My face flushes and my skin begins to tingle, but this isn't a flash. It's something else entirely.
As I blink, the room changes. As if a new lens has been added to my sight. I see things that weren't there before. Furry creatures scurrying around books. Paintings that move and shift and change designs. A room that looks more like a den or cave, and pillows that are now furs. When my gaze lands on Kana, she is no longer a beautiful woman in a kimono. Or she is, but she is also a fox, beautiful and white, with several tails splayed behind her and large eyes that stare deeply into mine.
"Kana is a Kitsune," Elijah says, "a magical fox who often takes the shape of a beautiful woman. She only shows her true form to a rare few."
I nod my head to Kana. "Thank you for the honor," I say, my skin buzzing again, this time with a flash.
"And you as well," Kana says, with a nod towards me. "It is not everyday we have one such as yourself to visit here."
I glance at Elijah, wondering what she means. But he's already digging through his satchel to pull out the letters. "We were hoping you could help with these," he says, handing her the stack of letters. "We need to know everything you can decipher about them."
She closes her eyes and holds them in her hands/paws, then sighs and opens them. "I fear you will not like the answers. But I will provide them nonetheless. Do you have my payment?"
Elijah nods and reaches into his bag again, this time handing her a vial of blood.
My eyes widen. "Who's blood is that?" I ask.
"Mine," Elijah says. "It is the cost of doing business with Kana."
She slips the blood into a mysterious gap in her kimono, the image of her fox form still superimposed over her female form. I remind myself to ask about this later. What does she do with the blood? In the normal course of affairs, this would be odd enough? But in this realm? With magic and mystery the norm? Here, I'd be extra worried.
Kana takes the papers over to her desk, which with the second sight looks like a stone boulder with runes carved into it. She works quietly, studying the papers, turning them over, examining them from all sides and comparing them to each other. She frowns, then takes a pouch and pinches a bit of black granules that she blows onto the papers. A spark of light ignites in the air above them, then fizzles out into a dark cloud of dust.
The entire process takes quite a long time. Maybe hours. Elijah and I sit silently for so long my feet go numb. I try to discreetly wake them back up with subtle shifts of weight, frowning as pins and needles overtake the numbness.
Elijah smirks at me like he knows what's going on and finds it amusing.
When she finally brings us the letters back, she looks tired. "They were written over the last year. They do not match any of the handwriting samples you brought me. The author is old. Powerful. Ancient. And dangerous."
She hands Elijah the letters. "I cannot give you a name but I know that this isn't a person to trifle with or to take lightly."
"What other man could she have been in contact with?" I ask, looking at Elijah.
He shrugs. "She was fairly isolated. I can't imagine many people had access to her."
"I should clarify," Kana says. "The writer of the letters wasn't male."
We turn and look at her, surprise on both of our faces. "So the writer was female?" I ask.
"Yes. A powerful female."
"Is there anything else you can tell us?" I ask.
"Like what?" she asks with a wry grin.
I shrug. "I don't know. Like, who might have read them?"
She cocks her head. "Curious question. The emotional imprints are few. The writer of the letter, clearly. Several from your firm. And…a woman. A pregnant human woman."
"Can you tell if Dracula read them?" I ask. "Earlier. Not recently."
"He hasn't, no," she says. "Will there be anything else?"
Elijah and I stand and bow. "Thank you," he says.
As we leave, she slips something into my hand. I look down and see a crystal pendant with a fox carved into. "For protection. You are going to need it, one thought to be mundane. Watch yourself," she says, then closes the door behind us.
When we step outside, the cold slaps me in the face. The office, or den, was so warm, that I'd forgotten about the impending winter awaiting us. My nose burns with the cold as we walk quickly through the streets. It's snowing more harshly outside, and neither of us speak right away as we bundle against the cold. I slip the pendant around my neck, studying the craftsmanship.
We walk in silence for a few moments before I turn to Elijah. "If the writer was female, maybe Mary wasn't the intended recipient. Or she had a female lover."
"Those were my thoughts as well,” he says. “But I do have a suspicion. The letters are signed with an L. Written by a powerful, ancient woman. Who do we know who is involved with this case and fits those criteria?"
And then it all clicks. "Lilith."
Elijah isn't expecting it when I suggest that I go see Lilith alone.
To be honest, I'm a bit surprised by it myself. I'd nearly succumbed to her entreaty once before, and here I am volunteering to put myself back into harm's way without one of the Nights to protect me this time?
My companion must have been thinking the same thing.
"Not a chance," he tells me, without even a glance.
But I'm not content to leave it at that. I reach out, grab his arm, and pull him to a stop.
"It is our best option and you know it. She'll have her guard up if you or one of your brothers shows up on her doorstep full of questions and we won't get anything out of her. But if I go alone, she'll be too intrigued to worry about what I'm actually doing there. She's underestimated me – everyone does – and that will give us out best chance to get the information we need from her."
"Eve..." Elijah begins, but I cut him off.
"You know I'm right. There's no sense in arguing about it."
He looks off into the distance, an expression of exasperation on his face, and I know in that moment that I've got him.
Which is how I ended up sitting in Lilith's living room a few hours later, waiting for her to join me, my hands sweating from budding anxiety. My nerves are a bit rattled, and I'm starting to regret volunteering myself like this, but it's too late to turn back now.
I stand as she glides into the room, resplendent in her gown—today a blood red floor-length design that hugs her body like she's been dipped into it, with matching lips, and long hair shimmering down her back like an inky waterfall. She raises an eyebrow when she sees that I'm alone.
"No Night brother to guard you against my dangerous appetites?" she asks, with a mischievous spark in her eyes.
"Should I be scared?" I ask in reply, in what I hope is a confident-totally-not-scared-at-all attitude.
"Not of me," she says, sliding gracefully into the chair across from me.
She sips at a wine glass full of blood as red as her dress and then smiles at me. "What can I do for you, Eve?"
She says my name slowly and with meaning, and given who she is, I wonder about her life. Her adventures. Her history.
"I had a few more questions I was hoping you could help me with," I say, pulling out the letters.
I had a whole speech planned, but under her intense gaze, my mind is a bit tongue-tied, as it were.
When she sees the letters, her eyes widen a fraction and she sets her glass down. "May I?" she asks, holding out her hand.
I give her the stack of parchment and study her as she flips through them.
"Where did you find these?" she asks.
"Mary Dracule's bedroom," I say.
She raises an eyebrow. "I underestimated her."
"So you don't deny that you wrote these?" I ask.
"No. I don't. But they were meant for Vlad. How did Mary get them?" she asks, but the question is clearly rhetorical.
"Dracula never saw them," I say, wondering if I'm telling her too much.
"How can you be sure?" she asks.
; "He denied knowing what they were," I say, "and we had a third party test them."
"That explains so much," she says, looking almost relieved.
"Like what?"
"Like why he never contacted me, even to tell me to bugger off. It's not like him to ignore me so entirely."
"Why did you send these?" I ask, cocking my head to the side slightly as I study this enigmatic mystery before me.
"I missed him. I still miss him. Vlad is my match in every way. He is the love of my many lives. He is my personal sun, the light and warmth I thought I would never experience the joy of…that's what he has always been for me." Her expression is that of one lost in memory, blind to what is in front of her, trapped in the past.
"If that’s true…why did you break up then?" I ask, curious about her side of the story.
"I knew he wanted a child of his own blood more than anything. Maybe even more than me. But he would not betray me in that way. He could not. Not with our sire bond. So…"
A single tear slides down her perfect cheek and she makes no move to dry it as she continues. "I ended things between us and freed him to find a human with which to procreate. Something, despite all my years on this earth, I will never be able to do. A vampire's womb is full of death. It is too barren to carry a child to term."
She leans forward and slips a hand under the cushion of her chair and pulls out a box of cigarettes and a lighter. Noticing the surprise on my face, she shrugs. "Don't tell the brothers. They'd frown at my flagrant use of contraband. Not that I give a single shit about their fragile boy feelings, but I'm not in the market for trouble at the moment."
She pauses to light a cigarette, and takes a deep puff, closing her eyes, a look of sublime joy passing across her face before she exhales and then refocuses her gaze upon me. "I'm sure you've wondered about this world, and why any of us would spend time amongst mundanes, given the limitations of the sun, the risk of being discovered?"
I nod. "Yes, that's true. I have wondered." I'm not surprised she surmised this about me. Given her lifespan and clear intelligence, I imagine she is quite the master manipulator, which means she has a keen insight into others. And the tragic irony isn't lost on me. Eve was the mother of humanity, but also blamed for the fall of humanity. The creator and the destroyer. The savior and the villain. Lilith was the mother of all vampires, but never a mother herself. For some, that could be a great and painful burden to bear for so many lifetimes.
"There are perks to your world," she says, taking another hit from her cigarette. "These, for instance." She smiles. "Technology, sanitation, style, and comfort of living. The mundane world has it all. Yes, it comes at a price, so those of us with means have homes in both worlds, to move back and forth through them as we like. The best of it all. Sometimes the Otherworld can be frustrating with its artificial limitations of advancement and growth. Its backward ways." She blows smoke and it coalesces into the shape of a dragon storming the sky with billowing fires. "It will soon be time to set the worlds on fire, Eve. I wonder if you'll be ready."
I swallow, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. "Ready for what?"
"For the role you will be asked to play. And for the role you are destined to play. Women with great power make sought-after targets. Men do not like to yield power to anyone, let alone a woman. And women who have chosen to align themselves with the enemy in order to gain favor above their sisters do not like the system they have erroneously chosen to be toppled, so you will have many enemies, even amongst those you think are trustworthy." She snuffs out the cigarette in a crystal ashtray I hadn't noticed before.
"I don't think I am who you think I am," I say. I know I'm different, but I'm definitely not the explosive powerhouse she's painting me to be.
"You have no idea who you are," she says plainly. "But then, I don’t know either. I assume that will be your next question and I'm sorry to say I don't have an answer for you. Though that in itself is its own kind of information. I know much of many beings. But I do not know you."
My heart is beating hard against my chest and I feel heat pulse through my veins. "What does that mean? If you of all people don't know what I am, how can I ever find out?"
A new desperation fills me. This has been eating at me like a cancer, not understanding the core of my own being. Having a sense of something living in me but not understanding what that means and having no one outside of Adam to share that with. And now he's gone and there is no one.
A flash.
Just a blink.
Did I really see it or just imagine it?
Isn't that always the question?
The woman with the silver freckles. The silver horn glowing in the soft swirls of the Dragon's Breath colors.
A cooling of the heat.
A calmness.
Lilith smiles. "So she has visited you. Good. You are not as alone as I had feared. There might be hope for you yet."
The Courthouse
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. ~ Aristotle
When I return, all four brothers are waiting for me.
"Well, did you get anything useful?" Elijah asks, without preamble.
"She confirmed the letters were hers, written to Dracula," I say, giving a recap of the conversation.
Derek paces the library, thinking. "It's risky, but we could cast a shadow of a doubt on her. She has means and motive," he says, with a frown. "But she's a powerful enemy to make."
"She didn't do it," I say. "She was at a ball that night. She gave me a list of individuals who can confirm her presence. It should be easy enough to check."
"Then we've still got nothing," Liam says, with a clench of his jaw. "We still don't know who killed Mary or why."
Derek shrugs. "While it would be useful to identify the actual killer, it's not necessary for our purposes. We just need to prove Vlad didn't do it. And we don't have much time left, so let's get to work."
We spend the next few days diving into law books, preparing for Dracula's legal defense. We've sussed out all the evidence we can, and at this point, his guilt or innocence will largely be circumstantial. The final verdict will rely on compelling testimony and closing arguments.
Derek is lead counsel, which is how I find myself alone with him late one night in his office, as he practices in front of me.
"Feel free to speak your mind," he says, after going through his opening statements.
"I don't know your legal system well enough to give helpful feedback," I say, biting my lip.
He cocks his head. "That's rubbish. I can tell you have thoughts. Speak them. You won't offend me." He offers up a charming smile as proof that his feathers won't be ruffled.
Of all the brothers, he's the easiest to be around, I've found. Maybe it's the water element in him, but Derek is less rigid than Sebastian, less volatile than Liam, and less mentally distracted than Elijah. With Derek, I feel I am the center of the universe when he looks at me, like I'm drowning in him, but not unpleasantly. His dimpled chin and ocean blue eyes pull me in, and his charisma is organic, consuming the room and me with it. It's no wonder he's lead counsel. He could charm anyone. He reminds me a lot of my brother, which sends a twinge of pain through my heart.
Adam would have loved it here. He always believed there was more to the world than what we could see. This would have vindicated him and those beliefs.
Being sent from foster home to foster home was tough on both of us, after our dad died, but it was especially tough on him. He didn't keep his ideas about monsters and superheroes to himself, and not all the foster parents appreciated his creative interpretation of the world. He was beaten a lot for his stories. And though I did my best to protect and defend him, it usually just led to both of us getting the belt across our backsides. One time he was hit so hard it split his skin clean open. I had screamed louder than him when I saw what our foster father had done in his drunken rage. Adam couldn't sit for weeks. We were sent to a new home, but it wasn't much better.
<
br /> I shake my head, ridding it of past memories, and focus on the man before me. "You're trying to make a case for Dracula's innocence, right?"
Derek nods. "Obviously."
"But you're trying to soften him. To paint him as a regular Joe blow who couldn't possibly commit such a heinous crime."
"Well, yes," Derek says, scratching the dimple on his chin.
"I assume Dracula's reputation proceeds him, even here?"
Derek chuckles. "You could say that."
"Then it won't work. The jury, the judge, they're already going to have ideas about Dracula. They may have even decided he's guilty. I don't know how impartial the system is here, but in my world it's pretty corrupt."
Derek narrows his eyes but doesn't challenge me. "What would you suggest?"
"Play up his reputation. Lay it all on the table. The prosecution goes first, yes? They're going to paint him as a monster. So let them. Encourage it. Bring out the monster in him."
He begins pacing again. "How will that help win the case?"
"Because you'll be showing the jury and the judge you know the truth of your client. You'll be creating a bond of trust. Then, you show Dracula's intelligence. His cunning. His ability to plan and implement acts of cruelty." The ideas are coming to me quickly, as I consider his best defense.
"Okay… " Derek says slowly.
I stand from the chair I've been curled up in and pace the room as Derek pauses to watch and listen. "And once you've done all that, you show how this crime, this crime scene, is sloppy. It's messy. It's lazy. It's not the crime of a genius monster like Dracula. It's a bad frame job that's too poorly done to be him at all. Prove that Dracula is too evil, too monstrous, too good at his killing to have done this crime. Then, you can use the Ifrit's testimony to cast doubt on whether a vampire committed the crime, and argue that he wanted a child more than anything and would never have killed his."
I Am the Wild (The Night Firm Book 1) Page 16
