Catrin stared at me, bloody eyes wide with shock. She lifted the fingers of her left hand and studied them. They were blackened and blistered, trailing smoke. The same fingers she’d touched me with.

Her true form was very different from the “girl next door” look she’d had before. Her hair had bleached to silver, her skin corpse pale, her eyes vermillion in the room’s dim light. Even the sclera had darkened to red. The pointed ears and narrow features made her look like a gothic artist’s paranoid depiction of an elf.

Her fangs had been so close to my neck. I breathed to calm my racing heart, aware how close I’d just been to disaster. Fool, I berated myself. You let your guard down in the enemy’s own house.

I expected her to attack, tensed for it. I knew she could move faster than the human eye could track, perhaps even do nastier things like assume a bestial form or become a devouring mist. There was no room for mistakes or hesitation.

She didn’t do any of those things. Instead, Catrin clutched her burnt hand to her chest, wincing. “The fuck was that?” She asked, distress coloring her voice. “Are you some kind of priest? That hurt.”

The pain and disbelief in her ghoulish features were genuine enough to give me pause, despite my better sense. I frowned, watching her. Another trick? Trying to get me to let down my guard?

“Bastard!” Catrin scowled at me. “And I’m not a vampire, fucker. Rip your arms off if I was. Ow.” She shook the injured hand, wincing.

What is this? I stepped to one side, giving myself space from the bed so I could move more freely. “I’ve faced your kind before,” I growled. “You were about to go for my neck.”

Catrin’s transformed features shifted into something almost petulant. “I mean, sure. I might have gone in for a sip, but I wouldn’t have hurt you. Not much, anyway. Already fed tonight.”

“You were in my head,” I snarled. I could still hear her voice in my thoughts, drifting there like a stain of oil through water.

The fear struck fast and venomous as a viper. Not again, I silently pleaded. Never again. I took a step forward and amber flame boiled along the axe, causing the vampire to flinch away.

“It was just a trance,” Catrin corrected hastily. “Not so different from being drunk, really. It’s not like I can read your thoughts or anything. Never quite managed to pick up that trick. And you were being so vague, dodging all my questions or giving me half answers.” She patted down her dress and sat against the window, folding her arms. “I got impatient, you know? I shouldn’t have gone in for the whole dark seductress act so hard. I’m sorry, alright? So can you put the axe down?”

The axe remained between us, dimly burning with golden flame. I did not lower it. “I should kill you,” I said. “You’ll go right to the baron.”

“I won’t,” Catrin insisted. She stood then. When I tensed, she lifted both of her hands in a gesture of surrender. Her vampiric form was starting to fade away, I noted, her hair darkening to its normal chestnut hue, her skin taking on a healthier pallor. “Listen, big man, everything I said to you was true. Besides, from where I’m standing you’re pretty short on friends — you want to make it out of this alive?”

She studied me a long moment, one eyebrow lifted. She finished when I kept my silence. “It’s only a matter of days before his lordship hears about what happened in Vinhithe and takes the half-step of logic he needs to figure out you’re the same man who killed Red Leonis. If you’re really here to bring him down, then I can help you… but you’re going to need to put the cutter down and talk to me.”

“I can’t trust a word out of your mouth.” I took another step toward the door — I wouldn’t let her retreat to rouse the castle. She was near the window. I didn’t think using a cant to stop her would be very effective — the magic she used to lower my guard was stronger than any command I could muster, and mine were only effective on an unsuspecting foe in any case.

Vampires were proto-fiends — not quite demons, but most of halfway there. Damned souls fashioned in the world rather than in the boiling darkness of the Abyss, hungering for blood, undead, vicious. I’d faced my share of the creatures, and had learned to hate them.

They were repelled by sanctified aura same as demons too, which was a fine thing to me. My magic was made to fight such creatures. I showed the intruder that power. “You chose the wrong man to try to make your thrall,” I growled. “I’ll send you back into the Dark.”

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Catrin rolled her red eyes. “Alright, I’m certain of it now. You’re some kind of knight, aren’t you? Warrior priest, maybe? Had my suspicions about it. Should I call you milord?” She dipped into a mocking curtsy and — in the same motion — stepped back into the shadows. And vanished, sinking into the wall itself.

I waited, expecting her to emerge from another shadow and go for my throat.

“If I wanted you dead,” Catrin said from right behind me, “I could make it happen. You ready to talk?”

I spun, swinging my axe with a single hand.

It cut nothing but air.

“What do you want?” My hand clenched tightly around the haft of my axe. “You won’t be able to get into my head again, not now I’m wise to it.”

Catrin’s voice drifted from the shadows. “I won’t try that again, trust me. Didn’t realize you were hallowed.” There was a thoughtful pause before she continued. “My employer wants to see Orson Falconer’s faction undone before it’s properly formed. And I…” here she hesitated, her disembodied voice fading into a weighty hush. “I want revenge.”

“Revenge?” I asked.

“Preoster Micah was a good man,” Catrin said. “A kind man. One of the few priests I’ve ever met who wasn’t a right cunt. It was the Baron who gave the order to have him killed.”

“How do you know this?” I asked, turning a slow circle to try and pinpoint the source of the fell presence she exuded.

“He told me,” she said. I paused, taken back, and I almost sensed a sad smile from the unseen vampire. “I spoke to his ghost a few weeks back. That witch, Lillian, kept his soul from departing. I guess the Baron was worried his plans might get out that way.”

She waited for me to absorb all of that before saying, “and that’s all I know. Really. I was sent to observe and report, nothing more, but I can’t leave things as they are. I owe Falconer a bit of payback, and you’re the only one here who I think might be willing and able to help me. So will you put the damn axe down already?”

I bared my teeth, jaw clenching, fighting to keep hold of the anger in me. Anger at having my thoughts and will tampered with, mostly. I couldn’t trust her, not if she could affect my mind.

And yet, I sensed no deceit in her words. If she was telling the truth, my time was even shorter than I’d anticipated.

The baron himself had said it — there was no room to look a gift chimera in the mouth.

But working with a Thing of Darkness… the idea made my stomach churn.

“You tried to make me your thrall,” I said to the shadows. “Whatever your reasons, that’s a damned sour way to start an alliance.”

There was a long pause. “You’re right. It’s just…”

I heard the rustling of cloth at my back and turned. Catrin stood there, fully human again, her hair a bit disheveled so it half covered one eye. She took a long, shuddering breath. “I’m not going to pretend like I don’t make impulsive decisions sometimes.”

“You’re a blood drinker,” I accused. “You’re driven by impulse.”

Anger hardened the malleable edges of Catrin’s face. “I’m a changeling, you cockwart. I was born this way. Now do you want my help or not?”

That gave me pause. Changeling. It was a catch-all term for any variety of creature with nonspecific origin. They might be a Sidhe switched out with a human child in the cradle, raised by unsuspecting human parents, or a half-breed born of mixed ancestors. Sometimes a darker entity could corrupt a seed in the womb, giving birth to something terrible, a parasite with unknowing human parents who became little more than haunted victims to the demon babe.

Regardless of the kind, they were often preternaturally strong, driven by unnatural hungers, and difficult to destroy. Their most dangerous ability, however, was their predilection for creating a masque — a nearly perfect human disguise. They learned the trick in infancy in order to survive and got better at it as they aged.

But they were not all wholly evil. Not always, anyway. Unlike true vampires, who were little more than hateful souls bound inside a corpse, changelings were misbegotten children tossed into the world. There’d been one in the woods near the village I’d grown up in. Old, mad, and harmless as a leaf.

Catrin was not harmless. Even if everything she said was true, she’d still tried to subdue my will with her own. She’d tried to taste my blood.

When I still hesitated, she let out a contemptuous snort and turned back toward the shadows.

I grit my teeth. “Wait.”

She stopped and half turned to glare at me.

“Do you have some kind of plan?”

The smile that touched the corners of Catrin’s lips was sharp as razors, revealing teeth sharper still. “Maybe. If you’re still alive by sundown tomorrow, we’ll talk again. Keep your head until then, big man.”

Then, before I could stop her, she walked into the wall and vanished. I took a step forward, lifting a hand as though to grab her shoulder, but it was too late.

“Shit,” I said aloud. My eyes went to my axe, which was still dimly burning with amber flames. I quenched the flow of power and let them fade. I set it down against the wall by the bed and then sat myself. I took a few minutes to calm myself and think, twisting the ring on my right forefinger in idle habit.

Had I just made a devil’s bargain? Because Catrin was certainly a kind of devil. I wasn’t certain exactly what she was. There was a veritable legion of vampiric beings in the world, though relatively few who could wield supernatural charm or travel through shadows.

A dhampir, I thought grimly. It wasn’t the only possibility, but the most likely one. Very dangerous. I would have to keep my guard up, and hope I hadn’t just been duped.