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He took a sip and yet downed not a single drop.

With a skilled penmenship that would befuddle even the trained eye, the dhampire crafted a letter. A glass with some murky unnamed liquid lay on the table before him, brimming at the rim. He'd ordered the drink just to be able to procure a table, since the innkeeper insisted only paying customers could use his tables. When his eyes framed the counteance of the dhampire, however, the man was left sputtering apologies left and right.

D promptly ordered the first drink he saw on the overhead sign, plucked the glass from the man's hand, dropped a coin from his pouch onto the counter and set up residence in a table farthest from any others. Every so often he offered the image of drinking, mostly to pacify the other patrons. Whereever D went, notority followed, and so he gave the illusion of normacly to keep the skittish citizens calm.

"I could have told you that drink tasted like piss."

His hand not halting in the least, nor his head lifting, D muttered, "Leila."

The vampire huntress stood by his table, garbbed in her usual attire of bright red bodysuit, hair far longer than last the dhampire had seen it. Of course, it had been years since last D spoke or seen Leila, even though the woman sent a few letters his way. As was his custom the dhampire generally ignored her communications, responding only when she mentioned a mission.

Thus why she stood before him. "Not even a hello? Or how am I doing? Or good to see me?" She snorted, snatching up his drink. Without so much as a by-your-leave, the woman downed it in a gulp, wiping her chin with with back of her hand. "Yup, still pretty bad."

"Why are you here?" D's voice could have been ice crystals, how emotionless and cold it was. Finally his hand stilled, gazing up at the woman from beneath the shadow of his fedora.

"You know why." Leila made herself comfortable in a chair nearest D, propping her booted feet on the table and crossed her ankles. She waved the innkeeper over, who eagerly came to her side. Maybe he sensed how large her purse was, or perhaps he had no desire to antagonize what appeared to be the dhampire's companion.

"We'll need supplies for a long trip."

"We?" D said, deadpanned.

"We," said Leila said a bit more firmly.

After the innkeeper rushed off, the dhampire turned to Leila, his dark eyes like jewels one held up to the light to let that light reflect off it. Even though the vampire huntress had travelled with the dhampire before and was accustomed to his stunning beauty, even she had swallow to keep from fawning. "I assume this has to do with the memo about a vampire?"

"What else?" she said, laughing. "I can't imagine you doing anything that didn't involve death, blood or some kind of destruction." Was there a hint of sadness in those harsh blue eyes?

And was there a smattering of chuckles coming from the vincity of D's left hand?

D went back to his writing, parrafin-colored skin unmarred by either the sound of sadness or amusement. His long fingers slid the ink on the parchment with his characteristic grace again. "You've come a bit too late. I've been commissioned to slay half dozen vampires holed up in the Port of Nubarol. Your mission will have to wait."

Down came Leila's hand on the table, sending both the inkwell and empty glass tumbling to the floor. Her lovely face flushed with anger the huntress said, "This can't wait! A young woman's life is at stake!"

His dark eyes impassioned, D lifted the inkwell off the floor and set it back up on the table. He would have continued writing had Leila not set her hand down on the paper, pinning it to the table. The two exchanged a look; D's was just barely hinting at annoyance while the huntress seemed on the verge of leaving a red print on the dhampire's face the same shape of her hand.

"You don't care about the life of some young girl?"

His face placid as a lake D said, "Others are in danger as well. I guess you could say it's 'first come, first served'." Another few chortles accompained that, smothered when the dhampire made a fist of his left hand.

"What if I told you your employer would be Meir Link?"

Setting the pen down, D glanced at Leila. There was no lie in her blue eyes. D hadn't heard that name in many a day, the two words evoking the image of the young lord. A vampire who'd resisted the temptation of bloodlusting on a doomed journey to escape persecution from those who despised his bond with a young human woman.

Young human woman..."This young girl you mention...," D's beautiful dark eyes were full upon the huntress now, gauging her reaction. "...wouldn't happen to be Charlotte would it?"

Leila let out a little laugh, and the dhampire knew it to be the same before she even spoke. "Nothing gets past you does it, D?"

"You'd be surprised--" Again, the mysterious voice was silenced when D followed his hands together, steepling them. His wide-brimmed hat dipped down, concealing his eyes. The dhampire appraised the woman, judging whether to believe her, whether this mission, undoubtably very dangerous, was worth it, whether he was getting in over his head.

Because that was the kind of mission D liked best.

"Where is Meir?"

Leila's lips twisted. "At the Castle of Chayte."

More images danced before D's vision. The ghost-castle of Chayte. Carmilla, the vampiress countess, beautiful and deadly in her long crimson gown. Charlotte her face as white as her dress as she lay in a pool of her own blood. Leila herself crying, overcome by all the tragedies. Meir, his counteance crushed by the loss of his beloved, fighting against D to keep her body.

And so he had, as the dhampire delivered the girl's ring to her father and ended the story.

Or so he had thought. Gathering the letter, the dhampire stuffed it in his pocket, reclaimed his sword from where he'd braced it against the wall. As he rose, he was as a shadow expanding, the very defintion of darkness liquified and poured into a person's soul. All within the confined inn took notice, bespelled, as the vampire huntress herself was.

"We leave at dawn."

Then he was gone, out the door as if he'd never been there at all, leaving Leila to stare at the empty glass on the floor.