The Vampire's Rival

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My mind was a storm of thoughts, in sync with the storm breaking above us.

I hadn't expected to see Hadley again! Not until Kitari had fixed the Scavenger vampire and I made him lead us to the Scavengers' base, where I would have forced them to take me to her. But, somehow, here she was, in Sleritu's Enclave, and in the company of Kade, no less! I was confused, but also immensely relieved!

My Fledgling!

She was awake!

She was alive!

And it wasn't just Hadley. Jamila was there too! It was everything I could have ever hoped for, but didn't deserve! If they weren't just about to die in this massive storm that suddenly broke above us, this would have been the perfect reunion!

"Ruq, slow down!" Tristan yelled behind me. "Don't forget where we are!"

As if his words conjured it from thin air, a bar of wooden spikes sprung from the trees and impaled me!

Sleritu's Enclave!

This Enclave was as different from any other as it could be. For starters, they didn't have Barns or Warehouses to supply blood to their vampires. Instead, Sleritu maintained "Warrens". These were tiny underground bunkers where small groups of humans, usually no more than ten, were housed. The Warrens only had beds and ablution facilities. Sleritu had nurseries in the main centre of her Enclave where test tube children were raised to be prey, branded to showcase their year of birth, and released into the wild to find a Warren at ten years of age. For food, the humans had to leave the Warrens and brave the woods. And when they did, they became fair game for Sleritu's vampires to hunt down.

This meant that every step in the woods in this Enclave had the potential to be fatal.

Vampires set up traps to capture humans whom they would feed from and, if they were so inclined, release back into the forest. Only those sixteen years and older could be fed from. Younger prey had to be healed if injured then released back to grow older, wiser, and better at being prey. On the other hand, the Warren humans set up traps to incapacitate the vampires hunting them down, for example, the bar of sharpened wooden spikes that had gone right through me. Vampires who were always falling into human traps would eventually starve to dormancy and if Sleritu came across them, she would dispatch them for being weak.

This is what Sleritu wanted for the whole world – not only to mould it into a hunting ground for the most sophisticated type of prey alive, but to kill any vampire not smart or fast or strong enough to hunt and kill them.

This is what I would never give her!

"You can't die if you want to save them," Tristan said as a matter of fact while he and Cruto pulled me off the bar of wooden spikes. Bits of me caught on splinters, excruciating as they were dragged out of my body. I was beyond lucky that the wood wasn't laced in dead blood. The extensive wound meant that I would need to feed soon, but I had just enough in me to heal the large holes that went right through my torso.

I struggled to pull in air into a mangled left lung, glad that I was still alive.

There were eight of us: five Freelance vampires, Tristan, Cruto and I. As I healed, I yielded to working closer together to carefully make it through the forest. We moved as a team, slowly heading towards the gorge, all the while knowing that there might be eyes on us, whether human or vampire. As a team, we were stronger than most adversaries would dare to take on, even with me injured. If anyone was watching us from the shadows, they would stay in the shadows.

It was slow going, and I was impatient, but the slow pace gave time for my wounds to heal for the most part. After bypassing several more traps and scaring a group of five to seven year old children who quickly disappeared into the bushes, we'd made it to the gorge. The storm was well and truly raging around us at this point. We were soaked to the bone and barely able to see past two feet in front of us. One of the Freelancers among our group had the vampiric ability of enhanced vision and was leading us to the humans, but even he was struggling.