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"Lead the way. I will be able to open the door and if I can't then I will ask Cedric to open it for me." Yuki looked at Cedric pleading with her eyes.

"I will help in any way possible. After seeing that they included me in the portrait I cannot let this slide by. I will trust your people." Cedric came up to her side and placed his hand on the small of her back.

Ivy finished bowing. "Thank you. It is a pleasure to meet the partner of her excellency. Please follow me and I will lead the way." She started down the stairs and went down the hallway.

Cedric followed, taking Yuki along with him. He looked at all the pictures in the hallway. He stopped and touched one that was of Luna and Ryan. "Such fools."

"Yes, but they were happy to do it and that is a fact that can't be disputed. They are the ones to make their choices and no0t you. I know that this is going to hurt as it already hurts me but each picture in this hallway was painted by Ivy. She is the one that did the big portrait on the staircase." Yuki saw her parents and sadly smiled. The next picture was of Claude and Yuki dancing. There was a small saying on the bottom. 'I am meant to serve you, Princess.'

"Ivy painted all of these but she is not all that old… is she?" Cedric looked at the girl that had stopped at the end of the hallway and waited for them to catch up.

"She is a natural-born vampire. She chose to come to me when I was younger and offered her services. That is one of the reasons that we have all these pictures. She was there when it happened." Yuki turned and saw that next one and touched the picture. It was when she had asked Cedric if she could drink his blood and he was kneeling for her holding her hand. 'I am yours if you want me...'

Cedric turned and saw the picture. "That is beautifully done and it is true. I would give you all of me. I love that in some of these pictures there are one-sentence phrases." He places his hand on her back and guides her to the exit. "If we do not leave we will want to keep looking at all the pictures." Cedric took her to Ivy. "I am very impressed. I would like to ask you to do one for me, that is if you do not mind?"

"When I am finally done cleaning up after the massacre here I would be honoured to do another painting for you. Would I get your permission to make a small copy to add to the wall?" Ivy looked at Cedric hoping he would say yes.

"Of course, I do not mind. We will discuss the details after we check on your people that might be trapped in the shelter." Cedric waits for Ivy to lead the way once more.

Yuki stepped up to the wall and touched a spot. A keyboard appeared and she quickly inputs her code to override the locks on the shelters. Eleven out of the twelve open up and that last one remains shut. "Okay let's check all of them and make sure that nothing was missed."

Ivy ran to the first one and gasped in horror. "How could they kill such an innocent life. She looked down at the dust piles sadly.

"Is it that you can feel that the child was here? It is hard for me to know as I do not remember coming to this place before in the past." Cedric looked around the room and saw no survivors.

"It is a vampire thing. When our kind is killed we can tell what happened to them. or at least we can tell the age of the vampire by the dust. It is not hard to figure out." Yuki looks at Cedric answering his question.

Ivy shakes her head sadly. "It was a baby that was killed. I do not know what sort of sick individual would do this but it is terribly upsetting. There are four more rooms I need to check out that I was not able to access before."

"Okay, let's move to the next one. I want to get this all sorted before we leave here. Ivy, only you know the shelters that have been checked so we will be following you." Yuki gestures to Ivy to continue her search.

Ivy races to the next shelter and it is empty, no bodies, no blood, no dust, just eerily silent. She jogs to the next one and finds a survivor that was in the middle of the room.

"Ivy… I have been feeding James my blood. He is over in the corner crying please tell me I wanted him to live." The man smiled and crumbled into dust.

"James, this is not your fault. Your father wanted to make sure that you lived. Mia is safe with me and the bad guys are all gone now." Ivy lowered herself and held out her hand.

Yuki came into the shelter and went to the boy. She was behind him exploring the back of his neck and she pulled off the control bug and crushed it. "I do not like that they are interfering with this." She dropped the crushed bug on the ground and then James started crying.

"I-I," He sniffles and tries to wipe away his tears, "I wanted to hold back. I didn't want to kill Father. I wanted to stay by his side helping him as much as I can but I wound up killing him instead." James held out his hands and went to Ivy.

"It's okay baby boy, you are a good son. It doesn't matter that you made a mistake. Right now you are safe and sound. It was her excellency that freed you from the curse. I will take you to Mia after okay?" Ivy picked him up and carried the young boy.