Conspiracy

Once Valek was sure Charlotte had busied herself with Edwin and the Spider downstairs, he stood from his perch in the study. "Francis," he whispered, somewhat to himself, "you've got to help me. I cannot accomplish this alone."

He downed the rest of the blood, slamming the glass on the small table beside his armchair and lapping up the rest from his lips. Sarah entered the room in a huff, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Valek." Her musical tone was now shrill with her fury. "You've got to end this experiment now. The girl is dying. You promised me you weren't going to hurt her! I think you should go in there and have a look. I can't take any more of this!" She stamped her foot.

Valek eyed her, exhaling slowly through his nose. "I never promised you anything. At any rate, it is too late for her. This was the experiment. It proves my theory. That woman is Charlotte. She represents, on a faster timeline, the process that Charlotte's body is going through."

Sarah's eyes glittered as they watered up. "You meant to kill this person?"

"Sarah, I mean to kill a lot of people. If you haven't noticed, it sort of comes with the job description." Valek smoothed his hair and adjusted his ascot. "I didn't know that was the resolution-death. I was afraid it would be something else."

"What? Change?" Sarah blanched. "I happen to agree with change. I think Charlotte should be changed. Change is good, Valek. You shouldn't be afraid of it! You're telling me that death is better than that?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I am telling you!" Valek thundered, unable to control his temper any longer. Sarah flinched back from his volume. "I don't want your opinion anymore," he continued. "I'm going to check on the patient. I'll be back." He stormed past her.

"She's not your patient, she's your victim!" Sarah cried after him.

Valek shoved past as Lusian and Sasha entered the room. He heard them snicker, but their petty behavior barely bothered him now. He wouldn't let them instigate another fight when he had more important things on his mind.

On his way out of the library, he saw a gaunt-looking Charlotte standing stiffly by the staircase, appearing even paler than usual. Her face actually held a sort of green tinge to it. She already seemed like a ghost to him, the circles under her eyes nearly swallowing the green irises whole. She glared at him, a deathly look he had never seen her emit before. He tuned into her mind. He saw she had just come up to the house through Mr. Třinozka's burrow...through Valek's office. Damn it.

"Will you kindly tell me," she seethed, "What kind of monstrous experiment you are working on in there?" Her large, angered eyes twitched as they filled with tears.

Though the volume of her voice didn't rise a single decibel, this was the angriest Valek had ever seen her. She pressed her pink, heart-shaped lips together as she held herself steady on the banister.

Valek wanted to run to her and swallow her frailness in his arms and hold her up, but something in her expression kept him where he was. "W-what did you see?" He winced, afraid of her answer.

"Everything." She narrowed her eyes at him. "All I needed to do was follow the sounds of her screaming!"

Valek gasped. "Excuse me." He streamed past her and into his office, turning to lock the door before facing forward to the stark, white room.

It was silent, with an eerie sort of quality. The freezer door had been left open. That was not the way he'd left it, having to keep her locked in there out of fear of the others finding and eating her. There were no human-like sounds emanating from it. Valek took a step forward, listening for thoughts. They were present, though very, very quiet. Was the human finally dying? Valek toed deeper into the office, listening for any sign of action.

As he neared the freezer, carefully rounding the corner to peer inside, he was met with the scene that most definitely had been the catalyst for Charlotte's fury. The woman lay there on the gurney. She was still, her breathing shallow, he fingers flexed into claws and she seemed to be staring death straight in the face. Dried blood clung to her hair and her torn shirt. An IV filled with fluids and antibiotics was inserted into the large vein at her wrist. A bowl of Sarah's truffles sat on a small work table to the left of the gurney, Valek's rolling chair just next to it. He cringed slightly at the image of this poor, human experiment as he moved deeper into the room. He noted that there was still a slight chill, though he'd shut off the power so that the mortal wouldn't freeze to death. He needed her to last just a little bit longer.

"Hello," he murmured, rushing to her side, seeing that her eyes were open. She stared blankly up at the dismal ceiling, her skin a sickly sort of blue. Her lips were curled back over her teeth in silent agony. Valek put his hand on the side of her face, which was considerably cooler, though still warm according to his own unnatural temperature.

Slowly, her gaze shifted to his face. It wasn't an angry one. There wasn't much expression in it at all. She closed her eyes once and reopened them again as her stare moved slightly over the various details of him. He could see she was studying him, perhaps in an effort to remember what killed her when she finally went.

He sat down in the chair, their gazes still locked on each other. She didn't say anything as he watched her breath form in puffs of mist in front of her nose. "Here," he offered, removing his jacket and laying it over her body, tucking it under her on the sides. She was attractive, as he'd noted earlier. Wholesome looking-with pin-straight brown hair and dewy blue eyes. Her skin was pale around her thin frame. Her coloring reminded him somewhat of a fawn: wounded, helpless, small, hunted. She looked much thinner than when she'd first come into the house. He sighed at his monstrosity. Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, he spun around on his chair, reaching for one of Sarah's truffles from his medical bag. He turned back to the woman, who continued to stare tiredly at him. He took a mental note of how slow her pulse had gotten. He wondered if she had a family-a lover. He wondered how afraid they were for her. If they were looking for her. How many posters they'd plastered of her face all over their town. The adjacent town.

"Open your mouth please," he said.

She parted her lips slightly in response. He popped it in and clutched her jaw, holding it closed until he was sure she'd swallowed it. He turned her head to the side to better examine the bite area. The inflamed crescent mark, identical to Charlotte's, was raised at the side of her throat. What was more interesting was how the scar began to thread out, as if some odd creature had embedded itself into her skin and now its tendrils were growing deep into her veins. The infection was spreading. The ruby vines twined up from her neck, growing along her jaw and the lower half of her face, and all the way down to the top of her shoulder. Valek swallowed the hard lump in his throat as he watched the perspiration form on her brow. The yellowing color of her skin. He pressed his fingers to the artery that lived just under her jaw, feeling her pulse slowing further. She was truly dying.

"Please, do it," she finally whimpered.

Valek withdrew his hand and frowned at her. She turned back to look at him. Her eyes swelled with fresh, new tears. He tuned into her mind, hearing how much pain she was in.

"What?" He winced. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard. His mind flashed instantly to the memory of Charlotte, begging him to feed on her. He'd never felt more evil.

Her lower lip started to tremble as she turned her head back toward the ceiling. He could see then just how beet red the scar was turning, as though it were swallowing the rest of her. Burning her from the inside. Was this what Charlotte was going through? This really was a weighted affliction. And this person's disease was much more developed than Charlotte's-much further along. Valek and Sarah had figured out the exact way to speed the process along more quickly.

The night he'd started the experiment, the bites had been closer together. More concentrated. There was a direct correlation with the addiction and how often each feeding came, and how often the human was healed again by Sarah's magic. It was a certain way the human body reacted to the biology of Valek's infection. This woman had been the perfect subject. She was about the same height as Charlotte-the same weight. She was even close in age.

"I n-need you to d-do it." Her silver tears streamed down the side of her deathly face. "I-I can't be this way anymore."

Valek could see just how much her cheekbones had hollowed out-how sunken her eyes were. There was very little light left within them. He could sense how close she was to death-almost as though he could smell it.

"Please," she begged again.

Valek pressed his lips into a hard line, folding his hands together in front of his face. He closed his eyes and slowly inhaled through his nose. "Tell me your name."

She looked to him again, a line forming in between her eyebrows as she frowned weakly. "Eva," she barely whispered.

"Eva," he returned softly, "I am so sorry."

Charlotte appeared in the doorway, though he didn't bother to turn around and acknowledge her. The girl was far too crafty to be kept at bay by any locked door. He needed to remember that. He heard the familiar sound of her rapid little pulse, heard her stammered breathing. He inhaled her familiar tea rose scent.

"I'm so sorry for the things I've done to you," he whispered, his eyes washing in red that streamed down his face and stained the collar of his shirt. "I'm so sorry for the pain I've caused." Valek worked to free one of Eva's small hands, and gripped it in both of his, pressing it hard, enveloping it. "I'm so sorry to tell you that, yes, you are dying,"

He heard Charlotte gasp from behind him. Though he was unable to say the truth to her face, she'd figured out to whom he was really speaking.

Suddenly, Eva cried out and threw a hard punch across Valek's face with her free hand, though the crack he heard was not from his jaw, but from the bones splintering in her knuckles. It was a desperate attempt to escape. She arched her spine and cried out louder. She shrieked in both fury and pain as her gaze turned wild toward Valek's face. Saliva flew from between her teeth as she struggled to get the rest of herself free.

"Kill me, then!" she cried. "Kill me or let me go, you devil! You demon!" She spat at him, like she had the other day.

Calmly, Valek placed his cool hand on her hot face again as she continued to pant and seethe like a person possessed. He looked down upon her face as he imagined the angel of death might look down upon mortals. "I cannot release you, darling. You've already seen too much." He struck her at the same speed lightning would have struck her down-if her luck had been to meet that fate instead.

"Valek, stop!" He heard Charlotte howl from somewhere behind him. Her voice cracked on her words. The sound of it nearly made him choke on the blood gushing into the back of his throat. He needed to drink it. All of it.

But he heard Charlotte race up on him then, her mind flicking to something that glinted on his office table. What was it? He filtered through her garbled, desperate thoughts. A letter opener? His dead heart gave one lurch in his chest. What did she plan on doing with that?

She ran up beside him near the gurney, holding the blade high above her head as he heard her clear, mental plan to strike it down in the center of the woman's chest. Immediately, he released Eva's throat, catching Charlotte's wrist with his firm grasp, just in time, stopping the plummeting knife mid-flight.

"What do you think you're doing?" he roared, the blood spewing out and around his mouth. Eva arched and twisted against her restraints on the operating table, her life still ejecting from her open wound. She gasped and choked as some of it started to ooze from the side of her mouth as well. Unadulterated fury rolled through his chest and launched itself toward Charlotte. He'd never been interrupted mid-feeding like that. "Now she is going to die slowly and painfully and all because of you! What has gotten into your head?"

Charlotte continued to grip the letter opener as she stared at him, the many questions zipping past her clouded gaze. "I-I don't know," she stammered and Valek sighed and rolled his eyes. Exasperated, he ran a claw through his hair. "I'm tired of it!" The words broke from her and he looked at her again. "I'm tired of all the killing! I told you, I just wanted you to let this one go! Why did you have to do this to her? I can't take it anymore." She clutched her stomach as if she was going to be sick. "I just wanted to get it over with. I didn't want to watch her suffer."

Valek narrowed his eyes at her, watching the pain contort her softness as she continued to watch the mortal die. He peered into her mind again, seeing that Charlotte was comparing herself to this unfortunate person-recalling that she went through the same agony in the past. Valek fell miserable with himself again.

The woman went silent, her rigorous struggle gradually faltering under the weight of death. The faintness of her pulse in his ears dimmed to the lulling sound of Charlotte's quiet crying.

"Lottie," he began again, breathing deeply to calm his frustration. "Do you know what would have happened if you succeeded in killing her-if that blade had pierced her heart?"

Charlotte's whimpering response suggested she did not.

"You would have killed me in the process."

She frowned and shook her head, both of her hands clasped under her chin. She looked to him in that moment like the little girl he knew so well-the one he used to comfort in the event of a Fairy attack or the occasional thunderstorm outside.

"I cannot drink from a dead or dying heartbeat, Charlotte. It is part of the curse of what I am. If I do, I will die." He tried to make his words come a bit more gently now.

"But what about me?" She grimaced at him. "You drink from me. I'm dying, aren't I? That's what you said."

"Yes, but that's a bit different. What you suffer from is an ailment from my bite. I don't taste any toxicity in your blood when I drink from it. You are suffering, but I, as well as the others, are unable to sense death on you because it is a product of my own venom." He turned back to the dead woman. "But if you were dying of, say, a direct stab to the heart...well, that would be a completely different situation. Do you understand now?" He frowned at her.

Charlotte could barely hold herself with the weight of what she'd just heard. Her broken sobs crushed him as she wrapped her arms around herself, squeezing tightly for support.

"I am dying." Her words broke. She struggled to catch her breath as she looked up at him. "I do not want to talk to you." With that, she spun on her heels and dashed out of the room and down the hallway.

Valek's dead heart finally severed into two pieces as he heard her footsteps clamor all the way up the staircase, her continued crying reverberating all the way down to him.

There was nothing left to do. He needed to figure this out, and fast. He didn't have time to calm Charlotte down and also devise his next step. But her wailing pulled at him, like a gravitational force tugging at the ends of shoes, begging him to her. He gave in to it, traveling inhumanly fast up the staircase.

Charlotte hadn't bothered to close the doors to their bedroom. Valek found them wide open, as if they'd slammed back against the wall as she threw them apart. Charlotte lay sobbing, face down in the center of the bed. He couldn't imagine what he could say to console her. There was nothing. He just needed to fix it. He could. He knew he could. And he could do it without making her what he was.

"Lottie," he begged softly.

She sniffled, sitting up in the bed, whipping away at the tears on her face. A small crease formed in between her brows as she glared at him, clearly still furious.

Sadness weighed down his words as he leaned his emotionally exhausted head against the doorframe. "So you see, I was right," he murmured. "I am the monster everyone says I am."

"You killed that poor girl! You tortured her for days. Why did you do it?" she cried, whipping at her face with the back of her hand.

He slowly moved deeper into the room. "Would you believe me if I told you I did it for you?"

"Yes, but it wouldn't justify your gruesome actions, Valek! I feel like I don't know you anymore."

Valek smiled darkly once, dropping his gaze. "Nor I you."

"What do you mean? I'm still the Charlotte I have always been. Nothing has changed!" She fought, exasperated.

"You couldn't be more wrong. I am sorry for the suffering I've inflicted, but do not forget so quickly you are also a killer. You are my ward, so I should know that better than anyone else. It's God's honest fact."

"You cannot speak about God after what you've done," she said darkly.

The glare she cast him could not have been more deeply sunken in hatred. It was enough to burn him worse than the morning sun. So he was right. She did hate him. "Charlotte, you could break me to pieces. Do you know that?"

"I still do not understand. What were you trying to accomplish by torturing another human being? Killing to survive is one thing, but why did you put her through all of that?"

Valek cleared his throat and crossed his arms over his chest. "It was an experiment. I used her as my subject and sped up the process of my feeding habits to see in a shorter amount of time...what will eventually happen to you. I wanted to find out what the eventuality would be. If it would be death...or change."

"So you think you are so powerful and so above us that you can use us simply as your lab rats? Your tests for experimentation?"

"You say us like you identify more with the mortals now than you do with me. I don't ever remember that being the case as you were growing up. To me, you were never one of them, Charlotte."

"But I am one of them! You can't see that? That's why I'm breaking so easily now. Unlike you, I have a limit!" She got up from the bed. "You've pushed me to it!"

Valek narrowed his eyes at her, dropping his hands from his chest and folding them modestly in front of himself. "Once again, I'm sorry. I am going to fix this. You won't end up like her, Lottie. You're stronger than that. I made you into what you are."

"You haven't made me into anything! You refuse!"

"Charlotte, it's because I love you. It's because I would give anything to be warm, living flesh again, like you." Valek sighed. "Aside from being with you, that is my biggest wish."

Charlotte's temper quieted on that last note. Valek could see her whole chest collapse, her face fall.

"Why did you ever take me in, Valek?" she cried quietly. "Why would you put your own life at so much risk for a mere lab rat?"

"Because I needed to redeem myself. It was a selfish reason, I know." Valek struggled. "I'd taken so many human lives over the years, I needed to feel like I was redeeming my soul for being responsible for protecting and preserving at least one. That's why I took you in, Charlotte. For my own selfish reasons."

Charlotte's sad stare touched the floor. Tuning in to her mind, he could see she didn't know what to say to him next. She loved him just as well. Perhaps more, if that was even possible, though her emotions in that moment were so conflicted.

"I am going to solve this," he declared and spun on his heel. There was nothing left to say now. He just needed to prove it to her.

He plummeted back down the stairs and into the library. They were all in there, huddled together in one room like a pack of savage wolves-a custom learned after so much time confined to Francis' cramped basement.

"There is an entire rest of the house for you to inhabit, I hope you're aware," he mumbled bitterly to the lot of them.

Jorge, the only one of the coven Valek considered to be anything of a friend at all, was sipping a cup of one of Valek's emergency blood packs warmed up by the fire. He read a thick volume from one of the library shelves, and did not acknowledge anyone in the room. Ana and Aneta scrimmaged over the other blood pack like a pair of vultures. Sasha was a statue at the other end of the room, watching something incessantly as it moved just outside the west window. Dusana was curled up on Lusian's lap, who was sprawled out in Valek's large, leather armchair.

Valek ignored Lusian's snickering leer as he passed him. Instead, he made his way to the small Witch, sitting cross-legged in the corner with her nose buried deep in one of her books of shadows. She did not look up at him.

"Sarah?"

"What?" Her response was quick and biting. He deserved that.

He looked around himself at the coven once again. Every set of glacier-colored eyes was locked on him, fishing through his thoughts-what he had just done upstairs, what his intentions were now. It was impossible to have a private conversation, living with a group of these mind-reading heathens. Valek could swear the only noise in the entire house was the fire crackling and Sarah's little heart racing like a mouse's in her chest. Doing his best to guard his thoughts, he cleared his throat and looked back at her.

"Would you please accompany me outside?"

"No," she snorted and dug her nose deeper into her book.

Valek gritted his teeth. "Yes. You will," he insisted, hoisting her off the ground by one arm. It wasn't much of a struggle.

Sarah dropped the book, squealing, and he let her arm go. She rubbed at it, shooting another dirty look at him.

"That will bruise tomorrow, I hope you know," she shot back bitterly.

"My apologies. Accompany me on that walk, won't you?" His tone feigned politeness this time as he quickly linked arms with her, tugging her over the threshold and into the foyer.

Hearing a meek voice call for him, Valek stopped and turned to look up the darkened staircase to see Charlotte standing on the top stair with her hand gripped to the polished balustrade. Valek realized it hadn't been her voice that called for him, but rather, her mind.

She was frowning, her eyes cast to the spot where Valek's arm linked with Sarah's. A million of her insecurities flooded him from the top of the staircase. He mentally heard the sound of Charlotte's heart beginning to rupture with fierce envy as she stared at them, her eyes welling up. It sounded like the violent roar of wind and hail assailing the top of his head. Filling his ears. Deafening. He immediately released Sarah's arm and the sounds stopped.

"We'll be back shortly." He gave a faint smile and grabbed Sarah again, pulling her out into the night, ignoring Charlotte's many mental questions like a tornado of zillions of tiny voices, each overlapping the other.

Once out in front of the house, Sarah wrapped her arms around herself, teeth chattering. But Valek remained unaffected by whatever the climate was as he continued his persistent crunching through the frost and dead leaves. Sarah yanked her arm free from his grip, though the tug might as well have been a feather washed away from his hand by a small breeze. He did relinquish it, however.

"I'm going to get my coat." She whirled around on the heels of her shiny, burgundy flats, but Valek caught her and spun her forward again. This time, he placed one of his arms around her shoulder, not to make her warm, but rather to keep her there.

"I don't think so. I need to speak seriously with you, and I want to do it right now."

She wrinkled her pixie nose at him. "I should probably inform you that I am not your house Witch. Now that Francis is gone, I will be a slave to no one. If I want to go back inside, I will," she huffed.

Valek stopped walking, placing both hands on her shoulders. "I do not mean to speak to you as my slave, Sarah. I mean to speak to you as my friend. I need your help," he begged, watching her scrutinize him, confusion filling her eyes. "I need your help...as my friend."

The look in Sarah's eyes immediately lightened.

"May I take you for a drink?" He smiled.

She pulled away from him, arms flying up in the air. "No!" She clasped her hands around her throat. "Get your light magic somewhere else, bub!"

Valek sighed. "I mean, can I treat you to one at the pub?" He indicated the small establishment wedged between an arcade of shops and the old Elven church just down the square. The doors were set open, welcoming patrons to escape the frigid air for a spirit or two.

"Oh." Sarah's cheeks flushed as she dropped her hands. "I can't be too sure anymore now that your palate has been trained for...other tastes." She looked him up and down.

Valek chuckled. "Only when I need it. And anyway, Witch's blood is from a darker magic. It doesn't appeal at all to me. You should know that." He didn't want to sound impolite by going on to explain how sour her blood was. It actually smelled like rancid milk disguised by lumps and lumps of sugar. "About that drink...."

"No, thank you. I don't drink. And at any rate, I am mad at you!" She stomped her foot.

"Right. You're not the only one," he sighed. "Tea, then. You will have tea. And that's fine. You can stay mad at me," he offered and glanced behind them, at his home. Just as he expected, Charlotte was standing in the bedroom window, watching them. She still looked just as hurt. "But still, we must talk."

Sarah refused to budge. "What of your little experiment? What was your conclusion? That she is uncontrollable? Her desires are almost as bad as yours!"

"The conclusion is that she dies," he said. "If she suffers when I am around, I have to give in, lest she be in unimaginable pain. I cannot bear to listen to it any more. If I am to leave, she will slowly die and remain miserable, as will I. Her addiction is not an addiction at all, but rather an incurable disease that kills her from the inside. It's an infection." His shoulders slumped. He truly did feel desperate. The future had seemed so bright once they had been successful in escaping the Regime. Occult creatures could cross borders freely without the fear of being killed. There was finally a sense of liberation. With any sort of order destroyed, their world was quickly sinking into chaos. Monsters were already beginning to invade human cities. His own coven had proved that to be true. To think about the consequences those actions may have on the future was enough to make even Valek dizzy. He needed to restore order, and he needed to begin with Charlotte.

Sarah glanced over her shoulder to what Valek was looking at, seeing Charlotte angrily disappear back into deeper parts of the house. Sarah turned again and began walking ahead of him. "Fine. Come on," she called. "But you will listen to everything I say."

Valek caught up with her easily as they made their way farther down the bleak and snowy street. "I will not change her."

"We are going to try a different way," Sarah explained. "I've been thinking about this just as fervently as you have, believe it or not."

The Occult had become so forsaken, ransacked since the fall of the Regime. Mostly the older inhabitants remained, afraid of the outside world after being caged off from it for so long. But those younger creatures that had tasted freedom for the first time flooded over the Occult borders like bats out of hell. A lot of the shops in the center square had been looted, the windows broken, though the Elven church still stood perfect and quiet as it always had.

Valek and Sarah entered through the archway to the gloomy inn. Even this tavern, that had always been crowded every night only a few, short months before, had fizzled to a gathering of a mere handful. Firelight was the only source of illumination over the quiet, shadowy faces. As Valek walked in, an eerie, hushed feeling fell over the room. Glasses stopped their clinking. Elves and various types of Phasers stared maliciously at him as he moved slowly, deeper into the tavern. It was so quiet, Valek swore he could count the pulses in the room.

A pair of portly Trolls sitting at one side of the bar turned to glare Valek down. They winced at him before turning to each other. One whispered, "What's a leech doing here?"

The other responded, "There ain't no blood bein' served at the bar." They each chuckled quietly before turning their attention back to him.

Noticing this, Valek grabbed Sarah's arm, stopping her from going any farther. He could predict the Troll's next actions all too easily as he watched them slowly stand from their bar stools. One of them cracked his knuckles-a warning that he intended them to make impact with Valek's face.

"Hey!" One called out to him, reaching around to scratch his rear. His paunchy gut, poked from between his stained shirt and tattered slacks. Thin suspenders stretched out over the tremendous size of him. He snorted the thick contents of his nose, gulping it down his throat. It was enough to make Valek's stomach lurch.

"Blood suckers aren't welcome here!" The Troll gripped the neck of his ale bottle and chucked it toward Valek's head.

Valek swiftly dodged it, the glass shattering all about the floor, beer spilling in a puddle around his shoes. The rest of the tavern patrons reacted to the noise with hoots and quiet giggles.

He lifted his hands in surrender, his attempt at a white flag. "Gentlemen, we do not come seeking trouble."

The other Troll hocked the slimy contents of this mouth to the floorboards. "How unlucky for you, then, parasite. Trouble is exactly what you've found." The two snickered, slowly pursuing Valek and Sarah, who stood frozen behind him.

"Well, isn't she a pretty thing...." The other grinned when he noticed the Witch. "Bring her here!"

Valek's eyes shifted black as he crouched like a wild cat. His talons seemed to lengthen as a minatory hiss slipped from his throat. If they took another step, he would tear out their jugulars and empty them there on the tavern floor.

The larger Troll pulled an axe from his tool belt. The other one shouted, "Chop off his head!"

Valek roared, baring his fangs-his only weapon. They lunged at each other, the Trolls' masses seeming to be of no hindrance to their agility. Despite their stealthy moves, the floorboards thumped under their immense weight as they ran at him.

"Congelo!" Sarah chanted with her arms raised into the air.

The entire world bent to her command with a wave of light that seemed to explode from her hands. Valek, as well as the pair of Trolls, hung suspended in mid-air as time stood still. A twinkling light formed in the space between the Witch's arms, stretched above her head. It spun and swirled, the bright, white center seeming to plunge downward like the dripping sands of time as she walked slowly forward. Things that had been in motion seemed to take on an odd sort of gelatinous form, slowly rippling like a pond surface in slow motion.

Valek was conscious in the freeze, but the sensation was strange. He'd never experienced anything like it, as though his solid body had suddenly been reduced to liquid, as he looked at the world around him.

He watched as Sarah carefully lowered her arms, the light still hanging brilliantly above her in the air as if it were balancing there. She dipped her hand into its starry center and pulled out a fistful of light. Snickering, she blew it like grains of dust, in the direction of the Trolls, causing their flies to unzip, their pants to drop around their ankles. The Witch moved quickly around back of them. With one, swift kick in each of their inflated rears, the two hurtled out of the tavern doors and into the town square.

"Impetus!" Sarah chanted and Valek dropped to his knees. He attempted to stand up, but regaining his balance after what had happened proved to be difficult, even for him. His knees still felt like gelatin.

"Sarah!" He gasped. "Where did you learn to do that?"

Sarah said nothing in response, quickly moving to the tavern doors. She pushed them closed, bolting them together with the giant, wooden barricade.

"It doesn't matter. I have no tolerance for racism." She dusted off her hands and gracefully flitted back over to the bar. A large, female Troll, the bartender, stood with her hands clasped over her mouth. "Black tea. Straight. No sugar," Sarah demanded. She peered over her pointy little shoulder at Valek, who still stared, astonished. "You?"

"Nothing for me." Valek grinned at her.

"Oh. Right." She blushed and turned back to the barmaid. "Quickly." She tapped a nail down on the polished, wooden surface. "Or I'll do the same to you and retrieve the drink myself!"

Yelping, the barmaid quickly obliged and scrambled for the makings of Sarah's order. In a few moments, the two of them had taken seats by the fire and the barmaid delivered Sarah's tea in trembling hands before dashing away to hide in the darkest corner of the tavern.

Valek leaned on his elbow in the chair across from Sarah, unable to stop the enormous grin spreading across his face. "You are fabulous. Have I ever told you this?"

"You didn't have to." Sarah returned the satisfied grin and sipped at her tea. "Francis taught me not to take crap from lowlifes. Now," the Witch began, "tell me why we could not discuss this at home."

Valek leaned forward, his elbows to his knees. "I did not want to discuss this at home for fear that Charlotte would try to listen. I think we need to find Francis. He's banished to the Dark City. I believe he is with the elders of my kind. He's the only connection I have for me to seek counsel with them. I do not wish to turn Charlotte, so that makes them the only ones who might have a different answer to my problem. More importantly, there was a man." Valek frowned down at the floor, struggling with the idea that Sarah might find him mad. "A dark man. I could not see his face. It was the other evening. I had been alone in my study, sitting for hours, just thinking about Charlotte's predicament.

"Out of the corner of my eye, I see this dark figure leaned against the hearth of my fireplace. He was just standing there, watching me. And then he spoke." Valek narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping the floor. Sarah watched him silently, her eyes wide. "He said he was from Abelim-a member of the Parliament. He told me I would be joining them soon...alone. Without another word, he vanished, only moments before Charlotte appeared in the doorway and came seeking comfort in my arms. She didn't see him."

Sarah blinked at him once before setting her tea down. "That's impossible." She leaned forward. The glow of the firelight danced around the delicate planes of her face, creating an intense darkness about her shiny eyes. "We'll have to go to them. It would be very dangerous. You're aware you'd have to leave Charlotte here."

"She could not come with us?"

"No!" She howled before she immediately quieted herself. "No, it would completely defeat the purpose and I can assure you the mission would end badly if Charlotte were to go with us to a place like that. Francis is in the Dark City." She whispered the words as though they were a curse. She leaned even closer to Valek, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. "Abelim is one of the most dangerous places in the world. The city of death. It is a place of perpetual darkness, home to the original Vampire coven. The dark man mentioned it to you. The Parliament. They are legendary. Many of our kind think them to be mere legend, and long since destroyed by early up-risers of the Regime. I don't know any Witch who's even stepped foot over the city's border. Francis has been exiled there on purpose. I understand that Vladislov and Francis had a prior history." Sarah's whisper grew just a bit quieter with this change of topic. "Vladislov put his ex-lover there on purpose, to protect him, to seek refuge from this war I think. Francis spoke to me a lot about it. Vladislov made it look like a curse, but he sent Francis to the only place he knew he would be safe. That is what I believe. We have to find Francis alone, without Charlotte. It's the only way to seek the information we need to save her and keep her safe while we do it. If you think our little coven is bloodthirsty, I can't even imagine how the oldest coven in the world would react to your human ingenue. And at any rate, I have no idea where the city even is. We'll have to leave for weeks. Charlotte could never survive that long, being exposed to the elements. The others in the coven. She isn't strong enough."

"We? You would not stay with Charlotte?" His voice quaked. "I have no trouble going by myself, but who is to protect her while I'm gone?"

"How do you think you'd find your way to such a place on your own? Abelim's borders aren't exposed, out in the open. You need a Witch. And who knows where Aiden still waits for you to trip over him? You need to travel with protection."

"And you'd be that protection?" He quirked an eyebrow at her.

Sarah looked slightly insulted. "Yes! I saved you well enough from those Trolls, didn't I?"

"I could have handled it." Valek's eyes prick with blood. The thought of leaving Charlotte alone, without him for weeks, was too much to even think about.

"Třinozka wouldn't let anything happen to her, Valek. Charlotte can stay in his burrow until we return." She smiled, placing a comforting hand on his knee. "It is the only way. How are you going to protect her, if you're the one who keeps hurting her?"

He closed his eyes and began inhaling slowly through his nose to even his emotions. He didn't want Sarah to see him upset. "Do you think Francis will know what to do?"

She sat back again in the armchair. "You can either change her-"

"No."

"Or you can kill her."

Valek scowled at her.

Sarah's response was a simple shrug. "Then we must go. Even if Francis himself has no solution, he calls the Silver City his home, and one of his elder comrades will probably come to our aid. I hope. Bring your research and your findings with that woman. What was her name? Eva. Show them what you've discovered. Either way, I have faith that your best answer lives in there, in that city." She hopped up from the chair. She placed two coins on the table next to the teacup. "We leave tomorrow evening, before she wakes up."

Valek slowly got to his feet as well and followed Sarah out of the tavern. He glanced back at the bar left in havoc, just like the rest of the outside world seemed to be. A bar stool was in splinters. The ale bottle was still smashed to floor. All of the other patrons watched them go.

How could he leave Lottie alone at a time like this? What was she going to think of him? What if Aiden were to find her while he was gone? What if Lusian or one of the others got too carried away? How would she fix herself?

"Can I tell her that we are leaving?" Valek asked.

"No," Sarah shot back as she walked briskly through the tavern doors. "It must remain completely and utterly our secret."