A tidal wave of animate blood rushed through the woods, vanishing the nightmares and the unnatural darkness from every corner. By the time she was done, not so much as a shade hiding behind a single blade of grass remained. She hoped that, in time, they would learn not to cross over the borders of her domain. Laurel was building a kingdom of blood and all to protect the nightmarish prisoner at its heart. Weeks had passed but Tamsin had thus far shown no slither of humanity. Her childhood had made her patient, however, and she was content to wait for years, even decades, if it meant saving her. In her mind, she was saving her mother, or the memory of her mother, and convincing herself that a happier life would've been possible. If her father had only bound his lady wife, imprisoned her in a silver cell, perhaps it would've been possible.
For now, she was content to bring her food and read her mind. Tonight, she was going to bring her prisoner a treat. Tamsin had, so far, been forced to subsist on nightmares. Their blood often made her wretch and it upset Laurel to see the girl in such a state, holding her stomach tight and supplying her captor with all sorts of lies in search of way to slip free and gorge herself on human blood. So, Laurel had decided to find a human who deserved to be eaten. In most places, that was becoming harder to find, as the common folk banded together in the face of what was being politely referred to as 'the present crisis.' There were always those few who saw dark opportunities in such circumstances, however, and Laurel knew she'd find one if she looked hard enough.
After a few fruitless stopovers, she discovered a man wandering the streets of a city at night. A curfew was in effect, so he was already a criminal or a vagabond, but Laurel was not yet willing to say that such a person deserved to die. Instead, it was the way he skulked and stalked that drew her attention. He had an obvious talent for it and he seemed to be on a mission. If he turned out to be a burglar, she'd take him, but she was hoping for something a little worse, something that would ease her conscience. When she got closer enough to look into his eyes, she found it. He dismissed her ruby reds in the dark, clearly not an uncommon sight, and let her see his thoughts quite clearly. He planned to murder a woman tonight, as he'd done several times before, staging the crime scenes as nightmares.
He didn't get the chance, this time, however, and she drank in his fear as she emerged from the darkness in the shape of a large furless bat. With her feet, she clutched his shoulders, digging hard, and flew off. A few crossbow bolts from panicked guards whizzed past but, soon enough, she was out of their sight. The murderer screamed and squirmed all the while but she had become good at resisting her urge to drink. Once she'd flown down into the cavern, she deposited him on the ground as gently as she could, so as not to spoil Tamsin's kill, and transformed into her true body. Her prisoner didn't wait at all, jumping on the man before he even realised anyone else was there. The messy feeding was not a pleasant sight and his suffering was drawn out too long.
Tamsin looked up at her, blood staining her mouth and dribbling down her chest, and hiccoughed. 'Thank you,' she said, with a smile. 'All that nasty goblin flesh was getting to be too much but this was really nice.' It was the first time she hadn't immediately tried to convince her to let her out, so Laurel smiled. A small victory, she thought. They kissed a little, after that, but Laurel regretted it immediately. 'See,' she said, 'it's really me. You can trust me now. Let me out.' They were lies and Laurel stormed off in a huff, feeling like a kid with a stupid crush. She took herself out of reach of Tamsin's voice and read through some more of the books she'd stole over the past few days. They all promised her vampiric lore and secrets, but few said anything she didn't already know and none of them had anything to say on the subject of vampires regaining their humanity, except sometimes that the author had heard rumours of such a thing.
Answers were likely to be more forthcoming beyond the wall, of course, but she didn't want to leave her prisoner alone for that long. A thought struck her, then, and she returned to the cell. 'Tamsin, where did you live with your father?'
Tamsin came up to the bars and smiled, blood stains ugly in the torchlight, 'a farmstead near Bluestone.' Laurel hadn't been to the village but she'd flown over it a few times. 'I can take you there, if you'd like. I could show off my powers to my dear old mum.'
Laurel ignored the offer and the sickening thoughts that lingered behind it. 'She's still there? What about your father's things? Would they still be there?'
Tamsin seemed to be trying to sus out her intentions, staring deeply into her eyes, but came up empty. 'I suppose so,' she said, feigning boredom and walking off.
That was all Laurel needed, however, and she flew to Bluestone in search of Tamsin's childhood home. It was easier to find than she'd imagined it would be, since it was the only farmstead, likely in the whole country, with a moon beast by the porch. She flushed out some nearby gremlins to distract the moon beast before entering the property, quickly and quietly. She discovered Taylor, along with his mother and a kid sister she hadn't known about. She did not linger, however, knowing that the moon beast would not take long. When it returned, it would likely pick up her scent if she were mere feet away. Instead, she searched for and quickly found their step-father's old study. Knowing that she had to be quick, but not wanting to leave any sign that she'd been there, she quickly flipped through every page of his writings in turn. It took less than a second for each one to become lodged into her eidetic memory and only a few minutes to finish the whole lot.
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She processed everything whilst she flew back to her lair. There was something of a mad rambling quality to them but they revealed that he'd been born beyond the wall, as a member of a dreamling tribe. That was astonishing enough, as she'd never heard of such a person making the journey and not returning. He'd met a dhampir but, more importantly, also claimed to have met vampires who'd grown a conscience and who chose to fight alongside the dreamling tribes. Five years was what it took, according to him, for a vampire's former self to begin reasserting itself. It was something to work with, at least. Of course, she didn't know what the world would look like in five years. Tamsin could regain her humanity long after humanity itself had gone extinct.
For that reason, and many others besides, she decided that she would be a soldier in the Nightmare War, after all. She'd proved that she could protect something as small as a town single-handed but that wouldn't quite be enough. Instead of snatching up nightmares as they were being born, she would cleanse the forests and woods that they fled to and amassed themselves within, one square mile at a time. Within months, she'd cleansed the entire country. Tens of thousands of nightmares were still being born every night, of course, but she had effectively handed the population a do-over. She received no formal praise for this but, for the first time, she began to hear herself spoken of in more positive terms. It was suggested by some that she had aided them in repentance for her crimes and, by others, that she'd done no crimes at all. Those missing people, that headless guard, just fanciful tales, they said.
Such talk soon gave way, however, to the news that few could keep off their tongue. The Queen had confessed to adultery and to the bastardy of her son. When she'd first heard it, she'd headed to the palace immediately, but both of them were long gone by then. Daphne, being a few minutes older than her twin sister, was now King Julian's heir, unless and until he found a new wife and bore a son. The suspicion of bastardy now surrounded her sisters, however, and conspiracies abounded to deny them their inheritance in favour of a number of their male relatives. Laurel had never disliked her sisters but found it hard to really care. Callum, however, was in mortal danger and she felt compelled to find him. She ended up having to startle a servant, who revealed that he and his mother were on a ship headed to the land beyond the wall.
That had been the compromise. Rather than kill him, they planned to keep him well away from civilisation, in a land where his nightmares would barely even register. Of course, the real hope behind the scheme is that he would die there in short order, solving the problem without sullying the King's reputation with a true murder. Laurel raced across the coast in search of the ship, finding it easily. Against the moonlight and white sails, the shades swirling around the ship were unmissable. The boat was being rocked hard by nightmares in the sea and the waves they were creating, as well as by shades and stronger things on the ship itself. The crew was fighting hard and even winning but the Queen and her most loyal guards had still found themselves having to defend the former prince from their demands that he be thrown overboard.
They'd been cornered near the stern and appeared doomed. That was until Laurel descended onto the ship in a whirlwind of blood, killing the shades and knocking the besieging sailors to the deck. She congealed herself back into her true body and approached them. 'I can take you away. Keep you safe.'
Her step-mother looked at her with hateful eyes but her thoughts were filled only with fear and desperation. She didn't need to say the actual words and Laurel responded by splitting herself into five and carrying each of them off the ship and back to her lair. She cradled Callum herself, whose thoughts were tainted by delirium. She could feel his abiding love for her, however, and focused on that as she flew from one side of the country to the other and finally landed at the cave entrance.
'I'll let you decide, from here,' she said to the former Queen. 'You can go on the run or you can stay here with me. I can keep you all safe, from Callum's nightmares and from the world outside but I'm the lady here and not you.'
There was a flash of resentment that passed through Charlotte's mind but she stifled it. 'We'll remain. Argus, Gerald,' she said, addressing two of the guards, 'return to your posts and to your families. Tell the King that Laurel took us away but keep our location secret, if you can.' They nodded, and their thoughts spoke to their sincere loyalty to the woman they once served. Such feelings seemed so alien to Laurel, who'd only ever resented and hated her. One of the guards, Ben, remained behind. The reasons were never stated but nothing was hidden to Laurel. The two were in love, as hard as it was to believe. The three of them adjusted quite well to life in her lair, all things considered.
'That is my prisoner,' Laurel told them, when showing them the silver cell one day. Tamsin had smiled at them, the blood dribbling from her chin. 'She's under my protection as much as you are, so do not hurt her. Don't believe her lies, though. She's evil.' That had caused Ben to laugh but Charlotte had regarded her only with disgust. Soon enough, they were fashioned with finer living quarters than bed rolls on the rocky ground, and Ben took turns with Laurel guarding Callum as he slept and slaying his nightmares. Shades slipped from beneath his eyelids almost constantly. It was tiring work for Ben to keep them under control but Laurel ate them all up as if it were nothing, catching even the ones that escaped under his watch.
Still, Laurel was looking at a long and hard five years, with little light at the end of the tunnel.