• "Hm..." Rhea replied. Yuna returned a couple hours later her cheeks flushed from the blood.
    "Feel better?" Rhea asked looking up for the first time, and Daven smiled.
    "Yes, but the sun will rise soon so I will be going to bed." she said, glancing at Daven for a brief second.
    "Really, dawn already?" she asked standing and stretching. "Well, about thirty minutes away is another cave and it's en route. We can camp there." She said, folding the map and pocketing it.
    Yuna nodded and they headed towards where Rhea had seen it on the map. They had gone about thirty minutes when Rhea stopped and started routing around in a bush.
    "Uh, what are you doing?" Daven asked.
    "Looking for the cave. Here we are." she said, pulling part of the bush aside to reveal a narrow opening that hid a wide, tall, deep cave. Perfect to avoid the sunlight, and any unwelcome visitors.
    "Ah, sleep at last." Yuna said sleepily, going to the darkest corner and curling up against the rock, wondering vaguely how Rhea had known the cave was hidden behind a bush. Rhea smiled, and tucked the maps away in Daven’s' rucksack.
    "OK, you sleep, I'm going to go explore. Be back in a bit." Rhea said, following a tunnel that led through the cave.
    "M'kay." Yuna muttered, slipping into a comfortable, dreamless sleep.

    In the tunnel, Rhea followed the long, dark, familiar passageways. The Labyrinth in which she had lived her entire miserable, tortured existence no longer held any fear for her, therefore no more power over her. But it did hold many painful and dark memories. She paused every now and then as she remembered and seemed to mentally re-live some of the moments. She finally stopped and looked up where a trap door loomed invitingly and ominously overhead. Her eyes were well adjusted to the ominous, forbidding darkness, so pushed open the trap door and climbed through it into a dark, musty room.
    Back at the cave entrance Yuna tossed and turned in what was turning out to be a not so comfortable sleep. She struggled to get to and stay asleep. Daven, sitting closer to the entrance, glanced at her worriedly. "Hey, you OK?" he asked.
    "Oh, yeah, just restless I guess. It's the new blood in my system probably. Every thing is adjusting." Yuna explained, waving his concern away as she sat up, bowing to the inevitable, and realizing she would not get sleep at the moment.
    "Oh, I see." Daven muttered. "So have you and Rhea really only known each other a day or two? I mean, you two just seem so close, it seems like it would be longer." Daven explained, blushing lightly.
    "Yeah, why so interested? Hm?" Yuna asked, glancing at him suspiciously, the corner of her mouth tilting a little.
    "I don't know, it's just, she seems a little familiar, but I can't think from where." Daven shrugged.
    "Yeah, she said the same thing about you." Yuna said thoughtfully.
    "Really? Did she say why?" Daven asked, looking up curiously. Yuna just shook her head,
    "No, just said you seemed familiar." she said.
    "Oh... I see." Daven said, sounding somewhat disappointed. "Who were her parents?" he asked. Yuna shrugged.
    “I don't know. I don't know that much really, at least personally. We haven't talked about that stuff much. It's just kind of been, getting settled, getting used to each other." Yuna explained.
    "Hm... I see." Daven said, then stiffened, listening as the sounds of a scuffle reached their sharply tuned ears. A sudden vicious snarl rent the air. A twisted grin spread strangely over Yuna's face, contorting its fine, porcelain, angelic features strangely.
    "Looks like the fun has arrived." she said.

    Rhea was slammed into the stone wall as soon as she was through the trapdoor; she slid down the slime covered walls. She staggered to her feet, already shifting into her lightly furred hybrid form. She was fully changed in a heartbeat. She let out a vicious snarl at the two looming figure in front of her. One was a seven foot tall black werewolf; the other was just under that range, and pale as the moon with raven black hair. A vampire, the vampire held a long, bloodied cat-o'-nine-tails. She snarled, remembering the pain that had caused her. It was going to be a fun bit of revenge.
    Yuna and Daven raced down the long dark tunnel towards the sound of the commotion. They saw the trap door hanging open and quickly clambered through it, and into the fight. The vampire lashed the whip at Yuna which she nimbly dodged, and round-house kicked the vampire in the face, smirking as a sickening crack rent the air. Rhea snarled and lunged at the werewolf, sinking elongated, razor sharp fangs into the lycans spine.
    The vampire stood in a flash with an enraged hiss, and seized his whip and lashed out wildly. Rhea felt the familiar burning, biting pain as the poisoned whip tore lashes into her back. Instinctively her back arched and her head was wrenched upward, tearing the unfortunate lycans spine out. Daven was not to be left out of the action, he lunged at he vampire from behind, tackling him with blade-sharp claws and pulling back, forcing him to drop the whip.
    Yuna spun around helplessly looking for some kind of weapon ' Where's a weapon? Anything, I have to find one. She thought desperately as the vampire managed to free itself from Daven and raced towards her. Out of nowhere a white scythe appeared in her hands. Rhea saw the scythe appear out of nowhere, she stared thoughtfully, until another roar from behind her alerted her to the presence of another lycan further down the tunnel. She wasted no time, turning and racing towards her next foe.
    Daven caught himself before he hit the wall as the vampire threw him and he let out an enraged cat-like hiss then leaped over the first lycans corpse at the vampire. Yuna gave no quarter, and wasted no time, she sliced the vampire's head off and turned to follow Rhea, Daven following behind.
    Rhea ran full out not paying attention to the floor; she barely kept herself from falling into a twenty foot deep spiked pit in the floor. She staggered backwards a few paces as two lycans roared at her from the other side, clearly hoping for a new meal.
    She shifted the scents of the tunnel, the only way out was past dumb and dumber. She paused, gagging distance, then leaped over the chasm, ducked under one lycan, and tripped him into the pit; the other lycan sank fangs into her already injured back. Half a second later he gasped and made an odd gurgling sound before falling back dead. Yuna ran blindly after Rhea, she didn't see the pit and fell towards the spikes, she caught herself just over the speared head of the lycan corpse, her feathery black wings flapping keeping her suspended above the spikes of death.
    Rhea gasped as she saw Yuna fall but sighed in relief as she caught herself. "You okay?" she asked, as Daven stood on the other side, judging the jump. He paused, and then leaped gracefully over the pit. At least it would have been graceful if he had actually made it. Instead, he fell short and crashed into the wall almost sliding to his death if Rhea and Yuna hadn't caught him and hauled him up.
    "Nice jump." Rhea remarked sarcastically. Then turned to Yuna, "So where did you get the shiny new toy?" she asked, pointing to the bloodied scythe in Yuna's hand.
    "Um... I don't know. First, I was just looking for a weapon and this came." she said, holding it up.
    "Heh, that's weird, maybe it's just an instinctive power?" Rhea asked.
    "I don't know. It just happened." Yuna shrugged...
    "Well, we can worry about that later I guess." Rhea said, her head was spinning and she felt sick. "Come on." she said and turned leading the way down the tunnel and turned left, clawing the camera she saw, and then kept going. Yuna and Daven followed, they helped each other outside and into the shelter of the forest.
    Once outside Rhea relaxed, now in her element, earth, and darkness. She led her friends along the wall in the shadows, and through the hole she had made during her first escape. Once out of the grounds they ran for the shelter of the dark trees and ran on until they were in the thick of them. Panting for breath and exhausted, running on sheer adrenaline, they all paused, and bent double, gasping for breath. Rhea finally relaxed completely and shifted back to her human form.
    Probably not the best choice, as she collapsed instantly lost to her dark unconsciousness. "Rhea!" Yuna gasped rushing to her side and quickly checking her pulse. Daven swore and knelt next to her, looking her over for wounds. He sat her up and noticed the nine, fine, cuts across Rhea's back. They smelled strange and were also marred by large fang marks on the side, where the cuts had swelled at each puncture. They had a dark, almost green tint to them.
    "Poison, she's been poisoned." he said.
    "Poisoned? How? By what?" Yuna asked, gently rubbing over the wounds, examining them.
    "When she attacked the first lycan, that vampire got a shot at her back. The whip must have been poisoned. It explains why the other lycan died, it's poisonous to lycans, but not vampires." he said thoughtfully.
    "Oh." Yuna replied, looking down. Then she looked back up in a sudden idea. She sliced her wrist with her fangs and smeared the blood on Rhea's wounds
    "What are you doing?" Daven yelped incredulously. "Sharing blood could kill her; it might not be her blood type!"
    "If you have a better idea then tell me," Yuna snapped. "But she won't die from this anyway; she's half of what I am." Daven looked at her confused.
    "You mean like a sister? You said you'd never met before." he said, sounding befuddled. Yuna shook her head.
    "What I mean is she is half vampire, my blood will heal and strengthen her." Yuna explained. "It happened when we were experimented on. She's half vampire, half lycan, and I'm a stronger vampire." She explained further as Rhea groaned and tried to stand. Yuna helped her to her feet. Rhea grimaced and held her arms out to steady herself. Her eyes, previously a light, topaz, were now a soulless, evil black, and the thirst seemed to threaten her very existence as she fought for control and the pain it brought, like a stabbing in her gut.
    She resisted the urge to growl and snarl like a dumb beast, and was thoroughly grateful her companions were not bleeding. Or were they? Yuna. Yuna was bleeding, and she was so close. Too close. She snarled and shoved herself away.
    "Don't touch me!" she shouted, terrified of her almost uncontrollable thirst.
    "It's okay," Yuna said, watching the wound heal by the second. "It's almost healed." Rhea looked away.
    "No! No it's not; I can't control It." she yelled and fled into the woods away from her friends, and away from all sanity