Daughter of the Night

(Cross’s P.O.V.)

I was making my way through the Summer Palace with the intention of hunting when Aerrinaekaiyan emerged from a opulently decorated corridor to my left. His hair was not gelled, and I noticed that when it hung loose it was rather long and shaggy, strands of it falling over his eyes. His emerald eyes sparkled brightly, however, and I knew that he had made a full recovery.

“I was just looking for you!” he exclaimed as he fell into step alongside me. “I wanted to tell you something.”

“I see Lemariastra released you from the depths of hell,” I said as I eyed him sideways. My tone was less than pleasant; I was still harboring a stinging grudge.

He snorted. “Emphatically shoved me through the exit is more like it.”

“She must have been getting sick of you,” I remarked coolly. “I think I can understand.”

“I missed you too,” Aerrin said, unfazed. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that Tristan and I took care of your little Vampire Hunter problem.”

My eyebrows shot up. “You what?”

“Those Van Helsing people high-tailed it out of the city this afternoon,” he explained. “They were actually quite agreeable.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I suppose you’re trying to make amends for your actions, hmm? You could try to be a bit less transparent about it.”

He flashed me a dazzling smile. “But you’d see through it regardless, so why try? And why should I hide the fact that I want to redeem myself?”

“What kind of answer is a question?” I growled.

“A philosophical one,” he responded slyly.

I rolled my eyes. “So how exactly did you go about eliminating the Vampire Hunters?”

“Well, you told me that they used heat sensors to track vampires, so Tristan and I got some bags of ice and set up an ambush in one of the hideouts that you used when you were staying in the city. When they came, we used our Fae abilities to scare them off.”

I pursed my lips and stopped walking, and Aerrin stopped when I did. I turned to face him, and we studied each other squarely for a few long seconds.

“It was a thoughtful effort,” I admitted eventually. “I appreciate that you did it. I am willing to forgive you and set this whole thing behind us, but you’re going to have to do two things for me.”

Aerrin cocked an eyebrow. “What two things?”

“First, you’ll have to show me something. Second, you’ll have to help me take out the real Van Helsing.”

Aerrin blinked. “What? What do you mean, the real Van Helsing?”

I smirked. “Did they ever tell you flat out that they were members of Van Helsing?”

Confusion flashed across his face. “Well, no… but they said they were Vampire Hunters!”

“Vampire Hunters are not synonymous with Van Helsing,” I told him. “Van Helsing is an organization of Vampire Hunters who hunt vampires as a full-time profession. Then there are Vampire Hunters like the kind you and Tristan found, people who figure out we exist and take it upon themselves to do something about it in their free time. Amateurs.”

“But you said they didn’t know about the existence of other supernatural races!”

“I said Vampire Hunters didn’t, I never said anything about Van Helsing. They are perfectly aware of the Fae, and the werewolves. Their perspective is a bit fuzzy when it comes to human sorcerers and the like, but beyond that, they know what they’re doing.”

Aerrin exhaled through his nose. “Well, this sucks. At least we only scared them off. Sure, I can help you out with Van Helsing. What’s the other thing?”

I grinned, crossed my arms, and leaned against the stone wall of the hall. “I want to see your wings.”

His mouth fell open slightly before he shut it, but the surprise was still clear on his face. “Who told you about that?”

“No one told me, but I saw the slits on your back where they should be, and the legends of winged faeries have to come from somewhere, don’t they?”

He ran a hand through his hair, the picture of distress.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “It’s not like I stumbled upon a clandestine secret of your race or anything, right? I just want to see them.”

Aerrin shook his head slowly. “It’s not that it’s that huge of a secret, but we Fae… we don’t really talk about it. Ever. We never talk about it. It’s just not something we talk about.”

I tilted my head, bemused. Aerrin was not one to repeat himself out of anxiety. “Why not?”

He sighed and then cast a wary glance down either side of the hall, as if checking to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping on our conversation.

“Our wings… our wings are a vital part of who we are as the Fae. And I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean it literally. The surest way to kill a faerie is to rip off his wings. All of our natural magic is channeled through them, and we need our magic to survive. A faerie without wings is like a human without lungs; there’s no way to transfer the oxygen from the air into the bloodstream, and the human would die of asphyxiation. The same thing would happen to a faerie with no wings.”

I narrowed my eyes skeptically. “Yet you seem to have had yours removed.”

He shook his head emphatically. “Definitely not. I’ve had mine bound. It’s not the same thing.”

“Aerrin, your wings are gone. From what I can see, you have no wings.”

“Oh, they might not be there physically, but they’re definitely there. It’s the same for every faerie; getting our wings bound is another application of the same type of sealing magic that I used to bind my faerie abilities to Wildfire.”

I nodded, fascinated. “So how do you release the binding, then? I doubt your wings will come out if you unsheathe just any old sword.”

“When I had my powers bound, that was a major sealing,” he informed me. “Having my wings bound isn’t nearly such a big ordeal. I simply have to will them unbound for them to come out.”

“And how do you get them bound again?” I asked.

“Most people would have to visit someone trained in the sealing aspect of the magical arts, but… My mother taught me how at a young age. There are some major advantages to having your wings out that come in handy when it comes to espionage and trespassing, see.”

“What kinds of advantages?” I demanded, curious.

“If you were anyone else, I would cut off my foot before telling you this,” Aerrin warned.

“You don’t have to tell me, you know,” I said. “It’s not like I’m forcing it out of you.”

Aerrin attempted a smile, but I got the impression that he was wondering at my ignorance more than anything. “I know, Cross. Our wings are the center of our magic, so when they’re unbound our magic is magnified. If I were to turn invisible with my wings out, you wouldn’t only not be able to see me; you wouldn’t be able to smell me, hear me, or see signs of my passing. My emotion-reading capabilities would be magnified to the point where I could detect the location of people in a hundred meter radius based off of their emotions. Oh, and I could fly.”

“If they’re so useful, and it’s not a hassle for you to release them and then bind them again, why haven’t I seen them before?”

He shuffled his feet, giving me the sense that this was by no means his favorite topic.

“They’re large, and bulky. They slow me down, make it harder for me to move. I can’t roll or twist or do any sort of backward power attack in a fight. They’re a huge liability, because if I lose them, it’s over. And… they look stupid.”

The corners of my mouth twitched, but I smothered my amusement before Aerrin could see it on my face, even if he could sense it among my emotions.

“They look stupid,” I repeated. “Why do they look stupid?”

He looked at me mournfully. “Would you take someone seriously if they had pink butterfly wing sticking out of their back?”

I couldn’t help it; I cracked up. “You have pink butterfly wings?”

“Well, no,” he admitted. “They’re green. And they resemble dragonfly wings more than anything. But the point is, they’re stupid. If I can’t take myself seriously with wings, it’s a given that no one else would either.”

“Aerrin,” I said, “be reasonable. They can’t be that bad.”

He looked at me wistfully, as if he wished more than anything that what I said was true.

“Show me,” I commanded. “I’ve got to see them after all this. You can’t hold me in suspense.”

Aerrin rolled his eyes heavenward as if seeking encouragement from a higher power before his gaze returned to me. “Long enough for you to see,” he told me. “That’s it. Ten seconds.”

I grinned, amused by his trepidation.

He first unstrapped Wildfire’s harness from around his chest and set it on the ground. Then he shrugged out of his hoodie before dropping it on the floor as well and pulling off the tee shirt under that. I opened my mouth to comment on the spontaneous strip show before I realized that his wings would be projecting from his back, and if he were wearing clothing on his upper half when he unbound his wings, something would have had to give.

After he dropped his shirt onto his sweatshirt, his gaze grew distant and he seemed to be concentrating on something far away.

There was no warning before he was shrouded abruptly in a haze of brilliant emerald green light. It seemed as if the light was coming from the air around him, but it was difficult to say. The green light congealed around his back, and the emerald light took the form of angular wings that indeed looked like a dragonfly’s.

The light faded somewhat and I realized that the transformation was over. I stepped closer to Aerrin, focusing on the beautiful swirling patterns of his wings. Emerald colored veins coiled and twisted through his wings, separating them into panes of pale blue, the kind of blue that glass seems when one looks at a thick piece of it. They looked thick and strong, not weak and paper-thin as Aerrin had made them sound.

Each wing had two prongs, just like a dragonfly’s. The top sections of the wings were maybe twenty-eight inches thick at his back, but as they extended outward the width narrowed slightly. They protruded at an upward angle from his shoulder blades and were just over four feet long. The bottom prongs angled downwards and were probably closer to three feet in length. The top edging of his wings were made out of what seemed to be like bone, yet they were encased in a shiny green exterior.

Without thinking, I reached out a hand to touch one of them. Aerrin jerked back and his wings started oscillating so fast that even my vision couldn’t follow them.

He caught himself, and his wings slowed to a nervous flutter. “Sorry,” he told me with an apologetic smile. “It’s sort of a knee-jerk reaction.”

I retracted my hand slowly before stepping back. “I don’t want to invade your personal space,” I said. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, either.”

His wings flapped a few more times, churning wind, and I felt a strong gust across my face. I studied him as he studied me, and with a pang I realized that with his wings, he seemed more… complete. As if the last piece of a puzzle had fallen into place and suddenly the hidden picture made sense. His wings complemented his eyes, both so radiantly emerald. The way his hair, the color of melted chocolate, fell across his eyes, the way he glowed even more so with vitality than before, everything…

In essence, Aerrin looked wild. But it fit him; it seemed right.

His wings began glowing with an intense green, and in a flash of brilliant light they were dispersed. The green light faded, and Aerrin bent to pick up his shirt.

“There was no way that was ten seconds,” I argued belatedly.

“It was thirteen,” came the reply as he pulled his shirt over the sculpted planes of his stomach. “I was counting.”

“I don’t understand why you dislike having them out so much,” I said after a moment. “I know you’re sensitive about them, but they looked strong. You’re acting like they’d fall off if I sneezed in your direction.”

He shook his head as he pulled his sweatshirt on. “It’s instinctive. I know they’re strong, and I reckon they’re even more durable than you think they are, but just because it’s incredibly difficult to remove them doesn’t mean it can’t happen. If they get damaged, I wouldn’t be able to recover at my usual speed, or even as fast as I had from the fight with the Alpha.”

“But you just said it’s difficult to do,” I countered. “So aren’t you a bit overprotective?”

Aerrin finished strapping on Wildfire and gave me a serious look. “I know you’re not versed in faerie lore,” he said, “but when the Fae were less civilized, around the Second Crusade or so, the Summer and Winter courts waged war upon each other. I don’t remember why, history isn’t my thing, but I remember this; it was quickly discovered that the fastest way to kill opposing Fae warriors was to amputate their wings, and with this method, faeries were killed in droves. It was massacre. In the end, neither side won because there were too many dead. It was only after the war that research was conducted and it was discovered that when a faerie’s wings were severed, the magic within the faerie went haywire and destroyed the faerie internally. A horrific way to die. Because of this, experiments were done and the binding solution was produced. The Summer and Winter Courts forged alliances as well, in order to guarantee that such atrocities would not occur again.”

I exhaled slowly. “Oh.”

“So it’s not just instinct, it’s a paranoia,” he told me. “Nowadays, presenting your wings is something you do only when you’re with a person you trust with your life. Even then, we Fae avoid it as much as possible.”

I blinked. “You know, if you had told me this before, I wouldn’t have asked it of you.”

Aerrin shrugged. “It’s okay. I trust you. Let’s just forget about it, please?”

I grabbed his shoulder and turned him to face me. “You should not have done it. It was not my intention to put you in such an uncomfortable position, and I did not know what I was asking. Next time something like this happens, say no. Got it?”

He gave me a weak smile. “Sure.”

I let go of his shoulder, disgusted with myself for turning the Summer Knight into such a nervous wreck. I had had no idea that my questions would have had these kinds of repercussions.

“Now, can you help me take care of Van Helsing tonight, or do you want to do it some other time?”

Aerrin unconsciously reached up to grab Wildfire’s hilt. “That would be nice. I need some action. Let’s do it tonight.”

“Excellent,” I said brusquely.

Aerrin’s eyes sparkled as an idea hit him. “We could take Baby!”

Oh shit. I completely forgot that I had never told him what had actually happened to the Harley. I looked at him sideways. “You don’t mean your motorcycle, do you?”

“Of course I do. Don’t be so cold, Cross, you’ve already met her! Do you know where she is?”

“Actually, I used her as collateral for saving your life.”

His face froze. “What do you mean?”

I made sure not to look at him as I said “I gave it to the doctor who sewed your innards back together as payment. It was only fair. The poor man hadn’t slept in forty-two hours by the time I was done with him.”

“So she’s… gone?”

“Yup,” I replied, careful to look anywhere but at him.

“Oh,” he said in a small voice. I jerked around to look at him, angry with myself for causing that voice more than anything.

“Look, Aerrin, you didn’t really think I’d be able to get you home on that thing, did you? And if I had just left it in the city, it would have been stolen anyway. Be practical!”

“I know, I know,” he muttered. “But… she was my baby!”

“Can you do the self-pity thing another time?”

He sniffed loudly for effect. “It’s like I lost a child.”

I snorted. “Aerrin, I seriously doubt what you’re going through right now is anything like losing a child.”

“Oh, all right,” he sighed. “Let’s go kick some Van Helsing ass. Maybe one of them will have a Harley I can, ah, borrow.”

I grinned. “That’s more like it. Do you think Tristan will want to come?”

Aerrin shook his head. “He sleeps at night, unlike some people.”

“You don’t sleep at night, though,” I pointed out.

He grinned. “Not since I met you, no. You’ve sort of messed up my sleeping pattern.”

I didn’t know what to say at that, so I didn’t say anything.

“Well, since someone auctioned off my Harley, I suppose we’ll have to take public transportation,” Aerrin went on. “Pity, really. The Metro gets kind of creepy at two in the morning.”

“Mostly because you’ll be on it,” I retorted. “The nut jobs are always the ones who still carry around katanas in the twenty-first century.”

He laughed. “Better a katana than a gothic wardrobe topped off with a cape straight from the set of Star Wars VI.”

I snorted. “Now that we’ve established that we both look like psychopaths, are we going, or not?”

“Sure,” he agreed, “but you’ll have to fill me in a bit on the way. These guys sound a bit more hardcore than the losers Tristan and I sent packing.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I acknowledged. “Although their sense of fashion is their one downfall.”

“Huh?”

I rolled my eyes. “If you see any badass person on the streets dressed entirely in black, they are either a vampire or Van Helsing. Those douches completely copy our style.”

His eyebrows were creeping upward. “Style?”

I shrugged. “You know, our strange addiction to dark colors and heavy fabrics. It’s not just me; every vampire does it. I mean, come on; have you ever seen a vampire wearing yellow?”

He adopted a thoughtful expression. “I suppose not…”

“And we’re always, always wearing some sort of black. Red is an acceptable second. Followed by a dark royal blue. Least preferable is yellow, pink, light blue, light green, and above all, white.”

“While I appreciate this sermon on fashion tastes…”

“It’s important if we’re tracking Van Helsing,” I interrupted crossly. “Their belief is that black is the true color of death, and that’s what they want to deliver to their enemies.”

“Unoriginal,” Aerrin commented.

“The other thing you need to know is that the first thing they do when stalking a vampire is to entrap the vampire by making a ring of holy water around the battleground,” I went on, pretending that he hadn’t spoken.

“Holy water?”

I threw my hands up in frustration. “I’m damned, remember? Religious stuff, that gets me. Crosses, stars of David, holy water, sunlight, His holy name… Any holy name, for that matter. That’s why I’m bringing you along. You don’t become immobilized if someone starts reciting scripture at you.”

“You’re not serious,” he said, his deadpan green eyes fully illustrating his disbelief.

“Hey, you sprout butterfly wings, all right? I’m no worse than you are.”

“Dragonfly wings,” he scoffed. “They’re dragonfly wings. And I can withstand the catastrophic devastation of a verse from Genesis, thank you very much.”

“If you were anyone else,” I informed him with narrow eyes, “you would be dying right now.”

He chuckled. “Cross, the more you use death threats, the less effective they become. You never follow up on them, see, because if you did I would be dead approximately sixteen times over.”

“If you can remember the number of times I’ve threatened your life, obviously my threats are effective.”

“They’re memorable, not effective. I don’t know how you come up with them, but each one is more unique and explicit than the last.”

I glared at him. He beamed back at me, but that eventually withered up under my angry stare.

“I’ll just be going now,” he eventually said as he walked by me.

We left the Summer Palace together around one in the morning.

We headed to the Foggy Bottom metro stop and waited for the train with a crowd of college kids out clubbing. As usual, the humans subconsciously edged away from me. I also collected several wide-eyed glances, probably at my cloak.

“So how are we finding Van Helsing?” Aerrin asked. I looked over to see him skimming the crowds warily, clearly prepared for an ambush. His instincts were good, I noted, although I had already known that.

“They’ll find us,” I said. “Normally they wouldn’t hunt me at night, but my trail is fading fast and they’ll be impatient and desperate. I might expedite the process by pretending to hunt.”

“What do you have in mind?” he questioned.

“Well, I was originally thinking you could pull out your human form and I could pretend to attack you, but you told me before that that’s not possible, so now we have two options; I can make a scene and you can wait and hide until they show up, or we can start a fake fight.”

“A fake fight?” he reiterated, confused. “Look, Cross, I’m not sure that’d fly…”

“Van Helsing has wanted a foothold in D.C. for a long time,” I went on, ignoring him. “If they save a warrior of the Fae, the Court will have to acknowledge them somehow. Van Helsing would request a location for a base, and in the nature of reciprocity the Fae would be unable to deny it; it’s a perfect opportunity for them.”

Aerrin frowned. “I don’t like that option. We’d be too distracted.”

“Relax. If they felt your magical aura and see my lack of body heat, they’ll figure out what’s going on and be on us in a flash. We would lure them in, but they’d only target me.”

He studied me for a moment. “That’s a very risky plan. I know you’re powerful, but that only makes you more susceptible to their methods. If I can’t take them out in time, you won’t have any way to defend yourself.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Aerrin, you seem to be underestimating me. They’ve been afraid to hunt me at night, remember? And Van Helsing is entirely unprepared for a master duelist, so we’ll have the advantage of surprise.”

He scrutinized me thoroughly. “Are you sure you’re comfortable with this? It sounds like you’re setting yourself up.”

I peeled back my lips. “Remember whom you’re talking to. I would prefer avoiding Van Helsing on my own, but if I have backup they won’t stand a chance.”

Aerrin laughed. “That’s more like it.”

“Watch it,” I growled.

He grew serious. “Cross, I have to say, I’m not sure how I want to deal with these people. The fact that they’re hunting you is enough for me to hate them, but I don’t know… if that’s enough incentive for me to kill them.”

I shook my head. “Aerrin, I would never ask you to kill for me. I’m asking for you to use your own judgment. It’s going to be harder strong-arming Van Helsing into leaving than it was the Vampire Hunters, however.”

He nodded. At that moment, the train came roaring into the station and slowed to a stop before us.

“Come on,” Aerrin said, grabbing my wrist. “We’ve gotta be aggressive getting on, the doors are only open for about seven seconds.”

He wasn’t kidding; after the flow of people coming out of the train ceased, the crowds wanting on the train surged forward. The elbows and feet were turned into weapons as people clustered together, and it was only my own less-than-reserved physical behavior that cleared us a path to the nearest doorway.

We slipped onto the train ahead of most of the others and claimed two yellowish seats. I smirked as Aerrin struggled to adjust Wildfire so that he could sit down properly.

“Do you know where we’re getting off?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “I figured you’d have an idea. We just need to get away from the Summer Palace so that Van Helsing doesn’t get suspicious.”

He rolled his eyes. “You would get on the subway without knowing where you’re going.”

“I know where I’m going,” I replied evenly. “I just don’t know where this train is in relation to that.”

“Oh, brilliant,” he groaned.

To be honest, we picked a random stop and got off. I followed Aerrin because he looked like he knew where he was going, and we took an incredibly long escalator up through the tunnel to the surface.

The streets of DC at night were quieter, and pedestrians were fewer, although the people who were out in the middle of the night were quite less sane than their daytime counterparts. I frowned warningly at any that came too close.

“So where are we supposed to do this?” Aerrin asked me. From the way he was monitoring our surroundings, I knew he was still uncomfortable with the idea of a mock fight. Inviting an ambush was poor battle strategy, but I saw little other choice.

“I was thinking the rooftops,” I informed him. “We’re away from the pedestrians that way.”

“Sure, but how is Van Helsing going to get up there?” he demanded.

I smirked. “Grappling hooks. A bit overdramatic, if you ask me, but it works.”

He just shook his head before walking over to an office building merely twelve or so stories tall. He gestured for me to follow him before springing, catlike, to the ledge of third story balcony. He used his momentum to swing his body and pull himself forward before running up the side of the wall and leaping to a higher point on the building.

From the speed at which he swarmed up the wall, it took him about ten seconds to get to the top of the building. I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him before I loosened the form of my physical shape and rose up the side of the building as a cloud of fog.

The rooftop was large, maybe thirty by twenty yards. It was mostly flat concrete, although there was quite a lot of bird crap that I would have to watch out for splattered all over the place.

When I solidified into my usual form, Aerrin was gazing at the sky.

“The bad thing about cities is that you can never see anything,” he told me quietly. It was true, for the most part; the light reflecting from the city made the sky a purplish red, and any stars were blotted out. The only clearly visible thing was the moon, which appeared to be a waning crescent.

“You can see the moon,” I pointed out.

Aerrin crossed his arms, his face still tilted upwards. His eyes seemed to glow emerald in the darkness, the same way as a cat’s. His dark hair still looked unkempt, but it only gave him a wilder aura. “But no constellations,” he muttered in a voice I wasn’t sure was directed at me.

We had been staring at the sky in silence for almost two minutes when I felt a presence approaching rapidly from behind. At first I didn’t know what to make of it, but as it neared us I could feel the power. And, with a combined sense of horror and hatred, I recognized the reiatsu.

And, with a roar ripped from my chest that defied heavens and earth alike, I flung myself forward, over the lip of the building and through the air, to clash with fury against one person I had hoped never to see again.

“Vanessa,” I heard Aerrin whisper through the fog of animalistic bloodlust.

My fist that had been aiming to detach her head from her body was countered by her forearm as her other hand came around at my side. I disintegrated my shape enough to slip around her, where I reformed and rammed my elbow into the base of her neck. She wasn’t there, of course, and that was when I realized that there were other vampires besides her. Seven of them, and from the feelings they exuded, they were all Ancients.

I was about to throw myself at her again when I felt a hand grab me by the collar of my cloak on the back of my neck. I would have severed the arm in a heartbeat had I not recognized Aerrin’s scent.

He pulled me back onto the rooftop, using an unsheathed Wildfire as incentive to keep me from resisting.

“Cross, restrain yourself,” he ordered in a voice that was deathly calm. Wildfire was crackling with fiery energy and burning so intensely that it caused my skin to burn.

I realized why he had pulled me back; the vampires were surrounding us in a semicircle, and although they looked wary and aggressive, they weren’t attacking.

Which meant that they were here to deliver a message. And the message had to be from him.

I snarled, low and deadly, as my gaze found Vanessa’s. The vampiress looked exactly the same as she had in 1937. She bared her fangs at me in return. While there was nothing either of us wanted to do more than kill the other, the circumstances prevented it.

“Why are you here?” the Summer Knight asked flatly.

The red haired vampiress blinked, reigned in control over herself, and straightened to a more human posture. Within seconds she had composed herself.

“I come bearing a message for each of you,” she said to Aerrin without looking at me. “Two messages, two items.”

Wildfire didn’t waver at all, and its light was a flaming beacon in the night. “Deliver them, then,” its wielder commanded.

Vanessa smirked and withdrew from a satchel a small white bundle tied with yellow yarn. She tossed it to Aerrinaekaiyan, who unblinkingly caught it out of the air with his free hand.

“Tell your Queen this; she is still alive,” the vampiress told him. His flashing eyes narrowed dangerously, but his nimble fingers unlaced the yarn without his looking at it. He pulled from the small bundle something triangular, yet transparent and flat. Patterns of lavender swirled across the surface. It looked familiar, but what…

My blood turned to ice as it hit me; the texture of the object was almost exactly like Aerrin’s dragonfly wing. Aerrin was holding a dismembered section of a faerie’s wing.

The Summer Knight stared at the piece in his palm for several long seconds. His face turned pale, and Wildfire’s raging flames dimmed into something even more lethal. The blade itself was white-hot now, and crackling with almost unbearable heat that I could feel from ten feet away.

Vanessa wore a satisfied smile, but neither she nor I was prepared for when Aerrinaekaiyan simply vanished.

The French vampiress ducked under an unseen blow that split the roof from where Wildfire met concrete. I couldn’t follow Aerrin’s form at all because he was entirely invisible, but I could hear and smell enough of him to follow his movements. He twisted, Wildfire seeking the vampiress’s lifeblood. She ducked back so that the katana only opened a narrow cut along her collarbone, and before the Summer Knight could follow through a sea of belligerent Ancients surrounded him.

It was my turn to grab him from behind, wrapping my arms around his middle so as to trap his arms by his side.

“Not now,” I muttered into his ear, careful to avoid Wildfire’s razor edge. I pulled him backwards before the Ancients could land a blow, and they in turn were stilled by Vanessa’s signal.

“My second message,” she hissed as she made contact with me, “is this.”

She pulled out of her satchel something small and gold, linked through a golden chain, and tossed it to me.

I recognized it as it flied through the air and jerked away before I could help myself, allowing the necklace to land at my feet.

Although the cross had melted and cooled crooked so that its religious power was lost over me, the rosary my father had given me for my fourteenth birthday was unmistakable.

The back of my neck burned with remembered pain and I slid a protective hand over the burn mark in the shape of a cross.

“He wishes you to know that he will not collect you,” the vampiress informed me in her heavily accented voice. “You will come to him.”

I had gone rigid, as I normally did when faced with remnants of my past.

“A war is coming,” Vanessa said to me, complacent at the advantage she had gained. “I am under his orders now, but the next time we meet, I will be the only one walking away.”

The Summer Knight and I tensed as the vampires left the rooftop, abandoning it to us and our nightmares.

After a minute of silence, Aerrin sheathed Wildfire and bent to recover the corner of the faerie wing, carefully wrapping it in the white cloth it had been delivered in. His face was grim, and he looked far older than I had ever seen him.

He slipped the object into his pocket before turning to me. “I don’t suppose they took care of Van Helsing for us, did they?”

The suddenness of his joke surprised me into a laugh. “Wishful thinking. No matter, though. We will take care of them another night.”

The Summer Knight nodded thoughtfully before eying the rosary at my feet. “Are you going to get that?”

I stared at it for several long seconds. It was nothing to me except a reminder of eternal damnation and things that once were. Yet it was part of who I was.

I eventually scooped it off of the ground and gave it to Aerrin.

“Put it somewhere that I’m never going to find it,” I told him. “We need to go alert the Court.”

Aerrinaekaiyan’s face darkened. “I’m don’t want to be the bearer of bad news,” he muttered, “but this information needs to get to Morhiannara.”

I pursed my lips, considering my position, before asking, “Aerrin, I don’t mean to overstep myself, but exactly whose wing is that?”

His gaze turned to me, and I realized it was full of pain. “Riornahara,” he told me. “Summer Princess of the Fae, and Morhiannara’s daughter.”