Daughter of the Night

Aerrin’s P.O.V.

The rest of my week went by at an incredibly slow rate. And when I say slow, I mean that a drugged, three-legged turtle could move faster than the speed at which I was healing.

Nevertheless, the pain faded bit by bit every day, and strength and mobility slowly returned to me. If I had been human, I would have debilitating scarring across my body that would cripple me for the rest of my life. However, I could already tell that I would only have white slash scars across my body, and everything would heal correctly. Still, my natural magic was incredibly weak, which was why I was taking so long to heal.

When I asked, Lemariastra explained to me that my healing process had slowed because I had been given a transfusion of human blood, which diluted the strength of my natural magic and healing capabilities. While the effect wasn’t permanent, it would take several full weeks before my natural magic was back to where it had been previously.

The only thing that had expedited my path to recovery was when Cross visited me. After I had told her of my past, she had come back every night to keep me company. We were back to our usual sarcastic banter, which I was perfectly comfortable with. Still, I was also disappointed that she seemed entirely disinclined to tell me anything of her own history.

My freedom finally came when Lem walked into my section of the hospital wing to see me cleaning Wildfire with a cloth.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“Same place you hid it,” I replied with a grin.

She studied me for a few seconds before pointing to the door. “Get out. You’ve done your time. Make sure I don’t see you in here again.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said with a salute before sliding past her and out of the door, Wildfire in one hand.

My first destination was my living quarters. I needed new clothes desperately, and I needed to unbury my harness for Wildfire.

After dressing in a pair of jeans, tee shirt, and sweatshirt, I dug around for my extra harness. This was leather, a bit bulkier than my other one, and scuffed from years of use. I slung it over my shoulder and buckled it on.

After considering myself prepared, I left my chambers and headed to the Guard station.

When I found Tristan, he was drilling a group of guards with swords. I heard him bellowing before I saw him, however, and I grinned when I heard a “HARDER, MAGGOT! You couldn’t cut off the head of a dandelion with a blow like that! This is how you do it!”

When the warriors saw me coming, they immediately halted their practice and tilted their heads to me out of respect. I returned the favor, although I was gnashing my teeth on the inside. Once upon a time I was unseen, I thought sourly.

Tristan turned when he saw his guards stop and a grin split across his face. “You’re back!” he crowed. “Here for some practice?”

“Absolutely,” I responded. “I’m also here to see if you had any interest in helping me out with a little unofficial diplomacy.”

Confusion flashed across his face. He told his guards to continue drilling without him before he followed me across the training yard to a more secluded area.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

I told him quickly about Van Helsing, and how it was my fault that they were following Cross.

“So you want to find them and scare them off?” Tristan mused once I had finished.

“From what I understand, they only track her during the day, when she can’t do anything about it. At night, they’re completely hidden and she has no hope of finding them.”

“So we’re going to help her out,” he confirmed. “Sounds good. Except, how are we going to find them? And how can we get rid of them, short of killing them? I mean, we could kill them, but the Queen wouldn’t like that at all.”

“No,” I sighed. “Well, I was planning to lay down a fake trail for the vampire hunters. They would follow it to where they thought Cross was resting, and they’d just come to us. We could use a little intimidation to send them packing.”

“And how would you do that?”

“I know a location that Cross stayed at in this city, and from what she told me they have heat-seeking equipment. They can sense vampires from their lack of body heat, once they get close. We’d just need some ice.”

Tristan snorted. “I suppose you had nothing better to do in your free time than think all of this up.”

I frowned at him. “I’d like to see what you’d do when you’re chained to a bed for a week.”

He laughed. “Touché.”

“So will you help me?”

“Of course. But I need you to demonstrate the proper form for a Crescent Arc first. This batch of recruits is absolutely clueless.”

I laughed. “Sure thing.”

A few hours later, when Tristan dismissed his guards, we left the Summer Palace and emerged in the city. I had my sweatshirt hood up to hide my ears, and Tristan was sporting an Oreilles hat. We hopped on the metro and took it to Rosslyn, where we got off and found a supermarket that sold ice. After purchasing several heavy bags of it, we trekked several blocks to the small church where Cross had stayed the first night she had been in the city. I had tracked her down here along with several guards, which is how I knew where it was. From there we had followed her to the rooftops, and took her to the Summer Palace.

She had gotten furious about that, although we had eventually resolved it. But now she was still mad at me for the whole werewolf thing. Was there ever going to be a time when she wasn’t pissed off at something I did?

Cross’s scent was very old and faint, seeing as she hadn’t spent too much time in the church. Still, Tristan and I managed to follow it down to the basement, where we found an old storage closet. Covered by a stack of linens was a hole in the wood floor down to the foundation of the house. The smell of damp earth came up from the hole, and the air down there was cool, almost cold.

I nodded to Tristan and jumped through the hole, the bags of ice in my hands. He followed me. The area under the church basement was pretty large, maybe fourteen by twenty feet. The ground was slanted though, so the floor dropped away towards one corner and we had to crouch not to hit our heads on the ceiling in the opposite corner.

We found the loose earth where Cross had buried herself to sleep, and we placed the bags of ice in there before scraping clods of earth onto them.

“Now what?” Tristan asked me.

“We wait.”

“My favorite part,” he sighed. “But didn’t you say they use heat-seeking equipment? They’ll see our body heat. And what if the ice melts before they come?”

“They’ll assume we’re humans that Cross trapped us in here after feeding on us,” I replied. “And if the ice melts, one of us can go get more.”

“But wouldn’t it be better if we wait for them outside?”

“Dude, it’s a hundred degrees out there.”

Tristan pondered this for a moment. “I suppose,” he said after a moment. “Although our mobility is restricted in here, and there’s only one exit. This isn’t a particularly sound ambush location.”

I rolled my eyes. “Look, if you’re more comfortable outside, we can go.”

Tristan grunted. “Fine. It’s just a bunch of humans. We don’t need to take full measures.”

I entwined my fingers behind my head and leaned back against the wall. “I’m not even sure they realize that the Fae exists,” I told him. “From what I could get out of Cross, they know next to nothing about werewolves and aren’t interested in expanding their knowledge base. All they care about is exterminating vampires.”

The Captain of the Guard pulled a face. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I’d be pretty pissed if some vampire turned my relative into one of the eternally damned. Maybe pissed enough to hunt them down.”

After a moment of pondering, Tristan said, “That makes sense, I guess. Although I’d hardly consider a vampire ‘eternally damned’.”

“Humans think they are. And they are accustomed to being the top of the food chain. It’s only natural that they’d try to wipe out anything that hunts them the way a panther might stalk cattle. You have to admit, Cross makes for a terrifying predator.”

Tristan chuckled. “You’re smitten, my friend.”

“Smitten?” I repeated stupidly.

“Stop playing innocent, Aerrin,” came the brusque reply.

“She’s my friend,” I retorted, maybe a bit too snappishly. “Do you realize how rich I would be if I got a dollar every time someone assumed we were… dating?”

A corner of his mouth pulled up wryly. “Well you bicker like a married couple, that’s for sure. And are you seriously going to continue denying that anything’s going on after the press released that front-page headliner?”

I felt a knot of dread forming in the pit of my stomach. “Tristan,” I said slowly, “what are you talking about?”

One of his blue eyebrows rose slowly. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the article.”

I exhaled slowly, trying to reign in my irritation. “I’ve been kind of preoccupied these past few weeks, actually, so excuse me if I don’t make a habit of catching up on the day-to-day faerie gossip.”

Tristan shook his head, bemused. “I know you’ve been busy, but I would have imagined that even you would have time for this.”

As he said that, he pulled a newspaper clipping from his pants pocket. “I was planning on asking you about this, anyway,” he explained, “which is why I was carrying it around. But I guess if you haven’t even read it yet… Well, you probably should.”

I took the article from him with leaden hands. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with why the Queen thinks we’re-” I stopped my sentence when I saw the headline of the front page. After several seconds of numb horror ticked by, I began cursing profusely under my breath. “Has Cross seen this?”

Tristan gave me a small apologetic smile, the kind you give someone when there’s nothing better to offer. “There’s no way she couldn’t have. It’s all anyone’s been talking about lately.”

“This is utter bullshit,” I said desperately. “You know this, so does everybody else! I’m going to kill the bastard who wrote this!”

“No you won’t,” Tristan said calmly. “You’ll probably hide from the public eye for a few weeks after this little fiasco, as you should.”

I realized he was right, as usual. I couldn’t keep the anger and embarrassment from heating up my face when my gaze fell back to the words in bold black print; “SUMMER KNIGHT CONFESSES LOVE FOR VAMPIRESS”.

“I never did this!” I yelled at the newspaper. “This is such a lie!”

“Read the article,” he advised me. I glowered at him before returning my gaze to the newspaper clipping in my hands.

It was observed several days ago by reliable sources that Aerrinaekaiyan, Summer Knight and Defender of the Realm, admitted his feelings for the vampiress known only as Cross after showering her with gifts and complements.

“I can’t believe it,” states one witness who asked to remain anonymous.

While the Summer Knight’s absence these past two years was kept secret from the public, his whereabouts were revealed a short time ago when a Descendant of Dracula formed an alliance with the Fae. She came to the Summer Palace in the company of the Summer Knight, arousing some interest.

The public’s curiosity was further piqued when Aerrinaekaiyan refused to draw his sword in defense of the Realm when the vampiress attacked her guards. This resulted in retraction of his title as well as a public flogging. Although since restored to his station, Aerrinaekaiyan can frequently be found in the company of the vampiress.

Since that incident, several “lovers’ quarrels’ have been overheard by many inhabitants of the palace. These arguments have been between the Summer Knight and the Daughter of the Night, and have been quite heated. Several staff members of the Summer Palace have reported that they have been unable to sleep due to the excessive volumes of these conflicts.

The Summer Knight was directly overheard saying to the vampiress yesterday evening by a witness who also would like to remain anonymous
“I realized that… You were a woman… I’ll convince you… that I’m… [a man].”

The article went on, but I was so overwhelmed that the rest of the words slipped over my mind like oil over water. I was in a stupor, the type of thing that happens when you’re in a car accident; it takes a few hours for the onslaught of emotions and feelings to set in.

“Are you sure that Cross has seen this?” I asked, my voice ringing with the pathetic hope of the damned.

“Man, I’m sorry,” Tristan replied grimly, “but that article is everywhere. Apparently your personal life is hot stuff. You’re like the Fae equivalent of Justin Bieber.”

“Not only is this completely untrue,” I seethed, “but this is a huge invasion of privacy! They’re spreading false rumors! Isn’t there a law against this somewhere? And why anyone would believe this shit? Don’t these people have anything better to do with their lives than screw around with my reputation?”

Tristan, I realized with fury, was trying hard not to smirk.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That information is pretty accurate. And if you’re not in love with her, you’re doing an amazing acting job pretending to be a lovesick puppy.”

“I. Am. Not. Lovesick!” I spat out between clenched teeth. “I’m humiliated! How will I ever be able to look at Cross again? This is so embarrassing!”

“Aha,” Tristan said. “See? Your first thoughts are of how she’s going to react to this. You’re completely whipped, my friend.”

I spluttered, not knowing what to say that would appropriately convey my feelings of rage and embarrassment. It was times like these when I missed being a world-class thief, invisible to all except those whom I wanted to see me. Right now, I felt trapped, like a rabbit that was in clear sight of a hawk and knew that there was nowhere to hide.

“Tristan,” I said, inhaling slowly. “Cross is my friend. These tabloids are lies. I would expect you of all people to respect that.”

He swallowed his smile. “I apologize, Aerrin, but I was just pulling your leg. You know I can’t resist giving you a hard time-“

At that moment, we heard the door to the church above us swing open, and Tristan and I made eye contact when we heard cautious footsteps padding across the wooden church floor. I counted four people from their footsteps.

He reached for his throwing knives as I reached for Wildfire’s hilt and thumbed off the catch that held the blade in its scabbard. We both had to stay unmoving, however, so that the Vampire Hunters would assume we were unconscious.

“I think we found it,” came a breathless voice from above, female from the sounds of it. “And, oh shit, it looks like it’s got some captives down there. We’d better go down.”

“Are you sure it’s clear?” a second voice, gruff and clearly male, demanded.

“Yeah,” came a third person, also male.

Tristan and I smirked at each other as a rope uncoiled and fell through the hole into the pit. We were on the opposite side of the entrance, so they would have time to pile in here before Tristan and I did our thing.

Sure enough, they came slithering down the rope, one after another, until they were all four on the ground. A woman, a big guy, a skinny guy, and a man with a briefcase. The skinny one crossed over to Tristan immediately, making as if to measure his pulse. I winked at Tristan and together we rose to our feet, brushing off the dirt from our jeans.

The man shouted with surprise, and three beams of flashlight landed squarely on us. I squinted against the sudden light, almost blinded, but I could still tell where they were based on smell, sound, and their broiling emotions, which had turned immediately to fright and wariness.

Tristan and I heard the sound of a semi-automatic being loaded. I squinted enough to see that it was the big one who was holding the black pistol.

“I don’t think that’s such a great idea in a space this small,” I warned.

“Who are you?” the woman demanded. Although she was definitely afraid, her voice came off as merely irritable.

I brought my arms up into a shield, forearms turned outward so that I could reflect any bullets with my protectors. While normal humans couldn’t even see a bullet once it was shot, the Fae possessed reflexes fast enough that they could dodge it or redirect it. As long as a faerie was mobile, guns wouldn’t be much threat.

“I am Aerrinaekaiyan,” I said, “and that’s Tristanarium. We’re here on behalf of a friend.”

“What are you?” the big man asked. Even crouching, his forehead was scraping the cement ceiling. Apparently he had picked up on our less human features.

“We’re faeries,” I said. “Which means that you’re not much of a threat to us.”

“Faeries?” the man with the briefcase choked out. “Like, with wands and wings?”

“No,” I retorted, getting annoyed. “Faeries, like, with invisibility and emotion-reading capabilities.”

The Vampire Hunters exchanged glances and I got the distinct impression that they thought we were lying.

“The point is, you need to leave this city,” I said. “This is the domain of the Fae. We don’t allow vampires in here, and we sure don’t let Vampire Hunters run around with guns blazing.”

Their emotions went from startled and afraid to relatively pissed off in a short amount of time. I shot Tristan a look and he rolled his eyes before stepping forward.

Out of the two of us, he was much better at the hardass routine. After all, he was quite experienced at bullying recruits and full-fledged guards alike, when he had to.

“That vampiress you’re hunting?” Tristan asked smoothly. “Well, suffice it to say we took care of her.”

Their emotions went from anger to skepticism.

“And how exactly did you manage that?” demanded the big man.

Tristan nodded almost imperceptibly at me. I swept Wildfire from its sheath and threw myself forward at the same time towards the big man with the pistol. Because I was using full speed, the humans didn’t even blink in the time it took me to slice the barrel of the pistol off millimeters from the hand that was holding it.

By the time the Vampire Hunters had registered my speed, I had Wildfire slung over my shoulder edge-up and was standing casually beside them.

“Does that answer your question?” I asked, giving them my best Cross-imitation grin. Their skepticism turned back to fear immediately.

“Now,” Tristan began as he stepped up beside me, “Answer honestly, because we can tell if you’re lying; are there any more of you in our city?”

“No-not that we know of,” the skinny man replied. “We never knew of any vampires in this area, and now we know why.”

“Excellent response,” Tristan grunted as I sheathed Wildfire. “Now, you have until midnight tonight to evacuate the city, otherwise you’re at our mercy. Understand?”

The Vampire Hunters nodded together, and when Tristan raised an expectant eyebrow they began piling out of the hole in the ground. Tristan and I followed them, but instead of using their rope to climb out we just jumped up, caught the lip of the hole, and pulled ourselves through. My torso protested a bit at being stretched.

“Midnight,” I warned them as they struck up a fast pace towards the exit.

After we heard the tires of their car screeching on the asphalt, I turned to my friend. “Are you sure they’ll be gone by tonight?”

“When you’re not talking, you can be pretty scary,” he responded as he watched them leave. “And if they’re not gone, there’ll be one pissed off vampire who’s probably not going to be as nice to them as we were.”

I laughed. “True.”

“So I heard that you’re going to see Opheliannere soon,” he said amiably. “She misses you. I talked to her last a few months before you got back to Court.”

I thought fondly of the Winter Knight. “I’ve missed her too,” I said fondly. “We need to catch up.”

“So,” Tristan said after letting me mull over my thoughts for a few long seconds.

“Mm?”

“Do you think this’ll let you get back in?”

“Get back in what?”

“Get back in Cross’s good graces, duh,” Tristan said. “It’s not like you’re doing this just to be nice. You’re trying to suck up.”

I snorted. “Well, yeah. I mean, if she sleeps in the Summer Palace one more night I think she’s going to hunt me down and throw me off the Washington Memorial. I had one night of relief when I told her about my past, and the next night it was back to the same old routine where she’s trying to light me on fire with the heat of her stare.”

“She’s not one for subtlety,” Tristan sympathized. “Anyway, do you want to find a Jamba Juice or something now that we’re out?”

“Hell yeah,” I said. “And then I’m going to do a little research on the address of a certain reporter…”