The Greville Household

"I knew he was dead. An idiot like him could never survive in this world," An arrogant looking man walked into the room, closing the door behind him and finding a seat beside Mr and Mrs Greville.

Olivia observed him. He looked to be in his early 20s, his hair matching his fathers, reddish brown. He wore neat clothing, a white shirt underneath his black waistcoat. A gold chain dangling out of his breast pocket. He also wore a black coat complementing his dark brown trousers and black, freshly polished shoes. All in all, a true young noble.

Before Olivia could continue her inspection, Mrs Greville's voice snapped her out of it, "Collin! How could you say that about your brother!"

Collin scoffed at his mother before mumbling, "It's not like you don't have other children."

"Collin!" Mrs Greville shouted again.

"Shut up! Shut up right now! You think I won't throw you out?" Mr Greville glared at both his son and wife.

Olivia felt uncomfortable watching this debacle so she decided to look away but her eyes caught Alexander, his face looking increasingly gloomy. Eli sitting next to him also caught his partners expression, so he made the quick decision of wrapping it up.

Once outside, Olivia took a deep breath of the crisp spring air.

"Where are you going now?" Eli asked Alexander as he walked alongside him. Olivia trailed behind them silently.

"Bureau."

"If that's so, I'll also come along. You don't mind do you?" Eli glanced at Alexander with a smile on his face, while Alexander merely looked back at him before stepping into the carriage.

Eli also stepped in after him. Olivia paused for a while before stepping in to the carriage as well. She sat on the same side she sat on earlier while Eli sat beside the vampire.

The ride carried on in silence. Olivia kept taking small peeks at Alexander, hesitating for a while before looking away again and repeating the whole process.

While she was once again hesitating, a deep voice made her look up, "Spit it out."

Olivia continued to gaze at Alexander before asking, "Why… why did you lie?"

Alexander was confused about what the girl was talking about before it clicked in his mind, "About the witches?"

Olivia nodded her head.

Alexander turned his head towards Eli that was sitting beside him. Olivia too, looked towards Eli.

"No one needs to know the truth. It's troublesome," He answered before looking away from Eli and glancing out the window. Olivia moved her gaze towards Alexander.

"What is this? We have secrets now? I feel like a child again," Eli chuckled. Olivia slightly flinched at the word 'secret' but nonetheless kept her gaze outside the window.

Soon, the carriage reached its destination. All three of them walked out one by one. In front of them, stood a tall building with 4 pillars holding it up. Multiple people were walking in and out in a hurry. It seemed that the bureau Alexander mentioned, was located here. While she was stuck gawking at the building, she later noticed that the other two were already far up ahead. She quickly ran after them.

Inside, tables upon tables covered with various pieces of paper were scattered around. People were constantly bustling about. Although Olivia didn't know what the bureau dealt with exactly, she guessed it must be an important establishment as she keenly observed that the majority of people seemed to be of nobility and the like.

"Mr De Vere and Mr Cromwell, have you just returned from the Greville's?" A man in his mid 40s walked up to the trio.

"Must you be so formal, Edgar?" Eli gave a helpless sigh.

"Of course. We're at work, not at a party, Mr Cromwell," Edgar hmphed.

Alexander ignored the shenanigans of the pair, "I've reported to the Greville's. The case can be closed now."

"Very well. Good work. They can finally stop hounding me about their son day after day," Edgar grumbled the last sentence under his breath.

After he finished his mumblings, he finally took notice of the idle Olivia.

"And this is…?" Edgar motioned towards her.

Before Eli or Alexander could answer she quickly spoke up, "Assistant."

Olivia cleared her throat before correcting herself, "Master Alexander's assistant."

Once her sentence finished, Eli looked to be stifling a laugh while Alexander turned towards Olivia and frowned. Olivia looked back at him, giving him a small smile before seeing him turn away in silence.

Edgar gave a pointed look at Olivia, "An assistant…"

Edgar's eyes then flitted to Alexander. Seeing the vampire look indifferent, he gave a small sigh.

Eli looked around the room and asked, "It seems to be busier than usual. What's going on?"

"Not only have the hunters been acting increasingly suspicious over the last couple of weeks, recently we've had reports of young women being killed," Edgar shook his head.

Eli raised his brows in surprise, "That sounds unfortunate. Any leads?"

Edgar shook his head before replying, "We've only got a few facts. All of the victims seem to have the letter 'T' branded on them. Another point is that some of the victims have an intact corpse while others are missing limbs or even worse, decapitated."

Edgar then sheepishly looked at Alexander before adding, "We've also discovered that all victims have had their blood drained. We suspect that the perpetrator is a vampire."

Alexander frowned and asked, "Who have you put on the case?"

"We haven't assigned anyone ye-"

"I'll take it," Alexander interrupted.

Edgar nodded before saying farewell and walking away. Eli also mentioned having something else to attend to so Olivia and Alexander got back on their carriage.

Inside, once again both Alexander and Olivia sat in silence.

"Assistant," Alexander spoke.

Olivia looked up, "I'm not your relative, neither am I your servant and I'm certainly not a Giver so I settled with assistant."

"Have you ever heard of a human being a vampire's assistant?"

"No…" Olivia admitted, it wasn't exactly a well thought out answer but it was the best she could come up with at the time.

"But I'm not human either," Olivia added.

Alexander continued to look out the window while replying with a low 'hmm.'

The next day, Olivia once again had a silent and awkward breakfast with the De Vere family before Alexander took her out of the house. According to him, the perpetrator struck once again last night and so both of them were currently at the crime scene.

"The victim was born from a commoner family and was one of five children. She was aged 19 and was on her way home from working in her aunt's shop. In the early hours of the morning, she was found dead on the side of the street," A worker from the bureau informed Alexander on his arrival.

Olivia listened to his briefing as she continued to look at the crime scene. Before her lay a horrific display. A decapitated head lay next to its corpse, a bloody 'T' clawed on to the victims chest. The victims clothes were torn apart, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Once the worker left, Alexander looked at Olivia, observing her reaction, "Scared? Feeling sick?"

"I've had worse done to me," Olivia finally tore away her gaze from the victim and looked up at him.

Alexander hummed in amusement before moving closer to the corpse. He looked at the neck of the corpse before standing up and tutting.

"What's wrong?" Olivia asked.

"Look at her neck," Alexander replied.

Olivia shifted her eyes towards the victim once again, this time looking at the area around her neck. A minute had passed yet Olivia couldn't see any anomalies. She finally gave up and gave a confused look at Alexander.

"Look properly at her neck. It's not a clean bite is it? The criminal bit her a lot of times," Alexander informed.

Olivia was hesitant for a moment before replying, "Maybe he was in a hurry?"

"No, this means that the criminal is a newly turned vampire as he has yet to understand how to make a clean and efficient bite. He bit her neck numerous times because he couldn't find the appropriate way to drain her blood."

Olivia had a face that looked enlightened as her head whipped back to look at the victims neck again. Indeed, the area had multiple small holes in one place.

"How are you going to catch him?" Olivia asked as she noted that the vampire seemed to talk to her more than usual today. The vampire had somehow, however, returned back to his unresponsive self as he ignored her question.

Soon, four days had passed. Olivia, for some reason, found herself stuck with the vampire in the carriage the whole day. They were currently stationed on the corner of a popular street. The sun had set hours ago and the streets were soon covered by a blanket of darkness bar a few street lamps using gas to light the way.

Olivia was in a slightly foul mood as she had not had anything but the breakfast she ate this morning, to go on. She also had to endure sitting silently in this carriage with a stoic vampire for hours on end.

As the streets continued to usher in the night, Olivia could no longer hold on, "What are we doing?"

The vampire made no move to reply to Olivia, merely sitting there with an indifferent expression on his face. Olivia huffed in her seat before continuing to gaze at the empty streets.

About an hour later, Alexander finally got off the carriage without saying a word. Olivia quickly got off the carriage after him, hastening her footsteps to follow after him. As they kept walking, Olivia looked around the darkness. Everything around her looked gloomy and eerie, somehow her thoughts went back to the nights she spent in her childhood alone.

She quickly snapped out of her reverie and noticed that Alexander was no longer walking in front of her. She hastily looked around trying to find the tall vampire's shadow yet she couldn't find a single person let alone Alexander. She frantically looked around and found that she was currently walking on a dimly lit street. Unfortunately, she was the only person there.

"Master Alexander," Olivia whispered into the shadows.

As she continued to look around for the vampire, someone tapped her on her shoulders.

"Master Alexander?" Olivia turned around to look at the person, forgetting that Alexander was not the type of person to tap one on the shoulder but preferred to vocalize his presence instead.

"Hello," A young man stood in front of her with a small smile. Olivia quickly took a step back, observing the man before her. She looked into his eyes and found he had the same shade as the butler back at the De Vere household, light scarlet. Olivia quickly put up her guard and vigilantly looked at him.

"You seem to be lost," The vampire stated. Olivia didn't reply but rather took another step back, keeping her eyes strictly on the man in front of her. Where on earth was Alexander at the moment?

"Why aren't you answering back? Do you also think I'm not worthy?" The vampire suddenly asked with hostility.

Olivia sensed that his words had taken a sharp turn down a dangerous path.

"Do you think that just because you're beautiful you can ignore and belittle others?" Although the vampire slipped in a compliment, Olivia had no time to be flattered by it. She somehow had an inkling about who this delusional man was and she didn't like where this was going.

"I've already had a shitty week because of those dogs chasing after me and now here's a whore trying to act all arrogant in front of me! In what world do I, Tobias, deserve this?" The vampire suddenly started using a harsh tone making Olivia flinch slightly.

Despite not being scared about him killing her, nonetheless, her heart was palpitating wildly. She thought that the vampire in front of her was peculiar in that his mood seemed to go from heaven to hell in a split second.

Thinking back to what he had just said, Olivia managed to take out a key point. His name began with 'T', the same letter that was left on the victims they had been looking at recently. It seemed that this vampire took pleasure in marking his preys' as his.

She tried to quickly stir the conversation another way as she took the chance to question him, "Why did you kill all those young women?"

The vampire started before snarling at her, "I didn't think you had guessed my identity but what does it matter? I've already chosen this path and I'm not planning to stop any time soon," The vampire had a look of extreme craziness in his eyes. Olivia didn't like the sound of what he had said.

She started to take small quick steps back but before she could create a big enough distance, the demented vampire had already reached her, holding on to her arm with a death grip.

"We don't need these legs now do we? We can't have you running away," The vampire chuckled before his hand started to approach Olivia's leg.