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Carmilla’s plan, this time, is this: to do as little as possible to somehow lose Laura Hollis. She’s been tagged up with an apparently ‘promising’ young girl for Mother’s damned reaping. She’s got her name, basically, and a feeling that this one is going to be easy. The plan is usually to just get the girl out of the way, through means nefarious and not. Mother never gets too mad, just sends her off to a new girl. Carmilla eventually always delivers a girl, just because she enjoys the look on William’s face when Mother dotes on her for doing her job. His unhappiness is utterly thrilling.
Laura Hollis, of course, does not turn out to be simple.
-
The girl starts vlogging, searching for her missing roommate. Carmilla is, for once, considering just delivering the girl and being done with it - maybe if she finishes up early, Mother will let her skip a semester in favor of traveling somewhere that won’t begin shrilly yelping at her for forgetting to wash dishes.
She walks in on the girl at least eight times, looking at her computer screen in some sort of appeal, as if the box could somehow provide an answer to her. It’s Betty this and Betty that and stop eating my cookies! and it’s tiring, to say the least. Carmilla does legitimate schoolwork a few nights in a row while Laura starts and stops vlogs, huffing and puffing at Carmilla’s mere presence. Carmilla brings a few girls over, flirts and chats loudly, and Laura huffs louder. The volume is surprising; the girl is so small, she’s surprised that that much air could enter the girl in the first place.
“Are you okay?” one girl she brings over, Allison, or something, asks Laura. Laura’s face almost makes Carmilla laugh, it’s so overwrought with dislike. The girl leaves soon after, and a few other girls rotate in her place. It’s simply fun to play her charms on girls. It gives her an easy challenge - no one likes obstacles that are hard to surmount, right?
Laura eventually cuts into her excitement with a poorly done herpes reference. It’s juvenile, but Carmilla can tell she’s getting under Laura’s skin just by the irritation that rattles through the girl whenever she walks in the room. It’s visible, to Carmilla, the way Laura tenses up like a threatened animal. The scent of her blood racing in irritation is a bit thrilling, too, so Carmilla chases that smell. It ends up in small little blow-ups, with Laura threatening to call the Dean and Carmilla sneering. The threat is, unbeknownst to Laura, almost totally useless.
It becomes less fun and games when it becomes obvious that Laura isn’t quite so easy to shake as the other girls. She brings in two of the chosen girls for interviews, and Carmilla does her best to break up the Scooby Doo Where Are You fest, and all of a sudden, Laura’s going off on her, throwing her milk box.
“That was a real, actual person who had something terrifying happen to her and all you can do is make crappy jokes,” (this is when she threw the milk box), “Are you really so damaged that you’re incapable of caring about anything?”
-
Every night, while Ell sleeps, Carmilla paces back and forth across the enormous rug in her room. It tires her too much to do it in human form, so she becomes her panther and growls at the spectres that try to cut into Ell’s sleep. She’s not sure why it is she functions so well as a knight against these attacks as the cat, but she can see more clearly the nightmares that hunt Ell. She knows, of course, that these are related to her Mother’s plans. She knows, of course, that she will have to make a choice.
It is agonizing. Every moment she feels peace enough to sleep, Ell’s brow becomes heavy and she begins to frown at another dark vision. Carmilla pulls herself up and patrols again. She knows Ell can feel her, somehow - she speaks of the black cat in her dreams, the one that feels strong but calming. It is a comfort. Carmilla doesn’t really need her sleep, but her days have become her dozing period. She is exhausted.
Every Tuesday, Mother asks her how the Fuchs girl is going. And Carmilla responds in an airy voice that it is going well. Mother doesn’t press. She has no reason to. They stroll through the rolling hills of the castle in Styria. It is well.
It isn’t well, and Carmilla paces about the floor of the room, in circles, building a web to catch Ell’s suffering in. Inevitably, she imagines, it will be her own trap.
-
The first sense that something has gone wrong is when she spots the gigantic, lean redhead sticking close to Laura’s side. She feels the sneer pull across her face before she imagines its purpose. The redhead tilts her head curiously, but steers Laura toward the seats. Mother is standing up at the front of the room, glaring about. William and his herd of testosterone brush past her, chanting about something or another.
“It has come to the attention of the university that a certain individual, or individuals, are circulating rumors about students disappearing. Rest assured, if these disturbances do not cease, these perpetrators will be dealt with.”
The room is silent, and Laura is shrinking - Carmilla is trying to not laugh. But then, before anything else happens, the redhead is standing up to talk back. The look on Mother’s face is also hilarious, and at this point, Carmilla is happy she’s brought Laura’s secret cookie stash along. She’s popping them in her mouth like popcorn. She wondered if Laura had popcorn.
One of William’s walking muscle lumps stands up and starts talking about safety patrols, and the boy is nodding along. This draws another sneer, but she reaches for more cookies as the redhead turns on them and a number of other athletic young women around the room join her in a yelling match that’s overrun with a bunch of shouting nerds from the always-disastrous Alchemy Club. Then, everyone’s yelling, and Carmilla finds it fitting to just leave. She drops the cookies and darts out the doors, dropping into her panther form - what better time to behave like an animal? She can smell salted herring in droves wafting from the hall she’s just left.
She darts through campus, keeping to the shadows, just in case someone else has ditched the all-important, menacing Town Hall. The woods on the edge of the campus call her in, and she finds her way to the clearing she had visited with Ell a few times.
The faeries and shapeshifters that hide out in the forest know her well enough to let her be, and she sits and looks up at the stars as she considers what to do next. The feeling of that girl - the tall redhead she had seen with Laura at the town hall - pulled through her stomach. It was grating, and she felt her throat rattle with a growl. She didn’t much like the girl, and now that she was paying attention, the barest scent she had caught coming from the girl in the crowded hall was hovering in the air of the forest.
Of course. She was with the inane Summer Society girls, always screaming about their own empowerment but wasting their time combatting with the idiotic Zetas. Their rivalry was centuries-old, and boring to Carmilla. William seemed to revel in it though, continually joining the seemingly unchanging crowd of lustful, reductive young men.
The stars weren’t providing her with much companionship, and neither was her clearing - so she sauntered away, thinking over her plans. The look on Laura’s face as Mother’s voice boomed out her disapproval had been frightened, but not bowed. The look on Laura’s face as the redhead had stood up to fight for her had been awed. She growled at the thought. Did the girl need that kind of protection? Carmilla was already there, preventing her from being murdered in some sort of ancient ritual. The redhead should stay in her lane.
Of course, by the time she gets back to the dorm, there’s William the Bloody Terrible and a large Zeta who’s grinning at Laura, and she’s even more frustrated with people who won’t stay in their lane. She beats the grinning one up, bites him too, before William is giving her a glare as he pulls his bro out the door. Laura stares at her, and she just sprawls on Laura’s bed, uncaring. The girl’s computer starts spouting off noises, and she knows now that she’s in trouble as the girl’s face lights up in happiness.
-
“If you don’t takecare of this situation, I will,” Mother is saying, and Carmilla’s boredom with this reprimanding evaporates. She tries not to let it show, but God knows. The last time Mother took care of a situation, she was buried in a coffin of blood for about seventy years. She can hear Laura and her other two redheaded idiots, LaFontaine and Perry giggling away at the chewing out.
Mother can at least tell that the threat has landed, and pushes the door open for Carmilla with a menacing look that is barely scrutable even after all these years. Perry and LaFontaine try to play nice, but the look shrinks them down, and Mother is powerwalking away, leaving Carmilla to deal with the anger simmering up inside her.
The two dons ditch, and Carmilla throws her book at the wall. She’s pushed herself between a rock and a hard place. Mother is pulling the hammer down, ready to give her a more permanent burial if she doesn’t deliver, or at least get rid of this pesky girl. But the pesky girl is now, maybe, a pet project. At intervals, Carmilla thinks maybe she’s admirable for being so dogged in her pursuit of truth. At others, she desperately wishes she could drink the girl dry and deliver the lunkhead, Danny, who’s been lounging around her dorm room, to her mother in apology.
“Did you wanna talk about it?” Laura’s voice is all gloat, and it grates down Carmilla’s spine. She wants to rend the walls apart, and there’s an easily damaged human being trapped in the room with her.
“No,” she says, hoping Laura will take the hint and stop talking. Apparently, however, Laura is no good at hints - which should be obvious, considering she’s watched Danny drop them all over the room for the past week - and keeps talking. She sounds less sure of herself this time.
“Because, you know, a personal chewing-out by the Dean of Students, that is impressively badass, or something?” Laura’s face is a bit imploring, maybe reaching for an imitation of empathetic. It’s irritating, and Carmilla stretches her believability by parroting back words she knows a normal human might not have been able to hear.
“But I so had it coming, didn’t I?”
Unexpectedly, Laura’s face draws back to guilty.
“Look, I didn’t mean it like that…”
“Please, you think the Dean of Students is raking me over the coals because I don’t play along over your passive aggressive chore wheel?”
“No, but...well, why would she be?”
“I said something she didn’t like,” she muttered, running back over the damn Goethe talk. She hadn’t even known the woman was there before she was going off about the burden of Faustian deals. The guilt of it. Everyone else in the room had just been impressed that she had thought so deeply about it, but, really - she’d had centuries to consider the damnedness of Goethe. Mother had not thought her so precocious. She doesn’t even hear Laura’s next few words, because the urge to speak grows heavy on her vocal chords. She’s pacing up to grab tissues because, fuck, she’s crying -
“God, this age doesn’t understand obligation. It’s like an undersea anchor, impossible to escape.”
She doesn’t realize she’s slipped backward in tone for a moment, not until Laura responds as she wipes away stray tears.
“Ah, worried you aren’t, uh, living up to expectations, huh? Only child of massively overprotective dad here? And I didn’t even have to get all Coleridge-y about it.”
This draws a smile out - the Coleridge reference helps. Laura slides on up in her desk chair, offering out the trash can for the tissues Carmilla’s taken. It’s small, but Laura’s looking at her, for the first time, with true kindness. Her chest tightens up a bit as they watch each other, waiting for the moment to break.
The door swings open, and indeed the moment breaks.
-
After the chewing-out, Carmilla pays a little more attention to Laura herself. She’s up and about while the girl sleeps, reading Kierkegaard and staring up at the stars. She resolves to stay in the room a bit more at night - with William prowling around trying to “protect” young women she knows Laura is a little less safe now.
She listens to the girl breathe while she reads over words she’s read a thousand times before. It’s beautiful, but she’s searching for something in the words. She finds new things every time. Laura snorts a little in her sleep, muttering about India - her lit class has moved on to Kipling, and she and Danny don’t talk as much about it as other topics, thank God. Apparently Laura has a better handle on Kipling than old English poetry. Which is all well and good, because old English poetry is practically useless. The Germans had a far better handle on writing than the English at the time.
Carmilla loves Kipling. She considers talking about it with Laura, occasionally, but the girl’s too busy searching for her missing roommate and filming every second of her life. It’s all well and good. Kipling’s writings have always swung a little too close to home, and Carmilla read them a little too quickly after her freedom from the earth.
Laura frowned, her body writhing slightly. This draws memories, too, and she considers dropping into the familiar role of guardian, of soothing her trembling with the panther. The sound of Laura’s moan stops her, and Carmilla settles Kierkegaard against the windowsill to listen to Laura’s heartbeat pick up.
What does she know about Laura Hollis?
She knows her father is a teensy bit insane. The girl has two trunks shoved under her bed filled with what smells like dangerous aerosols and at least four kilograms of hemlock. Carmilla tried to look once, but there were also four locks on the damn things. She knows the girl is a journalism major, and loves Veronica Mars and considers Lois Lane her heroine.
Carmilla is trying to find a weakness in the girl, somewhere underneath the bravado and sleuthing, but she can’t seem to get past a now vague irritation and suspicion the girl holds for her. The anger over cleaning has lessened up, but now Laura looks at her more closely.
The girl rolls over in her sleep, moaning again. She wants to melt into the cat form, the urge so overwhelming for a moment that she feels like she’s on fire. Laura’s face looks a little like Ell’s, in the starlight, for just a moment. She tries to shake it, but it doesn’t quite disappear from her mind when Laura rolls away again.
Carmilla is starting to think she is the vulnerable one here.
-
She fashions the bat wing herself. She had bought it the first time, for Ell, but this time she knew it might draw too much attention if she were to go to town to purchase it. She tries not to think about that at all - that the last time she was carrying one of these horrible things around, it was for Ell. Every time she grips the thing it makes her feel ghostly, like she’s barely got her feet on the ground. She feels less than superhuman.
As she slides it on Laura’s wrist and ties it in place, her fingers glance against Laura’s skin. Laura’s heart is beating a little fast, and Carmilla can smell the extra blood. She’s close enough to want to taste it, as sugary as she imagines it to be. She wants it, wants to taste it and Laura.
It’s awful, but when Laura asks her where she goes all night - (to the woods, to get away from the way Laura whines in her sleep over her dreams, even though she knows it isn’t safe to leave the girl alone like that) - she leans a little too close just to catch a closer whiff.
-
Laura acts strangely for the next few days, still a little twitchy whenever Carmilla comes in the room. The way her heartbeat picks up starts to be endearing. She herself starts to be endearing. It’s frustrating, to say the least, considering Mother has stated clearly that this is Carmilla’s mess now. Laura keeps vlogging, she assumes. She doesn’t watch them, because it would just be another way of watching Laura and Danny and the other dimwits worry over damned Betty and her irritatingly pink clothing.
Carmilla comes wandering in just after sunset one day and finds Laura hovering over a tin of cupcakes, typing away at her computer. Laura throws her a little nervous smile, and Carmilla returns it.
“Where’d you get such a sweet tooth, cupcake?” Carmilla asks, reaching for one of the little chocolate things and accidentally brushing past Laura’s arm. The girl almost jumps out of her chair, and her blood races around. It’s amusing, and...something else, something not worth considering right now.
“My dad would just buy me chocolate whenever I got sad,” Laura answered, her voice a little wavering. Carmilla considers pressing there, but - she isn’t privileged to keep asking, she supposes. She needs to scare the girl off, not get to know her. She’s already done too much.
“Seems like a great guy,” she says sarcastically, and turns away to hide the wince from Laura. Laura doesn’t respond for a moment, but she doesn’t smell angry - maybe sad or wistful. The wave of awfulness that comes over Carmilla at the guilt that falls in her stomach almost makes her sit down. She grabs Laura’s yellow pillow and places it on her bed, settling against it. It supported her back well, and she was, technically, old. She needed good back support.
Laura turned to look at Carmilla, with a surveying look. Carmilla gives a smile, the one she knows irritates Laura.
“Where’d you get such a sweet tooth, then?” Laura asks. It is, Carmilla imagines, an attempt to delve into her self-proclaimed mystery. Laura’s been trying to do that for the past week or two, and every time it causes a burst of warmth in the center of her chest that the girl is curious about her. She takes a bite of cupcake.
“I lived near a bakery as a child,” Carmilla answers. It’s a lie, in the sense that the baker lived in her house all the way back in 1680. Hans had made delicious cakes and used the finest chocolates. They had been luxuries, but her mother had insisted. It is close enough to the truth that she feels uncomfortable.
Laura watches her for a moment, and her eyes are tracing over Carmilla’s face over and over. It reminds Carmilla, unbidden, of the way Ell used to look over her before asking, “Tell me your mind, love.”
They stare at each other for a few more moments before the door swings open again, and one of the redheads comes wandering in. Carmilla leaves, and doesn’t come back until sunrise.
-
Ell looks surprised, for a moment, that Carmilla is asking her for a walk around the grounds. She’s been watching the girl for almost the entirety of the party, and can’t seem to keep her eyes off her. Normally she would blame it on the focus Mother required she put in on these seductions, but the girl is enchanting. The week that she’s been stowed away in her and her father’s home has been near torture; Carmilla can’t stop her eyes off the girl.
She’s bright, in a way that not many girls in this age are. Ell is filled with charm and excitement - her father lets her run free as long as she completes the requisite schooling over needlepoint and posture. Carmilla cares little, but she threads and watches Ell’s frown as she does the same. It’s endearing, and she fears something has gone wrong.
Carmilla knows, of course, of love. She’s never known it, not in the way that it is described in the writings of philosophers and poets. She’s seen great wonders, but the way Ell smiles as middle-aged, pudgy men ask her on her favorite flowers is a wonder of its own.
“I had grown tired of those horrid men. Thank you for my rescue, dear Carmilla,” Ell says, taking Carmilla’s arm as they walked toward the lake on the edge of her property. The estate is lovely, not so lovely as the old Karnstein castle a short distance away.
“I had grown tired of them, also,” Carmilla says, her voice trembling. Ell looks over to her questioningly, but Carmilla has no answer. No suitors had bothered approaching the glaring girl in the corner.
“Said like a true suitor in her own right,” Ell says. The smile that writes itself across her face is sunny in the dusk of the evening. Carmilla is starting to feel strength seep back into her bones as the damned light slips away to bring night. It helps, too, the feeling that courses through her as Ell’s words sink in.
Mother was very far away from her as they continued on their walk around the lake, their bodies bumping into each other too often to be unintentional.
-
“‘Black as the pit and terrible as the night was Bagheera.’ I always loved that. It’s beautiful,” Carmilla said, her voice somewhere between soothing and seductive. Laura was wearing her customary green tank to bed, and the soft muscles of the girl’s arms and back were easy to see in the low light of the room for Carmilla. She had left that night when Laura’s dreams had started, knowing the girl would be somewhat safe with the batwing on.
The clearing had given her solace, and she had sat peacefully in the panther form for what felt like hours, watching the stars trace across the sky, slowly. She knew that she was expected to deliver Laura soon, or else Mother’s wrath would come to her.
Carmilla was becoming less certain in her quest to get Laura out of Silas and away from the monsters that hid on the campus. The girl wouldn’t budge, no matter the tactic. She had left seduction out of the plans on pure annoyance with the girl at first, but now, she was avoiding it out of fear.
She had come back when she heard the girl’s nightmares get more violent. The panther could sense them, even at this distance (another concerning notion), and she had given in. Prowling around the dorm room, trying to chase off the notions that crowded Laura’s brain. The nightmares were the inevitably strange part of the ritual - whatever it was - and she had spent plenty of time chasing them away. Watching Ell experience them had been agony. As for Laura...she could only listen to someone be in pain for so long.
“Or, you know, terrifying, because giant black cat,” Laura says, her body half-turned toward Carmilla’s as she saunters to her bed and sits down. Her eyes trace over Laura’s silhouette. It’s true of course. Bagheera was terrifying. She had always found it funny, especially after reading that passage, how her shape mirrored the black and terrible monster. The shapeshifting gift of the vampire was a strange one, allegedly based in their personalities. It was comforting to know that hers was a mirror of the monstrous life she lead as a vampire. She didn’t bother answering Laura, because the girl’s heart was picking up, and she was sidling closer to Carmilla.
“So,” she started, looking nervous, “there’s this party tomorrow night that the Zetas are throwing, and I was thinking that because we got off, such, to a rough start as roommates that we could go together? You know, maybe hang out for a while there. Look at the stars.”
Laura looks small in her desk chair, her heartbeat going wild. Carmilla doesn’t know what to think, exactly. She knows William is likely to make a move to capture one of the girls at the party and that it isn’t exactly safe for Laura to be there. But she would be there with her, and maybe…
She doesn’t finish the thought.
“I would like that very much,” she says, and it’s one of the first things she says to Laura that isn’t a lie.
-
Of course she would allow her damned attraction to blind her. Of course she would find herself tied to a damn chair while the redheaded perpetrators plus a gloating Laura all debate how to handle her. She could break loose at any second, but she’s certain she would snap Danny in half before personally tearing William limb-for-limb for playing along with this charade of a capture. She had broken his collarbone out of pure spite. It would, of course, heal in moments, and he would, of course, run to Mother and claim that Carmilla wasn’t playing nicely.
Maybe she could fashion some excuse for her imprisonment. It was already past pretending she wasn’t a vampire: it was clear now that Laura had known that for some time. The distrust that they all regarded her with was now very apparent - how she had missed it was beyond her.
What would Mother say? Something along the lines of letting pretty girls get in the way of doing what she needed to, for Mother’s sake. And she had been, so distracted, clearly - she hadn’t even heard the thunderous footsteps of the gigantic Summer Society troll as she and Laura looked at each other.
It was so - so idiotic. She had been ready to save Laura once again, shielding her away from the inevitable kidnappings at the party. She was going to share some champagne, squirreled away years ago, and maybe...maybe something would happen. Even if Laura didn’t like her, Carmilla wasn’t so wrong as to imagine the tension of attraction that ran beneath their interactions. She couldn’t be imagining that. She had thought, for a moment, for one singular moment, that her intuition hadn’t lead her astray, and that she and Laura were watching each other with real lust. That maybe she could shuttle Laura away safely by the power of it.
And then she had been tackled by a crazed, jealous clown car of dimwits. And now she was tied to a chair, and thirsty. Laura’s neck was bare, again, in that ridiculous tank top, and she was thankful she couldn’t see it very well. Anger and thirst didn’t couple well for vampires.
“If you could just explain yourself, you know, we would let you go,” Laura says, after turning the lights off and settling into bed.
“I am tied to a chair, and you expect me to explain myself?” Carmilla asks, staring at the white wall behind Laura’s computer idly. The computer is, for once, turned off.
“You’re a vampire!” Laura yelps, as if the entire dorm didn’t know by now that Carmilla was a member of the undead. Honestly, this century’s argumentative skill had certainly left much to be desired. She doesn’t bother answering, and Laura huffs until she falls asleep, into the nightmares. Carmilla sits in the darkness, comforted by the breakability of the ropes around her, and listens to her moans.
-
The seizures start around day seven, but only when Laura’s sleeping or away. She manages to control that, at the very least. They’re awful, but unfortunately familiar. The minute she feels her brain rattling around, slipping into the barely-there fugue, she is drawn back to that damned coffin.
She remembers scratching at the lid of the coffin, begging to whatever creature that listened to let her free. The seizures came early, then, around what could have been day three or four of her imprisonment. She hadn’t even known of them - and she had grown so angry knowing that Mother couldn’t have not known, and had still interned her anyway. Towards the end, the seizures were constant, Kojevnikov-like. The booming of the bombs had been an almost welcome distraction from the thunder in her own head.
When the earth ripped open above her, it was accompanied with the brilliant flash of fire and the steady glow of the stars. She had no respite here, trapped in this room, with this girl who Carmilla had allowed to capture her.
By the time Laura catches her in the midst of one of the seizures, Carmilla is desperate for another bomb. Instead, Laura touches her, holds the back of her head and gives her blood, apparently randomly acquired from the local hospital (they’ve always been a bit lax with their blood containment). She almost touches her again, at the mouth, but Carmilla is wise enough to know that she may bite if she senses Laura any closer.
“Look, if you really want me to believe that you didn’t do it, you have got to explain what you were doing at those parties, ‘cause the night that we caught you, it sure looked like you were about to eat me,” Laura says, and Carmilla’s heart sinks.
Of course.
-
“How could poor, sweet Ell have ever grown to love a monster?” Mother asks, one arm holding Ell, and the other extended to clench at Carmilla’s neck. She can hear her throat cracking under the grip, but can’t stop watching Ell. The girl looks utterly repulsed, by the display of violence and by Carmilla.
How could Mother have known? How did she find out? She had thought she was so careful, building a path through Europe to America to be with Ell - and now, this.
“You have disappointed me, Carmilla,” Mother says, letting go of Ell long enough to drop Carmilla and kick her. She rolls, unable to yell out anything. There’s a painful clicking noise when she tries to produce noise. By the time she comes to a stop, Mother is over her, dragging a struggling Ell.
“I saved you, and you repay me by disobeying me. By being disloyal to me.”
Mother’s voice is hardly even angry. It sounds airy, but the fear Carmilla feels becomes transcendent when Mother’s grip on Ell’s arm goes too tight; the girl’s forearm splinters and she screams. She attempts to reach for her, but Ell jerks away, from both of them - the both of them, monsters. Mother lets her fall to the ground, uncaring, and pulls Carmilla up to caress her face.
“You were my favorite,” Mother says, and suddenly, she’s being forced backwards at the jaw, further down the hill on the edge of the castle. Mother’s grip is again too strong and she feels her jaw fracture. It will heal, of course, all this will heal, but Ell -
“Oh, the little girl, of course,” she says, just before kicking swiftly at Carmilla’s knee. It bends outward sickeningly, and Carmilla falls forward. She tries to scrabble for purchase and transform into that damned panther, but it’s too much energy. The monster won’t come. She resorts to the beggar, then.
“Mother, please,” she starts, but it’s barely more than a wheeze coming through her crushed throat and broken jaw. She watches her sire pick up her love again and pull her closer. The beautiful girl is sobbing, and Carmilla is sobbing too. Mother is grinning. Ell looks at Carmilla with some strange look. It is similar to the way she used to view her, with love and hope. But it is infected now, with what Carmilla is. It is accusatory in its plea for help. Carmilla tries to push up to her feet, to power through the injury. Her body crumples, though, and her hands fall short of even Mother’s leather shoes. The boot comes down across her hand.
She tries to say something, to make a noise. But nothing is coming. She looks up at Mother, at Ell, and realizes what she must resemble now. A distorted perversion of a human being, groveling at the feet of a devil. The image Carmilla had tried so hard to keep from Ell, now made clear. She had fallen in love, and now, she was certain she had lead her love to death.
“I will grant you my blessing on your union with this lovely little thing,” Mother says, her hand, bloody, tracing over Ell’s face. The moon has hidden itself behind the clouds, and they cover the stars.
“‘Til death do you part.”
Mother kicks her backwards, and into the coffin far beneath the earth.
-
It’s silly Willy who Mother sends to rescue her, and he is clearly excited to have been thought of first. Carmilla thinks for a moment to remind him that Mother most likely sent him because he irritates her so much, but the poor boy would probably start sobbing at the thought that Mother didn’t love him best. It doesn’t help that he immediately begins threatening Laura, who is waking up quickly at the thought of two vampires on the loose.
“I am really going to enjoy this,” he says, and the irritation she feels with his very presence explodes into an actual rage. Before she can do anything much, Laura punches him in the throat. He actually chokes - amusing, considering he is gifted with a bit of superstrength and is less likely to feel pain than a normal human being. Laura must have punched him pretty hard, and so Carmilla is content to settle back in the desk chair to watch their tussle.
He kicks the door in and complains about broads these days and is generally horrific at banter. He eventually gains hold of Laura, though, and the look in Laura’s eyes is, for the first time, afraid. Carmilla is still angry at being tied up and starved, and still isn’t sure she likes the girl beyond being unfortunately, undeniably attracted to her, but she isn’t about to let William kill the girl. She punches him hard enough for him to know she isn’t playing - and she knows he’ll go running to Mother. He’ll tell her, “Carmilla’s gone and done it again, Mother,” and, well -
Laura’s sprung from his grip, and after a moment of looking between the two of them, launches herself behind Carmilla. Carmilla has no idea what to think of that, except that William is watching with curious eyes. He walks out, with a vague threat that has Carmilla ready to chase after him and finally end the little twerp’s life. How could he threaten her? She was at least one hundred years older than him, and he knew nothing of what was happening. The urge to take his throat and rip it clean open was there, but her strength to do so was not, so she turned back to look at Laura, who was hovering on Carmilla’s own bed.
“Thank you for not letting him eat me, which was especially nice of you-”
The urge comes too quickly for her to do anything about it - she’s been thinking about it for almost a week and a half, since the blasted party and the champagne and the way Laura’s neck had looked in their dimly lit room. Laura was staring at her dolefully, and she was beautiful. So Carmilla bit her.
Laura’s hips jumped up to hers almost immediately, in a mix of struggle and, well, a very obvious lust that Carmilla could taste in her blood. It was sweet, sweeter than any other human she had ever tasted - probably on account of her steady diet of sucrose. But it was delicious. It was so delicious, heaven on her tongue, and the feeling of being pressed against Laura was just as intoxicating. Laura was starting to go limp, though, and Carmilla - she had to let go of her.
She dropped her, and ran.
-
She barely survives a whole day without an attempt on her life, of course. Danny the gallant gigantor barges in with a stake (a stake!), and tries to be menacing. Carmilla’s just finished embarrassing herself by touching Laura gratuitously (“It makes you feel off to vampires,” she says, while attempting to not puke and also joyously feeling Laura’s skin), and she’s just not in the mood: she almost breaks the girl’s neck, but leaves her for Laura to tear down instead.
It’s a little surprising, but after it’s over and Danny’s threatened her (again, and hopefully for the last time), Laura sits on her bed. Of course, then the giant mushrooms start, and she’s eventually being rushed outside to help clear the quad of the enormous things.
“Okay, the way you swing that is going to kill somebody,” Carmilla says, grabbing for Laura’s axe before she does indeed take off LaFontaine’s head. They don’t notice, too busy trying to collect a myriad of samples for their little laboratory nonsense.
“Oh, are you some sort of practiced lumberjack, Carmilla?” Laura asks haughtily, clearly still a bit angry about her not-breakup-but-still-breakup with Danny. She pulls the axe from Carmilla’s grip (read: Carmilla lets her), and attempts to swing again, and manages to take a good swipe at the mushroom. It then starts pouring out spores. Carmilla gently grips Laura’s arm and pulls her away, while LaFontaine tries to catch some of the spores without breathing. The next mushroom they arrive to is not trying to poison everyone.
“I’ve seen my fair share of plaid,” Carmilla says breezily as she watches Laura take the top of the mushroom. She catches a glimpse of a smile on the girl’s face. “Wouldn’t attribute that to being around lumberjacks, however.”
“How’d you know you liked girls?” Laura asks, hacking up the top while Carmilla makes sure no spores or other crazy people with axes are nearby. She spots Danny across the quad, staring at her and Laura.
“The lack of fear of persecution through death gives rise to all sorts of curious ventures,” Carmilla says, before Laura’s backswing does, in fact, hit her. It’s the back of the axe, thank God, and she barely feels it, but Laura almost screams.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” she asks, dropping the axe on Carmilla’s foot while reaching out for Carmilla’s shoulder.
“It’s fine,” Carmilla says, but Laura still grips her shoulder and tries to feel for any sort of injury.
“Am I now allowed to handle the axe?” she asks with a smirk. Laura nods sheepishly, but keeps her hand on Carmilla’s shoulder, looking out over the quad. There are drunken-looking students stumbling around, zombified by the spores. There are also crazy Zetas and Summer Society members hacking away, while sad Alchemy Club students urge them to be gentle. It’s such an encapsulation of all her time at this ridiculous school that she can’t help but laugh.
“This place is insane,” Laura says, and they look at each other and smile. It reminds Carmilla of how she knew she liked girls - something in the smile. It’s an unfortunate moment. She takes it out on the mushroom they’re cutting up, taking strong swings that slice the thing easily. Laura sticks to her side, apparently struck with some sense of preserving her life. God knows there are all sorts of creeps amongst the damned mushrooms trying to also kill them.
“When did you know you liked girls, cupcake?” Carmilla asks, legitimately curious. A mushroom springs up right in front of them, and Laura jumps backwards, laughing and grabbing onto Carmilla’s arm. It is funny, and Carmilla is for once inclined to smile at this idiotic place. Laura moves to her other side, while Carmilla moves to the new mushroom.
“When I was nine, I had a neighbor named Sophie,” Laura answered. “She was about five years older than me and I was a little obsessed with her.”
“What a cliche,” Carmilla says, laughing when Laura makes an affronted noise. She swings at the mushroom, but the axe gets stuck.
“Coming from the lesbian vampire?” Laura asks, laughing. Carmilla frowns, first at the comment, because - who is Laura Hollis to invalidate her identity, honestly? Born this way and whatnot. Her frown deepens when the axe won’t budge from the mushroom. As she tries to dislodge the damn thing, she notices the mushroom starting to swell. She turns quickly, abandoning the axe, and grabs Laura.
The mushroom explodes when she’s pushed them back about ten feet in the one second she has. The force of it knocks them down to the ground. Laura lands on top of Carmilla with a groan. Her weight settles comfortably on top of Carmilla while people around their mushroom start grunting, now inhaling the spores comfortably.
Carmilla finds herself staring up at Laura, who’s staring back. It’s the closest they’ve been since the biting incident, and it’s too much. Laura’s shirt rode up when Carmilla pushed her backwards, and her hands are tied up in it at the low of her back. Her skin is warm, so warm - vampires aren’t frigid stones, but Carmilla has been called at least chilly more often than not.
“Hi,” Laura says, her voice high pitched and nervous. Carmilla isn’t inclined to breathe right now, but the sound of Laura’s heartbeat is loud enough considering the girl was lying on top of her. Just past Laura’s head, Carmilla can see Danny, sword in hand, looking ready for murder. It is so joyful a moment that Carmilla actually grins back at Laura.
“Hello, cupcake. Come here often?”
Laura’s mouth drops, and her eyes drop to Carmilla’s lips. This is, of course, when everyone begins to notice the zombified spore-breathers are starting to gather wood and are pouring into the Lustig building, where smoke is starting to appear. Someone trips over them.
-
“What did I taste like?” Laura asks, before turning to look at Carmilla. She’s been typing away at something for one of her classes, happily ignoring the impending doom hovering over her now that she’s convinced Carmilla to stay and figure out a plan.
Carmilla’s been trying to figure out a plan between staring at Laura’s neck, where two bandages have been fairly obviously placed. The girl hasn’t mentioned it since the initial confrontation, but Carmilla can still taste the lust boiling up under the fear in the sugary blood. She hasn’t been able to draw the taste out of her mouth, no matter how many nervous blood packs she downs. She even tries the cocoa, but it only reminds her of it more.
She hasn’t made much headway on her plan.
“Like a miracle, for not having diabetes,” Carmilla says airily, reaching for one of her trusty books. It’s Nietzsche, and the German copy. She tries to bury herself in it, but Laura is still watching her.
“What, creampuff? Surprised you aren’t all that exotic?”
“I was just wondering. Did you really live near a bakery as a child, like you said?” Laura asks idly, her attention now settled on Carmilla. Carmilla isn’t exactly unhappy with the attention, a terrifying thought in its own way. She promptly ignores it and attempts to read her Nietzsche.
“The baker lived in the house,” Carmilla said, deciding to just answer the girl so she would get this curiosity out of her system. Did it really matter so much?
“Oh, right. Did you live in a castle?”
“Yes.”
“Is it the best place you’ve ever lived?”
“What’s with the questions, cutie?” Carmilla huffs, setting her book down and staring at Laura, who is smiling a wide smile that crinkles the skin at the corner of her eyes.
“Oh, you know. Just trying to get an interview with a vampire,” Laura says, grinning as if she’s swallowed the last of the cookies just as Carmilla’s gone looking for them. Carmilla has never been more frustrated with another human being.
“That is the worst joke I’ve ever heard in my whole life. My whole life,” she says, glaring over at the girl. She’s giggling at herself and at Carmilla, and Carmilla smiles for just a second before she takes it off her face.
“I hope you’re satisfied with the joke you practiced for an entire week. Because it was awful,” Carmilla continues, glaring at Laura while the girl laughs even harder.
-
Carmilla had been enjoying the walk to the library. Laura had a frying pan and mace, LaFontaine had their baseball bat. Carmilla had brought a knife for the fun of it. LaFontaine had marched ahead, leading Carmilla and Laura towards the building. It was cold out, and Carmilla was enjoying watching her breath in the air, while Laura stuck closely to her side.
However, her enjoyment quickly ended as they creaked open the door to the library and climbed down five flights of stairs to the disappearing sub-basement. She had only been down there once, in an attempt to scare a girl off campus back in the 70s. It had worked very, very well, and Carmilla was reminded why almost immediately.
“Does anyone hear that?” Laura asked, looking from Carmilla to LaFontaine. LaFontaine shook their head slowly, but kept moving, raising their bat up a little more. Carmilla could hear better than the other two, she knew, but she couldn’t hear anything at all. For a moment, she was so distracted by searching for a sound that she hadn’t noticed Laura grabbing her hand and pulling her forward.
“Where do you think we should look?” LaFontaine asked, coming to the crossroads in the center of the archives. On the central table, there was a cage, swung wide open.
“Um, is that computer spelling things out at us again?” Laura asked in response, raising her frying pan laden hand to point at one of the index computers. It was indeed blinking the words I CAN HELP. I CAN HELP. WATCH FOR FLYING INFERNO.
“That was indeed comforting. You talk to it,” Carmilla says, nodding at LaFontaine and taking the bat out of their hands. “I’ll handle the flying inferno if it comes.”
Laura crowds over LaFontaine’s shoulder as they try to communicate to the computer. Carmilla turns to observe the ceiling of the sub-basement. It was covered with little black spots she could easily see were bats. No flying inferno in sight - but there was a flash of white just off the end of one of the stacks, accompanied with a slight giggle.
This place was awful. Laura would probably say it sat on a damn hellmouth if she stopped to consider applying Buffy logic to the whole thing. When Carmilla pulled her eyes away from the stacks and looked back to see the two dimwits’ progress, Laura was watching her.
“Can you hear that?” Laura asks. Carmilla concentrates hard, and hears nothing. It’s gone dead silent to her, but Laura is blinking and blinking, stepping away from LaFontaine and closer to Carmilla. “What is that?”
“I don’t hear anything, sweetheart,” Carmilla says, reaching for Laura’s hand. Upon touching though, it feels like her whole arm gets lit on fire - where their hands connect, it looks like a bolt of lightning juts out and strikes the ground beneath their feet. This place is so awful, honestly. Laura’s staring at their connected hands, before her puzzled eyes meet Carmilla’s.
“Do people normally turn into highly conductive Tesla coils here? You’ve been around,” Laura asks, and she actually laughs - laughs! - at this damn library and the possible hellmouth. The sound echoes around in the cavernous sub-basement. LaFontaine is too engrossed with the computer to notice the moment of scientific miracle occurring behind them.
“There it is again,” Laura says, shaking at Carmilla’s hand. Their fingers have threaded together now, and it almost feels like Carmilla can’t pull her hand away. She hears a giggle then, much closer than before, and tries to pull away so she can grip the baseball bat with both hands - totally prepared to send whatever monstrosity back to the stone age - but her hand won’t budge from Laura’s. She pulls again, much harsher, but she only ends up yanking Laura up against her. The shorter girl looks just as bewildered as Carmilla feels.
“We’ve become an electromagnetic phenomenon,” Carmilla mutters, and tries to step backward to put space between her and Laura - she can smell her blood too well up close, and well, it smells a specific way. It takes a little too much effort to be normal, and Carmilla watches Laura start to slide closer to her the minute she stops pushing the girl away.
“J.P. says there’s a Sumerian text that might have info on the ritual!” LaFontaine yelps, turning around to find Laura sliding straight into Carmilla’s arms. “Um, guys?”
“This is actually not intentional,” Laura says warningly. “I think we may have been magnetized.”
“We have one hundred percent definitely been magnetized,” Carmilla says, gritting her teeth as she tries to somehow remove her body from Laura’s. It isn’t working, at all, even with the fullest of her vampiric strength involved. She sticks the bat back out to LaFontaine, who grabs it just before Carmilla’s arm welds itself to Laura’s stomach.
“Who is J.P.?” Laura asks, clearly trying to ignore the situation at hand. Carmilla tries to make the position a little more comfortable, until her hands meet on the other side of Laura’s hip, just barely under the hem of her shirt. In all her years on Earth, she wasn’t sure she had ever felt so close to a person than in a moment she couldn’t really get away. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, honestly.
“He’s a library clerk who got sucked into the catalog? I can go get the book while you two figure out, uh, how to not be magnetized, but the problem is the Sumerian - he says he doesn’t know how to translate it, and it’s not like it’s an easy language to just pick up…” LaFontaine says. They’re staring at Laura and Carmilla and clearly trying not to start laughing.
“I can read it,” Carmilla says, in as dull a voice as possible, just so everyone knows how unaffected and bored she is of this whole adventure. “Just go get it before a flying inferno comes.”
“You can read Sumerian?” LaFontaine asks, but Carmilla just glares at her for a second, unable to gesture them away. They get the hint, starting to jog off down one of the stacks. Carmilla watches a flash of white come right through and cross in front of them, provoking a yelp and an errant swing of the baseball bat.
“I keep hearing a voice,” Laura says, looking up at Carmilla as well as she can wrapped in the middle of her arms. Carmilla again strains to hear anything - but besides LaFontaine jogging around and Laura’s heartbeat, she’s picking up nothing. She doesn’t look frightened so much as curious.
“Does it sound like anyone you know?” Carmilla asks, and watches Laura as she tilts her head to one side. It looks like she listens for a moment before her whole face turns bright red.
“Uh,” is all Laura has to say, just before - honest-to-God - two mirror images of them appear, rounding a corner at the very end of one of the stacks. Carmilla can sense a strange ripple around them, can barely perceive it with her eyes. But it looks like, almost, a different dimension, or a slightly different version of them. Carmilla - the other Carmilla, the clone one - was holding Laura’s hand for half a second just before pressing Laura - the clone Laura - up against the stacks and kissing her rather fiercely.
“Is that what you’ve been hearing?” Carmilla asks, watching her other self start kissing Laura’s neck while the girl turns her head to the side. This experience, of watching this not-her make it with a not-Laura while simultaneously magnetized to the real Laura, is so singularly unique in her life that it completely shocks her. The basement gives another foreboding rumble, and Carmilla isn’t distracted by that awful sign at all. The fake-them down the way flicker as the marble floors shake off the disturbance. It’s a strange electromagnetic occurrence, she supposes, this whole strange ordeal that’s happening to them right now.
She thinks she sees herself whisper in Laura’s ear, just in time with the Laura currently in her arms to squeak, loudly.
“Oh my God,” the Laura in her arms says, but it echoes strangely in Carmilla’s ears. They both stare at what’s happening down the aisle, and Carmilla hears Laura continue -
“I want it so bad,” she hears Laura say, but it doesn’t sound quite like the nervous, anxious ball wrapped in her arms. It feels like it’s just been whispered in her ear - and the Laura down the hall is just pulling her head away from Carmilla’s - the other Carmilla’s ear -
“Oh no,” Carmilla says, miserably. LaFontaine better hurry up with the damned book so that whatever weird dimensional strangeness happening to she and Laura would end as soon as possible. She could feel her damn fangs starting to prick out, and she could hear Laura’s heartbeat, smell her blood, smell her - smell -
The building shakes, and so do the clone-Carmilla-and-Laura. The rippled air around them flickers like a television trying to catch signal. The rumbles are starting to sound angrier. Carmilla hated this whole institution claiming to be a university.
Laura squeaks again, almost purple now. Down the hall, the clone Laura gets lifted up against the stacks, wrapping her legs around the clone Carmilla’s hips. Carmilla has only recently escaped being tied to a chair for several days, and was also imprisoned in a coffin deep underground for hundreds of years, but this is truly, honestly, the worst experience of her entire life. She wants desperately to be the Carmilla at the end of the hall, or wants to just reenact their movements as is. But she’s plastered to Laura at this point, stuck to the girl in such a way that she couldn’t move in any fashion - couldn’t move away, couldn’t move to a more conducive position.
“We shouldn’t be doing this here,” she hears clone Laura say - in her ear. Their dimensions, or - whatever hellish vision this is - it’s mixing with this reality, where she and Laura are magnetized and where a possible inferno is going to come at some point. God, she is the inferno, and Laura feels damp, or sweaty, or something more - some words more correct. Even in Carmilla’s own head, she can’t sort out the situation.
She knows exactly how she might respond to that sentence if it was indeed her, if she was indeed defiling Laura Hollis in a library, and she’d like to imagine it provokes the moan that she hears from both Lauras. Laura’s breathing picks up as it looks like the clone Carmilla’s hands start to wander.
Disturbingly, this is the point LaFontaine returns with the book, a bruise blooming on their face. They take one look at Laura and Carmilla (the real, magnetized ones), and then down where their eyes are fixed, and lets out a yell, before spinning to face away from both versions, covering their face with a large leatherbound book.
“What the hell is happening here?” LaFontaine yells, scattering a few bats on the ceiling.
“Some sort of torture,” Carmilla responds, trying to sound unaffected and perhaps very disturbed, but it mostly sounds gravelly. Laura shivers in her arms.
“I’ll say,” LaFontaine yells again, and a low rumble greets them. For half a second, Carmilla’s eyes are drawn away as dust falls from the ceiling of the sub-basement, and the ground ripples beneath their feet. Her eyes whip back when she hears a whining sound that is so undeniably Laura, and there is clone Laura, her head tilted back while - oh good God. The vision falters though, and then disappears completely as the building rumbles again. The wave that Carmilla could just barely perceive shocks outwards, reacting to the rumbling. The vision of the two of them tumbles away, and when the shock hits the real them, they’re rocked away from each other. Laura falls to the floor, and Carmilla gets knocked backwards into the very corner of a table. It hurts quite a bit, but any feeling was better than the overwhelming heat that had been building between she and Laura half a second ago.
“We’re never going to talk about this ever again,” LaFontaine says. Laura groans again on the ground. Carmilla can easily tell it isn’t from pain of any medical sort, so she lets LaFontaine be the one to draw near and help her up. Laura’s eyes trace her for a moment, and Carmilla has to draw in an unnecessary breath at how blown out her pupils looks, how she smells.
“Fine by me,” Carmilla says, perfecting quickly an apathetic tone. “This has been an awful experience.”
Laura just nods heavily, and picks up her abandoned frying pan to start up the path back out of the library. LaFontaine follows after, but they’re all distracted when a whistling sound starts up. Carmilla looks up just in time to spot something hurtling toward Laura. She drew the knife and stabbed it just before it hit the girl, sighing loudly. Laura stares at her, and they maintain (terrible, horrible) eye contact while LaFontaine pulls whatever it is off the knife and examines it. They start laughing.
“Flying Inferno,” they say, turning the mangled book around and showing the cover to Laura and Carmilla. It is indeed Dante’s Inferno.
“I’m never coming in this library ever again,” Laura says. Her eyes widen, and meet Carmilla’s.
Carmilla is never, ever going to be able to think about libraries the same ever again. But she still grabs Laura’s hand as they rush past the small dragon on the first floor, and holds it all the way home.
-
Laura’s nightmares were getting worse. Carmilla couldn’t find the time to slip away to the clearing, to think about Laura’s visions of Ell, or what she could do. She just paced around and around Laura’s room, unable to consider anything beyond Laura herself. They had grown close, closer than Carmilla thought possible. While she still wanted the girl, wanted her on a physical level, she was beginning to be unable to bear the thought of diminishing her.
Carmilla was a black mark, ruining all the things she touched. And Laura was - Laura was as bright as the stars. LaFontaine disappeared, and Perry had gone after her, tearing into Laura for being foolhardy and headstrong and blaming her for her friend’s disappearance. Carmilla had just barely restrained herself from turning on Perry. But Laura had started to blame herself, inexplicably.
She had been so wrong, of course. And Carmilla had told her so, ignoring Perry’s presence in their room, and she had never felt so open to Laura before. Not even while magnetized and teased by a strange dimensional quirk. It carried over - when she danced with Laura, she remembered what it had been like to discover and feel the waltz for the first time. Pressed up against someone, feeling them, and feeling the flutters of butterflies in her stomach. Laura had smiled at her as if she was the only thing worth seeing, as Ell had.
The worst part was that she could sense herself smiling back. That she could feel those butterflies once more. That she paced circles around their room, occasionally nosing up against Laura when she twitched in her sleep. That she would most assuredly be punished after all this.
Black as the pit and terrible as the night. The monster had fallen in love again.
-
Mother’s undeniable tone coming out of Laura’s small little body was more than a little frightening. She found herself shrinking away - Mother had that effect on her, but she knew that with Mother in control of Laura’s body, it would be one step out of line for Mother to decide to kill Laura anyway. The burn on her hand from the necklace ached, and she listened as Mother threatened Laura, insulted Carmilla, then gave her one chance:
“If you can keep your little pet here from making more trouble, I’ll let you keep her. Take someone else instead,” Mother says, and Laura’s body is too still and serene. Carmilla can barely trust the image of it. She says as much. And she wheels in that puppy dog Kirsch, and promises to save Laura, and take him. Mother knows - Mother knows. She knows that sparing Laura and sending the boy to his death will keep Carmilla from interfering. It does, and she signs the deal with the devil, to keep Laura safe.
-
The swim down to the blasted Blade of Hatsur is only slightly better than her coffin days. It grows dark quickly, and she can only barely see. The panther can see better though, and she forges further downward.
“Carmilla, if you’re watching this...you know,” Laura had said, even though she had sent her away, even though they were done as she had said. Even though Carmilla had bargained her friend’s life away. Danny, the enormous idiot that she was, had come storming in shortly after, and Carmilla’s resolve had quickly set in when she announced that Laura was trapped in the Lustig building, a future sacrifice to the light. She had a chance to save her - to save the girl she loved - for the second time. Carmilla was a near nihilist, but she wouldn’t question it anymore. She had a chance to be Laura’s hero.
Of course, it was fucking cold as hell in this blasted lake. How had the cult even get the sword down so far? Swimming as the panther provided her with extra insulation, but her muscles felt like blocks of ice underneath the thick black fur. Moving was becoming a troubling trial. She saw the cave, complete stalactites and stalagmites towering and hanging to create the image of teeth over the entrance. How quintessential. This whole ordeal was a damn cliche.
When she managed to squeeze past the sharp points, the cavern was wide and stretched out before her. There was the cliff face, replete with a strange darkness hovering high up it. She swam toward the patch of darkness.
There was a sealed marble tomb, almost, inset there - she couldn’t read the inscription because of the lack of light, not even with the eyes of a panther. She switched to human, and the change was exhausting. Here, though, she could trace the letters with her fingers, now practically ice chips. The inscription said: BEWARE TO ALL THOSE - and then she stopped reading, because honestly? Who had time for instructions. She had to get out of this damn lake and into the damn cavern underneath the Lustig. She bashed the marble in and withdrew a sword that sucked light into it.
And then she swam as fast as she could, ran through the woods, bursting through the clearing and past the fairies warning her, into the building.
And then, hopefully, she was Laura’s hero.
-
The pit was smoky. Generally, she didn’t need to breathe, so it was unconcerning. She couldn’t move very well - the sword had taken a lot of energy from her, and without any bodies around, she wasn’t exactly gaining any either. The damn thing had apparently combined with the fall into this blasted pit to save even her from death.
Maybe when it said ‘consumed’ it meant it totally sapped a person of energy. Maybe she didn’t quite count as a person. Stupid cultists.
She mostly just lied there and thought about Laura, and about her Mother, and about Ell. The women in her life, really. Ell had been in the light, reaching out for Carmilla, and it had been so painful, seeing her semi-alive. But she knew it was a trap. Laura had almost walked into the light herself, just as Carmilla was bounding in.
But Laura had looked at her with so much - so much love. And now her Mother was dead, and Ell’s memory was safely away from the damn Lollipop monster. Carmilla couldn’t muster its real name out of her brain.
She didn’t know how long she had been lying there. It felt like ages, or seconds - sometimes she could remember the breadth of her whole, long life, and the next she was struggling to remember just a few months ago. She was just lying there. It wasn’t especially painful.
Then, a clump of rocks landed on her leg.
She cursed, and the effort it took almost took her out of commission. Barely, she can hear someone talking, somewhere up above. She had fallen too far, really, to know. It was growing blurry.
“Dude, what was that?” she hears a voice ask, and then there’s rustling, and a light shining down on her. “Bro!”
“Get help, bro! We need to get her to Laura!”
Laura. She felt a smile come across her face, and then, she passed out.
-
“So you’re a big black cat, huh?” Laura asked, her face so earnest and the room so bright. She still feels half-there, but the feeling is coming back to her as the blood works its way through her system. She laughs, and shrugs.
“It’s my party trick, cupcake,” she said, and then almost keels over. Laura catches her, and supports her, moves her over to her own bed.
“Bagheera was never that bad,” Laura says, and settles next to her in the bed, lacing their fingers together. Carmilla can’t do much more than kiss her.
She isn’t sure she wants to do much else ever again.
-
“So, can you turn into a cat whenever you want?” Laura asks. They’re hiking through the snow of Styria, now just as tall as Laura is. Carmilla is carrying three bags: one full of Laura and her’s clothes, one backpack filled with the Sumerian book and Laura’s godforsaken laptop, and one filled with various survival kits that have finally proven useful.
The whole school had been evacuated. The scene had been quite chaotic: The Alchemy Club was running around campus, frantically picking up transponders (God knows), the Glee Club was chanting something Druid-ish and ancient, and the students were panicking. It was all very Titanic.
“When I have the energy to,” Carmilla says, pulling Laura away from a tall drift so she didn’t have to pull her out of one again. The girl had managed to submerge herself a few times, despite the fact that she had claimed enormous survival skills. Apparently it didn’t extend to winter hiking.
“How long have you been able to do that?” Laura asks. Her nose sounds stuffy, but she’s wearing two coats and three hats. It’s a pretty hilarious sight.
“Pretty soon after I died, I think. I woke up one day and I had paws. William used to turn into this infernal owl creature,” she answered. How many times had she stepped on his wings intentionally? Ah, memories.
“So you’ve been in my dreams?” Laura asked, nudging at Carmilla and grinning. Carmilla refuses to smile back, but fails.
“Not as such. The panther keeps nightmares away sometimes. Not sure why,” Carmilla muttered, watching Perry and LaFontaine march steadily through the snow ahead of them. She could just barely hear the rumblings of Silas off in the distance, away from these infernal mountains.
LaFontaine burst into another round of “All I Want for Christmas is You” up ahead, and Carmilla almost began a murder spree right then and there, halfway up a mountain and on the run with her maybe-girlfriend. Laura didn’t seem to mind it though.
Laura leaned up to whisper in Carmilla’s ear, and press a kiss to her cheek: “Meow-y Christmas, Carm.”
God. She is so done with humanity.