by Danae Ayusso
Talking about myself in a third person is really weird.
“That isn’t at all concerning or creepy,” I mumbled.
“Shawn?” Tybalt asked, waving his hand in front of my face.
Alder grabbed him and pulled Tybalt back. “Don’t touch her. Shawn is sleepwalking, in a sense… This is fascinating,” he said with a smile.
Andrei would have a much different opinion of how fascinating it is to have a sleepwalking head-case like me doing medical procedures on him while he’s unconscious and she’s in limbo.
Sleepwalking me was inserting a tube up Andrei’s nose, threading it so it’d go down into his stomach. Once she was certain it was where it should be, sleepwalking me attached a bag of clean blood that Tybalt brought. Once it was connected, I handed it off to Tybalt then pulled his arm over his head so it was gravity fed.
Again, third person was really irritating me but how else would you describe it.
Tybalt looked between me and Andrei. “If she does something and he dies as a result, they’ll blame us for assisting her,” he warned.
Alder nodded. “They already tried to use Shawn as a means for assassination of this particular vampire prince,” he explained, motioning towards Andrei.
Oh the things I get myself into.
“A baby vamp wouldn’t have noticed the blood was wrong, and instead would have devoured it,” he pointed out. “Or, at the very least, try to feed it to their Maker in an attempt to heal him. That’s what I suggested she do, and if she would have, I would have facilitated the assassination of a Vampire Prince and Marshal.”
Yeah, this can’t get any worse if I tried.
“You can’t take the blame for… How is she able to do that?” Tybalt asked when I inserted a needle into the vein in the side of Andrei’s neck since there weren’t any on the insides of his arms that I was confident I wouldn’t collapse. Once the catheter was in place, I hooked him up to another bag of clean blood.
I have to admit, I do good work and should have gone to nursing school.
“Was Shawn a doctor or nurse?” Tybalt pressed, taking the second bag of blood I was offering him to hold for me.
Alder shook his head. “Giovanni said his baby sister sleepwalks, and always has. They shared a room growing up because he was a light sleeper and would wake if she did, follow her around, then guide her back to bed.”
I made a face. “That’s why my annoying big brother wanted to share a room and moved me to the converted attic space with him?” I groaned. “It would have been really nice to know that growing up, instead of believing he was scared of the dark and needed me to protect him,” I grumbled.
Tybalt reached out and caressed away the tear that rolled down my cheek.
“Ghost me can’t cry but catatonic Dr. Shawn can?! Awesome,” I huffed in frustration.
“Isn’t her brother dead?” Tybalt asked.
“How would you know that?” I whispered, looking at him with wide eyes.
Alder shrugged.
“I heard her, when we first met, cursing the Goddess for taking all those she loved from her but refusing to allow her to join them, especially her brother,” Tybalt said, giving Alder a look. “I’m not my brother, and I had nothing to do with what forced you two apart, not that I know what did, but I care for Shawn. I just met her, but she’s different. She speaks to my wolf-”
“Shawn is a Nightling,” Alder interrupted, as if that was explanation enough.
The look on Tybalt’s face confirmed that it was, but I didn’t know why mattered or would even mean anything in this context.
“Oh,” he said, looking from Alder to me. “That’s disappointing and bad.”
Alder shrugged, checking the slowly mending gashes on Andrei’s chest. “Don’t be disappointed. I only mention it because that is how she is able to speak to your wolf, to soothe him as she has. And bad? Only if it becomes public knowledge. The last Nightling that I can remember hearing about was targeted and their light turned to darkness, their gift being consumed by shadows. It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy, not even wish it on your annoying brother.”
Tybalt chuckled. “You two made a cute couple, but yeah, he can be a little much at times.”
Alder gave him a look. “A little much?” he scoffed. “That creature is a Queen in his own mind and nothing but self-centered trouble. I couldn’t get out soon enough.”
“Uh huh,” Tybalt said, trying to keep from chuckling. “Twenty-seven years too late, huh?”
“Minor details,” Alder said, switching out the empty bag of blood with another that was leading to Andrei’s stomach. “The remodeling is almost complete on the tissue, but the lung and rib is still mending,” he said, inspecting the wounds. “Do you think Marshal Belova–Revnik knew and that’s why he took care of it instead of allowing Mercy to? Baba Yaga falls under witch jurisdiction, and a spirit issue would fall under Necromancer jurisdiction, but from what Mercy said Andrei volunteered to check into it.”
That’s a good question.
One Tybalt wouldn’t have the answer to.
“I’m not a Marshal and neither are you,” Tybalt reminded him. “What my brother, that is a Marshal, does he keeps to himself. That is, after all, the oath they take to prevent forfeiting their soul. The last person I would ever speculate for is this Marshal… Why is he bleeding again?” he asked in a panic.
The nearly healed gashes on his chest were once again bleeding, the healed tissue pulling apart as if something was cutting him…
“This isn’t right. Andrei!” I shouted, passing through his body and mine, appearing on the other side of him. I rested my hand on the wounds in a feeble attempt to stem the bleeding.
The moment I did, a searing sensation ripped through me and it made me gasp.
Blobs of darkness and flashes of light alternated in my vision, blinding me, but through it something registered.
A blur of red.
Huh. That isn’t normal. Think, Shawn, think! What do I know? Talk it out. You can do this.
Red? Sleep paralysis. Skin peeling and gashes. Suffocating…
A smile filled my face.
That was why Andrei left breadcrumbs in Italian!
It isn’t the pale Italian that is the source of this unseen attack, but it is an Italian.
“Gotcha,” I mused, swiping my hand through the air, my fingers wrapping around the unmistakable feel of fabric and I pulled.
A red cap materialized from thin air, my fingers clenched around the top of it.
There was a flickering distortion in the air over Andrei.
I swiped with my other hand through the air over Anderi’s head, and again my fingers wrapped around fabric before I pulled it away, and another red cap appeared in my hand.
“Two down, five to go,” I said, dropping the hats to my lap.
Again, there was flickering in the visual spectrum.
“Ammuttadori of Sardinia,” I teasingly sang.
Mia nonna told me a tale from Sardinia when I was a little girl, one of Italy’s islands, about an old belief for the reason behind sleep paralysis. It was because of a demoniac being called Ammuttadori. It is said the ghoulish creature sits on the chest of its sleeping victim, suffocating them and flailing their skin with his nails as he does. Mia nonna told me her padre had seen Ammuttadori in his youth, was victim of him even, and that the demon wears seven red caps. Her padre resisted the pain Ammuttadori was putting him through, and stole one of his caps. When he woke with the cap in hand, he found hidden treasure inside as a reward.
That was how he was able to move his family from their cottage to an estate large enough for all of them on the main land.
Sadly, how mio bisnonno beat the Ammuttadori she didn’t say, and Andrei was less than forthcoming in his notes.
“I know what you are, and Andrei knew as well. Why else would he leave Italian breadcrumbs for his pale Italian?” I rhetorically asked. “You are a long, long way from home, Ammuttadori.”
“I know what you are, and I know what you are doing,” I said, grabbing the next cap that appeared on his head; five down, two to go. “You are too far from home. Those of Sardinia must be missing their Night Hag. Who would be foolish enough to summon you, to bring you across the oceans and land, to target a Vampire Prince? Surely you must know how suicidal this is,” I said, snatching the next hat off his head and another appeared. “What happens when I take the last of your seven hats?” I asked. “Does your soul mean so little to you?”
Ammuttadori snarled, digging his claws into Anderi’s flesh even more and blood seemingly exploded from between Andrei’s lips.
“No!” I cried out. “Leave him alone!”
The small ghoul smirked.
“I know what you are, and I know you don’t belong here. What is it they have over you?” I asked, gauging if I could snatch the last cap off his head. “Why are you risking your soul…” my words trailed off.
There wasn’t an answer that he’d give me.
That I knew with absolute certainty.
I didn’t have a choice, not that I knew what I was doing or how, but I had to fight him.
I had to get a Night Hag from the island of Sardinia off Andrei before it killed him.
But how?
Logical reasoning would say I do it the human way.
I reached out with one hand and Ammuttadori dodged to the side, which I figured he’d do, and my other hand wrapped round his arm and I pulled him into me.
“You are not wanted here,” I sneered in his face, my eyes locked on his. “Go back home where you belong. You are free of the shackles that tie you to this insane endeavor. Go home. I release you,” I ordered, desperately trying to figure out how save Andrei. “Please go home. I forgive you.”
It felt as if I was being flung across time and space, an unfamiliar sensation of darkness and melancholia consumed me, crushing my heart and searing in my head, before my consciousness was slammed back into my body.
Andrei gasped and sat up in a blur of movement, the cannula in his neck pulling free, and knocking me off of him in the process.
Suddenly his arms were around me and he was pulling me into him before my body hit the floor.
“Solnyshka?” Andrei whispered, his face so close to mine that I would taste his heated breath on my tongue, but my body was unresponsive. “What did you do, Solnyshka?” he asked, his eyes moving over me.
What do you mean? I saved your annoying butt… Wait, why can’t I talk?
Alder gasped. “No, no, no,” he stammered.
Why can’t I move?!
“What is it?” Tybalt demanded.
“It isn’t possible… See the white in her hair? There’s more of it now. That only happens when… Shawn gave absolution to a creature that can’t be absolved,” Alder choked.
Huh, that sucks.
“Shawny, Shawny, Shawny, you really need to stop touching weird things, especially if you don’t know where they’ve been,” Giovanni scolded.
I made a made a face and continued to slowly rock myself back and forth on the swing I was sitting on.
“I’m serious,” he said, rocking on the swing next to me, his knees bent up under him because of how tall he was. “Do you even know what you did?”
Of course not.
I shook my head.
“From Alder’s tone and concern it was bad whatever I did,” I said with a shrug. “I have more white, don’t I?”
Giovanni nodded. “It isn’t that noticeable unless you’re very familiar with you. I notice it though because you’re my baby sister and I know you better than I know myself. Every freckle, strand of white,” he teased, pinching one of my white hairs between his fingers, “I know better than my own-”
“That’s only because you can’t see your reflection,” I interrupted.
A smile filled his face.
I was right.
“I don’t feel any different,” I admitted. “The original snapping back into my body thing hurt for a moment, and the overwhelming foreign emotions and sense of despair that flooded me was unsettling but nothing I couldn’t handle. For a moment I was scared and felt vulnerable, unbelievably vulnerable… But then when Andrei pulled me into his arms, the concern clearly visible on his face and in his eyes, overshadowed his temporary irritation that I had strange men in his bedroom with me and that he ripped the IV out of his neck and was bleeding all over… I felt safe. I feel safe with him and I don’t know why.”
Giovanni gave me a look. “The creature that damned you to all eternity as his slave? That man?”
I sheepishly nodded.
“The man that got you fired, or put in your notice without your permission?” he reiterated. “As much of a douche as your boss was, and a creeper that was most likely on a sex predator watch list, and that needed kicked in the balls every hour on the hour, it was a decent paying job for someone without a high school diploma or degree like all of the other bitches had.”
That was true.
“The same creature that essentially kidnapped you, moved you from your apartment-”
“That was crackhead infested, smelled like piss, and had awesome consignment store furniture,” I interrupted.
He glared at me. “But it was yours. A place that you could call your own and have say in who was allowed to enter or not.”
Again, he had a point.
That was a very big and important step for me when I got to Seattle. And Andrei took that from me.
“My room at the church is really nice,” I feebly tried to argue. “If you could get in you’d see-”
“Is the kitchen nice? The bathroom?” he retorted.
“No and I don’t know,” I grumbled. “The kitchen is nearly as crappy as the one in my old studio apartment, and I don’t know if they even have a bathroom since vampires don’t poop or pee.”
Giovanni gagged. “Ew. You have issues, especially if you feel safe in the arms of the predator that bit you, turned you against your will into a vampire, that can’t stand to be in the same room with you for longer than five-minutes, and that runs from you every chance he gets.”
Well, when he put it like that it sounded completely ridiculous.
“Will you promise to stop touching weird ghouls?” he asked with a sigh.
I made a face.
“Answer enough,” he complained. “You are such a glutton for punishment. You really need to stop sleeping and demand answers. Alder and Mercy gave you some information that the creepy old dude has kept from you. Why not seek answers in regards to everything they gave you to think about? That Sardinian Night Hag left you a small fortune in all those hats, didn’t he?”
I shrugged, looking around the park we were sitting at.
Most likely I was dreaming, or was unconscious again and recovering from whatever world destroying peril I threw myself in this time. The park was from our youth in Usk; it was one that Giovanni would find me in when I was upset, hiding, or got away from him and was sleepwalking. It wasn’t as nice or large as those in Seattle, but it was safer in the middle of the night than being home at times.
“When I’m awake I’ll start demanding answers,” I conceded.
Giovanni chuckled, softly knocking into me. “Liar.”
I sighed. “I know. I’m too scared to rock the boat, Vanni,” I admitted, looking over my shoulder when a chill ran down my spine.
Sitting on the vintage metal merry-go-round behind us was Andrei; slowly the aged metal playground toy turned on its own. Andrei was sitting there, legs crossed in front of him, elbows on his knees, holding his face between his hands as if he was a pouting child that was picked last in kickball.
“If I screw up where would it leave me?” I asked, looking back to the sway
ing trees across from us so my brother didn’t see the sulking vampire behind us. “What if the Night Hag was after me, not Andrei, and he just happened to intercept him? What if it’s my lack of luck that’s now targeting his crown? That isn’t something the Queen, his mother and Maker, will overlook.”
Giovanni sighed, making a face; I had a point and he knew it.
“As you pointed out, I’m unemployed and homeless. It isn’t as if I can find a women’s shelter that’s sun proof during the day, or know how to get blood when needed,” I continued.
Again, Giovanni made a face.
“I haven’t had any blood by choice,” I assured him. “And I don’t want to! What I dumped down the drain turned my stomach even, the smell alone was gag worthy,” I said before gagging for his amusement, and he chuckled. “I’m a high school dropout that ran away from home when she was barely seventeen, that doesn’t have two nickels to rub together-”
“You have a savings account,” he interrupted.
“That isn’t the point,” I reminded him. “All the money in the world won’t protect me or those holding the key to my cell if this was an attack on me.”
“Ugh! I really need to know who you keep pissing off to have luck this bad.”
“Agreed,” I said with a sigh.
“How do we figure out if the Night Hag was targeting you or that douche keeping you hostage?” Giovanni asked.
I shrugged; it was a good question.
“What if we put you out there so they can try again?”
“And die this time?” I retorted and he huffed; my brother hadn’t thought of that.
Yet another difference between us is I think things through a bit more and keep a level head compared to my run into the middle of a fight swinging brother.
“What would dangling myself out there prove?” I asked. “If it wasn’t for Alder and Tybalt, I wouldn’t have survived this most recent attack. I can’t, and won’t, use them again like that. It was selfish of me and I could never live with myself if something happened to them because of me, or because I was being stupid and trying to save the annoying vampire that doesn’t want anything to do with me most of the time, as you pointed out.”