CHAPTER 7

****

Darkness. Ghosts of screaming victims.

"What horrid place is this" Niccolie asked in to the darkness

"This is a place of your making Niccolie. A land of your actions." Said a voice he never truly knew.

"Show your self!!" Niccolie screamed into the darkness.

Out of the darkness they came, hundreds and hundreds of them, bloody men and women with open wounds and amputated arms flowing to him like a wave.

"Leave me be tortured souls!!!" Niccolie screamed backing away.

"We come for you Niccolie!!" said the heaping mass of blood and gore.

They surrounded him and began to claw at him. Niccolie fought desperately to get free but they were too many. They screamed at him and smeared their blood-covered hands over him. They griped him and began to pull him into them like quick sand. Deeper and deeper into the blood he sank until it was at his neck and he could see them face to face and then...

Niccolie eyes opened with a gasp. He was in a bed. The soft light of dawn shined through the dark stain glass windows. He was naked, a soft sheet covered him And Kyla clung quietly to him, her hands wrapped around his chest and her black blue hair blended into his pitch-black hair.

Her soft skin pressed close to his.

Niccolie looked around with out moving, he was confused for a moment then He began to realize what had happened. The bloody ghouls were a mere dream that came with sleep. Niccolie did not sleep. But it was real enough to him; it had a meaning he did not want to remember.

He looked at Kyla; she lay in soft slumber next to him, with an expression of peace on her face, as if life was made simple once again.

Niccolie brushed away the hair covering her peaceful face. She let out a soft moan and opened her eyes.

"Humm?" she said with out opening her mouth.

He smiled at her, she smiled back.

"You seemed to wake up in a startle, bad dreams?" she asked.

"Not first time they have came to Me." he said leaning ageist the wall behind him.

Kyla looked at him with an odd expression.

"I never sleep. But this dream meant some thing"

"Most dreams don't mean any thing."

"This one does."

He looked around the room. It seemed to be a simple place, filled with relics of passed memories. A Sarafan sword here, a crystal ball there. Simple things of the past.

"What time is it?" Said Niccolie rubbing his eyes.

"It is dawn,"

'I must go." Said Niccolie slowly getting out of the bed.

"You sound worried. Is some thing a miss?'

"Zephon wanted me to ride to Rahab."

"You still have lots of time." She said move up to him and pulling him back in to the bed. Niccolie lay down and she put his head beside hers and ran her fingers through his hair.

"You seem so sad." She said as she stopped and made a face of pity

"Maybe I am."

"I heard so much about you, I thought you would be a monster. But the night I met you...you were none of what I heard. You seemed lost, lost in your own misery."

"And you pitied me?"

"Indeed, you reminded me of my self."

Niccolie got up and looked around the room. He saw his armor and hers were in a clutter in the middle of the floor next to the bed. He moved to it and sat down to pick his armor out. Kyla went next to him and watched him.

"Do you love your work so much?" she asks as Niccolie picked out his swords.

"No, I just make sure it gets done."

"Is their someone else?"

Niccolie paused for a moment and looked at his hand, his wedding ban was still there. He fingered it.

"No, not for a long time." He said as he continued to pick out his armor.

"Tell me Niccolie, how did you come to be." She asked

"It is a story I don't wish to tell." He said slipping on his pants

"What about your daughter, how did she come to be?"

"I don't want to discus...*bonk*...GRAH!" Niccolie fell backwards into the bed as he bonked his head on the bed roof.

"That must have hurt." Kyla said as he rubbed her hand on his head.

"a disavantage of being tall, and having long hair." he said trying to get up.

"Why don't you cut it off?"

"That would be like taking a memory away, I would forget who I am and what I was. My hair reminds me to respect what I once was, a vampire slayer." he said pushing his hair back

"I can fix that," she said as she got up and took the sheet with her to a small box on a table. She opened it up and took a wood needle and some dark colored string. And then she came back and sat behind Niccolie and put his head in to her lap.

"What are you doing?" asked Niccolie

"I am weaving your hair tight to your head so that it will not bother your eyes." She said combing through his hair and selecting a lock of it.

"That would change the way I looked," he said

"It may, but you will still have your slayers hair."

In the beginning, if you wanted to become a vampire slayer to the order of the Sarafan, they would cut off all your hair as a symbol of the beginning of your 'holy' life. The length of your hair meant the length of time you were a slayer. The oldest and more important men would have long hair to their shoulder and farther down. The vampire slayers of Niccolies day did the same. Niccolie served twenty five years as a slayer before he was turned into the one thing he slayed and thus his hair stop growing.

Kyla took the lock of hair and weaved it in to a braided. she did it rather quickly. Then she did another.

"We have time now"; she said, "Will you tell me of how you and your daughter came to be?"

"You are a curious woman, lady Kyla"

"I want to know were you began before you got lost in life and before getting lost with me in my bed."

Niccolie looked up at her and she smiled.

"Ok, but tell me were you are from first" Niccolie said

Kyla let out a sigh and then lead forward and kissed Niccolie on the forehead.

"I was a daughter of a family blood line that was form one of the greatest of the Sarafan priests warriors. One day when I was out with my mother, Zephon came to us. He told us that if we wanted to live we would have to tell him were we buried our great grandfather, who was once was the Fith general of the sarifan army. We told him 'no' and he killed my mother. I tried to kill him but he was too strong. I was really little at the time, I guess he felt a little guilty and he decided to let me go. When I got home and told everyone what happed. but they turned on me and accused me of killing my mother or becoming a vampire or some thing I can remember. So they tried to kill me. They tried to burn me to be exact. But Zephon came and rescued me. With my family out to kill me and no were to go Zephon pitied me and adopted me, raised me, and taught me to be what I am. Like a father would. I think he regrets the fact that it was his fault it happened. I feel that now and then he wants to ask for forgiveness, but doesn't have the strength to do so."

"But he raised you as a human, and you are now a vampire."

"Yes, once I got to the age of twenty seven he turned me into a vampire."

"Why?"

"Huh, I don't really know. Maybe he didn't want to see me grow old and die. Or he couldn't handle the fact that his adopted daughter would look older then him. His motives I still don't know."

"Didn't you resisted, becoming a vampire I mean?"

"No, not really, maybe as the person who took care of me and treated me as his own I probably felt that he was doing what was best for me."

"And that's it?"

"Yep, pretty much, I had a large amount of training from Zephon and spent the rest of my time at Zephons other cities. Then one day he said he need a lieutenant, and asked me and I took it"

"It is sad how you came to be."

"It is just fate, you cant change it, you can't blame it, you can't blame it on any one. Not even Zephon."

"Why?"

"Well if it I never went out with my mother, Zephon would never had found us, and he wouldn't have killed my mother. But what he would do is killing some one else, perhaps my father, or me."

"But he killed your mother, don't you feel the need for revenge."

"Revenge is for those who cant handle the pain. Even if you kill the person you will still have that pain, knowing you only can kill them once and they will make you suffer forever even after they are dead, makes it seem so unjustified. I have seen Zephon; he feels more pain for what he has done then I ever will. For him that's suffering, knowing he killed an unarmed mother and found him self rising her child as his own. Knowing that he made a unresonable mistake. That will be with him forever. Unless I kill him. So he lives, I live, we both suffer, but the hurt goes away after you know that it's ok. Then you find your self pitying him for his suffering."

Niccolie was quite he looked out the window and found that what she said was true. Now third years after his wife death he found he still hated the people that killed his wife, and they were all long gone.

"Now what about you." She said with a little cheer in her voice

"I don't like to talk about my beginnings."

"Why?"

"To painful and you probably wouldn't really understand."

"Well, all the more reason to tell it."

"No"

"Fine tell me about how your daughter came to be."

"That I can tell. It isn't as bad as my past at least."

Niccolie told Kyla about how he became a vampire and watched over Karie through his undead life. And how he was finally discovered by his wife and how she met her fate.

"I am sorry" Kyla said as he told her about his wife. Kyla sounded guilty at what she brought between him and his wife.

"It's ok, she would have hated to see me like I was before. In fact she probably would have done the same"

"Did you love her?"

"Very much."

"Do you miss her?"

"No,"

"Why don't you miss her?"

"She would have hated me for bring her and Karie in to this life, I would not want her to live this horrible life with me. Karie, even now I feel some form of resentment for mty action and what I have done"

"I don't believe that is true."

"Why?"

"Because you are trying to blame your self. You are trying to say is that you hate your self for what you brought them into."

She was right. Niccolie did hate himself. If Zephon never had said what he would do if Niccolie ended his own life, Niccolie would have.

"I guess you are right. Maybe because she is in a better place then here, I don't miss her."

"But you do miss her, you still ware your ring."

"It's a reminder."

"I am sorry for her"

"Why?"

"She lost a good man"

Niccolie was quite for a moment. Kyla stopped braiding and began to weave the string thought his hair.

"So," he said finishing off the story "me and Karie escaped, then she wanted to become a vampire and wa-la we were a family of vampires."

"Interesting." She said pulling tight the string that stiffed Niccolies hair to cling to his head.

"Where did you learn the hair tricks?"

"I lived in a family of vampire slayers. They all compliant of the hair getting in their eyes like you, every damn day."

"Hummm" Niccolie chuckled, remembering the clumsiness of an army of rag headed slayers.

"This will make it so your hair never moves, it sticks to your head." She pulled the last string and tightened it.

"It's finished."

Niccolie shook his head and found that his hair did not swing side to side. In fact he got the sensation he had no hair at all.

"It is nice," he said.

Kyla got up and dragged the sheets with her to the table and pulled out a mirror. And walked to Niccolie abd sat on his lap and looked at him.

"You know, maybe I should just braided it in to a ponytail." She said with a laugh.

"Why?"

"You look more um...tougher then before." she said a little sarcasticly

"I thought you said I looked lost?"

"Well, you did look like some one who spent too much time on the battle field too." she corrected him.

Niccolie eyes her, she was hidding something, a glitter of amusment was in her eye.

"Give me that mirror!" he snarled

She refused and he wrestled her down to the bed to get it as she laughed hysterically. He got the mirror and he looked in to it. His hair was stretched back and the braids were split into selections as they went back. And where they stopped at the back of his head they stabbed out like poky pine needles some what like cornrows meets porkipine. He looked somewhat clownish and somewhat eerily scary. He tried to smile, Kyla blushed and exploded into laughter, as his face had a psychotic clown killer look.

He turned and looked at her.

"Do I look funny when I smile?" he asked intently with out looking in the mirror.

"No, you look good." She lied.

Niccolie smiled at her and she fell back laughing out loud. He looked in the mirror as he smiled.

"I look like a killer clown!" he said smiling at the mirror.

"It's ok," said Kyla trying not to laugh. "You don't smile any way."

Niccolie turned to her and grabbed her into his arms. He looked at her in the eyes.

"I smile when I am with you." He said.

She smiled, he smiled back, and she fell back laughing.

Niccolie kissed her and she stopped laughing. But then just for fun, he smiled at her again and she went in to another laughing fit. Niccolie got up and put on his upper body armor and Kyla helped him strap it down. She put on her under clothing and wrapped the sheet around her to keep warm.

Niccolie was walking out and Kyla stopped him to give long kiss.

"Don't tell Zephon about this." She said after the kiss.

"Why?"

"Well, because he has some rules about lieutenants getting 'involved' with each other. And he is like my father so I am sure you get the Idea."

"I won't tell any one, but the hair is obvious."

"Just say that I told you about the hair thing and you asked."

"I will"

"And don't smile around your men, they may not take you seriously."

"that will definetly be noted."

Niccolie was walking away, and he stopped and turned around. And looked a Kyla leaning on the doorway watching him walk away.

"Lady Kyla, it was a lovely evening"

"Your welcome"

"I think I am finding my way."

"The lost are always finding their way. Niccolie."

He smiled, she smiled back trying not to laugh but with not much success.

Then Niccolie left.