"Aftermath" by Shelby K. Irons

Dannel ached. The pounding, all-over ache assaulted his senses with shrieks from every muscle and nerve in his battered frame. Blood? No, he decided, not his own but sticky on his skin and clothes just the same.

“How long?” his groggy mind asked.

The floor was hard and cold beneath him and a dim light – Marrik’s? -- shone at an eerie angle, rising from the floor a few feet to his left to cast surreal shadows on the walls. Why was it so dark in here? His weapon lay on the floor to his right and instinctively his hand groped for it. Gaining purchase, he dragged it close with a rasping sound that echoed in the silence. The feel of the stark, cool metal offered him some primal comfort.

He struggled to a sitting position and bone-jarring pain surged up Dannel’s spine dashing itself like a wave on the back of his skull. He winced and sardonically acknowledged to himself that the battle must have gone well if he could accomplish so much. The surrounding carnage and the fact that he seemed intact told him it could easily have been much worse. “How much worse?” he thought with a start.

There were bodies and parts of bodies everywhere. His eyes sought familiar shapes among the dead. The light – Marrik’s! The dim light escaping from beneath his crumpled body shone an ugly red. Dead. Very much so. No doubt – he was torn nearly in half.

There… some ten feet away… Lirra! Slumped against the wall, bloody, a gash in her face running from her forehead down her right cheek nearly to her chin. Her weapon was still in her hand. Well, she’d never been one to retreat.

Dannel revised his initial assumption. The battle had not gone well at all. He crawled across the gore-strewn floor to Lirra. Maybe, just maybe…

“Lirra?” Dannel rasped in the darkness as he inched up to her body.

No answer. Maneuvering himself to his feet, he fought back the nauseous urge to wretch and stumbled forward.

“Lirra?” he asked again as he kneeled down, dropping the Beretta to the side.

Gingerly, he checked for a pulse on the left side of her throat. Her skin was cold to the touch and clammy… but there… he thought he felt a heartbeat, faint as it was.

Though his left arm hung limp and broken at his side, he moved it anyway to rip a piece of fabric from the hem of his black shirt. Tendrils of flame seared through every nerve and bone. Biting back nausea, he used the cloth to gently dab at the bleeding wound sliced across Lirra’s face. Her head lolled to the side at his touch to reveal two neat puncture wounds against the pale skin of her neck, right over the jugular.

Dannel swore under his breath.

He hadn’t wanted to see the evidence of Lucian’s earlier boasting.

“Victory tastes like metallic strawberries, my lords, and here she is! Lirra Grayson, our destroyer! I’ve tasted her blood... I drank her dry to the marrow and then gave her all of mine.” Lucian motioned to the heavy irons doors and they swung open. Two guards dragged Lirra into the Speaking Circle and tossed her semi-conscious body down at the Vampire Prince’s feet. “Let us test Marrik’s dangerous theory. Can the blood of a human really stop the Dark Gift?”

At least she was still alive… for now.

He wiped his blood-slick fingers dry on the tattered remains of his shirt and gently brushed a tawny swathe of hair from her delicate face. A puffy bruise bloomed high on her cheekbone beneath the slow-bleeding gash. He cursed again.

“That,” Lirra mumbled, “isn’t a nice word.”

Dannel exhaled a breath of surprise and felt his heart skip a beat. “It seemed to fit the occasion,” he replied.

“Yeah, it describes how I feel at the moment,” she said, licking her lips. “Actually, I thought I was dead for awhile. But then I heard you cussing and knew I couldn’t be in heaven.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult,” Dannel murmured, cupping her face in one hand.

“It was both,” she croaked. “You look like hell.”

“I feel worse,” he said.

“Hmm…” she smiled and nuzzled her head into his hand, letting the matching Beretta in her hand clatter to the ground. “By the way, thanks for the gun.”

“You seemed to need it more than me. Lord Odfrey would have killed you. You emptied three rounds into his throat before Lucian ripped his head off personally.”

“Lucian tried to save me?”

“He wanted to keep you alive. You are his grand experiment.”

Lirra clinched her jaw, “Odfrey was crazed. Why would he turn on Lucian so quickly?”

“It seems some of Lucian’s loyal supporters were not keen on him having the cure for vampirism… if your blood is a cure, that is. Odfrey’s was the loudest voice of dissent. Lucian had to crush a revolt before it started.”

“Then if I am so important to Lucian, why… am I still here?” she asked.

Dannel turned his head to scan the domed chamber where so many bodies of his friends and enemies lay. “He wanted to,” he said, “but he was injured. Badly. His witch, Venizia, found your body. You were pretty messed up and she told him you were dead. He was bleeding, it looked like from everywhere and I know he needed to feed quickly. I don’t remember much after that. I blacked out.”

“Oh!” Lirra said, her eyes sparking with heated concern at the memory, “I remember seeing you get shot.”

“Just a bullet,” he smirked. “I don’t need my right leg anyway.”

“I didn’t know shape-shifters needed anything,” she said peering at him beneath her lashes.

“Food. Water. Shelter. Limbs. Just like everybody else,” he quipped. “Can you move?”

Her ghostly pallor turned a shade whiter at the prospect. “Do I have to?” she whispered, a tremor of suffering coloring her voice.

Dannel swallowed back a ball of fear. Forcing his gaze downward, he quickly inspected her battered body. The worst of her many cuts and gashes was an abdominal stab wound, exposed and still bleeding through her tattered shirt. He knew the wound was fatal in such a vulnerable location if she didn’t receive medical treatment immediately.

Staring into her eyes, his silver clashing with her bi-colored violet and green, he asked, “Please try?”

Tears slid out the corners of her eyes as she attempted to move, gritting her teeth against the urge to cry out. “I c-can’t.”

“I’ll help you,” he whispered. Supporting her shoulders, he gently propped her up into a sitting position. Before she could react, he stopped her gasp of pain with a soft kiss.

Instantly, it was a mistake. Unable to control his powers in his own wounded state, his mind was slammed with information overload.

He tasted blood: hers, his and Lucian’s—mingled with sweat, fear, heat and desire. He saw it; rich and dark as it wrapped around him like a seductive veil. It tasted like honey and metallic smoke. He couldn’t stop feeling like he was drowning in her lips; red, red everywhere with blood.

He felt her heart flutter with happiness, a little yellow butterfly, yet growing weaker each beat. Though buoyed by pleasure, she was fading in his arms by the second. He tasted the icy tendrils of death seeping into the heated passion of her mouth.

But then, deeper, he sensed more. Each heart beat told him the story of tension and torture she had endured—explained the agony of the vampiric conversion forced upon her. He was hungry, ravenous; her mouth was so warm and willing…yet cold.

He was falling. Suddenly he knew what the blood was trying to tell him: her Change had been interrupted. He knew she was weak, her wounds grievous. The precious blood inside her was gone…gone…bleeding away onto the ground into the pool she was sitting in. Her cells were in limbo: half-human, half-vampire…starving for blood…dying…

“No!” he gasped, wrenching himself backwards. He quickly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in horror. He couldn’t believe it. Though covered in blood and the grime of the evening’s earlier violence, she still looked achingly lovely to him.

Reaching up to touch her kiss-swollen lips, Lirra tried to mask her growing sense of despair with sarcasm, “Not the best night for a first kiss, hmm?”

“Apparently not,” he quipped trying to match her airy tone.

“So it’s bad news then?”

“Yes.”

“Like medium-bad or very-bad?”

“Very,” he rasped.

She closed her eyes. “Your powers be damned. At least you’re honest.”

Thinking about the truth jolted him back into reality. They’d wasted enough time here. “Lirra, we have to go. Now.”

“I still can’t move,” she said huskily.

“Then I’ll carry you.”

“No. Your arm is broken and you’ve been shot.”

“I’ve had worse,” he grunted.

“Look, you may be super-wonder shape-shifter extraordinaire, but even you need blood and rest,” she said.

“I need you more,” he said matter-of-factly.

Lirra quickly crushed the tears welling in the back of her throat, “I need you to live. To save my queen,”

Panic warred in his silver eyes. “I will. Helena needs you too. If we leave now--”

“You are going without me,” she interrupted.

“No, I’m not.

Though it took almost all the energy left inside of her, Lirra straightened her spine and willed herself to make him understand.

“Vampiric civil war is inevitable. The vampire king and his council were slaughtered tonight. Without the vampires being governed as a unified body, the last vestiges of civility and sanctuary in the Undermoon will crumble into pieces of chaos. Though I may be..d-dying…I can still see the forest through the trees. Humans won’t be safe anymore,” she said turning her face away to break his feverish gaze. She was so tired all of a sudden, the lines of his handsome face blurring in and out of darkness. “Find the queen and Prince Dacian. They are in grave danger. You have to go! Alone.”

“This isn’t an issue up for discussion! We go together. I won’t leave you here for the scavengers to find when they come back for Marrik’s head as a trophy!” Dannel said.

“Don’t leave me alive then,” she murmured.

“You think I could do that? Kill you?” he said darkly, forgetting the protests of his body to press her close against his chest. He heard her whimper in pain but hugged her harder.

“It’s an option,” she said reasonably.

“Are you insane?”

“Listen to me! I’m either a threat or a commodity to everyone in the Undermoon at this point. Anyone around me will be in constant danger. I am trying to think for everyone before my mind gives out. It is imperative that you live! The queen, Dacian….and my sister, oh Gods! Aurora has no idea…”

“Which is why we are going together,” Dannel said.

“No!” she said, pushing against him with a sudden surge of strength. “This is bigger than us, you thick-headed arrogant son-of-a bitch! You know it and I know it! Get the hell out of here!”

“Lucian still wants you alive and the other half of the vampire world will want you dead by morning. I have to protect you too.”

“You don’t understand! I am a liability!”

“You’re wrong. You may be Helena’s only hope to retain power,” he said with grim resolve.

Lirra sighed and looked up at his face. His normally blond locks were stained with the night’s gore, dried tendrils of sweat and blood matted against his forehead. His strange silver eyes were cold with the ice of congealed determination.

“You never listen to me,” she said finally, too weak to protest further.

His lips curled into the beginnings of a smile when a faint shuffle of noise registered to his finely tuned senses. Dannel turned his head sharply. Lirra relaxed in his arms having heard it as well.

The air moved silently but still surged forward in gossamer strands. No foot falls. No scent. Vampire.

Dannel’s fingers, never far from a weapon, found his Beretta in the dark.

“Listen to your woman, shifter. She seems to be making the most sense. You should get the hell out of here,” a voice the timbre of wood-smoke said.

Dannel’s index finger caressed the trigger as he leveled the gun at the nothingness before him. Through the murky red haze that illuminated the room, he could see Prince Dacian standing beside the fallen body of his father. The other Prince of the Vampires, the elder twin by three minutes, knelt down and held Marrik’s lifeless hand.

Looks like you arrived a little too late for the dance,” Dannel quipped. “How bloody convenient.”

Dacian looked up, as if in a daze, the normally emotionless vampire’s face full of sorrow. “I was delayed by would-be assassins. It seems my brother and his associates wanted to stage their coup without me.”

“Like I said, how convenient,” Dannel said testing his finger against the trigger.

“You know I had no part in this massacre,” Dacian said.

“Do I?”

“The Undermoon has always supported the Blackthorn family’s legitimate claim to the throne of the vampire nation. My father was a fair, open-minded ruler. I was his designated heir. I had no reason to harm him,” Dacian explained softly.

“If you were as loyal to your father as you would have me believe, why did you defy his orders to cease your investigation into my background as a teacher from Starfell Academy?”

“I thought you were a threat to his safety. There was something strange about you… odd clothes… odd smell… odd mannerisms… yet everyone accepted you into court. I couldn’t prove anything! I knew you weren’t vampire but I couldn’t prove my suspicions. Then my father came to see you as a friend. A very good friend. Perhaps I was envious of the attention he gave you."

"Perhaps?" Dannel scoffed.

Dacian winced and bowed his dark head. "I realize now I played a part in compromising your cover tonight within the Vampire Council. You work for the Undermoon…I know that now. Helena counseled me to wait… I see now she knew what you are. I told Lucian thinking he would help…” his voice withered into silence.

“He’s your brother,” Lirra whispered. “You didn’t know.”

“In my heart I knew. I did not want to believe and chose to ignore the mounting evidence against Lucian.”

“So you let this happen!” Dannel snapped. “You decided to trust your criminally insane brother over the sage words of your seven-thousand year old mother and you dare to wonder why I’m pissed off! Marrik was my friend and I watched him get shot and hacked to death! I watched his life-blood seep out of him and still they pounded at his body until there wasn’t any blood left!”

"I know I should have been here. I would have been..."

"But you were set upon by assassins."

Dacian removed an object from a satchel on his back. "You don't believe me?" A graceful flick of his wrist sent the object sailing across the room. It sliced the air past Dannel's right ear and pierced the stone wall behind his head. A slightly curved, jagged blade stuck out of the wall halfway, a green silk tassel hanging from the inlaid hilt.

"House Greenstar," Dannel said suddenly realizing the scope of the evening's betrayals.

"So much for neutrality," Dacian smirked. "They only sent four."

"Their intel must be lacking. Everyone knows you trained at Starfell with Master Raine.”

"Yes. It seems they were poorly informed."

Dannel lifted a brow. "And I'm supposed to be impressed?"

"I don't know what you're supposed to do,” Dacian’s voice wavered as he looked down at his father’s body. “Kill me if you think it will make everything better. But I can’t think about my mistakes right now. I don’t have time to grieve or even care about my own safety.” Kissing his father’s bloody hand, he placed it gently over the chest of the mutilated corpse. “Lirra is correct. We must find my mother.”

Dannel’s jaw clenched and he lowered the gun. “Do I need to fill you in on the details you missed?”

“Lucian played his hand. Any loyalists whom he knew would not turn against Marrik were murdered.”

“Your father killed nine of them,” Dannel added quietly.

Dacian nodded. “I wish I could give him my blood. He looks so peaceful. Do you think I could try… maybe…to bring him back?”

“No! Don’t waste your energy. Without the blood to carry the oxygen to the brain, it dies… even a vampire’s brain. It’s been hours now. Keep your strength.”

“Yes,” Dacian agreed, smoothing a hand through his short, black hair to stop from fidgeting. He stared down at his father’s body and suddenly looked away. “Lucian took the royal signet.” “Of course he did,” Lirra interjected weakly, “it’s what…. he came for. I-I’m sorry, Dacian. Find the queen…” <P>Her voice faded into wispy nothingness and her lashes fluttered shut. <P>“Lirra!” Dannel bit out urgently. Her body went limp in his arms. <P>Dacian’s nostrils flared. “She’s dying.” <P>“She needs blood. Now. I don’t think Lucian’s conversion worked,” Dannel said. <P>In-between blinking, like quicksilver, Dacian appeared by his side. Kneeling down, the vampire prince gave Lirra’s wounds a cursory examination and grimaced. “There is a secret room that connects the passage way between the King and Queen’s chambers. Helena taught me how to unlock the wards guarding the door. Not even my father knew it existed. He didn’t have the Sight. We must take her there so I can determine her condition… and yours. ” <P>Dannel lifted a wary brow. “I think we need to get as far away from the castle as possible. They’ll want to confirm their kills again.” <P>“I agree… but I’d rather make arrangements from a secure, undetected room than the scene of the crime, wouldn’t you?” Dacian replied. <P>“You’re willing to make her your fledgling then?” <P>“I seem to be the only living vampire on these premises. Who else do you think is going to do it?” <P>“And what if her blood really is the cure to vampirism?” <P>“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Dacian said darkly, his iridescent blue eyes locked on Lirra’s unconscious form. <P>Seeing no other alternative given Lirra’s deteriorating condition, Dannel smirked. “Fine. Lead the way.” He grunted in pain as he shifted her body in his arms. He attempted to stand and found he was dizzy enough to need to the wall behind him for support. <P>Without hesitation, Dacian bent low and scooped Lirra up into his arms. Dannel watched her dark-honey colored locks swing in the air like a curtain, the only bright shimmer in the surrounding aftermath of carnage. <P>“Follow me,” Dacian said, turning towards the door. As he carefully maneuvered his way over and around the bodies strewn across the floor, Dannel retrieved Lirra’s gun--his gun—from off the ground. <P>“After you.” <P>Brandishing the weapons protectively, Dannel limped forward, following Dacian into the awaiting uncertainty of the night.