Chương 11: Regaled
When Damien awoke, he felt more refreshed and energized than he had in weeks. Inhaling deeply, he stretched his arms overhead and sat up. The tunic that had been tucked under his chin fell into his lap, and he stared down at it resentfully. Was that really all it took to recover from mate-sickness? A stupid scent? Why was he so weak that he couldn't go on without something so small and pointless? Still, he was grateful that Dezzy had gotten it for him. And he still wanted to know exactly what had happened, and why it had taken her so long to come back.
In any case, he wasn't going to learn anything if he stayed in bed. So, with a groan, Damien forced himself up and out of bed for the first time in weeks. His knees wobbled when he tried to take a step, and after two aborted attempts, he gave up and sat back down on the bed, feeling even more pathetic than before.
That was about the time the door to the sickroom opened and Dezzy poked her head in. A huge grin immediately stretched across her face as she saw Damien sitting up. "Oh! Damie! You're up already?" she hurried the rest of the way into the room. "You only slept about four hours."
"I feel a lot more rested than that," Damien commented, frowning a little. He glanced at the tunic. Was the scent responsible for that, too?
"Maybe it just feels that way because it's been so hard for you lately," Dezzy mused, crossing the room and hopping onto the bed beside Damien. She picked up the tunic and smushed it into Damien's nose.
"What are you doing?" Damien demanded pulling the tunic away to shoot a glare in her direction.
"That's your medicine, and I worked very hard to get it. I expect you to take full advantage of every breath," Dezzy told him, a stubborn edge to her tone that Damien recognized as not worth arguing against.
Grumbling a little, Damien wrapped the tunic around his neck like a scarf. "Happy?" he demanded.
"Better," Dezzy agreed, and reached over to try and tug the tunic up over his nose. Damien batted her hands away.
"I'm not going that far," he snapped.
Dezzy sighed and rolled her eyes, but left it alone for the moment. "Fine," she said. She leaned back a little, resting her shoulders against the wall and yawning. "Now that you're feeling better, maybe I'll take a nap, too," she said.
Damien frowned. "Didn't you sleep?"
"A little," Dezzy said, "But man, the last few days were too … err, chaotic… to really sleep."
"Chaotic?" Damien echoed, staring hard at her. She had a tendency to understate things, so if even Dezzy considered a situation chaotic, it had to have been nothing short of a disaster.
"Oh, you know," Dezzy said, still sounding nonchalant. "It's not like it's every day you sneak into an ancient vampire clan's fortress, steal clothes from one of the highest-ranking figures, and make it out without being enthralled and sucked dry."
Damien was staring at her with wide eyes. "You did what?" he demanded, aghast.
"Don't worry," Dezzy insisted, shoving Damien's shoulder affectionately. "I'm fine, aren't I?"
"Are you?" Damien asked, genuinely concerned that she might not be. She seemed even more crazy than usual, had to count for something.
"Yes, Damie," she said, sounding a little bit annoyed.
Damien sighed. "All right," he finally agreed, "if you say so."
The two of them sat beside one another for a few moments of comfortable silence. Then, Dezzy coughed lightly. Damien glanced over at her, raising a brow in curiosity. Clearly, she had something more to say, though he couldn't quite figure out what she wanted from him. When he met her gaze, she had a mild pout to her lips, and a disappointed look in her eye.
"What?" Damien asked. "I already said thank you, didn't I?"
"I don't care about that," Dezzy said, her pout becoming more pronounced. "I want you to ask me about my adventure!"
Damien blinked. "You… what?"
"Ask me! Ask me how I got the shirt! Ask me about the theft! Ask me how I got away! Ask why it took so long to get home!"
Damien frowned. "Didn't I already do that?"
"Ask more!" Dezzy poked Damien's shoulder. "I shouldn't have to guess which parts you want to hear about. Ask me!"
"Okay," Damien said, mostly humoring her. She had gone to an awful lot of effort on his behalf, after all. "Um… you said you stole this from one of the highest-ranking vampires in the clan?" he tugged at the tunic wrapped around his throat. "How did you figure out that he was high-ranking? He kind of looked like a mess when he was in here earlier. I would have guessed he was a lone vampire, if there weren't already rumors of a whole clan holed up somewhere near here."
Dezzy grinned. "Great question, Damien. I'm glad I didn't have to blindly guess which parts you wanted me to tell you about."
Damien rolled his eyes, and gestured for her to continue speaking.
"Anyway," Dezzy said, leaning forward, excitement making her dark eyes sparkle like black opals, "first, I had to figure out where he came from. So I started asking around about vampire attacks."
Damien nodded. "They're hard to miss, usually."
"Oh yeah. So turns out there was an attack on some wizard researcher from the tower by the eastern pass." Dezzy grinned. "So I figured that was our guy - who else would be sneaky enough to poison themselves with holy blood? It had to be a wizard."
Damien had to admit, that made sense. Not many people would have access to such potent holy materials, but mages often worked alongside the church to drive back 'dark creatures' like vampires, demons, or werewolves. It made sense that a wizard would have that sort of equipment handy. "So then what did you do? Did you go investigate the wizard's tower?"
Dezzy gave Damien a disappointed look. "Only if I wanted to end up like the vampire," she scoffed. "There's no way he didn't have traps laid for demons, too."
Technically, Dezzy was only half-demon. But most people didn't bother to make the distinction, so Damien shrugged. Point taken. "So what did you do?"
"Oh, I asked where they thought the vampire came from," Dezzy said. "I have truly mastered my 'scared but full of youthful vengeance' act. The humans were practically falling all over themselves to point me in the direction of the castle."
"There was a castle?" Damien asked.
"Yes, the castle where the vampire clan lives! Do try to keep up, Damie." Dezzy smirked.
Damie wasn't sure she'd ever explicitly mentioned the fact that they lived in a castle, just that she'd broken into a fortress, but he also didn't have the energy to start another argument, so he let the matter rest. "Okay, so you found out the location of the castle, and went there, and…"
"Well, obviously, I couldn't just march in," Dezzy said. "It's a vampire lair, not an ordinary castle."
Damien nodded. That was hardly a surprise. "So you what, scouted out the place?"
"Sort of," Dezzy said. "I followed some of the thralls around. Even though vampires feed on blood, the other people who live and work in the castle need to eat real food. They buy it from the markets. It's kind of a shameful thing in the area, to sell food to the thralls, but it seems like the locals also feel sorry for the thralls. They're controlled by the vampires, you know. So it's not like they're purposefully supporting the vampires that live there."
Damien nodded. He'd heard about thralls from mother's books. Vampires had the ability to exert control over the victims they fed from. The more often they fed, the stronger their hold over the creature would become. If you managed to escape unscathed after the first feeding, there was a chance you wouldn't be fully captured by the creature. But if you were fed from two, three, four times? It was much harder to get away. There were several theories about how it worked - some thought that the vampire saliva contained some sort of drug that forced the victims to become docile, and it had a prolonged effect even after the feeding. Other sources wrote that vampires had a form of mind magic that was activated through eye contact. Similar to the way that Alpha wolves could force other wolves to obey commands through the power of their voice, vampires could enforce their will through the intensity of their gaze. There were a few other theories, but the saliva and the eyes were the two most prevailing theories.
"So I just shadowed some of the thralls," Dezzy explained. "Eventually, one of them noticed me and confronted me. So I told her the truth."
Damien blinked. "The truth?"
"That I was looking for a vampire yea tall," Dezzy lifted her hand to almost as high above her head as she could reach, "with wide shoulders and long black hair in a braid." She grinned. "And here's the wild thing - they knew who I was talking about! You'd think that vampires would look alike, but once I said that he'd come back recently from some sort of attack, the thrall knew exactly who I was talking about!" She grinned proudly at Damien.
"That sounds extremely dangerous," Damien pointed out. "What if the thrall told him someone was looking for him?"
"Oh, she asked me that, too, and I told her the truth," Dezzy said. "I just wanted his clothes because I needed to give his scent to a mate-sick werewolf."
Damien inhaled so sharply that he choked on his spit. He had a minor coughing fit, and Dezzy whacked him between the shoulder blades a few times. 'Why would you say that?" he demanded, once the coughing fit had subsided.
"I dunno," Dezzy shrugged. "She seemed nice, I guess. I didn't want to lie to her."
Damien could strangle her. "So you told her the truth," he sighed. He frowned, because honestly it sounded more like a flimsy and stupid lie than the truth. "And this thrall actually believed you?"
"Of course she did!" Dezzy looked affronted. "I am a very believable person."
Damien wasn't sure he agreed, but he was starting to feel genuinely curious about how on earth Dezzy had managed to get into the vampire's castle. "So the thrall agreed to let you inside?"
"Well, not right away, obviously. She wanted to check with some of the other thralls to find out if there was some sort of procedure in place for that sort of thing."
Damien gaped at her. "You let her go?! Back to the castle? So she could tell other people that you were there for one of their vampire masters?"
Dezzy shrugged. "Like I said. She seemed nice. I wanted to give her the chance to help. She seemed like she really needed it."
Damien groaned. "So the thrall went back to the castle to ask the other thralls about their policy on giving away scent-laced articles of clothing belonging to their vampire masters…" he prompted.
"Oh yeah," Dezzy said. "So I waited at a local tavern. The beer there was really good, actually. Better than it had any right to be, I think. I had like three tankards before the thrall got back. Also the snacks…"
"Dezzy! Focus!" Damien snapped. "What happened with the thrall?"
"Oh, well, she came back, obviously," Dezzy said, shooting Damien a dirty look. "It really was good beer," she insisted, then sighed as Damien glowered harder at her. "Anyway, she said she'd asked the thralls, and the thralls had asked Cain, and Cain had-"
"Who's Cain?" Damien demanded.
"I dunno," Dezzy shrugged. "I assume he's the thrall manager or something. She just said she asked 'Cain', and that this 'Cain' guy had said it was okay to take some of the clothes."
"So you didn't need to break in?" Damien asked.
"Well, I didn't plan on breaking in," Dezzy said. "But the plan changed."
Damien groaned. "Why did the plan change?"
"Well, apparently the Cain guy got in trouble with one of the high-ranking vampires because they're not supposed to be giving clothes around willy-nilly. Because, I guess, you know, all the thralls' clothes and things technically belong to their master? So anyway, I got a letter from my thrall friend who said that Cain couldn't actually give me the clothes, but if I could figure out how to get into the castle, the room would be unlocked, and that's the best he could do." Dezzy grinned. "So then I had to plan a heist."
Damien sighed. "Let me guess. You asked your thrall friend to help?"
Dezzy's grin widened. "Now you're catching on!"
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