"Mommy," Dmitri said as soon as the carriage was underway, "I like those kids – the ones I was, I was playing with. They nice."
Mayerling turned to his wife, who sat with Yaneth's sword still across her lap, staring ahead as though lost in thought. He frowned and picked his son up onto his lap. "I know, son. You looked like you were having fun playing with them."
"I was, Daddy." Dmitri glanced at his mother then turned to Mayerling. "What's wrong with Mommy?"
"Shh. She's fine, Dmitri. Just leave her alone for a while." Mayerling hugged his son. He guessed that what was wrong was one of two things: either she was thinking about what to do about their son or about her first hunt if it had caught up to her. Either way, he would have a talk with her about it that evening.
"Mayerling," she addressed him in the predawn hours that morning, after they had curled up together for the day. "We need hunting supplies if we are to be Hunters."
He froze but recovered quickly. "Dear, I thought that we were just hunting so we could get food and free passage. We don't need hunting supplies for that."
She was silent so long he thought she had drifted off to sleep. "But what if we have to face a powerful vampire?"
Now it was his turn to be silent. "Fine. Let us stopandobtain hunting supplies."
When Mayerling awoke that night, Charlotte had a wide array of weapons resting against the walls of the carriage. He blinked around the cabin in confusion then asked, "Is all this necessary?"
Charlotte looked around the cabin with a little frown on her face, and Mayerling realized she didn't think so either. "I didn't know what we would need." As he sat up, she came to sit on his lap, holding a book-like object in both hands.
He smiled when he saw it. "That," he pointed to it, "Is helpful."
She handed it to him. "Do you know what it does?"
He ran a hand across the cover, and it opened. "It's rare that one of these leaves its owner. We used to have them all over the castle. Most hunters have them, but most of them gain them from their prey." He had been hitting buttons on the object, and it finally came to life with a whirr. He turned it to show her. "See. The hunters who have them use them to find out about jobs. It is called a computer. Now take it up to the front of the carriage and tell me where our son is."
"We're just outside of a town. I thought…" she looked away, "I thought it best to let him go play with some of the town children."
He caught her face and ran a thumb down her jawbone. "What troubling you, darling?"
She kissed his hand and held it against her cheek. "I don't want him to see this stuff. That Hunter, D, he seemed so lonely, so cold… I don't want that life for Dmitri, and I don't want him getting any ideas from us – ."
He kissed her cheek as she rubbed his. "If he stays with us, he is bound to be a Hunter."
She turned away. "But who could we trust with him?" she asked. He rubbed his chin, thinking, then reached onto the table where she had put the computer and tapped a few keys. While he did this, she tried to sort out an answer. "I love him. I don't want anything bad to happen to him because of who he is. Do you think the Barbaroi-?" She shuddered. "But I still don't trust them. We could stop at my aunt's, but no, she would fear him too much, if only because he is an outsider."
He stopped typing and now sat running a hand down the screen. She noticed. "What are you thinking?" she peered at him.
He turned the computer towards her. "Here." He gestured at the screen. "They are asking for the best Hunters on this one."
She frowned. "You think D…"
"No. That would doom him to a Hunter's life more than living with us would. No. Do you remember the woman Hunter? The one who took more than a casual liking to D?"
She nodded. "You don't think she is hunting anymore…"
"Her brothers died chasing us. And she let us go, knowingly," he explained.
Her eyes brightened. "You think her liking for D has softened her."
"Yes. And I think D could deliver Dmitri to her for a price or, at the least, tell us where she is."
She looked away. "And this must be done? Could we not settle in a little cottage somewhere and raise him ourselves?"
He gave her a wistful frown. "Are you certain you are not having second thoughts?"
She hugged him. "No. But if we must live this way, the least we can do is to make sure our little one doesn't."
He stared off into the distance, determined not to look at the place where the top-Hunter job was. "That only leaves one problem."
She looked surprised. "What is it?"
He took a deep breath to steady his nerves: incredible how quick little human gestures were to catch on. "I used to admire the vampire in the area of this job as an uncle."
She was still staring at him, an expression of sympathy on her face, when he turned to meet her eyes. She was the first to speak. "Can we not use the… computer… to talk to D without this hunt?"
He hugged her against his chest. "My kind, Charlotte… it is upsetting that so many either go mad or disappear." He pressed his eyebrows in his pause. When he spoke again, he sounded more determined. "If he has… done something so egregious as to have a hunt after him… our last meeting, he confided that he would rather die than kill and that it would be just to kill him at that point… however, it pains me to know that he has fallen so far..."
She reached up to wind her fingers through his hair. "You won't fall, my love. You have me to hold you up."
He kissed her cheek. "Yes, darling."