===Pyre===
She exited her trance as they seemed closer to their eventual destination. She recognized the place, but it was unfamiliar to her.
This was clearly where their castle was, but not far from it, and she could see human-made buildings. She tried to use her telepathy to talk to the gigantic wolf she was currently on, but she couldn't use that ability. She was weaker than she thought.
They stealthily moved around the town and used a secret entrance to enter the castle, which seemed abandoned outside and quite damaged. After moving through a long corridor, they went up some stairs and finally reached a vast hall as they got inside.
In the hall, many vampires were excited when they saw the princess but worried when they understood how weak she was.
Pyre looked around at her people and recognized most of them as castle servants.
One of them, who seemed to be the oldest among all, wasn't recognized by her as a servant but was one of the Elders. The Elders were vampires trusted by the king, and all of them were over one thousand years old.
People presumed Vampires were immortal, but they had an expiration date.
They would die at the start of their one-thousandth year unless the King or Queen of their representative made them an Elder. They did not know how long an Elder could live, as there were other ways they could die.
Gareth hadn't been alive for over two thousand years, at least the last time she was around. She didn't know how long she was away, but she was confident a long time had passed.
The werewolf person who was in charge of his people and had carried her here made sure she was comfortable once more as he turned to one of her servants.
"I am going to bring her somebody to feed on."
She was excited to hear that.
It was a long time since she had some human blood.
She wasn't certain who or how her people first discovered it, but human blood had the greatest recovery benefit for them. Some theorized that because they could not use magic, their blood was purer to consume than that of other creatures.
They had tested drinking the blood of beasts, but none except humans had these exceptional benefits. The blood of other creatures was helping them, but at a lesser to no degree for some.
For example, if a vampire drank the blood of another vampire, other than having a disgusting taste in their mouth, they earned nothing else.
A few thought that maybe that was why humans were brought to the realm, to be a resource for Vampires, but the Darien had objected to this, considering it absurd.
She couldn't do anything but wait, so she reentered another trance.
===Vlad===
He left the castle through its secret tunnels and headed toward the nearby town.
He had to find a human for the Princess to consume his blood so that she could recover faster.
He needed one not too young but neither too old, but most of all, one not to be missed. Usually, it was pretty rare when vampires were out for a hunt, as they didn't need blood to survive unless significantly injured. They could use their Vampire Charm to manipulate people's memories, making someone disappear much easier.
But not long after the Princesses got kidnapped, the humans attacked the castle of the Vampires.
He wasn't sure what happened that day, but he knew the vampires had to retreat, and their abilities weakened as time passed.
This wasn't his first hunt in the town, as the Vampires could use some blood here and there and couldn't keep a human alive for long.
Getting their blood sucked by Vampires seemed to consume some of their life force every time, so they would die after they fed a Vampire multiple times. As for restoring the lost life force, it was impossible to do, at least as far as Vlad knew. So he went to the part of the town where he knew the poor lived, and the ones with no home seemed to hang out.
He and his people had kept tabs on things that happened in the town and its people, so he had a perfect candidate in mind.
He had heard stories about this man everyone called Chester. The man seemed quite old because of his awful state, but Vlad had found out through his research that he had just completed his third decade in life a couple of years back.
Apparently, Chester wasn't his real name, but nobody knew what it was, so they called him like that. The reason was that he seemed to have an obsession with opening chests or different storage units. He took nothing from them but just opened them.
People seemed to let him be and did not care much about what he was doing so nobody would miss him. This made him the perfect candidate for Vlad's needs.
He found Chester in an alley that he was reported to mostly sleep in. Vlad used his senses, mostly his sense of smell, to detect anybody else nearby, and he detected nobody, so he had the perfect timing.
He had moved as silently as he could towards the seemingly asleep Chester, and Vlad could hear him mumbling in his sleep. While he was in the human base, he got the chance to get some sedates shot from them, and this was the perfect chance to use one. After all, consuming blood from a living human had a more significant effect than a recently deceased. So he got next to him with the injection in hand and used his hand to expose the person's neck.
As he was ready to give Chester the injection, he heard some sudden movement behind him. A young human boy appeared out of nowhere and stared at him with confused eyes.
"What are…" the boy didn't finish his question as Vlad quickly moved behind him and, with a hit at the back of his neck, the boy fell unconscious.
According to reports from his people, Vlad knew the boy was an 11-year-old orphan named Rubert. As with most of the orphans in the area, the grownups mostly used him to do tasks for them. But none seemed to care about the orphans or take care of them, so Vlad didn't mess with them, as humans of that young age hadn't developed enough to help Vampires.
He also considered it unfair to kidnap them as they had done nothing wrong, while the grownups had all the power to help the people around them and only cared for themselves. But he couldn't leave the boy behind, as he had seen his face. He had to take him back and hope that one Vampire was strong enough to affect the boy's memories.
He gave an injection to Chester but not to the boy. After that hit, he knew that the boy would stay down for enough time, and he didn't want to waste these injections. He wasn't sure if a single human would be enough for the Princess, so he tried to save as many injections for future hunts.
He also discovered why he hadn't detected the boy beforehand. He was as filthy as the trash around the alley, probably by sleeping around them. As for detecting their heartbeat, the Werewolf's sense of hearing wasn't as good as the Vampires, so they mostly used their sight and nose to detect people.
He was strong enough in his humanoid form to move while holding both of them, one at each of his shoulders. He didn't do so with the princess because he was faster in his wolf form but not as stealthy, but now stealth was more important than speed.