The prey entered his home unsuspecting of the demon that watched him from outside. With a blink, red eyes appeared in the shadows across the street, watching him. Marley slipped from the shadows hiding her and across the street, making her body phase through the front door. She stopped when she saw the bowls in the kitchen-- dogs. They weren’t in the room with him, were they? She crept along the house, determining where things were and where the closest exit was. Noted and noted. But tonight, she had focus, she had determination. She had reason. This would not be like Nadia or Dario. This was what she did, this was who she preyed upon. She found his room, eventually, still invisible hidden in his shadows, and waited for him to sleep. Hunters did not sleep as much as normal humans, but the exhaustion from the night hit him and he was out. In the next moment, Marley was hovering above his bed. Without hesitation, she put a hand to his forehead, and pressed into his nightmares. Tonight, she could feed well.

2:57. The numbers were bright in the darkness. 4 hours of sleep would do, he had to wake up early in the morning, and start to get things in order. Thank God he was not alone to take care of this, he thought to himself seconds before dozing off. He was woken up, or at least, he thought he was woken up, by the sound of a car crash, although, it was not his ceiling that he saw as he opened his eyes, but rather granite. White granite polished, cold, and way too close to him to be the ceiling. In fact, he had granite right on his left, on his right, and below his fingers. He was not in his bed. He was in a… in a mausoleum. Buried. This did not make any sense. He always said that he would be cremated, and, while his family had a mausoleum, and generations of Babineaux buried there, he certainly did not have a spot saved for him here. His heartbeat had started to hasten. Fear. He had been buried alive and his only way out would be by punching through stone. This was not something he had ever done. Punching through wood was doable, easily so, but stone? Granite, out of all sorts of stone? It had to be one of the most resistant types of stone on Earth, and when pushing the top proved to be useless, Alain had to try punching it instead. His joints started to scrape against the stone, and the sting was soon unbearable. Just as he thought that all hope was gone, the hunter heard a chuckle, coming from nearby. It was no relief, no, as he recognized immediately whose laughter it was.

Marley fell into his nightmare easily. The past two times, she’d pressed too hard, taken too much, so she sat back for this. She would not mess this one up. This hunter deserved what he was about to get, what he was about to see. He deserved to suffer under the thumb of his past, relived in endless nightmares. She would make sure of that. Buried alive, that was a good one. She could easily work with that one. His fear was abundant and all-consuming already and she drank it up, breathing it in, letting it roll through her. She watched him usually scrape and punch and kick against the granite case he’d woken himself up in. A torture chamber of his mind’s own design. It was almost too easy. She paced herself, then, listening to the laughter that rang out.

“And you wonder why I never was proud of you?” The voice spoke in French. Slower than someone would. Much slower than his father did. This was the voice of his old man, coming from beside him, resonating against the stone. Most people would have tried not to look, but Alain had to, and that’s exactly what he did. He could have sworn his heart skipped a beat as he turned his head and saw the partially decayed corpse of his father, the jaw moving with difficulty. What the fuck was going on. He had been drugged, hadn’t he? This. This was impossible, the hunter told himself. He wanted to respond but no sound was coming out of his mouth, and when he tried to move, he realized that he could no longer move his hands. If he was seemingly paralysed, his father’s hand reaching over, the bones showing where the joints used to be, felt very real as it wrapped itself around his arm, squeezing it hard. “You’re not going anywhere,” his father still spoke slowly, but he was now yelling, his voice cavernous and threatening. Alain looked at his arm, and that’s when he noticed the color returning to his father’s hand, while his own was getting paler, and his arm getting as cold as ice.

Daddy issues. Typical. Marley moved through the scene, resisting the urge to press it harder, further. She wanted to take her time with this one, and it would do her no good to pull him into a nightmarish hell of her making. Besides, using their own mind against them was the ultimate prison, wasn’t it? He’d done this to himself. He was his own nightmare. It was always the same with these types, using their past trauma to explain their current behavior. She’d seen it so many times. Hell, she even did it, not that she’d entirely admit that. But she was the monster other monsters were afraid of, and she thought that, she knew her face was shifting inside his illusion to match the old, rotten bones of the one on his father. Grimacing, she watched. What hell would he conjure up next?

This was not possible. Alain shut his eyes tightly. If he could have moved his hands, he would have pinched himself awake, but focusing seemed to work, because he woke up, startled, sitting on a bench of the cemetery. His mind could not remind him that he had gotten home tonight, that he was in his bed, and not here, or that this feeling in his guts was a fabrication of his mind, and not the sign of a vampire being nearby. The slayer got up on his feet. The ashes of the two higher vampires he had killed earlier were still piled up nearby. He walked through one of them as he followed his gut instinct, and moved through the cemetery, one hand on the handle of the sword, ready to draw it out. That’s when he saw a silhouette leave the lane and disappear behind a family vault. Found you, he thought to himself, and walked toward the other side of the vault, making sure not to make too much noise on the gravel.

Marley focus intensified on this next nightmare. He thought he was awake, he thought the nightmare had ended, but if she was lucky, it never would. It would bleed into his waking hours and then plague him every night until he couldn’t sleep anymore. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him follow the shadow, wondering just who it was. What had he done in his past to create this false memory? Who had he betrayed?

Walking past the vault, he was reminded of the nightmare he just had had, and he couldn’t help but reach for his arm, pulling up his sleeve to check how his arm looked. He did not hear the vampire approaching, and when she punched him in the face, his reflexes kicked in and he threw her away from him with a kick to the stomach. Or at least that’s what he thought he would do. She had grabbed his foot, and that’s when he looked at her face. Audrey. Impossible. She smiled at him and he felt his heart sink in his chest. This was impossible. She smiled at him. She smiled at him as she broke his tibia. Alain fell to the gravel. “You know, I thought you were letting me win back then, but I can really kick your ass, can’t I? ” she had taken a step back to taunt him. He had hopes, he used to have hopes that maybe she had not died, that she had gotten into trouble and had to leave without a warning, but a side of him always wondered : what if she left him behind because she knew that once he’d find out that she had been turned into a vampire, he would kill her.

Oh, now this was juicy. Marley could feel the excitement rushing in from the wave of fear and pain that came from this nightmare. She drank it up as if she’d been starving and reveled in the feel of it. The thought of someone finally getting their just dues, of the hunter becoming the hunted. This was enough for now, she thought, pulling her hand away gently from his forehead as she opened her eyes to reveal the dark bedroom around her. The clock next to the table read 6:37 AM in big, bold letters. She stepped back, turning invisible, lingering in her spot as she watched his face contort. Clawing at his own arm, leaving angry red marks on his skin, sweat pooling on his forehead. Turning, she found a piece of paper and a pen by his bedside and scribbled a quick note, setting it next to him on the bed. This was the start of something great, she thought, as she backed away from the bed and her prey. This was what she did.

The note next to him read, in scribbled writing: I know what you are.