The Demon's Pa

After having a lengthy discussion with Lucy I managed to convince her to go with Viktor because he wouldn’t let anything happen to her and we needed her.

Alive.

She’d relented to my demand as long as I fulfilled her condition.

I had to go with her.

I hugged Cherise awkwardly and patted her back, “Goodbye.”

Cherise smiled and let go of me, “Goodbye, Ash. I’ll see you in five weeks.”

I nodded in understanding and then muttered my goodbye to Oberon as well and before I knew it they were gone, almost like they were never even there to begin with.

The others had left before Oberon and Cherise had so it was only Viktor, Lucy and I that remained. Zaiden, of course, stood carefully watching me as always.

Viktor would wait for me to finish my business in Africa before the three of us would leave for his continent. Lucy’s request wasn’t that difficult to grant, I’d wanted to go and see my family anyway, but I wasn’t sure if leaving was the best move to make…

“Well, let’s get this over with.” I said to myself. I looked around, my eyes meeting Zaiden’s once before I spoke clearly, “Nobles,” I said, “Come to me.”

I knew they were all still in vicinity since they didn’t want to be too far from me if I needed them so it wasn’t even necessary for me to raise my voice. One after the other they all appeared. Al twelve of Alexander’s- I mean my nobles. Did they know he was going to come back as a full-fledged demon?

I looked between them. I still had a hard time remembering all their names since I hadn’t really known them until a few weeks prior. I gave them all a small smile and they smiled right back at me, happy that I had called them.

Briefly my eyes met Theresa’s and I couldn’t help but glare at her for a split second before I moved on. She was the only the only noble who I’d ever seen Alexander kissing and even though I knew that was before he’d decided to court me a pang of jealousy shot through me. Who knew how many times they’d kissed before Alexander had found me.

I cleared my throat, “The other royals have just informed me that Alexander isn’t going to stay dead. He’s going to come back as a demon.” They only seemed slightly surprised as I explained the whole situation to them. “When I’m finished with my business here I will be going with Viktor and Lucy to North America. While I’m away I’m going to need all of you to take care of things here. Your priorities are the vampires and the humans. I don’t care for the buildings or the rest of the infrastructure; I want you all to protect the people. Make sure the humans have enough food and that they are safe and make sure all the vampires are on high alert.” I swallowed, “Make sure they are all ready to be called to war at a moment’s notice because as things are looking at the moment that is where we are ultimately heading.” Jacob took a step forward and raised his hand slowly. I smiled a little and nodded for him to go ahead and say what he wanted.

“Is the war going to be against demons?” He asked without a hint of fear or hesitation in his eyes.

“Yes,” I answered honestly after a moment, “The father of the royals will be their leader.”

“Doesn’t that mean we’re going to have to fight Alex as well?” Samael asked.

I swallowed hard and looked away from them, “I don’t know, when Alexander comes back he will either be with us or against us so I just… don’t… know at the moment…” I trailed off awkwardly. I really didn’t know.

“Who will be accompanying you?” Faith asked, “When you go to North America I mean.”

My eyes immediately shot to Zaiden, “Zaiden will come with me.”

“I will join the two of you.” Samael stated plainly before his mouth broke out into a wide grin. “Someone needs to keep your feet on the ground with a few sadistic remarks.”

I hesitated for a moment before I relented with a small smile, “Very well.” It could just have been my imagination but it seemed like the rest of the nobles all visibly relaxed when they learned that I would have two escorts instead of one.

“I won’t be returning here after we leave tomorrow, but I will still be on the continent since I need to find a certain human. Please be ready for when a messenger comes to tell you all the location of the battle. Bring most of the vampires with you but leave a few so the humans aren’t completely unprotected and chaos erupts.” I gave them all a reassuring smile, “I wish you all the best, that is all.”

I’d already turned away from them when I thought of something and I spun around again, “Fabian, Faith, please come here for a moment.”

The rest of the nobles said goodbye to me and they left while Fabian and Faith patiently waited for me to say me goodbyes.

I looked at them intently, “When I find the human, I need you two to stay with him and his followers if he has any.”

Faith narrowed her eyes questioningly, “Our purpose being?”

“The mediators between the humans that are going to be on our side in the war and the vampires.” When both of them looked at me disbelievingly I thought it best to explain the complete situation to them. It took them mere minutes to understand the problem and for them to get on boat with my idea.

“Of course Ash,” Fabian said, “I take it we will have to protect them then as well?”

I nodded, “We leave first thing in the morning so make sure you’re ready and fed since I don’t think I will be all that convincing if the two of you still have to feed off of them.” I looked at them both intently, “We need them.”

They took my advice and vanished to go find some food.

Only after lecturing them I realised I was starving as well so I swallowed, clenched my fists and walked in the direction of the house. I hadn’t drunk blood since Alexander’s death. I didn’t want to, I was afraid of killing the person and it would just feel… wrong… to drink someone else’s blood. What would it even taste like? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“I’m hungry.” Lucy stated and she headed for the kitchen with the rest of us trailing behind her.

Viktor stepped in front of me and patted his stomach, “I should probably fill up as well.” His eyes went to Lucy who was happily skipping in front of us before he looked at me again, “Do I have permission to hunt on your land?”

I nodded, “Yeah, just don’t kill anyone.”

“Of course.” And then he was gone.

Zaiden and Samael both watched my curiously, “You can drink my blood if you don’t want to hurt a human.” Samael said as he bared his neck for me.

I shook my head, “No, I’ll just… take down a few cattle before bed.”

That had sounded like something Alexander would have said.

So when I was full a few hours later I fell down onto our bed face first and allowed myself to relax for the first time in a while. Alexander’s scent wasn’t that strong in the room anymore but I could still smell him.

Goodness I missed him.

I missed sleeping in his arms and the sound of his voice and so I quietly cried for a while in my loneliness, but it wasn’t as bad as it usually was.

After all, now I knew he was coming back to me.

And I didn’t care how.

I woke up early and finished getting ready in less than fifteen minutes. I had to hand it to Alexander, being a vampire was very useful sometimes.

I grabbed hold of a backpack I’d found in the top rack of Alexander’s closet and carefully packed two sets of spare clothing and a lot of extra underwear.

I looked around the room with my hands on my hips and my eyes landed on the stuffed lion that was dutifully sitting on his place on the bed. I picked it up, hesitated and then put it back on the bed where it belonged. I couldn’t take it with me, I mean who knew how dangerous things could get. And I was not going to let anything happen to Fluffy.

When I arrived downstairs Viktor, Faith, Fabian, Samael and Zaiden were already waiting for me and I was about to declare that we leave when I realised we shorted one person. Lucy.

So with a sigh I made my way to her room and knocked on her door since I could hear her moving about.

“Come in.” She called with a cheerful voice and I couldn’t help but smile.

I pushed open the door and peeked inside, she was searching through clothes trying to find something to wear for our journey, “Good morning, I was just checking to see if you were up. Do you want to eat something before we leave?”

“No, I’m alright.” She said with a sigh. “Tell me, what do you think?”

“Hmm?” I asked, “About what?”

“About what I should wear.”

“Definitely not that.” I said pointing towards the dress she was holding in her right hand, “That would just be disastrous since we’ll be traveling at vampire speed. I think shorts and t-shirt is your wisest option.”

She nodded understandingly and looked at the clothing in her left hand, “Alright then.”

“Why do you care about what you’re wearing anyway? You haven’t been concerned about clothing at all since you got here.” I pointed out. Maybe she was finally starting to warm up towards Viktor.

“We’re going to civilisation; I want to look good for my fellow humans. Specifically look good for any gorgeous guys we meet today.” She grinned widely.

I hesitated and then leaned against the wall, “Let’s be honest for a minute, Lucy, Promise angel to Promise angel. Do you really not feel anything towards Viktor?”

“No, I don’t. He’s stiff and mean and hardly ever smiles.” She stated stubbornly.

I couldn’t help but shrug in agreement, “Well I suppose that’s true… It’s just that… Viktor is not going to appreciate you hanging around with other guys.”

“I don’t care.” Her stubbornness continued.

“You’re actually dressing up like that for him aren’t you?” I asked.

Heat flooded her face, “I’m not! He’s mean and unpleasant… and… and mean!”

I smirked, “I thought so; you like him don’t you? Even though you’re afraid of him you’re attracted to him. Am I right?”

She looked like she was about to start protesting but hung her head and sighed instead, “You see right through me.”

I nodded, “That I do. Well you’ll have a lot of time to decide how you feel about him as you’ll be clinging to him for dear life for the rest of the day.”

“What?!?” She exclaimed in horror and I ran out of the room before she could attack me with the pillow she’d picked up very threateningly.

When I reached the waiting vampires again I said, “She’ll be right down.” I was about to head outside when Viktor caught my hand and pulled me back.

His intense eyes met mine and he smiled a small smile, “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it; I’m just helping her in the right direction.” I said with a laugh, “At least she doesn’t hate you anymore.”

He let go of my hand and I waited outside. When Lucy came downstairs what felt like hours later things got a little… awkward.

Eventually after fussing about who exactly was going to carry her for what felt like an eternity, Viktor very boldly scooped her up in his arms and her protests were immediately silenced. Figures.

It was very hard not to roll my eyes at them.

What was even harder was not bursting out into tears at the fact that Alexander and I used to be like that, but I was fine, I had no time to have a breakdown right now.

We reached the location where I’d first met Thomas- self-proclaimed vampire hunter- in less than half an hour after we left the house.

I quickly picked up on his scent since I could still remember it easily. The reason behind that being of course was that he was only the second human male I met after I was turned so his scent was familiar to me as one I didn’t lust after. As I was the only one who knew what Thomas smelled like I was tasked with the duty of being our leader in finding him. Just give the new vampire the reigns and expect she knows what to do with them, how wonderful.

My senses had definitely improved since I’d been turned a few weeks prior but I still didn’t have that much confidence in my skills. Sure I’d accidently turned over a tree the other day but that was strength not sense of smell and trees weren’t even that heavy…

Following Thomas’s trail was more than the chore than I’d originally thought it would be, but I could thank the heavens that it hadn’t rained in weeks and that his scent hadn’t been washed away or we would have been royally screwed.

His path weaved through the mountainside, up sheer cliffs, across dams and through rivers and after a few hours of searching it was clear to me that he had been on a very long journey since the last time I’d seen him. The way that he travelled even made it seem like he had been going somewhere with purpose. Home maybe? Or was he on some adventure to better his vampire killing tools?

I suddenly came to an abrupt stop. For the first time since we’d started following his trail his scent became stronger and excitement pulled through me. I crouched low and carefully looked around. Were we finally gaining on him?

I nearly screamed in horror when I realised that the only reason his scent had gotten stronger was because there was a patch of dried blood on the ground.

Thomas’s blood.

I swallowed my nervousness and looked around again. Was he… dead?

Viktor put Lucy down gently and after looking her over to see if she was alright he turned to me, “Why did we stop? Did you lose his trail?”

I shook my head, “Let’s just say that it ended in blood.”

“Hmmm?” He asked with a raised brow and came closer to see what I was pointing at. After inspecting it for a moment he casually commented, “Well it doesn’t look like he died here, there’s too little blood here if he bled out and I don’t smell a rotting corpse nearby.”

I nodded again, slightly disgusted, “Yeah.”

“It seems like he was attacked.” Viktor crouched down and took a whiff of the dried blood and the ground around it, “By an animal by the smell of it.” He added before straightening himself again.

I frowned, “How can you tell?”

Viktor grinned happily, “Experience, decades and eons of experience.” He frowned and looked around, “But he fought it off with… help?”

“Someone came to help him?” I questioned doubtfully, not sure what Viktor was insinuating.

“Yes, a human came to help him it seems.”

I was in some state of disbelief; he really had me outranked in the experience division. “And you think they both left here alive?” I questioned.

“Most certainly.” Viktor assured me with a firm nod of his head.

Lucy looked extremely worn out so with her best interests at heart I said, “Let’s rest here for a while and get Lucy some lunch.”

She gave me a weak smile, exhausted from clinging to Viktor in one position like that for hours and stressed out about being so close to him.

I knew the feeling all too well.

I looked around for a place for her to sit down in the shade- the ominous dried blood out of her eyesight - and spotted the perfect little place only a few meters away. After I’d inspected that area for bugs and spiders I dropped my backpack to the ground. “So how about something to eat?” I asked Lucy.

She shook her head and waved me off, “I’m alright, I brought some crackers for me to eat. No need to kill some innocent creature for me.”

“Uhh…” Viktor suddenly said from behind her and she turned around to face him. “You spoke to late.” He said with a sheepish look on his face and held up the two dead birds.

Lucy’s eyes widened and I couldn’t help but chuckle, “Well I hear pigeon tastes like chicken so that shouldn’t go too bad with the crackers.” I told her amusedly.

She didn’t say much as Zaiden made a fire and Viktor tried his best to cook the birds over the fire. Needless to say that didn’t end all too well, but the pigeons were eatable for the most part. He was better at cooking than Alexander had been, I couldn’t help but note.

When Lucy was full and she got that sleepy expression on her face that came after eating, we headed out again. With Lucy sound asleep in Viktor’s arms our journey was silent. “Do you think we’ll find him soon?” Fabian suddenly asked me over the wind that rushed past my ears.

“We aught to, his scent is growing very strong now. We’re definitely near his location.” I frowned, “But Viktor was right, another human joined him and it seems like are traveling together.”

“I see.”

My skin crawled when I felt eyes on me and I came to an abrupt stop and looked around. Viktor must have felt it too because he was still next to me with an alert look on his face.

I sniffed the air. The scent was human, male. It was Thomas and the other human.

My nobles also came to a stop and rushed back to me, surrounding me and Viktor as if to protect us. “Lucy,” Viktor said with a tense voice, “You have to wake up.”

She groaned slightly as she opened her eyes, “What’s going on?”

Suddenly a red hot knife flew out of the bushes, past my nobles.

And it was heading straight for Lucy and Viktor who still had his eyes trained of her and not the danger that was coming right at them.

Oh great.