Cosima left her friends to their merriment and returned to the sleigh that was cursed. She worked carefully to remove that curse first, then went on her way to give the whole place a good going over. This was to see if anything else had a dangerous curse that needed to be removed, then to put magic protection up to stop any future curse attempts.
When she walked into the main workshop, she nearly startled the elf foreman out of his wits.
"Who are you?" he asked gruffly, looking up at her with a stern expression in an effort to show he'd recovered from the start a second earlier.
"I'm Ms. Brett," she replied coolly, "And I'm here to help get to the bottom of these troubles you people've been having lately.
"Is that true?" The foreman asked the elves who were assembled there.
"It's true," Gilda replied.
"Yes, she and several other visitors were at the rink this afternoon." Hermey put in.
Cosima nodded.
"Well, all right then," said the foreman, reluctantly, "Why don't you take a seat. "We're holding a funeral for some of our company who were just recently..." he broke off and turned away from Cosima. His head went down.
"I'm so sorry." she said. "I was just coming in to check things out and, well, carry on." She turned to leave.
He nodded, and she exited the workshop.
Cosima could detect nothing in the way of bad magic in the main workshop itself, but planned to return at night to give it a more thorough going-over.
But trouble had found Cosima. She had only begun walking down the hall when she was suddenly hit with a violent tremor that nearly caused her to stagger and fall. She skidded to a wall to lean against for support until she could regain her bearings. Then, her vision swam.
Cosima groaned at the recognition. Something definitely wasn't right.
Shouting was heard from somewhere down another hall.
Cosima forced herself to hurry on, even with the sensations, she had to get to where the trouble was, no matter what tremors and dizziness, she would simply have to fight through them.
Somewhere up ahead, there was a sharp turn to the right, and then another long passage.
the shouts seemed to be coming from down that passage. Someone, probably an elf, screaming for help and to be let go. This was answered by a sharp-toned woman's voice telling the elf to keep quiet. A man, or maybe it was more than one man were faintly heard, but Cosima couldn't make out what he/they said.
The elf's distress cries seemed to be getting fainter, even as Cosima ran down the hall.
Then, the sound of a door slamming up ahead, and the parties Cosima was listening for, seemed to be coming from outside. If this was another elf about to be vamped, Cosima was unfortunately the only one right there in the vicinity to try and prevent it. Fighting back her own inner-shudders, she had no choice but go out there and do what she could.
"Oh my - freakin' - " Cosima gaped at the sight of the enemy. One in particular, she recognized, but couldn't quite believe it.
"Oh, it's you!" this enemy seemed equally shocked and displeased to run into Cosima. It was a young woman with red-blonde hair in long braids, cold green eyes, a sharp-featured face, makeup to kill, a lush figure, and this woman's posture and manner were all too unpleasantly familiar.
The one thing that was different about her, however, were the vampire fangs, which she opened her mouth in a smug sneer to flash at Cosima.
"Forget that stupid little elf!" she barked at two of her accomplices who held a squirming little person between them. "I want HER!" the young woman pointed at Cosima.
"To hear you is to love you." both drones responded, and they let the elf go.
Santa was talking with the others back in the house when his phone rang. "What is it, Elsa?" he asked, trying to hide his growing alarm.
"Vampire attack! B-behind the main shop!"
"Oh good heavens!" exclaimed Santa.
Elsa continued to give out details about exactly where it was happening, and Santa and the group raced down to where the attack was occurring.
In the meantime, things were not going well out there.
"Don't assume these two are the only ones with me, Brett," the woman continued."
"I always knew you were utterly disgusting, Miranda, but it truly knows no bounds with you." Cosima glared at her.
Before anyone had any time to even react, another one of the enemy who was hiding behind a tree, came out, and together, they all surrounded Cosima as if hemming in an elf or reindeer for another vamping.
But Cosima presented much more of a challenge and the woman knew it, even if her pals did not.
"Projesterex." Miranda demanded.
One man quickly put a cloth in front of Cosima's face.
She pushed it away.
"Light." the woman barked.
Someone handed her a match, she lit it, and put the lit match against one of Cosima's hands that was sticking out from where she was being held.
Cosima screamed in pain, which meant she had no choice but breathe in, so the drug in the cloth being held against her face, began to take effect.
Miranda laughed.
Cosima continued to scream but couldn't seem to do anything else.
"Leave her to me, boys!" Miranda demanded.
They withdrew without helping Cosima to lie down, they simply disbanded, letting her fall down, hard, to the ground.
"This is even sweeter than I thought it would be!" the evil woman crowed as she knelt down beside Cosima. "Santa will pay for being so unfair to me all my freaking rotten life, and now I get to get my sweet revenge on you too!" she hooted.
Cosima would've had plenty to say to this if she only could, but she couldn't even turn the burned part of her hand toward the snow to relieve the pain let alone talk. The look of agony from the burn remained fixed on her face.
"No, I'm not going to kill you." Miranda drawled. "At least, I'll try not to. Though I haven't had a blood meal in a while and I'm famished. I'd make a vampire out of you, but I know you're probably resistant to that, so I'll just use you as a snack instead."
So, much as Cosima wanted to, she couldn't move to stop this nightmare. She couldn't even faint, so was fully conscious of everything going on.
Miranda and her friends knew that, and wouldn't have it any other way.
Suddenly, an unseen someone, hiding somewhere around the area called, "Hide, you fool! Someone's coming!"
Miranda, miffed to have her meal interrupted, by an insult at that, hurried toward a tree where this person had called from. When she found her hiding-place, she hissed to him, "I'll bite you the next time you call me a fool!"
"Shut up!" He hissed back. "We don't have time for this now."
Cosima could hear them arguing quietly for a few moments before they became silent. For a time, she was alone in the silence. Then, a welcome sound shattered it.
"I think I see her!" said one anxious voice.
"Yes! There she is!" called another.
"Oh no, she's hurt!" said another.
Though Cosima couldn't move to look, she recognized the voices of her friends as they approached.
"Cosima," Santa said, kneeling to help her up. "You'll be okay, we found you.
Pippi knelt at the other side and winsed at the sight of the burn on Cosima's hand. "Who would do such a sick thing?".
"I don't want to move her in case she's injured inside." said Santa, "Cosima, if you can hear us, we're getting help."
Cosima could only make a breathy moan in response. Santa called emergency, and assured Cosima that an ambulance would be there as soon as possible.
"While they waited, the group discussed who or what could be behind this.
Still unable to move and nod her head, Cosima's breathing quickened sharply in an attempt to indicate she heard, understood, and wanted to confirm what was just said.
The ambulance arrived quickly, and after questioning the others, who had little information other than what Elsa told them, and Cosima's debilitated condition, they rushed her to the town's hospital for tests and treatment.
Back at the enemy hideout…
"And blabbing to that person about me is what you call smart?" Miranda's companion chastised in a clipped whisper.
"I didn't mention you!" Miranda snapped.
"Shhh! Keep your voice down!" he admonished. "You said there were more than just you and those poor little servants you picked up on our way here."
"So?"
"Girl, do you never think? You should've let her think it was just you and the other two. If that woman lives and the drug wears off, she'll tell anyone who'll listen to look for all of us and we can't give them a nasty surprise by being a bigger, much stronger group than they originally thought!"
"They still don't know how many we are, or who we are, so chill, okay?"
"Just do me a favour and keep your mouth shut the next time you're tempted to boast."
"You have no idea what that woman is like," Miranda snapped back. "Is it so wrong to want to cut her down to size?" She rolled her eyes. "Oh, forget it. I've got to feed on something or I'll pass out!"
"That's the problem with doing anything with vampires," her still unseen friend said, "You always have to stop what you're doing to let them find food so they don't faint and become completely useless. And then there's the time they take up during feeds."
"Oh, so first I'm a fool, now I'm useless!?"
"And they take every little thing so personally." her friend kidded. "Go find yourself another elf or something."
"I'll need more than that to get through the night." Miranda said sullenly.
"Two elves, then." he said.
"You should've just let me at least get a start on that Brett woman."
"And risk being seen? Miranda, you're just mad because you're hungry. Go feed if you must, just be careful and for the love of Twilight, be quiet about it, and don't lose your main objective or you'll ruin the whole thing, for all of us."
"I'm not stupid you know!" Miranda snarled, and stalked off, into the darkness, looking for her next blood meal.
"Vampires." he muttered at Miranda's rapidly retreating back.
--