Chapter 7
After Carmilla vanished, Laura bellowed down the hallway to Perry and LaFontaine, and the pair of red heads came running, first aid kit in tow. As they bandaged Danny up, the injured girl hammered Laura with questions, not to be deterred from her role as savior by something as miniscule as a near death experience.
"What the hell was that!?" Danny demanded, gesticulating wildly with her free hand as LaFontaine tried to wrap the other one and Perry attended to the finger-shaped bruising forming on her throat with a bag of frozen peas. "She could've killed you, Laura!" Laura knew Danny's anger was only coming from fear for her safety, so she tried to keep her responses level.
"I just…she has seemed different lately is all. I mean, yeah we know she's a vampire but…she's been changing. She's been nice to me recently, and I just thought maybe if I talked to her, maybe I could find out what was going on without us having to hurt her or take drastic measures, especially considering we don't actually know if Carmilla is the one behind the girls disappearing," Laura sputtered out, her voice laced with apology, not for her choice to abort the plan to ambush Carmilla, but for the fact that her spur-of-the-moment change of plans had gotten Danny hurt.
"Oh, now I get it!" Danny hollered, her eyes steeling and her mouth snapping into a hard line, "so as soon as she comes in wearing some low cut corset and those RIDICULOUS leather pants, and schmoozes you with a little champagne and music, your brain goes out the window and she "might not be the one responsible," when we have pictures of her at every party where a girl has disappeared!?" Laura's face flamed red, half out of rage with Danny's accusation, and half out of embarrassment because she knew Danny was partly right.
"How dare you!" Laura yelled back, all attempts at remaining level headed quickly abandoned. "You don't know her at all! And don't act like cool, collected intellect is the only thing controlling your actions, especially when it comes to Carmilla! Who was the one that was suddenly all about stakes and ropes and holy water when she heard the term "seduction eyes" being applied to how Carmilla looks at me!? Yeah, maybe I was a little impulsive, Danny, but so were you! Not to mention, you tried to kill her tonight! We haven't discussed the fact that YOU attacked Carmilla, not the other way around! She could've snapped you like a twig, and me to boot for witnessing it, but she didn't! Because she's not a bad person, she's not a monster, she didn't want to hurt anyone tonight, which isn't something I can say about you right now!" Tears were now streaming down the honey blonde's face, and she burst out of her own room, leaving the three red head's perched on her bed, all shocked into utter silence.
Laura fled down the hallway, surpassing the creaky, jolting "hellevator" in favor of the safer bet of the stairs. Taking them three at a time, she quickly reached the bottom and burst out the back door of the dormitory onto the expansive back lawn that bled out into the forest. The cool night air chilled the damp tracks of her tears, and she wiped them away furiously. Without any plan, any purpose, she walked toward the tree line, knowing only that she wanted to distance herself as much as possible from everything that had happened tonight.
The shadows of the towering pines sprawled out in menacing black spears along the grass, growing longer the closer she came to the forest edge. She broke the hedge line and her pace slowed as the sounds of the campus began to fade, and as the dappled moonlight provided a less than clear path over the gnarled roots and jagged rocks smattered across the forest floor.
After about fifteen minutes of pushing onward in a straight line, she slowed when she came to a large, moss-covered boulder. Clambering up on it, she pulled her dress tightly about her legs and tucked her knees to her chin, looking up through the branches at the broken moonlight, counting stars aimlessly.
Until she heard the distinct snapping of twigs under steadily approaching footsteps.
