Laurel could not deny the thrill of the hunt. With each moment that passed, as her mark remained oblivious, she felt her exhilaration grow. He was an elderly farmer with a lumbering gait, which made it very easy to keep pace with him but he'd had a lifetime to hone his wits and the vigilance to have survived in the countryside so she still knew that she had to be careful. Occasionally, he would whip his head around. She would always be out of sight in the those moments, moving quicker than she ever had, behind a tree or down a ditch. The goal her master had given her was to follow him all the way home without being caught.

  They were just outside his homestead, by now. It was dark and his pretty wife, who must've been forty years his junior, was beckoning him from the open front door. That made the approach a little hard as she now had to account for two sets of eyes, one of which was permanently fixed on the direction she'd be coming from. Still, she managed and took up a prone position beside the path. It was only then that she saw the shadow behind the farmer's wife. It was not her own. Within seconds, her master had torn the woman's throat out and struck the farmer hard in the chest, sending him sprawling.

  'No!' Laurel cried, giving away her position - if that even still mattered.

  Her master drank his fill from the farmer's wife before saying anything, as she checked the man over. He was bleeding heavily, having hit his head hard in the fall. 'Go on, Laurel, you passed the test, you stalked your prey, now kill it.'

  She cradled the man, who clutched at her and babbled deliriously. 'No,' she said, shooting her master a look of defiance. Then, her blood ran cold, as the unmistakable cries of a baby rang out.

  Her master smiled at that. 'Right on cue,' he said. 'I will make it easier for you. Kill him and I'll spare the babe. Defy me, and I'll kill both of them myself.'

  Tears began to fall down her cheeks and she turned to look down at the frantic old him. His grip on her hand becoming violent, he tried to jerk himself away from her quite uselessly. After only a second of hesitation, she pierced his neck with her fangs and bit down hard. She should've just broken his neck but as soon as she'd decided to kill him, the nightmare in her blood drove her to sate her hunger. She later wondered if that's why he'd permitted her to sell her mule rather than butcher it. Perhaps it was simply the first phase of the starvation diet he'd had her on for the past five days.

  The taste of human blood was wonderful, especially compared to that ghoul, and it even caused her to let out an involuntary moan. She drained him completely as he writhed against her and tried with what shred of might remained in him to throw her off. When she looked up for her master's approval, she saw that he'd brought out the infant and that he'd somehow managed to calm it.

  'You said,' she started, before faltering under his gaze.

  'I am a man of my word, sweet girl, but who knows how long it will be before anyone even realises these two have gone missing? We'll take the child to an orphanage.'

  He entrusted the baby's care to her after that, what little she could offer it as they travelled for the night to the nearest settlement. Once she realised he was telling the truth, her opinion of him began to soften, likely enhanced by some power he possessed to charm people. 'People have always recoiled from me,' she said, 'will you teach me how to enchant them?'

  'There are powers of shadow and powers of blood,' was all he said in response. It reminded her of what that old wise man had said. If she was a creature of blood alone, did that mean some vampiric powers were impossible for her to learn? She dwelled on her first human victim less and less as the days and nights wore on. She reasoned that that she had no real choice in the matter. In fact, she'd saved a life. 'In time,' he assured her, 'you'll realise that humans are our prey, occasionally our playthings, and nothing more.'

  'Was my mother your plaything?' she dared to ask, in a bitter tone.

  He struck her hard across the face and she fell to the ground. 'Your mother was a vampire. She was the nightmare coursing through the body of her host, just as you are the abomination coursing through the veins of what used to be that woman's child. I do not want to have to tell you that again.' He dragged her to her feet and pulled her hair tightly, yanking her head back and peering into her eyes. 'The next time you imply that I killed her, I will break every bone in your body.'

  It happened only a few days later. It was not something she said but something she thought. She remembered a portrait of her mother and compared it, favourably, to the horrible image of the vampire in her birthing bed. In an instant, he was on her, wrestling her to the ground and beating her into unconsciousness. She woke up to find herself sprawled out on the forest floor, a broken and bloody mess. She cried out in pain and anguish as she tried, and failed, to get to her feet. He watched from the shadow, with those evil eyes of his, as she writhed around for hours. Eventually, the nightmare in her blood mended her bones, though the pain lingered on for a day and a night.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Neither of them spoke to one another of what had happened but she learned her lesson all the same. From that moment on, she squashed any thoughts of her mother as soon as they arrived. Her next big task was another hunt but this time he didn't hide her true goal. He allowed her to pick her own mark - even encouraging her to check a local bounty board for criminals to ease her conscience - kill him, drain him and dispose of his body. If she failed, he would conduct a massacre. She did not doubt that he could or would and so, once again, she convinced herself that she was really saving lives by killing.

  The target she eventually decided on was a bandit. He was accused of killing a traveller and, she reasoned, even if he was innocent of that, he was a lowlife thief and poacher besides. A young man with a slight frame, lank hair and sharp, almost crazed, eyes, he was far wittier and perceptive than the farmer had been. He never caught sight of her but he whipped his head around far more often and once definitely heard a leaf crushed under her foot. She followed him to his hideout and attacked him before he could enter. He was surprisingly strong, given his size, and managed to throw her off when she first jumped on him. He took out a dagger and stabbed her half a dozen times during the struggle but he couldn't matched her strength once she pinned him down.

  Soon after she'd drain his blood, an arrow whistled through the air and struck her in the side before she could react. A second came but she batted it aside. It had come from inside the hideout and she dove into the cave. She bashed the archer's head hard against the rock wall, killing him instantly. A woman shrieked and within seconds she was on her. She pinned her in place and stared at her, only then realising that she was unarmed. Quite beautiful beneath the muck on her face, she was dishevelled and her wrists had rope marks on them. The nightmare in her blood demanded that she feast but she suppressed the urge.

  'Were you their prisoner?' she asked, unsure if she could really trust the woman's response.

  Frantically, with tears in her eyes, the woman nodded her head.

  'So,' Laurel said, slowly and carefully, 'if I let you go, you won't tell anyone about me?'

  'I won't tell,' she pleaded, and Laurel dismounted.

  'Sorry for scaring you,' she said before taking off. Wrenching the bandit's head from his shoulders was much easier than she'd imagined it would be and she brought the proof of her kill back to her master.

  'Good,' he said, smiling, before taking the head and tossing it to the ground. 'Next time, I'll pick your target.'

  She was not looking forward to that but she smiled and nodded regardless.

  'Before then, you need to work on your technique.' He produced a set of bells, some of them stained with blood, and began to pin them to her. She intuited what they were for immediately and the next several hours were miserable, as she practised moving, including jumping and running, without making a sound. Eventually, however, she was able to get it right. She began, more and more, to understand what it meant to be a creature of blood. It referred to much more than her thirst. In essence, she was her blood. She moved like a human, albeit with inhuman skill and acceleration, but what she was actually doing was piloting her own body telekinetically. Once that had finally clicked, it allowed for an even finer level of control.

  At a certain point, she realised that she was practically flying, though only a few millimetres above the ground, but her master ended the lesson shortly afterwards.

  'Now,' he said, in a dark tone, 'I kept track of every time I heard a bell ring.' That must've been in the hundreds, she thought. 'Take off your jacket and your shirt.'

  She did as she was told and he began his torture immediately. He used his claw to cut her, one little nick for every time he'd heard a bell ring, with another added every time she winced. As she got weaker, he awarded himself small treats, often licking her blood off his nail. Eventually, she fortified her mind and stayed as still as a statue from the hundredth cut to the last. The hunt he put her on afterwards was worse torture, however, as he gave her the task of hunting and killing a young man. He made sure that she knew how innocent he was as they stalked him, night by night, and saw him help his struggling family, tutor his younger brother, court his sweet girlfriend and study for a city job.

  Her master didn't even tell her what he would do if she failed, which made it worse. Of course, she knew it would've been bad, but that was not quite as easy to justify in her mind. When she thought about turning on her master and alerting the town guards, he dared her to. 'Go ahead,' he said, with a smile, 'your father's palace guards were enough to drive me off, perhaps the men here were bred from the same hardy stock.'

  Instead, a few days later, she snuck up on the young man on his way home from the tavern and snapped his neck. Though she refused to drink from him, her master made her watch as he drank his fill. The nightmare in her blood pounded in her head and drove her wild with thirst but she remained true to her convictions and sat in silence, fighting back tears, before helping to dig a grave for him deep in the woods. Her master laughed at her when she suggested that it was better to leave the man's family with hope.

  'No, hope will drive them insane. It will tear them apart. Their pain will be so much sweeter this way.' Not knowing how else to respond, she launched herself at him, but he got the better of her, wrestled her to the ground and choked her into unconsciousness. All the while, reminding her that she didn't need to breathe. If she was strong enough, he said, she'd have been able to resist no matter how hard he squeezed. On some level, she knew he was right but darkness enveloped her all the same.