A/n: Rewritten chapter as of 11/16/2018

They were going to catch her.

Her heart was in her throat. Her lungs burned as she sucked down frigid air past the suffocating press of her own pulse. She didn't dare stop to catch her breath. No chance to glance behind to see how close they were. If she spared even a moment then she risked tripping on gnarled roots or long snow drifts. No, she could only stare ahead and pray.

The flicker of trees as she sprinted past lost their shape and meaning in the dark. She spared them only enough thought to avoid running into them. It had been a mistake to leave the road. She'd thought that cover would help. That she'd be able to lose them amid the thick underbrush. She'd been wrong.

The sound of their laughter was more chilling than the wind shrieking through the trees, their taunts rising and falling back as they toyed with her. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed a darker shape rushing through the trees. Just a little reminder that they could catch her when ever they pleased. Their undead bodies did not care about the freezing night sapping heat and strength away from living flesh. She was foolish for thinking she could outrun a pack of vampires.

They'd catch her. Of that there was no doubt. But Keelan would be damned if she didn't make them work for it.

Up ahead the treeline broke at the foot of a mountain and hope gave her a renewed burst of adrenaline as she spotted the outline of a building at its base. If she could just get close enough. If she could just catch her breath enough to scream. She never saw the hand that struck her.

Icy white pain shot through her as the blow sent her careening down a steep embankment of snow. Her flesh had long since lost the ability to feel the sting of scraps and cuts when ice, sharpened upon winter's grindstone, clawed into her skin. She clawed back, throwing herself forward just as she felt their breath against her neck.

Yanked up and held in the grip of a single pale hand, Keelan struck out with her hands only to have them slapped away.

"Come now little rabbit. Haven't you had your fill of running?" Silver eyes in a once elven face, a smile more sinister than a serpent's bared fangs, her captor pulled her close enough to feel the spill of his words against her skin. "Why don't we play another game? I think you'll like that one much better."

Keelan tried to strike at him again but found her arms would not obey, her body going limp under the press of the vampire's bespelling gaze. Only her heart seemed still willing to fight, thumping loudly in her chest as if she stood a chance.

The creature cradled her face in a grip like cold iron just as the others caught up with them.

"Quite the pretty catch isn't she?" The accent was Colovian and feminine, its owner hidden beneath a thick cloak. She hadn't been with the other two when this doomed chase had started, of that Keelan was sure. But the third? The Dunmer male still wearing his stolen Vigilant of Stendarr robes? Absolutely, and Keelan cursed herself for not catching on to their lie sooner.

"Indeed, I'm almost tempted to expand our little family." This from the Bosmer male still holding her aloft. He ran a thumb over the crest of Keelan's cheek and down until it pressed against her paralysed lips. "How about it bunny? Want to live forever?"

His spell offered her no chance to rebuke. Not that he'd have liked the answer curled upon her stilled tongue.

"It might be nice having a mage around," the female purred as she circled them, no doubt spying the staff strapped to Keelan's pack.

"A fair point."

Keelan wanted to shiver as the Bosmer's silver eyes turned back to her. Fortune had gifted him a once handsome face but death had robbed it of color and kindness, his skin sallow and waxy beneath the shade of his yellow hood and sable hair. "Perhaps we should put her through her paces?" The way the words rolled from his mouth made each sound salacious and obscene. His face drew close as his hand forced Keelan's chin up and to the right. She saw his mouth open and braced for the pain that would follow as the skin at her throat fell prey to his teeth.

All at once she was thrown backwards, tumbling through the snow as the vampire who had bitten her and his Dunmer clanmate clashed together. The Dunmer's face was pinched in a snarl, his features rawboned and gaunt.

"We agreed that the next one we caught would be mine." The words were spat with near tangible venom as the air crackled with the promise of violence.

"You idiot." The Bosmer was picking himself up out of the snow and dusting it from his robes. "If we want her to obey then I need to thrall her. What about that do you not understand?"

Keelan didn't care if she was likely no better off with the second than she had been with the first, she knew that this might be her last chance, and if she wanted to see another dawn then she had to act now.

In the struggle, most of her possessions had been scattered. She couldn't see the small knife that had once been nestled in her robes, nor any of the scrolls that Jhz'argo had given her. What she did see was the pointed end of a staff, whose properties she didn't know, sticking out of the churned snow little more than a foot from her. As the third vampire turned her attention from her bickering clanmates to the source of their quarrel, Keelan whispered a single prayer and dove for the staff.

Its ice coated shaft slid along her hand until one of the carved thorns caught in her palm, giving her the second she needed to tighten her grip on it and to face her enemy head on.

She didn't know what to expect as she swung the wooden rose into the face of the oncoming vampire. She prayed for the sickening smack of wood slamming into flesh, she feared what would happen if she heard nothing at all.