Carmilla: Moonlight's Guide to Nocturnal Creatures

PROLOGUE

"These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the spring. The water comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it falls. Why?"
-Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

Baby you need to leave,
'Cause I'm getting drunk on your noble deeds.
It doesn't matter that they don't get done,
When I feel this cold they're like the fucking sun.
---
Baby I need a friend,
But I'm a vampire smile, you'll meet a sticky end.
I'm here trying not to bite your neck,
But it's beautiful and I'm gonna get
So drunk on you and kill your friends.
You'll need me and we can be obsessed.
And I can touch your hair and taste your skin,
The ghosts won't matter 'cause we'll hide in sin.
---
Baby you have a choice,
'Cause you burn my ears with your magic voice.
I'm a paper doll, you can tear me up,
We'll be the broken lovers with the poison cup.
And we'll draw in breaths like we don't have air,
Oh god, look at me, don't you even care
That I'm dying in the cupboard underneath the stairs?
Steps stamp on above my head.
---
Baby you're cruel to me,
But you see I love it when you make me plead.
I want a scar that looks just like you,
'Til then I gotta learn to be a wiser fool.
Baby you need to leave,
And I know you know
That's why you keep ignoring me
Because if you don't,
Gonna run me down, let myself go
"Vampire Smile" -Kyla La Grange

---
There was nothing like the sight of a bird soaring through the wind below you in view of the entire forest landscape.

If it weren't for that Nina might not have ever gotten there any faster. This was something urgent. So urgent that she mustn't move any slower. That's why she flew instead. Through the eyes of a nocturnal creature in the guide of the moon's light, she saw the holly tree. Her heightened eyesight had probably been the only reason she had ever seen the short stumpy tree.

The holly tree was completely different from the rest of the trees that had stood in the forest. They had all been tall, cloud reaching, elder trees. But not this tree. It was different.
Nina swept down, quick, in a nose dive towards the red berried holly crown. Once she had landed in front of it she began to speak hastily.

"I have an offer for you that you may like." The tree responded with a screechy voice.

"Oh!" It was a high pitched squeal. "More blood my dear?"

"Of course. But you have to do something for me first."

Green scattered in a shroud of light around the tree as it shook with laughter.

"You want something from a measly old tree? Oh how exciting! This should be entertaining." The hollow in the tree lost all humour from its face. A face created in a hole in the trunk of this tree. "Tell me everything."

---

Whaapesh!

That was all the noise that Carmilla could hear bouncing off of the stone walls. Noises that echoed for what seemed like miles through the tunnels where it's walls were covered in dirt. The dirt was hard and dry from years of being under the ground where the sun and water couldn't reach it. She knew this because the dirt had been digging into her knees for several days now.