“Is it strange to feel alone?” I ask Anna as we set up our tent for the night. Most of my senses are still focused on the world outside, waiting for the next shout to warn us of an attack. Waiting for the next monster to come.

Blinking brings me back to the cold whistling that sounds through the door of my old cave, sometimes I’d wish for the monsters to finally come and kill me. There’s warmth and comfort in fighting for my life in the heat of battle, rather than cold and alone waiting for the snow to steal everything from me.

“What do you mean?” She asks, stopping her work. I didn’t expect her to take my words this seriously, and I’m not really sure how to reply. “Are you feeling lonely? Is there something I can do?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything,” I shake my head, swallowing down my anxiety again as the memory of cold draws me towards its opposite. The warm night I spent in the arms of someone that genuinely loves me for what I am.

“There’s someone I left behind and... I know I only knew her for a few days, but I feel lonely without her,” I admit. Feeling the warmth of her affection only makes the cold that much more painful.

“That noble girl?” She asks, tilting her head curiously. “I mean, usually you’d just say that you miss her, you wouldn’t say that you feel lonely.”

“It’s different,” I say, not really getting it myself. It’s not like I’m back out in the wild again, I have so many people around and so many of them are important to me, but this is different.

She’s the only one that fully accepted me for who I am. That’s not to say that Adeleya and the others don’t accept me, but there’s a difference to it. Being loved despite my nature is different to being loved while appreciating my nature.

My necromancy isn’t an issue with her, and I want that. I need it.

I need her.

Even if she’s nothing but ash, I’ll find her again.

I’ll find others like her, too. Maybe Namor can be a part of my new family, maybe not. She doesn’t understand my magic well enough to know to hate me for it. When she does learn, will she hate me? Or will she be disgusted by me?

“You’ve gotten quiet,” Anna presses me.

“It’s different with her.”

“You said that,” she nods slowly. “What’s it like? Being in love?”

“It’s warm unlike anything else,” I say. “It’s… the world is keeping us apart, so I’ll find a way to change the world. I need to find that warmth again.”

Anna doesn’t get it, but I don’t know any better way to put it.

Christina. Rea. A vampire. A noble. A desperate young woman, crying because she had to say goodbye.

I need to get stronger and kill the vampire that she’s so scared of.

I have to stop running. I need to fight.

The mercenaries outside start shouting, but it’s only a passing monster, something quickly put down.

The monsters, the vampire, every challenge set before me is a chance to prove that I can win. To prove that nothing can stop me. Not a vampire, not a King, and not a kingdom full of knights. I’m going to be strong enough to defeat everything in my way, and this bandit, this terrible creature stalking the night, is just one more step on my way to achieving my goals.

I’ll finally be strong enough to protect the people I love.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Papa!” Namor rushes Grey, cuddling up to him and finally letting out a long-repressed whine. The tears that she’s held back are pouring and Grey knows how to respond, even if he’s a second slower than he should be.

Too slow, too cold, the differences are subtle but the longer this goes on the more difficult they are to ignore.

He’s taken the time to care for his fur, cleaning out all of the leaves and sticks that covered him while hiding away from the scouts, but his fur isn’t as slick and fluffy as it was back when he was alive. I don’t know what I can even do about it. No matter how I try to keep him alive, he’s going to disappear one day.

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“We can’t stay for long,” I tell Namor, frowning as I flush necromancy magic through Crow, building the paths that will keep him alive even when I can’t be there for him. With all my training, I can weave a few dozen channels through his dead flesh. “The others will come to check on us if we take too long.”

“Why?” Namor looks up at her father, still whining as she clings to him. “Why can’t you heal him? Why can’t he stay with us?”

She whispers her questions so quietly that it’s almost like she’s afraid of the answer, or maybe she’s just afraid of how I’ll react. How much should I say? She’s still just a kid, but a kid brave enough to carry that shield and learn how to fight.

She’d understand the truth if I used the right words, but then she’d hate me. If she hates me, I can’t help her anymore. Will anyone else be able to help her, then? I’m the only one that can even talk to her and even that I can only do because I still have Grey with me.

Namor is looking back at me her eyes glowing as she whimpers, hoping for an answer. I can’t do this. I can’t lie to her.

“You know what death is?” I ask, running my hand through Grey’s fur, it’s bristled and rough.

“It’s when people go away. The gods take them away and make them baby’s again, but they all forget who they are.” Namor surprises me with the words she uses, even though she speaks in a halting stutter. It could be because she’s still a kid, or it could be because she’s afraid of what we’re talking about.

“Well your Papa... the gods have already taken your Papa and made him a baby again, but I’ve saved the parts that he’s left behind. The parts of him that know how to walk and talk, the parts of him that remember how to hold you. The parts that remember how you’d run into the forest behind the garden. The part that remembers your mother, and what it was like when she was gone.”

Namor looks up at Grey, she doesn’t understand it. I didn’t want to have this conversation, I wanted to keep it from her, I should have kept it from her, but I can’t. It hurts to lie all of the time. I don’t like having to lie to the people I love.

“But he’s still here?” She asks, her hands shaking even as she grips tightly to his fur. “But he’s gone?”

“He still has to protect you,” I say, shrinking down in my spot. “He has to teach me how to protect you. So I’m keeping this bit of him here with us.”

Namor looks between us with a hint of a frown on her lips, her teeth showing as her eyes flitter about with her thoughts. I can’t even imagine what it is for her to try and figure this out.

Is she going to hate me?

“Come on, we have to go,” I lift Crow and let him fly up into the sky where no one can tell him apart from the other birds. He can see through the thin canopy, but not well enough to see everything hidden below.

I need to focus on something else.

If I were a vampire where would I hide in the day?

He could be strong enough to walk through the sunlight, but even if he does it’ll make him vulnerable. A single good blow under the sun would kill him, and he wouldn’t be able to use any vampiric powers to save himself.

Things are a mess here right now, even if he has the strength of a normal knight, which is more than possible considering the water he was manipulating, then he’d not want to put himself at risk. More than that, he’s still releasing new monsters on these people.

Which means that he’s keeping them somewhere.

Grey can’t remember the path, but there was open sky. Crow is confident that he can find them. That we can save them, and kill the monster keeping them there

Namor is silent as we return to the camp, Grey tries to help me find an answer. He knows her better than I do, but even he hasn’t seen her like this before. She’s growing up faster than she should be.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I’ve fought vampires before, I’ve beaten them, but I haven’t hunted them. There’s a difference between fighting something and stalking it, setting out a trap, or putting together a plan to see them dead.

“We can bait it,” Lothar suggests, sitting opposite the fire to me. “But aren’t they meant to have some powerful senses? Wouldn’t it see right through us?”

“We’d need to prepare with that in mind,” Theo says, nodding slowly as he leans forward, his eyes flickering with the fire but his expression is calm as ever. “How would we bait it? Do we know what it’s after well enough to anticipate where it’ll strike next?”

“No,” I shake my head. “We can’t. We have to fight him in the daylight anyway.”

“If we could bring him out in the daylight,” Adeleya shakes her head. “If we can’t even get him where we want, how are we meant to drag him out into the daylight?”

“I’m finding his base,” I say, shrugging. “He’ll try to protect his monsters from us. If we go in the daytime, he’ll have to come and fight us.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Theo asks. “What if it’s too strong for us, even in the daytime? The water magic it was using before was powerful enough to compare to a knight’s magic. That magic won’t be affected by the daylight, it’s not vampiric, it’s normal magic.”

“No, but I can use my magic to force him to pause for a little bit. Long enough for Adeleya to burn him dead, and in the daylight, he’s going to die much more easily,” I say, planning out the monster’s murder. “Do you think the plan is good enough?”

“If you can find where the monsters are kept, it’d be worthwhile destroying them, vampire or no,” Lothar suggests. “Less for us to deal with later on.”

“Everything depends on finding that monster’s hiding spot, then,” Theo says, shaking his head and standing. “I’ll speak with the company commander, but until we find something then nothing changes. When your scouting turns anything up, get back to me.”

“Right,” I nod, still seeing nothing of interest through Crow’s eyes.

“Keep your eyes open, there’s a long march ahead of us,” Theo says, letting out a long sigh and sitting back, letting us all know that the business side of our talk is done.

Lothar doesn’t waste a moment before complaining about the simple stew that we’ve got for dinner. I don’t see how it’s all that bad, it’s not the best thing that I’ve ever eaten, but it’s far from the worst.

Namor is licking her bowl clean and even Anna is enjoying herself. She’s still eating the elvish meal, without any meats and using as many elvish vegetables as could be found. I still don’t get why that’s so important to her, but it’ll only annoy her to bring it up.

We rest, we sleep, we march.

Crow flies all over the region, but I can never seem to find anything that sparks any memories in Grey and while we don’t see the vampire again, we still cross the monsters that he makes.

The following night as we march into camp near to town, the first howls rise into the sky again. Namor stares up at a bright moon above, her jaw wide but slack as her voice comes out in a whine.