Vale… Is Not a Vampire?

The first signs of morning painted the branches of the tree I was sitting in a dark midnight black. In the distance, a blaze of gold crept over the valley. The tips of grasses and bushes colored a painted orange — shining all the brighter with their rears smeared in cold green shades of night. It was beautiful. And then the sun reached my eyes and turned the fields before me into little more than a vague blur of color.

I swallowed, trying not to think of Nebby who had dragged me up the ‘hill’ to show me the sunset. It had been more of a mound of rocks and dirt than a hill. It had been pointless because I could not witness any of the splendor. Nebby had insisted it did not matter. She had been right. The best moments in life were about the friends you shared them with and the memories you took with you.

All of these idle thoughts were nothing but more Birnstead reminiscing, painful reminders of a life that was no longer mine. I blamed this new bout of nostalgia on the file I was working up and down my claws, working away at the last hints of inhuman sharpness.

Back in Birnstead, after yet another near-incident, Aunt Reya had demanded I dull them. I had growled at her, had angrily insisted that I couldn’t. They’d grow right back. She shouldn’t just presume to know my own body better than I did.

After an endless onslaught of her mockery, her maddening explanations about hair and nails and dead tissue — all idiocy because I was nothing but dead tissue — I gave in and experimented, just to prove her wrong. Infuriatingly, I ended up demonstrating she had been right, sort of. If I blunt them, and consciously, continuously focus on them being dull, then they actually remain somewhat blunted. It made no sense, and then they regained their sharpness as soon as I lost focus, which I understood even less.

My father had wanted me to hide, to spend a lifetime pretending to be something I was not. I had tried it, and it had been miserable. Miserable enough that I had run from it. Yet even then, I had continued living by the lessons and truths learned under his roof, until Aunt Reya proved some of those truths wrong.

It was her tirelessly mocking commentary that forced me to think beyond what Dad had thought I could do, beyond what he taught me about myself. It was Aunt Reya’s insistence that pushed me to experiment, instead of merely hiding or denying. It was her guidance that really allowed me to be myself around the people of Birnstead. She gave me the courage to live, to claim and embrace my nature and my gifts, instead of endlessly fearing them.

And then the Inquisitors arrived. Captured me. And just like that, the entire wonderful illusion came crashing down.

I flexed my fingers, made a fist, flexed them again. Good enough. Realistically, dull or sharp made little difference. Even dulled, I still had nearly an inch worth of claw tipping my fingers. I still needed gloves to hide them. Yet now I would not be tearing through a set of gloves every other day simply because I wasn’t being careful.

As long as I keep thinking of them as dull.

If I don’t… sharp again.

Still need to work on that.

With the emerging dawn, I turned my attention to the road. From my vantage point up in this lone tree, I studied it. Sitting perfectly still, my nose and ears tracked every sound, every stray breeze, every living thing that breathed and moved. Patiently, I waited for the perfect prey.

A lone and weary male led an ox-pulled cart. He guided the old beast on with the gentle patience of a saint. The misty waft of earthen scents, hay and manure and produce, painted him as a farmer. A tempting target, but I waited for better prey. A heady melange of spices followed a chattering couple. I waited.

Soon the scant individual travelers became a steady trickle. I kept up my vigil, unseen in my tree. I was in a hurry, but a couple hours more did not matter. The patient hunter gets the best prey, and I was nothing if not patient. The right opportunity would present itself eventually.

Slightly before noon, I dropped to the ground. I donned my coif and my gloves, shouldered my burden basket, and collected my staff. I extended my Metzus strings, my true self, all throughout my puppet body, pushing a little more Metzus than usual. With a couple of quick steps and hops, I tested my daytime coordination. I pushed more Metzus to my limbs. Much more.

With so much of it extended out from my core, the rays of daylight seared and burned the strings of my Metzus that much faster. Keeping this up for long meant I would not be feeding once every three to five days, but close to twice per day. For once, that cost was acceptable. I would be hiding in plain sight, in the most populous city in the kingdom, with everyone in it caught up in a mad vampire panic, and with the entire Inquisition hunting for me. I could not afford to display my usual stumbling gait, and the staff alone would not be enough.

I sank my teeth into the dead rabbit I had saved for this occasion, drained it, and tossed it far into the field. Then I set out for the road. Once on it, I accelerated to a brisk walk, or the closest approximation of it I could manage at least. Occasionally, I still stumbled. That was fine. I could blame it on a poorly healed injury.

My hands reached for the back of my head instinctively, itching to rebraid long hair that was no longer there. It was a nervous habit that I had tried to shake, but so far I had been unsuccessful. I would have to be more careful. Even simple things like old habits might give me away.

It took a while, but I eventually caught up to my targets. A tiny flock of little snacks was settling down at the side of the road, ready to have their lunch. I slowed my pace, giving myself a little more time to study them, to make absolutely certain these were the people I wanted to use.

In charge of the herd was a young female, wild and free as a plume of smoke reaching for the sky. Even though she herself barely tasted like more than a child, she was trailed by a gaggle of three little dumplings. There was equal parts exasperation and love in her sky-plume presence, and despite her three charges defying all attempts at being herded, the exasperation never won out on the care she displayed.

They refused to be corralled, these kids, and yet she mothered them with care and worry. Impatient outbursts were shushed. Half-discarded clothes were quickly donned again. The complete unmanageability of it would have driven me utterly mad.

Despite how the sky-plume girl was beset by kids, despite how harried by their antics she tasted, her herd of children never bore the brunt of her exasperation. Order was restored at last when she dealt scraps of stale old bread into eager, grasping hands. The rancid scent of the food repulsed even me, yet the nibbles all accepted it without question. The silence of hungry mouths being fed descended.

It was this final detail that convinced me this herd of children served as the perfect prey. Their age made them trivially easy to blend into. The sky-plume girl acted so motherly even that, with an appropriate child-like demeanor from me, I might be able to manipulate her into extending that protective energy to me.

At the same time, this group displayed a measure of back-alley smarts that would have them question every scrap of kindness. That would serve me as well. Instead of trusting over-quick and then second-guessing my intentions, they would doubt first. Once I’d gained their hard-won trust, it would be far more unconditional.

Finally, they tasted so hungry and poor and weary that it had worn them down. They would be tired and drained to the point where they would not question my motives and kindness as much as had they been well-fed and alert. Yes, they were perfect manipulable targets.

I dug through the little pouches at my waist, fishing out my own lunch. Close enough for them to spot me I made a show of looking out for a place to sit. I held this charade until I felt their attention on me. As soon as it did, my gaze appeared to wander and then settle on their group.

Marching up to them with a bounding, youthful stride I waved a greeting. My overly familiar behavior created a brief moment of confusion which I exploited to close the distance. When I was only a few paces removed from them, I called out in my best childish pitch.

“Heeeey, mind if I join you for a bit?”

There was a brief moment where they all looked at each other, trying to decide what to do with me.

Ruthlessly, I abused that short absence of an answer. Before they could utter a refusal, I pretended to interpret the time they spent hedging their options as acceptance. Making some vaguely awkward sounds of gratitude to further sell my act, I settled down on the cold hard ground, directly to the right of the sky-plume girl.

Despite there not being an outright refusal, I was still a stranger to them, and a very brash stranger at that. The girl, the child, the sky-plume snack froze in place. A hint of alarm colored her presence. It quickly spread to her nibbles, who picked up the mood of their guardian in the way children do.

I played with my posture and features like the perfect mimic I am. Acting a little younger, a tad more innocent was trivial, especially with my childish frame painting the image of a perfectly unassuming farmer’s daughter. Using the complete control I had over my expression, I crinkled my nose in mock bemusement. My lips twisted in a hopeful yet tight-lipped and toothless smile. My eyes grew a little wide and uncertain. I presented a flawless display of someone belatedly realizing they’d approached a group of strangers without first considering if they could be trusted.

And when the girl saw her own apprehension mirrored on my face, the edge seeped out of her. She gave a slow, acknowledging nod. Then a slight smile to match my own. At her approval, the worry seemed to ebb out of two of the three other kids as well.

Only the third child, tasting of sweet nothings coated with crispy edges and damp with tear-stained resolve, remained unusually wary. She had grown an odd sort of flighty the second I sat down. It was one of the most conflicting scents I had ever tasted. She shrunk like a mouse hiding in a hole, yet radiated with the defiance of a badger defending its den. I was too blind in this daylight to catch her expression, but her gaze on me was so intense it was impossible to miss.

And despite the three others appearing to accept me, they settled around this girl like a shield. I did not think they even noticed that they did this. It just happened, in posture and body language and the very taste of them coloring the frigid winter air. None of those things were anything the little human girl I pretended to be was supposed to notice, and so I ignored it all completely, merely rubbing my gloved hands together, pretending to ward off the cold.

It worked. At my utter lack of reaction, the tenseness slowly left the sweet-nothing girl as well. I had gambled right. Hopefully.

No matter where you went, most people were reasonably alright with meeting strangers. They brought news and tidings from faraway places. The less suited the weather became for traveling, the more people hankered for news. People wanted to be trusting and hospitable to travelers because they hoped to get the same treatment should they venture further from home than usual.

Of course, all of this only really worked as long as you stayed among your social circle. I was dressed as simple folk, so I should not have tried this ruse with someone of higher standing. The current vampire situation made things more of a gamble though. It was another reason why I had chosen to mingle before entering the city. Better to judge the situation when the groups I had to deal with were still small and did not include town guards, soldiers, knights, or Inquisitors.

I weighed my next words carefully because the actual ‘bringing news’ part of portraying myself as a traveler presented a bit of a problem. I had spent most of these past couple of weeks avoiding civilization, and while I had managed to inform myself somewhat, my knowledge of recent events was still choppy at best. I had little credible news to trade, and if I did not proceed with great care, then my ignorance of certain local events would become highly suspicious.

“Terrible weather, isn’t it? Think it’s going to snow today?” I spoke as I unpacked my lunch.

“Too cold for that. Soon though.” The sky-plume girl adjusted her seating to study me, a tiny lingering hint of suspicion still present in her posture.

I took off a single glove, and careful to keep my uncovered claws hidden behind the folds of the hide, rubbed my hands together again. I blew some warmth into my fingers, then donned the glove again and repeated the process with the other hand.

With all the vampire rumors floating around, people were probably trading all kinds of means to spot potential vampires. Them hiding their fangs and claws was probably one of them, but she had just seen my full hands, or at least she thought she had. It was amazing how the human mind could delude itself. I had done many of these things before, experimented with how far I could push things. It was a fun game. A nice little hunt. Never before had the risk been greater. And it would probably only become riskier.

The girl visibly relaxed. “You heading for the city?”

“Yeah, just passing through,” I lied. There was no need to clarify which city we were talking about. Tormund, the capital of Thysa, was the only one that mattered when you were this close to it.

I took a bite from my lunch, opening my mouth just far enough that she thought she had seen normal human teeth, while in reality I had hidden everything behind my food. The dried nuts and berries in my meal were crunchy, gross, and utterly disgusting, but close to two months of learning to cook under Eryn’s supervision had taught me more than ever not to let my disgust show. I was probably never going to appreciate human food, but at least I had learned to tolerate it enough by now that I could pretend to have regular meals in front of other people. I’d probably still end up with indigestion from the inedible parts of this meal, but that was a small price to pay for safe passage into the city.

“Uncle’s in a bit of a bind in the next town over. Hoping to get to him before the first snow hits,” I elaborated after I had swallowed, slathering my lies in a helpful dose of twisted truths. “You?”

“On the way back from some errands. We actually live in the city—”

“Errands? This time of year?” I interrupted, displaying an air of incredulity. It was perhaps a little impolite of me, but I had selected this group specifically because they would probably tolerate some amount of impropriety. They were all young enough that me interrupting wouldn’t bother them all that much. Their youth also meant they were hopefully inexperienced enough to not notice that I had essentially just asked them for their local tidings, instead of sharing my own.

“Yeah,” she nodded towards her proteges. “Had to get some of these kids away from the worst of it after the vampire fleet made landfall.”

After the what the what did what now!?

When I’d heard a vampire delegation was coming as well, I had assumed the Ostean Grand-Inquisitor would arrive accompanied by a small number of human representatives for the Ostean vampires. The rumors had been a little more colorful, of course. The vampires hadn’t come to negotiate, but to eradicate mankind. The regent has been turned. The capital lay in ashes. Some of the things I’d heard had gotten fairly outlandish. I’d disregarded all those ridiculous claims.

But what the girl just said, that didn’t sound like mad panicked ravings. Her matter-of-fact tone, so calm, so utterly ordinary, made it much harder to dismiss. Yet it still sounded every bit as absurd as the other rumors. The way she’d phrased things hinted at a full-scale naval invasion. But that wasn’t possible. The Ostean vampires were nothing more than scattered rogues. They weren’t organized at that scale. They couldn’t get past the blockade. They most certainly didn’t have a naval fleet.

Did they?

No.

Couldn’t.

I very, very, very carefully kept my face passive, then slowly let a hint of fear cloud my features. Over the course of slow, agonizing seconds I twisted my face into a look of horror I had seen of far too many people discussing the vampire rumors.

And I prayed the maddest of rumors weren’t true, because after this news, and after all the crazy things Irina had divulged weeks ago, I no longer trusted my sense of what counted as preposterous.