Daughter of the Night

Cross’s P.O.V.

The Summer Court had hired a talented violinist to play tonight, and her nimble finger dancing over the strings, filling the ballroom with lilting music. The attendance was down from last time, but those of the Fae that were here were as beautifully dressed as they had been before. The attire was akin to pictures of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I that I had seen, outdated yet beautiful.

The Queen was going with a tree theme tonight, as her dress was woven seemingly of oak and maple leaves, forming a cascade of magnificent green. The hem of her dress barely kissed the floor, and the sleeves were to her elbows and fell to her waist at the end. A crown of willow branches was delicately placed over her brow, enunciating her depthless amber eyes and ageless wisdom.

I materialized from my shadow form maybe thirty feet before the Queen, palms held outward in a sign of peace and head tilted slightly in a gesture of respect.

The Queen looked as if she had been expecting me, but her guard, most of which I had never seen before, leaped to alert and began to unsheathe their weapons in less than a second.

Silence swept over the Court and the songs of the violin came to a halt as the attention of the Fae turned to me, the unexpected. The warriors of the Queen would have come at me in full fury if the Queen had not raised the first two fingers of her left hand, a command to halt.

“I have come to form an alliance with the Fae,” I told the Queen after I had risen to my full height and let my hands fall, relaxed, to my side. “But first, I have more personal affairs to attend to.”

It may have just been my imagination, but I could have sworn that a corner of the Queen’s mouth quirked upwards a fraction of a degree. “He’s in his chambers, in the Southeastern corner of the palace. Down two floors.”

I smirked, dipped my head in thanks, and resumed my form of shadows. I wanted to laugh out loud at the audible intake of breath of nearly every member of the court at my sudden disappearance. They could still sense my presence from my emotions, I was sure, but they couldn’t pinpoint my location with any serious accuracy.

I followed the shadows of the court, weaving through faeries and under tables until I reentered the great hall outside the court. There I exchanged my shadow form for one of a vampire bat.

It took me a half hour to locate the wing that the Queen had instructed me to because there were so many damn staircases and corridors to that place that I was reminded of the mazes in the Sunday paper. I finally came to huge, dark oak double doors. There were symbols that I didn’t recognize carved into the oak, but I could smell remnants of Aerrinaekaiyan’s passing here and I assumed that the symbols said something akin to ‘Summer Knight’.

I resumed my humanoid form and extended a fist to knock on a door. There was no response after half a minute, so I knocked again, more forcefully. Still no response. I doubted that the Queen would have misled me, so I softened my form to that of smoke and slipped in through the cracks between the two huge doors.

I rematerialized on the other side and found myself in a sort of sitting room, spacious yet cozy at the same time. The fluorescent lights were in the four corners of the room, casting a surreal glow to the tiered fountain in the center of the fountain. The sound of running water was smoothing and beautiful. There was a large, plush brown leather sofa encircling the fountain, and I wondered at that. The carpet was made of living grass, fine and smooth. The walls were decorated with grape vines and posters, which made for a strange combination. I recognized a few of the bands, but some of the posters were very old, older than I was.

I continued warily through the sitting room and through the doorway to the next room, which clearly was a bedroom.

The walls, or at least what was visible of them, were a deep emerald green. The ceiling of this room was incredibly high, enough so that two white pine trees, maybe thirty feet tall, had plenty of room to grow. The floor here turned to hard-packed dirt, although it was mostly covered by soft growths of moss and orange pine needles. The room was light, but the light came from far above the trees, which blocked out most of it at ground level. I sighed with relief as the light was blocked from my skin.

As my eyes fell to the ground, I noted a trail of shedded clothing. Closest to me was a familiar black sneaker, and then another, and then a biker jacket, then socks, shirt, jeans, all leading right up to a bed. There were other clothes on the ground as well, and a bathroom towel and several magazines, but the bed was by far the most intriguing.

The bed was like none I had ever seen before. It appeared to be a hollowed-out tree trunk, larger than the likes of which I had ever seen. The trunk was probably eight feet in diameter. I saw a huge patched quilt inside the trunk and the glimpse of white pillows.

Wildfire was leaned against the edge of the bed, inches below its’ master’s hand, which was draped carelessly over the rim of the tree trunk. The blade was clean and sheathed, although I saw a rag now black with dried blood littering the floor a ways away. I wrinkled my nose. It reeked of vampire blood, the blood of my kind.

I looked up from the sword and followed the hand to the rest of the body, which was for the most part under the huge patched quilt. Aerrinaekaiyan’s other arm was clamping a pillow over his head, but the quilt didn’t cover his shoulders. Although his skin was still radiating the golden glow of the Fae, I saw angry red slashes marked vertically up his back. At first I thought they were claw marks, but I realized that there were too many and the wounds were too broad. There were small puncture wounds lining the slashes, and I knew that he had been stitched back up at one point. These wounds were relatively old. I only knew of one other way to attain marks like that, and it was by flogging. I felt a wave of anger in my gut, and I wasn’t sure what to accredit it to. I was also curious, however. Vampire blood and whip marks? What had this faerie been doing?

I crossed my arms and wondered if I should let him sleep. From the looks of it, he had barely made it to the bed before falling asleep. Still, the Queen was waiting on me, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I would have these feelings of amnesty.

“Aerrinaekaiyan,” I commanded loudly, “get up. I need to speak with you.”

At first, there was no response, but after a few seconds I heard a groan from under the pillows.

“Five more minutes, Mom,” I eventually heard. Aerrinaekaiyan sounded only partially coherent, and the pillows muffled his voice.

“I am not your mother,” I said through gritted teeth, “but if I was I would criticize the state of your bedroom. This place is a disaster. The only excuse for this appearance would be a category three hurricane, and I seriously doubt your bedroom had the misfortune of being struck by one of those in the past twenty-four hours.”

There were a few seconds of silence from under the pillow before he shoved it off his head and rubbed his eyes with his hands. “Cross?” he asked. “Is that you?”

“Who else would greet you with a scathing criticism of the state of your living quarters?” I retorted.

I heard some more mumbling, but I couldn’t understand any of it. Finally Aerrinaekaiyan rolled over and sat up, looking at me with bleary green eyes. “What are you doing here? And at two in the morning?”

I was about to respond, but at that moment I realized that he was drastically underdressed, and I mean that in quantity, not quality. Not that I was complaining. He had an excellent musculature, after all, although I saw bandages wrapped around his lower stomach. For the thousandth time, I was extremely glad that it was physically impossible for me to blush.

Aerrinaekaiyan blinked, looked down, did enough blushing for both of us, and rolled over again. “It’s way too fucking early for this,” I heard him say into his pillow.

“You’re gonna have to tough it out,” I informed him unsympathetically, “since Morhiannara is waiting for me and right now you’re wasting my time.”

“So cruel,” he told his pillow. “Why is she so cruel?”

“I’m leaving,” I said, “and when I come back in two minutes I expect you to be dressed and coherent and ready to give me a very long and detailed explanation as to why you look like you lost a wrestling match with a tiger and why your sword reeks of vampire blood.”

I left his bedroom and made myself comfortable on the nice leather sofa in his sitting room, making a point of keeping my back to his bedroom.

After two minutes Aerrinaekaiyan came out of the room. He was sporting a pair of baggy grey sweatpants and a plaid collared shirt that was only partially buttoned. White bandages around his stomach were still visible, and he limped when he came in, favoring his right foot. As he sat down, his left arm hung oddly limp, and he seemed to be suppressing a grimace. Still, something about his eyes looked haunted.

“You’re in pain,” I said, studying him analytically. “Don’t you Fae have a hospital or something?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’m a regular there. BFFL’s with all the staff, got my own room, the works. It’s actually surprising that you found me here considering the hours I log in the hospital wing.”

“Then why aren’t you there?” I asked, exasperated. “You can’t walk, your back was recently lacerated, you took a major hit the gut, and your left arm is immobilized.”

He rubbed his eyes some more with his right hand. “And here I was thinking I’d be able to get a full night’s sleep,” he muttered. “I’m so innocent I shock myself.”

“My question still stands.”

He sighed. “I already saw Lem. She did everything she could for me, and I’d prefer sleeping in my own bed to spending one more night in one of those accursed cots.”

I felt a sense of panic for him. Had he lost his arm for good? I was by his side in a millisecond, grabbing his dead arm and gently lifting it up. He flinched away from me, but his reaction time was sluggish and there was no way he could shrug out of my grip.

I rolled back his shirtsleeve until I found what I was looking for; puncture wounds made from fangs like mine. The skin around the wounds was pale and devoid of the usual glow.

“You got bitten,” I stated, confirming my suspicion. Vampire venom was absolute agony to werewolves, but it was excruciating to other supernaturals as well. “How long ago?”

Aerrinaekaiyan cursed under his breath. “Twenty-six hours, roughly.”

I hissed. “Do you know what tier?”

“Maybe fourth or fifth, but she might have been an Ancient.”

Now it was my turn to curse. “And you’ve left the venom in this long? This is sheer stupidity! Any longer and you could really lose an arm!”

“And what do you propose I do about it?” he retorted. “The only solution is to exsanguinate myself until the venom comes out, and the Fae can’t just do blood infusions like humans can!”

“I can get it out for you,” I said. “But neither of us is going to enjoy it.”

Skepticism and then wariness crossed over his face, and I couldn’t blame him. Voluntarily getting bitten by a vampire was a stupid thing to do as a human, but when you were a supernatural it becomes sheer idiocy.

“I don’t suppose there’s a secret antidote kicking around somewhere?” he asked. “No? Awesome. I might have to take you up on that offer after all, then.”

I had to commend him for his bravery. Even vampires don’t like getting bitten by other vampires. Still, this shouldn’t be so bad, because instead of injecting venom I would be removing it. Although it wasn’t my venom to begin with, it belonged with me more than it did in the veins of one imbued with nature magic like Aerrinaekaiyan, so I would be able to call to it.

Without further ado, I hardened my grip on his forearm and sunk my fangs into the vein there. I felt him become rigid, but I didn’t release my grip, even as I was struck with a heavy sense of wrongness. Aerrinaekaiyan’s blood, the blood of the Fae, was tied to the earth in ways I would never understand. His blood sang of wildness, of fire and life, and it was so overpowering that I wanted nothing more than to get away from it.

Still, I could feel the venom in his blood. It was akin to my own nature, and as I had assumed, I attracted it to myself. I began absorbing the venom myself, my own immunity kicking in. A minute passed, then another, as I removed the venom from his system. Finally I couldn’t sense anything except the wildfire in his blood and I extracted my fangs from his arm.

We both let out sighs of relief at the same time. Purple blood gathered in the bite marks I had created and began tracing rivulets down his arm, although Aerrinaekaiyan didn’t seem to notice.

“Well,” he finally said, “that was interesting. It’s definitely an improvement, though. I can actually twitch my fingers now.”

“Because you took so damn long to get the venom out, it’ll be a few days before you get full control of your arm again,” I told him.

“That’s fine,” he replied. “It’ll take a few days to get back to normal anyways.”

“What the hell did you do?” I demanded. “Who lashed you? When did you fight vampires?”

“Well, it’s a long story,” he began. “After you left I returned to life as the Summer Knight. I was kind of belligerent after you went, though, so I sort of got into a fight with this guy who I really hate. It was incredibly unseemly for me to do that as the Summer Knight because it was entirely my fault. So I got what I deserved, which was a flogging, obviously. Morhiannara also took back the title of Summer Knight, which was entirely within her rights. She told me I could get back, though, if I completed a mission for her, which was to interrogate some hermit vampire up in Ohio. I got ambushed there by some more vampires, hence my injuries. I dealt with them and came home. I stopped by the hospital wing and then I came directly here to sleep, which is where you found me.”

“How many vampires ambushed you?” I asked.

“Um,” he said. “Nine? I think it was nine. Oh, no, yeah, it was definitely nine.”

“Did you find out who they were?” I asked.

“From the Court of Dracula. Led by this redheaded French chick named Vanessa.”

I snarled instinctively at that name, a wall of hatred forming in my heart. It was long since time that she got what she deserved, and I would be the one to give it to her. “I will rip out her heart,” I growled.

“Funny, she said much the same about you,” Aerrinaekaiyan said. I looked at him through a haze of bloodlust, and he hastily added, “But you’d definitely win.”

“She heads a party of Ancients,” I said after conquering my hatred. “And they’re all formidable warriors on their own. And you survived that encounter?”

He took on an air of insult. “Of course I did!”

“Did you kill any?”

“Seven of them.”

“What?” I asked disbelievingly.

“They clearly had never fought a well-trained Fae warrior before,” Aerrinaekaiyan said, “because they were nowhere near prepared for me. Vanessa escaped with her boyfriend though, so you still get to kill her like you wanted.”

“Excellent,” I said. “At any rate, when you recover, we should spar. You sound more impressive than I thought you were.”

He snorted. “You still have me pegged as a human. I’ll convince you otherwise. You’re on.”

His body language was confident as he said that, and for an ephemeral instant I saw him not as a trickster, but as a warrior. I had already exchanged blows with him once, but at that point I hadn’t been looking to analyze his skill, and he hadn’t been looking to take the offensive, so it was a poor gauge.

At that point I heard footsteps from outside the sitting room and I looked at the oak door. “Someone’s coming.”

After a few seconds of heavy knocking, a faerie entered the room with a plate of food.

“Tristan!” Aerrinaekaiyan exclaimed.

“Aerrin!” the deep blue-haired faerie returned. He had dark brown eyes and a scar through one eyebrow. He was bulked up, especially for one of the Fae, who tended to be leaner. His eyes fell to me, and then he nearly dropped the plate of food in surprise. To his credit, he quickly reigned in his emotions and gave me a respectful nod.

“You must be the vampire Cross,” he said to me. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Oh?” I said, my eyes moving to Aerrinaekaiyan. “I’m going to act like that’s a good thing.”

“Oh, it is,” Tristan assured me.

“Cross, meet Tristanarium, Captain of the Guard of the Fae and my best friend.”

“You have friends?” I asked, smirking evilly at the expression that crossed Aerrinaekaiyan’s face.

I turned to Tristanarium and rose to my feet, extending my hand. “Charmed.”

“Call me Tristan. I must say, you’re not what I imagined,” the blue-haired faerie said as he shook my hand.

“Mm?” I replied. “Is that so? Am I not intimidating enough? Should I act more bloodthirsty? Or is it my lack of a stereotypical black cape and blood trailing down my chin?”

The faerie quirked an eyebrow. “Bit defensive about the cape, aren’t we?”

Aerrinaekaiyan snapped his fingers. “I forgot about that! Wait here for a minute; I’ll be right back. I think it’s in the linens closet outside…”

He hobbled through the huge oak doors and I heard him shuffling down the hall outside.

“Is he supposed to be walking around on that?” I asked Tristan.

The Captain of the guard shrugged. “Probably not. I’ve long since given up trying to keep him in line, though.”

I snorted. “I get the feeling he’s used to being injured.”

Tristan laughed. “He gets fidgety when he’s not.”

“I’ve noticed that,” I agreed.

After a moment of silence, Tristan smiled to himself. “I’m glad I’ve met you. It’s solved a mystery I’ve been wondering about. I guess it makes sense that he got whipped for you because he was whipped by you.”

I blinked. “What was that?”

“He didn’t tell you why he got flogged?”

“He did,” I said scathingly, “but apparently he lied.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That he got in a fight with another guard member and was punished for that.”

Tristan exhaled. “Oh. Well, I suppose that is something he would do. I guess he didn’t want you to feel guilty. Anyway, he got hit hard for not attacking you when you went after the Queen’s guards. As the Summer Knight, his actions speak for all Fae, and that action of his was seen as treason.”

I felt a burning sensation in my gut that I identified as guilt. “Is he still Summer Knight?”

“He earned back the title by doing a suicide mission. He intentionally sprung a vampire ambush full of Ancients, but the idiot survived.”

I was beginning to feel very, very bad. I had put him between a rock and a hard place, and he had still shown me amnesty? And then he didn’t tell me about it because he didn’t want me to feel guilty?

“If you could pretend like you didn’t know, you’d be doing both of us a favor,” Tristan said hopefully. “I didn’t mean to tell you what he didn’t want you to know.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I replied, “but if it comes up I’m not feigning ignorance. I’d hear about it from another source eventually, anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Tristan agreed. “But promise me something instead.”

“I’m listening.”

He leaned in, intent upon my face. “Don’t do that to him again. He can’t waver in his allegiance to the Fae, ever. You don’t know what he’s done to get the title, but if he loses it again it will ruin him. You haven’t seen it yet, but it’s part of who he is.”

I thought about it. I didn’t like making promises because I never knew if I’d be able to keep them, but this was a legitimate cause. I didn’t want to conflict Aerrinaekaiyan’s loyalties again, either. This was a promise in line with my own interests.

“I swear it,” I said. “But only because I have no inclination to do such a thing again anyways. Understand that your personal desires have absolutely no effect on my actions. Don’t think I am controlled so easily.”

Tristan looked somber. “You have been hardened, indeed.”

“I don’t want your sympathy,” I snapped. “And I doubt your life has been all rays of sunshine, either.”

He threw back his head and laughed, a deep belly laugh that made me want to crack a smile.

“I like you,” he finally said. “More importantly, I trust you.”

With some degree of surprise, I discovered that I reciprocated the feeling.

At that moment, Aerrinaekaiyan returned, easing the door shut behind him while he held a vivid black fabric slung over his left arm.

“It was with the clean laundry,” he explained. “I forgot that I had it washed.”

He grabbed it with his good hand and tossed it over to me. I grabbed it from the air and held it up wonderingly. It was a vampire’s cloak, beautifully woven and with good materials. The interior fabric was wine red, and the shoulders and collar of the cape were fashioned from black leather. The rest was heavy black wool.

I slung it over my shoulders in a state of wonder and buttoned the moon-shaped clasps on the front, marveling at how natural the heavy material felt on my shoulders. The cloak billowed gently to the floor, a perfect fit.

I couldn’t speak for a long moment. I had not been given a gift in decades, and now that I finally had been, I didn’t know what to say.

Finally I walked up to Aerrinaekaiyan and hugged him. He obviously wasn’t expecting it because he tensed up when we came into contact, but he relaxed almost immediately and put his arms around me.

I broke the contact after a second and exited the room.

“Where are you going?” Aerrin called.

“To form an alliance with your Summer Queen,” I said as the door fell shut behind me.

My cape enunciated my every movement as I walked confidently down the hall.