A twenty-two year old woman was walking around a museum in central London. Her name was Ella Baxter. She had lustrous, black hair and piercing, emerald coloured eyes. Her gaze held little interest in the paintings she was staring at.

That was until her eyes honed in on one painting in particular. It was average in size and decorated with an ornate gold frame. The subject was a nineteenth century ball. Men and women, mostly youthful in appearance, were twirling around on the dance floor. The women's dresses were a sea of ocean blues, emerald greens, deep crimsons, royal purples, and there were some that gleamed like the morning sun.

Their facial features all held differences; some men wore hats to disguise ruffled hair, while others were meticulously brushed and parted. Some women wore their hair in elaborate styles, while others let it fall beyond their shoulders.

Some of the dancers held sharp, prominent features; others sported rounder, fuller characteristics. One thing that was similar between all of them though, was their inhumanly pale faces.

Ella was entranced by this spectacular piece of art. Almost as if they were moving of their own accord, her feet inched closer to the painting. As her arm reached to touch it, black fog engulfed her vision. She found herself getting dizzier and dizzier as the fog continued to cloud her senses. Ella felt ready to collapse until all of a sudden, the fog cleared.

She definitely wasn't in London anymore. Instead, she found herself long the circumference of the ballroom from the painting! Couples she had seen just moments ago in an inanimate object now danced before her very eyes.

No one seemed to take much notice of Ella until a loud, clear voice hissed

"Human!"

That had a profound effect on the dancers. They all turned and focused their eyes on Ella. Their eyes shifted from their pretty, individual styles to a blood red. They opened their mouths and gave a bestial snarl, revealing their razor-sharp fangs.

"Put her in the drawing room with the other abominations. We shall feast on her and her ilk later." Proclaimed a tall, blonde woman, or, dare Ella think it, vampire? She was clothed in a royal purple dress, with jewels embroidered on the bodice. She exuded equal amounts of majesty and malice. Ella gathered the notion that the woman was in charge.

Impossibly strong hands seized Ella and forcefully pulled her into the adjacent room. There were dozens of people in there with her. They looked as petrified as she felt.

Ella had come to the conclusion that the monstrous creatures were vampires, because regular humans did not possess the incredible strength or the ethereal beauty that the strange creatures in the ballroom did. We also didn't have fangs.

As the vampire dragged me through the doors, two of the dozens of humans tried to flee. The vampire swiftly grabbed them by the neck and, seemingly effortlessly, snapped them as if they were nothing more than twigs.

No emotions flitted across his face as he took two human's lives in cold blood. He simply closed the doors and left the humans to their fear. Ella started to cry as pure, unadulterated panic began to set in. Several people began to pat her back consolingly, but stopped when a woman, without even glancing up at Ella, spoke.

"Stop mollycoddling her. If she stands a chance at survival when the vampires come to feast, she must remain strong."

The woman then looked up at Ella and let out a startled gasp. Ella began crying again upon recognising the woman. It was her mother.

Andrea Baxter had gone missing when Ella was five years old. After three years on missing lists across Britain, she was pronounced dead. Ella's father had fallen into an all-consuming depression, leaving her to take care of her.

With tears streaming down her face, Ella choked out

"M-mum?"

Almost subconsciously, the two women ran to embrace each other. Andrea ate her previous words as she felt tears pooling in her eyes.

The mother and daughter's heartfelt reunion was cut abruptly short as he grand door leading into the ballroom was flung open. Dozens of vampires poured into the drawing room. Ella's gaze fell onto a painting in the distance, just behind where the vampires were. It was of the museum! Maybe... Maybe if I could reach the paint in would send us back mused Ella. She quietly informed her mother of her scheme.

To Andrea, this idea was not a new one. Everyone who was fated to become the vampires' next meal thought of it. That was the idea of the two people that were brutally murdered that very evening. But... if she provided the vampires with a distraction, namely her very human pulse running in the opposite direction of Ella, her daughter may stand a chance.

Andrea knew that, whatever happened, she would die that night. But if Ella stood a chance of living, then it was worth it.

"Ella, listen to me. When all the vampires have chosen their victims, and they're hopefully not us, I will run around the ballroom to the painting and you will run straight to it and go through." At that moment, Andrea Baxter was strength and determination personified. Ella had no choice but to listen to her.

The two women tried their hardest to maintain a strong and dignified composure as the vampires strolled around the room, choosing their next meal. When all of them had chosen, Andrea screamed, with the strength of a dozen armies

"NOW!"

She ran first. The vampires stopped feeding to hunt her down. Ella ran then. The remaining vampires saw her milliseconds too late. She seized the painting. Black fog once again engulfed her. The next moment, she was back in the museum.

Ella waited in the museum for hours. Or was it merely minutes? Every second she waited, it became abundantly clear that her mother was not coming back. She was dead.