The Vampire Xia

Awendela shook her head, clearing it. She had no time for such thoughts; she needed to focus on the protection of the Xia.

“Mizushima, the Xia is in danger,” she whispered into her earpiece, Mizushima’s name activating the device.

She liked vampire technology. She didn’t have press a button to speak which saved time and prevented obvious movement.

“Shemihaza, see no indication of that,” was the reply.

“Don’t question me, get him out of here,” she hissed, the ear piece wouldn’t deactivate until she said his name again.

“O’Hale any outside movements?” she asked the head of the perimeter team.

“Shemihaza, no ma’am. No activity to speak of…its quiet…very quiet.”

Awendela’s eyes skimmed the round, the laughing vampires, vampires dancing, music playing; her heart was beating fast in her chest, her wrist pounded in time. Something was going to happen, a display of their strength. A display that the rebels could slip into a security location and kill the Xia but they wouldn’t kill him yet. No, they wanted to show that he was weak.

Undermining her security, showing that the Xia’s trust in the Watcher’s authority and protection, would be a great display and a negative impact to his possible supporters. An unsupported kind was a dead king. If the King wasn’t the target then something nearly as important would be.

Lilith.

Awendela tugged her cellphone out of her thigh strapped, snapping it opening and hitting the speed dial.

“Aren’t you suppose to be working?” Moore asked on the other end.

“Where is Lilith?” she asked immediately, her eyes scanning the crowd, shifting closer to the main doors.

Mizushima was whispering in the Xia’s ear.

“What do you mean? Didn’t she call you? She was supposed to have arrived at the Summer Caster hours ago. She said she would call you before her flight.”

Awendela’s mind snapped to the Xia’s dragging his entire essences into herself and screamed out one word, a projection, using the sensation she had felt when he had connected her to Lilith, the path to her mind using the Xia as a connector.

~LILITH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~

Awendela whirled around and dash out of the ballroom, her cell phone shattering on the hard stones. Her dress flew around her like shredded wings, doors opened in her wake without her touching them. She held onto the sensation of Lilith in her mind letting it tug her forward, blindly.

Awendela’s feet drove her deep into the Summer Castle, lower and lower. She had long ignored the voices yelling at her through the earpiece. If she focused anywhere else she would lose the already weakening thread.

She had long threw the Xia out of her mind only keeping the path open, he sensed her emotions and had long stopped bombarding her with questions and aided her by supporting the connection.

Awendela rounded a corner and literally ran into a bulk of a vampire. He grunted in surprise not having heard the silent running steps a gift of the nephilims. She recoiled and her daggers her in her hands in moments.

“Where is she?” she hissed out, her breathing hard, sweat coating her skin like a lover’s embrace.

The vampire grinned, “who might that be Watcher?”

“Where is the Lady Lilith?” she snapped.

The vampire’s smile widen, “do you want to see?”

He took a side step and crumpled on the ground behind him was Lilith, blood coating the floor, her skin whiter than normal, dark circles around her eyes, her lips cracked and rusted with blood, bruises lined half her face, her beautiful gown obviously something that had bought in Paris torn and shredded, revealing more bruises.

Four more vampires stood around her.

“The Xia wanted me to keep any rebels alive but I think he will not begrudge me killing every last one of you.”

“Ah, you see none of us are planning to die tonight. If you don’t get her help soon, she will be dead. So you have two choices, let us go and save her or fight us and by the time you kill us she will be dead.”

Awendela’s dark brown eyes almost seemed to glow in the dim underground lighting of the dungeons, the flecks of gold in her eyes brightening.

“You seem to think that I mean to fight you. You however are wrong,” she said softly though her voice carried to the other four vampires as she slipped her daggers back into her holster.

She watched the vampires’ eyes light up with triumph thinking she was giving up.

“I do not mean to fight you at all. I mean to kill you.”

They blinked sensing a change in the woman before them, a ripple of power causing the air to shudder around them, like an ocean in a storm churning violently at them. They didn’t even have time to scream before the power hit them with a force that would have sent them flying through the stones walls if it hadn’t disintegrated them into nothing.

Awendela’s knees gave out from under her, as pain ripped through her, she gasped, her muscles spasm-ing violently before settling. As the pain settled, exhausted threaten to pull her into darkness but she could not rest yet. Blinded by her power she used her memory and other senses to stumble to Lilith slipping as she crawled through the blood soaked stones.

Her bloody hands found Lilith’s face, “Lilith?”

A soft moan, an indication of life in the woman she didn’t realize meant so much to her.
Awendela’s hand skimmed over the woman’s chest, felt the shallow fall of her breathing.

“Lilith wake,” she said as she lifted her broken wrist to the woman’s lips, “drink.”

Another moan, she felt Lilith stir under her hand on her chest.

“Your…eyes..are….grey…” came her soft hoarse voice, weak and trembling.

Awendela chuckled tiredly, “I am blind and you need blood or you will die. Drink.”

The pain of the bite was sharp and quick intensified when lilith’s hand lifted to cling to her broken wrist, sucking the blood from her body with a desperate need. Awendela never in her life imagined she would have freely given her blood to save a vampire yet here she was doing just that.

A hand touched Awendela’s face and she felt something warm and sticky smeared across her eyes. Lilith touching her blind eyes perhaps in awe of their color or in thanks, she couldn’t be sure. Awendela felt her body weaken as Lilith drank, her body shook with cold and she sent out a thought because she knew she had no strength to speak.

~Dungeons~


With that thought she collapsed on top of Lilith, who had finished drinking and had slipped into a vampire healing sleep.

--- --- ---

When Awendela woke it was to utter darkness and pressure around her eyes. Her hands lifted and felt soft bandages over the top half of her face.

“I figured you wanted no one to know of your eyes. Before I passed out as I was feeding I sent the Xia a message to allow no one to look at your eyes and to have them bandaged immediately because they had been injured and if any light touched them you could be permanently blinded.”

“That is why you touched them, you has smeared them with my blood to make them look as if they had been injured,” she replied softly in awe that this woman despite her condition had thought of those things.

“My thanks,” she murmured softly as she felt herself over.

“No Awen, the thanks of mine. You saved my life. It was the least I could do. I will always been in your debt. Do not take the I.V. line out!”

Awendela lifted her hands as if to say ‘ok ok you win’, before replying, “I did my job, nothing more, nothing less.”

Her hands lifting to undo the bandages but soft gentle hands pushed them away, the weight of something settling next to her as Lilith sat on the bed made her feel like a sick child.

“Your job is to protect the Xia not me yet you did anyways,” Lilith replied.

“You knew something was wrong and your job was to secure the Xia instead you went on a hunch, trusting your other guards to keep the Xia safe and came looking for me. The Xia had a massive headache for two days I would have you know. Apparently you forced a connection between us, using him.How is still a mystery to even the Xia. He never knew that someone could connect mentally to someone else using a third as a bridge. While this is exactly what we do anyways it is always done by the person who has the connection between the two people not the other way around.”

Awendela groaned, “Was he mad?”

“Annoyed and perplexed but I highly doubt he was or is mad,” Lilith laughed as she finished removing the bandages.

Awendela tested her eyes opening them slowly but the world was still black. She turned her head to where she heard Lilith’s voice.

“They are beautiful. I have never seen such a color, grey yet almost silver, they seem to shimmer every so slightly.”

Awendela could hear the awe in Lilith’s voice and felt the gentle touch as the woman cupped her face into her hand.

“This is a secret you have kept for many years isn’t it? I felt a rumbled of enormous power in those dungeons.”

“My lady….”

“Don’t you dare ever call me that again. It’s Lilith.”

Awendela couldn’t help the bubble of laughter that spilled from her lips at the mother-like tone and nodded her head in agreement.

“Better now, I am not asking your secrets, everyone and every species has them. However, you risked your secret becoming exposed to save me. Again, I will always been in your debt. I think I understand more now why the nephilims do not seem like the ones of the old stories. That old power has consequences as if should for no one species or being should be all power. There should be checks and balances. The nephilims are the check and balances for the vampires that and silver bullets.”

“And Icer Glass,” Awendela muttered, the material her daggers were made from.

With Lilith so near, she felt the woman shudder, “or that. Let me re-wrap your eyes and I will have some food brought up. I am sure your are starving.”

“Lilith?” she called, listening to woman’s soft footfalls heading to the door.

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“Two weeks.”

Awendela sat in utter shock, the sound of the door closing echoing through the room.Two weeks, that was far too long. How much power had she used to be unconscious for two weeks? Yes, she had been utterly pissed and had used more then necessary and her blood had been drank afterwards but still two weeks was a little too long and she was still blind.
She thought back to the last time she had used her nephilims powers, which had been over a century ago, she had been unconscious for three days and when she had woken, her eyesight had been blurry but had returned to normal within two days.

Awendela barely noticed Lilith’s return, her senses dull and rusty. Lilith scolded her for trying to eat blind and fed her the chicken broth spoonful by spoonful.

“Where are we?” Awendela asked after taking a careful sip of water Lilith offered.

“Still at the Summer Castle, everyone has been removed from the property but for a handful of nobles that live in the Main Castle. Guards have been doubled and Moore flew in to oversee everything.”

“Has it really been two weeks?” Awendela asked.

“Yes, is that not normal after whatever it is you did?”

Awendela heard Lilith put the trap of food on a table and felt the weight on the bed shift she resettled on the bed.

“No…it isn’t though it has been a very long time perhaps that has something to do with it.”

“I also almost drank you dry…I don’t think that would have helped,” Lilith said softly, and Awendela could hear the sadness in her voice.

“Oh Awen I have much to apologize for. You saved me and I almost killed you in my need for blood, it was your eyes that stopped me. Otherwise I think I would have drank you dry but those eyes looking down at me with such hope and desperation to save me. It snapped me out of my blood-lust. I also need to apologize for the first time we mind-spoke. I bombard you with those images on purpose. I was jealous. The Xia was talking about you none stop. He is fascinated with the fact that you are not scared to talk back to him…well you are but he said it is different with you. I don’t know. I got jealous because every time I was with him the topic somehow returned to you. I don’t understand it. I am so so sorry!”

Awendela remember then the sensation of malice she had felt before the images invaded her mind.

“ Please, there is nothing to forgive. You wouldn't have drank me dry regardless of what you think. Also, you love him, you are his consort. I am a woman and an outsider. I do not blame you in the least.”

Lilith made a dismissive sound, “I am his consort but I do not love him nor him me. We are the best of friends but not lovers as many believe us to be."

Awendela knew her face must have shown her shock because Lilith broke into laughter, her hand patting Awen’s hand.

“If only you could see your face. I am the only thing protecting the Xia was the women of court who would be throwing themselves at his feet and into his bed if he didn’t have a consort.”

“You must love him or otherwise you wouldn’t have been jealous of me,” Awendela stated, her mind reeling from this revelation.

“No, I was jealous about our friendship. That you were going to get in the middle of it. Ruin the closest we have. Like I said he talked of you non-stop.”

Lilith shifted on the bed so she was now laying next to Awendela, Awendela shifted as well so she was laying her, her head on the pillow because she was feeling tired again.

“Non-stop?”

“Oh he is quite fascinated with you. No one ever questions him and he doesn’t know what to make of it. I think he enjoys arguing with you because he has no one to argue with.”

“I think my brain is too tired to think about this right now. I mean I was certain….you two…”

“And so is everyone else otherwise this ruse would never work. Rest now, with rest you will heal. I will stay here and be here when you wake.”

Awendela nodded, closing her blind eyes sensing the woman next to her. It was the first time anyone had ever protected her, taken care of her, watched over her and she was surprised to find that she actually liked it. She felt Lilith’s hand run through her hair and a soft lullaby fill the air as she drifted to sleep.

Notes