The car sped along the dark roads and out on to the interstate. I saw the signs for Shreveport pointing the way we had come and I realised quickly that we were heading north. Gunnar and Hræfn sat up front, talking in a language I didn't recognise. At least, Hræfn did the talking and Gunnar, who was driving, turned to look at him now and again and make that eerie hissing sound that I now understood was how he communicated. At one point they laughed uproariously and Marie, who'd been wriggling in agitation on the seat beside me, could finally stand it no longer.
"It's really rude to talk in front of people in a language they don't understand," she said peevishly. "Speak English!"
"We are speaking English," Hræfn said and turned in his seat to me. "I don't suppose you speak Old English, Ms Kennick?"
Marie snorted. "Like, yeah. Like, she speaks Old English."
Shyly I said, "Well, I actually took a class in Old English at university," I said. "We read Beowulf."
"Beowulf?" the dark-eyed vampire said and a grin spread across his face.
I cleared my throat:
"Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,

þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon." I recited.

It was all I could remember, but Hræfn gave me a round of applause and even Gunnar took his eyes off the road to nod approvingly at me in the mirror. Marie snorted and looked out the window.
"And Old Irish?" Hræfn asked eagerly, as though I had another linguistic party trick up my sleeve.
"I can just about get by in modern Irish," I admitted reluctantly.
"A pity," he said and looked almost sad.
I'd often wondered about that: those old vampires who spoke languages now long dead, the only ones who remembered what their mother tongue had sounded like. I had asked Eric once if he missed his language, but he'd looked at me as though I were crazy.
"Norse didn't disappear from one day to the next," he'd said. "It evolved, it adapted and it developed to become modern Swedish and Danish and Norwegian. The language police didn't flip a switch and eradicate it."
"That's not what I meant," I'd said, my cheeks pink, "I mean, do you miss it? Do you not sometimes long to hear people speak the language of your human life?"
And he'd looked at me in his assessing way, wheels turning in his head, before he answered: "You are so sentimental, Magdalena."
Then he changed the subject.

"Do you miss hearing people speak Old English?" I asked Hræfn without thinking. He rubbed his nose, considering the question.
"Yes," he finally admitted. "You can hear academics try to read Beowulf, but it's not the same. It's what they think it sounded like but it's not the living language."
He paused, then turned to look at me, his eyes black in his white face, fixing me intently.
"It's lonely," he said quietly and it seemed like the entire car was still for a second. His face suddenly looked drawn, vulnerable. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. He looked away and I started to breathe again, as though he'd let me off a leash.
Beside me, Marie's eyes bored into the side of my head. When I looked over at her, she shook her head infinitesimally, a look of warning. I felt suddenly ashamed. This vampire had kidnapped me and abducted me and was taking me to an undisclosed location and I felt sorry for him? Because he was lonely? For crying out loud.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked, trying to sound confident and no-nonsense.
"Well, first and foremost across state lines," my captor said cheerfully. "Out of Northman's initial jurisdiction, that's our top priority at present. Once we're in Arkansas we can stop if you need to powder your nose or whatnot."
He smiled at me again.
"Arkansas is friendly," I said smartly, "He won't mind extraditing you straight back to Louisiana if you get caught."
"Ah, see, that's where you are wrong. Arkansas is friendly to everybody," Hræfn said and his smile became a wide grin.
And damn him, he was right. The King of Arkansas had been put in place by the Vampire Authority a long time ago, mostly as a result of desperation and a dearth of loyal vampires in Little Rock. King Thomas of Arkansas would much rather have been left in his position as accountant to the Arkansas monarchs, but instead he was plonked on the throne with the task of causing no ripples, rocking no boats and firmly cementing the status quo. Eric despised him but had courted his support with alacrity, suffering his company during long lavish dinners of blood sorbet with Tru Blood cocktails. But Arkansas's first priority was to be on friendly terms with as many of his fellow monarchs as he could and, at worst, cautiously neutral towards those he could not stand. Towards Eric he was cautiously neutral, occasionally melting into something resembling friendliness when he remembered our shared border.

So, no, he would not do anything that would cause a fuss. King Thomas would sooner pretend we had never entered or left his state.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked again, more firmly this time. "And why did you take me?"
"You're the Queen of Louisiana," Marie said. "Like, more or less. And we took you because you stood on that fucking porch and shouted it across the garden. Seriously, bitch..."
"Marie," Hræfn said in a pleasant tone that had a sharp undercurrent. She got the message.
"We found out about the fairy and discovered where she lived. Thing is, we couldn't get her to leave the house so we could grab her. And she's pregnant, which is a bit inconvenient. Humans die during birth, right? Then you came along, served yourself up – say, why didn't he send someone to protect you? You don't just let your human run around like that, especially not one like you. You're a carrier, aren't you?"
I didn't deign to answer, just stared her down.
"Do you have fae blood, too?" she asked eagerly.
"I'm Irish," I muttered. "You can't throw a stick in Ireland without hitting someone who has a bit of Sidh in them."
She looked quite happy at the thought.
"Anyway," she continued, undeterred, "we even thought about going down to New Orleans to get you if we couldn't get the fairy to come out, but obviously that was the absolute last resort. Shreveport is so much better, so what a stroke of luck that you decided to come up here and hang out on her porch."
Stroke of luck? Not for me, anyway.
"What's so great about Shreveport?" I had to know. I hadn't quite figured it out in my short time there.
"Closer to the border, baby!" Marie whooped and a WELCOME TO ARKANSAS sign flashed by.
Gunnar held up his watch and Marie read it off. "Twenty-eight minutes. Just like you said. Great work, Gun."
The grey-haired vampire grinned, turned to look at me. I gave him an ironic thumbs-up. Thanks for abducting me at warp speed, Gun.

"Do you need to use the bathroom?" Hræfn asked solicitously, like a primary school teacher.
"No, thank you," I said primly.
"Then I suggest you sleep," he said in his quiet voice. "There's not much to see in the darkness."
And his hand stretched out to stroke my cheek, a caress that was as light as a feather and as cold as stone. But I caught the smell of sun off his skin and it made me look up, into his white face. He stared at me for a moment and his fingertip brushed my lip.
"Sleep well," he said. And added in Old English, "Gōde Niht, Ms Kennick."
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck again. There wasn't much I could do till we got where they were taking me, so I closed my eyes to escape his.

*Thanks for reading along!*