Awake
It was early when a body began to creep around in the guild. Green dreadlocks flattened against one of the wooden walls, and Araña let her black eyes rove around for any of the girls that would be getting here early. Typically, Sirenia was the first one in the guild, but on some days it would be Kagura who would be one to open up shop.
So far it didn't look like anyone was around. Even so, Araña moved with stealth across the wooden floors. Her feet didn't make a single sound.
Flattening herself against another wall, she made her way towards the infirmary. Last night, Kagura had decided to set Isaac up in the infirmary. It made the most sense since he wouldn't be able to stay at an inn. Also, having him in the guild instead of out in public would cause less people to know of his presence.
But… that wasn't the reason that Araña was sneaking around the guild. She was creeping for an entirely different reason. Hands moved to the pocket in her mustard colored jumpsuit, and immediately she fished out a vial of blood. This was going to confirm her suspicions for a fact, and then she would know to cover the guild with garlic and crosses to keep Fallen Angel Isaac from making a meal out of any of the girls.
Last night, Kagura and King Isaac had come back late. Apparently, they had snuck out and gone shopping without letting anyone know. Isaac had gotten all the right outfits needed to do the modeling competition in Crocus, and while they had been gone, Araña had taken the time to visit one of the sketchier magic shops around town.
That was how she got this little vial of crimson liquid. Grinning at her own cunning, Araña made her way up the stairs in the guild. Her free hand slipped along the smooth, wooden railing, and she crept quietly. She felt like the perfect ninja as she made her way up towards the infirmary.
One foot in front of the other, she walked down the hallway. Her dark eyes checked each door as she passed by it. Sirenia's office was at the end of the hall. There was a bathing chamber to the right, and the infirmary was on the left.
Pressing her pale hand against the flat surface of the wooden door, Araña took a sharp inhalation of breath. She was about to do it. She was about to find out once and for all if King Isaac truly was a blood drinker.
Araña had seen a lot of frightening things in her life. Demons were real. Dragons were real. It would only make sense for vampires to be real, too, and then, there was the assumption of angels. With those wings, vampire wasn't the right word to come to her mind, but vampirism in any form was still vampirism. She was about to find out for certain.
Carefully, she pressed on the door. It opened silently to her presence. Her right hand clenched the vial of blood tightly, and when she opened eyes that she didn't remember clenching shut, all she found was Isaac stretched out on the infirmary bed.
His rose pink lips were parted, and two hands were stretched out over his head. Compared to the tight way that he'd been sleeping in this bed last time, it appeared that King Isaac's body was close to finishing its healing process. In sleep his large wings were spread.
The long, ebony appendages twitched on occasion. Sometimes they would even wrap closer to his body like he was keeping himself warm with them. King Isaac was definitely a strange mage.
In complete stealth Araña forced herself to get back to the task at hand. She made noiseless steps towards the king, and once she stood at the head of the bed, she peered down at the teeth she could see behind his parted lips.
Although Isaac's body was completely clean of any injuries, his skin appeared paler than it had been when they'd first seen him. Even the color of his mouth and lips had paled.
Curious, Araña moved the vial. She unscrewed the lid and leaned closer towards Isaac. Like a dog on a scent trail, his head moved towards her in sleep. She moved the vial this way and that way under his nose to watch in amazement at how he followed it. Her eyes were so focused on the way he moved towards the vial of blood that she didn't notice the claws on the tips of his fingers elongating and darkening.
Isaac's lips parted when Araña got the vial too close to his lips, and suddenly, a hand snatched her slender wrist. A slight squeak pulled from her lips, but sleeping Isaac covered her mouth with his free hand. The one uncovered eye he had flashed open. Instead of being that wonderful Alexandria's Genesis purple, this eye was brilliant blue. Not only had that changed, but when Isaac spoke, his voice wasn't the same.
"Don't go around teasing one like me, girl," the deeper voice explained. With a cruel smirk on his lips, Isaac pulled Araña's wrist closer. He tilted the vial up to his lips and like a starved man at drink, his mouth sucked the contents of the vial dry.
All the blood felt like it was sucked out of her face with the same speed that Isaac's lips downed the vial of crimson. Her body broke into slight tremors that seemed to please this blue eyed, deep voiced version of Isaac. Once he pulled the vial away from his mouth, he released her.
Isaac's hands smoothed the white sheets covering him, and he adjusted until he sat up straight. "So, you sent me to Fiore," the deep voice rumbled as if coming straight from Isaac's broad chest.
Araña was frozen in fear. She watched with wide, black eyes as this new Isaac stepped from the bed. Color was returning to the face of the male. His skin turned pink before her very eyes. His hair appeared to grow silkier and so did his large, black wings.
The man tilted his head this way and that, popping the bones in his neck. With a flexing and movement of his shoulder blades, Isaac's massive wings began to fold in on themselves. They seemed to break down. The bones snapped and bent before sinking inside of him in a black light that glowed. In just a few moments, the wings were gone to reveal Isaac's muscular back.
There was one mark on Isaac's back, and that was the seal of the Royal Guard, his group of mages that served him with their lives. The seal was a round shield with a raven in flight dead center. The black wings spread out from the shield, and the beak of the raven pointed straight up along Isaac's spine. Even though the wings were gone, Isaac's intimidation factor was not. Everything about the way this new Isaac moved, like a predator in the night, screamed evil.
Despite it all, Araña didn't feel like her legs could move her.
Isaac braced his brawny arm against the large, pointed arch window in the room. His currently blue eye scanned the town below him.
At this hour it was early dawn. A dusty light filtered down through the clouds to shine a pink glow across the sea shore. Golden sand reflected against the blue-green sea, and the lamps in the town were just beginning to turn off their lacrima powered glow.
From this angle red light poured across Isaac's healthily glowing skin. With his head resting against his forearm and his free hand making trails along the dark slashes of his masquerade mask, King Isaac appeared like some forlorn darkness come straight from the past.
The hand that had been smoothing over the mask stopped its leisurely stroking, and Isaac clenched the mask tightly with his black talons. The talons sunk beneath the mask, but when Isaac tried to rip the piece off his face, he was met with magical resistance. Red light shined from whatever magic seal held the mask to his face. Suddenly, a magic circle appeared and flames shot out along Isaac's fingertips. "Damn you, Sirenia," Isaac hissed.
His body whipped around when Araña made just the slightest motion to back away, and suddenly, it was like he'd just acknowledged her presence. The man was on her in a second. His talon tipped fingers grabbed onto the back of her head, and his blue eye bored into her gaze. "You will tell no one of my presence," he explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
Hastily, she nodded her head. She was unnerved. Wasn't sure what was going on. Yeah, she'd figured out Isaac drank blood, but what she didn't figure out was who the hell was inside Isaac's body.
"You will forget that you ever saw me."
"Y-Yes!" she squeaked.
"Good. Now scram. I can feel the boy waking up inside of me. The last thing I need is for Sirenia to know I've been awakened." Isaac's hand wrapped around Araña's entire face. Her black eyes widened in fear as that strange dark yet glowing light spread around his hand. A small magic circle formed on the black of his hand in a blue-black light. Right when Araña was sure that she was about to be attacked or killed, Isaac's new voice commanded, "Forget."
Kagura felt uneasy as she walked into the guild the next morning. She didn't know why she felt that way. She had the whole morning from when she'd woken up two hours before her alarm went off to when she'd finished packing in preparation for Crocus. The fact that the guild's doors were unlocked by the time she'd gotten in didn't help her unease one bit.
Chewing on the inside of her lip, Kagura checked the inside of the guild. No one was here. None of the lights were on. Not even the large chandelier that was made of blown glass was turned on. That single light illuminated the entire space in a flickering glow similar to flames. It was the first light anyone turned on when they came into the guild.
Had someone broke in last night? If so, why? There were items of value in the guild, but the town of Verbena was a quiet, peaceful place. Thieves were the last things people in this town had to worry about. Their worst problems were tsunamis and hurricanes.
Flicking on the light switch of Sirenia's favorite chandelier, Kagura checked out the guild. Nothing seemed out of place. The guild was pristinely clean thanks to Kagura having hired new barmaids to take care of the place.
She rubbed the back of her neck then placed her messenger bag down in a hideaway corner of the foyer. If someone was in here, there was no way they would know that pulling out a book on ancient rulers of Lancet would cause a small storage space to open up. Besides, the average thief looked for obvious items of value. Thieves weren't typically versed in pricey literature.
Immediately, her eyes locked on the opened door of the infirmary. Isaac was still healing. He shouldn't be up and out of bed. Just when she was starting to make her way up the steps to the infirmary, Isaac popped his black head out the doorway.
Purple eyes locked with hazel, and he did that adorable boyish grin thing again. Ugh. The grin should be outlawed with the way it made her skin flush pink. "Morning, Kagura," Isaac greeted.
His tall body stepped fully from the infirmary, and he met her at the top of the stairs. Inclining her head at him, Kagura greeted, "Morning, Isaac. Did you unlock the doors this morning?"
"Huh? No. It must have been Araña. When I woke up, she was passed out on one of the infirmary beds. She's still asleep up there."
Well, that explained why the doors were unlocked, but now Kagura had more questions. Why did Araña come up here early?
Instead of asking, Kagura wondered about something else. "How long have you been awake?"
He shrugged. "Just long enough to take a shower. It took me about five different tries to figure out which way the hot water turned, but I eventually got it figured out." The look of self-satisfaction that crossed his face would forever be stuck inside of Kagura's head forever. How amnesia could turn one of the most serious, honorable men alive into a simple boy was amazing.
Kagura took a step around dark headed Isaac only to pause and notice a couple of things. One was the fact that he was strolling around the guild with nothing but a towel around his hips, and two was the fact that his wings were gone.
Rivulets of water dripped down the many indentions in his back, and she felt her face turning deep scarlet when moisture glistened against the Royal Guard's insignia placed between his shoulder blades. Without those wings on him, she could see everything. Hastily, she tore her eyes away.
Coughing into her hand, Kagura mentioned, "Isaac, where are your pants?"
The tall, brawny male blinked a couple of times then looked down at the towel he'd tied around his hips. "Oh. Uh. Ha. Ha. Oops. Lemme go get them. I just got out of the shower."
He spun around on his heel towards the infirmary, but Kagura was right behind him. If Araña was in here early, Kagura needed to make sure she hadn't come in to harass Isaac about the blood she'd found in his flask. It was a good thing that Kagura didn't watch TV shows like Type A. The last thing Kagura wanted to be was hallucinating about people with a tendency to drink blood.
As soon as she stepped into the doorway, Isaac snatched up a pair of faded out blue jeans before disappearing behind the door of the bathroom. How he got rid of his wings, Kagura had no clue. She just knew that she'd be a lot more comfortable around him when he decided to put on some pants instead of that thin towel he had on.
Kagura let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding then turned her eyes to Araña passed out on the bed. The woman looked like she'd fallen there and hadn't moved since. It was odd for Araña to be up so early. Kagura was the earliest riser in the guild, second only to their master.
With a frown crossing her face because Kagura was sure Araña had come here to confirm her vampire suspicions, Kagura flicked the green headed woman between the eyes. They only had so much time before they had to get to Crocus, and Kagura was sure that Araña had been up all night plotting how to reveal Isaac's secret instead of getting packed.
"Five more minutes," Araña complained. She grabbed the thin sheet covering her body to hike it up and over her head.
Quickly, Kagura pulled the sheet back down. "Araña, wake up. We're leaving in half an hour."
The woman shot straight up to sit at a perfect ninety degree angle. "Half an hour!" she cried. Her eyes got wide then narrowed. Pointing a finger at Kagura, she asked, "What are you doing in m my house?"
Hazel eyes rolled. "We're not in your house. We're in the infirmary. You unlocked the doors early this morning. You weren't trying to see if Isaac was a vampire or not. Were you?"
Araña's eyes flew wide at the accusation. "Wha-me? No! I don't even know how I got here." She leaped out of the bed. With her hands on the door frame, she cried, "I'll be back before time to go. Don't leave without me! I have to get packed!" And, just like that Araña disappeared in a frenzy.
With a sigh Kagura turned her eyes up to the tiles in the ceiling. "Am I really the only sane one around here?"
(Gives a bow) Sorry about the lateness of this chapter. It was supposed to be up sooner, but writing eight stories at the same time while also doing beta writing for other people and keeping up with classwork is a touch difficult. Yes, I know that was an excuse, but aye, I ain't a miracle worker here. :P
One another note, I hope you all enjoyed this tidbit. Have wonderful days and nights.