===Pyre===
She got out of her trance as they seemed to get closer to their eventual destination. She recognized the place, but at the same time, it was unfamiliar.
This was clearly where their castle was, but not far from it, and she could see buildings made by humans.
She tried to use her telepathy to talk to the gigantic wolf she was currently on, but she couldn't use that ability. She probably was weaker than she thought.
They stealthily moved around the town. They used a secret entrance to enter the castle, which seemed to be 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 the moment 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 servants of the castle.
One of them, who seemed to be the oldest among all, wasn't recognized by her as a servant but was actually 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 in reality, they had an expiration date.
They would die at the start of their one-thousandth year unless the Kind, or his representative, would make 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 realized quite some 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 first discovered it, but the human blood had the greatest recovery benefit for them. Some theorized that because they completely could not use magic, their blood was purer to consume than other creatures.
They had tested drinking the blood of beasts, but none except humans had these exceptional benefits. So 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 humans, to be a resource for Vampires, but the King had brought this to an end, considering it absurd.
She couldn't do anything but wait, so she reentered another trance of hers.
===Vlad===
He left the castle through its secret tunnels and headed toward the town near it.
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. Normally when Vampires were out for a hunt, which was quite rare, as they didn't need the blood to survive, they could use their Vampire Charm to manipulate people's memories, making someone disappearing a lot easier.
But not long after the Princesses got kidnapped, the humans attacked the castle of the Vampires.
He wasn't certain what happened that day, but he knew the vampires had to retreat, and their' abilities got weaker and weaker as time passed.
This wasn't his first hunt in the town, as the Vampires could use some blood here and there, and they couldn't keep a human alive for long.
Getting their blood sucked by Vampires seemed to consume some of their life force every time, and so they would die after they fed a Vampire multiple times. As for restoring the lost life force was something 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 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 that everyone called Chester. The man seemed to be quite old because of the awful state he was currently in, but Vlad had found out through his research that he had just completed his third decade in life a couple of years back.
Chester wasn't his real name, apparently, 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 just to let him be and not care much about what he was doing, so nobody would miss him. This made him the perfect candidate for what Vlad needed.
He found Chester in an alley that he used to sleep in. He 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, who he could hear mumbling in his sleep. While he was in the humans base, he got the chance of getting some sedates shot from them, and this was the perfect chance to use one. So he got next to him with the injection at 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 from behind him.
A young human boy appeared out of nowhere and was staring 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 its neck, the boy fell unconscious.
He had noticed that boy during his research and was an 11 years-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 took care of them, but 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 with him 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 also found out the reason that 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 their 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 at his wolf form but not as stealthy, but now stealth was more important than speed.