~Chapter 7~

The originally blonde-haired girl turned just in time to be rammed in the side, causing her to throw Marceline into the air, where she stayed until she could catch her breath and transform to defend herself. She had little time to accomplish such a task as many other vampires surrounded her, fighting each other as well as challenging the queen. Several of them hurled themselves at her, and each one she dodged. That blonde-headed girl was lost somewhere in the new battlefield. The trail of death left behind was unmistakeable and anyone who wanted to track them down would be able to find them.

Marceline was forced somewhere into the center of the crowd. Everywhere, she heard screams and battle cries, pain and death. It was pure carnage. As she tried to move around, seeking at least a semi-safe place to be while the others fought themselves over her title, a high-pitched whistle sang through the air. She had enough time to catch a brief glance at a little projectile before an enormous cloud of black smoke filled the air. She heard a screech, recognizing it as her own, followed by several others, and then the rest of the colony was splitting and roaming everywhere to escape the smoke cloud.

She didn't even know which way she was going, she just headed in a single direction, usually managing to hit a rock or a ledge or something else hard. Eventually she made it to the edge of the cloud, where her vision grew clearer. And where she spied many colors huddled against one another. She headed for them and for some reason, she felt herself getting angry.

"Men," a small voice peeped, "hold your fire!"

She flew nearer and nearer...to find yet another setback to this awful war. Who else would want to blind and disorient her? Who else would be so polite as to interrupt that which shouldn't ever have been interrupted in the first place. Now the war would last longer! Longer! As if it wasn't already long enough!

The clear image of Princess Bubblegum came into view. Her colorful subjects stood out like a sore thumb against the dreary, grayish-brown setting. Not the best decision when becoming involved in a gory war. And she had angered each and every vampire alive! That princess was so royal and protected that she didn't know right from left when it came to these things! Sugar drops like her wouldn't last four seconds!

Marceline, in order to avoid confusion among the candy people, morphed back into her more human-like self. It was hard to not attack Princess Bubblegum after the mess she'd made.

"Marceline, you're safe!" she exclaimed. "Do you feel sleepy yet?"

"Sleepy? No! Do you realize what you've done?" she yelled. "You've sent all of them into a frenzy! You've disrupted a war!"

"You aren't supposed to be angry," she said. "That was a knock-out formula."

The ever-present and very loyal Peppermint Butler stepped forth and held out a triangular bottle with a strange gray liquid in it. "Princess, do you mean this formula?"

The princess turned to look and gasped. "No! That's the knock-out formula! Quickly, what did you put in the missile?"

"A missile? That's what that was? YOU SHOT A MISSILE AT ME?" Marceline screamed.

"Oh, dear..." Peppermint Butler sighed. "Princess, I think we may have put the adrenaline stimulant in by mistake. I'm so sorry."

"Hey, Your Highness, you need to stay out of this!" With that, Marceline hooked her arms under the princess's and hoisted her into the air, with much protesting.

She brought her back to the cave where Finn was screaming and kicking to be let go of, and where Jake had used his arms like a straightjacket to tie Finn down. She set down the princess angrily and, grumbling and hissing on her way back out, left the trio to talk amongst themselves. However, Finn didn't exactly want to talk right now. He struggled impatiently against Jake, but it didn't work.

"Finn, you really mustn't go out there. I meant to distribute a formula that would put all the vampires to sleep, but we loaded the wrong one and when they inhaled it, they got angry," Princess Bubblegum said.

A horrible growl came from outside the cave, most likely deep in the canyon, where the fight was at. Several more joined in. Soon the whole cave was tremblings with the rumbles that came from outside. Jake moved himself, as well as Finn, deeper inside the cave. Afraid that Princess Bubblegum would get caught up in the savageness that was the vampires' fight, he called her to keep close to them.

That whole night was spent without any sleep, and water, any food... It was awful. Every few seconds they would hear what sounded like a T-Rex roaring its lungs out, and every few more they would hear bodies drop dead, splashing in large puddles of blood. They could literally only imagine what was happening. Even Princess Bubblegum couldn't bring herself to try to climb down the cliff despite her wishes to make sure her people were okay. Finn stopped resisting Jake, but just in case, the dog refused to let him go.

By the end of the night, there we no more sounds. Just to be sure, they waited another hour.

Jake went to the edge of the cliff to find the sun glowing brightly, meaning that he and the rest were safe from any vampires. He stretched his front legs down the cliff all the way to the bottom, where he let them settle soundly on the ground. Finn and PB climbed on his back and he departed from the cave, following the princess's orders to first look for her people. From her tone, she was hoping they'd either turned back or found safety.

Thankfully, the candy people had found a large cavern to hide in while the war went on. They were ecstatic to see that their princess was asked the candy people where Marceline had gone. They said that they couldn't tell which one was the queen because all of them had attacked every other one they saw. However, they also said that the whole war somehow moved from the middle of the canyon all the way to the outer edge, and that when the sun started to come up, the vampires focused less on fighting each other and more on finding refuge from the sunlight.

Princess Bubblegum told Peppermint Butler to lead everyone back to the Candy Kingdom. He was reluctant, but did as he was told. The next order of business was now at hand. Once again, Marceline had managed to escape them and this time they doubted she would want to be found. They traveled the way opposite of the Candy Kingdom, once again forced to go straight through the unceremonious graveyards. The vampires left in the sun weren't burning, they just lay lifelessly on the ground, usually in their own little pool of blood. Some were on top of the others, lying in someone else's pool of blood. There had to be at least a thousand vampires and the more they passed, the more gruesome it got. It was obvious that each time they fought, the more aggressive they became.

Finn wondered which ones were Marceline's victims.

As they pushed onward, they began to see small bats sleeping upside down, hanging off of stalagmites and other sheltered juts of rock. The caves, it seemed were decreasing in number, while ironically, the vampires only increased. Not surprisingly, they never saw two bats in the same place. They were safely distanced from one another. On the larger juts of rock lay dozing vampires in their human-like forms. They were cut up everywhere, their clothes ripped up and stained with their own blood as well as others' blood.

Blood, blood, blood. It was all they saw for the longest time. They pushed through the horrid odor that the others somehow slept through. Princess Bubblegum didn't complain about anything, not the daytime heat, not the smell of rotting vampires. They moved slowly, their consciences making them stop regularly to see if they could find Marceline among the grounded. And it was hard, because any of the bats could've been her.

Jake rose higher into the air, hoping to escape the scent of dead vampires. It was only a slight relief. The smell was persistent and absolutely relentless on the poor dog's stomach. He held it back for the sake of the princess, because puke was what princesses liked to see. Not that Finn liked to see it, but girls were a little different. He tried to talk as little as possible along the way, afraid of opening his mouth.

Eventually, the dead vampires began to lessen significantly, and the smell became...tolerable. That still hadn't seen Marceline so far, meaning that they'd either passed her while she slept in the for of a bat, or she had reached safety and was sleeping elsewhere.

"Look up there!" Princess Bubblegum shielded her eyes form the sun as she pointed to a ledge. The ledge was narrow and was veiled by the top of the cliff, which hung over it like an umbrella with rocky teeth helping obscure the view. No matter where the sun positioned itself in the sky, none of its light would reach that ledge. It was a smart choice for a vampire. And sure enough, as they got closer, a black speck appeared on the ledge. The closer they got, the clearer the image. Until finally, it was Marceline.

Jake ran under the "umbrella" and rose higher up to keep his back level with the top of the ledge, where Marceline, thank gloob, was still alive. The reason, they found out, that she'd looked like a black speck before was because she was lying face-down, flat on her stomach, with her hair blanketing her body. It was Princess Bubblegum who noticed that she was breathing very erratically, which meant something was wrong. She had to have been alive to get all the way up here, but from the way she was breathing, that could change any minute now.

The princess climbed off Jake and stepped onto the ledge, immediately dropping to her knees in front of Marceline. She bent over her and put two fingers on her throat. Her pulse wasn't irregular, which brought some relief.

"What's wrong, Peebles?" Finn asked as he got off Jake so the dog could shrink to fit on the ledge.

"Her breathing isn't normal," she replied. She turned Marceline's head and pressed her finger against the top of one of her fangs. The reflex was triggered and she bit down, although not actually biting anything.

"It's probably because she's really tired," Jake said, uncomfortably sitting on a rock.

She shook her head. "Her reflexes are working, so I don't think her nervous system was damaged. I don't know what's causing this."

Finn's eyes widened. "Will she be okay, princess?"

"No, not unless I can figure out what's going on," she answered.

She put her hands on Marceline's back and shook her, trying to wake her up. She coughed, and blood was flecked on the ground next to her mouth.

"Ooohh... This isn't good..." the princess whispered to herself. "Marceline, can you hear me?"

She didn't move, there was no sign she heard anything. Princess Bubblegum put her hands on her back again and shook her harder. It was brief, however. She took her hands from Marceline's back and looked at her hands. Wet blood covered them. PB reached for the queen's hair and pushed it off her back. The underside of her hair was clumped together, made darker by the blood. Three parallel gashes were bleeding profusely, and they were dangerously deep. Closing her eyes, the princess reached into one of the gashes. She felt liquid surround her hand, but kept her mind focused on finding out just how deep the injuries went. She stopped when she felt a rib. She took her hand out, certain that during one of Marceline's fights, the queen had been attacked from behind. The wounds left behind probably punctured a lung. Now the blood was slowly filling that lung, which was why she was coughing blood and breathing so strangely.

"Is she okay, PB?" Finn asked, jumping up in case his help was needed.

She shook her head again. "No, she's badly injured. If we don't get her to a hospital soon, she'll die! She needs to rest right now, but she's losing a lot of blood. She needs more...but..." She hesitated to finish. "The only way she can get more is by biting someone."

"What?" Finn said. "She's not going to do that! She hates biting people she knows!"

"I know." The princess held her arm up to Marceline's fangs.

A/N

Bet you weren't expecting Bubblegum to get involved, were you? Sorry about the wait, I needed to find the right opening for this chapter. And I'm also sorry about the fight "scene". It wasn't much of a fight, I guess, but like I said before, I can't do fight scenes very well. Hope this is good enough though.

Please review. And stuff.