Within a day, Laurel's inheritance was almost gone. In return, she had a rapier, a silver dagger, a steel breastplate and a nice coat to wear over it, a set of maps and bestiaries, a mule and a bag of tools for any conceivable purpose. She'd read a lot about dream hunters throughout her life and the most important thing to note was that they lived by their reputation. There was no formal organisation, no recruitment process. To become a dream hunter, one merely had to collect bounties and help the helpless. She refused to delay herself even a moment longer than necessary and left the wondrous city for a hard life in the country.

  Her first stop was a small fishing village, only a day's walk from the city. Even the villages this far south were impressive, with a number of stone buildings. Its denizens regarded her with suspicious eyes as she travelled through, eventually stopping at the noticeboard near the centre. She was pleased to see that it had just what she was looking for, a plea from a baker to exterminate his gremlin infestation. A handsome, though nonspecific, reward was promised. She went to the bakery immediately and introduced herself to the owner, a very hairy fat man who appeared to have been running himself ragged, with scratches all over his body.

  He didn't greet her or bow to her when she entered, which caught her off-guard a little. Her clothes were quite expensive but, perhaps, they were too workmanlike for him to realise. 'Good man,' she began tentatively, as he appraised her with bloodshot eyes, 'I hear you've had a problem with gremlins.'

  'Yes,' he said, harshly, 'they attacked my wife and they're wreaking havoc. I can't get any work done and no one in this damn place seems to care.' It did seem a little odd, as gremlin culling was something boys and young men would often do for their own amusement. Either the man was not well liked or his gremlins were nastier than usual.

  'Just point me in their direction, and you shall be rid of them,' she boasted. He grunted in response and pointed to a locked door behind him. She immediately saw it moving, presumably as one or more of the nightmares tried to ram into it. He let her in and she booted one of the things before even getting a good look at them. She heard the door lock behind her as she took in the chaotic scene, spilled flour mixed with blood, shelves and furnishings smashed to pieces and seven engorged gremlins with thick black fur and burning red eyes. Within seconds, they were all dead and she was cleaning her rapier. 'All done,' she said to the locked door, 'would you like me to take away the remains?'

  He took a while to respond after opening the door. A smile touched his face, if only for a second, as he regarded her work. 'No, no, I've got an idea for what do with them,' he said, making her a little curious.

  'Fair enough,' she said, 'now, on the matter of payment, your notice promised a handsome reward.'

  'Gremlin pie,' he said at once, and she wasn't sure if it was his response to her.

  'I'm afraid I don't eat meat,' she chuckled, hoping he wasn't actually describing his interpretation of the phrase 'handsome reward.'

  'Well,' he said, his eyes wild as he turned to her, 'then I guess you'll have to go without a reward.' Before she could begin to argue he raised his voice, 'because I don't have any bloody money. These damn things have seen to that. Now, clear off, dreamling, and let me get back to work.'

  For just a moment she imagined herself taking payment from him, beating and robbing him or biting his neck and drinking her fill. Such thoughts worked in his favour, however, as she was too ashamed of herself to argue and left with nothing to show for her work. To cheer herself up, she took a trip over to the pier. She'd never been to the seaside and the salty air was just the treat she'd hoped it would be. She took a deep breath, working her enhanced senses and letting the wind nip at her face.

  'He won't pay you,' an old man called from behind her as she leaned against the railing. 'Peter's hoping to fool some earnest young dream hunter into dealing with his gremlin problem, since he doesn't want to pay Old Bill to do it.'

  'He succeeded,' she said, turning to look at him. He was slight and scrawny, possibly shrivelled from age, but his most notable characteristic was a set of faded red eyes.

  'You're a dreamling?' she asked, flatly.

  He smiled at that, 'aye, and the people here will be sure to remind me if I ever forget. My father was a doppelg?nger.'

  Such creatures were quite rare and exceptionally dangerous. 'My father's the King, if you'll believe that.'

  'Ah, so you're the dhampir all the nutters like to rave about?'

  She smiled at that, reflexively. 'I didn't know there were nutters raving about me.'

  'Your grandfather was one of them, believe it or not. My step-son was devotee as well, before his passing.'

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  'I'm sorry for your loss.'

  The old man smiled, 'thank you. Anyway, I best be off before the mayor decides it's an offence for two dreamlings to be in the same place at once. Could you feed this to the gulls for me?' He pointed to half a loaf of bread and she nodded. 'That's from Tilda, the baker who's not a complete pillock. Check in with her before you leave, she's liable to feel sorry for you and give you a cake for your trouble.'

  'I will,' she said, and he left. She did as he'd asked and threw chunks of bread for the seagulls, who only dared get so close to her, before heading to the village's other bakery. Tilda was about twice as fat as Peter had been but two heads shorter. With prominent cleavage and a pretty face, Laurel had no trouble imagining how much more popular she was than her rival. Indeed, she wondered how that man even managed to stay in business.

  'Oh, you poor dear,' she said, upon hearing her story, 'I'll tell you what, I'll reward you with a slice of strawberry tart for doing us all a favour. Three days of bleating from that man was sending a lot of people round the bend.'

  'Thank you,' Laurel said with a smile, before tucking into her reward. It was quite lovely, and at least on par with the palace food she was used to. When she remarked as such, Tilda gushed over her and gave her a tearful hug that almost choked the life out of her. Afterwards, she left the village, untied her mule and set herself on the path towards a larger village further along the coast. She was barely a third of the way there when she had to set up camp for the night, all alone a short distance into a nearby wood. Whereas she didn't need to deal with the worst of it, since her lack of the need for sleep meant she wouldn't produce nightmares and couldn't be snuck up on, she was still mindful of the danger.

  If she'd had no need of her mule, she could keep on walking, day and night, and the maths involved in cutting her travel time almost by half for the rest of her career tempted her to figure out a way to do just that. She was obviously strong enough to carry all of her things but it would still be quite inconvenient. A dark thought immediately occurred to her. She could, of course, live like a true creature of the night. Filling her belly with the blood of other travellers would erase her need to cook and prepare food and she could simply steal supplies as and when she needed them. When the nightmare in her blood began to gurgle and growl in response, however, she put the notion out of her mind.

  Her mule appreciated the warmth and light of her campfire more than she did, as she spent most of the night staring out into the furthest depths of the darkness, where she could see a multitude of red eyes glinting back at her. When a gang of fairies started to pester her mule, she snatched them up and crushed them each into fairy dust, which she bottled for sale. 'Poor thing,' she said, softly, to her mule, named Cougher for a trait he'd apparently shed since his youth, and she stroked him gently. He was still a little afraid of her, but she hoped that would change in time, if she really was stuck with him.

  The first night otherwise passed without incident but, on the second night, she began to intuit that she was being stalked by something. It did not yield to her searches nor respond to her calls but she could feel its eyes watching her whenever she turned her back. Only on the third night did it reveal itself to her. It was a vampire, of immense power, in the form of tall man with a muscular frame and noble features, oily black hair slicked back with a strong cleanshaven jawline and the shiniest ruby red eyes she'd ever seen. She knew that he could kill her relatively easily but she remained calm, reasoning that, if he'd wanted to, he already would have. 'Correct,' he said, in a thick but unplaceable accent, as if reading her mind.

  'Who are you? What do you want?'

  'I want to train you in the vampiric arts. You already know who I am. Think back, all the way to the beginning and remember.'

  She searched her eidetic memory and recalled the feeling of his presence, a gruesome lurking shadow she'd felt even from within her mother's womb. 'You killed my mother,' she said, with more heat than she could afford to show.

  He crossed the distance in an instant and grabbed her throat hard. 'No!' he roared, 'I created your mother. Your father killed her.'

  'Stop,' she squirmed and clawed at his hands, 'please, I can't breathe.'

  'When I've trained you up,' he said, eventually relaxing his grip, 'you won't need air to breathe.' She examined him and his vampiric body told the truth. His heart was not beating and he only ever sucked in air to speak.

  'I'm not like you,' she pleaded, 'I'm a dhampir.'

  'You are exactly what I wanted you to be, nothing more and nothing less, the perfect weapon. In time, you'll become a lot more like me but in a hundred years or more, you'll be so much greater than me. So, I'll give you the choice, here and now. Die by my hand or become my apprentice.'

  He allowed her to think about it, at least, and she struggled. Her rage, though cloaked by her inhuman composure, was so great that part of her wanted to die. Every rational impulse of hers, however, told her to accept his offer, to grow stronger in his tutelage and betray him only once she was strong enough to get away with it. She knew, however, that if it really did take a hundred years, she was liable to have grown attached to her mother's killer. The thought of it made her sick but, in the end, she was forced to stomach it. 'Alright,' she said, though flooded with self-hatred, 'I accept.'

  The first step was to sell most of her belongings and he ingratiated himself by yielding to her pleas not to kill and eat old Cougher. By the end of the following day, she'd earned most of her inheritance back, which her master, who'd so far refused to give his name, held for safekeeping.

  'So, what now?' she said, as they sat in the middle of the wood at the dead of night on a fallen tree trunk.

  'Don't ask those sorts of questions, sweet girl. You are not ordering about your little palace servants, you are receiving instructions from an elder vampire. From now on, you will perform the tasks I assign to you, whenever I deign to, and you will spend every other moment exercising and thinking of ways to improve yourself. Am I clear?'

  'Yes.'

  'Yes, master.'

  'Yes, master.' The words sounded perfectly polite and deferential but she knew, just from the twinkle in his eyes, that he was aware of just how disgusted she felt.