Slay Alive

Chapter 5

five

“This is bad,” I whisper to no one but myself. “Oh, Bonnie, we fucked up.” I say we, because I know why I’m here. I’m here because my brain is a sadistic bitch that can’t let me have anything nice and turned my before bedtime playthrough of Fangs Are Forever into a goddamn nightmare. I don’t need to look for a big bad to fight in the real world when the call is coming from inside the house.

“Okay, so it’s a dream. We can handle a dream.” A dream makes perfect sense. I take in a calming deep breath and nod to myself. A dream I can deal with because a dream isn’t forever. “I have to wake up. That’s it, that’s all I have to do. I wake up and the vampire bizarro dream is over.”

I can wake up. I need to wake up.

But how?

I swallow hard and look around the forest. The world seems so real. My brain might be a backstabbing jackass but it knows how to world build like a fucking pro, which means this isn’t just any nightmare.

“I’m lucid dreaming,” I groan. Of course my brain chose hard mode and set me up in a lucid dream. I don’t know much about lucid dreaming, with the extent of my knowledge on how to deal with dreams coming from the one random seminar Gio dragged me to. It had mostly dealt with botanicals and tinctures for enhancing deep sleep but there was a part where they talked about what to do when you realized you were in control of your dreamscape.

“If you want the dream to continue, try to gently and slowly manipulating your surroundings. Pick up a book or open a door. But if you want to exit the dream, intent is key. Going to sleep in your dream with the intention of waking yourself is often effective, but the easiest and fastest way to do so is to alter the environment to create discomfort.”

Discomfort.

Going to sleep is not on the agenda, but discomfort? That I can do. I don’t just want to exit, I want to fucking eject myself at topspeed. How did a vampire chase not create the discomfort needed to wake up? Apparently, I’ve got to think bigger. What’s bigger than a vampire chase? Considering I’m hanging from a branch I don’t have a lot of options….except….

“That’s it!” I look up at the branch I’m holding onto and take a deep breath. “You better wake the fuck up safe and snugly in your bed, Bonnie,” I order myself and before I can think about what’s going to happen next, I just do it. I let go of the branch. I brace for the impact on instinct even as I hold the image of my bed and my room in my mind and, because I’m me, the unthinkable happens.

I land on my damn feet one hundred percent awake and alert in this shitty vampire dream.

“Whyyyy me?” I bury my face in my hands and scream. I’m so into my screaming that I don’t hear the approaching footsteps until it’s too late.

“When we were told the new recruit would be eccentric this isn’t what I had in mind.”

I freeze, swallow down my scream and lower my hands to see two men and a woman watching me like I’m the lunatic in all of this. They’re holding torches in their hands. Real, honest to god, torches that look like they came out of a period Viking piece. The warm glow of the fire dances along the forest floor and I take a shaking step towards the light.

“Who are you?” I blurt out.

“We’re the ones asking questions, recruit,” the man with blonde hair snaps with a glare. He looks like every superhero movie come to life with a jawline so sharp it could cut glass and shoulders broad enough the black t-shirt he's wearing looks like it’ll rip if he so much as sneezes wrong. I scan the other two and Mister Superhero isn’t the only one rocking a tight black tee. All three of them are clad in all black to varying degrees, which wouldn’t phase me but the armor does. They’ve got on enough leather to fit in at a BDSM fetish night. Leather pants, what looks like a harness and even bracers and greaves, all made of leather, of course.

The trio giving me the stink eye look totally fucking awesome.

I tug self-consciously at my flannel pajamas when the blond man looks me over with a raised eyebrow. “This is what they send you to us in?” he asks, disdain dripping from his words.

I lift my chin in defiance. “Not all of us got the memo on leather, okay?” I snap before I remember this is a dream and I don’t need to give a shit what some leather babes think about me.

“So they don’t outfit their recruits correctly in Haven?” The woman snorts and shakes her head. She has dark hair and delicate features out of place with her kick-ass leather outfit. She looks so much smaller than the men. I bet she kicks more ass than them. “I know they’re out of practice but…this is something else entirely. She’s completely unprepared.”

“I’m not who you think I am. What do you mean recruits?” I ask. What do they think I’m a recruit for ? My brain starts to whisper to me exactly what they think I’m a recruit for but I won’t listen to it. I can’t. If I listen to my psychotic backstabbing brain I’ll pop my top.

“Listen. I don’t know how I got here and the only thing I want to do is go home. Can you help me do that?” Maybe if I reason with the leather triplets they’ll do me a solid and help trigger my wake up. I cross my fingers and hope for the best but it all comes to nothing when the woman keeps speaking.

“You cannot return to Haven. None of the recruits can. Not until they master their power,” she says and crosses her arms with a frown. My stomach twists into a pretzel and I feel sick, because I know the storyline she’s reciting. It’s the Vampire Hunter class story origin. I’m meant to be a fresh recruit learning my paces from the crew in Briarwood Hollow.

“Everyone knows this,” she tells me. It takes everything in me not to tell her “everyone in her world” but I hold my tongue.

“I, ah, I’m new,” I say instead.

Blond bitch superhero sniffs and looks down his nose at me. “You were meant to come fully outfitted from Haven, but seeing as you could not even manage that…”

The emo looking dark-haired man at his side sighs. “Have you any combat skills or are we meant to supply those as well, girl?”

Girl.

He says it like an insult and I flush with rage. I’m not even registering as a recruit anymore.

In the game, I start out in Hunter’s Watch, the vampire hunter headquarters and from there my training starts. Usually it’s with the strong and silent Riley showing me how to throw knives or offering to stand watch with me on my first duty or Adrian the leader of the Nightwarden’s gives me a tour through Briarwood Hollow. Sometimes I get to have a cup of tea with Gabriel in the library when I want a more cozy playthrough.

I would take any of those options in a heartbeat if I could, for this lucid dream field trip. But whatever drug Rhiannon gave me decided to take the vampire world I know and put it on hard mode. So here I am, in my threadbare pajamas, in front of three hunters talking shit on me.

“You’re right,” I tell them and draw myself up to my full height. I’m tall, 5’10 and more than ready to make good use of it now, staring these asshats down. “I am a girl. I’m just like every other fucking girl you know but I am so much fucking worse.”

The men’s mouths fall open and the woman has to cover her mouth to hide her smile while I walk up to them and grab the branch that dusted the vampire. I grab it and twirl it in my hand with an ease that surprises me so much I almost drop it. Holy shit, when did I get reflexes?

I recover by thrusting the pointy end of the branch at them. “You see this?” I ask, making a point of waving the branch to make my point. Dust poofs up from it and hits me in the face. I start coughing and then almost puke because oh my gods, I just inhaled vampire.

“It’s a vampire,” I manage to wheeze out in the middle of my coughing fit. “An-and I dusted him. Me. I did that and I didn’t even need any of your bondage gear to do it, so why don’t you stop being a judgy bitch?”

The blond’s eyes go wide and emo boy doesn’t look like he believes me, but the woman? She steps forward with a nod of approval.

“Impressive. A kill on your first night in Briarwood Hollow. Not bad for one of the Haven folk. I’m Tamsin Crescent.” She holds her hand out to me and I take it.

I smile at her. “I’m Bonnie Duskweaver.” The last name comes out of my mouth before I can stop it. My last name is Flores. I clear my throat and try again. “I mean, no, my last name is Duskweaver.” I clap a hand over my mouth. Oh fuck.

Why can’t I say my real name?

Tamsin nods at me. “Yeah, we know, Duskweaver. We were sent here to meet you but I’ll admit we expected you to be on the road,” she says, jerking a thumb behind her.

“There’s a road? Where?”

“Where a road should be,” the blond asshole snaps and gives me a once over that tells me he’s quite recovered from me saying I slayed a vampire and he’s back on his hater train express. “If you had a map you would know not to be wandering in the woods like this. Perfect setup for a vamp to attack.” He swings his torch at me and I have to jump back from him. “We will fulfill our mission and take you to the Hunter’s Watch as we’ve been ordered but make no mistake, recruit. There is zero tolerance for risk takers. Especially for unprepared and ill-equipped recruits. If you want to make it through your hunter training and become part of the Nightwardens you’ll do well to remember that.”

I’d love nothing more than to punch him in his perfect face but I don’t. I need them.

I give him finger guns. “Sure thing, boss. Only the most professional vampire hunter biz from here on out.”

His lip curls in disgust. “Let’s move out before any more vampires arrive. No doubt the House of Nocturne will turn up soon looking for that infernal cursed ass.”

Cursed ass? He means Dante Shadowfang “The Cursed Lord” and Nocturne Clan Leader, and also one of my dependable play throughs when I’m in the mood for something a little more cozy on the vampire side.

“Dante’s here?” I ask. If I’m in the game, I can get Dante to help me. He’s always one of the easier vampires to win over. He’ll help me.

“He was,” Tamsin tells me and looks down at the pointy branch I’m still holding. Realization hits me like an ice cold bucket of water. That wasn’t just any vampire that was chasing me tonight.

I drop the branch with a gasp. “Oh my god, I slayed Dante Shadowfang.”