Daughter of the Night

The Alpha leapt forward immediately, snarling as he morphed midair into his second form, a great grey wolf with blue eyes. His wolf form was easily as tall as Aerrin and much larger than the sleight faerie. He had the advantage of strength, I thought wryly, although that was something Aerrin was used to.

The Summer Knight unsheathed Wildfire in a blur of speed, the blade seeming to catch fire as it danced into his hands. He brought the katana singing towards the wolf’s shoulder in a decapitating blow faster than lighting.

The werewolf was clearly surprised by the speed of the counterattack, and the duel nearly ended there. I thought the battle was over; in the air like that, the wolf couldn’t change his trajectory, so this was over-

The Alpha seemed to jump in midair, propelling himself sideways out of Wildfire’s range. I blinked, confused.

Even Aerrin seemed to falter for a millisecond, but it was such a brief period that I was probably the only one to catch it. He came out of his attack with Wildfire held at the ready, orange-white with fire.

The grey wolf growled, and in his wolf form it was a cavernous, monstrous sound that echoed against the walls. A shuddering rumble shook the building, and I started as pieces of the tiled ceiling fell to the ground. I frowned, trying to absorb the correlation between the two actions.

Aerrin had to roll to his left in order to dodge a particularly large chunk of ceiling, and when he came up the Alpha was on top of him, powerful jaws opened wide.

Aerrin rolled forward again, but he shifted his grip on Wildfire so that the blade sank viciously into the underbelly of the huge grey wolf. Aerrin grimaced as crimson werewolf blood splashed across his face, a more vivid shade of red than human blood. Still, the faerie rose to his feet behind the wounded wolf and readied himself to make a second attack.

The great wolf snarled in pain as his blood drenched the stone floor. I winced in sympathy; gut wounds were excruciating, and chances were Aerrin had severed major arteries. That wound was fatal, although slow and painful. Make it clean, I thought to Aerrin.

The floor seemed to shake in response to the wolf’s snarl, as if an earthquake had suddenly struck New York City, knocking Aerrin off-balance and almost off his feet. The Alpha crouched, attempting to shield his underside, as his ears flattened against his skull. His lips were pulled back, exposing all of his huge, deadly canines.

Aerrin regained his balance and then threw himself forwards, Wildfire humming with heat and energy as it came again towards the werewolf’s head.

I didn’t think the werewolf would have the strength to dodge, but the Alpha rolled onto his shoulder, using a huge paw to catch Aerrin on his side and fling him full-force into the opposing wall. I winced at the sound of Aerrin meeting the hard marble wall, but when the cloud of dust cleared the Summer Knight was perched, catlike, on the mantle of an old chimney about halfway up the wall.

He must have flipped to meet the wall with his feet, I thought admiringly. Impressive.

The titanic grey wolf rolled to his feet and shook his head as if to clear it. I was momentarily confused before I recalled with irritation that werewolves could regenerate wounds with astounding speed. If Aerrin didn’t kill the Alpha in one blow, he wasn’t going to kill the Alpha at all.

Aerrin seemed to realize this, too, and threw himself forward into a blistering combination of attacks so fast that the wolf could barely even see some of them. He was trying to make an opening so that he could land an instant-kill blow, I concluded.

The werewolf pulled back, too big to evade some of the attacks, but then he came down on Aerrin with both paws and head. His great paw knocked aside Wildfire, and although the blade nearly lacerated the limb the wound began closing immediately. I grimaced. This was usually where Aerrin would unleash a throwing knife into the wolf’s eye or pull out a second blade to defend himself with, but the Summer Knight had disarmed himself except for his katana.

Indeed, Aerrin was frozen for fraction of a second. In that ephemeral instant I saw hesitation in his eyes, as if he was unsure of what to do. I willed him to do something, but his gaze hardened and made no move to defend himself against the oncoming attack.

Therefore, Aerrin was entirely unprotected when the gigantic paw smashed into his right side, the claws ripping through his jacket and flesh as if they were paper. To lessen the blow, Aerrin rolled with Wildfire, re-opening the wound on the wolf’s paw and taking off a toe and a half.

The wolf howled in torment, unable to put weight on the paw, and cracks appeared in the floor and ceiling, threatening to collapse the room. Aerrin staggered into the wall, rolling his shoulder to assess the damage. From what I could see, it was bad. The blow had caught him right in the ribs, and from the way the Summer Knight was breathing unsteadily I would say most of them were broken. Deep amaranthine blood began soaking his shirt, and I felt my grimace stretch into a wince of worry.

Aerrin leaped forward, employing a burst of speed that I hadn’t thought he had left, and sank his blade directly into the side of the still-howling werewolf, right into the heart. The wolf’s howl cut off abruptly, and the shaking building stilled immediately.

Groans of fear swept through the watching werewolves as their Alpha convulsed on the ground, unable to regenerate because Wildfire was still buried in his side. Aerrin wore a look of weariness, unlike the triumph I might have expected.

“I haven’t pierced your heart yet,” he said loudly, so that we, the audience, could hear. “And I don’t plan to. You are talented and you show potential. As an ally you would be invaluable. In repayment for my mercy, however, I expect you to set aside your thirst for my lifeblood and do as I request; call an assembly of the wolves. Do we have an agreement?”

The seconds stretched out, and it occurred to me that the Alpha was actually considering the alternative. Did he really feel so strongly about Aerrin’s role in his mother’s death? Still, he had a pack to lead, and his own personal grudges had to be set aside for the betterment of the werewolves he was in charge of. The great grey wolf eventually grunted an affirmative, and the werewolves around me exhaled in relief.

Aerrin nodded and jerked his sword free of the werewolf, spilling crimson blood before the wound began to close. The Summer Knight stepped back and wiped the blood on his blade off onto his jeans before sheathing Wildfire in one fluid motion, the fire quenched as it touched the sheath.

As the fire of his sword went out, he seemed to deflate somewhat. The way his jaw was clenched told me that he was in a lot of pain, and his usual glow was replaced with a sickly pale complexion that I didn’t like.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed Aerrinaekaiyan’s sudden change in temperament; from behind him, I saw a tall, muscular werewolf leap suddenly towards Aerrin, killing intent clear. The wolf phased in midair as he flew towards the Summer Knight. Aerrin didn’t sense the impending attack until a split second too late, and as fast as Wildfire came out of its sheath, it wasn’t fast enough to counter the werewolf’s cheap ambush.

Luckily, I intercepted the mutt in time, my clawed hand digging into the side of his neck. I heaved with all my strength and sent the damned beast spinning into the wall twenty feet away. The building shuddered yet again as the beast crunched against the stone, sending a cloud of dust flying into the air.

I landed on the ground and spread my cape as wide as it could go. I also employed a trick I had learned a long time ago and turned the fringes of my cloak into a combination of smoke and shadow, so that my form looked larger than life and yet untouchable.

“Traitor!” I spat at the werewolf who had tried to jump Aerrin. “How dare you break the truce of an honor duel! Your leader lost! The Summer Knight defeated him and spared his life!” I turned to the rest of the werewolves, who were eyeing me with a mixture of dislike and wariness. “Any of you; if you wish to contest the outcome of this duel, you’ll be contesting it with me.”

At this point, I grinned savagely, showing my fully exposed fangs. “Right now, I’m looking forward to some action. And I have no intention of being as forgiving as the Summer Knight.”

The pack of werewolves looked subdued enough that I let my cloak fall to my side and released the shadows, entirely solidifying my form once more. Aerrin still wasn’t looking good, just a touch more wary, so I stepped forward to the Alpha.

“We will require a date, time, and location to bring back to the Queen,” I informed him.

He looked at me, still in his wolf form, before dipping his broad head. He turned and walked over to some of his pack mates, who held a pile of clothing. He shifted back into his human form, which was as naked as the day he was born. He began dressing while speaking to the werewolves in murmurs, throwing an occasional glance in my direction. I assumed that he was planning out the logistics for the conference.

After a minute he turned to me in an outfit nearly identical to the one he had been wearing earlier. His ice-blue gaze seemed older, more tired, than it had been when we were talking in his office. Of course, that would probably happen to me too if I spent a quarter of an hour getting stuck repeatedly with Aerrin’s sword. Regeneration looked effortless, but it had to be an exhausting ordeal.

“We can do a nine o’clock evening conference in the suite on the fifty-third floor of the Carlton-Ritz two weeks from today,” he told me in a flat voice. “If a conflict arises, we’ll send a messenger wearing all white to the capital.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. If we need to contact you, one of us will return to this location.”

It was his turn to nod. We eyed each other for a long second before slowly extending our hands. We shook briefly, just two pumps, before releasing each other’s hand and jumping back warily.

I turned to Aerrinaekaiyan, who looked as if he was doing his best not to lose his balance as he gathered his weaponry off the floor.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing him by his forearm and pulling him after me. “We’re leaving.”

He came after me, although I could tell that he was by no means graceful about it. I opened the front door and held it for him, and then I had to stand next to him in case he didn’t make it down the stoop. He stayed standing, though, and followed me with his head held high.

“I have a safety house near here that has some medical supplies,” I told Aerrin as we rounded the block. “We can patch you up there.”

“So you were lying,” he said, giving me a sluggish grin.

“About what?”

“Nursing me back to health.”

I shoved him playfully on the shoulder before it dawned on me that that wasn’t the best move I could make. Aerrin went toppling sideways and made no effort to catch himself.

“Shit,” I muttered, managing to wrap an arm around him before he hit the hard concrete. I pulled him to his feet before realizing that he was for the most part incoherent. I pulled his arm over my shoulders and picked up the pace to my hideout, ignoring the startled look a homeless man on the bench gave us.

I felt a sticky wetness seeping into the fabric of my cape and I realized with a fearful jolt that Aerrin was bleeding heavily enough that it had passed through even my thick wool. The buildings began to blur as I sprinted to the church basement, worry powering my run. It took me two or three minutes to get there, and when I did I gently spread my faerie friend on the ground. He looked even worse than he had before, chalk-white under his tan.

I peeled off the remains of his leather jacket and shirt, wincing at the copious amount of blood on them. The skin on the right side of his body looked the same as his jacket; shredded. He had four deep wounds in his side, and I could tell from the swelling that the ribs around the wound were cracked. His entire side was blackening into one giant bruise.

The bleeding had finally begun to slow, but the wounds were too deep to scab over. I growled in the base of my throat; this was beyond my expertise. But Lemariastra was back in D.C., too far away. Aerrin wouldn’t make it in time. The werewolves would have no healers among them because they didn’t need any. The Fae healed at an extremely fast rate, but they couldn’t regenerate like the werewolves could.

What to do, what to do?

*************************************************

Dr. Marius Clayton hated working the dawn shift at the hospital. He had to drink three cups of espresso in order to function normally, which always irritated his wife. The only patients awake at this time were either in emergency care or in too much discomfort to fall asleep. And none of his friends had this shift, so there was no one he liked that he could spend the night with.

Therefore he was stuck in his office reading the test results of several follow-ups from the past week. Negative, negative, negative. They were all clean, which was good news. He knew he should be more elated that he had cured his patients, but at two-thirty in the morning he had difficulty summoning the enthusiasm.

“Impressive,” a chilling voice said from the doorway. He looked up, surprised that he hadn’t heard the door open. Unnerved, he realized that it was still closed.

“An M.D. from Johns Hopkins, huh?” the voice continued, cold and emotionless. Marius’s head turned as he searched for the owner of the voice, unease setting in like an October chill.

“I’m sorry, I can’t see you,” the doctor explained, proud of the way his voice didn’t shake.

A girl materialized about two feet before his desk, her long black hair falling over her shoulders. She wore all black as well, he noted as he scanned her. She was sporting what appeared to be an oversized wool trench coat that covered the rest of her garb.

His eyes were pulled upwards to her face and his jaw dropped slightly before he could help himself. She was beautiful. Her skin was ghostly white, pure and unblemished, in stark contrast with her clothing and hair. Her eyes, however, were a deep vermillion. When she read his shock, she grinned, exposing razor-sharp incisors that were far too long to be human.

“I’m in a bit of a hurry, Doc, so I’ll make this quick; I need your assistance. My friend is dying, and I can’t help him. I can’t take him to the hospital, either, because he won’t… meet the standards.”

“I’d be happy to help your friend,” Marius stammered, “but I’m not an ER doctor anymore, and my shift won’t end for another three hours. You need to call 911-”

“I should have made this clear from the beginning, Doc,” the girl cut him off coolly. “I’m not asking. I’m demanding. And you’re going to do what I say, because you don’t want me to get angry. I don’t have much time.”

Marius frowned. “I don’t know how you got here, Miss, but I’m going to have to ask you to return with your friend and register properly at the front desk. I can’t do anything for him without the tools at the hospital, and however he got himself injured, it’s better getting medical attention than avoiding jail…” As he said this, he reached in his pocket for his cell phone so he could speed dial security. To his surprise, he couldn’t find the phone, although he remembered putting it in his pocket not minutes ago.

“Looking for this?” the girl asked, dangling his phone from her fingers. He opened his mouth to demand it back before she closed her fist around the device. He heard several sharp cracks, and his eyes grew bigger and bigger as her fist closed tighter and tighter around the phone. When she opened her hand, the tiny broken remains of his phone fell from her palm.

His eyes widened as he tried to process what had just happened.

The girl was on him in a moment, wrapping her arms around him and picking him up as easily as if he were a toddler. Before he could blink they were hurtling down the hallway at breakneck speed and suddenly they were in an empty supply room across the floor from his office.

“Get everything you’ll need to deal with severe lacerations in the torso, internal bleeding, broken ribs, and extreme blood loss,” the girl said. Her voice was not the voice of a girl, however; it was much older, more commanding. She expected him to do exactly what she said.

How had she destroyed his phone? How had he gotten here so quickly? She had grabbed him, and then… Who was this person? She growled warningly when she caught him staring at her instead of moving, which startled him out of his reverie. She didn’t sound human when she growled, more like some sort of wildcat…

“How are we going to carry all this-” he stopped talking when she threw a cardboard box on the floor in front of him. Uncertain, he began sorting through the materials, selecting a variety of medicines and operating tools, an IV bag, several packets of blood, and bandages. He threw everything into the cardboard box and then some.

“You can’t kidnap me,” he said as he worked. “There are security cameras all over the place, you’ll be identified in no time.”

When she didn’t reply, he looked up at her. She grinned back at him, although it didn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes were distant and filled with worry.

“I don’t have to worry about being caught on tape,” she told him. “Vampires don’t have to appear in reflections when they don’t want to. At any rate, I disabled all the security cameras in this wing before I fetched you.”

“There’ll be guards coming,” he warned her, trying not to dwell on her words. As if on cue, he heard muffled footprints from down the hall.

The girl hissed impatiently before grabbing him around the waist and throwing him over her shoulder. She bent to pick up the cardboard box before sprinting towards the three-by-four closed window in the room.

“Put me dow-aaaagghh!” he yelled as she propelled them through the window, the glass shattering as if the girl was made of rock. They were several stories up, and his stomach jumped into his mouth. It was all he could do not to hurl as they plummeted to the earth. He cursed his luck; he was going to die along with this crazy girl, and there were so many things he had left unfinished; he wanted to see his children graduate, see his wife’s smiling face one more time…

After what seemed like ages, they hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud. To his shock, Marius realized that he wasn’t dead. The girl wasn’t either. In fact, she looked completely unfazed. That was when she started to run like a demon from hell. The land blurred around him, the wind pushing against his face as if he was doing ninety-five on the highway in a convertible.

He tried to thump on the girl’s back to get her to release him, but he gave up after several attempts. Not only did it have absolutely no effect, but she seemed to be as hard as diamond. He was bruising his fist, and a doctor needed their hands to be in good condition.

After maybe five minutes of full-out sprinting, the girl seemed to slow. She heaved open door with her free hand and the next thing he knew they were plunged into darkness.

The girl eventually set him down in a room that was pitched black. The doctor heard some rustling from the girl’s direction and eventually a flashlight came on, perched in one corner of the room. She crossed up the room and set up another, then another, then another. Finally she got a large flashlight and made a hole for it in the ceiling with her fist. He blinked in amazement at the display of strength, although by this point he knew he shouldn’t be surprised.

When his eyes adjusted to the light, he looked at his surroundings. The air had the musty scent of a basement, and the walls, ceiling, and floor were all made of hard concrete except for a patch in the floor that was curiously devoid of concrete; instead, it was filled with fresh damp earth.

Marius’s eyes fell to a limp form in the corner of the room, resting on blankets. He crossed over to the body and bit his lip as he drew back the blanket covering the figure’s torso.

The man before him was unconscious, and with good reason; from what the doctor could tell, he had four deep claw wounds in the right side of his torso. The wound was still bleeding, although it appeared to have slowed somewhat. The entire side of the man’s body was one large contusion, swollen and purple. Clearly, the man had some broken ribs.

What made his eyes pop was the color of the man’s blood; there was no mistaking it, it was purple. His eyes went up to the man’s face, where he was shocked again. The man’s ears were pointed at the tips, and his face was more angular and catlike than Marius would have liked. Although the man was unconscious, his teeth were bared in a grimace of pain, exposing sharp incisors not unlike the girl’s own.

“Who are you people?” Marius asked, his voice finally cracking.

“I’m a vampire, he’s a faerie,” the girl said. “He’s also the Summer Knight for the Court of the Fae, so he’s pretty important. He can’t die. You can’t let him die. I’ll assist you any way I can, just tell me how.”

Marius sighed and pulled on a pair of operating gloves. Despite everything, his first instinct was to aid the unconscious man any way he could. He wasn’t a doctor for no reason, after all.

“First,” he said, “We have to clean all this up. Hand me the cloth and the purified water...”