Hadley turned and raced to catch up with the others. Teroi had led them to a building that would easily hold them all. He kicked the door in before ushering everyone inside.

"Make sure there's no one in there that shouldn't be," Hadley said to Teroi before handing him her machete then turning to run back the way she came.

She sprinted to where Ruqwik was. Ruqwik, the other vampire and Drew had only been out of her sight for a few seconds, but that was enough for everything to have changed. Hadley skid to a stop, sliding on loose gravel. The vampire that had grabbed Drew was on fire. Well, his headless corpse was. The head was positioned so that it was watching the body burn as life slowly drained from its eyes. Ruqwik's eyes were focussed on the blaze. Hadley rushed to where Drew lay on the ground, his eyes closed. She looked up at Ruqwik, a new layer of fear for the vampire imprinted on her.

Ruqwik hadn't needed to physically touch the vampire to kill it.

She'd just touched his mind.

"You painted quite the graphic image when youthreatened to do this to me back at the Barn," Ruqwik suddenly spoke up. Hereyes were still glued the fire, the red of her irises dancing in the light of theorange flames. She then turned slowly, facing Hadley. "Thought I might try itout."

Their eyes met and it took considerable effort for Hadley to look away, swearing to herself that the tingle she felt in places she didn't want to think about right then was just her being happy that the vampire who'd hurt Drew had gotten what he deserved. Hadley tried to control her breathing, bringing her focus back to the little boy.

"He's still breathing, but his pulse is weak," Hadley said, choosing to concentrate on Drew rather than the quagmire of pent-up emotion that was crawling up her throat and threatening to release itself in a hysterical scream. There was no time for hysteria. Maybe later. She shook off her harvest bag and pulled out her medical kit to field dress the jagged fang wounds on the boy's neck. Examining Drew grounded her. "He's in shock. He's lost a lot of blood."

In silence, Ruqwik watched Hadley work until she was done.

"The blood café? The building where you and Teroi took the others? Take him there. You'll find supplies that'll help," Ruqwik finally said.

Hadley looked at the vampire and was surprised to see clear green and blue rings at the edges of Ruqwik's eyes. Whatever she'd done to that other vampire had drained her. Fast. Her eyes were mostly still red, but the vampire would need to feed soon. Hadley hadn't even thought of that until then. How long would Ruq last without blood on this quest to the Wildlings? How would the vampire feed while in the woods without blood cafes or whatever other convenient ways vampires fed? And what was her preference in how she fed?

Because Hadley had pieced it together as they'd been walking through the Enclave. She'd been reading the posters that hang everywhere around them. Images of blood in fancy looking glasses or deep long cups with straws. Some posters described blood that was "pre-flavoured" with "uppers" and "downers", whatever that meant. And others focussed on the blood types available – from the lettered types, A, B, O, and all combinations in between, to those with and without the rhesus factors, as well as something called golden blood and so on. Vampires didn't just feed on humans. They made a drinking art of it. Made it convenient. That was all that humans were to them. Bags to hold their blood.

Hadley loathed that stark, unavoidable truth.

And the question still remained. With Ruq away from all this, how would she stay fed?

"Are you okay to carry him, or should I?" Ruqwik said, barrelling through Hadley's thoughts.

Hadley shook her head free of the disturbing thoughts. "No, it's fine. I've got him."

She shouldered her harvest pack then carefully put her forearms under the boy's head and the back of his knees and gently lifted him. He looked so small and so peaceful. If the bandages covering the rough fang marks on his neck weren't there, it would have seemed like he'd just fallen asleep.

"There'll be others, won't there? Other vampires and vampire dogs. Other dangers." Hadley said to Ruqwik as they walked with the boy to the blood café. She kept her voice low, as if speaking any louder would conjure up the dangers she was speaking of.

"Yes." Was Ruq's clear cut answer.

The vampire had been right about the blood café. It was a strange building with chairs and chains circling a narrow platform against its walls, and a bar on one corner, the wall behind it filled with polished glasses. In the back, there was all the medical equipment that a small clinic would need to function. There were also bags and bags of refrigerated human blood.

This answered a question Hadley had never ever thought to ask.

Everyone in the Compound above eighteen gave a full unit of blood every ten weeks. It was compulsory. The program was divided so that every week, one person was donating blood from each Cohort with members eighteen years and over. It was much more blood than would have ever been needed for just medical tests, which is what they were told it was for. Their Compound blood bags had the same tags as the ones she was looking at and now she knew the truth of where all that blood went. To blood cafes. And there was a lot of it! It was then that she noticed the tags were similar but weren't exactly the same as those from their Compound. These bags had come from more than one Compound.

The realisation rocked Hadley.

Just how many other Compounds were out there?

"Did you find everything you need?" Ruqwik asked,poking her head in the back, where Hadley was gathering supplies.

"Yeah," Hadley called back, her voice shaky. It was starting to dawn on her that being beyond the Compound wall might be more than she could handle. "I'll be right out. Just make sure they're giving him some space and not crowding him."

"Right," Ruqwik said, disappearing back to the main room.

Hadley took a deep breath to ground herself as her mother's voice played in her head.

'You're always acting like you know everything, like you know better than everyone, but you are just a naïve little girl who knows nothing. And you never will, especially if you don't listen to me.'

When Hadley finally joined the others, she found Drew laying on a table, cushioned by a makeshift mattress made of a few of the girls' harvest clothes.

Once Hadley had determined Drew's blood type using what was labelled as the blood café's "quality control" equipment, she set up a field transfusion kit and gave him a Hb booster shot. There were numerous Hb boosters in the blood café's backroom, a lot more than Hadley had ever seen in one place. The café must have also sold blood drawn straight from the veins of humans and administered the boosters immediately after.

When Drew's blood transfusion was under way, Hadley returned to the back room "clinic" and stuffed as many of the Hb boosters into her harvest bag as she could. That morning, Ruqwik had injected her with the one and only Hb shot she'd been able to steal from the Compound Clinic, but with this new stash, it looked like she wouldn't have to worry about that for a while, especially if they were attacked by any more vampires. Hadley stocked up on other medical supplies as well, filling hers and Jamila's harvest bag with as much as she could without overloading them.

Once again, it seemed impossible that less than twenty-four hours had passed since her failed escape attempt from the Compound. It felt like she'd lived a week in less than a day. As she packed the harvest bags with the pilfered medical supplies and took inventory of what they now had, exhaustion crept up on her, slowing her down. She would have to sleep soon, or she was going to crash.

"You need to rest," Ruqwik said.

Hadley dropped the gauze bandages she was holding and whipped her head around, surprised to find the vampire only centimetres away from her.

"You scared me!" Hadley said, the words whispered between them as they got lost in each other's gaze and breathed each other in. The blue and green rings at the edge of Ruqwik's red irises were beautiful, even though they were an undeniable sign of danger. Hadley lowered her eyes. The vampire had taken off her jacket. The white harvest cotton shirt she wore hugged her form, accentuating the musculature of her torso and arms.

"You're exhausted. You need to rest," Ruqwik whispered back.

The vampire's voice was laced with a sweetness that lulled Hadley into her. It conjured in Hadley's mind the still surface of the pond that stood at the edge of their Compound, and how it felt like in the middle of a muggy summer's night, illuminated by the full moon's glare. You knew you shouldn't be there that late, yet you just wanted to dive in and cool off in the refreshing water. And there was always that little fear in the back of your mind that if you did jump into the inky black depths, something might reach out, grab your leg, and pull you into the watery darkness.

It was simultaneously exciting and terrifying.

"See?" Ruqwik said. She stood and offered Hadley a hand. "You can barely focus. Come. Let's find you a place to rest with the others. I promise to watch Drew and to wake you if anything changes."

That sounded amazing to Hadley's fading mind.

She accepted Ruq's hand and let the vampire walk her to a corner of the blood café's main room. Ruq had piled a bunch of table clothes into a makeshift bed roll. Hadley was asleep before her head hit the pillow that was the vampire's canvas harvest jacket.

The jacket's scent vividly coloured Hadley's dreams.

Until they turned to nightmares.

Sharp teeth... angry dog eyes... blue eyes... caked blood on dumbbells... guts spilled on crimson grass... blue eyes... spittle dripping off sharp dog canines that transformed into human...

Hadley jerked awake.

Panic clawed at her chest, reaching for her throat. She clamped her mouth shut with her hands to keep from screaming, breathing hard as her eyes darted around, trying to figure out what she was looking at. Where she was. A sound reached her in the dark and Hadley froze to listen.

"Why did he hurt me, Ruq? I'm a vampire. Why did he hurt me?"

Hadley knew that voice.

A boy.

Drew.

Her memory crashed over her like a wave, piecing together her memories of the last day. Even with her hands on her mouth, she barely stopped the sobs that wracked her body. She took a deep breath, wiped her eyes, got to her socked feet, and tiptoed over to where she'd left the little boy the night before, on that cushion of clothes placed on a table of the blood café. The blood bag connected to his IV was empty. Drew was talking to Ruqwik. Hadley stayed in the shadows and listened for a while.

"Listen to me, Drew. He may have been a vampire, but he was fundamentally a bad person. Bad people hurt others," the vampire said.

Without skipping a beat, Drew asked. "You're a vampire and you hurt him. Are you a bad person? Will you hurt me, Ruq?"

Ruqwik had walked straight into that one.

Watching the vampire being tender with the boy was strange after everything Hadley had seen her do. It was like Ruqwik was two different people, and Hadley was conflicted about what to think every time she saw this version of the vampire. On one hand, it was comforting to know that she had a mean side she used to protect them and that it was contrasted perfectly by this tender side. But on the other hand, this put a wider wedge between her and the vampire because of how much it emphasized just how different they were. She was unlike Hadley in every way – ancient, powerful, strong, scary, and perfectly well put together and confident in herself. What could Hadley honestly bring to the table?

There was one thing that wasn't confusing.

Ruqwik was clearly terrible at comforting traumatised children.

"Ruq is not a bad person, Drew," Hadley said, walking up to them. She examined the little boy's wounds, redressing them. The bites were healing well. Hadley ruffled his hair. "And she'd never hurt you. Or me. Or anyone in this room. She only hurts those who hurt others."

Drew looked up at Hadley, his eyes narrowed in question. Hadley held his gaze and gave him her most sincere smile. The way she'd said them, she almost believed her own words. And after a while, Drew eventually did. He smiled back.

"Okay," he said, with a tired smile.

"Now, go back to sleep," Hadley whispered. "And when you wake up again, you'll be feeling much better."

The little boy nodded, lay back in his makeshift bed and closed his eyes. His breathing settled into a regular rhythm in seconds.

"You should be asleep, Hadley." Ruqwik whispered.

"And you should be lying to terrified little kids in the dark, like a good parent is supposed to." Hadley whispered back.

Hadley tried not to wince, hiding it with a smile. Everything hurt. She could feel muscles hurting that she hadn't acknowledged the existence of since birth. The last day had been hell. And she was still exhausted. She couldn't stop the yawn that left her then. She rubbed her eyes. When she'd walked up to the table, her muddled brain had chosen to stand right next to the vampire when she was examining Drew, even though there was plenty of space around the table. This realisation was just catching up with her as she stared into the vampire's eyes, mere centimetres away.

"Don't need to rest too?" Hadley asked, suddenly wondering if vampires needed to sleep. It wasn't something they'd discussed with Aunt Zee. The thought of her aunt was a dagger to the heart, but she kept the emotion off her face. "Do vampires even sleep?"

"Is that an invitation to your bed?" Ruqwik replied, with a smile that showed off her fangs slowly falling.

A shiver went through Hadley, and she was surprised at how strong the urge was to tilt her head and give consent. But she was exhausted and what she felt for the vampire was too intense. She couldn't bring herself to act on any of it because there was too much of a possibility that she would get lost in it. That she would get carried away. And she couldn't let that happen.

Hadley pulled every barrier inside her as high as she could get them.

"You're as bad as Teroi," Hadley finally replied, rolling her eyes.

The vampire feigned being stabbed. "Oof, right in the guts!"

Hadley laughed and shook her head. She yawned again.

"Go back to sleep, Hadley," Ruqwik whispered. "It's still a few hours to dawn. I'll wake you up before everyone else so you can feel all bossy."

"Promise?" Hadley asked with a tired smile.

The vampire chuckled. "I Promise. Go."

Hadley nodded and walked back to the pile of table clothes, hugged Ruqwik's jacket under her head, and breathed it in deeply, hoping the scent would fog up her mind enough to banish the nightmares.

*

"What's her story?" Ruqwik asked.

The sun was up. Hadley's body was stiff, but she felt better rested than when she'd first woken up. Her mind was clearer now. Focussed. The task ahead was daunting, but she was being trusted to accomplish it. It was no longer just her daughter's life that depended on this plan. She looked up from packing tablecloths into her harvest bag, which was getting a little too full. The vampire was pointing at the group of girls across the room. Hadley followed her gaze.

The girl's hair was cut close to her scalp and had well defined S curls. She was a few inches taller than Hadley and lanky, all arms and legs. She had skin darker than Hadley and long lashed, light brown eyes transfixed on items she had pilfered from the blood café cabinets she was standing next to.

"That's Jael," Hadley said. They watched as Jael stuffed the items in her bag and dove into the cabinets to search for more. "She's a tinkerer. She collects all sorts of things and uses them to build whatever she can imagine. Sometimes it's even useful. I love how her mind works."

"What about them?" Ruqwik asked.

This time the vampire was pointing at the blonde, green-eyed girl whose six-foot two inch frame towered over them all, and her best friend, almost a foot shorter with shoulder length, super straight, jet-black hair and large, beautiful, hooded dark brown eyes.

"That's Crystal and Billy. Give Crystal anything that's edible and she will turn it into an impossibly delectable meal. She's also faster and stronger than most of us," Hadley said, proud of her friend. "Billy can skin, butcher, and dress any piece of meat you set in front of her to perfection. She's been curving meat since she could hold a knife. They're both pretty amazing."

"The teen Progenies seem to think so too," Ruqwik said. She was referring to two young men who'd been with Teroi last night helping Crystal and Billy with their bags. Hadley had caught a stray phrase from a conversation the previous night where the boys stated that they were both nineteen years old. Crystal turned to Billy and gave a cheeky wink.

Hadley groaned.

"What?" Ruqwik asked.

"I know that look in Billy and Crystal's eyes," said Hadley with a sigh. "That's the look that resulted in fifteen girls ending up naked in their cubicle during the birthday bash. The Elders were furious! Except for the one who was in there with them, of course."

The vampire laughed.

"What about her?" Ruqwik asked, pointing to Jamila. "What her story? Or should I say, your story?"

Hadley faltered. Long, wavy black hair, golden skin, golden eyes, and a golden heart. Hadley had never dared to imagine she would have the chance to leave the Compound with Jamila as company. Conception day was less than a month away and her daughter wouldn't only have a new home, she would also grow up knowing one of the best people Hadley had ever known. It felt too good to be true. And after every awful thing that had happened so far that was Hadley's fault, this one amazing thing felt way too undeserved.

"That's Jamila," Hadley said, a little breathlessly.

Ruqwik stayed silent for a long moment, watching Jamila, making it awkward between them.

"What about you?" Hadley asked, not wanting to think about what the vampire's silence meant. "What's your story, Ruq?"

The vampire didn't immediately answer.

"Oh, you know," Ruqwik finally drawled. "Vampire, drinks human blood, tries to figure out not-boring ways to while away eternity..."

"Is that all?" Hadley asked, raising a brow.

"Fine," the vampire relented. "I'm the Head of security for this Enclave. I keep everyone who lives here safe. That's pretty much it. Maybe even less than that, seeing as the Enclave is now basically dead without its Baron."

"That's a really bad thing, isn't it?" Hadley said, suddenly serious. "That's why you wanted us to leave the Enclave."

"It's not worse than anything else," the vampire assured her with a shrug. "Even if Lujeo was still alive, or the dogs hadn't attacked, there's always danger lurking somewhere in this world."

"Not in the Compound. At least not before," Hadley said, dejected.

Hadley pushed down the guilt and uncertainty that tainted the confidence in her plan. This would work. They'd walk into the forest, they'd find the Wildlings, and they'd live happily ever after.

"We should probably leave," Hadley quickly said. She closed the clasp on her overfilled bag, hitched it onto her shoulders and began to walk over to the others.

"Wait."

Hadley stopped and turned back to the vampire.

"What about you?" Ruq asked. "What's your story, Hadley? Why are you out here? Why did you escape the Ba... Compound?"

Hadley didn't even have to think about it.

"I want something different for my daughter. A freedom that I never got to experience. A full life." Hadley said. She shook her head. "I'm never going back to that Compound."

The vampire tilted her head and looked at her curiously.

"I remember someone else who said the same thing to me about two decades ago, almost word for word." Ruq said, pensively. "You remind me a lot of her."

Hadley smiled. "Did you help her too?"

"As a matter of fact," Ruq said, returning the smile. "I did."

That unexpectedly prickled Hadley.

"So," Hadley asked. "You do this all the time? This is just a normal Tuesday for you."

Ruqwik shook her head, becoming a bit sombre.

"Hadley," the vampire said, putting a fine point to her words. "Whatever is happening between us is anything but normal."

There was clearly more the vampire wanted to say, but she held her tongue. Hadley wanted to press for more. She could feel that the vampire wanted her to press for more. However, just as she'd felt the night before, it was all too intense again. And if she asked more questions, that would mean the vampire would continue opening herself up to Hadley and then Hadley would feel obligated to do the same, which was something she was trying to avoid at all costs. She couldn't risk lowering her guard. Especially not for a vampire. She could barely open herself up to Jamila.

Instead, she acknowledged the vampire's statement with a wistful smile and then turned away to join the others.

Hadley gathered the women and children. Teroi oversaw the boys and men. As they walked out of the blood café, most of the men walked with Crystal, Billy and Jael and the young girls and young boys walked together in a group not too far from the mothers. Jamila walked with the mothers, seeming a little apprehensive of the men, as well as the vampire, who walked beside Hadley.

The eery silence of the town started to make sense now that Hadley knew a little more about the significance of the death of the Enclave Baron. If the head of security for the Enclave herself thought it was better to leave, every other person who lived here must have had the same thought. The empty buildings were menacing, even in the glare of full sunlight. It had drizzled for a while in the early morning, and the air was heavy with petrichor. It was one of Hadley's favourite smells, transporting her right back to her youth at the Compound, to the past, when she could hold emotion in her mind longer and enjoy everything better. Life had been richer then.

She missed that.

Hadley noticed Drew drifting away from the other children. He walked to the front of the whole group, where Teroi and another man led the group. Ruqwik had called the men and boys "Progenies". Hadley wondered what it meant. Drew had his head down and his hands deep in his pockets. He was wearing a miniature version of Teroi's outfit, but his dress suit was dark green and his button up shirt was light blue. All the boys were wearing fancy dress suits. At the Compound, the women usually only dressed up for the two Initiation ceremonies which were held every year in celebration of the five-year-old and the thirteen-year-old girls. Teroi and his friends were dressed up for an annual event as well that Ruqwik had referred to as the 'Sun Festival'.

Hadley was thinking about how the men's extravagant clothes wouldn't survive a walk in the rain forest, when a creature walked up in front of the group.

Avampire dog.