This was it, do or die. Laurel counselled herself as she strode towards the werewolf camp. 'I am the blood,' she had to remember that because it was so easy to slip back into the belief that she more human. 'Pain is an illusion,' she assured herself. There was no reason for her to feel fatigue, except from starvation, and there was no injury she shouldn't be able to ignore. Once she was in view, a few elders ran out to challenge her but she evaded their swipes and plunged her silver sword through their flesh and into their heart. The alpha only watched her, his predatory gaze boring into her mind. The alpha's mate came next and she was much more of a challenge, being faster and stronger than any werewolf she'd yet faced.

  Though it seared her arms, the beast batted away Laurel's sword strikes and forced her to fight with tooth and claw. One lucky swipe caught her right across her throat and she had to suppress her urge to sputter and choke. She reminded herself that she was the blood and not the body and she kept herself from spilling forth. Her opponent howled in pain when Laurel repaid that one strike with half a dozen of her own, tearing into the nightmare's flesh without mercy. The alpha, again, did nothing, even as the mother of his children fought for her life. He did not even stir when she secured the kill, biting down hard and plunging her fangs through fur and flesh. Laurel drained her dry and, still, the grotesque mass of fur and muscle was unmoved. His gaze intensified, however, and he began to send her visions.

  She was a helpless fawn scrambling through the forest, a lost little girl crying for her mother, an innocent piglet being raised for slaughter. Fly or freeze, her instincts commanded. She blinked in an effort to clear her head and, in that half-second, he'd crossed over to her and bitten her. His mouth covered her and his fangs pierced through her breast and upper back. The pain was excruciating, no matter how well she knew that it wasn't real. In what would otherwise have been her final moments, she remembered that she was the blood and yanked back hard, letting chunks of flesh go. One of the studs on her armour went with them, burning his tongue, but he spit it out and pressed his advantage.

  The nightmare in her blood began to sew her flesh together even as her clothing began to fall apart, costing her her dagger. She flew backwards and upwards but his leap was too powerful and he knocked her back down to the ground. 'I am the blood!' she screamed, losing all composure. His claws came faster than she could react and severed her right arm at the shoulder. Floods of tears fell from her face as she grimaced in pain but the nightmare held on, catching her arm with a tendril of blood before it could fall to the ground. That was enough to buoy her and she became more certain that she really was the blood inhabiting the body. Her counterattack anguished her much more than it hurt him but it still connected and left a bloody gash across his chest. With every bite and slash of his that connected, she felt less and less like a human being, with gaping holes in her flesh and her limbs attached only be the power of her blood.

  However, the longer she observed this, the more powerful she became. Pain had to be an illusion, nothing else could explain why she was still standing, so she felt it less and less. She became more agile and her attacks become more and more charged with telekinetic might. Their blood sprayed all around them but hers returned, snatching itself out of the air. With every blow she landed, he weakened. With every blow he landed, the more of her inhuman nature could be called upon. She remembered what her master had said. If this was what she'd become, what would she be in a hundred years?

  The alpha's blood tasted like any other werewolf's but it was suffused with nightmarish power and, as she drained him dry, she felt her body mend itself to the tiniest slither of detail. She was drenched in blood, her armour was in tatters and her hair had clumps tore out but her body was neither scarred nor bruised. She brought the alpha's desiccated body back to camp, where a few of the hunters looked stunned, some even cheered, but most looked upon her with horror and disgust. She missed having servants. They'd looked at her the same way but at least she was allowed to order them around. Most of all, she missed Sarah but a self-loathing part of her supposed that even the person who'd once loved her most would be unable to handle what she'd since become.

  She bathed herself and became wrapped up in such thoughts as she did so. 'Hey,' Tamsin called from the lake's edge, and Laurel reflexively covered herself. She wondered why she'd done it, as she'd left so much of her sense of etiquette behind but she chalked it up to having been so lost in old memories. 'You really kicked ass today.'

  Laurel didn't really know how to respond to that. 'Thank you.'

  'You're welcome,' the girl said, smirking, 'so, anyway, we're heading to Hartsholme tonight,' the walled settlement that the survivors from Bradley had journeyed to, 'to collect the bounty and, you know, unwind and stuff, but you're not allowed in. So I thought, hey, why don't we do something together, like, go flying or something?'

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  If Tamsin was after something, she couldn't figure it out. 'I can take you flying, I guess. Hastholme's not exactly closed to me, though. I can sneak and hide very well.'

  'I know, I just thought you'd prefer to do something more enjoyable.'

  Laurel actually found sneaking and hiding very enjoyable but she decided to keep that to herself. 'That's very thoughtful of you.'

  The rest of the group were vague and nonspecific about the size of the bounty and the exact percentages of the shares which would've irritated her not all that long ago. By now, she didn't really care. Anything she wanted, she would take, with or without the necessary funds. The only real sense it which it mattered was what it implied about her standing within the group. If they tried to stiff her, they were her enemies. If they gave her the lion's share, which she felt was her due for slaying the alpha single-handed, then they were her friends. Most likely, they intended to be something in the middle. She went along with them until the settlement came into view, whereupon she lingered behind with Tamsin.

  Taylor put up a fuss but the others eventually grew impatient and dragged him inside. She thought that Tamsin looked very pretty in the light of the waning moon as she put her mousy brown hair down, and for a while they just walked and she found that she enjoyed such brief moments of human feeling. Abruptly, she turned to the girl and, with only the gentlest of touches, took her into the sky. They went as high as she dared to go, which was very high, until Hartsholme's torches were tiny specks of light in the blanket of darkness beneath them. Tamsin shivered with nervous thrill and Laurel held her close as they began to soar and swoop and pick up speed. She didn't know where she was going and didn't much care and only stopped when the girl asked her to.

  They dove down to the ground in the middle of a cornfield and Tamsin laughed when they landed. 'I'm never gonna' get used to that,' she said. Her smile was so pretty and her blood was so ripe and she wanted so desperately to bite her. She let none of that, show, however, as she pulled the girl to her feet. For a moment, a strange silence passed between them, and Tamsin kissed her. It lasted only a second. 'Sorry, was that okay? I can't really tell,' she laughed nervously.

  'It was nice, I just wasn't expecting it.' Rationally, everything about this girl suggested that she was being deceived. There was however, beneath Laurel's rational mind and even deeper than the nightmare in her blood, that tiny little part of her that wanted to be loved more than anything. She kissed her back and they spent the rest of the night in each other's company, as she and Sarah once had. When they returned to the group in the morning, she hoped that no one could tell that their relationship had deepened as she now realised that she was anchored to them even before they revealed just how much they were screwing her over. In the end, she received ten pounds, not a pittance and more than a poor man's ransom but not a scratch on the sum she felt entitled to. She accepted it politely and accompanied them on their next mission without any objection from any of the more hostile hunters.

  As they journeyed south, through forest as much as through open country, to investigate a town that had been out-of-communication for many weeks, she enjoyed having a lot to occupy her time. She helped to collect fairy dust for Matthias and learned dream lore from him in turn, hunted nightmares when famished, shared intimate moments with Tamsin when they were alone and out-of-sight, served as a scout in the air whenever the unnatural darkness became too thick on the ground and honed her powers whenever she wasn't doing something else. Slowly but surely, life began to feel normal. Her memories still taunted her, the death of her mother, her master's lessons and betrayals, the innocent people she'd killed. She'd never be rid of them but she found it easier to divert and distract herself from them.

  The nightmares intensified as they drew closer to their destination and the group began to worry that something truly terrible had happened. In that context, John abruptly announced one night, 'I think Corey is ready to claim a moon beast.' There were hushed whispers at that, some of them excited but others more concerned. The boy himself seemed shocked but by no means displeased. 'Tonight,' John added, and the whispers devolved into an argument.

  'We've had no time to prepare,' Gordon said, his voice rising.

  'We're all well versed in this, by now,' John countered. 'Every night, they hit us harder. How long before we are too distracted and beleaguered to even make an attempt?'

  'Give us a day, at least.'

  'No.' John's tone indicated that the matter was now closed to discussion and preparations were hastily begun. Laurel observed them with fascination and helped guard the camp. The ritual itself would, ultimately, however, remain a mystery to her, taking place as it did in the dream world. Corey was given a potion before resting in an open spot away from the fire. The other moon beasts seemed to recognise the ritual's importance, as they looked on with the same curiosity as she did. The boy began to toss and turn an hour later as he performed his task. She'd seen the birth of a nightmare and this worked in a similar way as moonlight began to seep out from under the boy's eyelids and pool around him. Within minutes, what had been a puddle of sparkling spectral energy was a young moon beast, dancing and zooming around like a puppy. Corey's father cried with relief and the boy woke up, soon after, to embrace the creature he'd brought into the waking world.

  The total number of moon beasts was now five and the group seemed to belief that would make all the difference as they pressed further into the darkness.