Daughter of the Night

Aaron’s P.O.V (continued)

I remember dozing for a while, but a kink in my neck kept me from being able to sleep peacefully for much longer. Annoyed, I was eventually forced to open my eyes and sit up. Two things happened when I did. First, I thought I had gone blind because the room was clearly as black as when my eyes had been closed. Second, my head cracked into the underside of that huge old oak desk.

Cursing, I grabbed my forehead with my hands. The painful collision of my head against the wood had certainly brought back my memory. I had camped out here for the night, or for the day, because I had been exhausted after hours of wandering, looking for Cross.

Looking for Cross.

I dug around my pocket for the lighter; it was almost empty, so I knew I should use it sparingly.

Before I flicked on the lighter, I checked the time on my digital watch. The face lit up with a greenish hue, illuminating the time, 6:43. I was assuming it was at night, since I had fallen asleep at around five in the morning and I felt too well rested to have slept only two hours.

I used the glow from my watch to manuever around the spiderwebs covering the oak desk. Once I had crawled out from under it, I straightened and stretched, rolling my shoulders and shaking my head. The neck kink was in to stay, unfortunately. Well, considering that I had slept curled up under a 4X6 space under an obnoxiously hard desk, I had gotten off pretty well.

I looked around the office, viewing it through rested eyes. The walls were a cheery yellow, or at least they had used to be. Now the paint was peeling, exposing bare cream-colored wall underneath. The bookshelf was stuffed with files, papers seeming to explode from its shelves.

My eyes fell to the top of the desk. Some files, only recently viewed, were still spread out over the oak surface. Curious, I flicked on the lighter and read one of the papers by the light of the flame.

‘To the Beta of the Chelsea werewolf pack’, the letter began in a businesslike format. ‘We have successfully captured your pack leader, named Raina Krull, at the Bronx district at the time of 1:32am on the morning of July 6. We are currently holding her at our headquarters, and her life will be in forfeit if the following demands are not met within the specified time period.’

My eyebrows shot up. A hostage? This was now getting interesting. So someone, it sounded like a gang or organization of some sort, had captured the pack leader of the hotel I was currently occupying. That would explain why the werewolves were so disorganized, otherwise I would probably be caught and dead by now. The Beta, then? So a pack leader must be the Alpha, and their second-in-command was the Beta. That made sense, seeing as it was a wolf hiearchy.

‘The vampiress who resides in Brooklyn known as ‘Cross’ is to be captured and immobilized within two weeks, with the reward of your leader’s release. Characteristics of the aforementioned vampire include a full-length black cape, all the characteristics of a typical vampire, and a cross-shaped burn mark on the back of her neck. Weaknesses of the vampire include all religious artifacts, humans, and most importantly, a exceedingly powerful aversion to sunlight. During the day, the vampire is immobilized, and when exposed to the sun, the vampire is weakened to a highly controllable degree.’

My eyebrows had risen nearly off my forehead at this point. They wanted Cross! That’s why I had been captured; they were using me to get to her. Damn, so this was my fault. A wave of guilt washed over me, pressing down on my shoulders. Maybe if I hadn’t been so goddamn stupid I might have figured out what was going on. A tiny voice in my head shot back, how could I?, but I brushed it off.

It was certainly curious, though, to see all of Cross’s weaknesses listed on paper right after I had been thinking of how invincible she was. Well, that was ironic.

My eyes fell back to the paper.

‘Now we have provided you with a target, a deadline, and a motive. Remember that we will not hesitate to kill your leader, since her value to you is the only thing keeping her alive, and if that is rendered useless, we will cleanse our hands of such unnecessary trash. Contact us when you have successfully imprisoned the vampire.’

Underneath the end of the letter was a code that I had never seen before, a script of dots and sharp angles. Apparently the senders of the message had left a return address of some sort in a code. Since it was incomprehensible to me, I ignored it and continued down to the end of the paper. The letter was signed in two large, curling letters; C. D.

C.D.? What was that? I looked back to the desk to see an envelope, black enbroidered with a curling golden frame. The front was signed, instead of with an address, with a mere four words. It read ‘the Court of Dracula’.

I dropped the envelope in shock. Oh, Jesus. I hadn’t expanded my newfound knowledge of the existence of vampires and werewolves to include such legends as Dracula. It only then occured to me that I was in way over my head.

Well, I thought stalwartly, Cross still needed to be saved. Although I had no idea what the ‘Court of Dracula’ wanted with her, if I managed to heroically execute an amazing rescue, she might in her rush gratitude reveal her secrets to me. At least, that ‘s how it worked out in my mind. A guy could dream, right?

But there was still the problem of locating my vampire damsel. Well, I figured ruminatively, I probably shouldn’t word it like that to her face. She might feel inclined to rip off my head, after hissing into my ear about feminine superiority and how dangerous it was to insult a vampire. I grinned at the thought before proceeding to re-read the letter.

I stopped at the part ‘exceedingly powerful aversion to sunlight’. Aversion to sunlight. I knew that Cross wasn’t thrilled about the daytime, since she always managed to disappear before the sun’s rays lit up the city, but... What did that mean, an exceedingly powerful aversion?

Wait... the trapped-in-the-underground-of-the-hotel thing hadn’t worked out too well for the werewolves, had it? I mean, Cross had exploded through the floor with all the intention of setting fire to the entire place. Since she had come up from the floor, I figured that she had started off in the basement. Away from the sunlight. But now...

Could she be on the roof? It would make sense, after reading this letter. I had no other leads, and it was only so long before someone tracked me down. I would have no defense against that.

Up it was, I decided. Gently replacing the letter and envelope where I had found them on the desk, I turned to leave when something stuffed between the desk and the bookshelf caught my eye.

Bending down, I picked up a large plastic bag with several things tucked inside. I found a black leather jacket, cut for a woman’s shape and stained even darker with crusted blood. In a smaller ziplock bag there was a long, pure white strand of hair. Whether a wolf’s or a human’s, I wasn’t sure. Either way, the evidence was obvious that the Court had indeed captured the Alpha.

Within minutes of abandoning the office, I had miraculously returned to the rickety old staircase that I had been at the previous night. Well, morning. Oh hell, roughly eleven hours ago, at any rate.

The door creaked open on rusted hinges, and the swallowing darkness of the winding stairwell rushed up to meet me. Sighing, I allowed the door to swing closed behind me. Flicking on my lighter, I began what I would soon discover to be a twenty-two flight ascent.

The creak of the stairs beneath my feet faded as time seemed to lose its flavor. I had had no idea how long I had been climbing for when I reached a door that was locked from the inside. I could have been walking for minutes, or I could have been walking for hours. I had no idea.

From between the cracks of the door a fresh, cool breeze of New York air reached out to me. Inhaling, I knew that I had reached the roof of the building.

Careful to use the shirtsleeves to cover up my fingers (so as to not make direct contact with the lock or doorknob), I slid the locks open and heaved the door outward.

At first, the dying embers of the fading sun were all I could see besides the black silhouette of New York skyscrapers. The sky was orange and purple and grey, and a strong breeze blew from the east.

The roof itself was dark, concrete, stable. A lip rose from the edge about three feet, in case some maintenance guys showed up.

My eyes scanned the dark concrete, seeking a sign of life, or at least a sign of the undead.

That was when I heard a shudder from behind me. It wasn’t a human shudder, but rather a shudder of a thousand pieces of clinking metal chafing against each other in a collective sigh.

I turned slowly, fearing the sight that was about to meet my eyes.

Along the wall behind me that covered the stairwell I had come up were hundreds upon hundreds of chains, some big and some small, all fused to the concrete of the outrising building.

I caught the smell of something burning and I saw whisps of smoke rise from between the chains.

That was when I saw the withered fingers frozen under the chains, seeming to have been struggling weakly to shield themselves from something. I looked at the dimming sun, my heart suddenly in my throat.

“Cross,” I croaked, but it was no good. She couldn’t hear me.

I approached the netting of chains. Black whisps of hair, smoldering yet unburnt, had escaped the entanglement of chains.

The fingers, grasping at nothing, were burned so badly that I nearly doubted that any of the skin was left. To say it looked painful would have been the understatement of my life; there was no explanation for the ragged, destitute scorch marks that had once been flawless, ivory skin.

I looked back to the hair, hanging lifeless against the bonds, and follwed it up to the lolling head of the fierce, panther-hearted vampire it belonged to. I was so scared. Scared of what I’d find when I looked at her face, scared of what would happen to her from here, scared of what I had done to my saviour.

Swallowing my heart, I extended my hands and gently cupped my fingers under her chin. The texture of the skin I made contact with was flaky, without any moisture. A piece nearly fell off at my touch and it took all of my self control not to turn around and throw up.

I lifted her head, oh so slowly, until it met the embers of the retreating sunlight. It was a ravaged, destitute face. The eyes were squeezed shut, the eyebrows drawn together in a solid denial of pain, the lips locked in a defiant snarl, exposing the ever-white fangs of her kind.

I peered closely at the locks that bound her. Solid, metal, unbreakable, certainly. Pickable? Oh, yes.

Trying my hardest to take my mind of the vampire, I pulled out my lockpicking set with trembling hands. I fumbled for the first of my tools, the ones that I knew would be perfect for popping the lock.

What with my uncooperative hands, it took me five whole minutes to get the lock open.

One down, I thought as the lines of metal dropped unused to the floor. A gajillion more to go.

Grimly, I set to work. The only sounds penetrating the night were those of my tools chafing against the imprisoning tumblers inside the locks.

Time stretched out forever, the sun sinking far below the horizon by the time I was done. Eventually I had to work by sound and feel alone, so as to preserve what little lighter fluid I had left. Hours passed uninterrupted, but as soon as I had freed Cross from the last lock, her limp body tumbled forward into my arms.

Surprised, I staggered under her weight. For one so superhumanly strong, she was so... light. The fiery warrior of the night, brought down low in her time of need. And right now, she needed me.

That was when I felt something damp against my stomach, something sticky and wet. I pushed her away slightly to see the blood, trickling slowly but surely from the wounds in her body. For some reason, the burns on her torso had been far more severe than those on her limbs, because the blood simply would not stop flowing.

Damn, it would be impossible to get out of this hotel with all of those blood fumes.

Still, I had to try. Forget try, I had to succeed. Grimly, I pulled off my t-shirt and bunched it up in the palm of my hand before pressing it forcefully against her sizzling bare skin, sliding it up under the charred remains of her tunic to her stomach. There would be plenty of time to be embarassed later.

Now, I had to get the panther in my arms back home.