Susan didn't seem to get along with her father. They bickered about nothing almost constantly and it was obvious that the girl had no real interest in the life of a hunter. Her mother had died many years ago, and he held it over her head. Laurel felt as though she might be able to bond with the girl over that, once she'd successfully peeled her away from her father. For now, though, she simply watched and waited. She also tried to figure out just how dangerous the man truly was. Tall and stocky and badly scarred, he fit the conventional image of a dream hunter quite well. His thick crop of hair had gone white, along with his large full beard. He exclusively wore blacks and browns and regularly chastised Susan for wearing earrings. Just like her step-mother, however, he behaved entirely different around other people.

  With his fellow hunters, whilst he could be direct and a little gruff, he tried to impart advice and wisdom. Tonight, he was hosting a young pair of hunters at his camp and taking them through his collection of poisons. 'This,' he said, holding up a vial filled with black sludge, 'is one hundred times more potent than demon's blood!' The fact that he knew the effect demon's blood might have on her was cause for concern. 'One good shot of this, and she'll be incapacitated.' He then demonstrated a few of the ways he was considering delivering it, such as in a syringe or coating it on the tip of a crossbow bolt. The young men he was entertaining were suitably impressed, though they held true to their own belief that silver was the answer, and he even gave them a vial as a parting gift. That upset his daughter, as did most of things he did.

  'That cost like five pounds!'

  'You care too much about money,' he said. Irritated, he took a swig from his hip flask. Whatever liquor it contained smelled foul and he seemed addicted to it, drinking very little else. 'Hunters have to look out for each other, than means sharing supplies where necessary.'

  'How was that necessary?! They're not even going to use it. You said yourself barely any of the others are capable of tracking her down and even if they do, they're going to try using silver and just get themselves killed.'

  He just rolled his eyes at that.

  'Dad, are you even listening to me?'

  A dark look crossed over his face. 'Yes,' he growled, 'now go to bed.'

  'I'm not tired,' she countered, sounding a little petulant, 'and I'm not a little kid anymore, you can't order me around.'

  'Do as I say,' he said, with shockingly little heat in his voice, 'or I will belt you.'

  On the verge of tears, Susan complied. Laurel couldn't feel any fear from her, which likely meant that she'd grown used to physical abuse. It made her want to push through the darkness and rip his throat out, right that second, but she calmed herself down. Susan had delicious, fitful, dreams that night but her father barely slept at all. She felt a lot of resolve and grim determination radiate from him as he brooded and the following day, at the crack of dawn, he left the camp to begin digging a large hole. Laurel realised very quickly that it was a grave and wondered if it was for her. This was a time, she reasoned, that her fearlessness had failed her. If he truly had an effective way to kill her and had somehow spotted her, then she was in considerable danger. Instead of being worried, however, she was merely curious. In the end, she decided to risk revealing her presence.

  Gliding back to the camp, she checked to see if Susan was still sleeping. She was, and Laurel had to resist the urge to simply watch her. Crossing over to the supply chest, she unlocked it as silently and gently as she could. She remembered her bell training and managed to pull out the collection of poisons without any of the glass vials clinking together. Once she had them, she carried them off and buried them in a hole of her own making, this one far narrower and deeper than the one Susan's father was making. She called on her eidetic memory and precise motor control to cover the hole in such a way that the earth looked exactly as it had before she'd begun digging, completely undisturbed. Upon her return, she was happy to discover a blazing row.

  'I was asleep!' Susan shouted. 'How was I supposed to know you'd gone off to the middle of nowhere?!'

  'Don't put this on me, you insolent little bitch!' There was so little anger coming from him, and Laurel didn't know whether that made it better or worse. 'We get up at dawn, that's the rule. You are aware the dhampir's here, aren't you?' Again, Laurel's fearlessness failed her.

  'Yes,' Susan replied, 'which is why you shouldn't have left me alone in the first place. What the hell were you even doing, anyway?'

  In answer, Susan's father grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the open grave. She cried out in pain and began to cry. Laurel had to, yet again, supress her urge to intervene. With their poisons gone, she knew that she had the upper hand but she didn't want to make her move until either Susan was in grave danger or the two had gone their separate ways. Once they reached the grave, however, a dark thought suggested to her that the former condition might be close to being fulfilled.

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  'Oh, a six foot hole!' Susan said, mockingly. 'I'm sure a bit of dirt would be enough to trap a dhampir.'

  Susan's father struck her hard across the face, drawing blood and sending her to the ground. 'It would have, if she'd been poisoned.' Susan tried to get up but he kicked her hard in the ribs. Again, even as he beat his own daughter, Laurel couldn't feel any anger, only resolve and cold indifference. That made it worse, Laurel decided, but it wasn't the only strange emotion. Instead of fear, Susan seemed to be experiencing only nervous anticipation between the moments of intense pain. It was as though she knew what was about to happen and had come to terms with it.

  When the girl's father straddled her and went to put his hands around her neck, Laurel finally lurched into action. She dragged him off her and bit down hard, trying to make the kill as quick as possible, wary of any tricks he might have up his sleeve. She imbibed as much blood as she could but it tasted so vile that she had to pull away seconds later. Her vision became fuzzy and her knees started to wobble. Her thoughts became muddled and the only thing she could even attempt was to vomit up the foulness in a bloody gush. As she did so, she felt two people pull on her arms. Her strength failed her and they sent her tumbling into the open grave. She tried uselessly to pull herself up but only succeeded in vomiting all over herself as her hands failed to find purchase in the earth.

  Through her blurred vision, she saw the hunter shovelling layers of dirt on top of her. She tried to reach out to him with the particulate blood swimming in the air but it moved too slowly and only managed to slide against his jacket when it found him. Her throat soon became blocked with mud and vomit and she had to remind herself that she didn't need to breathe. Once she was entirely encased in darkness, she began to feel fear and panic. She couldn't see, she could barely move and she felt far hungrier than she ever had during the time her grand-sire had starved her. In need of comfort, she thought of Sarah and of her mother. Not the monster that had sired her but the beautiful and kind young woman who'd brought her to life. Her heart felt torn between the life she might've lived as a human, alongside her mother, and the life she'd had with her best friend.

  As the hours dragged on, she wondered how long it would take for her to starve to death. She assumed that it wouldn't take more than a few weeks, since Susan's father would likely want to dig her body back up to use as proof when he collected his bounty. The nightmare in her blood didn't want to die, of course, but it was so weak that she could barely feel it. There were a few ways she imagined that she might still survive, but they seemed unlikely. Someone could dig her up, if they knew where she was. She dared to dream that it would be Sarah or Tamsin but, if anyone, it would more likely be Liana. The devil was bound to her, after all.

  Otherwise, perhaps the earthworms would come to feed on her and she could drain their tiny reserves of blood. Unable to do much else, she pretended to sleep. That of course, would've been a perfect route towards survival. If only she could dream, she could conjure a moon beast to dig her free or just a few nightmares to feed on. Alas, she was cursed with the gift of sleeplessness. She had a decent sense of the time of day, since she'd begun counting the seconds down at a certain point, and knew that Susan and her father would be turning in for the night. Perhaps, if they hadn't moved their camp and they both had particularly scary dreams, she'd get just enough slithers of fear to rejuvenate. Several days and nights passed before anything changed in the slightest.

  She heard a shovelling sound and assumed it was Susan's father or the authorities coming to inspect her. If they were expecting her to already be dead, perhaps she could pretend well enough and they'd take her somewhere she could feed on ambient emotion. More likely, they'd just give her a once over before filling the grave back up. When she finally caught a glimpse of the digger, however, she saw familiar hands with thorny red skin. 'Liana,' she croaked, after coughing up dirt.

  'My lady,' the devil teased, before pulling her up and flying off. Laurel held on with what little strength she had before they finally came back down to earth. Liana immediately cut open one of her wrists with her claws and dribbled several drops of blood into Laurel's open mouth. She felt the power course through her immediately, as her vision unblurred and the rest of her senses fully returned. 'You scared me.'

  Laurel smiled at that. Devils couldn't feel fear. 'I scared myself.' She killed some gremlins and went to wash herself before they said much else to one another. 'I don't even have to do this,' she boasted, with a grin, 'I can control hair growth now, so I could just reconstitute my body to get all the muck off.' Still, she enjoyed the sensation of bathing herself.

  Liana watched, bemused, from the edge of the lake. 'Impressive,' she said, sarcastically, 'and you still wound up almost getting killed by some random dream hunter.'

  She supposed that should humble her. 'He tricked me. I misread his emotions.'

  'You shouldn't be reading emotions. You should be reading thoughts.' Liana asserted, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. 'I'll teach you, if you like.' Then, the devil grinned and narrowed her eyes. 'On one condition.'

  'Which is?'

  'Don't restrict my feeding. Let me kill.'

  It took a while for Laurel to make a decision. She'd so far failed to learn the skill on her own and doubted she could easily find someone else willing to teach her. She'd also killed a hell of a lot of people since she'd left Liana's side. 'Alright,' she finally said, after emerging from the water and retrieving her clothes. Laurel's sense of invulnerability had been sufficiently shaken that it seemed like a fair trade. She was going to learn how to read minds.