know we're not done yet, but should you feel like checking out the other stories (you can only vote for one story) here is the link! xKei