Laurel might just have been a perfect nightmare. In this little town she'd found upon her return from beyond the wall, she was every little bump in the night. She was the shadow that passed over the window, the shape that loomed in the doorway, the monster under the bed, the thing that vanished as soon as someone put on their spectacles or lit their bedside candle. She permitted no other nightmares in her domain, killing them quickly and quietly whenever they appeared. Other than the vile blood of lesser nightmares, she drank only fear and anxiety. Such things were abundant in this town and not merely because of her presence. The country was in turmoil, with rumours that the young crown prince was a dark dreamer, more and more reports of organised bands of nightmares conducting raids and massacres. Many people had begun to believe that the final defeat of humanity was at hand. The mad men, at first, and the sailors and fisherman's wives, but later the common soldiery, scouts and rangers, then even the wise men and merchants.

  Part of her, a very small part, wanted to alleviate their fears and even to fight for them. The rest of her, however, delighted in the tension and heightened emotions. From time to time, these emotions would grow so great that she would groan and chunter. Such noises only ever helped her efforts to terrify her prey. If anyone noticed that, despite everything, their children were generally sleeping better, they didn't remark upon it.

  Though Laurel now spent most of her time as a nightmare, she'd still been working on self-improvement. By now, the speed of her transformations matched the rival she'd overthrown and consumed and she'd even managed to grow her hair to any required length. Despite being more monstrous than ever, she was now able to look into the occasional mirror and see a version of herself that wouldn't look out of place in a family portrait. From time to time, she found a mark worthy of dedicating all her time towards. A man who beat his wife, a thug who extorted the poor and indebted, a woman who looked like her step-mother. That last type was a personal indulgence of hers and, tonight, she would eat well. Constance was a young widow, not unkind but who bore a striking resemblance to the Queen. Upon close inspection, the differences in their faces were clear but every so often, when the light struck her at just the right angle, Laurel might've been staring right at her step-mother.

  The torment began with the slow creaking of her bedroom door. 'Ugh,' the woman moaned, as she got out of bed and crossed the room. She snapped it shut and closed the latch before returning. Just as she was about to climb back into bed, Laurel reached out from underneath and clawed one of her bare feet. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to be clearly felt. Constance shrieked and backed away, bumping into her wardrobe. She clasped her hands around her mouth and tried to calm herself. Once she was ready, she lit her bedside candle and brought herself low to check. By then, of course, Laurel had moved, hovering level with the bed. 'I'm losing my mind,' she complained, before snuffing out the candle and finally returning to her bed. For a while, Laurel simply watched her try to get to sleep. She slept on her side and left half the bed for her late husband, giving the dhampir easy access to her neck.

  She resisted the urge to bite her, however, and simply breathed out across her shoulder. Constance lurched up at that and looked over. She only saw that her window was open, however, and went to close it with another groan. Just as soon as she'd shut the window, however, her bedroom door creaked open once again. As her heart raced, she slowly turned to face it. What greeted her was the rotting, shambling, corpse of her husband and she screamed. Laurel lumbered towards her and groaned. Constance was too frozen by fear to move, so Laurel pretended to stumble, in order to draw out the event. She let one of her ankles snap, dropping to the ground and crawling towards her, eventually beginning to pull at her night gown. The woman screamed again and again, and cried. Her fear was mixed with delicious grief and guilt. In the end, one of Constance's neighbours made his way inside, finding all the doors helpfully unlocked and open, and bashed Laurel's brains in.

  She let herself be incinerated in the pyre her neighbours made for the zombie, escaping into the air as imperceptible particulates of blood. Once she'd had time to digest and dwell on her actions, Laurel found herself feeling a little guilty for scaring her so badly, especially since she hadn't seemed like too bad of a person but she knew that, in time, such feelings would fade and she'd do something like it all over again. It sated her too well for her to stop. A few nights later, she found herself eager to break her rule against killing. She'd followed a man on a hunting trip back to his cabin in the woods, barely within the legal boundaries of the town. Laurel had assumed he was merely a recluse and planned only to give him a good scare, until she found a woman chained up in his cellar.

  'Hey,' she whispered to her, appearing as nothing more than red eyes in the darkness. The poor woman knew well enough not to scream but she didn't answered either. 'Hey, I want to help. Tell me about this man who locked you up.' Still the woman said nothing, and she had to witness one of his assaults upon her. Initially, she drank in the fear and pain but it eventually became too much for her conscience to bear and she dragged the man away, biting down hard on his neck and getting her first proper meal in months. After tossing his corpse to the floor, she unbound the woman, who remained frozen in fear. A long while passed before she dared to speak.

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  'You're the King's daughter,' she said, unsure.

  'Yes,' Laurel replied, feeling the fear flood back into the girl. 'I'm not going to hurt you,' she said. When that failed to convince her, she just left and explored the rest of the cabin. At some point, the girl found the courage to bolt. In total, Laurel found five shallow graves surrounding the property and something struck her. She'd enjoyed killing and didn't feel the least bit bad about it. It was very rare for her not to feel even the tiniest hint of remorse. She wondered if she could bring herself to graduate from consuming nightmares to consuming people. Liana's taunts echoed in her mind, reminding her of all the innocent people she'd killed. She'd added many more to that list since then. She was already a killer, she couldn't change that. If she had already crossed the point of no return, she might as well direct her evil towards those who deserved it. Evil against evil.

  She found her next victim easily enough. A few towns over, a man had stabbed his wife and chased after her when she'd fled into the woods. Laurel had been drawn by the scent of blood and the sweet taste of fear but she didn't let that distract her from her true objective. She became the shadows between the trees, the ominous silhouettes in the moonlight, the red eyes all around him and the footsteps that stopped whenever he whipped his head around. At first, he'd been too blinded by rage and the thrill of the chase to pay much attention but as the night dragged on, it became harder and harder for him to block out the sense that he was being hunted.

  For his wife, she tried something new. Her blood entered the woman's wound but, instead of taking, it helped to mend and heal her. 'I am the blood,' she said, relishing her power. Her prey stumbled and fell and his heart began to race. He held up his knife and whipped his head this way and that. He shouted threats and curses, promising to kill whoever had come after him. His fear was palpable and Laurel found herself licking her lips. She drew out his anguish with silhouettes and ghastly, malapportioned, figures just barely visible in the moonlight. When she finally confronted him, however, she did so in her own body, with her true face. She batted his knife away and straddled him. He was utterly terrified when she pinned his strong arms down and she let him stare into her bright red eyes. Once he'd soiled himself, she bit his neck savagely and fully exsanguinated him, crushing his bones and muscles in the process and leaving his corpse misshapen, frozen in a grimace of pain and fear.

  In time, she found herself wedded to this singular purpose. She worked her way across the country, infiltrating towns in search of murderers and monsters and feasting upon them. Where none were found, she let herself go hungry, making up for it with the next kill, drawing the nightmare out for longer. By the time she'd claimed her twentieth victim, the bounty on her head had tripled. She stumbled across hunters from time to time but they rarely ever had the slightest clue she was there and even the sharpest of them couldn't hurt her in any meaningful way. It was when she spotted a moon beast, wandering across the forest floor, that she realised how best she might apply her new philosophy. If John and his group had caught up with her, weren't they also guilty of murder? On some level, she understood that it wouldn't feel the same. Even if she could convince herself that they deserved to die, which seemed easy enough, she knew that she'd still regret hurting people she'd been so well acquainted with.

  So, she put the idea to one side and continued her dark crusade. She found an old man with an awful secret, the body of a young girl buried beneath his floorboards. Laurel made his walls bleed and taunted him with his crime. He wailed and begged for forgiveness before the end, which came not with a exsanguination but with a massive heart attack when the terror grew too great for his frail form. Scaring someone to death felt ecstatic but she still took her drink. She made sure that the authorities found not only his mangled corpse but the body of the girl, whose parents could finally lay her to rest. Grief tasted almost as good as fear and Laurel indulged herself by staying for the funeral. Lingering an extra day meant witnessing the arrival of hunters on her trail, however.

  She watched them in the local pub as they argued with one another and traded theories about her. Some insisted that silver would work but others were apparently much more learned. Those that knew dhampirs best said that the correct way to hunt one was to poison and starve it, trapping and binding it if possible. It was during such a discussion, with two hunters showing off their poisons to one another, that something gave Laurel pause. The gruffer and smarter of the two had a girl with him. Laurel was struck by her beauty. She was dainty and soft-spoken, a striking contrast to the guardian Laurel soon learned was her father, with pretty pale blue eyes and snowy skin. Her silvery blonde hair was tied up and her outfit was as pretty as any dream hunter's could be, with a stylish cropped black jacket, a ruffled blouse and tight grey trousers. Her boots were clean and shiny, which was perhaps the most remarkable part.

  Laurel decided to follow the two, initially at a respectable distance, as they picked a town, seemingly at random, to continue onto. The hunters split themselves up roughly equally, meaning that they found themselves occasionally in the company of two other groups of hunters. Laurel avoided feeding whilst she followed them, fortunate to have filled herself up so thoroughly. She watched the girl, whose name she learned was Susan, as she slept each night. Slowly but surely, Laurel's heart became filled with yearning. She wondered if the danger was part of the attraction. Susan's father was the most likely of any of the hunters to actually have a chance at taking her down but no real way of getting to her and, yet, here she was, desperate to find a way to insert herself into their lives.

  Aila's words haunted her. 'Still trying to find another Sarah?'