Hadley couldn't believe her bad luck! She hadn't made it more than five hundred meters away from the Compound walls before getting lost – she'd been marking her trail with broken branches and had walked up to one of her trail marks after half an hour of traipsing through challenging terrain. Then, after thinking she was finally making progress, she'd ran into a vampire. And on its own, that had been fine. She'd used her carving knife coated in dead rabbit and cow's blood, as Aunt Zee had instructed her, and it had worked like a charm. She'd disarmed the vampire.

Only to find out that it was a Venom vamp!

Aunt Zee had assured Hadley that Venoms weren't anything to worry about. They were created on extremely rare occasions during a vampire Turning. No one knew why, but when they appeared, they were killed immediately after the Turn, before they fed, when they were at their weakest. They were never allowed to exist because that would be bad for everyone. Venom vamps were supposed to be ghost stories told to keep Wildling children well behaved! Although this wasn't a Venom vamp as Aunt Zee had described, with two neon blue eyes when blood starved and an insatiable, barely controlled thirst even when fully fed. But there was a part of it that was. Like a hybrid.

Aunt Zee had never mentioned vampire hybrids before!

Hadley could barely open her eyes. She was on a bed. It was soft. Fuzzy. Smelt amazing. She was lightheaded and confused. In shock. She recognised the symptoms and knew the cause. Excessive blood loss. She wasn't in the forest anymore. Wherever she was, it was warm, with a heavy scent of wood and earth and something else she couldn't quite place. Something dark. Dark and delicious. She was in a room of some kind. Hadley heard a rustling sound on the far side of the room.

"I'm giving you a Hb shot."

Hadley's eyes shot open. She backed away from the vampire, who was suddenly sitting right next to her, even though she had clearly been on the other end of the room just a second before. The vampire gave her a sheepish grin.

"Sorry about that. Hyper speed. It works best after a good feeding, but it's difficult to maintain. Drains you too fast." the vampire rambled.

Hadley's mind was straining to decipher words, her body sluggish and out of it. Her eyes lazily followed the vampire's movement as she took Hadley's hand in her own and gently administered a haemoglobin shot. That was good. It would help Hadley recover from the blood loss. But this was all too strange. Especially the uncharacteristic tenderness with which the vampire was treating her after what had happened in the forest. Hadley pulled her hand away from the vampire, unnerved by the emotional whiplash.

"What do you want?" Hadley whispered. She tried to keep her face stoic despite the storm of emotions inside her. She could barely focus enough to push the emotions into the darkness.

The vampire stood and stretched, revealing the flawless pale white skin of an impressively toned torso under the jungle green t-shirt. In the slight delirium caused by her blood loss, Hadley felt a rush into every sensitive part of her body as she watched the vampire move, and her stomach exploded into a fluttering kaleidoscope of butterflies, her heart racing. After the vampire stretched, she ran a hand through her hair, pulling it back from her face, which Hadley decided was an action she could watch her do for hours. That's until the vampire began to pull off that jungle green tee.

Everything seemed to slow down.

The vampire's jeans hang low on her waist, a deep V etched into her skin pointing down to where Hadley very much wanted to explore. As the shirt lifted higher, Hadley almost sighed at the revelation of a full, exquisite chest to go with that perfectly etched torso. Hadley was starting to wonder if this was what dying felt like. Because none of this made sense. This vampire threatened Hadley's life! Hadley didn't need Aunt Zee to tell her this one thing. Vampires and humans didn't mix. Couldn't mix. It was the one thing every human and vampire intrinsically agreed on.

A fact embossed into their very souls.

"Right now, I want a shower," the vampire finally said, bunching up the T-shirt. She walked towards a door in the room but turned to face Hadley before she disappeared behind the door. "You can try to leave, but you'll be safer here. It's the Sun Festival tonight. There're a lot of starved vampires out there you could run into. And they won't be nearly as nice as me. Or as pretty."

Hadley didn't know what the Sun Festival was. Didn't care. She could barely hold her head up, let alone think of leaving. She needed rest. She turned away from the vampire and closed her eyes, getting comfortable on the bed. There was a fur blanket thrown over her. She hugged it and lost herself to the opulence as she fell asleep.

But that didn't last long.

There it was again.

A feeling inside Hadley's mind that wasn't hers.

The only reason Hadley noticed it was because she was constantly studying her own emotions and the darkness that swallowed each one as it showed. Any feelings or emotions that didn't fit the usual stood out like a sore thumb. Hadley woke up, her eyes scanning the room, trying to figure out where she was. Her eyes landed on the vampire and the truth struck her like a slap across the face.

"You're an Ageless One," Hadley whispered. She'd been scared before, but now, she was borderline hyperventilating. "And you're in my mind."

The Ageless Ones were the oldest vampires in existence. As close to the Originals as one could get. Aunt Zee told her no one knew where vampires came from, but legend had it that the really old ones possessed abilities that set them apart. One was the ability to telepathically connect to humans. What Aunt Zee had never described was how intimate the experience could be. The vampire's presence in Hadley's mind was a soft breeze gently caressing her in the most sensual of ways.

But there was also an edge to it that whispered danger.

A warning of how much power she held and could wield against Hadley.

"There you go again," the vampire replied, walking towards Hadley in nothing but a robe flimsily covering her. Hadley couldn't have stopped her eyes from further undressing the vampire, even if she tried. "Saying things that you have no right to know."

Hadley's heart would give in if it didn't stop hammering her rib cage like it was.

"Relax. If I was going to kill you, I would have already," the vampire said, stopping right next to the bed.

Hadley's emotions acted of their own accord once more. Her panic and fear melted away, but not like they usually did – with the darkness swallowing them. It was more like someone was turning down the volume of her emotions. An odd sensation, but it worked.

"I apologize for before. In the forest. I was... not in full control" The vampire said, her words awash with sincerity.

Hadley nodded, accepting the apology.

Partially, at least.

"You can't take me back to the Compound," Hadley replied, putting a fine point to it. "If you really want to apologize, that's how."

The vampire narrowed her eyes at Hadley, tilted her face and smiled. It was a curious smile, as if she wasn't looking at Hadley, but through her, which was not an impossibility with that fabled telepathic ability.

"You've only been gone for a few hours. I'll return you to the Barn..." the vampire started. Hadley's face reflexively scrunched up at the word. The vampire hesitated for a second before she continued. "...I mean, the Compound, where you'll receive a reasonable punishment and then life will go on as it always has."

Was that to appease Hadley? Not that it mattered. The vampire was still going to take Hadley back. Hadley was about to protest, but something in the vampire's eyes stopped her. For the first time since they'd met, Hadley saw the vampire. Really saw her. The part of her that made it so you could never mistake them for human. A menacing glint in her eyes. Her inhuman crimson eyes. Hadley's voice quit its job halfway up her throat.

"Clean yourself up," the vampire said, her voice an ice pick against the base of Hadley's skull. She pointed to the bathroom door, where the tendrils of steam still seeped through. "We leave in ten minutes."

Hadley slipped off the bed and tested her stability. She was woozy, but she could walk, and the room wasn't spinning too fast. She locked the bathroom door behind her and slid to the floor against it, hugging her knees tight, holding herself together as best as she could.

Going back to the Compound was not an option.

Hadley studied the room. It was small. Simple. A shower stall, sink, vanity and mirror and a small cupboard with a few towels. No toilet. A window. Hadley was halfway out of the window when she stopped herself. The menacing forest beyond seemed to grow more ominous with every second she stared through it. Hadley grit her teeth. She could choose to escape but doing so without her supplies wasn't a plan. Not without Aunt Zee's map. And not with Venom vampire hybrids roaming the world. She pulled herself back into the bathroom.

Slowly stripping off her clothes, she studied her reflection in the mirror. Her scraggly frame would fill up properly once she was pregnant. She only had to wait a month. Disappointingly, the scalding hot shower didn't rustle up any new ideas of escape. Defeated, Hadley walked out of the shower in a cloud of steam, wrapped in a towel. The vampire was waiting with a set of clothes laid out on the bed. She walked over and held a pair of cargo pants against Hadley's hip.

They were standing way too close and having a loosely wrapped towel between them didn't help with the heat that bloomed inside Hadley at the proximity. After appraising the garment, the vampire nodded and handed Hadley the pants. Hoping to affect the vampire as well, Hadley turned around, dropped her towel, reached into her backpack for a pair of panties, slowly pulled them on, then pulled the pants over those. They reached an inch or so above Hadley's ankles but fit perfectly against her waist and comfortably on her hips. The black T-shirt the vampire stoically handed her after her little show was snug around the middle, but not tight enough to make it unbearable.

That the vampire seemed unfazed was a bit of a blow to Hadley's ego. Usually, she wouldn't have made it to pulling the pants all the way up before the object of her seduction jumped her bones. Disheartened, Hadley reached for her field jacket, but the vampire stopped her. Hadley didn't dare breathe with the vampire's hand on her own. They shared a moment where their eyes met, but the vampire turned away, walked over to a closet, reached in, and pulled out another field jacket. This one was brand new – black with a brown fleece lining. Hadley didn't point out the fact that her own jacket was just fine. She slipped into the new one and marvelled at how comfortable it felt.

"Thank you," Hadley said with a smile. Maybe she was garnering favour with the vampire after all.

The vampire ignored her, as if distracted by other thoughts as she turned to rummage through a drawer. Mortified, Hadley watched as the vampire pulled out a length of thick jute cord and bound her hands in front of her before grabbing the harvest bag and leading them outside.

"Do you really have to tie me up?" Hadley asked as the vampire pulled her forearm as they walked.

"I don't trust you not to run. And I don't have the time to chase after you when you do." the vampire replied. She'd said 'when' not 'if'. Clever vampire. Hadley was already planning how to escape again. "I shouldn't have trusted your mother and aunt either. For that, I'm going to have to cut their tongues out, as I should have twenty years ago, and yours too. And that will take time. Time that I do not have. You have wasted my day and I don't appreciate it."

Hadley stopped struggling. The vampire's statement shattered every shard of hope she'd been holding onto. She could hear her mother's voice. The words she said every single time that Hadley tried something her mother disapproved of and failed.

'You'll never learn, will you Hadley? This is what happens when you don't listen to me. When you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.'

The sting of those words was even more devastating in the moment. Her mother and aunt were about to lose something precious, and it was all Hadley's fault. How selfish could she have been? She hadn't thought about the trouble she'd rain down on them if she'd got caught. Hadn't even given an inkling of thought to the fact that she could get caught! With hindsight in play, her naivety was woefully humiliating. Her good intentions of escape for her daughter's sake had paved the way to an indescribable hell, not just for her, but for her family too.

And what did that mean for her daughter's life now? She would be known as the daughter of the girl who'd caused enough trouble to cost the tongues of two well respected Elders. As for Hadley herself being chosen as an Elder? There was no way that would happen. Not even with all the privilege she'd held before. Not without a tongue. And what about that darkness inside her. What would happen when it grew, pickled in resentment and hate for those who would undoubtedly judge her harshly?

Those were the thoughts coursing through her mind as the vampire led her back into the Compound through a large gate that slid open on its rails, past a massive gravel walkway, into a room full of screens displaying most of the Compound. They found another vampire in the room with screens. This new vampire called the one who'd captured her, Ruqwik. Hadley finally had a name to attach to the face. A name and a face she would never forget.

One she would hunt to kill when she escaped again.

Ruqwik was interrogating the other vampire in the room, called Hiltro, about protocol and security – asking how Hadley managed to escape. Hadley zoned out the conversation, retreating to her thoughts, debating on whether she'd attempt her next escape in a few hours or a few days.

Hadley's thoughts screeched to a halt when the room's atmosphere flipped.

The air crackled with tension. Hadley's head snapped back to the vampires. Ruqwik was powerful. Of all the vampires Hadley had been in the presence of as a Compound Medic, she had never felt power ooze from any of them like she did with Ruqwik – which was annoying because Ruqwik looked barely older than Hadley. That was why Hadley's stomach dropped when she recognised fear streak past the vampire's face.

A deep, menacing growl reverberated off the room's walls.

Hadley's head whipped to the door.

Everything changed in that single moment.

The monster at the door stood on all fours, its face wearing gruesome, snarled features and two-inch-long unmistakeable vampire fangs jutting out of its mouth. Its body was massive, muscles rippling under the shiny black, seemingly furless, coat. It's eyes glowed blue. Both eyes. A full-blown Venom vampire, but not human! Venom vampires were meant to be villains of fictional ghost stories, yet Hadley had now seen two in the few hours she'd been outside the Compound's walls!

"Is there really no one else here?" Ruqwik's voice was gruff as her fangs fell in the same breath, but you could still hear the urgency in it.

The other vampire, Hiltro, shook her head and lowered her fangs too. That was when Hadley noticed Hiltro's eyes. They were a bright green with the thinnest rings of red near the pupils. This vampire was blood starved. Not enough to go dormant, but enough for Hadley to know that she wasn't at full strength. Was the vampire willingly starving herself? Why? Hadley's eyes went back to the beast. The blood in her veins curdled, a chill piercing her marrow.

The Venom hybrid was worried.

This was bad.

The creature drowned the space in another monstrous roar.

To stop the scream gathering in her lungs from fighting its way out, Hadley's shoved her mind into the darkness, ignoring every instinct not to.

The first time her mind slipped into the darkness, she'd been young, eleven or twelve. She'd watched a seventeen-year-old's leg severed by a machete in a harrowing harvesting accident. Hadley had been a Medic-in-training, but she saved that girl's leg right there in the grain field. Through it all, her mind was quiet and calm. Calculating. Dark. At first, she embraced the ability, using it to get through the toughest and most emotional draining moments of her life. However, it wasn't long before she realised that every choice to surrender to the dark brought her closer to a total loss of emotion. Complete disconnection. It was the first time in a long time she'd dived into the abyss without the usually accompanying guilt for hastening the inevitable end to this!

But this was no time to feel.

No time to think.

The monster attacked Ruqwik and Hiltro. As they fought, Hadley searched the room until she saw her battered harvest bag where Ruqwik had dropped it when they'd arrived. With her hands still bound, Hadley ran towards the mass of limbs and snapping jaws, snatching up the bag just as Hiltro's body landed at the exact same spot. The vampire was shredded to bits, but her wounds were already healing as Hadley watched. Hiltro stood, giving Hadley no mind, and rushed back into the carnage. Hadley moved away from them, dug into her bag, recovered her carving knife, and awkwardly cut through the cord binding her wrists.

Once her hands were free, Hadley considered running. It made sense. The vampires were distracted and wouldn't notice her slipping past them and pressing the clearly marked button that Hiltro had used to open the front gate. She could make it past the Compound walls once more, to the freedom she sought for her daughter.

The thought whizzed past Hadley's mind in less than a second but passed on just as fast. She knew she wouldn't run. If the creature defeated the vampires, it would find its way into the Compound and it would kill everything and everyone Hadley had ever loved. On the other hand, if the vampires overpowered it and Ruqwik realized that Hadley had escaped again, the vampire would go into the Compound and rain down hell on everything and everyone Hadley had ever loved, thinking they had helped her in the first place.

Running was a no-win situation.

But if she stayed and helped, maybe this time she really would garner some favour from the vampire. Or some leniency, at the very least. Maybe Hadley would be able to negotiate with the vampire and be the only one to lose a tongue, sparing her mother and aunt the humiliation.

Hadley was acting before that final thought had fallen into place.

She took out a button-down shirt from the harvest bag and wrapped it thickly around her left arm, then retrieved three syringes filled with dead rabbit and cow blood. As Hadley stood to join the fight, a body landed at her feet. It was Ruqwik's body. Her headless body. Hadley looked up to see the vampire's head in the monster's mouth. Ruqwik's eyes were looking back at Hadley, still blazing with fury as the red slowly drained from them and was replaced by green and blue. Hiltro's body a few feet from the creature was in far worse shape, torn into a mass of unrecognisable bits.

The office was painted blood red.

The vampires were dead!

Hadley stood her ground. She wouldn't let the beast find its way into the Compound! Not without a fight. The monster dropped Ruqwik's head. It hit the ground with a loud, cartoonish squelch, a sound that was completely out of place in the moment. Hadley had her knife in one hand, drenched once more in dead blood, and a syringe half filled with dead blood in her other hand. She put her fists up, tightening her grip on the knife and syringe, then crouched, letting her mind sink further into the darkness, pushing away every ounce of fear.

"Come on then," Hadley said to the monster.

It growled and obliged, pouncing on her. Hadley blindly swiped at the beast with the knife while she ducked. The blade hit something, slashing through flesh. A surge of adrenaline mixed with pride and vindication coursed through Hadley's veins as she rolled away. The wadded-up shirt on her left arm had got caught in the monster's fangs and loosened as the beast yanked at it and eventually ripped it off. Her left arm was bleeding from shallow fang marks raked along her forearm. The knife was gone. The creature was still standing.

But Hadley wasn't dead yet, and that was a win.

Still on the ground, she turned and back pedalled away from the monster as fast as she could. The creature was properly enraged now, howling, and roaring incessantly as it violently shook its head back and forth. Hadley's knife had slashed open a cut from its eye, across its face and down its snout. Hadley gripped the syringe in her left hand hard enough for it to hurt, the only other weapon she had. She stood up again and backed away from the creature until the back of her knees hit something. A padded office chair.

That was when she noticed that the cut across the monster's face wasn't healing, and the creature was swaying on its feet, looking dazed. The vampires had made their mark with their attack, weakening the creature before Hadley had had to face it. The knife laced with dead blood was the match in the powder keg. The last straw.

"Hey! Over here!" Hadley yelled at the creature.

It whipped its head to her and snarled. In the small space, it bound towards her and pounced. In answer, Hadley rushed towards it then dropped to her knees, letting the momentum slide her forward on her knees as the beast flew over her. In its delirium, it smashed into the chair that had stopped Hadley, sinking its teeth into the blue cushion. Hadley twisted around, jumped on the partially dazed creature's flank and plunged the syringe deep into its torso, emptying its contents as close to its heart as she could get.

The animal swiped at Hadley, throwing her clear across the room as it let out a loud, desperate scream. Adrenaline had Hadley stumbling back on her feet, grabbing the other syringe from her pocket, running over, and jamming that one into the creature's throat. This time, the creature's legs gave way and it collapsed at Hadley's feet.

Hadley's legs were jelly, barely holding her up, her head ringing from crashing into a wall of monitors when the monster had hit her. She forced herself to pick up one last syringe, keeping the tension in her muscles, ready to use the dead blood if she needed to. She watched the creature breathe its last, and counted slowly to ten, making sure the creature's chest stayed still. To her relief, it lay there, still and quiet, its blue eyes staring blankly into space. Hadley weaved on her feet, barely catching her balance against one of the desks. She likely had a concussion, but that would have to wait. She studied the blood-spattered room.

Everything that could break was shattered.

Hadley considered her next move. The sudden silence was incredibly loud. Almost too much for her to focus through. And her emotions were spiking wildly after this last dip into the abyss, which wasn't helping. She stumbled again as she made her way to the harvest bag, this time losing her balance.

Hitting the ground, her eyes fell on Ruqwik's head. She could have sworn the vampire was looking at her, despite that obviously being impossible. Whether true or not, that look grounded her. Brought her back slowly. The world finally felt clear and solid around her. Hadley pushed herself up, first onto her knees, then her feet, determined to stay up. She looked at the decapitated head once more.

Ruqwik had captured her and had been about to ruin her life alongside her mum's and aunt's lives, but if the vampires hadn't attacked that monster first and hurt it as they had, Hadley would have never been able to kill it. She bent down, carefully picked up Ruqwik's head and walked over to the body. Hadley placed the head where it belonged, reached for the bloody shirt she'd used to protect her left arm and covered as much of Ruqwik's face and torso as the shirt could.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Hiltro's body was in an irreparable and unrecognizable state, torn to too many bits for Hadley to pull together. Instead, Hadley fetched her old field jacket from her harvest bag and covered as much of the remains as she could with it.

"Thank you," she whispered again.

Hadley had considered two options before. Option A, where the monster would kill the vampires, kill her, and then make its way into the Compound and proceed to kill everyone; and Option B, where the vampires would kill the monster, punish her, and then make their way into the Compound and proceed to punish her mother and aunt. She had never considered Option C, where she would be the last one standing between her, the vampires, and the monster. This third option presented her with a new opportunity.

Hadley turned to the back of the office and looked at the door that would lead her to the Compound. By now, they must have known she was missing. She took a moment to think about going back. Better the devil you know, right? But was that enough reason to go back? She turned to look at the main gate through the office window. The gate that led out of the Compound and to the Wildlings.

To a new home for her and her daughter.

Hadley made her choice. All she had to do was hit the button Hiltro used to slide the gate open and shut, and walk away, disappearing into the jungle to find the Wildlings. When all was said and done, this wasn't about her. It was about her daughter. About ensuring a new life for her. It was a scary world beyond the wall. As her mother said it would, the world had already presented Hadley with heartbreak and pain.

But she was still alive.

And she would stay alive. For her daughter's sake.

Hadley pressed the button, grabbed whatever was left of her harvest bag and ran out to the driveway, only to be presented with Option D, where she would open the large gate and find a whole pack of vampire fanged, four-legged creatures, some with pairs of neon green eyes and others neon blue, drooling and grinning at the sight of her.