Disclaimer: I own nothing relating to Naruto.

Sakura woke up in a cage.

"Seriously?" she muttered, rubbing her head where she'd banged it on the metal bars above her. "You've got to be kidding me."

She shouldn't have been surprised, all things considered. The witches had been way too active lately. Annoyingly so.

And witches hated vampires.

Sakura looked down at her once pretty pink dress to see the dried pattern of blood and gore covering it. Her shoes—once nice black kitten heels that she rocked, thank you very much—were missing, her feet bare and covered in dirt. This, more than anything else, was what really pissed her off.

She liked those shoes.

It was dark, and damp. She was in a cave of some sort, with a salt circle set up with candles dripping wax on the floor.

She smelt salt water, and wondered if she was still in Greece. The sharp pain in her throat told her that she'd been there for at least a couple days, and Sakura licked her teeth, finding no remains of her last meal.

A soft scuff of boot on ground had Sakura spinning around in her cage, only to blink in confusion.

There was another overly small cage in the cave with her. It was a bit larger than Sakura's, but larger in the way someone would shop for a cage for a very large dog. Sakura was in a cage meant for only a medium-large sized dog.

She was slightly offended at this unfairness.

The man in the cage opposite hers was obviously a vampire, if the red lining his pupils was anything to go by, and he'd been starved for much longer than Sakura had.

"Hello," he said, good-naturedly.

"Hello," Sakura said, glad when her throat didn't betray her and her voice came out clear. "I don't suppose you know where we are? Or why we're here?"

"It would appear our kidnappers are some very foolish witches who thought a vampire sacrifice would be the way to appease their ancestors in some way or another." He waved a hand lazily in the air, like said annoying ancestors were floating around above them. "There were some more details in there somewhere, but I stopped listening after a while. One can only take so much witchling bitching."

Sakura let out a surprised laugh.

One side of the vampire's mouth curled up. Sakura noticed then that he was dressed in a rolled up white button-down and slacks. His feet, however, were not bare like hers. Sakura felt that some injustice was done to her, even more so.

He was obviously older than her, by a lot. The power was radiating off of him, even from over there. And that was without his annoyance being directed at her.

The only lighting in the cave came from the candles, telling Sakura that it was either currently night outside or they were far enough inside the cave that no light would reach them. Even so, the vampire's hair was lit up by the flames, bright red and making Sakura wonder if he dyed it that color or if he'd gotten so much blood in it before that it was now permanently stained that way—

"So, sweetheart, we seem to find ourselves in a bit of a bind now, what with the witches having stepped out to find a third vampire. And the bars are cursed, if you haven't noticed, meaning I cannot break out." He raised an eyebrow, and Sakura saw that it was pierced with something silver. Huh. Must have been turned in the rock era. "Unless you have something special about you besides that pink hair that can get us out."

—or maybe he'd just pissed off a witch and been cursed with it.

Sakura narrowed her eyes and flipped onto her side, reaching out to touch the bars of the cage, only to find the bars were drenched in vervain and pulling her hand back with a hiss.

"Cursed? Seems like vervain to me."

The vampire tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. Sakura felt a shiver go up her spine at his look. "Really? How peculiar. The witches must not see you as much of a threat, sweetheart."

He was old, that much Sakura could tell. Very old. It took a certain amount of age to hone that kind of smug self-satisfaction at all times.

"Though you do seem rather young, for a vampire. Tell me, sweetheart, what was it that a little baby vampire like you could have done to warrant the attention of this particular witch coven? They've been a rather annoying pain in my side for centuries now."

He liked to talk, too. Lovely.

Sakura looked around and rooted around in the dirt by her cage. Cursed, the older vampire had said. The salt circle wasn't centered around their cages, which meant that it wasn't a part of the curse. And it wasn't a part of Sakura's cage, as far as she could tell . . .

But the candles . . .

"Not much of a talker, are you, love? No matter, I highly suspect the witches will sacrifice you first—weakest first and all that. You understand."

The vervain on the bars she was reaching through was burning her arms, but Sakura gritted her teeth through the pain. If she could just reach it . . .

There.

A metal rod, buried just underneath her cage. Thin as her pinky finger, long enough to stretch across the cave to the older vampire's cage and, if he was to be believed, to where the third cage would be set up with the third vampire, Sakura supposed.

These things were always done in threes, of course.

Sakura pulled her hand back through the bars and looked up. Honestly, these witches could have at least put a little effort into their plan. Seriously. It's just plain rude to cage a vampire and not plan it out decently.

She looked back over to the older vampire with a huff, but paused when she found his red-ringed eyes on her, head canted to the side.

"Now, sweetheart, you—"

Five witches came through the mouth of the cave, black haired and scowling faces. The oldest witch, the one obviously in charge if her self-satisfying walk was anything to go by, led the group.

There was no third vampire.

The witches paid Sakura no mind, eyes darting back and forth between the older vampire's cage with a sneer and the oldest witch, listening to her rant and rave something that sounded very much like Grecian.

So. Greece it was. Good to know.

Sakura would have been very put off if she had learned that this coven had planned to sacrifice her somewhere ugly.

One of the younger black haired witches walked around the perimeter of the salt circle, obviously trying to look busy so the older witch would ignore her. Sakura appreciated her effort. She'd want to stay away from an older, self-satisfied witch like her, too.

The older vampire was just grinning in his cage, dimples showing. Sakura was seriously untrusting of those dimples.

When the younger witch neared Sakura's cage, Sakura jostled the metal rod near her, upsetting the salt circle in a part the younger witch had already checked.

The older vampire was watching her, his eyes gleaming.

When the coven stopped getting yelled at by the older witch, they arranged themselves outside the salt circle in a line, still a good distance away from the older vampire, who was in a cursed cage and inside the salt circle.

Interesting.

Sakura licked her dry lips, the remains of her red lipstick long gone. She was so going to Italy after this. A shopping trip was what she needed, and she'd just been to Paris. Maybe she'd go back to the United States here soon, visit L.A. again . . .

The witches were chanting something gruff sounding now. Sakura idly wondered if they were planning to sacrifice a chicken. Or a goat. It was never a good time to be a goat when witches were involved.

Well. It was probably never a good time to be a goat, period.

Sakura sighed and waited. The older vampire was still watching her and grinning a secret little smile, his dimples more prominent in the candle light. It was starting to creep Sakura out.

It was when the older witch pulled out a talisman that Sakura started paying attention. A talisman Ino had told her about before, when she'd still been alive and reading her family's spell books in the living room of her house, Sakura baking in the kitchen and yelling for Ino to take a break and come help her get flower all over herself.

The talisman had a goat head on the front of it.

Figured.

"The more powerful covens have a talisman defining their powers," Ino had once explained to Sakura, back when everything was made up of rooms filled with herbs and hot green tea being handed out and ancient Yamanaka spell books being rooted through on weekends. Ino had pointed to a page on the dried and crinkled paper that might have once belonged (somehow) to an animal. "The goat represents sacrifice and blood offerings, like how the Yamanaka talisman represents healing and protection."

"You deal with herbs and plants," Sakura had said.

"And the goat coven deals with blood and bone. There are some covens that have nothing but pure evil at the root of their beliefs. I know we argue about the good and bad of witchcraft as it is, but this kind of magic . . . nothing good comes from it, and after a while it eats at the witches until nothing is left except blood and bone."

"I though you said they just dealt with blood and bone in their sacrifices."

"Why do you think they need to sacrifice it in the first place?"

Sakura understood why the older vampire had been bothered by this coven before. This was a coven that would sacrifice anything and everything, but only really wanted the vampires as old as dirt.

The most powerful.

The older witch placed the goat talisman on the salt circle.

"All magic needs a conduct," Ino had explained. "Something to align the magic. Nothing comes from nothing. But something can come from something. Don't let yourself be that something, Sakura."

Which explained what the metal rod was for. Something to align the magic from Sakura to the older vampire.

Sakura eyed the older vampire with renewed interest. How old must he really be, to warrant this kind of magic? To have come in contact with this coven before, and still be alive?

It was when Sakura saw the oldest witch pull a long and narrow dagger out from one of her billowing sleeves and begin making her way towards her cage that Sakura internally groaned and lifted herself up from her hunched position and kicked out the bars above her head.

And it hurt. God, it hurt, but Sakura just gritted her teeth together. The witches may not have been smart enough to paint the bars above her head with vervain, but Sakura had been starved for a few days now and her bones creaked with the effort it took to lay enough force behind them to break the metal bars. They had been thicker than she'd expected.

But by her third kick (without much leverage or space to pull back her foot, thank you very much), enough of the bars were gone for Sakura to shimmy through and for the witches to start screaming.

It was always done in thirds, after all.

The oldest witch raised the arm not holding the dagger out to Sakura's head. Sakura winced and gritted her teeth at the migraine the witch was giving her, all the while coming closer to her with dagger in hand.

Sakura kicked out at the candle nearest her before the witch rendered her unconscious once again, knocking it over. The connection broken, all the candles went out and fell to the floor.

It was dark in the cave, dark enough for the older witch to lose her concentration, just a bit.

Sakura sped over to one of the younger witches—the one who had checked the salt circle before, the poor dear—and tore into her neck before she could so much as gasp. The older witch screamed in rage.

The blood was warm on her tongue, and it eased the ache in her head only by the slimmest margin. A low moan reverberated in her chest, and Sakura dropped the dead witch.

Before she even hit the floor, Sakura was over by the elder witch, and broke the wrist holding the dagger to plunge it into her own heart. A gurgle and mumble of incoherent Grecian words that made no sense to Sakura (and would likely not have made sense even if she had spoken the language), and the witch was dead.

It only took a moment longer for Sakura to take care of the remaining three younger witches, snapping their necks in quick succession.

The older vampire was still lounging in his cage—literally lounging, the bastard—and smirking up at her. Sakura forced her eyes back to normal, her teeth no longer extended. Her monster pushed against her skin, hungry for blood. Witch's blood always tasted sour and unfulfilling, like a watered down meal, and now she just wanted to get back to her hotel and find a decent meal before moving on.

But first . . . the older vampire.

He grinned at her weariness, and Sakura rocked back on her heels at the pure sharpness behind his gaze.

"It seems I was wrong," he murmured. "Turns out you're not so useless after all."

"I'm sorry, do I look like I care about your opinion?" Sakura snapped, reaching down to pick up the goat talisman from what remained of the salt circle. She smoothed her thumb over the engraving and Latin words inscribed in a near invisible font on the ridges.

The old vampire had the gall to chuckle at her. "Now, sweetheart, that's all in the past. Tell me—where exactly did you learn so much about witchcraft? You appear to know more than the average baby vampire."

"It is truly amazing," Sakura said, "how much I do not care, nor have any desire to answer your questions. In fact," she muttered, "why don't you tell me about why this particular coven was so interested in your demise?"

He quirked his head at her, and Sakura refused to look away. "Witches hate vampires."

"That's not an answer."

"This coven—that you so kindly just made extinct, as those five were the very last of the lineage, and were in a last ditch effort to kill me by the way, so thank you for that sweetheart—" Sakura rolled her eyes. "—but this coven and I go back a very long ways, and I'm afraid at one point I may have lost my temper and, how you say . . . committed a type of genocide on their indigenous people at one point or another."

Sakura swallowed at that. The last mass killing of any one coven had been over three hundred years ago, and this older vampire had to already been pretty darn old to have the sort of power to even contemplate such a move. Witches—and particularly covens—were hard as hell to kill.

Witches were the one creature who could stop a vampire where they stood, simply by reaching out and giving them an intense migraine kind of pain in their heads. It had been known to kill more than one baby vampire before, if given by a powerful enough witch.

"So they're extinct now, huh?" Sakura said, mostly to herself as she pondered how she was going to destroy the goat talisman . . . maybe burning it down and making a nice pair of earrings with the metal. Or maybe she'd just throw it in the ocean and be done with it.

"Quite." The older vampire gestured to the cage around him. "Thinking about letting me out anytime soon, love?"

"Still thinking about it." Running back to her hotel was going to be a pain. Sakura would have to go at full speed, and while no human would be able to see her move at that speed, running barefoot had never been her favorite thing to do. Her lost shoes were going to be a sore point until she got some shopping done, she could already tell.

The older vampire narrowed his eyes at her, his grin sharp and grating. Sakura froze and eyed him, wondering if she could just throw him in the ocean and be done with it.

"Now, I'm not all bad. I haven't tried to kill you, and I'm not even mad about you killing all the witches yourself, and so quickly too. Personally, I would have made the youngest of the witches pull out her intestines to show to the older witch until her voice had gone horse with screaming, and then worked my way up by age until I tore the oldest witch's tonsils out." He dimpled.

Yeah. Never, ever trusting those dimples, Sakura decided.

She blinked slowly at him. "You are still sitting in a cursed cage, as far as I can tell. And if you could have broken out yourself, you would still be playing out your little torture fantasy."

Again, that cutting gaze. The power was radiating off him now, and Sakura could see how he was re-evaluating her every moment they stood there verbally sparring with each other. Sakura wondered how long it had been since someone—especially a baby vampire—had spoken to him in such a way.

She pushed a stray curl of hair out of her face, grimacing at how dirty and bloody her hand was when he spoke again.

"How about a bargain?"

She lowered her lashes. "A bargain?"

"Mmm. I'm going to guess the reason you are so hesitant—and with good reason—to let me out is because you don't trust me not to tear that pretty little pink head off the moment I'm out."

Sakura crossed her arms, refused to back down. "I would expect you wouldn't want anyone to know about your little misstep with these witches. Weaknesses and all."

If possible, his grin widened. "Here's what I'm offering, sweetheart: You lift the curse—and I am guessing you know how to do that, all the witchcraft knowledge in your head, after all—and let me out of this cage, and I give you my word that I will not harm a hair on your head. Deal?"

Sakura tilted her head back like she was thinking about it. "Mmm . . . it's a good offer, but I'm going to need something a little more concreate. How about . . . ," Sakura tapped her chin, and then snapped her fingers. "I let you out of that cage, and you promise to not only not harm me now, but promise you can never harm me, nor send anyone to hurt me."

A vampire's promise—and especially one from a vampire as old as he obviously was—was as good as she was going to get. The only thing stronger than a vampire's promise would be an overseen witch blood pact, but since all the witches around were currently dead and Sakura like really, really wanted a bath in the next hour . . .

He placed a hand over where his heart would have been beating had he still had one and looked scandalized. "Why, love, you really think so low of me as to harm you after killing all these pesky witches for me?"

"Yes," Sakura deadpanned.

He threw back his head and laughed. Bastard. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"That's not part of our bargain." A name would only help him if he ever decided to remember the baby vampire who was clever enough to kill five powerful witches in the midst of a ritual.

The vampire stretched his hand out, so that he was almost touching the cursed bars of the cage. Sakura wondered exactly what it was the curse did. "I accept our bargain."

"And no trying to find me," Sakura growled. "I will not be hunted."

His eyebrows rose. "Hunted? No. Though if I so happen to find myself in the same city as a certain baby vampire, you cannot blame me that."

"I'm not that interesting."

"I look forward to tearing out the heart of whoever would dare put that idea in that pretty little mind of yours."

That took Sakura off guard. She struggled to get the next few words out. "Our bargain?"

"Agreed, love. You have my word that neither I nor anyone under me shall ever harm you, nor will you ever be hunted by me." He raised one pierced eyebrow at her. "Good enough, sweetheart? As much as I enjoy this whole ambiance we have going on, personally I'd like a change of clothes soon."

Sakura grumbled and stepped forward to place the goat talisman in front of his cage, right on top of where the metal rod was attached to his cage.

Nothing physical happened, but when Sakura raised her eyebrow at the older vampire, he grabbed hold of the cage.

Nothing happened, and a slow, easy grin pulled at the corners of his mouth.

Sakura rose, realizing she was close enough for him to touch. The older vampire kicked out at the cage, and it was decimated.

He stood slowly, and Sakura refused to run, no matter what her instincts told her. He'd made the bargain, and he was old as dirt. If Sakura had learned anything as her time as a vampire, it was that the ancient ones were the most cunning, evil, vile creatures to roam the earth, but they were also the ones who never broke a bargain.

He was suddenly right in front of her, close enough that the curves of her breasts and the planes of his chest could touch if they both took a deep enough breath.

He was tall. It was the first thing Sakura's brain told her, but to be fair, there was a lot going on with the older vampire that was hard to take in all at once.

There were more piercings than she'd first realized. Eyebrow, lip, nose . . . The rock era was too soon for him to have been turned during, but he was obviously a fan. And his eyes . . . they weren't just ringed with the normal red a vampire gets when they go too long without feeding—they were ringed multiple times.

A hand came to rest on her cheek, and Sakura froze. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"I'd like a name, sweetheart."

"And I'd like a bath," Sakura retorted. "Looks like only one of us will be getting what we want."

There was something wicked and crooked behind his eyes, and Sakura was surprised at her body's reaction to it. The parts of her made up of teeth and nails wanted to peel back his skin to see what was behind it.

Instead she clenched her fists.

"How about both," the older vampire murmured, sliding a thumb across her bottom lip, catching a stray smear of blood from the younger, dead witch at their feet. He lifted his thumb to lick it clean and leaned down far enough that she could see his pupils, dilated and blown wide.

"The name's Pein."

Author's Note: I know I said this would only happen after I was finished with Two Morons and a Mad House, but, well . . . I couldn't help myself.

I hope you guys like this. It's different, and I'm not sure if this is gonna be just a really short oneshot and leave it as is or maybe this will be a few chapters long or maybe it'll just be some random drabbles relating to vampire!Sakura. Dunno.

Tell me what you guys think so far. This is ever so loosely based also on The Vampire Diaries as far as the whole vervain and the witch migraines thing goes. If you haven't ever watched the show, that's fine, it won't matter for this story. Also, I'm a serious shipper of Klaroline, so my Pein is kinda like Klaus and Sakura is kinda like Caroline. Not completely, because they're still different characters in my head, but I wanted to write vampire!Sakura, and so this happened. (I may try my hand one day at writing Klaroline fanfiction, but not right now.)

Please REVIEW! Tell me ya'll want more of this story, and how much.