A/N: Again with the book-based. Mashira, though an honorable werewolf in Bloodlust, is a creature more like Left Hand – except that the creature possesses who it is in – in Demon Deathchase and is far less than honorable. Also, I'm having Dmitri be born dhampir – instead of having his dhampir characteristics awaken when he is a teenager – because it fits better with the story. Remember water, as well (the Marcus brothers plan on killing D after forcing him into a river because they assume he will be paralyzed). I think that covers everything.
There was one thing Charlotte and Mayerling had never considered, and the problem was not related to Dmitri being dhampir but merely being a baby: as soon as he began teething he howled non-stop. After three quarters of a year of happy parenting, Charlotte and Mayerling found they could not get near any villages.
This did not provide a direct difficulty for the small dhampir or for Mayerling; however, for Charlotte, it did. As a human, she could not travel the distance from where Mayerling and Dmitri were to a given village alone at night – there were many creatures that vampire power did not sway, as she did not want to rediscover (having already discovered it with the creature called Mashira) – and traveling the same distance during the day (when the townsfolk would think at best that she was insane and would trap her within the village) was out of the question.
There was one way to get Dmitri into a state of sleep that the loving parents didn't shiver at, as a tearful Charlotte found out one night when she and Mayerling at their wits end with Dmitri's crying. Mayerling had even suggested bathing the child one evening, but Charlotte had protested, the two ending the night in an argument about her own health verses as it was now beginning to seem the baby's. That had been the evening previous to the discovery. In desperation the following evening, she picked up the screaming child and held him close with his face tucked against her chest, and for the first time in several months, there was silence. Mayerling met her eyes: somehow, this had to bode well for the trio.
The following evening, Dmitri tucked under Charlotte's chin, Mayerling guided the carriage to the edge of a village, and together, they were able to gather food from one of the farms, and Mayerling was able to refill the blood tanks with cattle blood. The baby stayed quiet until they were back on the road.
This seemed to work for a while. They dealt with the dhampir issues as they came along. More often than not, a dismayed Charlotte would approach Mayerling with a supposed reason to worry (once Dmitri had been playing on her lap and the next second she had had to catch him to keep him from sliding to the floor, unconscious.) He would check over his son and tell her what part of dhampir condition had caused it (in the case in question the condition was sunlight syndrome and he wrote the date down so that the boy would know how long in between the attacks).
Amid all this, the baby was growing, and Charlotte wrote down all the information about his baby firsts as Mayerling watched in wonder. Originally, she had wanted to write it down on the same sheets as his dhampir information was on, but Mayerling managed to convince her that though very interesting and fun, the information on when he had grown in his first tooth was not as likely to save him as the knowledge when he was going to fall unconscious for days on end.
The now-toddler awoke three days after falling unconscious with the word "Dada" on his tongue. Charlotte accepted Mayerling concern about keeping the records of necessary verses sentimental information separate, and Mayerling found himself wanting to do just the opposite, overjoyed as he was the their child was starting to talk. It was because of this that Charlotte would remember that his first sunlight syndrome attack wasshortly afterhis first birthday and that it was six months in between them, and that Mayerling would remember that he said his first word a year and a month after his birth.