"Are you sure about this, Pale?" Evie asked as they stepped inside the city's morgue, Adam trailing just behind them.

Pale paused, then turned to face her. "Truthfully? No. I suspect this isn't going to lead to anything, but we still have to try. This is the only potential lead we've got."

Slowly, Evie nodded. "Okay. What do you need us to do?"

"Keep her father outside," Pale warned. "I don't think he'll want to see this."

"I'll do that," Kayla offered. "I wouldn't be able to stand the blood and guts, anyway…"

"Very well." Pale peered past her, locking eyes with Adam. "You have my word that I will do my absolute best to not only find out everything I can from her, but also keep her body in one piece. She deserves at least that much respect."

Adam nodded softly. "Do what you can," he pleaded.

Pale pursed her lips, but said nothing. Instead, she turned to Evie and motioned for her to follow. Together, both girls entered the room, closing the door behind them.

The room was everything Pale expected it to be, which was to say that it was incredibly rudimentary from the ground up. There was a stone slab in the middle, upon which May's body rested, covered by a white sheet. There was also a shelf full of chemicals used for preserving corpses, but past that, there wasn't much else, save for the torches that lit the room.

"So," Evie asked, stepping up alongside Pale. "How is this going to work?"

"You're okay with the sight of gore?" Pale asked.

"Believe me, I've seen worse throughout my years. You don't get to be my age without doing some things you regret."

Pale nodded. "Okay. Let's get started, then."

The two of them approached the stone slab, and Pale pulled the sheet off of May's body. The dessicated corpse was there, but stripped of its clothes now, allowing Pale to get a good look at it for the first time. It was just as she'd suspected – the body looked to have been drained of all its fluids; its skin hung taught around the bones, and its veins all seemed to have collapsed.

"Gods…" Evie muttered. "What in the three hells could have done something like this to someone, and so quickly, at that?"

"That's what we're hoping to find out," Pale said. "Alright, let's begin preliminary examinations."

She motioned to May's neck. "There are two puncture wounds there, just on top of where the carotid artery would be; I suspect those are what led to her extreme exsanguination, but until we take a deeper look, let's not write anything off."

Evie nodded, writing down on a piece of parchment as Pale circled around May's body, looking for anything else of interest.

"No defensive wounds," Pale reported. "So it's as I suspected – she was caught by surprise and couldn't fight back in time to save herself. The whole attack took less than a minute; I suspect whoever got to her punctured her neck, and the intense bleeding from the resulting wound led to a rapid loss of blood pressure, which left her unconscious before she had a chance to try and resist."

"Makes sense…" Evie muttered, continuing to write the entire time. "Is that everything?"

Pale circled the corpse once more before nodding. "I believe so. Nothing else really jumped out at me. It truly does look as if someone managed to simply get the drop on her, then rapidly drain her of her blood before anyone could do anything about it. I take it that's as odd-sounding to you as it is to me?"

"It is," Evie replied, though there was something else that crept into her voice that Pale couldn't place – confusion, perhaps? She couldn't tell.

Still, Pale nodded. "Very well. Then I suppose it's time to take a deeper look."

She drew her knife, then approached May's body and began to cut a Y-shaped incision from her collarbone down to her navel. Once that was done, and her innards were exposed, Pale sheathed her knife and flipped it around, then carefully bashed at the ribs with the pommel of the blade until they broke. The moment they did, she pulled them back, enabling her to get a closer look inside.

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"Initial thoughts," she began, "there truly isn't a single drop of blood left in her."

"How can you tell?" Evie asked.

"All her organs are shriveled up, almost necrotic… I know that's not due to decomposition – she hasn't been dead long enough for decomp to set in yet, and even if she had been, her body was thankfully untouched."

"Necrotic? What does that mean?"

"It means her body is rotting, even though it shouldn't be." Pale's brow furrowed. "Truthfully, I'm at a loss with that one. It defies any kind of medical science I'm aware of. Simply put, this body should not look like this by any stretch of the imagination."

"Some kind of magic, maybe?"

"Maybe," Pale conceded. "But what kind of magic do you know of that can do this to a person?"

Evie shook her head. "I have no idea, Pale. This is the first I'm hearing of anything like this."

"You're sure?"

"Well, yes, I-"

Evie suddenly paused, her eyes going wide. Pale stared at her, then leaned in.

"You know something?" Pale questioned.

"Possibly," Evie told her. "I mean… maybe? But it doesn't make any sense… they were supposed to have been wiped out hundreds of years ago, there hasn't been a confirmed sighting of one in centuries…"

"Who is they?" Pale all but demanded. "If you know something-"

"Look, I don't know anything for sure," Evie offered. "It's just… this reminds me of something I encountered several hundred years ago. I didn't initially think of it because, like I said, there hasn't been a sighting in centuries. For one to still be walking around, it's… it's simply impossible."

"Apparently, not quite. Now, are you going to explain, or not?"

"Certainly." Evie took a breath. "Pale, I think we're dealing with a-"

Just before she could finish her sentence, May's corpse suddenly lurched upwards, her teeth bared. Pale just barely managed to get out of the way by falling backwards, meaning May's attempt to sink her teeth into her shoulder missed. Both girls went tumbling to the floor, and Pale was forced to scramble backwards as May clawed for her, her nails scrabbling across the ground. Pale stared at the suddenly-living corpse in wide-eyed disbelief – May had been dead; she'd confirmed it herself. Not only had there not been a pulse, but there was no blood circulating throughout her body, and even if there was, her organs were currently trailing out of her torso onto the ground below.

And yet, May didn't seem to care. She simply continued crawling after Pale, a low, feral moan erupting from her mouth as she did so.

Pale's heart hammered in her chest at the sight of it. So disconcerted was she that she almost didn't realize Evie was still there, shouting to her – that was enough to shake her out of it, and Pale hurriedly drew her pistol, then began to fire. Round after round of .45 caliber hollow points made impact with the living corpse, but May didn't react in the slightest, the bullets simply piercing her body and leaving small pinpricks throughout.

Her gun ran dry, and Pale scrambled to her feet, pressing her back against the wall. She was just about to call to Evie when the door to the morgue came flying open, and Kayla rushed in. She froze at the sight of the dead girl crawling across the floor, her eyes widening with shock and horror.

It lasted until Evie ran up to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Kayla, burn it!"

That was enough. Kayla raised a hand, and fire erupted from her fingertips, engulfing May's living corpse in flames. A low groan of agony filled the room, and to Pale's surprise, rather than try to keep moving or extinguish the flames, May simply laid down and let the fire consume her.

And just like that, it was over, the only sign of their struggle being a room in disarray and the stench of burning flesh filling the air. Pale stood there, gasping for breath as she stared at May's burning body. Nobody said anything, until finally, Adam broke the silence.

"What… what did you do to her…?" he said timidly. "She was alive after all…"

"She wasn't," Evie said firmly. "Listen to me, Adam – that thing… it wasn't May. It may have had her body, but it was just a shell, driven by its base instincts to feed on whatever was closest – completely and utterly mindless, devoid of any kind of thought process beyond eating. Believe me, putting it down was a mercy."

"Then… what was it?"

Evie's expression darkened. "It was a ghoul, I'm sure of it."

"A ghoul?" Kayla echoed. "What is that?"

"It's the end result of what happens when a person is attacked by a vampire lord."

"What?" Kayla sputtered. "But… the vampires were wiped out ages ago! You're telling me there's not only one here in town with us, but it's a lord as well?"

"You both have me at a loss," Pale confessed. "I know what a vampire is – it's an old legend my creators used to spread among themselves for superstitious reasons – but you're both saying that they're real?"

"They were," Evie hissed. She turned and began to walk out of the room, stopping only to address Adam for a moment. "I stand by what I said – that thing was not your daughter anymore. If you want to do what's best for her… let her burn to ash, and then bury her next to her mother. Anything less would be doing a disservice to her memory."

Adam nodded, numb. Evie sighed, then stepped past him, Kayla and Pale following after her.

"You seem to know the most about this out of all of us," Pale pointed out.

"You can say that," Evie replied without looking over to her. They all stepped out of the morgue and back into the city, trudging through the snow once more. "I have some personal history with vampires from long ago. And believe me, there's nothing worth remembering in any of it." She shook her head. "Vile creatures… I was downright happy when they were declared to have officially been wiped out. To have one still walking around is unprecedented."

"I can imagine." Pale looked up and saw that they were headed towards the castle up on the hill. A frown came over her at the sight of it. "Do you realize where you're going?"

"I do. And believe me, this is the best thing to do at the moment. If there truly is a vampire loose in town, then we need to make the local government aware of it before things get any worse."

"You mean to tell me things can get worse than this?" Kayla asked, fear creeping into her voice.

Evie said nothing, and somehow, that was all the confirmation Pale needed.