Calponia's merry band of fanged marauders zipped along at a mind-numbing clip that left her stomach several few miles back. The land blurred to an unpleasant shade of brown that made the surrounding forest appear like a high speed trek through a giant colon. To add insult to injury, her backward facing position gave her a wind burn on her rear cheeks that stung like the dickens with each passing mile.

The béte noir showed itself when the captain abruptly slammed into a tree. It was a miracle of physics she wasn't a red smear from the impact. It jarred her bones and sent her flying into a handy pile of leaves with only a few minor scrapes and bruises to show for it. The captain wasn't so lucky. It was a bad injury when her first reaction was to feel sorry for the soldier. No one deserved to be skewered through the neck by a blunt low hanging branch, though she could call it karmic balance. An wound like that would be fatal for a normal person, but this was a tough crowd. The others helped him down, supporting the captain, frowning at her as he slapped a hand on his gushing throat. She gulped at the expression, made all the more eerie by his blood filled eye. It was the expression of someone considering her worth, one she was all too familiar with as she spent years attempting to hold down a job beneath the weight of her curse.

After a long moment, with his neck neatly tied off, the captain gestured to his men. One of them reluctantly stepped forward, a short, young soldier who had to be younger than Calponia herself. He handled her like a malfunctioning grenade, gingerly draping her over his shoulder. She could almost feel sorry for the guy.

They didn't make it another five minutes before her new ride hit a hidden sinkhole and disappeared into the ground. The fall dislodged her. She rolled away as the vampire vanished. The ground released a satisfied squelch. The vampires panicked falling away from the hole as if it were a living thing. It might be. Calponia knew jack squat about this realm but their reaction shocked her. None of them darted forward to try to pull their comrade free as the sinkhole made a few bubbles to mark his presence.

"What are you doing? Help him!" Calponia shouted, rolling to her knees. The second impact left her covered in muck and thoroughly battered but her conscience hit her nerves like a taser. The vampire captain was a jerkwad to the nth degree, but this guy was just following orders. Right? She stared at the bubbling ground, torn by indecision and her pesky morality when a desperate hand broke the surface, clawing for purchase. The surrounding vampires didn't twitch, watching with morbid intensity as their fellow soldier struggled. Calponia fell forward, wriggling closer on her belly until she grabbed the hand.

She didn't have the right leverage. That much was obvious when the hand began to drag her down into the muck with it. Calponia got up close face-time with the foul smelling muck, quite certain she'd stumbled upon Satan's butthole. Her actions jolted the surrounding vampires to finally act. She felt hands like iron manacles close around her ankles, yanking her and consequently the submerged vampire out of the mud with an aggressive pop. As if the sinkhole was loath to give up its prize. The reward for her troubles landed on top of her, hard enough to squeeze the air from her lungs.

For the first time since her delightful excursion began, she was grateful for vampire reflexes as the surrounding soldiers whipped the rescued one off her in time for him to void mud from his lungs on the ground beside her. She'd take a couple of splatters over a face full of dirt vomit any day of the week. A hand grabbed her bicep, yanking her to her feet.

Face to face with Captain Deadshot, Calponia erroneously brought up a knee in automatic self defense, regretting it immediately; it was like kneeing someone with a granite cod piece. The captain gave her shake, merely annoyed by her attempted crotch shot. He glared down at her. This time his frown was grim and full of unspoken judgments.

She hated judgy people.

He looked from her to the still retching soldier on the ground. "Can you walk?" He croaked, his voice thoroughly shredded after taking a tree branch to the larynx. 

Calponia nodded with the understanding it was in her best interest to say yes. The captain grunted, tugging her along as the rest of his unit fell in behind them. Once they were moving again, he took his hands off her, trusting the circle of wary, twitchy vampires was enough to keep her in line. It was. After two mishaps none of them were quite willing to risk touching her unless necessary, all shooting her the same judgmental glare as their captain. The only one who didn't look like he wanted to leave her carcass in the woods to rot was the sorry sod she'd pulled from the sinkhole. He didn't look at her at all.

It was a very tense, uncomfortable trip.

Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, it didn't last long as the dripping woods coughed up a roadway leading to civilization. One moment she was surrounded by cringe worthy wilderness, the next she stared at a vast city of steel edges, its ultra modern appearance at sharp contrast to the land. The vampires picked up speed at the sight of it, eager to be home and rid of their charge. When she couldn't keep up, they bounced her between them like a living tilt a whirl. She didn't want to imagine what her shoulders looked like beneath her filthy clothes. Concentrating on keeping her feet under her so the louts didn't trample her, her attention fell away from the city until she was in it.

Calponia gaped up at the boxy metal structures. No windows, not a one, though she supposed that made a sort of sense in the company of vampires. The whole atmosphere of Sanguinheim was so doom and gloom, she wondered if she would be able to do the difference between day and night. Without the suffocating cover of the trees, the clouds above them were an angry boiling gray that looked seconds from tearing the sky open.

The unit led her to a long squat building of sleek matte metal. There were no seams in the building, as if it were constructed from one great oblong cube. She couldn't even see the door until the captain prodded her forward. A section of the outer wall dented inward, peeling away with a silent smoothness that out classed Star Trek doors. It revealed a gloomier interior with nothing more than a few feeble blue lights to illuminate the dark. Calponia eyed it, certain she did not want to go in but had little choice as the captain shoved her between her shoulder blades. She avoided a face plant by stumbling inside. Her eyes attempted to adjust, blinking away the blotted shapes clouding her vision. She managed to note the tube-like entrance a moment before another section of the wall slid away without warning.

Blinding fluorescent light blazed through her retinas.

Calponia muttered a few choice words as the captain dragged her forward, blinking rapidly to clear the flash bulb spots out of her vision.

"Welcome to Recruitment and Research," the captain croaked somewhere above her left ear. The spots finally dispersed, unveiling a nightmare of blood and sterile chrome.

The captain's grip on her arm kept her upright as she took it all in; the line of frightened thin faced men and women, half starved and trembling. They moved forward with factory efficiency, zapped or cuffed by vampires in tight button down lab coats. The line moved into a room, separated and strapped into a line of examination chairs by metal brackets. Calponia watched, mesmerized as a line of mechanized arms rose beside the chairs in perfect unison, bearing a syringe of black liquid. The men and women began to scream before the needle touched their skin. She saw why shortly after the injection, when the people started to writhe.

She stopped moving. Fascinated, horrified, unable to look away as their bodies bucked and bowed at unnatural angles. The screams were so loud she tuned them out, unable to pick one out over the rest as they meshed together in a one endless blast of sound. Time slowed, dragging, an eternity in a handful of seconds as the change took over. A few began to collapse back into their straps, their faces sweat soaked and pale, growing paler by the second. Their panting mouths filled with fangs but that wasn't the worst.

The injections didn't take for all of them. Two men and a women fought harder, tears of blood weeping from their eyes, their ears, and nose as their hemorrhaged internally. They shook, flailing, rabid, blood flying. As one the others turned to look at them, hunger in their new born crimson eyes...

Calponia jerked her gaze away, feeling sick. She found the captain leering at her. The pit of her stomach turned; he'd stopped and let her watch. Her fingers curled against her palm to keep from hugging herself. She forced the disgust and fear from her face, glaring up at the captain's smug face.

"How's your neck?"

The smirk drained off his features. He took a menacing step toward her. Calponia was certain he would have struck her if the wall hadn't slid open.

"Ah, what do we have here?" The vampire in the doorway wore the same tight white coat as the line guards, complimented by a pair of black gloves and goggles that obscured his eyes. Despite the blood that seemed to be smeared everywhere, no a speck marred his white clothing. He gave her Dr. Moreau flashbacks, far creepier than captain frenemy with the bloody eye.

"Found her in the bleeding wood. Says she's cursed," grunted the captain, absently rubbing his bandaged throat. "We have cause to believe her claim."

She could feel the White Coat's eyes on her through his opaque goggles. Her skin crawled when he grinned, his fangs pressing against his lower lip. She did not like this turn of events in the slightest.

"Excellent. It is so rare we get to study the properties of cursed blood," said the creepster, offering her a gloved hand. "Come my dear."

Calponia stared at it as if it were a giant hairy spider. Her lip curled. She wondered if she could bolt for the door when the captain shoved her again, sending her pitching forward. The Creepy Vamp caught her outstretched hand and pulled her further along until she was inside the new hallway. She looked up.

The line of people being turned via injection was bad and scary and would give her nightmares for days. This was so much worse.

The sullen silence of Sanguinheim's Bleeding Forest broke as a bearded man stumbled through an unseen doorway. The woods cringed at the explosion of hearty laughter. Mack straightened, continuing to chuckle as he wiped a tear from his eye. A sinuous figure detached itself from the shadows behind him, wearing a sour expression as he stomped away.

"Ah, don't be like that," said Mack, swallowing a hiccup as the vampire whirled on him.

"Shake it loose from your system now, Way Keeper, because if you giggle in front of my men I will be forced to tear your throat out," snapped Eugene.

Mack squinted at the ruffled vampire. "Don't make me call in your tab." The straight face didn't last long as he added "Valentinianus." The name sent him into another fit of laughter. "Oh, lords of the below, what was your mother thinking?"

Eugene scowled at the laughing barman, folding his arms as he waited for it to stop. "Are you done?"

Mack nodded, holding a straight face for a total of ten seconds before he crumbled. "She named you after Cupid. Cupid? Really?'

Eugene kicked a rotted log. It sailed into a nearby tree and shattered to bits. "It's not her fault." He held up a finger at Mack. "Don't you dare tell Calponia."

The man snorted. "Wouldn't dream of it," he lied. "Shall we?" He waved the bone rifle in the general direction of the closest city. That is where they would take her, he had no doubt. He wondered if the béte noir reared its head in route. That could prove disastrous. Mack started forward until Eugene grabbed him.

"Do you get motion sick?" The vampire didn't wait for an answer as the barkeep's face fell. A vengeful glow flared in Eugene's eyes. Before he could protest, Mack found himself flung over one hard shoulder. His stomach rolled as the vampire took off at full speed through the wood.