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To Dream of Darkness

A story by DoggyStyle57

Chapter 19, Written January 2012

===

Chapter 19 - On the run

Sarina reappeared inside her room in the mansion. She knew she might have only minutes before they started searching both here and in her workshop for her, but she refused to lose the few nice things she had gained from her false life as Sarina.

She opened the top drawer of her dresser, swept all the loose things from on top of it into the drawer, closed it up and shrunk the whole dresser to attach to her necklace. She grabbed her spare shoes from under her bed, threw them into her wardrobe closet, and shrunk both the wardrobe and, after only a moment's hesitation, also shrank the four-posted bed, to become charms on her necklace. She dearly would have wanted to take the small chest that her uncle still kept for her, with the money and jewels that she had conned out of Lord Edward Randall when she took the identity as Sarina Randall, but she did not know where Lord Pennington had placed the chest for safe keeping, and had no time to search for it now.

She teleported again, reappearing in her magical workshop.

"Asha! Come to me now! I am being hunted!" she shouted, as she threw half a dozen books and scrolls into a chest, and sent that chest to her necklace charms. She almost poked herself in the eye with the wooden dart that Lady Portia had shot into the post by her desk, and which still jutted out at head level. She glowered at it and angrily yanked the dart out of the wood, then shrugged and attached that dart to her necklace too.

"What in the nine hells did you do? Kill the rich old couple you were living with?" Asha asked.

"No, but I did kill Amara's husband, it seems. He was a vampire, and attacked me, but I can't prove it, and I was caught over his headless corpse by Amara and by Lord and Lady Pennington. They are calling ME a vampire now!" She said. She heard a police whistle outside, and someone started pounding on the locked door of the workshop, threatening to break it down. She hissed, "Damn! How did they get here so fast? Stay with me!" as she teleported again.

Sarina and Asha reappeared in the woods near the inn on the South road, where they had first appeared in this realm. Her arm was still bleeding. Reluctantly, she drew her knife and heated the blade with a spell, then bit back a scream as she used the red hot blade to cauterize the wound.

She stood there unsteadily for a moment, until the pain became bearable. Then her eyes glowed, and Sarina ceased to exist, as she reformed her appearance and became Heather, the black furred vixen whore that she had briefly been known as here. She checked her arm, and saw that the cauterized cut was still on her arm. She shook her head and pulled her blood-soaked sleeve back down over the wound. Then she used a spell to eliminate the blood from her clothes, and another to repair her torn sleeve. Finally, she said, "I'll deal with that wound later, I guess. Stay invisible, Asha, and stay close".

As Heather, she calmly walked into the inn, smiled and waved at Molly and Meridith, and sought the innkeeper at the bar. "You're keeping well, Master Duncan," she said with a smile. "Got some beer for an old friend?"

Master Duncan looked at her questioningly for a moment, and then a smile graced his wide face, as he said, "Miss Heather! Why, I thought ye'd gotten married or some such. Haven't seen you since that gloomy old lord hired ye for the full night. Where have ye been these last few years? Or shouldn't I ask such things?"

"Not far off from that guess, an' I don't mind the tellin'," the black furred vixen said. "I did get married, not a week after that, to a fine strappin' sailor. I thought we were happy as could be. An' we were, too, while he was in port. But come ta find out he had two other wives in other two ports afore me, an' a handful of pups by each or 'em! Guess I got off lucky - since he failed ta' knock me up. The first wife found out 'bout the rest of us, an' raised holy hell with 'im. I lit out from there like my tail was afire when she came stormin' into our house, lucky ta keep the clothes on my back. Ah well, so it's back ta' the life of a workin' girl for me, I guess. Can I get a room here, an' this time with a wench's day job as well as the night work?"

"I don't see why not. You were pretty popular as I recall, and damn my eyes if you look like you've aged a day since then, lass!" the innkeeper said, pouring her a pint of beer. "This one's on me, to drown the memory of your unfaithful sailor. I'll have Meridith set ye up with a room, and you can start the night work as soon as yer' ready, an' on days at lunch time tomorrow. A free room and coal for yer fire is part of yer pay for the day job, an' you buy your own meals."

"Fair, and thank ye, Master Duncan. You're a kind-hearted soul, and good to your girls. I'm glad to be back," Heather said.

===

Heather sat on her bed after Meridith left, and looked around her new room. It was smaller than the corner room she used to live in here, with only one window, that was over the low roof of the stables. She opened the window and wrinkled her nose at the strong odors wafting up from the horse stalls below. But if she needed to come or go without using magic, that roof would give her a handy route to do it. She shut the window again quickly, and warded it with a simple spell that would keep out both the stench, and any intruders.

Asha lit the fire, and settled into its coals, as she asked, "So now what will you do, Mistress? Start over again, as a whore?"

"This is just to give me a place to live, where none would suspect me to be. Who would look for the elegant Lady Sarina Randall among the common whores in a roadside inn?" she replied. "Something about this mess stinks worse than those stables below us, Asha. How could Amara possibly fail to realize that her own husband is a vampire?"

"Could you have been mistaken? Yes, he may have attacked you for some reason, but are you certain he was a vampire?" Asha asked.

"I saw his eyes glow, and he recoiled from a crucifix," Heather said. "Which reminds me..."

She touched one of her charms, and enlarged the dresser chest from her room at the mansion. In the back of the bottom drawer she found three small pouches of gold and silver coins that she had stashed away, just in case, and a silver rosary with a silver crucifix. She put the rosary around her neck, and the smallest of the three money pouches she tucked into her cleavage, and then she returned the chest to her necklace. "I guess it would be good for Heather to be seen attending church, and be seen to wear this silly thing. If anyone does suspect I was Sarina, they won't believe I'm a vampire if I can wear a rosary on my neck."

===

Asha had just two days left to serve Heather. She spent those days hopping from flame to flame, in the Pennington mansion, and around the area, seeking information that might aid her Mistress.

At the end of the second day, she stood before Heather in her vixen form, and reported her findings to her Mistress. "The Pennington's are in shock over the murder, and the idea that you apparently turned into a vampire, but they seem to be all right otherwise. Amara has moved back into her husband's townhouse. I could find no flames burning inside her home, so I could not get in there. But I saw her outside the townhouse once, last night, and she looked normal. The police are investigating Sir Reginald Wilson's death as a murder, and, so far, they do seem to believe you were a vampire. There's a large bounty been placed on you, to be paid on proof of death."

"A bounty, you say? I wonder, how did Lady Portia ever prove her prey were vampires or werewolves, so she could collect her bounty? Could you find her?" Heather asked.

"Yes, Mistress. Lady Portia is in an inn on the North road. Her arm is still in a sling, but she seems to be healing rapidly. Should I contact her? I did not allow her to see me this time," Asha said.

"If there's a bounty for me, she will probably find me. I just hope she will give me a chance to talk, when she does," Heather replied.

"Very well, Mistress," Asha said. "Then if you have nothing more to ask of me, It is time for me to leave your service. This is the last night of my seven years bound to you."

"I do have one more request. Kiss me," Heather said.

"Mistress? I will, but... why? We both know that you can't be feeling that much attachment to me," Asha said.

"True. I can't say that I love you, or really am all that attached to you. Yet if nothing else, I will miss your company. Consider it a very mortal way of saying goodbye," Heather replied. She stepped forward and kissed the elemental, then stepped back and watched her fade away.

"See you in Hell," Heather said quietly, after the elemental was gone. She wondered how literally she meant that, and how soon it might occur.

===

The next day, Heather went to the other inn, to look for Lady Portia. She wasn't there, but the innkeeper said she should return that evening. Heather wrote a short note, folded it and sealed it with a dribble of wax from a candle on the counter, and asked him to deliver the note to the canine mage when she returned. Then she went back to her own inn, and worked the afternoon shift, waiting tables, making beds, and emptying chamber pots.

That evening, Lady Portia showed up at the inn that Heather was working at. She looked around the common room, drank one tankard of cider, and when no one approached her other than Molly, to ask if she wished to order food, she walked outside, commenting idly to the innkeeper that it looked like a good night to gaze at the stars.

Heather waited a few minutes, then ducked into the back hallway, resumed her appearance as Darla, and teleported to the spot outside the inn where she and Portia had first met.

Darla materialized in the woods, and the first thing she clearly saw was a flaming sword blade, pointed right at her throat. She stood her ground, and said as calmly as she could, "That won't be necessary, M'Lady. Did you not read my note?"

"The one that said you are not what they say you are, and asking me to meet you where first we met? Yes, that is why I am here. I could simply kill you, and claim the bounty, you know," Lady Portia said. "You have cost me one bounty already."

"But you won't. You owe me at least a small favor, for aiding you once before," Darla said. "Besides, if I am telling the truth, and you do kill me, you'd get no bounty, since you couldn't prove the girl you killed was the one they wanted. I don't look at all like Lady Sarina Randall now, nor would I if you killed me. You'd be guilty of wanton murder, and I don't think you would risk killing an innocent person."

The blade ceased flaming, but the tip remained at her throat. Lady Portia touched the rosary around Darla's neck with the tip of the blade, and said, "Many who believe in the church might object to your using a rosary as a necklace, especially if you're wearing one inside that inn, where many of the girls who are dressed as you are work as whores." She lowered her blade and put it away, then continued, "But I suppose it is a rather effective way to indicate you're not a vampire. You would do better simply to wear a small silver crucifix on a cord or chain. No one would mind that, and a vampire could not do that, either."

"So you do believe me, then?" Darla asked.

"Enough to listen to what you have to say," Portia replied. She took a sip from an elaborately decorated metal flask, and offered it to Darla, saying, "Share a drink with me, and tell me what really happened."

Darla took the flask and sipped, expecting liquor. It wasn't. She swallowed and handed the flask back, asking, "Water? Why bother with the fancy flask for just water?"

In answer, she showed Darla the design of a crucifix on the side of the flask, and said, "That was holy water. You just passed the one test a vampire is very unlikely to be able to fake. It is harmless for normal people, but it would be like drinking acid for a vampire. So, what happened, really?" Portia asked.

"It all started the night after you fought that female vampire, and I aided you when you were injured," Darla stated. "I was attacked that night by the same vampire that got away from us the night before. She seemed to be specifically trying to get me, for what I had done to her. My fire elemental incinerated her. I couldn't sense any other threats near us, so I sent my elemental back to my shop. Moments later, another vampire attacked me - a male one that time. I couldn't sense his mind at all, and couldn't attack him with oneromancy. I had just beheaded him and was incinerating the head when Amara started screaming that I had killed her husband."

" I'm amazed the police didn't notice the lack of blood on the scene. Didn't you notice he didn't bleed when you cut his head off?" Portia asked.

"I beheaded him with a white-hot axe, formed out of a silver crucifix. I assumed that cauterized his neck as I beheaded him, and I was a little preoccupied with incinerating his head at the time," Darla replied. Then she pulled back her sleeve, showing the gash in her fur from the cauterized cut that she hadn't yet bothered to eliminate. "When he first attacked, he threw me through a window, and I cut my arm. So there was blood, my blood, all over the place. My arm was bleeding badly. I had blood on my mouth, too, from licking my own wound. Amara and her parents all saw my bloody mouth and the corpse and assumed I'd sucked him dry. I teleported away. Why do the police still believe I am the one that was the vampire? Don't they some way to tell that someone who has been killed was a vampire? I mean, how do you prove you killed one, to collect your bounty? How do you prove you didn't just kill someone at random and incinerate their corpse?"

"Holy water will still bubble and burn like acid on the corpse or ashes of a vampire. And they are already dead, so they don't bleed, like a normal corpse. As for the police, why should they test the apparent victim of the crime, when witnesses saw a bloody-mouthed person standing over the corpse?" Lady Portia replied. She touched her own arm, and said, "The healer mage I have been seeing did a good job on my arm. It's almost completely healed already. He could fix that burn, once you clear your name."

"And how do I do that?" Darla asked.

"You said you incinerated the head, but not the body, correct? Do you know what happened to the body?" Lady Portia asked.

"Amara took her husband's body back, as soon as the police would let her have it. She's supposedly arranging for a burial at sea. He was a Navy officer." Darla said.

"But no church funeral? Interesting. And you're certain you completely incinerated his head, before you left? It was nothing but ashes?" the canine mage asked.

"Yes. I hit it with a pretty intense fire spell. Not as hot as my elemental's otherworldly fire, but there was nothing left. I'm certain of that." Darla replied.

"Then we need to find that body, before she has it dumped into the sea. And some of the ashes of the other one, if at all possible, so we can claim both bounties," Lady Portia said.

"We?" Darla asked.

"Of course," Lady Portia said with a grin. "I was already hunting the vampire that your elemental incinerated, so you kept me from claiming a bounty that should have been mine. We'll clear your name, and I'll split the bounty with you for each one we can prove we killed."

"What about your refusal to take an apprentice?" Darla asked, smiling.

"Well, you're not an apprentice if you already have eliminated at least one vampire single handed, now are you? Let's get to work," Lady Portia replied, as she held out her hand.